by A. C. Arthur
“I’m not leaving until you invite me in and we can talk,” she said adamantly.
Adam shrugged. “Then you can stand out here all night.” He turned and slipped his key into the door then looked back over his shoulder. “But if you’re here in the morning I’m having you arrested.” With that said Adam let himself into his apartment and slammed the door.
Camille couldn’t seem to get a handle on the butterflies that had been dancing in her stomach since waking up this morning. She’d forgone her usual cup of coffee for fear the added caffeine would turn her into a blabbering basket case.
Now she paced her office, sketches of her latest designs in hand. As she walked she looked them over thinking of alterations, fabrics, colors. She was humming a tune to some love song she’d heard on the radio last night while she and Adam had talked. It was after eleven and she was anxiously waiting for him to arrive.
He’d said his plane would arrive around one and she knew she wouldn’t breathe normally again until then. She couldn’t wait to tell him how she felt about him. Each time they’d talked on the phone she’d thought about saying it but realized that over the phone wasn’t going to cut it. She wanted to see his face, to watch him as he digested the fact that she loved him right back.
Again her stomach fluttered. The thought of her being in a committed, loving relationship was still a surprise to her, only now it was a pleasant surprise.
She was about to start singing aloud when there was a knock on her door and Sofari poked her head inside. “I know you said no more articles, but—”
Camille waved her inside. “It’s okay. I’m not worried about words on paper anymore. Bring it on,” she said, holding out her hand.
Sofari crossed the room and handed the newspaper to her. Sofari was out of her office before Camille could sit at her desk. That in itself was abnormal but Camille was too happy to question it.
So she sat back in her chair and placed the paper on her desk. Leaning forward she prepared to read.
The picture stopped her first. It was Adam in front of the door to his apartment with a woman plastered to his back. The woman was smiling while Adam’s face was a silhouette.
Her heart took one long, slow pause then pattered quickly. She tore her eyes away from the picture to read the headline.
TRIPLE THREAT DONAVAN MOVES ON, OR SHOULD WE SAY MOVES BACK
Her throat clogged and she struggled to take a deep breath. Forcing her eyes to stay on the paper she began reading the article.
The infamous playboy, Adam Donovan, was spotted entering his apartment after a late night on the town with Kim Alvarez, an international model and former wife of Grammy Award winning singer, Dante Dominion. Donovan and Alvarez are said to be rekindling an old flame since they were once highschool sweethearts. Apparently, Donovan has gotten over the Fashion Diva and moved on to greener pastures.
Camille felt as if her entire world were spinning out of control. She sat back in her chair, letting her head loll and her eyes close.
Breathe, she told herself.
One deep breath. Images of Adam and her in Linc and Jade’s den appeared.
Two deep breaths. Her body shivered with memories of Adam’s kiss, his touch.
She thrashed her head, struggling, but finally making the third deep breath. Focus, take control, don’t let the panic win. Over and over she told herself to remain calm.
Then she opened her eyes and saw the paper on her desk, the picture of Adam and this woman. Releasing a long, shaky whoosh of air Camille lifted the paper and dropped it into the trash. She opened her desk drawer and pulled out her purse. Standing, she walked across the room to the coat rack and retrieved her leather jacket. Opening the door she walked out, saying to Sofari as she passed her desk, “I’m gone for the weekend.”
Sofari didn’t have a chance to respond.
Chapter 12
Adam stepped out of the car and almost ran to the door of her building. He could barely wait for that last meeting with Max to be over so he could grab his bags and head to the airport.
He checked his watch and saw that it was fifteen minutes to one. He was on time and couldn’t wait to see her. Walking purposely he was a bit annoyed when Sofari stopped him.
“Ah, Mr. Donovan?” she said.
“Yes,” Adam answered in as calm a voice as he could.
“She’s gone.”
He stilled. “Who’s gone? Camille?”
Sofari nodded. “Yes. About two hours ago she left for the weekend.”
He brushed a hand over his hair. “I thought I was supposed to meet her here and we would go to the house together. Did she say she was going to her father’s house?”
Sofari fidgeted with some newspapers then looked back up at him. “She didn’t say.”
Because she was making so much noise with the paper Adam’s gaze fell to the desk. He saw the title of the Las Vegas newspaper and took a step closer to the desk. “May I?” he asked, slipping the paper from beneath Sofari’s hands.
As he turned the paper around so he could read it, his heart plummeted and rage roared through his body. He threw the paper across the room then walked through the flying papers until he was back out on the street.
Getting back into the car he directed the driver to go to Camille’s apartment at the same time pulling his cell phone out of his pocket.
“Trent Donovan.”
“Yeah, it’s me. Listen, I need you to find out who this reporter is at Vegas Today and why he’s so hell-bent on reporting about me and my women all of a sudden.”
“I’m fine and how was your trip, Adam,” Trent said.
“I don’t have time for this, Trent. I need you to get on this now!”
“Okay, calm down. What’s going on?”
Adam told Trent about this article and the ones that had been printed recently. And while he was used to being in the news he’d never made headlines this many times within a month and sometimes, although they were few and far between, they actually reported on his business conquests as well as his love life. These recent articles seemed geared towards him and who he was dating.
Who he was dating? A thought entered his mind and he prayed it wasn’t possible.
“You’re right. It sounds strange. Especially with Kim being back in town and now she’s in a picture with you. So I’ll check on the reporter and find out who his sources are,” Trent said finally.
“Yeah, she’s definitely involved. I wasn’t with her all night long. I went to Ben’s after I left Mom and Dad’s. She must have been waiting at my place. And if she was waiting, it’s logical to assume the reporter was waiting, too.”
“I’ll check her out again.”
“And check out Moreen Davis, as well,” Adam said as a precaution.
“C’mon, Adam. I know she’s a witch but do you think she’d go this far?”
Adam was afraid of what to think. All he knew was that Camille had seen this paper, this Las Vegas newspaper that once again had made its way to Los Angeles and to her office. She’d read this article and been pissed off. He couldn’t say he blamed her but damn if he wasn’t desperate to find her to convince her it was all lies.
Half an hour later Adam had banged on Camille’s door for fifteen minutes and had called both her apartment and her cell a half dozen times. He’d finally given up and jumped back in the car headed towards her father’s house. Taking out his cell phone again he called Dana.
“Hi, Dana. This is Adam Donovan. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No, Adam, you’re not. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Listen, I’m trying to find Camille. Have you seen or heard from her?”
“I talked to her when I was at the office this morning. She said she was meeting up with you later and then you were going back to your parents’ for the holidays. Is something wrong?”
Adam ran a hand down his face. “Yes. Something is very wrong.”
“What is it? I’ll be right there,” Dana said tension
rising in her voice.
“No,” Adam said hastily. “It’s not like that. I think Camille saw another article about me and is upset. I just left her apartment but I didn’t get an answer. I’m wondering if she went to her father’s place without me.”
“I told her to stop believing everything she reads,” Dana said.
“I know. I tried to tell her the same thing. But I can see how this article may have really bothered her. I have to find her to explain.”
“You really love her, don’t you?” Dana asked out of the blue.
Adam didn’t hesitate. “Yes. I do.”
Camille arrived at the house at one-thirty. After leaving her office she’d gone home and packed. No, she wasn’t packing for a weekend in Vegas with the Donovans but she was going to spend Thanksgiving someplace else.
Thinking as she drove she came to the conclusion that she was tired of having her life dictated by other people’s actions. Since meeting Adam she’d been on an emotional roller coaster. And while the emotions she’d experienced with him weren’t the tumultuous, self-condemning feelings she’d gone through her whole life with Moreen, it was still draining.
Could she be with a man with this type of reputation? Could she live her life wondering if this article as opposed to the last one were true? These were questions that made her heart rate increase, a panic attack slowly coming on.
But this time Camille calmed herself. Her father was no longer here and neither was Adam. It was time she got a grip on her own life, her own feelings. So as she drove, thinking about all that had happened in the last week, she kept her hands tightly on the steering wheel and chanted calming statements to herself. For the most part it worked because she hadn’t passed out and she wasn’t shaking uncontrollably. She did get really hot at one point and had to wind down the windows, but the fresh air worked wonders in bringing her around.
So as she pulled up in front of her father’s house she thanked her therapist and realized that all the money she’d spent on her hadn’t been a total waste.
The land surrounding the house had been relandscaped so that in addition to the plush carpet of grass there were small shrubs lining the walkway. The walkway that used to be red brick but was now an interesting mosaic of gray stone. Once she got closer she saw that the new steps to the front door had been changed to that same gray stone with huge white urns filled with more lush greenery. The door that used to be wide and dark oak was now a double white door, with glass center panes. On the pane was an intricate gold design that was continued in the two skinny windows alongside the doors.
Reaching into her purse she found the key Adam’s secretary had forwarded to her earlier in the week. She slipped it into the door and stepped inside. The foyer had been transformed from its dark cherry wood to an open and airy beige, cream and gold space. The floor was a beige marble with gold accents. Pedestals stood at perfectly spaced intervals but at this point did not have anything atop them. The staircase, as it had always been, was the focal point to the foyer and surprisingly had not been changed. It had however, been shined to a premium luster, so that the light oak railing gleamed.
Camille remembered traveling up and down those stairs on many occasions. She continued to move through the house noting the changes and feeling a sense of accomplishment. While she really hadn’t had much to do with the project up until this point, it was clear that Adam and his company knew what they were doing. The house was the same and yet different. She felt the memories and yet they weren’t as poignant as they had been when she’d come to the house months ago.
Her heart hammered but it wasn’t in panic. She felt waves of excitement at what the finished product would look like and prickles of pride for Adam and his company.
She was upstairs in the room that used to be the master bedroom looking out over the new pool area when she heard a sound behind her. She turned and saw him and almost tripped over the four-poster bed that had been left there by the crew. She’d instructed Max at the last minute to have them keep that bed. She wasn’t entirely sure why since she had a bed at her apartment but this one was a family heirloom she couldn’t bear to part with.
He took a step forward and she quickly righted herself. The last thing she needed was Adam touching her. A part of her had known he would follow her but she hadn’t given any thought to how she would handle that.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, knowing the question didn’t make sense.
He looked as if he’d been through the wringer. His normally smiling eyes seemed shadowed, his broad shoulders slumping a bit. She resisted going to him, barely.
“You left me,” he said in a quiet voice.
Her heart was pattering, not pounding. She was nervous but not in a state of panic. Was it the house or the man?
“I don’t think I can do this, Adam.” His name caught in her throat and she forbade herself to cry. For the last three days she could think of nothing more than how much she absolutely loved this man. And in the space of fifteen minutes a newspaper and a picture had crushed that.
He shook his head and crossed the room until he was standing on the other side of the bed staring intently at her. “You can do anything you want. Stop underestimating yourself.”
That wasn’t what she expected him to say. She expected him to immediately plead his case. But then again he probably didn’t know she’d seen the paper. “I saw the article and the picture. If you wanted to go back to your ex all you had to do was tell me.”
With smooth motions his hands slipped into his pockets. His leather jacket remained open showing the black sweater he wore beneath. His jeans fit his muscled thighs perfectly and her heart pattered at how good looking he was. No wonder the press and every other woman in the world loved him.
“I am not getting back with my ex. The picture was a set-up. A pretty elaborate one at that,” he said absently.
“I don’t want to compete with every woman in the world and to wonder every day if another article about you and me will hit the papers,” Camille said honestly. “It’s too hard and it hurts.”
Adam nodded. “I would never want to hurt you. But I can’t stop people’s opinions any more than you can. I am who I am and unfortunately the press likes that. You are who you are and they like reporting about you, as well. What are we supposed to do, live our lives under a rock to get away from it?”
She looked away from him then because staring at him and keeping her distance was becoming too hard. “I know who I am,” she said quietly.
“Then what they print shouldn’t matter.”
“It does when they print that you’ve returned to your playboy ways, leaving me in the lurch. Dammit, Adam! We were just together on Saturday and Sunday. This picture was taken on Tuesday. How do you want me to react? When it was a two-year-old picture I could digest that. But not this!”
“I want you to trust me.”
His words, spoken so softly, yet so seriously, had her turning to face him again.
“I want you to trust what we have and keep that foremost in your mind. Do you think I would cheat on you? Do you think I would lead you on? Tell me, Camille, is that the type of man you think I am?”
He was moving around the bed by then, with slow, measured steps that didn’t crowd her yet let her know that he was approaching with or without her consent.
“I…I don’t know,” she finally admitted. But that didn’t ring quite true even to her own ears.
“You do know,” Adam said. “You know that I’ve been nothing but honest with you. I’ve even demanded that you be honest with yourself. I’m not a stranger to you.”
He was standing right in front of her now. His scent, his form occupying her space with such gentle dominance she could barely breathe. And yet, she felt perfectly calm.
“I love you.”
Was it the words that were her undoing or the man that professed them?
“And I love you. That’s why this is so hard for me. For years I’ve refused to expect an
ything from anybody for fear of being let down. I’ve accepted limitations placed on me as the norm. I’ve lived in a bubble protecting myself from hurt and harm but it still found me,” she said in one breath. “What am I supposed to do now? How am I supposed to deal with this? With you?”
His hands were on her shoulders before the last word was out. “Breathe,” he said simply.
And she did.
She stopped talking, stopped thinking about the issue at hand and breathed. His hands rubbed up and down her arms and she closed and opened her eyes.
“Now tell me you love me again,” Adam requested.
She focused on him, on his deep brown eyes, his strong jawline, his slightly crooked nose. “I love you, Adam.”
He smiled. “Now you kiss me.”
She leaned in, lifted her face to his and realized he wasn’t going to meet her halfway. So coming up on tiptoe she touched her lips to his. Just a gentle brush and then she prepared to pull back.
But Adam had another idea. Grabbing her by the waist his lips fused to hers sending sparks of desire crackling into the air. His tongue eagerly parted her lips and tackled hers. Hesitation wasn’t even in her vocabulary. Instead Camille wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer as she opened her mouth wider, sucking his tongue deeper.
Adam groaned, cupping her buttocks and pressing her against his throbbing erection. She rubbed her center into him and blood thumped in his ears. Picking her up he took a step then dropped her onto the bed, falling down on top of her.
Her legs spread willingly and he rubbed up and down their length, angered by the fact that she wore jeans. Cursing he lifted off of her and yanked his jacket off. She followed suit and pulled her shirt over her head. Hastily they both got rid of their clothes. Adam reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a condom before tossing the pants to the floor.