Love Potion #2

by Margot Early

  But the commitment wasn’t there. Well, Paul’s only possible commitment was to their baby—at present a two-month-old fetus.

  But she was attracted to him. No, she loved him. Loved him as her best friend. Was practically in love with him. Was in love with him. “Okay,” she said.

  Why are you doing this, Cameron? You’ve read He’s Just Not That Into You. Cameron considered that book the bible on disinterested men. And Paul’s behavior appeared in more than one chapter.

  They went into her bedroom. Cameron routinely slept naked. She had brushed her teeth after dinner. Without looking at Paul, she peeled off her jeans, T-shirt and underwear, releasing her breasts from her bra. She pulled back the covers and got into bed.

  Paul sat down beside her. He touched her hair and the side of her face, his whole body alive with wanting her.

  Cameron saw what she did to him and reminded herself that it was not the equivalent of love.

  He bent over her and kissed her, and Cameron let herself kiss him back.

  He said, “I love you, Cameron.”

  Cameron’s heart felt as though it would break free from her chest. He had never said that to her before—not in a way that meant that he loved her romantically. But that was, she knew, what he meant now.

  She said nothing, just let her lips meet his again, feeling the touch of his tongue.

  He drew down the covers to look at her and pulled off his own T-shirt and jeans.

  Cameron’s lips touched his back as he undressed, moved around his waist and down his body.

  “Oh, girl,” he whispered, gently touching her hair, following a tress down past her waist. “Rapunzel.”

  Cameron tried to let go of her fear. She hadn’t been afraid the night their child was conceived because she hadn’t been in love with him and hadn’t had the sense to fear falling in love with him.

  He had a way of lying on top of her that moved her heart, because he seemed anxious that his weight not crush her, as though she were a fragile thing he feared to injure.

  His mouth caressed her nipple, and she shuddered, telling herself to let go and trust him. It will kill me if he leaves.

  He was doing nothing to her that other men had not done before. But it was Paul and she loved him. She barely knew him as a lover. There was that Halloween night in college and the night their child was conceived—and that was it.

  They did not speak—or little. Cameron wished he would, that he would tell her his innermost thoughts. And yet she was fascinated with him in part because she did not know those thoughts. She felt as though, even were he to say what he was thinking, it would be an incomplete story, with more chapters always to unfold.

  And now, she let go and was not afraid, because she had no choice, because the way he touched her she couldn’t bear to turn herself off. She let him open her legs, let him touch her.

  She let soft cries escape her, seeming to remember some innocence in her long before.

  Later, much later, he asked, “Can I stay?”

  Surprised, she said, “Of course.”

  “You were opposed to our moving in together.”

  “You’ve only asked to spend the night. Not to spend months or years.” If only his moving in together had held the proviso of his never leaving.

  Instead, she had the feeling that Paul simply wanted to play house.

  He hugged her, her back nestled to his front. “You might be grateful for another pair of hands when the baby comes.”

  “I will be,” she said. “As long as I don’t end up with a second child to take care of.”

  He stiffened. “I don’t deserve that.”

  Cameron instantly regretted her words. “I’m sorry.”

  “There are people in this world,” he remarked conversationally, “who see not rushing into marriage as a sign of maturity.”

  “Who said anything about marriage?” she asked.

  He made a sound that seemed to call her question insincere.

  Abruptly annoyed, she gathered the sheet to her chest, sat up, and turned toward him. “You know, I do want you to leave.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Forget it,” Cameron said. “You are who you are. No one should have to explain these things to you. I’m pregnant, Paul. And you claim to love me. But you can’t bring yourself to do anything more than moving in together. Then I let you know that maybe I don’t want to marry someone who obviously doesn’t want to marry me, and you make these sounds like I’m madly in love with you.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

  “Get out!” she cried, looking for something to throw. Mariah, who had been lying on the floor, growled low in her throat.

  He slipped away from Cameron and grabbed his clothes. “You’re behaving irrationally,” he said. “I just asked you to marry me because you want me to want to marry you, and now you’re throwing me out.”

  “That’s not why you ask someone to marry you,” she answered, lying down on her bed, listening to him dress. She wanted him to come near her, to kiss her, before he left, but he didn’t.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE MALE SAKI

  had diarrhea and was dangerously dehydrated. He had to be caught, and Paul needed to be on hand to help the vet. And this was the day he was supposed to go to Dr. Henderson’s with Cameron. Well, she was going to have to go alone. He called her and told her what was happening and that he couldn’t make it.

  “Fine,” she said and hung up.

  He hadn’t had an actual conversation with her since he’d left her house the night they’d made love and she’d told him to leave.

  Words she’d said—that she was pregnant and that he couldn’t bring himself to ask her to marry him—had stung. So he’d said what he’d thought she wanted to hear, except that she seemed to want something else. Something that must be impossible, something that was impossible to him because she seemed unable to make him understand what it was.

  The most recent detailed explanation of what she wanted, he thought, was that she wanted a man who could talk about emotions. He thought they’d cleared that up. Sean Devlin could talk about emotions, and Cameron did not want him. Cameron, Paul believed, wanted him, Paul.

  But she seemed to want him to do some mysterious thing that was impossible to accomplish—because he had no idea what it was.

  That evening, after a shower to wash off all the monkey smells, he drove to his father’s house for dinner. His father lived next door to Graham Corbett, a fact that had caused Paul some irritation for months without Paul’s consciously acknowledging the fact. He’d enjoyed teasing Cameron about Graham.

  But then he’d begun to feel irritation over her preference for someone so…unworthy of her. Not that Graham was a bad guy. Perfect for Mary Anne, in fact. But Cameron deserved…

  Better than me, Paul thought wryly. The thought lasted only briefly. Actually, though he didn’t understand Cameron, he thought he probably understood her better than anyone else did. And he imagined she would be the first to admit that.

  The real crux of the matter was that Paul found her fascinating and was suddenly very unwilling to cede her to anyone else.

  His father had made spaghetti, which had always been his single-father staple and which he’d fed to Paul and Bridget during their visits with him. Thursday night dinners, just Paul and his father, had become a tradition when Paul was in his teens. Bridget and David had dined on Tuesday nights, but their day of the week had become more flexible over time.

  The former obstetrician asked, “How’s Cameron?”

  “Fine, as far as I know. She went to Dr. Henderson today, but I haven’t heard how it went.” Paul suspected he was going to have to live down missing the appointment because of monkeys. “I hope he told her she has to have the baby in the hospital.”

  “Why?” his father asked, serving up the pasta and sauce and a side of bell peppers.

  “Because her sister had a terrible birth after half a million miscarriages, an
d because Cameron is built just like her.”

  Paul was relieved that his father didn’t downplay what seemed to Paul obvious dangers.

  “What’s she going to do after the baby is born?”

  Paul gave him a blank look. “What do you mean?”

  “She has a pretty demanding job.” He nodded toward Paul’s ear, which had not yet completely healed from the bite he’d received from the enraged husband at the Women’s Resource Center. To Paul’s satisfaction, after an emergency meeting of the board, a security guard had been hired for the facility.

  “She’ll probably keep working,” Paul said. He hadn’t given the issue any thought. In his imagination, he’d gotten as far as coming home from the zoo to Cameron’s house and the baby. He could afford to buy a home, but it had never been a priority while renting was cheap, which it was. Perhaps if they outgrew Cameron’s house…

  If she lets you live there with her, Paul.

  At the moment, that if yawned like a chasm.

  His father did not look at him but said, “I suppose marriage bells would be too much to hope for.”

  “Why does everyone want us to get married?” Paul dug into the food irritably. He hated the way the question sounded. At the moment, he hated the whole topic.

  “Because you’ve made a woman pregnant and children need two parents. You and Cameron have been friends for years, and marriage doesn’t sound unmanageable for the two of you.”

  Paul said, “What about the marriage you abandoned twenty-five years ago? You and Mom have been friends for years, but marriage was obviously unmanageable for the two of you. Not to mention that you walked out on her at what was probably the worst time of her life.” His accusations, to him, sounded a bit childish, but he felt almost unable to stop himself from uttering them.

  His father simply didn’t answer.

  “One instance of infidelity,” Paul continued, determined to get a reaction.

  “The infidelity had little to do with it. It was the cover-up. I couldn’t be party to it.”

  “You wanted her to have to fight?”

  David Cureux sighed. “No. I wanted the issue to be dealt with correctly. Practicing midwifery without a license is a misdemeanor. The consequences wouldn’t have been as extreme as your mother feared.” He paused, seeming to consider the accuracy of the statement. “Her response was, in my opinion, wrong. And remember, this was my boss she made this deal with.”

  “You transferred,” Paul remembered. “You went to work in—”

  “Another county,” his father finished. “Till he moved. Which fortunately occurred a few years later.” He hesitated. “I had little bitterness toward your mother. I understood her. But I couldn’t stay, knowing what I knew.”

  “Surely you could have worked it out.” Paul tried to imagine himself and Cameron involved in such a situation. It was difficult to imagine, but he believed he would stand by her in such a case.

  His father shook his head. “Paul, I’m a physician. I went to medical school. I spent more than a decade of life training, becoming a physician and then an obstetrician and gynecologist. I paid malpractice insurance. Being a physician meant a great deal to me and still does. I had to distance myself from what they’d done to protect myself—and, I told myself, you and Bridget.”

  “You and Mom both chose your careers over your marriage.”

  “Probably because neither what she does nor what I did can be classed as a career. The correct word is vocation, and a vocation is a part of who a person is.”

  Paul shook his head. “And I suppose being a zookeeper doesn’t qualify.”

  His father shook his head, not as a negative but as a refusal to address that assertion. He took a breath. “I believe that being a zookeeper is a vocation. It is a coveted job, and you’ve worked in several capacities as a zookeeper. You have meaningful interaction with your charges.”

  “It’s fine, Dad,” Paul murmured, laughing slightly. He knew himself to be fortunate that neither of his parents had ever tried to lead him into a particular line of work. They’d simply wanted him and Bridget to be happy.

  “You don’t respect my not marrying Cameron.” Paul wasn’t sure whether to tell his father that he’d extended the offer and been refused. He felt a quiet fury that his father should stand in judgment over him on an issue of marriage when his own marriage had collapsed.

  His father seemed to consider. He shrugged. Said nothing.

  Which was saying everything.

  David brought a portion of spaghetti to his mouth. He swallowed, drank some water. “Bridget put one of her potions in your water glass at the restaurant.”

  Paul choked on the piece of bread he’d been swallowing. A love potion! That explained it. Suddenly, in the middle of dinner, he’d been overflowing with love for Cameron. His father had no faith in the love potions. Paul’s faith in them was absolute. Time after time, he’d seen the people who’d drunk them end up married. He’d thought for a time that Mary Anne and Graham Corbett were the exception, thought Mary Anne had given a love potion to a different man. Wrong.

  They always worked. There was no turning back from them. There was no antidote.

  His father said, “If those things worked, you’d be begging Cameron to marry you.”

  “I did ask,” Paul said.

  His father frowned, heavy still-black eyebrows drawn down. “Well, that wasn’t because of the love potion.”

  It was like David Cureux to focus on the inefficacy of love potions rather than on the fact that Paul had actually made an offer of marriage to Cameron and been refused.

  “I don’t think she thought I was sincere—or something. She told me to get out of the house.”

  His father looked up, obviously surprised by Cameron’s reaction. “Were you sincere?”

  “I meant it, if that’s what you mean. Yes, I was sincere. I asked her, and if she’d said yes, we would be engaged and I would marry her.”

  “Well, I have no answer for you.”

  Paul felt some of his father’s disapproval melt away. His coldness had changed to puzzlement, as though he, too, wondered why Cameron had refused Paul. He said, “I never would have suspected her of—” He stopped short, as though he feared saying too much.

  “Being romantic?” asked Paul.

  “Not exactly. But I’ve always found her to be an extremely pragmatic young woman.”

  Paul made a sound like a grunt. “The pragmatic woman who was irrationally terrified of childbirth and now wants a homebirth, who I think wants to marry me but said no, and who is now basically not talking to me.” And Bridget gave me a love potion.

  His father seemed to sense his thoughts. “You can’t believe those things work. Their working would negate free will.”

  Paul considered whether the way he’d come to feel about Cameron was a product of free will. I really began to feel this way before the restaurant. For him, it had begun…

  Back in college.

  That one night. Glitter in his bed and a naked girl on his hands. It had seemed like too much. He hadn’t wanted to deal with her emotions. But in some ways, he’d spent all the years since doing just that. She’d been his best friend. He’d teased her through crushes, tended her when she was sick, taken her dogs to the vet, rescued her again and again.

  Have I been in love with her all this time?

  “Things have a way of working out,” his father told him philosophically.

  Paul said nothing, just felt again the overwhelming responsibility of that baby coming.

  Then his father suggested, “You must court her.”

  “I am! I took her to dinner. I brought her flowers.”

  David repeated, “I hope you don’t put any faith in those potions. It’s errant nonsense.”

  Paul wondered if giving Cameron a love potion would make any difference. But possibly Bridget had already given her one….

  MEANWHILE, CAMERON SAT across from Sean at a new restaurant that had opened downtown. It offered
a variety of ethnic cuisine—a plan that Cameron had noticed usually seemed to fail in restaurants. But the food here was all right. She’d gone with a Thai dish, while Sean had chosen Indian.

  They talked about the play she was to see that night, about the challenges and joys of directing high school students. Sean said, “I love that they believe in their dreams. Their idealism hasn’t been crushed.”

  Cameron remarked, “Are you saying that yours has?”

  He shook his head. “Not mine. But other people seem to feel that maturity takes the edge off it. We get older and the dreams don’t come true the way we thought they would. Maybe some people have an ability to always see the beauty in the way their dreams do come true. I don’t know.”

  “Would you be one of those?” Cameron found herself thinking dismally of Paul. If he’d been one of her dreams, he definitely wasn’t coming true in any way that she’d hoped.

  He shrugged. “I know that I still have dreams. Plays I want to write. People I want to help. A woman I’d like to spend my life with.”

  Cameron’s heart stopped. He couldn’t mean her.

  He seemed to sense her recoil. “Don’t worry.” He smiled. “That was saying too much. I go overboard sometimes. And it seems as though Paul is coming around. I know he’s the one you really want to be with.”

  Cameron frowned. “It’s not exactly that. I mean, yes, he is that person. And I know him, and he knows me, and there’s complete comfort there. We’ve been best friends so long.”

  “Like Heathcliff and Cathy.” Sean smiled.

  “I wouldn’t take you for a reader of romance.”

  “English was part of my major,” he admitted, and Cameron thought how attractive and thoroughly nice he was. “I always remember her saying, ‘Nellie, I am Heathcliff.’ That seemed the essence of love to me.”

  “Have you had girlfriends since your divorce?” Cameron asked.

  “One,” he admitted. “I thought we had that kind of understanding. But she wasn’t as much me as I thought, and I wasn’t her. I fall in love rather easily.”

  “I believe that.”