“You don’t mind?” She closed her eyes before she finished speaking and her breathing slowed almost immediately.
Which is how she missed Cam driving right past the cutoff to Denver.
12
ZOEY GOT BACK into the car and slammed the door. Staring straight ahead, she said, “Smirk all you want to, but what you did was still wrong.”
Cam hadn’t realized he was smirking. Instead of starting the car, he faced her. If only he hadn’t had to pull over for Casper, she would have still been asleep and they could have had this discussion when they were further down the road. As it was, they’d just passed Cheyenne, Wyoming, which was straight north of Denver, and it was only noon because of the time-zone change. They could reverse course on I25 and be at the airport in an hour and a half. Cam didn’t want to point that out, however.
“Would you rather Casper had that little episode while in his crate at the airport? They probably wouldn’t have let him on a plane.”
Slowly, Zoey turned to glare at him. “That’s not the point,” she said. “You promised. That’s the point.”
“Technically, I promised if we got to Denver and I could take an earlier flight, I would.”
Zoey took a breath before replying. “So because we’re not in Denver you win on a technicality? Am I going to have to start looking for loopholes in your promises?”
“No!” She was so much angrier than Cam had expected her to be. “Forget I said that. I’m not trying to win. This,” and he gestured to the road stretching endlessly in front of them, “seemed to be a better option at the time.”
“Driving a thousand miles across a vast frozen wasteland in January seemed like a better option?”
“Yes.” She might not believe him, but he had thoroughly analyzed driving versus flying. “The roads are clear, the sun is out, the forecast is good, and when you factor in the three-hour drive to Denver and the fact that we’d have to wait around to find out if we could get on a plane—”
“That’s another thing—why didn’t you book online when we were at the motel? Because of Casper, I couldn’t, but you could have.”
He’d hoped that wouldn’t occur to her. “I wanted to have the option of getting on your flight if it worked out,” he stressed when she started to interrupt. “Besides, something could have gone wrong—”
“Such as not showing up at the airport?” she snapped.
Cam refused to snap back. “I meant car or Casper trouble.” And there had definitely been Casper trouble, poor dog. Cam was beginning to wonder if the food had gone bad and Casper had taken one for the team.
Zoey threw a look over her shoulder. “He’s got to be empty by now. Kate said not to feed him for the rest of the day. And he’s not dehydrated—she told me how to check.”
“Zoey, you’ve got to admit that he’s more comfortable in the car than he’d be in his crate on an airplane. Gaining three hours in the middle of the night didn’t seem worth putting him through the stress.”
“I still can’t believe driving— What did you say, eighteen hours? I can’t believe with that long a drive, we’d only get to Ellensburg three hours later than if we flew.”
“See, it’s because we’re not going all the way to Seattle. If you flew, you’d have to drive a couple of hours to get to the kennel. When you consider that and—”
“I know,” Zoey broke in. “The flight schedule, blah blah, landing at night, blah blah, getting luggage, renting car, blah blah. I heard you the first two times you mentioned it to me.” She stared out the window.
The decision to drive had made sense to him and he’d honestly assumed she’d agree after he explained. But if anything, Zoey was angrier than ever.
Something else was going on here. “Why are you so angry?”
“Because you made the decision without asking me.”
Fair enough. “You were asleep and I didn’t want to disturb you, especially because I expected you to agree. But you’re right. I should have discussed driving the rest of the way with you first.”
“Thank you.”
Cam waited, but her demeanor didn’t change. She didn’t even look at him. He hoped he wasn’t going to have to offer to go to Denver after all. “There’s more, though. What?”
“I stressed how important it is that I do this myself!” she burst out. “I really want to get Casper to the kennel, let him do his thing and deliver him back home safely. I have to do this on my own because if I succeed, maybe it’ll end the Zoey disaster jinx.”
“So you’re saying that because we’re driving directly to the kennel, it somehow doesn’t count?”
She sighed. “I’ve depended on you too much. You got me food in Chicago, you helped take care of Casper, you got us the cars, you’ve researched flights—you’ve pretty much taken over and I’ve just gone along for the ride.”
And it had been a great ride. “We teamed up. You watched my samples for me. Otherwise, I would have had to lug that box all over the place. And the only reason Joyce let us use her car was because you and Casper were with me. There’s no way she would have let a strange man drive her to the wedding.”
“She Googled us.”
“She wouldn’t have bothered to even do that without you and Casper.”
“Okay,” Zoey said. “Getting to Des Moines was a joint effort, but then you didn’t get on a plane. You stayed behind to help me. And I let you.”
“So? It’s called using your available resources—me. That’s not cheating. That’s smart. You don’t get extra points for making things difficult for yourself.”
“But...if you hadn’t helped me, what would have happened?”
“You would have managed. Casper would have spent a lot more hours in his crate and you would have spent a lot more hours standing in line. Whether Casper showed up for his rendezvous on time would have been totally out of your hands. Same with me and my meeting. But we didn’t let some random ticket agent decide our fate. We took control. We chose to act.”
“It’s the choosing to act part that usually bites me in the butt,” she muttered.
Memories of her turquoise panties floated through Cam’s mind.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” She threw her hands up. “I know what you’re thinking.”
He grinned and she responded with a small smile—a very small smile. But it was a start. “At least if you fail, if we fail, we can say we tried to succeed instead of doing nothing and failing anyway.”
“Hmm.” She appeared to consider what he’d said. “Did you make that up, or is it from some speech you had to memorize in school?”
“My high school football coach may have said something similar once, and if he didn’t, he should have. I remember he did used to say ‘It’s better to try and fail than fail to try.’”
Zoey shook her head. “You make driving for hours seem so reasonable, but the fact is you made the decision without me. Why? Do you believe I’m incapable of making a good decision?”
Cam ran through his list of swearing numbers. He’d hoped to avoid this. “If you want to go to Denver, I’ll drive you to Denver.”
“But we passed the turnoff hours ago!”
Cam reached into the back for his laptop and handed it to her just as his phone buzzed. “We can be there in an hour and a half. I downloaded flight schedules. Call and check what’s available.”
He stared at his phone. Gus. Again. “What’s up, Gus?”
“You tell me.” Cam heard absolutely no trace of an accent in Gus’s voice, which meant he was extremely angry about something, or more likely at someone, probably Cam.
Everybody was mad at Cam today.
“I’m parked on the side of the road in Wyoming trying to figure out my next move. You?”
“You might have given me a heads up that we were g
oing to have visitors.”
“Who?” He hadn’t forgotten an appointment, had he?
“Bunch of infernal Campbells poking their noses into everything.”
A bunch of... “Richard sent his people to check out the brewery?”
“Aye.”
What was Richard up to? “How many?”
“Even one is too many.”
“Gus. I didn’t know Richard was going to do that. I haven’t met with the guy yet. Who did he send?”
“There is a lawyer type and a bean counter and a man who claims to know a thing or two about brewing. Then there’s a slick fella who has no discernible function other than to stare at everybody with his beady little Campbell eyes.”
“They’re not really all named Campbell, are they, Gus?”
“Might as well be. That’s where their loyalty lies. Hey! You with the fancy computer thing—you can’t go in there.”
Cam couldn’t hear the reply, but he heard Gus. “I don’t care if they are. You keep your grimy Campbell hands off my assets!”
“Gus?”
“They say they have a right to look at the recipes.”
“Not yet, they don’t.”
“Not ever as long as there’s a breath in my body!”
“Gus, calm down. Richard probably asked his finance guy to check us out to make sure we wouldn’t take his money and disappear. They’re just being overzealous. Explain that Richard and I have yet to meet and invite them to return when and if we reach a preliminary agreement.”
“With pleasure.” Before the connection ended, Cam heard, “Be off, ye Campbell wankers! And don’t come back until ye show me the color of your money!”
Cam winced.
“I heard that all the way over here.” Zoey was struggling not to laugh.
“Gus can be...Gus.”
“He’s your cousin. The red-headed one?”
Cam nodded. “The one who forgot he told you that you could take the beer out of the cooler.”
“I remember him. He’s very...colorful.”
Cam considered Gus. “He’s a hard worker,” he said and was surprised to realize it was true. “But his contributions are more...abstract, I guess. I’m not sure exactly what it is he does, but he does it very well.”
“Gus is your brand,” Zoey said. “Like what Joyce recommended to me for my Skin Garden line. It’s not enough to make a fabulous product. You also have to identify your market and sell it to them. The customer wants an experience along with the product. And your product must provide something no one else’s does. Gus is your ‘something.’”
“He is that.” Cam tried to imagine MacNeil’s without Gus and couldn’t. Cam was fine with people when he had to be, but Gus was a natural. People were drawn to him and thus drawn to the beer with his picture on the label. So it wasn’t all about Gus’s enormous ego.
“That day he made me laugh,” Zoey was saying. “He made me feel like we were going to throw the best party ever. And we did. People still remember it.”
“I know I remember it.” Cam nudged her shoulder when she immediately looked stricken. “Stop it. It’s funny. And Gus has told the exploding beer story a hundred times.”
Zoey appeared so horrified that Cam burst into deep, soul-cleansing laughter.
Casper barked at him and that made Cam laugh more. Finally Zoey joined him.
“Look! I’m crying.” She sniffed and dug in her purse for a tissue. “I don’t know why I’m laughing.” She dabbed her eyes. “I’m in a car by the side of the road in Wyoming in the dead of winter with a crazy man and a dog with intestinal issues.”
“Because you’re a saint, Zoey.”
“And this is my reward?”
That set them off again, which got Casper all riled up, so they both got out of the car and walked him.
Cam inhaled the clean, cold air and viewed the stark beauty of the distant mountains against one of the bluest skies he’d ever seen.
And then he looked down at the woman standing next to him, wearing the silly candy-cane hat, and emotion clogged his throat. He couldn’t imagine the brewery without Gus and he couldn’t imagine the rest of his life without Zoey.
He drew another breath. “I have to say something.” His heart thumped. Too soon. Too soon. Too soon. “I love you.”
The words hung in the air. Cam didn’t look at Zoey because he’d want to see answering love in her eyes, and he knew it wouldn’t be there. Not yet. “That’s a big part of why I didn’t go to the airport. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to you. So I convinced myself that driving straight through was better than gambling that you could get a flight today. I was selfish. Can you forgive me?”
He risked a glance at her. There was something in her eyes. He couldn’t call it love, but it was something.
“You make the best apologies.” Her voice was a gruff whisper. She cleared her throat. “Yes, you’re forgiven. Especially since there are only two possible flights and neither airline would accept a reservation for Casper until the weather conditions are confirmed nearer to departure.”
She gave him a wry smile and surprised him with a quick, cold kiss. “The road trip is on.”
13
HE’D SAID THE L WORD.
Incredibly, this great, heart-meltingly sexy man had told Zoey he loved her.
And even more incredibly, she hadn’t said it back.
It wasn’t because she didn’t love him. It was because once she said the words, Cam would take on all her problems as his own. That’s the kind of person he was. When he committed, he was all in, one hundred percent, accepting the good and the bad. Before Zoey could let him do that, she had to make sure there wasn’t too much bad for him to accept.
She didn’t want Cam solving her problems; she wanted to take care of them on her own. Besides, there would be plenty of problems that belonged to both of them in the future. If she and Cam got together, she wanted to add to the relationship instead of immediately taking from it.
She had to protect Cam from himself.
As if Kate’s pregnancy hadn’t already raised the stakes on getting Casper to Merriweather Kennels, Zoey wanted to demonstrate to Cam that she wasn’t a total incompetent.
No matter what he said, Zoey knew he didn’t have total confidence in her. But why would Cam believe that Zoey could do this on her own when she herself wasn’t completely convinced she could? From the moment she’d agreed to help her sister, Zoey hadn’t truly believed she could pull it off. She’d expected failure. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.
Cam had given her hope. And he was right. A win was a win. It didn’t have to be pretty.
They climbed into the car. Casper seemed perky, drank water and appeared to be over his Chinese food–induced tummy ache.
Even his paws looked great. Zoey had slathered them with one of her skin-soothing balms and used the same conditioner she used on her own hair on the ends of his coat.
She had all sorts of special dog-grooming products in the suitcase but nothing that repelled the dirty slush Casper had walked through the past several days. Though she’d regularly cleaned his legs and paws, the hair only got dingier. But the skin soothing balm was doing the trick, and as a bonus, Casper had stopped licking and chewing his paws.
She finished making sure he was dry before they started on the long slog to Washington and conditioned the outer layer of his coat just for grins. Besides, it helped get rid of the wet dog smell that permeated the car.
Zoey climbed out of the back, walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door. “Out, MacNeil. I’m driving.”
Cam stood. “Do you know where you’re going?”
Zoey pointed. “That way.”
Cam laughed, and when he got into the passenger seat, he opened his lap
top and showed her the map.
“Wow. We really are right above Denver.”
“You can still head for the airport,” he said. “Your call.”
“No. This feels right. Besides, Denver isn’t the only airport around. I notice we’re going by Salt Lake City and then there’s Boise after that. If we don’t like driving in the dark, we can pick another airport.” There. A plan. With options, even.
“Absolutely,” Cam said heartily.
“Dial it down, MacNeil. Or learn to fake it better.”
“Okay.” He didn’t seem bothered that she’d caught him. “Don’t count on the other airports. They’re too small. You’ll probably just be routed back to Denver for a connecting flight.”
“Ugh.” Zoey sighed and started the car. “You don’t have to dial it down that much.”
“We’ve got a few hours’ cushion, unless you want to land on the kennel’s doorstep at four in the morning. So if we have to, we can stop to rest for a while and still get there in plenty of time.”
Noted, but Zoey didn’t intend to stop until Casper was at the kennel. “As long as you can still get to your meeting. What’s the latest you can leave Merriweather after dropping me off?”
“Eight-thirty,” he answered after a brief pause.
Zoey bet that pause meant he should actually leave closer to eight o’clock and silently planned on making sure he was able to take off by then.
She pulled back onto the highway and settled in. “So Cam, I’ve been wondering—why are we getting a better cell connection on a Wyoming highway than I get in my apartment?”
* * *
CAM GOT THE message loud and clear.
He’d known it was too early to tell her he loved her, and although he hadn’t expected to hear it back—well, he’d hoped—he had expected her to say something.
But she’d totally ignored what was a huge milestone in any relationship. Instead, she’d taken two giant emotional steps backward, and now they were talking cell-phone reception as though they were a couple of strangers.
Awkward.
But when one person says, “I love you” and the other doesn’t, how can it be anything but awkward?
Taken by Storm Page 16
