Chapter Three #3
Ours. The word felt like a bullet. He was alone again. He wasn’t a we. Nothing would again be ours.
“It’s something Cam started talking about recently,” he said uneasily, reached for his glass and downed half of it, infusing his mouth and throat and gut with bubbles that turned to acid.
He needed to tell her. He needed to accept reality so he could figure out his next move.
He’d been staying in their corporate suite to feel closer to Cam, continuing on with business deals they—he—were in the middle of.
Hell, he hadn’t even called the coroner’s office to find out when he could claim Cam’s body—and what would he do with it?
Had Cam specified? Neither of them were religious or had family.
He hadn’t had the courage to read the will, though Sydney had reached out to him to make an appointment.
“Is that why he wanted a mail-order bride? Children could be seen as a legacy.”
There was something in her tone that was off, and her eyes darkened, became more luminous—a place where he could hide.
He shook himself mentally away from that ridiculous image. He was a man. Not a child hiding, though his life felt under attack. He’d stood with Cam for nearly two decades. He’d stand on his own now. He owed that to Cam—perhaps that would be his legacy. Carrying on. Not that he had a choice.
“Cam was … is … turning forty got him thinking. Roots. Neither of us have them. Family. A wife. Kids. He wanted three. Montana.” He could barely choke that word out. “He wanted land. To start building his own family history. Create a future that wasn’t just the business.”
As he spoke, she leaned forward, listening with her whole body, expression open, finger lightly running up and down the stem of the champagne glass in a distractingly sexy manner.
“Came out of nowhere. Cam’s a life force.
Always thinking, doing. He was about the business.
Being a billionaire before forty was his idea.
We’ve been friends and business partners for …
most of my life, but a month ago, in the middle of a huge deal that could have gone either way, he said he’d connected with an agency.
Sounded so … western frontier, like a mail-order bride.
I didn’t think he was serious and then … ”
He wondered if he should tell her, that some of those back-and-forth texts had been from him because Cam had been busy or unavailable, and he wanted his future bride to know she would always be first.
Even though she didn’t.
The thought felt disloyal, and he had trouble swallowing it.
“The game’s getting off track.”
“Doesn’t feel like a game, does it?”
How did she keep doing that? He wasn’t even sure what she was doing that unnerved him, but he felt as if she could reach into his soul—if he had one—and read his deepest thoughts.
It reminded him of texting idly with Vesna, in between late-night communications with an unhappy and disloyal coder at a start-up software company he and Cam were trying to disrupt and make a bid for before they went public.
Vesna had sometimes asked disconcerting questions that had made him stew—confused and uncomfortably aroused him.
He’d felt like dirt communicating with Cam’s potential future wife, with her thinking she was him.
And disgusted by his … attraction felt like too weak a word.
Fascination.
He picked up his fork automatically then put it down.
Stared at his plate. The salmon looked like bruised, raw flesh.
A flashback to Cam sprawled in the street, bleeding out, eyes so desperately trying to convey something he hadn’t had the time to share.
His stomach lurched, and the ambient restaurant noises sounded loud and brutal, like a waterfall tumbling over him. Crushing him.
“Hey, hey.” She crouched by his chair. Her hand covered his, and he realized he was shaking by the way hers moved.
Confused, he stared at their hands—hers creamy, his dark with a multitude of heritages.
He felt out of his body, untethered, floating free.
He hadn’t been like this since his mother and grandfather were murdered.
But Cam had found him. Rescued him. And Cam was gone forever.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said, firmly, tucking her arm through his and pulling him to standing with deceptive strength. She snagged up her shawl, whirled it over her shoulders and grabbed the bottle of champagne.
They were striding out of the restaurant, before he realized what was happening.
“I have to …” He wasn’t sure what to do.
He and Cam had a membership at the restaurant for the private dining room. But the check was always handled with no awkwardness. Automatic payment. But was it in Cam’s name or the business? Sydney, their attorney, had contacted him, but he wasn’t ready to meet.
“I got it.” She whipped a credit card out of somewhere in her flowy clothing and handed it to a surprised server.
“Not on your account, sir?”
“My treat. My money,” she said, firmly, barely pausing in her pursuit of the exit. “Thirty percent tip. Thirty seconds.”
Less than that and they disgorged into the sunlight, an island in a stream of businesspeople and shoppers flowing around them.
He squinted in the brightness. It felt absurdly, like being born again.
She pulled his Oliver Peoples shades from his pocket and put them on him like he was a child while he gasped for breath, feeling the need to double over, but he feared losing his balance and being swallowed into the sea of humanity sucking at him.
“Follow me,” she said, still holding on while he fought dizzy disorientation.
She began to walk, in long purposeful strides like she had a destination in mind.