A laugh burst from Lydia’s lips. No one had ever so carefully articulated her greatest fear.
“Yes!” she said, still laughing. Her tremors disappeared, and she smiled fully at her husband, kneeling before her like some sort of modern knight with his wrinkled tuxedo and mussed hair.
God, he was gorgeous. And funny. And kind.
And she was completely stupid. It didn’t matter that Cam was those things, because he was a whole lot of other things that were completely wrong for her.
“So you think I can push this thing along?” she said, returning to business as if it were the only safe topic ever invented.
Cam stood, brushing at his slacks. “You must. Even more so now that I know the circumstances.”
Lydia blinked at this. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Cam wandered over to her desk, refilling his glass before motioning toward her. She shook her head. She’d had enough wine for the night if she were to keep her wits about her. She couldn’t trust such a deliciously handsome man. Even if he was her husband.
“Well, lassie, since we’re being so honest here,” he winked in her direction, and her stomach hiccuped, “I ought to keep it up. I didn’t like the idea of you trying to impress dear old daddy with what you had going on at the boutique. It seemed superficial. Fleeting. I didn’t like the taste of the whole thing.”
All Lydia could do was blink. “Did you really think me that shallow?”
Cam nodded vigorously. “Oh, I did. Especially because you never let me see another side of you.”
Now Lydia stopped blinking and swallowed hard. Here it came. The blame. The guilt. The accusation that their failed marriage was her fault. Whatever marriage there had been.
“But I don’t really think either of us was ready for another side of each other. We were both too stupidly young.”
Lydia swallowed again, but this time, it was in sudden relief. He wasn’t going to try to blame her for their current separation? He wasn’t going to say it was her fault for the situation they now found themselves in?
“Cam?” she asked, even though he was still looking at her. “I’ve made you stay away from your home, your family, and your business for more than a month because I need to make a client think that I didn’t kick you out five years ago.”
Cam nodded when she finished but didn’t say anything else.
“That’s extraordinarily fucking twisted, Cam.” Frustration rose in her voice.
Frustration at herself, at her situation, at…well, everything.
Something was not right. She had felt it chafing at her for quite some time, but until that moment, she had never admitted it. She had simply denied that there was anything the matter. If she pushed things off long enough, problems sometimes just melted away. But sometimes they grew and festered and turned into estranged husbands sitting in front of her fireplace.
“You’re worth it,” he said, and her eyes snapped to his.
She was…what?
“Cam,” she whispered, not daring to speak louder.
He set his glass down and came toward her, knelt in front of her. Blood rushed to her limbs, flooding her face and arms and feet, singing with a unrelenting desire she could not deny. The planes of his face were jagged in the firelight, harsh and intriguing. Her fingers itched to touch the spread of stubble along his jaw, spear her fingers through his thick hair. She wanted to pull him toward her, feel that single moment when their bodies touched for the first time and let the tingle rush through her like an agonizingly slow electric shock.
But he did nothing more than kneel before her. Until he placed his hands on her bent legs, ran his fingers down her calves until he cupped her toes. She might as well have been wearing nothing for all the protection her stockings gave her. The warmth of his caress was a raging fire against her skin. The touch was unexpected, and her racing heart missed its rhythm. But she did not speak, could not speak. His hands skimmed back up to rest on her thighs, and the heat of his heavy palms pressed through the thin fabric of her dress, a physical reminder of how strong she had to be right now to resist this man.
“You’ve always been worth it, Lydia,” he said finally, but he did not look at her. It was so unlike him, the fire that rushed through her suddenly dampened, its flames retreating somewhere she could not reach.
“Cam,” she whispered again, but this time she dared to reach up. She dared to touch just one strand of his soft hair that had come loose from the rest, sticking out in perfect isolation. It was just as she had remembered it.
“You know what you need right now, Lydia Baxter,” he whispered.
She leaned into him, feeling the pull of his body. Yes, she did know what she needed right then, but she didn’t know if she could take that risk. Her hand slipped from his hair, falling to where his rested on her thigh. He leaned in, and for the briefest of moments she thought he was going to kiss her.
But instead he said, “You need a dude movie.”
Cam smiled as Lydia’s eyes fluttered, but at his words, they shot open, wide and daring.
“Cam!” she hissed. “I told you never to say that out loud!”
Cam smiled harder now, feeling the tension of the evening shattering in a million scattered pieces.
“Say what out loud?” he teased. “Your secret raging love of dude movies?”
Lydia actually looked about her as if someone were there to hear their conversation. She poked him in the shoulder with the hand that so recently had lovingly caressed him, and he laughed.
“You know damn well no one knows about the dude movie thing.”
Cam pushed to his feet, walking to the wall opposite the chairs and pulling open the cabinet doors that hid the widescreen flat panel. He bent pulling open the drawers beneath the panel.
“God’s teeth, woman.” He straightened. “You got this one on Blu-ray?” He held up a particularly raunchy dude movie and enjoyed the annoyed expression on Lydia’s face. He grinned. “This I need to see.” He turned to fire up the television and the player.
As the player hummed to life, he turned back around, bending once more in front of Lydia.
“Tell you what, lassie,” he said, thickening his brogue. “Go put on those stretchy black pants that you like so much but swear you don’t own, come back in here, and we’ll watch grown men make asses of themselves, and I will laugh at how much you are laughing, and we’ll all feel better about today. What do you say?”
Lydia’s face was stern, her cheeks tight, and her jaw clenched.
“I think you’d better not tell anyone that I own that on Blu-ray or I’ll kick your ass, Cam McCray.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He stood. “Now run along.”
She hesitated but finally stood, nearly running from the room to get changed into more comfy clothes. He smirked and turned back to the television. He was hit suddenly with the memory of a long ago rainy Saturday afternoon when he had first discovered Lydia’s penchant for dude movies. It had been accidental. An afternoon with nothing to do and a relentless rain to limit their options. Lydia had surprised him when she’d ask if he wanted to catch a matinee of the most recent dude movie release.
At first, he had thought he had heard her wrong, but when she had repeated her suggestion, it was still the same. So they had gone, and rather than being amused by the movie, he had spent the entire two hours and more watching Lydia, at the way her entire face broke into laughter as the antics played out on screen. Buttoned up, structured, rigid Lydia Baxter, laughing hysterically at a stupid humor movie. It was still one of his favorite memories of their time together.
And after the events of the night, after seeing Lydia’s face when they had first returned to the townhouse, he knew there would be nothing else that could cure her despair like a dude movie could.
Footsteps sounded in the hall, and Lydia came through the door, two white, cellophane packages held aloft in her hands. He stopped, his finger on the play button of the Blu-ray player.
“Is that what I think it i
s?”
Lydia nodded, smiling coquettishly. “Double chocolate heaven with almond,” she said.
“From Madbury’s?” he asked, his voice going soft.
Madbury’s was a local place that made bars with their own ice cream, a recipe somewhere between true ice cream and gelato. Just enough creaminess to make you eat far too much of the stuff.
He held out a hand, and Lydia tossed him a bar before resuming her seat in front of the television. Cam looked down at the package, his mind flickering along all the times they had shared these bars. He pushed the thoughts away, focusing on making sure to give Lydia something with which to distract herself. He pushed play and took the chair beside her, pulling the bow tie from his neck as he did so.
The movie started, and Lydia ripped open her ice cream, devouring it in an amazingly big bite. He cringed as her teeth sank into the ice cream.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” he said.
“What?” she mumbled around the mouthful of ice cream.
“When you bite right into the ice cream like that.” He grimaced. “Doesn’t it hurt your teeth?”
He had asked her the same question before, probably hundreds of times, and she only rolled her eyes at him. A few minutes later, he noticed she had stilled, looking at the stick of the ice cream bar, now empty of ice cream except for the smallest sliver of chocolate still stuck to the stick. That small remnant that served as the base of the whole bar and was the hardest part to clean from the stick.
He waited, savoring his own ice cream bar as he watched her, wondering if she would ask him. But she didn’t. She continued to stare at the stick, the last bit of chocolate hanging out there like a lighthouse on a foggy night. But still she didn’t move nor speak. Finally, Cam reached over, his hand closing around her wrist and pulling the ice cream stick towards him. He leaned over, closing his mouth around the stick and scraping the chocolate from it. He saw her cringe as he straightened, and he smiled.
“Doesn’t that hurt your teeth?” she said. It was the same question she had asked him every time he had scraped the last of the chocolate from her ice cream stick.
He smiled and rolled his eyes. Lydia just looked at him, and somewhere in her eyes, he thought he saw something familiar, something calm and soothing, something beckoning. So why did it feel like the sky was about to fall on him?
Six
Lydia thought mango fiesta was the stupidest name for such a drab color, but she was not going to share her thoughts with the woman holding the $8,000 bridesmaid’s dress in that color. She would smile and nod and suggest complementing it with the flower girl’s dress in the shade of pomegranate rumba.
Evelyn Hatfield was at her most bustling while Rebecca Hatfield was at her most wan as the entire Hatfield matriarchal line sat before Lydia at Baxter’s of Newbury and waited for something splendid to happen. But seeing Rebecca sitting so fluidly in her chair, Lydia again wondered how such a fragile thing could come from such strapping parents. The other Hatfield daughters were not nearly so weak. Sarah had interned for an outrageously outspoken feminist senator, and Tabitha played rugby and lacrosse on her college teams. Rebecca was simply the anomaly of the Hatfield girls, and she was the one Lydia was stuck with wooing.
Rebecca, who did not seem to know at all that she was about to be married.
How was Lydia supposed to woo that? She thought about what Cam had said and pasted a smile on her face. Evelyn Hatfield thought there was a wedding to get prepared for, and so Lydia would help her get prepared.
“I do think this peach color is divine!” Evelyn Hatfield announced, holding the mango fiesta into the light.
“I would rather not look like a piece of fruit when I walk down the aisle.” Sarah leaned forward on her crossed legs as she sat in one of the plush chairs that lined the dais where Lydia was exhibiting some of the dresses she had chosen to show the Hatfields. Evelyn had lasted but two seconds as an observer before popping right up on the dais with Lydia, pulling dresses from the rack haphazardly as they caught her eye. As Mrs. Hatfield was writing the rather large check for this wedding, Lydia let her do whatever she wished.
“But it’s peach!” Evelyn responded.
It’s mango, Lydia thought, but would never utter a word. These discussions were best kept to the families involved.
But as she kept out of it, her mind started to drift, and it drifted right into Cam like a tugboat to a barge. It had been two weeks since he had returned, and in that time, he had done all he could to invade her emotional defenses. If she were honest, it wasn’t anything he was doing on purpose. It was the little things.
He brought in the paper every morning, pulled out the business section, and left it on the kitchen counter next to the coffee pot. The coffee pot where he had always made delicious, rich, dark coffee every morning before she even summoned the energy to get out of bed. He gave superfluous comments over her ability to order take-out and always did the dishes. It was simply having him there that made her insides rattle and the hair on the back of her neck stand up.
She was getting used to him.
She was getting used to the way he was just there. In her life. He was so unobtrusive, at the same time he was like a rhino barreling down the delicate wood floors of her townhouse. But she had a creeping suspicion that the rhino was only in her mind.
Cam was always so relaxed. In the study, in the bedroom where he remained absolutely on his side of the bed, in the bathroom where his toothbrush sat silently beside hers. Even at the kitchen peninsula where he had set up a make shift office, Lydia sometimes forgot he was even in the house.
And yet, she consistently pushed him away even when he wasn’t there.
She took a deep breath and half tuned into the conversation about the merits of peach versus pomegranate. Sarah was in favor of pomegranate, deciding it was a less punctuated color while Tabitha thought they should all wear board shorts. Rebecca noticeably did not say anything.
It was time for Lydia to stop just standing there.
“I think—”
She was cut off by the sudden appearance of her mother, scurrying towards them through the racks. Lydia caught sight of her before the Hatfields, as the women continued to argue between the mango and pomegranate. Her mother stopped, still concealed by the racks of gowns, her delicate hands flailing as she motioned for Lydia to come closer. Lydia shook her head discreetly, so discreetly someone may have thought she suddenly acquired a tick. But Annette continued to wave her hands at her. Smiling slightly at the arguing women on the dais, Lydia sidled to the edge of the platform, leaning over towards her mother.
“What is it?” she hissed.
Annette Baxter let out a breath that had her bangs rising off her forehead.
“Your husband is here,” she said, her voice much louder than Lydia would have liked, her eyelashes batting furiously as she smiled coyly.
Lydia gritted her teeth. “Have him wait in my office.” She moved to go back to the Hatfields.
“Lydia,” her mother said on a trill, and Lydia swung around glaring. “He wants to see you now.”
There was more eyelash batting. Lydia wanted to run away, run far far away. She made an aborted gesture with her hand as if to wave her mother off and then walked slowly back to the Hatfields to hear Sarah finish listing the reasons why pomegranate would make her look like a washed out beach towel.
Lydia opened her mouth to intercede with something that would get the Hatfields back on track, but she was interrupted again, this time by one of Evelyn Hatfield’s whelping calls of the wild when her hands flew into the air, sending the mango fiesta dress flying.
“Oh, it’s you!” she exclaimed and bounded off amongst the racks in the direction of the door.
Lydia couldn’t see between the racks from her position on the dais, but she did manage to catch the flying dress. She placed it carefully on the rack and stepped down, looking around the corner of the racks of tulle and chiffon knowing exactly who was likely to appear between them
.
“Cam,” she said, and worried that she had just swallowed a major organ.
She reached up to the string of pearls at her neck, felt their cool softness against her throat and let them slide through her fingers. She realized what she was doing and moved to hide her hand, but Cam was already there. He snatched her hand before she had a chance to move and brought her curled fingers to his lips. It was not the action that had her heart trying to drive through her chest. It was the look in his eyes.
Heat.
That was all she could think of.
Pure heat.
“Yes, it is very hard to stay away from my Lydia.” He still stared at her, still held her hand, and Lydia realized Mrs. Hatfield must have asked him a question.
She backed up, taking her hand with her, so she could at least regain control of her ability to think.
“Cam,” she began again, “What brings you by the shop?”
Those were the words that came out while she was really thinking, what the fuck are you doing here? Or some equally excitable statement using a very thick Scottish accent, of course.
“I came to see what my lovely wife was up to,” he said with a smile so broad, she feared it would fall off his face.
“Oh, really,” she said, making certain her tone made her disbelief clear.
Why was he here?
“You had mentioned the Hatfield women would be in today, and I was in the neighborhood. Thought I would try my luck by stopping in.”
Lydia backed up another step.
Had she mentioned that the Hatfields were coming in today? She couldn’t recall, but then things tended to get muddled around him. He was watching her rather conspiratorially, and then his eyes darted to Rebecca with just the barest of motions. Lydia nodded reflexively, turning the nod into an affirmation of the situation, looking around to take in the dresses and the array of women about her.
“Yes, I did mention that, didn’t I?” she said.
She had no idea yet if she had said such a thing, but Cam was eyeing Rebecca as if to assess the situation But why did Cam care so much?
When She Falls Page 8
