Chapter 2
There were only two things guaranteed to distract Cami Sutherland when she was coding: emails from , and pictures of sex toys.
When one of the latter popped up in the bottom right hand corner of her laptop screen, she did a double take and then whirled around to check that no one in the campus library had seen it.
There was no one behind her, but her flailing drew the attention of the dark-haired girl in the cubicle next to her who inched her belongings away like Cami might experience a mental break and turn violent.
To be fair, it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened in the campus library, but it wasn’t even exam season.
She reluctantly pulled out her phone and opened the text message, wishing belatedly that she hadn’t set up that phone link program on her laptop.
It was from Lenny. The picture was of the endcap display for one of the shelving units, currently showcasing a selection of neon-colored clitoral vibes. It was serviceable, but uninspired.
And thoughts like that were exactly why she got pictures of sex toy displays on her days off.
I’ll fix it when I’m in tomorrow, she texted back, and then shoved her phone back into her pocket. The script she’d coded the night before wasn’t executing correctly and she wanted to get it figured out before she headed home for the night. Sex toys could wait.
She had made a little progress (by moving a solitary misplaced semicolon) when someone called her name.
“Cami.” She looked up to see Jeff, a boy in her program, approaching from one of the seating areas a little further down the way.
She’d spoken to Jeff a few times since she’d started the computer science program at Santa Monica College, but only about class things.
Maybe he’d missed the last lecture and wanted a copy of her notes.
“Hi,” she smiled. “How are you doing with the assignment for Java Programming?”
“Huh? Oh, fine.” He brushed off her question quickly enough that he either had a much better grasp on it than she did, or he didn’t care. “Look, I was wondering if you were free this weekend.”
For a moment, she just blinked at him. Was this a date thing?
If so, how did she get out of it gracefully?
He was cute enough, with blond hair a shade or two darker than her own, and the swimmer’s build that was so frequent among California guys, but he seemed so.
.. young. She was only twenty-four herself, but most of the people in her associate’s program had started straight out of high school, which meant there was a sizable chance most of them, Jeff included, couldn’t even drink yet.
“Uh, I’m working most of the weekend.”
At least he had the grace to look mildly interested. “Oh, where do you work?”
Oh no.
She shifted awkwardly in her chair. Think of a lie, think of a lie. Suddenly, her brain was devoid of every business she’d ever encountered and every part-time job she’d ever had besides the one she held now. “Sex on the Beach,” she admitted, finally.
For a moment, Jeff gaped at her in shocked silence. Then, he said, his voice taut with glee: “The sex toy store?”
Her cheeks began to heat with a combination of irritation and embarrassment.
Whenever she told someone where she worked, they assumed she was some kind of sexpot into all manner of kinky behavior.
The only way that could have been further from the truth was if she was a virgin.
The closest she’d ever gotten to kink in her personal life was getting financially dominated by bills and adulthood, and she didn’t even enjoy that.
Then again, who was to say what she enjoyed? She couldn’t even get herself off. She had to be the only 20-something in Santa Monica who’d never had an orgasm.
“Yep.” She sounded more terse than she’d intended.
“That’s so cool.” Jeff seemed to have decided this disaster of a conversation was a good time, because he leaned against the wall of her study cubicle and tucked his fingers into his pockets, giving her a secretive smile. “You must know all the sexy tricks in bed, huh?”
She wanted to be friendly, but Cami couldn’t help it when her tone flattened and her lips pursed. “Not really.” She didn’t even know what that was supposed to mean. “If that’s all, I really need to get back to work.” This C++ assignment wasn’t going to code itself.
Jeff was undeterred. “Do you want to get a drink on Saturday night? After you get off work.” There was a sheen to his eyes and something in the arch of his brow that made her wonder if he thought she’d bring work with her, like she’d load up her purse with battery-operated silicone before they met up.
Like because she worked around sex toys, she’d fool around with him if he bought her alcohol.
She squinted at him suspiciously. “Are you even old enough to drink?”
“Yeah, totally.”
He was lying. She wished she could say she was an expert at reading people, that she could tell whenever someone fibbed to her, but she couldn’t. He was just really bad at it.
If only all the other liars in her life had been so courteous.
“I’m not interested.” It came out harsher than she’d intended, but all her polite smiles had been used up by that point.
She did feel a bit bad afterward, though, and offered a belated, “Sorry.” Then she turned back to her assignment, and Jeff retreated to his gaggle of buddies, no doubt primed to tell them what a bitch she was.
If her grandmother had been alive, she’d have told Cami to give him a chance.
She’d always encouraged her to date, to get out of the house for something other than work or school.
But Grandma had been dead for over a year, now, and with no other family to speak of save the uncle who’d robbed her and the father who’d abandoned her, there was no one left to badger Cami into dating.
She had enough on her plate with school and her job.
She didn’t need to make room for a relationship, let alone one with a man whose first interaction with her involved lying.
An image of Des appeared in her mind, a charming smile on his face as he leaned one elbow on the sales counter at the store.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d brought her an iced coffee, and when she’d taken her first pull from the straw his eyes had flickered to her mouth and lingered there.
The memory alone triggered an odd clench in her belly.
Ugh. She needed to daydream about Des even less than she needed Jeff’s attention.
She stared at her laptop screen, willing herself to zone back into the coding she needed to do, but her brain was fuzzy with irritation.
After five minutes without making a single adjustment to the code, she gave up.
Maybe she could refocus after a bubble bath at home.
The library wasn’t doing her any favors today.
He was persistent; she’d give him that.
As winter faded into spring and approached the dry, crackling heat of the California summer, Des came by the store with increasing regularity.
It wasn’t uncommon for Cami to be ringing up a customer or checking on inventory and look up to find a pair of beautiful gray eyes tracking her movements with a twinkle of amusement.
More and more frequently, Lenny was out of the store when Des showed up looking for her, but he’d stay for ten minutes, or twenty or thirty, distracting her with witticisms and the way his shoulders looked in his bespoke blazers.
It was worrying how quickly Cami came to anticipate his pop-ins, eyes snapping to the door every time it opened to search for signs of his prominent cheekbones, his easy-going smile.
In March, she complained about the temptation of chocolate bunnies appearing in her grocery store as though to taunt her with their Easter deliciousness, and in April, the day before they closed for the holiday weekend, he stopped by with a milk chocolate bunny the size of her laptop.
She spent weeks nibbling away at it, thinking of him whenever she got a craving for chocolate.
He never seemed too disappointed when he turned up and Lenny wasn’t around.
He did manage to catch her a few times, but Lenny didn’t want to stock his product for whatever reason.
Maybe she thought it was shoddy? Cami couldn’t imagine Des hocking a shoddy product, though.
Not when he himself was so put-together.
Seeing him sent a little thrill through her nervous system every time.
She thought his effect on her would fade with time, but if anything it strengthened.
It had been too long since she’d been with anyone, and it was making her easy.
Her body shouldn’t buzz with interest just because an attractive man was nearby.
Ridiculous. Besides, she wasn’t interested.
She had enough on her plate without adding a relationship, let alone the humiliation of Des discovering her inability to orgasm.
The man sold or designed or made sex toys for a living.
Whatever it was he did, exactly, he was not the kind of man who wanted a woman who couldn’t get off.
She appreciated the eye candy, though. And there was no harm in flirting with him.
It would keep her from getting rusty, in case she ever decided to get back in the dating game.
If sometimes her mind drifted toward the appealing spread of his hand against the counter, that was fine.
If she wondered if his lips would feel soft and sweet against hers or if his kiss would be firm and demanding… Well, what was the harm in that?
Des slid a lid over his omelette-in-progress and leaned back against his kitchen counter, tapping his thumb over his phone to select various emails he intended to delete without reading.
There were a few forwards from his dad, a collection of audiobooks that had gone on sale, and something about a charity golf tournament (he did not play golf).
Then, below those, was the weekly digest from the New England Journal of Medicine.
He didn’t need to read it. He didn’t even need to be subscribed anymore. He should have left the mailing list a long time ago, but something inside him enjoyed the emails, even if he was only scrolling the headlines of the articles it mentioned.
He opened the digest and then laid his phone on the counter so he could fold his omelette. When it was cooked through and the cheese was extra gooey, he plated it, squirted a squiggly line of ketchup onto it, and seated himself at the kitchen table, phone in one hand, breakfast in the other.
As he used his fork to sever a corner of the omelette, he scrolled through the contents of the email: an article about bird flu, one about advances in insulin pump technology, another about the necessity of nuchal translucency scans in pregnancy.
Interesting and informative, but nothing begging to be read, until—
He stopped mid-chew as his eyes caught on a name: Madilyn Andrews, MD.
His blood rushed in his ears and the edges of his vision began to blur.
Taking a deep breath through his nose, Des forced himself to finish chewing and swallow, then take a swallow from the orange juice he’d set on the table before he made his omelette.
The tangy bite of cold citrus helped to calm the vasovagal response he had just from reading her name. God, he was pathetic.
The Efficacy of Medical Management in Early Appendicitis. Contributors: Madilyn Andrews, John Davis, Philip Templeton.
He didn’t know Davis or Templeton personally, but remembered their names from the PA system at the hospital.
Paging Dr. Davis to the ICU, Dr. Davis to the ICU.
At the time he’d been doing his internship, Templeton had been Chief of General Surgery.
He recalled Madilyn mentioning Davis as her mentor.
He recalled her suggesting that she, in turn, could mentor him.
How good she could be for his career. She’d breathed the promise into his throat in the dark of a locked on-call room as her fingers found the drawstring of his scrub pants.
His thumb hovered over the link to her article for two long heartbeats, and then he hit the trash button instead.
He’d sacrificed enough to the cold stone altar of Madilyn Andrews’ career ambitions: his time, his thoughts, his own career—hell, his self-respect. It would be a snowy day in the underworld before he gave her even a page view more.