Chapter 25 #2
“I can do this,” she said, gulping in a fortifying breath. “I’m sorry. It’s probably just hormones.”
“Sunny, trust me, if the roles were reversed, I would be taking a blade to you by now.”
She laughed miserably. “I have more patience than you do.”
“Aye, you do.” He rubbed her arm in silence for a moment or two, then spoke. “I have a crushing schedule the next fortnight here in London, but things will be easier after that.”
She supposed it wouldn’t be particularly prudent to point out to him that his schedule was going to lighten up because he was going to be getting ready for his wedding.
“Would you meet me every day?” he asked. “It would have to be very discreet. Maybe out of the way places, or touristy places.” He paused. “We might have to arrive in disguise.”
“Because you can’t be seen with me?” she whispered.
“Because you can’t be seen with me.”
She lifted her head and looked at him in surprise. “Cameron, what are you doing?”
“Nothing immoral, illegal, or debauched,” he said.
He hesitated, then sighed. “Just business with dangerous people, Sunny, and I’ll tell you no more than that.
That was likely too much.” He started to say more, but his phone rang.
He reached over to pick it up off the table.
“If you don’t know what I’m doing, you aren’t useful to anyone but me—and I mean that, Sunshine.
” He looked at the number and smiled briefly.
“This, however, may be a step in the right direction. Hang on and let me see.”
Sunny started to crawl off his lap, but he tightened his arm around her and shook his head, so she stayed.
She put her head down on his shoulder and closed her eyes, taking an unreasonable and probably fairly hazardous amount of pleasure at just being in his arms. It was easier to block out her surroundings when she wasn’t looking at them and it was easier to imagine that Cameron was hers alone when she wasn’t concentrating on whatever he was discussing on the phone.
She simply enjoyed the feel of his arm around her and the fact that—at least for the moment—she had him, hot showers, and no one coming after them with swords.
It could have been much worse.
“I imagine I’m interested in whatever he’s had time to come up with,” Cameron said. “When can he meet me?” He paused. “Actually, I might be able to come to him. Let me find out.”
Sunny watched him put his thumb over the microphone of his cell phone and she lifted her head to look at him. “What?”
“What would you think if we made a quick trip to Paris tomorrow? ” he asked. “If we took an early train, we could make the market, then be back before midnight.”
She smiled. “Fresh flowers and herbs. Yes, definitely.”
He smiled. “I thought you’d approve.” He put his phone back to his ear.
“Tell him I’d be happy to trudge across the Channel to come to him.
Did he give you any hints, or is he saving all the dirt for me?
” He laughed. “Of course I’m not going to tell you after the fact and nay, I don’t owe you a bloody thing.
Aye, and you can bill me double for that. Thanks, Geoff. Cheers.”
He hung up, set his phone aside, and wrapped his arms around her. Sunny smiled.
“Your attorney?”
“How could you tell?”
“It sounded expensive.”
“Aye, he’s damned expensive, but well worth his price.” He leaned his back against the couch and looked at her carefully. “He’s hired an investigator of sorts to ferret out a few details for me.”
“Are you going to let me listen in?”
He hesitated. “I’m thinking about it. At the very least, we can spend the morning somewhere you love. I’ll even sniff flowers with you. Who knows but that we might find a treasure or two in some musty old bookshop.”
“Shall we go in disguise there as well?” she asked lightly.
“Aye, Sunny,” he said quietly. “We should.”
She looked into his bright blue eyes, but saw no hint of levity there. Well, whatever the truth might have been, Cameron at least thought it was serious business. She reached up and touched his face. “All right,” she said. “Emily and I will find something this morning.”
“Emily?” he asked in surprise.
“She’s coming shopping with me.”
“And when was it she planned on telling me this?” he demanded with mock severity. “After she couldn’t be bothered to show up for work?”
“Actually, I think she was just going to call in sick and leave you in the lurch. And we decided yesterday when I was still not particularly interested in making your life easy. I don’t imagine I’ll spend very much of your money, though.
I can’t shell out fifty bucks for a dress that I’m not sick to my stomach afterward. ”
He trailed his fingers through her hair with a half smile on his face. “Sunny, I think you can afford a dress or two without needing a little lie-down after the fact. And I’ll happily fetch my own tea if it means you’ll have an enjoyable morning. But you’ll be cautious, aye?”
“Cameron, it’s London.”
“Exactly.” He paused. “You know, I think I could throw de Piaget out by about two. What would you say to an exhibit of medieval swords at the Victoria and Albert?”
“Perfect,” she said. “We’ll see if you recognize anything.
” He smiled as he slipped his hand under her hair, then leaned forward and kissed her softly.
“I’ll recognize you, which is the most important thing.
And the sooner I go at present, the sooner I’ll be able to leave.
Though I would rather pass the morning with you, truth be told. ”
She stood. “You’d better not, or you won’t be able to pay for this ridiculously expensive room.” She ignored the knowledge that when they left the museum, he would be going off to spend the evening with someone else. Whatever else she might have been, Penelope Ainsworth was at least not his refuge.
That was something.
He collected his phone, chucked his newspaper in the trash can, then put his arm around her shoulders and walked with her to the door. “Please be careful this morning.”
“I’m an adult, Cam,” she said with a dry smile, “I think I can manage a simple shopping trip. Emily will protect me if someone looks feisty.”
He started to say something, then shook his head. He simply shot her a meaningful look and slipped out the door. “Meet me at three.”
“I’ll be there.”
He smiled. “Thank you.”
“Cameron, you can stop thanking me.”
He shook his head. “Can’t.” He leaned in and kissed her. “I should, however, stop kissing you or I’ll come back inside and never leave. I’ll see you at three.”
She nodded and watched him pull the door shut.
She could hear his final be careful through the wood.
She rolled her eyes and headed for the shower.
Too many years in medieval Scotland had obviously made him paranoid—though having lived through a couple of weeks of it, she supposed she could see why.
But she was a modern girl who had grown up near a big city. She could handle herself.
Three hours later, as she lay sprawled on the pavement in an innocent-looking side street and listened to someone run off with her purse, she wondered if she should have taken Cameron a little more seriously.
She had met Emily for breakfast, then spent two hours making more of a dent in Cameron’s money than she was comfortable with.
Emily had suggested a break, which she’d happily agreed to, and they’d chosen the first alley they’d come to to use as a shortcut.
It hadn’t looked like a likely place to get mugged or she wouldn’t have taken it.
She started to crawl back up to her feet, then had help. Hands were on her arms and she was lifted and steadied. She was torn between shaking off those hands and watching another twenty-something guy brush past her and run after the guy running away with her purse.
“What did you lose?” asked the man holding on to her.
Sunny looked blankly at him. He was almost as handsome as Cameron, and that was saying something.
He was probably pushing thirty, built like a Highlander, with eyes almost as green as Patrick’s, though not nearly as dark.
He was dressed in normal business gear, suit and tie, nondescript and unremarkable.
The only thing that seemed unusual was the earbud he wore and the cord that disappeared down into his shirt. She frowned.
“There wasn’t anything in my purse,” she said, “but who are you and why do you care?”
Emily put her arm around Sunny’s shoulder. “It’s Derrick, one of Cameron’s lads. We should let him help us.”
Cameron had lads? She remembered thinking that she might be a little uncomfortable with this incarnation of himself. She now realized she was seriously uncomfortable with it. At least in Scotland, all she had to worry about was getting run over by his horse.
What in the hell was he doing?
She found herself being helped out of the alley, down the street, and into a chair at a cafe before she could truly give that the consideration it deserved. She looked up at Derrick as he stood at the table, scanning the street in both directions and talking quietly into his cord.
“No, there wasn’t anything in it of value to her. Follow him, though, and see where he goes. I’ll call Himself.”
Sunny found a glass of water in her hands.
“Drink,” Emily suggested.
Sunny did, because she thought it might make her a little less nauseated.
The familiarity of her situation was hard to take.
She had been plunked down again in the middle of something that she hadn’t asked for, something that had apparently been going on long before she’d arrived and would probably continue in spite of her presence in its midst. She had honestly wondered, as she’d thought about Cameron’s insistence they go to Paris in disguise, if he’d lived one too many years in medieval Scotland and was now having delusions of grandeur in the future where he imagined that there were people so out to get him that he needed to hide them both—and keep her in the dark about his activities.