Jordan skipped the patio table—too close to the kitchen window—for the top step of the two-level deck and sat down.
Cam seated himself beside her. “That went well.”
“You talked to my parents?”
“I did. I told them I was very interested in you.”
It would have been nice to have witnessed that conversation herself. “Very, huh? And they said…?”
“They seemed good with it. No one called me too old or you too young. Your dad actually seemed to like the idea.”
“And my mom?”
“I guess I didn’t catch her reaction.”
“If she didn’t say anything, she’s probably good with it too.” Now for her brothers. “Have you talked to Dillan or Garrett?”
“I told Dillan tonight. I called him before I called you. He thinks we were slowpokes.” He eyed her, clearly thinking about how to say something.
And evidently struggling with it.
She nudged him with her shoulder. “What?”
He linked his fingers together and frowned at them. “I don’t want to be slow about the rest of this.”
The rest of this… His meaning dawned on her. She widened her eyes and faked a shocked expression. “Are you asking me to elope?”
“No.” He grinned at the vast, empty park beyond the backyard. “I’d like to have a good relationship with my future in-laws, seeing as how they may be the only parent figures I ever have.”
“Did you tell them about your sister?”
“Not yet. I’m not sure if… I would have, until everything that happened tonight.” He slid his hand over hers and wove their fingers together. “I don’t want them thinking I’m putting you in any danger. And then I have to stop and think. Am I?” He met her gaze. “Do you think I’m putting you in danger?”
When he held her hand like this? Shared the most private part of his heart with her? “No,” she whispered.
“Good.”
But he let her hand go and rubbed his palms together.
Why did he go back and forth like that? Comfortable then uncomfortable in a few seconds?
Evidently there was more he needed to say. If only he’d spit it out. While it was tempting to ask him what it was, it’d be best if he told her on his terms. She shouldn’t force whatever it was out of him before he was ready.
Before they were both ready.
“So we’re not going to elope, we’re not going to get married before Dillan and Miska do. What’s the plan, then?”
“Get to know each other. Well.”
“I like that plan.”
“Maybe you will, maybe you won’t.”
What did that mean? “Why? Is your favorite color neon pink?”
He pretended surprise. “You saw my bedroom?”
She laughed. “Actually, I saw the toys on the stairs Saturday and wondered if you had some… toy issues.”
“Really? You hid that well.”
“You don’t have a bedroom full of stuffed bears? Or Matchbox cars all over your pink dresser?”
“Umm…”
She gave him a playful shove. “Stop it.”
“Avery’s the one into cars, actually. Logan’s outgrowing them, but she loves them. We’ve got a racetrack set up in the basement. The two of us spend good time down there.”
What an awesome uncle he was. “Maybe she’ll grow up to be a racecar driver.”
Cam grimaced. “Her mom would love that.”
Silence settled around them, and nature filled it. A bird chirped high in one of the trees, and across the yard another answered it. Were they a couple? A family? Were there young birds somewhere close by?
“So.” Cam leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, and rubbed his palms together again. And again. He bit his lip, then finally nodded as if he’d come to some decision. “I, uh, got my girlfriend pregnant in high school.”
Oh.
“My senior year. Early in the year. She, umm…”
Jordan’s throat tightened.
“I already told you about my parents. How pro-choice they are. Her family wasn’t. They were a lot more conservative, but of course I had my parents’ viewpoint on it. Just end it, you know?”
When would he look at her? When he’d finished?
“That’s what I wanted her to do, but she wasn’t sure. So I had her talk to my parents. They weren’t happy with me, but they felt there was an easy solution. That neither of us had to suffer.”
“Suffer?”
She didn’t realize she’d said it out loud until Cam looked her way. “That was their word. You know, we didn’t need to have those consequences. We didn’t have to let it ‘become a child.’” He used his fingers for air quotes. “I just went with it. Thought sure, we can fix this. And I didn’t listen to her. At all.”
A mosquito buzzed by her ear. Jordan swatted it away, her hand feeling weak.
“It all really hit me—what I’d done to her—when Anna went through it. The pressure to abort, knowing it wasn’t right. Knowing it was a real child in there. A little person.” His jaw clenched as he sat silent for several seconds. “I was about the biggest jerk a guy could be. I didn’t care what my girlfriend thought. I just wanted that baby gone, and I was getting angry that she was so hesitant about it. Always crying. Always…” A small groan escaped him, and he closed his eyes, a deep breath dropping his shoulders. “I pressured her. Hard. Convinced her finally. And she did it. Because I wanted it.”
Oh, Cam. Her eyes fell shut, but moisture leaked from them. Tears for a lost child, for the teenage girl he’d pushed to do something she didn’t want to do, for Cam himself—all these years later.
And for her own pain, right in this moment. For knowing more of what was in his past.
“Jordan.” He pulled her to him, and she rested her head against his collarbone. His words were deeper than normal, his voice rougher. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded against him. Deep down, she’d known there was something more. Cam had only become a Christian a handful of years ago. And his silence had made everyone wonder what kind of a life he’d come from. So while this wasn’t a surprise exactly…
“I hate telling you this. I hate that I could have a teenager now. I wish I did. I wish so much that I did.”
“Cam, I’m not mad.” She sat up and wiped beneath her eyes. “I’m sorry for all of it too.”
He watched her closely, as if he wasn’t quite sure he believed her.
She forced a shaky smile for him. “I’m okay. Really.”
His mouth twitched into a smile. “Thank you.”
She nodded.
He pulled her close again and pressed his lips against her hair. “You’re awesome,” he breathed above her ear.
And so was he. Look how far he’d come from what he’d been. “What happened to her?”
He released her and spoke toward the park again. “I haven’t heard anything about her in the last few years, but last I did hear… Her life’s a mess.”
“Guilt?”
“I think so. I realize now that she was trying all kinds of things to self-medicate. She went wild, then joined some weird religion. I heard she tried to kill herself in college. She just became a completely different person, swinging from one extreme to the other.”
Looking for help. For answers.
“And then Anna gets into a similar situation and refuses to have an abortion. I didn’t get it. I didn’t push her to do it—I’d learned at least that much. But I watched her. Listened. Helped however I could.”
“To make up for…” How did she finish that line?
“I don’t think so. It just confused me why she would risk everything for a child that wasn’t even hers. I mean, I understood at first. If she didn’t give that child a voice, no one else would. But I really thought that once the parents refused to be convinced, she’d say okay.”
“But she didn’t.”
He shook his head. “Just the opposite. She told me it was wrong, that the
baby had been given life, and she would not end it. Would not. I’d argue, and we’d talk about it. About God giving life. About what the Bible said about life. Did you know that the church fathers spoke out against abortion?”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I started reading up on it, and that led to more talking about the Bible, about what the church fathers believed as compared to what I thought they believed—”
“Which was?”
He shook his head. “I was clueless, Jordan. Knew nothing. But I was learning. And Anna was grieving over Tony and talking about how she’d see him in heaven again. I even told her not to worry about the baby, that she’d see her in heaven too.” He grimaced. “I still can’t believe I said that about Sophie.”
How had she not known that there was so much behind Cam? So much that had led him to where he was today? “Clearly it’s not how you feel now.”
“No.” A soft smile covered his lips. “I became a Christian because of Sophie. Because of Anna. She fought for what she knew to be right. If she hadn’t, I never would have bothered to ask why life mattered. Why Anna was about to be stuck, I thought, with someone else’s disabled child. Why she was willing to lose so much for a less than perfect life. That got me searching, Jordan. Me. I look back and see that God used a supposedly imperfect Sophie to bring me to him. To show me how imperfect I was without him. How I needed him. How much he’d sacrificed to give me life. And when I got it, it just… Jordan, it blew me away.”
A different kind of tear filled her eyes now. “That’s amazing.”
“Yeah. It is.” He searched her face. “I am sorry that I had to tell you what I’ve done. I wish I could undo it all. For the sake of everyone involved. But I know God’s forgiven me. I know that.”
“Which is why you’re helping Anna so much.”
“No, I’m doing that because it’s right. Letting Sophie be born was only the beginning of choosing life instead of abortion. Everything I do now is because it’s what God wants me to do—to help a widow and her kids. To stand up for what’s right, no matter what some law might say.”
Jordan wrapped her arm around his and curled up against him, her head on his shoulder. The old Cam was hard to picture. She couldn’t imagine this typically quiet, calm man doing—thinking—what he had.
How God had changed him. And how grateful she was for it.
“What’s going on in your head?”
“That I’m glad you told me.”
“Really?”
“Cam, I want to know you. The good, the bad. The current you, the past. I want to know why you’re you.”
His head rested on top of hers. “I’ve dreaded having to tell you this.”
“I know.”
“How did I get so lucky to end up with you?”
Jordan sat up and smiled at him. “Keep talking.”
With a chuckle, he rested his forehead against hers, his breath warm on her face. “I really admire how you’ve handled this. Grace Kelly has nothing on you.”
“Thank you.”
His lips brushed hers once, twice, then pulled back. “I also don’t think you’ve had time to process everything. You might not feel so understanding in the morning.”
“Cam—”
“I mean it. I’m giving you room to get mad at me if you need to. To hurt, Jordan. I don’t want you to pretend you’re okay if you’re not.”
“I don’t believe in faking emotions. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
“One reason I like you so much.”
He pulled out of her touch and rested his palms on the deck behind him, leaning back while he watched her.
“You’re not going to tell me the other reasons?”
“What other reasons?”
Tease. “Why you like me so much.”
He grinned out at the park. And said nothing.
“Wow, you know how to romance a girl.”
“Don’t I?”
“So?”
“You do like to fish for compliments, don’t you?”
“Well, you did compare me to Grace Kelly.”
He fingered the ends of her hair. “I don’t like blondes, though. I prefer dark hair. And eyes.”
Warmth flooded through her, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. How she wanted to kiss him again, kiss him for more than a couple lingering seconds.
He released her hair and sat up. “Jordan, you and I—I want us to date right. To marry right. I’ve already kissed you two more times tonight than I probably should have. Because I’m having a hard time thinking past kissing you some more. A lot more.”
Did she dare tell him that she was too?
“And I can tell by the look in your eyes that you’re thinking the same thing.”
Warmth spread across her cheeks, and she ducked her head, turned away.
“Makes me feel good, of course. A guy likes that.”
She nodded. So did a girl.
“Jordan.”
She wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his arms, be held by him, kissed by him. And right now she halfway felt rejected.
Was it because she knew he’d done more? With someone else?
Was this that hurt he’d mentioned, starting to surface? She closed her eyes, frustrated with the way her mood was suddenly changing.
“Jordan?” He turned her to him. “What’d I say?”
What had he said? What was this frustration building in her? “Nothing, Cam. Maybe you’re right, about the hurt coming later.”
His eyebrows knit in question.
Okay. Fine. “I want you to kiss me. A lot. And now you’re saying you won’t. When you’ve…” She flipped a hand out to let it say the rest.
“Ah.”
Yes. Ah.
“That’s because I don’t want to do to you what I did to her. I care about you, Jordan. I was nothing but selfish with her, but I want to protect you. And right now you might need some protecting from me. Because I know me.”
His words comforted, a little. “You’re right. We should just elope.”
A laugh burst from him.
Jordan couldn’t help smiling.
“And now I’m suspecting again that you’re trying to get your brothers to kill me.”
“Never.”
He chuckled. “I guess we should call it a night, huh?”
“If we have to.”
On his feet, he offered her his hands and pulled her up. The deck lights—when had those come on?—lit the planes of his face. His hazel eyes smiled at her.
Jordan smiled back, feeling it a bit this time. “When will I see you again?” she asked, remembering now what she was worrying about. That they’d share a special evening together and then she wouldn’t hear from him for days—the way Matt had treated her for so long.
“Tomorrow night? My goal is to see if you get sick of me or not.”
“It’s going to take a lot more than one night to figure that out.”
He winked at her. “We’ll do a thorough test.”
How quickly she was falling in love with this man. “Okay then. It’s a date.”
His gaze dipped, then flew back to her eyes. “Yes, a date.”
****
“Nice work, Thomas.”
It was, actually. Tracking Hannah down had been one of his tougher jobs in recent years. “My pleasure. I’ll send you my final bill in the morning.”
“Not yet. Something’s come up, and I’m not going to be able to get there tomorrow. I’ll need you to stay a little longer, keep an eye on things for me.”
“What things?”
“Just make sure she doesn’t run away, that she’s still in that house, that everything’s normal. That kind of thing.”
“I’m happy to do it, but I’ll need to charge you—”
“That’s fine. Whatever it costs. All right?”
If finding Hannah had been so stinking important, why now was the guy getting cold feet about coming out to talk to her? Hadn’t that been Peterson�
�s goal the whole time? What could be keeping him from coming?
“Thomas?”
“I’ll do it.”
“And don’t send me a bill. Just—What do I owe you? Right now? I’ll send you some cash right away.”
Something suddenly didn’t feel right about this. “Let me figure it out and get back to you in the morning.”
“Okay. Just call me with the number. Don’t send a bill. Not yet.”
No, things weren’t right at all.
Chapter Nine
On Tuesday evening, Cam took Jordan to the hospital to meet Sophie, eager to show off the little girl who’d changed his life.
He’d told Jordan how loving and giving Sophie was despite everything she was going through. But in the hospital room, it was clear it had been a rough day.
Sophie slept in her bed, and Anna dozed in a nearby recliner, eyes closed until they entered, while Logan and Avery read by the window.
Anna pushed herself out of the chair and held a finger to her lips. She looked exhausted, the circles under her eyes almost matching the dark circles beneath Sophie’s closed eyes.
Cam gave Anna a quick hug, then held her at arm’s length to study her face. “Rough day?”
She nodded. “Worst one in a while. They gave her the wrong breakfast, then had to give her a new PICC line.”
Sophie’d probably thrown a fit over it all and worn herself out. Worn Anna out too. “Sorry to hear that. How are you holding up?”
Anna flashed them a smile that said it all. That she was beyond frazzled, was close to falling apart. “I’m fine.”
He hugged her tightly. “You are such a liar.”
Beside him, Jordan chuckled.
Anna pushed herself back and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry we’re all such a mess, Jordan.”
“It’s fine, Anna. You’re allowed.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping girl. “I’d hoped you’d get to see her on a normal day. A good day.”
“Is she asleep for the night?” Cam asked.
“No. She’ll probably wake up soon.”
Cam walked to Avery and Logan and ruffled Avery’s hair, then tried to close Logan’s book on him.
Still reading, Logan grinned and fought to keep the pages spread.
Taken: A Kept Novella Page 6
