CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He smiled at me like everything was just fine and normal and he hadn’t woken up in my room at four in the morning, then announced, “I’m here about getting some lei.”
“You are such a child,” I told him. “And it’s making lei, not getting ... you know what? Never mind. I don’t need any help.” I still had several hours before the surprise event started.
I turned around and let the door start to swing shut on its own, but Camden followed me inside. “It looks like you need help.”
Despite what I’d said, he wasn’t wrong. “Fine. I’ll show you how to make it.” We didn’t have to talk or anything. I put the desk between us as I gave him the exact same instructions Troy had given me. I didn’t make eye contact with Camden, focusing on my task.
Fingering a flower on one of the completed lei he said, “You do good work.”
He was not going to butter me up with compliments.
And I felt my resolve harden when he asked, “Should I write that down on a piece of paper so you can put it in your box?”
While I knew he was trying to be cute or whatever, his comment stung. It reminded me how much I’d shared with him last night. How I’d told him things I had never told another person.
Nobody else knew about my happy box.
“You can sit over there,” I told him.
A strange expression crossed his face, but he took his needle and string and did what I said. I sat down at the desk, focusing on my task and doing my best to ignore him completely.
For a moment I considered texting Krista and having her join us. The only reason I hadn’t so far was because when Troy said he had called for reinforcements, I’d assumed he meant the other bridesmaids. I never imagined that he would have contacted Camden.
And if I got in touch with Krista now? Once I told her what was going on she’d rush down here with a big bag of popcorn just to have the chance to enjoy watching my embarrassment. Then she’d probably say some inappropriate things.
Because this room was already chock-full of Grade-A one hundred percent awkwardness, and the longer our silence went on, the worse it got.
I was almost grateful when he finally spoke. “Are we just going to pretend like last night didn’t happen?”
Feeling less grateful. “Can we? Because that would be great.”
“It’s kind of hard to forget you guzzling drinks like you were an eighteenth-century soldier about to have your leg amputated.”
“That wasn’t—” I saw that he was teasing me.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Sick,” I responded.
“My guess is that comes from the duty-free pop-up you were running in your stomach.”
“Ha ha,” I told him although if I were being fair, it was a little bit funny.
“Did you need some aspirin? Or maybe a sledgehammer?” he offered.
He was relentless in trying to make me laugh, wasn’t he? Like he knew humor would be his way in. “No, I took the aspirin that ...”
That he’d left for me, but I didn’t finish my sentence. I still didn’t want to talk about what had gone on last night. I asked him, “Are you always this loud?”
“I’m not loud. You’re just suffering from the aftereffects of rum flu.”
I focused on the lei I was making. He knew how cute he was, and I was not about to be sucked into it.
Was. Not.
Then he said, “I’m aware that you’re trying to change the subject.”
“I prefer to think of it as gently steering our conversation in a different direction on purpose.”
“You’re not the only one who can do that. So, you didn’t answer when I called you this morning,” he commented, correctly guessing that I wouldn’t be able to resist his bait.
“That’s because unlike you, I have caller ID.” I wanted to ask him how he got my number but knew that there were a handful of women who were supposed to care about me that would have happily handed it to him.
“Well, fortunately I’m not snobby like you, and when a phone rings, I answer. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have had the chance to chat with Lindsey.”
“Do not call my mom that.”
“Her name?”
“Yes, her name. Like you guys are friends or something.” As if I hadn’t already had an earful from her this morning.
“What are you talking about? We are friends now. We’re going to get lunch the next time she comes to visit you.”
“You’re not funny,” I told him.
“Objectively, I believe that I am.”
Did he not get how mortifying this whole situation was? Me not being myself last night, him having a chat with my overzealous mother, not being able to explain any of it to him. This whole thing was like a talk of shame.
To pile on, Camden offered, “Your face is all red.”
Should I thank him for pointing out the obvious? As if I wasn’t aware that my face was currently on fire from embarrassment?
Why could I not be around this man and just behave normally?
Because you like him.
I told Mom Voice to shut up and mind her own business. I’d heard quite enough from her today.
“We should focus,” I told him. “A lot of people are paying a lot of money for all of this to go perfectly.”
“Yeah,” he said with a short laugh. “Including Dan.”
So much for focusing. “What do you mean?”
“Can I tell you a secret?”
His words slammed into my chest, and I felt them twisting and turning inside me. They were the words I’d said to him. My secret had been harmless, but that desire had been there. To tell Camden about myself, to be seen by him.
He probably hadn’t meant anything by it, and I knew I shouldn’t overreact. “If this is something dumb like how much you can bench-press, I’m not going to be responsible for my actions.”
“It’s nothing like that. I probably shouldn’t say anything, but not all of the sponsors are fully ... sponsoring this event.”
“I’m not following.”
He put down the lei he was working on. “Some of them were only willing to offer a percentage off rather than the entire cost, and Dan stepped in and covered the rest.”
“Sadie doesn’t know that,” I said, feeling a bit alarmed.
Camden nodded. “I know she doesn’t know.”
“But you told me.” Was he not worried about me running off to tell her? I was supposed to be her best friend, after all. Should I tell her? This seemed like one of those things I might need to keep to myself. She might be devastated. Or she might be fine with it. I didn’t know her well enough to accurately predict her reaction.
Maybe she’d see it as romantic, because I was sure that’s how Dan meant it. She’d taken on those sponsorships to prove that she wasn’t after his money, and he had secretly covered the missing portion because he loved her. He wanted her to have her cake and eat it, too.
Regardless of what was going on, this wasn’t my secret to tell. Even if Sadie found out and got upset, I couldn’t imagine them staying angry at each other for very long.
Camden spoke, interrupting my internal debate. “You’re right. I did tell you.”
There was something more to his tone, but I was apparently too hungover to appreciate subtle nuance. “Why would you do that?”
“Do you really have to ask?”
Why did he think he was being obvious when he was being the very opposite? He was making my headache worse. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
When I didn’t respond, he just shook his head. I got the feeling I had disappointed him. He started working on his lei again. The lei that he was wrecking.
“That’s not how it goes,” I said.
“It’s fine. It doesn’t have to be perfect, Madam Lei Tyrant.”
I got up from behind the desk and walked over to him. “Despite your obvious insinuation, I’m not some kind of craft control freak. And you’re doing it wrong.”
“You’re really proving that whole not-a-control-freak thing,” he said as I reached for the lei.
He looked up at me and my heart started doing cartwheels. I’d been so busy avoiding making eye contact with him that I’d forgotten how beautiful his eyes were.
My breath caught and I forced it out of my chest. I wasn’t going to pass out just because he was looking at me. “The, uh, flowers all have to be facing in the same direction.”
“They are.”
“No, you turned this one the wrong way.”
He looked to where I was pointing and asked, “How did you see that all the way across the room?”
Because I’m becoming obsessed with you and everything you’re doing and thinking and I was just waiting for an excuse so that I could come over and be close to you?
Obviously, I didn’t say that.
I tried to take a step back, not willing to be sucked in by his sexy gaze. He reached for my hand and stood up, so close to me. So very close. A pang of crackling tension raced along my nerves, making it difficult to breathe.
I stared at his neck, thinking that would somehow make my pulse stop throbbing, but it didn’t work. All I could think of was what it would be like to press a kiss against his throat.
What kind of sound he might make if I did.
Why did I want something so badly that I knew I couldn’t have? It was like that time I tried to give up sugar and every bakery I passed gave me the shakes and I’d had to resist the impulse to press my face against the glass.
That probably wasn’t a very apt comparison, considering that the sugar fast had lasted only three days. I could make it three more days again, right?
Only the desire in his eyes made me think I wasn’t going to last three more seconds.
“Why are you afraid of this?” he asked.
What this? The fake this where he was trying to make me reveal that I was a spy? There was no this. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My stomach hollowed out when he somehow managed to get even closer to me without touching. I gulped hard, willing myself to resist.
“You know. This sexual tension.”
I tried to remind myself about how he’d blown me off last night, hoping that would make it easier to keep my raging hormones in check. But he stood in front of me all hot and lickable and what was I supposed to do? It was like a switch had been flipped inside me and there was no way to turn it back off.
No matter how much I denied it, I was so attracted to him. And even if things had been different for him before, unless he was the world’s best actor, he was attracted to me, too.
But none of that mattered. It couldn’t happen. “I think maybe you’re unclear about the meaning of sexual tension.”
He ghosted his lips over mine, and I felt it in my knees. He wasn’t even touching me but my lips still burned and tingled as if he had. “Oh, I’m very clear about what it means,” he murmured just above my mouth, making me blaze and shiver at the same time. “And it’s been happening between us from day one.”
“That’s ...” I was having a really hard time forming words as I no longer had control over the air coming into or out of my body. I wanted to melt against him. His teasing was driving me wild. It had to be stopped. “Nothing is going to happen between us.”
“When I kiss you,” he said, his lips still impossibly close to mine, making it so that I nearly missed the way he’d put an emphasis on when, like it was a foregone conclusion that it would definitely happen, “it’ll be because we both want it. Nobody will be impaired. You won’t feel sick. And there won’t be any more secrets.”
That was the cold bucket of ice water I needed to reengage my brain. Camden and his secrets. He really was a good actor. This had all been a lie to get me to confess the “truth.”
There was a knock at the door and I didn’t even care who was on the other side. Because whoever they were, they had just saved me from doing something really, really stupid.
I stepped back, trying to regulate my breathing.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Camden said in a voice that sounded both sexy and demanding.
Oh no, we would not. I ran for the door, yanking it open. Irene was there, and I was confused. Surely Troy wouldn’t have called Dan’s mom to come help us, would he?
She glanced from me to Camden and asked, “Am I interrupting something?”
He said, “Yes,” at the same time that I said, “Nothing at all.”
It absolutely had been nothing. And it had to stay that way.