Keeping the Pieces

by Brenda Lowder

  Cam’s mouth dropped open. His eyes went as wide as his shoulders.

  Emma relaxed. Apparently, five was an impressive, yet credible number. She congratulated herself and held back a smile. An effervescent feeling inside like champagne bubbles rising in a sparkly glass made her giggly, but she kept a straight face. Her plan was working. Cam was going to be hers. Just look at the jealousy crinkling his face.

  She decided to up the ante. “In fact, I might have to leave work a little early this afternoon. Derek is taking me out tonight.”

  “But you were going to help me work on the design for the grocery store endcap displays.” There was a promotion coming up in their department, and they both knew Cam was favored to win.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I think you’ll just have to wing it this time without me.” She looked at her desk and randomly stacked some papers. She’d never turned down an opportunity to help him before. Spending time with Cam was worth whatever else she sacrificed. But she was taking what Derek said to heart. She had to be less available to Cam so he’d miss her, even if it did disturb the order of her universe.

  “Um, okay.” Cam got up and strode to the door. He slowed and looked over his shoulder. “Okay, I guess I’ll go work on that. Maybe you can look over what I come up with tomorrow morning? Before the meeting?”

  Emma shrugged. “If I don’t oversleep. Seriously, that man wears me out.” She raised a hand to her brow and wiped off invisible sweat, then allowed a slinky smile to steal across her face. She shrugged again with a what-can-I-do-I’m-just-a-slave-to-sex expression.

  An uncomfortable look crossed his features, and Cam bolted from the room. Emma kept from laughing until she heard his office door close down the hall. Then she enjoyed a giggle and turned blissful circles in her chair till she was dizzy.

  She was certainly getting a bigger reaction from Cam now than she’d ever gotten before—their one night of passionate kissing notwithstanding. She just hoped it was the reaction she needed to bring them together forever.

  Her office phone rang, and Emma rolled her eyes when she saw her parents’ home number flash on the caller ID. Her mother, the ever-stylish and perfectly put together beauty Mrs. Jennifer Hayworth, would have left Honey Covington behind in her platinum-blonde smoke in her day.

  A former Miss Peach Beauty Queen, Emma’s mom was everything Emma was not—poised, confident, drop-dead gorgeous. Tall. Emma would have wondered if she were adopted if she hadn’t looked so much like her father. Same brown hair. Same hazel eyes. Same small stature. In fact, Emma had often wondered how her glamorous mother had managed to fall for her bookish father. Maybe she just liked being worshipped. Because she was. Jason Hayworth had fallen in love, fallen hard, and never recovered.

  She let the phone ring and toyed with the idea of letting it go to voicemail. She was sure her mom was calling to interrogate her about Cam’s birthday party. For years she’d been telling Emma to “grow a pair” and just throw herself at Cam because really, why was she clinging to spinsterhood so determinedly? But her mother didn’t understand a world where every man wasn’t just dying to be with you. The fact that her daughter, her only progeny, would rather be at the library than win a beauty pageant made her unable to relate.

  Picking up on the fourth and final ring before voicemail, she answered. “Emma Hayworth.”

  A muffled sound like sniffling greeted her.

  “Hello?” She tried again.

  “Hello? Emma?” Her father’s voice cracked.

  “Dad? What’s wrong?” Unlike her mother, he never called her at work.

  “She’s gone, Em. She left me. Us. Your brother Baxter and me. She’s gone.”

  Baxter wasn’t her brother. Emma was an only child. Baxter was a dog. The dog her parents had gotten three years ago and immediately dubbed their second “child.”

  “What are you talking about?” A cold dread stole over her heart. “Oh my gosh, Dad, is Mom dead?”

  “What? No!” She’d never heard her father shriek before, but he was definitely shrieking now. Like a little girl on a brand-new iPhone. “She’s not dead! She’s left me! She’s left Baxter and me. For another man. And another Beagle for all we know.”

  “Whoa. Slow down, Dad. What are you talking about?”

  Her mother had left them? That was almost as unfathomable as her mother being dead. Mom and Dad had been married for thirty-two years. Longer than Emma had been alive…obviously. And Mom hadn’t left Dad when he’d done any number of idiotic and absent-minded-professor type things during those years like driving into the closed garage door and putting her mother’s best Chanel sunglasses in the freezer. But now she’d up and left her doting husband and most cherished canine offspring, for what?

  Emma could hear her father take a deep, ragged breath. When he spoke, his words were clearer, more measured. “Emma, she’s been seeing someone.”

  Emma couldn’t help her gasp. Her parents were her parents. Wacky and annoying, but an indestructible team that had always agreed on everything concerning her from when homework should be done (immediately after school) to which college Emma should go to (Duke), to whether she should watch Orange is the New Black (no, because in her permanently single state, it might make her want to be a lesbian as a way to solve her Cam problem).

  “Who?”

  Another deep breath on his end. “Draxton Ayers.”

  “Draxton Ayers? Draxton Ayers?” Emma realized she was shouting when Suellen Temple paused by her door on the way from the copier to give her a concerned look. Emma waved to her and mouthed that she’d tell her later. Suellen left after a last worried look. Emma took a deep breath and reentered the bizarre conversation. “I used to babysit Draxton Ayers. That boy can’t be much older than twenty-one. I used to change his diapers!”

  “Yeah, well, he’s a surfer now, and he and your mother struck up a friendship over surfing—”

  Her head snapped back. “What? Mom’s been surfing?” There was surfing in Georgia?

  “You know how your mom loved those Gidget movies when she was young. Always wanted to be a surfer girl. And then this guy comes along with his long blond hair—”

  She squeezed the phone so hard her fingers hurt. “Draxton doesn’t have blond hair.”

  “He bleached it. To be a surfer. Anyway, she just loved the attention he showered on her.”

  Was she having an out-of-body experience? None of this was making any sense. “Surfing? Seriously? Georgia is not known for its waves.”

  “That’s why they’ve run away to Mexico together!” Dad wasn’t even trying to stifle his tears now. He was wailing full force. “She’s gone. She left a note that she had more of her life to lead, and she couldn’t do it stuck here. With me. She didn’t even mention your brother Baxter. We’re devastated.”

  “I can see that.” She sank back into her chair and looked at the door in time to see Cam walk by. He didn’t glance her way, but continued down the hall without breaking stride.

  “I’ll be over tonight, Dad. We’ll figure it out.” She sighed and twisted in her chair. “I’m sure she’s not gone for good.” She wasn’t sure of anything. Who was her father if he didn’t have her mother?

  “Thanks, sweetie. I’ll see you tonight. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Dad.” She hung up the phone and stared at it. Her heart ached for him. And for herself. And for everyone who was now going to have to suffer for this selfish decision her vain mother had made. Off to Mexico with a barely legal boy-child less than half her age? Oh, mother.

  She closed her office door so Cam wouldn’t see anything if he were to stroll by again, and sat back down at her desk. After only a second’s hesitation, she stuck her finger in her mouth and started gnawing at her fingernail, something she hadn’t done in years. After the first nail was bitten down to the quick, she started in on the second, remembering the bitter, stinging chemical her mother used to paint on her nails to get her to stop biting them. Tears rolled down her cheeks when sh
e got to the third nail. At least Dad—and by extension, Baxter—had gotten a note. All Emma had gotten was this raw, empty feeling inside.

  When she’d bitten off all the nails on her left hand, she moved over to the index finger of her right then stopped herself before biting. Enough. She wasn’t seven years old anymore. She was a grown woman with a plan. Her mother’s drama would not derail her. In fact, it made her realize she shouldn’t sit around biting her nails, bemoaning her situation. She needed to get out there and change it.

  She nodded her head, agreeing with herself, and took her handbag from her bottom drawer. She wasn’t going to get any more work done today. She might as well get going on some serious problem-solving.

  Between her mother and Draxton, Honey and Cam, and herself and Derek, she had at least three relationships to sabotage and reassemble.

  She’d better get started.

  Chapter Eight

  The spoiled oaf’s apartment was just like Derek suspected it would be—rich. The latest, biggest, best of everything graced Cam’s living room from the enormous TV on the wall to the signed Falcons Super Bowl game ball on the coffee table. Emma didn’t seem to notice and instead marched through the room like she owned the place. He wandered after her with his hands in his pockets.

  “Tell me why I’m here again?” Derek had always found having a flexible work schedule at the gym to be a great benefit of his job, leaving him generally available. Free time was an asset. Until today.

  “You’re the lookout,” Emma said. “Quit following me and go look out!”

  Derek made his fifth trip to the front window in as many minutes and still did not see Cam’s car. “We’re still clear.”

  “Okay, help me move this table so I can reach the ceiling fan.”

  Derek crossed his arms and mutely begged her to make sense.

  “What?” she demanded. “It’s not like you can reach it. And with all that muscle-y bulk you’d probably break the table if you stood on it.”

  “Fine.” He moved the table and gave Emma his arm. She leaned on him and mounted the table, her skirt hitching up and squeezing tight across her bottom as she did.

  Emma had called him an hour ago to tell him she’d be picking him up after she finished buying supplies. He hadn’t realized at the time that the “supplies” to which she so sweetly referred were the latest in surveillance technology.

  He’d gotten into her car innocently enough and then quickly became a criminal accessory when she’d broken into Cam’s apartment. Although maybe it wasn’t technically breaking in since Emma had used a key. When he asked her about it, she explained she watered Cam’s plants when he was on vacation. And got his mail. And fed his fish. And basically acted like the supportive girlfriend that Honey wasn’t.

  Emma may have been the one with the plan and the color-coded playbook, but he was the one with the real-world knowledge that men wanted what they thought they couldn’t have. The chase. The mystery. The allure. The unobtainable. Not the girl who fed your fish and took out your trash and waited for your call when you were out banging somebody else.

  Emma was a beautiful, exciting girl. (A little too exciting at the moment). All Derek would have to do would be to tweak Cam’s perspective here and there, reframing the story between them, and the guy would be drooling over her and ditching Honey.

  Which was why he was helping her install listening devices.

  He held the table steady as Emma made final adjustments to the light fixture above her head. He did not look up her skirt. Much.

  “This one is good. We’ll get video as well as audio from it.”

  “Fantastic.” It wasn’t. He didn’t need to see any more of Cam than he already did.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is video really necessary?”

  “Worked for Claire Danes in Homeland. Did you see that? Season One when she watched Damian Lewis’s every move and they fell in love?”

  “You know how that ended, right?”

  “Whatever.” Emma waved a hand. “This way we can keep tabs on him—and Honey, too, when she’s here. We’ll know firsthand how their relationship is faring. We’ll hear every conversation between them, see every kiss…or miss. There won’t be any surprises.” Emma crouched to dismount, but her heel slid on the table top. She would have fallen if Derek hadn’t been there to catch her. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, breaking her fall.

  “Thanks.” She paused there for a moment longer than necessary and patted his arms.

  She was soft and fragile and the sudden urge to protect her from Cam rather than help her win him surged somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. Or maybe lower. He tamped down that feeling and let her go.

  She straightened her skirt and cleared her throat. “Just one more. Let’s get cracking.”

  “We’ve already done the living room, kitchen, and workout room. Tell me we’re not planting audio/visual in his shower.”

  She spun to face him, hands on hips. “No, of course not! Just the common areas.”

  “What made you want to bug him—them—anyway? I thought we were just going to orchestrate some cross-stalking opportunities.” He picked up one of the microphones and started playing with it. Emma gave him a look, and he put it back on the table.

  “Yeah, that was the plan, but then my dad called to tell me my mom ran away to Mexico with a little boy I used to babysit.”

  “Whoa. Shit. Have you called the police?”

  When she gave him a blank stare, he elaborated. “For kidnapping?”

  She shook her head and started gathering the surveillance equipment from the table. “What? Oh, he’s not still a little boy. He’s twenty-one. But still! My gosh. My mother. And a twenty-one-year-old.” She made a frustrated sound that might have been a choked-back sob. “I never would have thought she’d leave my dad. Or even want a boy toy. But she ran out like decades of marriage meant nothing.” She finished gathering the tech and slung the bag over her shoulder. “I guess you just can’t know what’s going on in someone else’s relationship unless you can see inside.” She patted the bag. “This will help us make sure we do.”

  “Whatever you say, Tiger.”

  A key scraped in the lock. Emma turned on him with an accusing glare. “You were supposed to be looking out.”

  “I forgot, okay?”

  “Quick! Into the bathroom.” Emma shoved her bag of tools and bugging equipment into his arms and propelled him to the bathroom where she made him get into the shower alone. She pulled the shower curtain closed on his face.

  She didn’t make any noise, but he knew when she left the bathroom because he heard Cam say, “Emma! What are you doing here?”

  She hesitated only a second. “I felt bad about making you do the endcap designs on your own. I’m here to help.” Her voice was soft and gooey. Derek shuddered. He almost gagged.

  “That’s great, Em. Thanks. Really.” Cam’s voice sounded genuinely grateful. Which he should be, the lucky bastard. “Let me just get changed.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Derek heard Cam’s bedroom door close. He hopped out of the shower as quietly as he could and hurried to the living room. Emma opened the front door for him and ushered him outside. At the doorway she paused. “Wait five minutes and call me, okay?”

  “Okay.” He headed down the hallway to wait. He wished he could hear Emma explain herself to Cam once he came out of the bedroom, but then he realized he could. He fished the monitor out of Emma’s bag, attached an ear bud into the headphone slot, and stuck it in his ear. He adjusted the volume knob and, sure enough, he could hear the big lug talking to Emma.

  “I’m glad you came over tonight, Em.” Was it his imagination, or was Cam making a move on Emma?

  “Me too,” she said. He could practically hear her eyelashes batting.

  Three doors down from Derek, an older woman exited her apartment and gave him a dirty look like he was casing the place. After she passed by him, he walked to the end of the hall and hun
ched down on the first step in the stairwell. The conversation was still going.

  “After what you said today, I thought you’d be too busy with Derek.”

  “Well, yeah, I mean, I wish I were with him right now like I’d planned.” She paused and cleared her throat. “But you know as a person in love yourself that it’s not good to spend every single moment together. You have to have your space. See other people once in a while. Come up for air.” She laughed nervously. What was she doing? She needed to get out of there.

  “Yeah, I have to admit I was surprised. We had that kiss…with each other…and then I got engaged, and then you hooked up with some guy at my party. Crazy, huh?”

  “Crazy, yes.” Emma paused. “Maybe we should talk.” No, they shouldn’t. Derek almost dropped the monitor. Really, Em? Now? They didn’t have time for this. Besides, she didn’t have the leverage for a relationship discussion yet.

  There was a pause before Cam spoke. “I’m sorry, Em. I wanted to tell you, but so much was going on that night that I didn’t get a chance to. You and I…the kiss…it was bound to happen sometime, right? The amount of time we spend together?” Cam’s voice held a plea for understanding, and Derek wondered at Cam’s true feelings for Emma. He definitely cared for her. But not enough. “But then everything fell into place with Honey and now we’re really, really good. And solid. And I have you to thank for it.”

  “Me?” Emma gulped. Was she shocked or trying not to cry?

  “Yeah, you. After you and I kissed, I realized how much I loved Honey and how we were the real thing. I couldn’t go throwing that away.” Ouch. Derek cringed for her.

  “Of course not.” Emma’s voice dripped icicles, but he doubted Cam noticed.

  “You’ve always been such a good friend, Emma. You bring out the best in me. Always.” Derek snorted. Emma brought out the best in Cameron because she covered up his shortcomings and made him into a better man than he could possibly be on his own. He should hire her to be his image consultant. She made him look good.