One and Only

by Jenny Holiday

  Jane looked around. Spray-painting the tea sets gold? Why was no one else confused by that sentence?

  “But we’ll have to do that in the afternoon,” Elise went on, “because—”

  “I have to work tomorrow,” Wendy said. And when Elise looked up blankly, she added, “Tomorrow is Wednesday.”

  Jane was about to protest that she had to work tomorrow, too. Book seven of the Clouded Cave series wasn’t going to write itself. Just because she didn’t have to be in court like Wendy didn’t mean her job wasn’t important. She had an inbox full of fan mail from readers clamoring for the next book, not to mention a contractual deadline that got closer every day.

  Elise continued, seemingly oblivious to her friends’ weekday employment obligations. “Tomorrow we also need to do a practice run of boutonniere, corsage, and bouquet making. I finagled a vendor pass to the commercial fruit and flower market, but we need to get there early. So we should do the flowers in the morning and paint the tea sets in the afternoon. We’ll meet in Mississauga at five thirty, but someone needs to pick up Cameron and make sure he behaves all day.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Jane, mentally calculating that to be at the suburban flower market by five thirty, she’d have to get up at four a.m. Also, there was the part about spending the afternoon spray-painting tea sets. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which was the lesser of the two proverbial evils. She could babysit this Cameron dude. She’d treat him like a character in one of her books—figure him out, then make him do her bidding. “Give me the wild man’s flight info, and I’ll pick him up.”

  “I thought it would be best if you did it,” Elise said, still scrolling and tapping like a maniac. “I mean, your job is so—”

  Wait for it.

  “Flexible.”

  But at least she hadn’t said anything about—

  “And you’re so responsible. I feel like this is your kind of task.”

  Jane stifled a sigh. Everyone always called her responsible, but they made it sound so…boring. She preferred to think of herself as conscientious.

  “I really, really appreciate this, Jane,” Elise said, finally looking up from her iPad and gracing Jane with a smile so wide and sincere that it almost made her breath catch.

  Yes. Right. That was why she was voluntarily submitting to this bridesmaid torture-gig. Her friend Elise was still somewhere inside the bridezilla that was currently manning the controls, and she was so, so happy to be marrying the love of her life. That was the important thing. It made even Jane’s heart, which was usually immune to these kinds of sentiments, twist a little. A wedding wasn’t in her future, and she was fine with that, but all of this planning made her think of her parents’ wedding pictures, the pair of them all decked out in their shaggy 1970s glory. Had they been in love like Elise and Jay, before the accident? Maybe at the start, but probably not for long, given her father’s addiction. He was never violent, but he wasn’t very…lovable.

  But now was not the time for a pity party, so she smiled back at Elise. “No problem.”

  “You need to meet his plane, take him to Jay’s, and make sure he doesn’t do anything crazy. Jay will be home as soon as he can after work, and then you can leave for the evening and we’ll figure out the rest of the schedule from there.”

  “Got it.”

  Elise reached out and squeezed her hand. “Seriously. Making sure Cameron doesn’t ruin my wedding is the best present you could give me.”

  She waved away Elise’s thanks. This was going to be a piece of cake. Or at least better than tea set spray-painting duty. After all, how bad could this Cameron MacKinnon guy be?

  Chapter Two

  WEDNESDAY—TEN DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING

  How bad could this wedding be?

  Cam kept asking himself that question as the plane taxied endlessly to its gate and he stretched—as much as he could in the tiny seat—to shake off the sleep that had overtaken him.

  The flight from Thunder Bay had been short, but he’d conked right out and fallen immediately into dreams of the Middle East. Snippets of dreams, really, everything from both tours all jumbled up: sand and heat and boredom and fear. His instrument panel. Haseeb’s face when he’d realized they weren’t going to be able to diffuse the bomb. Becky’s cries for help.

  The trial.

  Objectively speaking, Jay’s wedding was not going to be as bad as Iraq. Cam knew that. And, he consoled himself, he was in Toronto.

  A city. Civilization. Steaks. Ice cream. Hell, fresh vegetables. He smiled to himself as he hoisted his backpack onto his shoulder and shuffled down the aisle.

  A drink. Maybe even a joint. He perked up as he ambled down the Jetway. Despite his reputation, he wasn’t really into drugs, but after the last couple years, maybe he could get into the concept of temporary oblivion.

  Television. Trashy American television. Or boring Canadian television, even. Television in English, was the point. Falling asleep with the TV on, warm under a pile of his mom’s quilts.

  Winter, he thought, as he followed the signs toward baggage claim. Not for five or six months yet, but even just knowing it would come was a relief. And before then, the leaves of fall. Cool nights.

  Warm beds.

  Women.

  It wasn’t a bad list. And ticking off the items on it was going to help get him out of the damned country music song he was currently living in. Kicked out of the Canadian Forces and dumped by the girlfriend he’d stupidly remained faithful to for two deployments—the first in Afghanistan and the one he was just coming off of, in Iraq. He was even homeless on account of the fact that the plan had been for him to move in with Christie when he got back to Thunder Bay. All he needed was to get a dog so it could die and make his wretchedness complete.

  So much for turning over a new leaf. He’d been trying to remake his life, but apparently a person couldn’t escape his destiny.

  But whatever. He’d spent his whole childhood wanting to get out of Thunder Bay, so why the hell would he want to move back to that remote shithole of a town now that he had no reason to be at the reserve unit? Christie had done him a favor, actually.

  He was totally free.

  He closed his eyes and let his mind return to his list as he approached the still-empty baggage carousel. His dream girl…she’d be what? Blond? Yeah. Sleek blond hair. What else? Petite. Hell, if he was going to imagine his ideal hookup, he might as well embrace his inner caveman. He would run his hands all over her—they’d practically span her waist. He started a little as the baggage carousel leaped to life but then closed his eyes again. One more second living in his fantasy: blond hair, blue eyes, a pixie of a girl. Someone with a big, wide smile who would be happy to see him. Exactly…

  “Cameron MacKinnon?”

  …the opposite of the chubby, mousy woman standing before him.

  “Yeah?” Did he know this woman from somewhere? Another Thunder Bay escapee maybe? With her jeans, unadorned white T-shirt, and mud-colored hair scraped back into a ponytail, she sort of had that small-town, unadventurous look he recognized from home. He wouldn’t go so far as to call her a hick—her skinny jeans were flattering and looked expensive, but she didn’t seem like the big-city type.

  “You look exactly like I imagined,” she said, regarding him with her hands on her hips and smiling with satisfaction, almost as if she had manifested him with her mind.

  “And you look nothing like I imagined,” he answered.

  The smug smile disappeared, and she narrowed her eyes. They were the color of mossy mud. To match the mud hair, he supposed, though really her hair was the color of rusty mud. He laughed, both at her confusion and at himself. He’d gone and conjured a woman, all right, but apparently the universe had decided to give him the opposite version of what he’d ordered.

  “I’m Elise’s friend,” she said. “She sent me to pick you up. My name is Jane.”

  “Elise?”

  “Jay’s fiancée?” said the woman he now knew was
called Jane. Plain Jane. Muddy Jane.

  “Right.” He spied his duffel sliding down the chute and jogged over to retrieve it. “So, Jane,” he said as she caught up to him, “I hope my brother’s marrying up.”

  “I don’t know how to answer that,” she said, her nose wrinkling. She had a cute nose. Especially when she scrunched it up like that. It went a little way toward counteracting all that mud.

  “It was a joke, Jane.” She still didn’t look amused. Didn’t even crack a smile. Well. His tiny blond dream girl would have laughed. “Let’s just say that although Jay presents pretty well these days, he and I both come from what you might call white-trash origins. So I’m pretty sure he can’t help but be marrying up.”

  One—only one—eyebrow slowly lifted. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I’ve got a car rented.” He looked around for signs for the rental companies. “So you didn’t actually need to pick me up, Jane.” He switched to looking her up and down. The skinny jeans showcased the way her waist nipped way in and then gave way to rounded hips. Pixies aside, there was something to be said for a curvier figure. The proverbial hourglass.

  “Jay lives downtown. You don’t need a car.”

  “And yet I’ve rented one.”

  “He lives right off the subway,” she went on, apparently bent on ignoring him. “It will be impossible to park near his building.”

  “Look, Jane. I’ve been driving around the desert in a G Wagon for the past five months. Cruising along a paved road behind the wheel of a good old North American hot rod? I’ve been dreaming of that.” He raised his eyebrows. “Among other things.” A pixie, primarily. The kind of woman who would appreciate the kind of car he was imagining.

  She sighed like a weary kindergarten teacher, and annoyance flared in his chest. He hadn’t asked her to come here, boss him around, and then act all put upon when he was exercising the goddamned freedom he’d been overseas defending.

  But he wasn’t a bully—he might be a lot of things, but a bully wasn’t one of them—so he bit his tongue and turned, setting off for the car rental counters.

  He could feel her following. And when they reached the edge of the carpeted area outside baggage claim, he could hear the clicking of her shoes on the polished concrete floor. He sped up. So did the clicks. Click-click-click, like a ticking timer signaling an imminent bomb blast.

  He knew what was happening. Jane wasn’t here as some kind of innocuous welcome wagon. Jay had sent her because he didn’t trust Cam not to fuck up in some way. He expected Cam to embarrass him. And, really, wasn’t that fair? From Jay’s perspective at least? Jay had no idea that Cam had been three years into Operation: Become an Honorable Person when it had all come crumbling down around him. He was back to being the unreliable loser of a younger brother, but as far as Jay knew, that was what he had always been. At least he didn’t have to look into his brother’s disappointed eyes after this latest disgrace. If people’s expectations of you were already in the gutter, it was hard to disappoint them.

  He could probably manage it with Elise, though. Cam hadn’t been joking about marrying up. Cam paid attention to his brother’s letters—lived for them in fact, though he’d never admit it. So he knew Jay’s fiancée was an interior designer. Elise and Muddy Jane were probably peas in a pod: uptight, refined, humorless.

  Click-click-click-click-click.

  He stopped suddenly, and she crashed into him. Her breasts hit his back, and they were soft and yielding as they met his torso. It was only an instant, but it was enough to remind him—to remind his dick—how much he had missed breasts.

  A pixie would not have breasts like that.

  He could feel her correct by stepping back, and as he turned, she tripped over her own feet. Instinctively, he grabbed for her, intending only to help her find her footing, but she jerked away from him with enough force that she stumbled even more and landed on her butt a couple feet from him.

  He tried not to laugh. He really did.

  “Stop laughing.”

  Oh, she was mad. She had pressed her lips together so hard, they had entirely disappeared. The rusty-mud ponytail had come a little loose, and some wisps of hair framed her face—he could almost imagine them as puffs of red steam. She looked like Yosemite Sam about to have a temper tantrum.

  “I don’t need a babysitter, Jane,” he said, even as he held out a hand to help her up.

  “And yet here I am,” she said, echoing his earlier refrain about the car as she took his hand—grudgingly, judging by how quickly she dropped it once she was upright.

  He looked down at her shoes. She was wearing unremarkable beige flats. How was it possible that such boring shoes could make so much noise? He turned and headed for the rental car counters, counting the seconds until the clicks started up again.

  * * *

  She should have just gotten up at four a.m. and done the stupid flowers. If she had, she could be spray-painting tea sets gold for some unknown purpose right now. But the point was she would be spray-painting tea sets gold with her best friends. People who would never laugh at her as she lay sprawled on the dirty airport floor. People who appreciated her for who she was, even if who she was was the responsible, reliable one. Yep, if not for her own stupidity, she could be drinking Earl Grey right now, maybe getting a little high off paint fumes.

  But no. Instead she was preparing to exit the airport parking garage in a royal blue Corvette convertible being driven by a jerk.

  “Why is this car so noisy?” she shouted as he revved the engine.

  “That, Jane, is not noise. That is the sound of a 6.2 liter, V-8, supercharged engine. That is the sound of freedom, Jane.”

  God, the way he kept saying her name. Every sentence he directed at her had an extra “Jane” tacked onto it. It was a joke, Jane. You didn’t need to pick me up, Jane. Normal people didn’t do that. It was hard to say why, but it was patronizing somehow. Like he thought he was the big manly man, and she was the simple girl who needed everything explained.

  But also…she liked his voice. She couldn’t help it. The fact that she did made her mad, but there it was. That is the sound of freedom, Jane. His voice was low and raspy, and he spoke almost with a southern drawl. Which was impossible because he was from Thunder Bay, Canada, for heaven’s sake. It was more that he spoke slowly—like if Matthew McConaughey moved north and lost ninety percent of his accent. He drew out syllables as if he had all the time in the world and was confident that whoever was listening to him did, too. The way he extended the long “a” in Jane made her name, which she’d always thought of as fussy and prim, sound almost sensual.

  She didn’t like that he had that power. That he’d just taken it. Because she surely hadn’t given it to him.

  He had paired his phone with the car’s Bluetooth system, and as they cruised out of the ramp, he pressed a button on the steering wheel and said, “Siri, directions to the closest Keg steakhouse,” naming a high-end local chain.

  “We are not going to the Keg,” she said, trying to twist her ponytail into a bun to prevent her hair from becoming a rat’s nest as the wind picked up.

  “I am going to the Keg. You don’t have to come.” He grabbed a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses from where they’d been perched on the collar of his T-shirt, slid them on, turned up the volume on the classic rock station he had playing, and gunned it, drowning out any reply she could have made.

  She huffed a frustrated sigh he couldn’t hear and watched the terminal buildings whip by, followed by the high-rises and hotels surrounding the airport as they got on the highway and picked up speed. At least he was a competent driver. He was a very good driver, in fact. He drove fast but not recklessly so, and he changed lanes decisively but he always checked his mirrors. Every move he made seemed intentional and well executed.

  Well, a little food couldn’t hurt. They had several hours to kill until Jay would get home from work anyway, and it would probably be easier to keep an eye on Cameron if
he was eating. Inside. In an enclosed space. And he couldn’t talk while he was eating, right? Or maybe he could—he seemed like the kind of guy who thought of manners as optional.

  Her stomach growled.

  * * *

  When the server—who looked amazingly like the pixie of his airport imaginings—brought their food, she winked at Cam. “Twenty-ounce rib steak, extra fries,” she said, setting down the enormous plate that held the meal of his airport imaginings. Dreams really did come true. He flashed her a smile, though he was a little surprised that a server at a place like this wouldn’t have the training to serve the lady at the table first. She’d tried to take his order before Jane’s, too, which struck him as flat out bad manners.

  She plunked Jane’s meal down without taking her eyes from Cam. “Mixed greens with grilled chicken.”

  Jane murmured her thanks.

  “Can I get you anything else?” said the tiny waitress, who still hadn’t made eye contact with Jane.

  “I think we’re fine, thanks,” he said.

  “You sure you don’t need anything?”

  There went Jane’s eyebrow. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t given some thought to the idea of trying to pick up the waitress. But what were they going to do? Make out by the Dumpster while Muddy Jane ate her salad? Nah, he’d wait until tonight. Hit a bar closer to Jay’s. Without his babysitter. “Yes, thanks,” he said, winking at the waitress. “But I’ll be sure to let you know if any…needs come up.” He was going to pass on the pixie, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy irritating Jane. Though he’d just met her, he knew, somehow, that she wouldn’t approve of his suggestive banter.

  The eyebrow went higher. Bingo.

  “So, Jane,” he said, picking up his steak knife and sawing into the glorious hunk of red meat on his plate as the waitress walked away. “You come to a steakhouse—an iconic Canadian steakhouse at that—and you order a salad with chicken? What’s up with that?”

  “I’m trying to lose weight.”