Love Reclaimed: (Clean Small-Town Romance) (Kings Grove Book 4)

by Delancey Stewart

  For now, I decided, I’d just be happy to be back among friends, around people. After the encounter on the hillside, I didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to spend hours in my car heading to a place where I’d have to start over. Again.

  We arrived at the Outpost and Cam took my hand as he helped me from the car, keeping it trapped in his as he led me up the front steps, through the door and out to the broad deck where the party was in full swing.

  As soon as we stepped into view, Chance swept in from beside the buffet and leaned in close to Cam. “We convinced Maddie to put off the speeches until after dinner, just before the cake,” he said. “But I’m glad to see you, I wasn’t sure what the plan was going to be after that.”

  Cam said, “Thanks, man,” and clapped Chance’s back. We crossed the deck together, winding through tables as people sat with plates piled high with food, and found Tuck. “Everything okay?” Cam asked him.

  Tuck looked from Cam to me, and his handsome face broke into a broad easy smile. “Good to see you back,” he told me, and then his eyes fell to where Cam still held my hand. “Very good,” he said. “I’ve got everything handled. You guys go do wedding things. Have fun. I want to see a dance or two.”

  I felt a bit like I was in a movie myself, holding on to Cam like a maiden in distress as the shock of the mountain lion fight wore off and everything inside me reached for him, for the hope that he really did intend to try to stop me from leaving.

  We headed to the buffet, and Cam filled a plate for me, checking in about what I wanted, what I liked, and then he settled me at a table with my father and Miranda’s parents. “I have to sit at the head table for a few minutes,” he said, then fixed me in his blue-eyed gaze. “Don’t you dare leave. We are not finished.”

  I found myself nodding, happy to be taken care of for once, and half in awe that it was Cam doing it.

  Before he went to the head table, Cam leaned in close to Ranger George’s side, and I watched as Miranda’s father’s face took on a firm set. Cam was clearly telling him about the mountain lion encounter.

  “We’ll have to send a team up with tranq guns,” the older man said, looking to me as he spoke. “This has gone on long enough. Thank God nothing happened,” he said. “Harper, I’m glad you’re all right.”

  I nodded and felt my dad’s eyes on me. As Cam went to the front, I told the story of the mountain lion encounter to the table, feeling more like myself as I spoke. As I was finishing up, the microphone crackled to life, and Cam’s voice rang out over the deck, quieting the buzz of conversation.

  “Hi there,” he began. “Hi everyone.” Cam stood next to where his sister and Connor sat, and Maddie beamed up at him, her eyes shining as Connor’s arm rested around her shoulders. Cam held the microphone with both hands, looking slightly nervous as he shifted his weight back and forth. “I’m Maddie’s brother, Cameron Turner. I know most of you, but for those I haven’t met before, you can just assume that I’m every bit as wonderful and charming as my sister here.”

  The crowd laughed appreciatively, and Cam’s shoulders relaxed a bit as he smiled down at his sister and then looked back out at the crowd.

  He chuckled and then went on. “If only that were true,” he said. “But it isn’t really. My sister got the lion’s share of charm and grace in our family, as I’m sure those who know her well realize.”

  Cameron dropped one hand into a pocket, seeming to settle into his role a bit as he looked out at the crowd and continued. “For as long as I’ve known her—which was my whole life, really—my sister has been a role model for me. That might sound odd because I’m the older sibling, but from the moment I first saw Maddie when I was about three years old and my parents brought her home and told me it was my job to look out for her, she’s shown me over and over again the kind of person I want to be. She’s strong and determined, she doesn’t let anything knock her down for long. But beyond that, I think what I’ve always admired most is her willingness to believe in those around her, her commitment to seeing the best in people, even when they’re showing her their worst.”

  Cam looked down at Maddie and Connor, smiling. “When my sister met Connor, she and I were barely speaking, so I didn’t get to know him right away as I would have liked. I wasn’t really doing the job I’d promised my parents I would—I wasn’t looking out for her. But I know the story, and I know that she gave Connor that same benefit she offered everyone—she doesn’t believe the rumors or the whispers about someone, no matter what people might be saying. She looks for the truth of a person, she looks for what matters. Maddie doesn’t allow people to be anything less than what they truly are around her, and I know that was part of the reason Connor fell in love with her—I know it’s a big part of why I love my sister so much. She makes us all better.”

  “I don’t know Connor as well, but I see a similar authenticity in him, a matching desire for what’s real, and I think that’s why they’re a great fit. They live their lives fearlessly, side by side, taking on challenges together and moving through them, stronger. Watching them together is like having love explained to you in understandable terms, having the nuts and bolts of it made clear.”

  Cam’s eyes moved to where I sat, and I sucked in a breath as he stared at me.

  “Connor and Maddie are an amazing couple, and from them I’ve learned that it’s useless to let fear get in the way of love when you find it. They’ve demonstrated that finding the truth—the true nature of the person you love and your own—and letting that truth be exposed, is the only way to find the kind of connection we all want. You have to love fearlessly, you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable and exposed because the real beauty of true love is that when you’ve put yourself out there to be hurt like that, the person who truly loves you will step up to protect you.”

  Cam turned and faced Maddie and Connor, but his words stayed in my mind and I wondered if they’d been meant for me, directed at me. I thought I knew the answer, but I was afraid to hope.

  “To Maddie and Connor,” he said, raising a flute of champagne. “May you continue to love fearlessly and show others how to do the same.”

  “Hear hear,” someone in the crowd shouted.

  Maddie and Connor drank and then put down their glasses and kissed, causing a ruckus of cheering and hooting to erupt from the crowd. Once Maddie had thanked her brother, the music came on again, and the DJ called for the happy couple to take the floor for their first dance. I watched as they did, both of them smiling, their faces flushed and happy. They held one another close as they spun and twirled to Ed Sheeran’s voice singing “Thinking out Loud.” Toward the end of the song, though, the DJ began spinning something else, letting the first notes of the new song weave through the end of the first. The space quieted to listen because the two songs didn’t exactly mesh, and I watched Maddie’s face turn from mild confusion to surprise and maybe a little annoyance as Europe’s “The Final Countdown” blasted through the space. She whacked Connor on the shoulder, laughing, as he grinned down at her, and after a minute they stopped dancing altogether and were kissing as if no one else in the world was around.

  My heart melted a bit inside my chest, and that was how Cam found me, pulling me from my seat by a hand and guiding me to the far edge of the deck to stand beneath the twinkling lights we’d strung under the ancient trees. The speakers were aimed away from us and it was quieter here. Cam held me lightly by both hands, our bodies close but not quite touching. “Do you mind if I occupy you for a few minutes?” he asked, his eyes darker than usual as he looked down at me.

  “Of course not,” I said, my heart hammering fiercely in my chest.

  “First of all, I owe you an apology.”

  I felt my eyebrows draw together in confusion. “For?”

  “For a lot of things. Mostly for being too afraid to be honest with you. For letting that feel like a rejection.”

  I waited, hope bubbling inside me.

  “You were never anything but honest wi
th me, Harper. From day one, you were clear about your feelings, about your hopes for what might happen between us. And I was a coward, and I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for the time I wasted, the time I let go by when we might’ve been together. And I’m sorry that it might be too late now, but I can live with that, I guess. What I realized—too late, maybe—is that I can’t live without telling you exactly how I feel. I can’t let you leave believing me a coward, or worse—believing I don’t feel anything for you.”

  He stopped a minute and I didn’t say anything, though the part of me that knew how to comfort people wanted to fill the space with words, wanted to alleviate any uncomfortable feelings. I knew Cam needed my attention. And I knew I needed to hear whatever he might be about to say.

  “From the moment you arrived here, you challenged me, Harper. In all the best ways. You questioned the way I shielded myself, my heart. You pushed at the walls I’d put up and helped me see how useless they were, how they kept me from really living.” He took a deep breath. “You kept coming close, even when I pushed you away—God, I’m a moron. Why would anyone push you away?” He let his eyes run down me then, holding me before him and really looking at me. I felt the brush of his gaze down the length of my body, felt my skin tingle and react as if he’d touched me. “And then,” he said, his voice a little sad now. “You were smart enough to tell me you’d had enough and strong enough to move forward with your life. You weren’t going to wait around and put your life on hold.” He shook his head. “And you have no idea how I admire that. It nearly killed me, knowing you were leaving, but God, I admire it.”

  His eyes bored into mine, and a faint buzz began in the back of my head.

  “The thing is, I can’t let you go. I mean—if you want to, of course, I’ll let you leave. But I need to tell you first that you’ve changed my life. I’m a better person for having known you, and no matter what happens now, you’ve forced me out of the cage I’d made. You’ve made me realize I want to live again, even if it means there’s a chance I’ll get hurt.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, as if searching for strength, and then he said. “I’m falling in love with you, Harper. I am in love with you, actually. And I just needed you to know that. In case it might affect your decision to leave. And of course I know it might be too late, and I’d never want to get in your way. I just…I needed you to know.”

  I stared at him, the shock of the evening compounding, making it hard for me to sort one emotion from another. “And what does that mean if I stay?” I asked.

  He smiled, an uncertain but no less handsome smile. “I hoped maybe you’d be willing to spend some time with me. Maybe let me take you out? I hoped maybe we could play some more cards some time.”

  “You want to play cards with me?” I asked, feeling a smile begin to tug at my own mouth.

  He stepped closer, an arm going around my back. “I’ll even let you win,” he said, his voice low and taking on an edge of suggestion.

  I tilted my face toward his. “Nobody lets me win,” I told him. “I’ll kick your butt with no help at all, thanks.”

  “I look forward to it,” he said. “Does this mean…?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t know what it means. For right now, it means you’d better kiss me.”

  And he did, his lips meeting mine tentatively at first and then more possessively, our bodies pressed together and a kind of sweet relief washing through me as we kissed. I honestly didn’t know what this would mean, how my plans might be affected—I’d made promises, made commitments. But I knew that in that moment, in Cameron’s arms under the big broad Sierra sky, I was happy.

  Chapter 21

  Cameron

  Kissing Harper there under the twinkling lights with music playing around us, and my words finally out, finally where they belonged, it was one of the best moments of my life. When I took her in my arms, held her against me and felt her softness meld against me, when her mouth opened to mine and her arms clung to me, pulling me nearer, I was happy. Not just happy, but like I could climb out of my skin and die in this moment fulfilled.

  I’d wanted Jess. There was a time when we’d been in love—or at least in deep lust. And Jess was a good person who didn’t deserve to be married to someone who hadn’t been sure of his feelings in the first place, and she didn’t deserve to die.

  But as I kissed Harper, though most of my mind was incapable of actual thought in those moments, part of me knew this was different. This wasn’t even on the same planet.

  Jess and I probably shouldn’t have gotten married, but at the time, my yardstick for measuring the intensity of my feelings only went so high, and it seemed big—what I felt for her.

  But as I held Harper in my arms, the world condensed around us, and this was all that mattered. The intensity of my desire astounded me, shocked me. I didn’t just want the physical part of her, though I absolutely wanted that—every inch of it and as soon as possible—I wanted so much more than that. I wanted everything. I wanted her bright open smile, the thoughts that went through her head. I wanted her early morning primal need for coffee, and her discomfort with being alone in big spaces at night. I wanted her triumphant grin when she beat me at cards, and the way her eyes shone when she laid the truth out for me, asking me to acknowledge it. I wanted everything she was and whatever she would become, and it felt like it would be the greatest privilege I’d ever enjoyed just to have her permission to be at her side.

  Harper broke off the kiss with a sound between a laugh and a sigh, and I caught her eyes with mine, not wanting to let her go.

  “What about your curse?” she asked, still holding my gaze.

  I shook my head slowly back and forth, my eyes never leaving hers.

  “Is it broken?” she tipped her head to one side, a little smile playing on her lips as her arms tightened around me.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She smiled and released me, stepping back to put a little space between us, but taking my hands in hers. “You saved my life tonight,” she said. “Matilda and Sequoia too.”

  I frowned at the overstatement. “Who’s Sequoia?”

  “My puppy.” She wrinkled her nose at the distraction, then went on. “What if saving someone reverses the curse? Now I’ll never die.”

  “Don’t joke about it.” I didn’t like talking about the worst things that had happened in my life to those I loved. “But maybe…” I trailed off, thinking. “Maybe you’re right. And maybe not. Maybe we just get the cards life deals us and sometimes we get a few in a row that are hard to handle.”

  “And some that help you win,” she added. “Though I still intend to kick your ass later.”

  “I’ll enjoy that,” I told her. She took my hand then, and pulled me to the dance floor, throwing one hand over her head and shaking in a small circle before stepping close to me again. Prior to this night, I would have taken any bet that had me dancing to ABBA and won it easily because there was no chance it would happen. But for Harper?

  For Harper, I was willing to put aside a lot of the things I thought I believed about myself. For Harper, I was willing to find out who I really was. Who I could be if I just let myself.

  And as we laughed and danced, I let my eyes roam the crowd out there on the wide open deck under the stars and the huge red trees around us, and my heart felt like it might balloon right out of me. My sister and Connor were laughing together, Maddie sitting on his lap with her arms around his neck. Chance and Mike were turning in a circle on the dance floor next to us, Finn doing the Floss at their side as Sam and Miranda stood behind him, trying to do the move themselves and failing. Ranger George and his wife were dancing too, next to Frank and Adele, and for a minute I worried about the movie we were supposed to be making because Tuck had Annie Gish spinning in a circle on the dance floor too, their faces glowing with smiles. Most of the guys from the crew had been invited, and they stood in clumps near the buffet and the bar, smiling and talking, relaxed and apparently happy
.

  Even Craig Pritchard looked happy, though he still sat at the table where he’d been eating. I caught his eye over Harper’s head and for a long minute he just watched me, dancing with his daughter. Finally, he nodded his head, and reached out one hand, showing me a thumbs up, which I took to mean I had permission to do what I did next. I twirled Harper back into my side, her dark hair flying around her and then settling over her shoulders. I brushed the hair from her face, took her in my arms, and leaned down to kiss her again.

  Chapter 22

  HARPER

  The end of the night of Maddie’s wedding was kind of a blur—a happy blur. Cam and I danced and laughed, and everywhere I went, he was nearby, never really letting me out of his sight. Since we hadn’t gotten to really talk—or at least, I hadn’t—I was sure he was keeping me close in case I decided to leave again, but I had no intention of wandering away now.

  We stayed until the end, spending time with the people who had become good friends, with my father, even. And as I joked with Annie Gish toward the end of the night, telling her about my near-death experience with the mountain lion, I had a realization. I was more at home here than I’d been anywhere in the world.

  When I really thought about it, it made perfect sense. I was home. It was that simple. This was the place I’d started my life, and the roots ran as deep in me as these big trees were tall. I’d traveled the world, been planted and bloomed in plenty of other places, and I could do it again. But I’d never felt as calm, as right, as I did here among these people, in this place. And I knew I didn’t want to leave, though I also knew I would have to figure out how to handle the promises I’d already made once this party was over. I let the worry slide off my skin, determined to enjoy every second of what was left of the night, of having Cameron close at my side, of feeling this clear sense of happiness and belonging.