CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He nodded, ready for me to share my deepest, darkest secret with him. “I do. Tell me.”
Was he a little too eager? “It’s not my birthday.”
His mouth turned down. “That’s not really a secret. Sadie’s not a great liar.”
“You knew? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“What would I have said? It’s not like I could have demanded proof. You would have shut me down with that enigmatic way of yours, where you answer but don’t answer and you leave me feeling confused and like I’m not really sure what happened.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I told him. It just meant I was very good at my job.
“Actually, I kind of like it. I never know what you’re going to say and I look forward to finding out. I like how you try to subtly redirect me. It makes me feel like I’m playing a really great game of chess. Watch out.”
We were heading back toward the grass and there was a large, pointy rock in our path. We could have easily gone around it, but Camden stepped over. Then he reached for my hand to help me across and I put my hand in his. The sensation of his hand engulfing mine, helping me to jump over, sent seismic waves through me and then ...
He didn’t let go. He kept holding my hand even when the path didn’t have any more obstacles. I liked how this felt—secure, safe, like I was being looked after.
So many relationships I’d had were on one speed when it came to the physical—super fast. I liked that he was just holding my hand. With no expectation of anything else. I almost felt like a kid in high school again.
Although, to be fair, this might have been just to make sure that I didn’t fall over and injure myself.
His voice interrupted my thoughts. “Tell me something you’re proud of.”
At the moment? That I hadn’t tried to make out with his face even once. “In college my alcohol tolerance used to be quite a bit higher and it took me a lot longer to get drunk than it does now. Is that what you mean?” I asked with a grin, and was rewarded with a matching smile.
“Not quite.”
“Okay. Um, I started my own business.”
“As an event coordinator?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t a lie; it was something I had to protect. But I really was pleased with what I’d done over the last few years. “I have fifteen employees and all of them are women in need of a fresh start.”
“Like former stay-at-home moms?”
I wondered how much I should tell him. Then I remembered his Olympics story and thought I could share this with him. “No. Like women who were hurt by their supposed loved ones. Or who were victimized at their jobs.” My voice caught on that one, and I wondered if he noticed. “Or who can’t get jobs because of some past mistake. They’re my second family and I’ll do anything to protect them.”
“I understand that. It’s how I feel about Dan and his family, and our employees. We’ve been working on building this up since our junior year in college and some of those guys have been with us from the beginning. Everybody had to sacrifice a lot. We do profit sharing so when this company goes public, we’re all going to be well taken care of. I’m making sure that that happens.”
“I suppose those are some more things we have in common. Starting our own companies, doing profit sharing, being loyal and willing to do anything to take care of the people that are important to us.” Anything. Even keep away from him. After tonight we would need to go back to being just friends.
“Guess I better break out that notebook,” he said with a radiant smile that tested my resolve.
We walked into the hotel, through the lobby in our bare feet, over to the elevators. When one arrived, we stepped inside and Camden pressed the button for our floor. The silence was comfortable and I found myself wanting to lean against him, to rest my head on his shoulder. If I only had tonight, then maybe I should make the most of it.
The elevator stopped on our floor and we walked to our rooms, still holding hands. We stopped in front of my door and I almost giggled. And whether that was from nervous anticipation or something else, I wasn’t sure.
I wondered if he was going to tell me he had a nice time and he’d call me. Like, as if we’d been on an actual date. Something inside me was telling me that feeling that way was still a bad idea, but in that moment I didn’t care.
He dropped my hand and I flexed, keenly feeling the loss of his touch. I glanced at his lips. I’d been wanting to kiss him for several hours. I rationalized that it was fine since I’d given myself a cutoff time—pretty soon this Cinderella night would be over and we’d turn back into pumpkins.
My heart began to hammer hard in my chest, like it was saying bad idea, bad idea, bad idea over and over again, but I ignored it, instead focusing on the swooping feeling in my stomach that made me giddy and excited.
I took a step toward him.
And he took a step back.
He cleared his throat. “So, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at whatever big, secret thing Sadie and Dan have planned,” he said awkwardly. There was a distance in his words and I wasn’t sure what had changed. He sounded dismissive. As if we hadn’t been having a really nice time together.
As if I hadn’t been about to make a move on him.
That sensation in my stomach turned sour, sinking down to my feet. I’d already made enough of a fool of myself tonight. There was no reason to prolong the experience. I dug through my purse looking for my keycard. I thought he’d do the same, get out his card, go into his room, and leave me alone with my uncomfortable embarrassment.
Instead he just kept standing there like he wanted to say or do something, but I wasn’t interested in whatever that was.
I got more and more frantic, not able to find where my keycard had gone. I let out a sound that was a cross between a sob and desperation.
He reached out and circled his fingers around my wrist. “Wait a second. What’s wrong?”
What was wrong? Seriously? We’d just had a magical, if slightly drunken, night together, where I’d had the best birthday ever and I wanted to kiss him and he’d looked like he’d been disgusted at the thought.
I wanted to shake off his hand but found I didn’t have the strength to do it, even though I felt like an idiot for all the warm fluttery feelings that I’d been having for him. That had probably been due to the alcohol and not his supposed interest in me. Because he definitely wasn’t into me. He couldn’t have made that any clearer.
“You can tell me,” he said. “Whatever it is.”
That irritated me. Why was he acting like we were friends? He wanted something from me and even now, when I was humiliated, he was still trying to get it. Wanting me to open up and tell him what he had been waiting so patiently to hear.
Instead I thought I’d tell him something that would definitely make him run away. “My mother wants you to give her grandchildren.”
He looked completely confused. “Like, buy them?”
“No. Remember when I took that picture of you and denied it? My mom asked me to do it and then decided you were handsome and smart and we should make babies together.”
If that didn’t send him running straight for those beautiful green Hawaiian mountains, I didn’t know what would.
But instead of being freaked out, he seemed amused. “You talked about me to your mom?”
He was so missing the point. “No, not in the way you’re thinking. I mean, yes, I did talk to her about you, but no, not like that. She asked if there were any good-looking, eligible men at the wedding—”
“And, of course, you immediately thought of me.”
I wanted to stamp my foot at him. I settled on pulling my wrist out of his grasp. “You were the only man I’d spoken to besides Dan, and he’s the groom, so don’t flatter yourself.”
“It’s far too late for that. You already did. And so did your mom by insisting you pick me to father your offspring.” He leaned against the wall with his arms folded. I briefly wondered how much time I’d get if I brained him with one of my shoes. So arrogant.
“I mean, if I’m going to be your baby daddy I should probably know your middle name first. But we can talk about all of that when you’re more sober.”
This was not a joke. “I’m plenty sober.”
“Agree to disagree. It sounds like your mom’s the interfering type, huh?”
Camden didn’t deserve an explanation, but I just couldn’t contain myself when somebody else recognized my mother’s insanity. “You can actually hear the whir of her helicopter blades as she hovers over me.”
He shrugged. “I don’t think that would be so bad.”
“You’re probably the only man on earth who thinks that. Trust me, it’s no day at the beach.” Which made me think of our romantic moonlit walk that hadn’t actually been romantic—the “romantic” part had only been a figment of my alcohol-addled brain—and I wanted to escape. I went back to my keycard search, and it was like it didn’t want me to find it. As if it were hiding. My fingers brushed against it and I let out a sigh of relief. I inserted it into the lock and when the light turned green, I turned the handle and pushed open the door.
I stood in my doorway, facing him, ready to make a mighty speech. About how I didn’t even need him. And I didn’t like him. That despite my ovaries throwing a party every time I saw him, I did not want him to be the father of my hypothetical children.
My stomach roiled and lurched suddenly, and it was as if a bunch of warning lights went off inside me, all at once—eject! Eject! Like I was a pilot whose plane had just been shot down. One second I was a bit dizzy but relatively fine and angry, and in the next I was going to do a real-life reenactment of that scene from The Exorcist. I made a choking noise, put my hand over my mouth, and ran for the bathroom.
“Rachel? Are you okay?”
I threw open the door and knelt down in front of the toilet. I had just gotten the toilet seat up when everything that had once been inside my body started to come out of my face.
Camden turned on the light, and that made everything worse. “What can I do?” he asked, hovering behind me.
“Go away,” I told him. What did he think he was going to do? My hair was already up and I didn’t need a spectator.
He closed the door behind him and once I heard it catch, I continued to empty out my internal organs. I had one of those marathon vomiting sessions, where you kept throwing up even though you had nothing left inside you. It was like my stomach was a clown car.
When my gut stopped clenching, my throat loosened, and that nauseous feeling passed, I flushed the toilet. I brushed away the tears from my eyes, grabbed some toilet paper to wipe off my mouth, and threw it into the bowl. I closed the lid and rested my head against it, the porcelain cool and refreshing.
I knew I should get up, but I felt too weak to move.
There was a knock at the door, causing me to lift my head. He’d stayed? After I’d told him to leave? He’d just been standing there, listening to me retch over and over again?
“Are you done?” he asked.
When I didn’t answer, he opened the door and I saw a look of relief. I could feel that my face was all flushed but I didn’t know if that was from the straining I’d done while puking or the utter mortification I was currently feeling.
I must have looked like such a mess. I knew I had sounded awful.
Well, if I’d harbored any secret hopes that we might start to like each other, I’d just flushed all of those down this toilet.
“Didn’t I tell you to go away?” I asked.
“I did go away.”
“No, you’re still here.”
“I went away from the bathroom. Technically I did what you asked,” he said. “But I thought you might need me.”
“For what?”
Camden finally looked unsure of himself, a state of being he probably didn’t experience very often. “I could, I don’t know, help you get into bed.”
“I don’t need your help for that. I’m fine. I can ...” I tried to stand up and it didn’t work because my legs gave out.
He rushed forward to catch me before I hit the ground. He hefted me up, very carefully cradling me against his chest as he carried me back into the bedroom. It was so nice. I never would have told him that, but I loved being curled up against him, relying on his strength to help me because I currently had none of my own.
It was like that same feeling I’d had when he’d held my hand—that reassurance that I was safe and everything would be fine.
He’d already pulled down the covers and laid me against the cool sheets, which felt amazing. He gently put the blankets around me once I’d settled in and then he walked out of the room.
My hazy brain thought maybe he’d finally left, but he came back into the bedroom a second later carrying a large glass of water and some aspirin. He put them on the nightstand next to me.
“You’re really dehydrated, so drink when you can,” he instructed me.
I nodded to show him I’d heard.
“One more thing,” he said, running back to the bathroom. He returned with a hand towel that he folded up. He placed it against my forehead and I realized that he’d run it under cool water and it felt amazing.
“Thank you,” I croaked, suddenly realizing just how sore my throat felt.
“She thanks me!” he said with a smile. “I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”
I knew he was teasing, but I was in no mood for it. “I’m a polite person.”
He said something that sounded suspiciously like, “To everyone else,” but I chose to ignore it. I was the debilitated one here. I’d probably just wrecked this hotel’s plumbing with what had poured out of me. The least he could do was not give me a hard time.
“I’m such a hypocrite,” I mumbled, trying to find a comfortable position.
“What do you mean?”
“I have to keep Sadie’s mom from being fall-down drunk and here I am. Fall-down drunk.”
“It’s not the same,” he reassured me. “You didn’t even know you were having alcohol.”
“It’s the same end result.”
“No, it’s not. Nobody’s upset by what happened tonight. You didn’t ruin anything.”
Hadn’t I? I’d had this good, reasonable, and logical game plan where Camden Lewis was concerned. I was going to be professional and courteous and do my job and not worry about him. I most definitely was not going to flirt with him.
It kind of felt like I’d ruined everything.
“So ...,” he said, “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at that party Dan and Sadie are throwing.”
“I can’t believe they won’t tell us what it is,” I grumbled, pulling the covers up to my ears. I didn’t care for surprises. “They owe us.”
“Definitely. I mean, you just threw up half a cake in an attempt to make them happy.”
I smiled slightly underneath my covers. “I guess it wasn’t all bad. Frosting tastes the same coming up as it does going down.”
“I did not need to know that,” he said, sounding grossed out. “I’m taking that as my cue to exit.”
“Wait.” I pulled the blanket higher so that it covered my eyes. “Would you mind staying until I fall asleep?”
I couldn’t have explained what made me ask, but I meant it. It wasn’t like I could blame the rum this time—I had definitely purged all of it, along with most of my internal organs. This was just me. I did want him to stay. I craved that feeling he gave me, the one that I was looked after and things would be fine, to stay until I was asleep.
There was a long pause and I almost risked looking at him but was too chicken.
Finally he said, “Sure.”
I let out a long breath as he turned out the lights. I heard him settle into the armchair that was situated by the foot of my bed.
“Good night, Rachel.”
“Good night, Camden.”
I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath, comforted by him being close by. Just one thing left to say before I lost my courage.
“Camden?”
“Yeah?”
“My middle name is Marie.”