Chapter Six Cameron
Chapter Six
Cameron
Cam had his laptop on the coffee table, dreading Jenna joining their next call – dreading having to put on a brave face and hear about Nate and his big plans and seeing Jenna racked with doubts.
Because Cam had a feeling she did have doubts about marrying Nate.
He could never say that to her, of course. Even if Cam didn’t think Nate was the man for her. Nate struck him as a bit domineering, and he sometimes wondered if Jenna was with him more because she felt grateful for how he’d supported her family than because she loved him.
However, Cam was also aware that he might be dead wrong and letting jealousy cloud his view of Nate. He could never sabotage Jenna’s happiness – and he kept reminding himself that she thought he was in a new relationship. He was supposed to be smitten . . . or something.
Their business concluded efficiently, with Cam confirming that Carly’s Breakfast Today crew would definitely be at the start of the Kilt Challenge.
‘That’s good . . .’ she said, sounding a little weary.
‘It is.’
Jenna seemed less than enthusiastic. Her eyes had dark circles under them and it was clear she had lost sleep over something.
‘Everything OK?’ he asked when he caught her looking wistfully in the direction of her office window, almost as if she wanted to fly out of it.
‘Yes. Um. You once said you would like to come down here. Why don’t you and Iona visit – maybe in October?’
‘October?’
‘Yes. Saturday the sixteenth, to be precise.’
Cam had the sensation of not quite being in the room, not quite inhabiting his body. He’d experienced it before, in the early days after Rachel had gone.
‘Cam?’
Recovering himself, he tried and failed to smile, instead gabbling out a response he hoped would let Jenna know he was at least still conscious. ‘You mean to your wedding?’
‘Yes. It’s er – all been a bit of a rush, but we got a great deal on a hotel and you know, why wait? No pressure if you’re too busy or it’s not Iona’s thing or yours, but it wouldn’t be the same without you – both of you.’
‘Erm. I – er – will have to check my diary. And – er – ask her.’
‘Great,’ Jenna said dully.
‘Jenna – are you sure you’re OK?’
‘Yes . . . Just, you know . . . this may sound silly, but do you ever question yourself? I mean, question the whole basis of your life? What you’re doing? Where you’re going?’
‘Often.’ He nodded. ‘We all do from time to time. Especially when a big life change happens – it shifts the ground under your feet.’
‘It does,’ Jenna agreed. ‘So you know how it feels – to wonder . . .’
‘I do. I thought I had my life all sorted out – great job, head of marketing for a big tech company. They even offered me a promotion in London and I wanted it, badly. But then I couldn’t, because of the sacrifices I’d have to make.
My sister was struggling to bring up Lachlan, even with my parents’ help and me coming home from Edinburgh as often as I could .
. .’ He stopped short of the other reason he had changed his whole life.
It wasn’t fair on Jenna to lay that sort of trauma on her.
‘And?’ she said, chin on hand, now completely engaged.
‘The job offer made me question everything about my life, how I wanted it to be, and that’s when I decided to do the craziest thing ever. I left, set up in freelance marketing, landed End-to-End as a key client and moved back here to JOG.’
‘Do you regret it?’
‘Of course, sometimes. But the times I regret losing the salary, the kudos, the instant access to tapas . . .’ He smiled sadly.
‘Those are outnumbered a hundred to one by the times I step out of my house and feel the salt stinging my face, or when I’m on a beach with Lachlan looking for dolphins or the perfect pebble. ’
‘And what about Iona?’
‘Sorry?’
‘And you met Iona too?’
‘Yes, um. Yes, that too.’ Cam felt sick.
Jenna nodded. ‘Well, I – um – am so glad you did move, otherwise we’d never have met.’
‘No . . .’ Cam said, momentarily thinking that if he’d never known Jenna, he would have avoided the pain he was going through now.
In the next heartbeat, he knew it was infinitely better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Even if he felt he’d suffered a double loss in different ways: Rachel and Jenna.
‘OK, I’ll send a proper invitation when they’re back from the printers.’ Jenna had snapped back into almost normal perky Jenna mode.
‘I’ll look forward to that,’ Cam said and ended the call.
Slumping back on the sofa, he let out a groan of anguish and frustration. Why was the world like this? What ill-fated star had he been born under?
He mustn’t wallow in self-pity. Rachel’s death had been a terrible and unavoidable blow, but this situation with Jenna was all of his own making.
He couldn’t keep lying about his fake ‘girlfriend’, but telling the truth meant telling her why he’d lied. Unless he could say that he was just embarrassed to be single . . . Damn.
However jokily he framed his ‘confession’, he would sound like a sad loser and weird to boot.
Which he probably was – which was why it was even more important than ever that Jenna never got an inkling he was in love with her.
Iona was spot on: she would definitely never want to work with him again or have him within 874 miles of her wedding.