Chapter 16 #6
“No, so I had to do a bit more stalking,” Cam admits.
“Found out her mate, Ash”—his chin gestures in Ashley’s direction—“worked in a clothes shop on the high street. I went in there hoping to get a phone number for Georgia, and there she was, Miss Congeniality herself behind the counter. And do you know how she greeted me? A paying customer?”
I cover my face with both hands because I know what’s coming.
“‘What the fuck do you want?’ That’s how she greeted me.”
“Mother!” Tallulah admonishes from behind me. “Don’t you ever pull me up on my language again.”
I ignore her. “Didn’t put you off, though, did it? If I remember rightly, you still spent about five hundred quid.”
“And you agreed to come over to the wine bar and have a drink with me.”
“Yeah, and that went well, didn’t it?” I dip my head and press my fingertips against my forehead.
“It absolutely did not,” Cam states.
“Can I just start by reminding everyone that I was still an emotional mess, mentally scared and traumatised by the negative publicity surrounding the breakup I’d had with my, by then, world-famous, rock star boyfriend. Outside of my immediate family and closest of friends, I trusted no one.”
“We got our wires crossed,” Cam says, eyes still on me.
“I knew Frank Layton had bought the shop, and his missus was running it, so when we finally went for a drink, and Georgia told me she owned the shop, I thought she was married to Frank. Then when she said she was his daughter, I just thought, fuck me, nothing good is gonna come of this. Knowing Frank like I do, he will not be happy if he finds out I’m pursuing something with his daughter. ”
“So, you knew Georgia’s dad? Before you were together, I mean?” Dan asks.
“Yeah. We were business partners on a couple of ventures, and I knew full well just how protective Frank was of his family, so my first thought was to back off.”
“I got the wrong end of the stick and thought he knew my name because of the whole Sean debacle and what had been printed about me in the tabloids,” I add.
“I didn’t,” Cam clarifies. “I had absolutely no idea Frank had a daughter, let alone one who’d been involved with a rock star.
I knew his boy was in a band that was doing well.
I think I’d actually heard there’d been a bit of trouble on their tour, but that was it.
And, let me just add, things hadn’t always been amicable between Frank and me.
Well, Bailey, really. Frank and I had never had a problem, so to keep things that way, I knew I needed to shut things down.
I’ll hold my hands up and admit, I was a bit rude. ”
“A bit? You stalked me, pursued me, sent over bottles of champagne, and literally begged me to go for a drink with you. Then, when you found out who my dad was, you told me to drink up because you had work to do.”
“Harsh, Dad. Very harsh,” Harry calls out.
“Thanks, H,” I reply.
“Yeah, thanks, H,” Cam says with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“Your response?” Dan asks.
“I got up and left.”
“And the rest,” Cam adds.
“That rejection was literally what pushed me fully into what I call my rage stage. I was angry at Cam for not wanting me because of what I thought at the time, what he’d read in the papers about me.
I was angry that I’d finally put myself out there, only to be shot down swiftly.
I was angry at Sean because it was all his fault.
I’d done nothing wrong, yet the tabloids wrote awful things about me, and the fan girls sent everything from a pig’s trotters to dog shit in the post while he was hero-worshipped by millions. It all made me spiral.”
There’s no laughing, and no whistling or clapping this time, just the silence of my family as they listen to my confession.
“I worked, I partied, and I bounced from one toxic relationship to the next. I was doing a lot of cocaine at the time because it made me feel powerful and in control. The men I was seeing… I did everything I could to make them fall in love with me, and as soon as they said the L word, I ended things. Though I made sure that while I was seeing them, I’d take them to Cam’s bar at least once a week so he could see what he was missing. I was an awful, awful person.”
“Hurt people, hurt people,” Dan offers.
“I was in agony,” I whisper.
“How’d you come back from that?” Dan asks.
“Him.” I tilt my head towards Cam. Speaking that single word has made my lips tremble, and I tense my jaw to control it.
Cam still has one arm on the back of the sofa. The other has reached across, and his hand has found mine. Our fingers are now loosely laced together.
“A bit like Georgia, I’d gone through some trauma prior to meeting her.
I’d lost my wife and son a few years before, had kept women at arm’s length since, and then this skinny, blue-eyed girl started turning up at my wine bar and kick-started my heart.
Like Georgia, it terrified me, and when I found out she was Frank’s daughter, I completely overreacted.
I regretted telling her to drink up before she’d even walked out the door.
Then she started waltzing in every week with a new little poodle lapping at her feet.
I knew what she was doing, knew she was playing games, knew that eventually she’d realise she wasn’t gonna get the reaction she was hoping for.
“So, I kept it civil. No more bottles of Moet, though I always said hello and asked her how she was. Waited for her to tell me to fuck off and mind my own business. Then, one night, she replied by telling me she was good. It shocked the shit out of me. Unfortunately, the bloke she was with took exception to that.”
“You saying hello?” Dan asks.
“Yeah. I said something like, ‘Georgia, how are you?’, and this bloke replied, ‘Fuck off mate, she’s with me.’” Me!
It’s my fucking bar, and the cheeky fucker’s telling me to fuck off!
At the same time, George said something like, ‘I’m good, Cam.
How are you?’, and when she did, the geezer grabbed her, spun her around towards him, then threw a punch at me.
Obviously, it missed, but security had been watching and restrained him before anyone got hurt.
Although he did put up some resistance on his way to the door, so a table was knocked over, glasses smashed, the usual chaos when you attempt to remove someone who doesn’t want to go. ”
Cam pauses, and I wonder for a moment if he’s going to say anything about what happened in his office that night. Thankfully, he skips right over it.
“Unfortunately, once evicted from the premises, and because Georgia didn’t follow him out, he proceeded to smash up her car.”
I press my lips together as I try not to laugh at Cam’s formal tone. He sounds like he’s giving a police statement, not an interview.
“Why didn’t you follow him out?” Daniel asks me.
I look up at Cam, and he grins down at me.
“Stockings,” he mouths, making me want to fuck him right this very second.
Instead, I cross my legs. “The man had just thrown a punch at someone for saying hello to me. I didn’t feel safe going outside with him.
To be honest, I was more concerned that Cam was okay and about the damage to his property.
I felt awful. When he started smashing up my car, I knew I’d made the right decision to stay inside. ”
“I wasn’t letting her out there with him, anyway,” Cam interjects.
Both of us are bare-faced lying because we were, in fact, getting busy in his office when the damage was done to poor, old Hilda.
“My security restrained the man until the police arrived, and then he was arrested. After we’d given statements, I offered to get Georgia’s car repaired, and that’s how I got my first date,” Cam says with a smile.
“Go, Dad. Knew you had it in ya!” George calls out.
There’s talking and chatting behind us, so I take the moment to whisper to Cam, “You forgot about your office, the twirling chair, my stockings…”
“I didn’t forget anything. I’m just not sharing any of that with these fuckers. That’s ours; just yours and mine.” He leans in and kisses me gently on the mouth. “Love the fuck out of you,” he says with his lips still brushing mine.
“Shit shag, little dick Lee,” I blurt, remembering what I’d called the bloke I’d been with that night. I bury my face in Cam’s chest as we both laugh.
“You got stockings upstairs? It’s been a while since you wore them for me,” he says against my ear.
“Cameron and Georgia, you’re still mic’d up and live. Just a reminder that we can hear what you’re saying,” a voice calls out.
“Jesus, you two,” I hear Tallulah say while I keep my face buried in my husband’s chest, and we both laugh.
“We did some digging, didn’t find much, but thought you might like to see this one,” Daniel says.
My stomach knots for a split second as I wonder what he’s about to reveal.
The screen we looked at images on yesterday lights up, and suddenly, there we are.
Cam’s wearing black, tailored trousers and a white shirt, with the sleeves rolled up.
His hair is longer in the picture than it is now, and much darker without the grey, but in a similar style.
He looks fucking gorgeous—still does. More so now, I think.
He’s one of those men who’s matured like a fine wine, the salt and pepper in his hair and beard just adding to his sexiness.
I’m wearing a pale blue dress. It has a paisley design on it, with bell-bottomed sleeves. Very sixties in style.
“Our first date,” I say quietly.
Someone—one of our boys, I think—wolf whistles.
“Oh, my God, look at you two,” Kiki says.
“My mum and dad were baddies,” George states.
“Still are,” I reply, recalling the night these were taken, when there were paps outside the Italian restaurant Cam had taken me to.