Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
AT THE HOUSE, she strode on up to the front door with purpose but paused on the top step until Terra caught up.
“Don’t touch anything.”
“Will Roxie be here?” Terra asked, practically drooling with excitement. “I can’t wait to get to know her.”
“I have no idea if Roxie’s here, but she doesn’t live here. Roxie is not part of this job.”
“I know,” Terra said and snatched her hand. “But I did some research and, oh my God, Camden Collier knows everyone! Roxie knows everyone and she knows Camden, so they’re like—Roxie’s best friend just married Camden Collier’s brother. They’re practically family! It’s so exciting!”
And if Terra was going to get fangirl juice all over Roxie, she’d rather not be present. And she’d definitely choose not touching Terra either. For any reason. Ever. The fingerprint lock gave her a reason to take her hand back. Thank you, Cam’s friend.
From manic busy to utter calm. The only person inside sat at the kitchen island on a laptop and it wasn’t Roxie or Cam.
“Noble,” she said and he smiled at her. “This is Terra.”
“I heard.” Noble gave the woman a look over, a quick one, and not an interested one. She’d come to recognize his lustful perusal and that wasn’t it. “Cam’s downstairs, he’s not up on this.”
“How did—”
Noble held up Cam’s phone from the island. With his head in the sand, or swamped in detail paper, Cam lived in ignorance. If only she could do the same. More bliss she was missing out on.
Ordinarily, she’d go about her business, tidy up, eat, grab her own laptop, there would be a backlog of tasks to get through, the sooner the better… That wasn’t her job anymore.
Wow. Her brain just caught up.
New York. Three o’clock.
“You want to do the introductions when he does appear?” she asked Noble. “I have a flight to catch.”
“A flight?” That raised his brows. “A flight to where?”
“New York.”
“Flashy. You really are leaving us.”
“I go where I’m pointed.” Which was only half true. “I have to grab a few things and—I won’t be staying in New York.” Nothing anywhere mentioned a hotel, but she’d take an overnight bag, just in case. “I’ll be back later. Maybe late.”
Three o’clock wasn’t a late-in-the-day meeting, but how long would it run? What if this new client asked her to stay and start immediately. She should at least say goodbye to Cam. Goodbye? For how long?
“Here?” he asked a question she couldn’t answer in present company.
He wasn’t asking if she’d be back to work that night, the question was about Cam. About them. About the future. About answers she didn’t have.
“He has Terra now.” And wasn’t she so thrilled about that? “Terra should be able to…”
A few seconds passed before he filled the silence. “Do anything you can do?” The angle of his smile quirked. “I think we both know that’s not true.”
“I’ll talk to him. When he’s done downstairs…” She headed for the ascending staircase and nodded backward. “Look after her for a second.”
“Oh, I can come with you—”
“No, you can’t,” Ariella said, stalling with a hand on the banister. “You can stay here.”
“I’ve been upstairs before.”
Wasn’t a memory she wanted to relive.
“Not that you remember anything,” Ariella said. “Right? That’s what you said. Cam hasn’t approved anything yet, don’t get too comfortable. Stay here with Noble.”
And their eye contact carried a promise he’d keep Terra on a leash.
Approved anything? She ran up the stairs.
Cam wasn’t going to approve this. Her feelings mattered so much to the man that he’d refused to go upstairs with Terra at the party because…
Maybe it was different now. He didn’t need to impress her.
Cam wasn’t that kind of guy. He wasn’t a “for show” kind of guy, or a “until I’ve had her in bed,” kind of guy either.
She picked a few essentials from the pile of stuff brought from her apartment and tried not to think about moving to New York.
It was an expensive city, did she want to live there?
Wages would be higher, it would even things out.
Hadn’t they just been talking about how close Boston was to New York?
This didn’t have to be the end of her and Cam.
Terra’s laughter carried upstairs as she descended. Noble had taken her out to the patio. Good. She couldn’t handle saying goodbye, even to Noble, and leaving Terra in this special place, her place.
On the bright side, emptiness gave her a clear shot to the door. She darted that way and then… couldn’t do it. Facing the front door, she closed her eyes. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about him being so close—oh, what was the point of resisting?
Dashing down there before she could change her mind, she let herself into Cam’s office, dumped the bag and charged to the drafting table.
Though he turned, she didn’t let him speak before marrying their mouths.
She could lose herself in his kiss. All the stress of the day and uncertainty of the future disappeared in the haze of their connection.
And, God love him, he let her. He met the ferocity of her kiss with his. She needed this and he delivered.
The damp heat of his tongue tangled just right, pushed just right, retreated just right.
She might’ve stayed there forever, except he eased back, forcing their mouths only a feather’s width apart. God, it was too much. Too far.
“Good meeting?”
“I have to go to New York.”
And he didn’t like that, he leaned back, scowling. “New York for what?”
“New client meet. He wants to meet me before deciding if I’m good enough to work for him.”
Which she likely wasn’t, so what was she even worried about?
“No,” he said, his fingers trailing down her arms. “You don’t need a new client.”
“Cam, whatever this is…” What did she want? “New York’s close. It wouldn’t mean us saying goodbye. We were just talking about it with Roxie and—”
“You work for me. You work here.”
It had taken him time to find an assistant he could tolerate. This wasn’t about that.
“You don’t want me to go.”
“No,” he said. “And I can’t see why you would want to when we’re fixing the problem.” They were. “You’ll be safer here.”
“Knox said New York would be safe.”
“Why do you want to leave? Things were fine before. If this is about what happened between us at the party—”
“This is about that.”
And so much more.
“I told you that your wild phase is not under threat. If you need time and experience, I want you to be happy. You think you’ll find that in New York? Is that why you want to go there?”
“The there wasn’t my choice. Allan told me I have to go to New York for a meeting with a new client. When—before—we—when your friend recognized me I asked Allan for a new assignment.”
“You told me.”
“I said no Boston and no LA because I thought I was avoiding…”
“The lens,” he said. “So he got you a job in New York? Roxie isn’t there a lot, if you think—”
“Roxie isn’t part of this job.” As she’d said to Terra about Cam. “The guy might hate me, it might not happen—”
“You don’t understand. I don’t want you taking this job, I don’t want you taking any other job. I don’t care if it’s down the street or in Lapland. I want you here.”
“Because we’re something.”
“Because I work with people I trust,” he said with conviction. “I’ll support whatever you decide, but it’s taken me a long time to build a solid team. I don’t want another stranger coming in here, taking your place. No one can take your place.”
“Irony has a sense of humor. Allan asked me to show the new girl the ropes.”
“The new girl for…? Me? There’s another—when? Now? There’s a strange woman upstairs?”
“Well, she’s with a strange guy…” She smiled. “I left her with Noble, but she’s not a stranger.”
“Not a—”
“Terra,” she said. “Allan assigned Terra here. I guess he thinks her sexy siren thing will work for you.”
“Hmm,” he exhaled the sound in an almost aggressive laugh.
Locking their fingers together, he marched out of the office and up the stairs so fast that she almost fell flat on her face.
“Cam…”
Looking this way and that, he got out to the patio before spotting Noble and Terra.
“You’re fired,” he said to Terra before she could draw breath. The woman’s face fell. “I don’t want you in this house. Go.”
“But I—”
“Out!”
“I’ll show you,” Noble said, a hand on Terra’s shoulder.
The beauty didn’t deserve wrath. She was caught in the middle of something—
“How could you think I’d be okay with that?” Cam snapped, whirling on her when the other two were gone.
Dragging him back into the house, Knox’s words about ears outside still echoed.
“Don’t lose your rag out there,” she hissed, keeping her own volume low. The yard was big, but there was still only a fence between them and the street, where Terra might still be with Noble. “What is wrong with you?”
“New York! What the fuck, New York?” Cam never shouted, never got mad, except right then. “You are not going to New York. You loved your job here before—”
“I love my job here.”
“Then why the fuck would you leave? Why the fuck would you want to—”
“I don’t want to!”
“Then there’s no fucking reason to—”
“Stop swearing!”
And shouting, but she couldn’t correct that while doing the same.
“You don’t need to go. I don’t want you to go. If you love your job—”
“I love you!” she screamed, the release liberating her heart.
“You idiot…” Oh, she’d known all along and this was the key to unlocking the truth.
“I love you, you idiot. Oh my God, that’s it!
That’s what’s been screwing with my head—I love—I’m actually in love with you.
” And that’s why she was trying to separate one from the other. “I can’t work with you when—”
“You think I don’t love you? You think that I’m this fucking crazy for any other woman?”
And there they were, two people standing there, panting, amped, raw, vulnerable and—in the clash of bodies and mouths, he scooped her up, hands sure on her ass. Coiling her legs around him, the edge of the pool table was the closest hard surface for the grind of their hips.
Mm, he was good. More. Right there. Harder. This wasn’t enough. Clawing at him, she wanted him out of his clothes, out of his skin, inside her, all the way to his hilt, until not an inch of him—
“Wait.” Struggling for breath, she grabbed his shoulders to push him back. “Wait. We have to wait.”
“No we fucking don’t,” he panted.
On a laugh, she bumped the heel of her hand into his shoulder when he tried to move in again. “You did not wait two years to pop your regrown cherry before we even get to lunch.”
“We’ll go upstairs and I’ll eat anything you want.” Another bump and he backed off, groaning. “Candy…”
“This doesn’t mean anything,” she said, looking at him straight. “Not until we talk about it, figure it out.”
“Doesn’t mean anything?”
Going to him, her fingertips glided up his cheeks to the side of his head to guide him down for one short kiss, then another.
“We mean everything. Us means everything. If we want a future, what we say and do now matters. We have a plan to deal with my past. Our future is just as important. More important. We have to… figure this out together.”
Wasn’t that what he’d said? That him and his partner—wow, partners.
“Live here.”
A second time? At least his asking again proved it was a serious request. Though their hormones were a little hyped, that couldn’t be prohibitive to decision making, they’d likely always be that way.
“I can get on board with that.” This was the safest place and she didn’t want to be without Cam either. “And New York—shit! New York.”
“You’re still going?”
“I have to call Allan,” she said. “He did me a favor, I shouldn’t—”
“Who was the guy?”
“Allan?” she asked, fishing her phone from her purse. “Zairn knows who my boss is and you don’t?”
“Not that guy,” he said, coming over. “The client in New York.”
“Some big shot who—Allan said sometimes men of means appreciate a person who isn’t afraid to challenge them.”
“That’s probably true,” Cam said, plucking the phone from her hand. “Let me call him.”
“No,” she said, stealing her phone back. “I’m a big girl, I can do it myself. Go pour me a glass of wine.”
He smirked. “It’s not even lunchtime.”
“What are you afraid of? That I might get drunk and horny?”
His lips pushed out a little before he nodded. “Right. Where are those twenty inch wineglasses?”
As he disappeared into the store, she smiled. This hadn’t been her plan when she woke up that morning. Hell, it hadn’t been her plan until the words came out of her mouth.
Love.
Again?
She chewed her bottom lip. Did anyone get two bites of the apple?