A Sweetheart For The Single Dad (The Camdens Of Colorado Book 8)

by Victoria Pade

  He went on then to tell her what he’d thought about as he’d driven from Wheatley. About what he believed he’d found in her. About what an incredible person he thought she was and how much he cared about her. About how much he wanted her in his life, how much he wanted a future, a family, with her. And about how he didn’t want to have to hide any of what they had together from anyone. That he would rather face whatever consequences came than be without her or keep anything a secret.

  He told her about how he thought it might take some time, but that he was sure his family would come to forget who she was and warm up to her.

  About how he was willing to weather any fallout from his clients or in his business.

  About how anything was worth being with her.

  “No, I won’t go to work for your family and I won’t stop doing the job I do,” he concluded. “But vegetarians marry into meat-eating families, and democrats marry into republican families, and sinners marry saints...”

  Marry? He was talking about marrying her?

  He took a breath as the wheels of her mind spun, then he squeezed her hand again and continued.

  “What I’m hoping,” he said, drawing her out of her thoughts, “is that we might all be able to separate business from family. That even if Huffman Consulting is still butting heads with Camden Incorporated in the field, outside of that I can just be ‘Lindie’s Sawyer’ to your family. And I promise you that I will do everything I can to be my most charming, winning, ingratiating self to fit in, to make them all like me and forget what I do for a living.”

  Tears clogged her throat and stung her eyes and she wanted to ask him if he really was proposing.

  But it didn’t matter if he was.

  Yes, she wanted this man. But at what cost?

  In the past she’d been willing to go to any lengths for the men she’d cared about and even now her mind was swimming with ideas of how to diplomatically inject Sawyer into her family. Of how to view Huffman Consulting’s work as clues to how Camdens could do better. Of how to point out anything and everything he might have in common with each and every separate sibling and cousin and even with their fiancés or spouses so he might be able to fit in. How to bridge the enormous gap that separated her family and this man. How to fix it all.

  But every time she’d gone to great lengths to make things work out with a man, she’d ended up hurt herself and having to regroup and start all over again. With Jason using her to get the career he’d wanted. With Ryan taking money from her. With Ray whom she’d finessed into coming out of the closet. And with Brad whom she’d counseled back into the arms of his ex-wife.

  And while she’d been hurt to varying degrees each time, with Sawyer everything was on so much grander a scale.

  Since getting mugged she’d been trying to temper the part of her that was driven to fix things. Granted she hadn’t been too successful when it came to the community center but taking emotional hits from four men and then a physical beating on a Denver street had left her knowing without a doubt that she had to be more cautious in following her instincts to fix things.

  And this time following her instincts—following her heart—involved all of her family and the business that generations before them had built, the business that sustained each and every one of them.

  This time following her heart could jeopardize her relationship with the grandmother who had raised her, with her brothers and sisters, with cousins who were as close to her as brothers and sisters.

  To her, whatever Sawyer was asking of her, whether it was marriage or not, would create a problem. A lot of really big problems. Problems that could ultimately alienate her from everyone she held most dear.

  Then what?

  Would she leave behind her family? The business that she was a part of, that was her legacy and provided her livelihood?

  Would she leave behind everything and everyone she’d ever counted on? Everything she valued? Everything that she’d strived to be a value to?

  Could she live with being the cause of such a rift in her family, in Camden Incorporated?

  She’d already suffered enough of a sense of disloyalty as she’d gotten closer and closer to Sawyer. How much worse would it be if she was the source of a break in the family?

  Then there was the other part of this. She’d always known that she didn’t want a man who already had a child or children with someone else.

  He’d already said that he’d shortchanged Sam today. If they did get married, if they had kids of their own, wouldn’t that be the same song played again and again? Only sometimes it would be their kids shortchanged and sometimes it would be Sam.

  That wasn’t something Sawyer even knew was important to her, though. It wasn’t something she’d told him about. So it wasn’t what she said now. Instead she opted for only addressing the issue he knew about.

  “What if nothing either of us does makes any difference and you butting heads with us means that my family never sees you as just my Sawyer?” Oh, but how much I wish you could be my Sawyer... “If you’re always just the enemy, I could lose my family.”

  “Or, if they absolutely can’t accept me as part of that family, we could just lead our lives separate from them. You work with all your cousins and brothers and sisters so you see them anyway. For family things, holidays...if you needed to be with them, I’d just stay home.”

  “Oh, I hate that kind of thing,” she said. “And not only wouldn’t I get to have you with me but then everyone would wonder if I was telling you things I shouldn’t. You would wonder if I was telling them things you told me. I’d be caught in the middle and eventually they might not even want me at work!”

  “We’re not spies working counterintelligence, Lindie. I mount public campaigns, remember? And we talked about this. It could even be of benefit for me to tell you what problems I see coming and for you to head them off. I’ve been doing some of that about Idaho. In a way we’d be working together. Just not in the way you all want.”

  Apparently it wasn’t helping in Idaho, but still, maybe he had a point. Maybe she could make her family see it.

  At least that was what the problem solver in her thought.

  But even as she entertained a small—very small—glimmer of hope on that front, there was still the issue of Sam. Nothing could be changed about that and even though it was going to come as news to Sawyer she saw that she was going to have to tell him about it now.

  “And you have Sam,” she said in what was little more than a whisper.

  Sawyer’s handsome face pulled into a frown. “Sam? You don’t like Sam?”

  “I do. But...” She hesitated, wishing she felt differently. But she didn’t. So she very carefully told him how she did feel, about how adamant she was about not tying her own future to a man who already had a child or children with someone else.

  “And you didn’t tell me this?” he asked when she finished explaining.

  She knew what button she’d just pushed. Too many women before her had left him in the dark about problems or concerns until they had become major issues that ripped them apart. And while she didn’t want to be another woman who misled or disillusioned him, she could tell that’s what he was thinking she was.

  “It wasn’t a part of this before,” she said in her own defense. “This was about me trying to make amends for my uncle stealing my aunt from your dad by hurting your dad’s construction company. It was about me trying to do that in a way that was to our mutual business advantage. It wasn’t supposed to be personal. It wasn’t supposed to be about dating and finding someone to have a future with.”

  “But now my having a kid is not only a part of it, it’s a reason for you to tell me no?”

  “It is for me,” she said. “You just told me that you shortchanged Sam today because you wanted to be somewhere else. Wouldn’t that become the story of Sam’s life—and the story of our kids’ lives—if we had kids? Wouldn’t something always have to give? Wouldn’t you have to decide whether to go
to Sam’s Christmas program or one of our kids’ Christmas programs? Or sporting events? Or graduations? Or whatever?”

  “Maybe. But those things get worked out. They aren’t that big a deal—”

  “They’re a big deal to whoever is the one getting shortchanged. And it’s so much more than that. You saw how Carter competed with Sam that day we were all together. Imagine that being every day for Sam or for another kid you love. Another kid you need to be there for, another kid who needs to feel like they are the most important kid to you but who can never be sure if that’s true. I don’t want that kid to be my kid. I don’t want to watch it, to see my kid or kids worrying if you like Sam more, if Sam is better than they are, if—”

  “I wouldn’t let that happen, Lindie. Any more than I’d let it happen between two kids we had together.”

  “I’m afraid that it’s built-in to having kids who are only half siblings. I’m thinking of Sam, too. Right now he’s everything to you. I don’t think he could help but feel unseated if you have other kids, kids you’re with every day and tuck in every night. And if things don’t work out and he ends up in Vermont...”

  She shook her head. And forced herself to take her hand from his, to pull it back, out of his reach.

  “If things don’t work out with that dental practice,” she went on, “and Sam ends up in Vermont while you’re here with your new kids—that would make it even worse for him. I don’t want that for Sam, either,” she said quietly but unwaveringly. “I don’t want to be responsible for making him feel what that would surely make him feel.”

  “The kind of insecurity you felt,” he said with an edge to his voice. “But just because you felt that way doesn’t mean other kids will. And we can be on the lookout for it. Head it off.”

  He stalled when she’d been shaking her head no through everything he was saying.

  Then he sighed, sounding frustrated. “So you put it all together and—”

  “This just can’t work,” she finished for him.

  “I think it can. You just won’t let it,” he said. “Of all the damn things you want to fix, why isn’t us being together regardless of anything else one of them?”

  If only he knew how badly she did want to fix this so she could have him.

  She just didn’t believe it could be. And part of what she knew she had to be more aware of was when things couldn’t be fixed, when to accept that and not throw herself into something that would likely end badly.

  “I don’t want to be the cause of Sam feeling the way I did growing up. I don’t want to bring other kids into a home where they’ll immediately have to compete with your other son. I don’t want my kids to feel like they have to share their dad with someone who doesn’t feel like part of their family. And, yes, when I put it together with the fact that I don’t want to be the one who tears up my own family—”

  “Then we try not to do any of that,” he said, reasoning again.

  “And if we do it anyway?” She shook her head once more. “There’s too much at stake. Sam and new Sams and my whole family... And if the damage gets done, it doesn’t get undone.”

  “So it isn’t only that you want to fix problems, you’re so afraid of causing any that you won’t even give us a chance?”

  She shook her head, unable to say anything around the lump in her throat that she was trying to tame.

  “And that’s it?” he demanded, sounding as if he couldn’t believe it. “We can’t even take it a step at a time? We’re just done?”

  It was what she’d decided even before she’d come home tonight and found him waiting for her. What she’d decided when she wasn’t under the influence of that face she never wanted out of her sight. Or that body she wanted back in bed with her right at that moment. Or the feelings that were ripping her apart to have to deny.

  It was the decision she thought she had to abide by in spite of everything that tempted her not to.

  “I think we just have to be done,” she whispered, her eyes burning like fire as hot tears welled up in them.

  For a long while as she fought for those tears not to fall, Sawyer merely sat there, scowling at her, looking as if he wanted to shake some sense into her.

  Then he stood. But before he moved away from the couch he said, “So my dad lost the girl and now I am, too...”

  Lindie didn’t know what to say to that so she didn’t say anything at all. And after another long moment of watching her as if he thought things might change if he just waited, Sawyer sighed a disgusted sigh and walked out.

  And the sound of her front door closing on what she wanted more than anything made the day that had started so well one of the worst days of her life.

  Chapter Eleven

  “We’ll make it work, Lindie. We might even be able to recruit him over time,” Lindie’s sister Livi had said saucily, “because you know that when he gets to know us he won’t be able to not like us.”

  “But one way or another,” her cousin Jani had put in, “you can’t let us be what keeps you from him if he’s what you want. We wouldn’t ever stand in your way.”

  A week had passed and it was Sunday night again. Lindie had claimed she was sick and played hooky from her grandmother’s dinner.

  She was sick—sick at heart. And after a miserable, awful, horrible week since Sawyer had walked out of her house, she just hadn’t had it in her to go the family dinner. She hadn’t been able to face sitting around the table where all of her cousins and most of her brothers had people they cared about sitting beside them while she was alone and secretly pining for Sawyer. She had not been able to face even another few hours of trying to act as if nothing was wrong.

  So she’d played sick.

  But when the dinner had ended her sister and her cousin had showed up at her door, demanding to know what was going on.

  Apparently she hadn’t fooled anyone most of the week. Jani and Livi had said that for the first two days they’d written off her mood to her failure to close the deal with Huffman Consulting. But when she still hadn’t come out of her funk they’d begun to see that there was more to it. They’d decided to bide their time and wait for her to open up, but missing Sunday dinner was too much and they weren’t going to let it get any further. Finally, Lindie had broken down and told them the truth.

  The end result had been their reassurance that not even getting together with Sawyer Huffman could change the way any of the family felt about her or treated her.

  “It isn’t like things are with Dylan,” Livi had said, “because we know what your guy throws our way and we see it coming.”

  “And none of it with him is personal,” Jani added.

  So it couldn’t alter her position or any of their relationships, was their conclusion. And if she wanted Sawyer, they—and everyone else—would be cordial to him and welcome him despite the problems he caused them in business.

  “And we’ll make sure all the boys are nice to him, too,” they’d promised in the same making-a-pact fashion they’d employed growing up as the only three girls facing down seven boys.

  That had made Lindie cry, too.

  “It’ll just be business as usual,” Jani had said. “And after-hours we’ll turn that off. Whichever side took the hit will put on a happy face and we’ll have Sunday dinner. He’ll just be your guy, and whoever your guy is doesn’t change who you are to us. You’ll always be ours.”

  And they would always be hers. Her family. So important to her that she’d been willing to give up Sawyer rather than risk causing any problems with them.

  So important to her that nothing any one of them ever did—or anyone they were ever with—could change her feelings for them.

  And if she knew that to be true of her feelings for them, she’d reasoned with herself, then why couldn’t she relax and believe that the same was true of their feelings for her?

  The more she’d thought about that the more she’d come to believe that she could accept Jani and Livi’s comfort and support. That she coul
d trust that with or without Sawyer, she would always be in the heart and lives of all the other Camdens.

  She hadn’t realized how much she still struggled with those old insecurities she’d felt after going to live with GiGi. Those old worries that if she rocked the boat they might wash their hands of her. Fears that she might not measure up in some way to so many cousins and siblings, that she had to “earn” the love and attention of the few adults in their lives.

  And now that her cousin and her sister were gone and she was alone with her thoughts about a future with Sawyer again, it occurred to her just how powerful those old worries and insecurities were.

  Powerful enough to only add to her belief that Sawyer’s relationship with Sam was a deal-breaker.

  So even if she accepted that none of her family would ever snub or shun Sawyer, even if she accepted that none of them would ever stand for her separating herself from them or banish Sawyer or her because of Sawyer, even if she trusted that no one would allow a rift of any kind to develop, there was still that issue that couldn’t go away.

  Sam.

  She leaned against the front door she’d just closed after saying goodbye to her sister and her cousin and sank back into despair.

  She wanted the man so much but she just couldn’t let herself have him...

  Because how could she risk that any child she might have—or Sam—would be burdened with worries and insecurities powerful enough to affect them well into their adult lives?

  “I can’t,” she answered her own thought.

  And she also couldn’t go on crying, she told herself when tears threatened to start again.

  Maybe a shower would help.

  At the very least it might get some of the puffiness out of her face before she had to see everyone at work tomorrow.

  So she showered then plopped onto her bed with a cold washcloth across her eyes, still thinking about Sawyer.