Winning Alex: The Cameron Family Saga

by Shirley Larson

  “There are already three doctors in there with her. I don’t think she needs another one. They all know her from her time of working here and they are doing everything they can to make sure she and the baby will be okay. I just…” He shook his head. “If anything happens to her…”

  I went to him and gave him a guy hug. “Listen to me, bro. What Anne needs from you now is to be strong. Go in there with a positive mind set. Nothing is going to happen to her or the baby. She’s in good hands. But she needs you by her side. Go get those scrubs on and get in there with her. You can do this.”

  “You’re only saying that because you’ve never done it.”

  I did a fake punch to his abdomen. “Don’t be such a wuss. Man up.”

  He gave me a look like I’d pay for that insult later, but he took a breath and marched through the double doors.

  The baby was born two hours later, a boy. Before very long, Justin beckoned us into the room where Anne was lying to show off his baby. The boy was blond, like Justin, with the hugest, bluest eyes I’ve ever seen on a newborn. This kid was going to be a lady killer. Justin picked up the sleeping baby and cradled him in his arms. “We’re going to call him Josh.”

  “Congratulations, bro,” I said. I had such conflicting feelings looking at Justin with his son in his arms. It was the largest responsibility there was. And God help me, I wanted it.

  Justin beckoned to Natalie, Anne’s sister who’d been looking wistfully on from a distance. Justin and Anne had formally adopted the teenager a few weeks ago. “Would you like to hold your little brother?”

  Natalie’s eyes lit up. “Can I?”

  In answer, Justin put the baby into Natalie’s arms. I was glad I was there to see that young girl’s joy, but now I felt that we all needed to go and leave the young family alone. My mother Amelia lingered.

  “What do you think, Ma?” Justin asked cheekily.

  Amelia didn’t even bother to give him the usual reprimand. She just reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you,” she said. ‘Thank you for my grandson.” Justin murmured back. “You are welcome. And I love you too, Ma. You can hold the baby after Natalie.”

  My mother smiled. “I can wait.”

  Chapter 8

  In the three days before Thanksgiving, in the office, Alex was just as he always was, cool, formal. I’d heard that he had a new nephew, Justin and Anne’s son, Josh. I congratulated him on the addition to his family.

  When I tried to broach the subject of what had happened on the island between us, I did it obliquely, asking him if Hunter was able to correct the filching that was going on at the renovated hotel. He gave me that cool, expressionless Alex look and said, “I haven’t discussed it with him, but I presume so.” And that was the end of that. Except that he announced that I was to have the entire weekend off.

  An entire weekend off? I hadn’t had an entire weekend off since I started working for him. That meant I would go for three whole days without seeing him. I had that horrible feeling that he was freezing me out.

  On the weekend, I tried to be a good daughter and eat Mom’s food. She’s a wonderful cook, but I couldn’t eat very much. I was one big bundle of nerves. Mom is a gem. She didn’t ask me anything, just looked at me with those worried Mom eyes and said, “Whatever it is that is bothering you, you know you can always talk to me.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said.

  But I knew I wasn’t going to share my dilemma with her. I couldn’t. She’d be too worried.

  On Saturday, as an antidote to my agonizing over what I should or shouldn’t have done, should or shouldn’t have said, I asked Betsy to come over. About eight o’clock, she blew into my apartment like a refreshing winter breeze, bringing sanity with her.

  We had agreed on pizza. She liked black olives, so I ordered a half black olives, all pepperoni and cheese. What did I care if I gained weight?

  “Well,” I said, when the pizza was delivered and we were devouring it. “Are you leaving for the opal mine in Australia?”

  “I don‘t know. Sam doesn‘t know what to do. He‘s really tempted by the money. I hate to think I might end up living in a hole in the ground in some god-forsaken place.”

  I looked around the apartment. It seemed as if I’d been holed up here for far too long. “You know what? We need to go out. Have a drink. Go where the bright lights are.”

  “Excellent idea.” She looked down at her jeans. “I’m not very dressed up.”

  We both had on the uniform of casual, jeans and a t-shirt. “Don’t worry about it. Nobody dresses up these days.”

  We entered Chez Louie’s to find it already packed with revelers. We found one empty stool at the bar. I pushed Betsy to sit down and I’d stand behind her. At the back of the bar, instead of a mirror, the owner had mounted the hood of a red Chevrolet pick-up truck circa 1947. When Betsy and I ordered a beer, the bartender drew our drinks from spigots mounted under the chrome grill. I scanned the room. There was a guy with a minicam on his shoulder following another man with a microphone in his hand. It looked like they were doing spontaneous interviews. Being in the business of selling and buying and promotion, I guessed this must be a gimmick by the owner to garner free advertising.

  I paid for the drinks while Betsy swung around to clink her glass mug to mine. “Here’s to us,” she said. “BFFs forever.”

  We both drank. I tried to relax and pretend this was my thing, but truth to tell I hadn’t gone pub crawling since I started to work for Alex. Betsy sat up and gave her full attention to something over my shoulder. “Say, isn’t that your boss?”

  I looked. It was Alex, all right, as I had never seen him. He wore a tux under his Burberry coat, the white tie tied precisely, above a snowy white shirt front. Clinging to his arm was a woman who could only have been a super model. Perhaps not now, since she was older, but she must have been once, with those high cheek bones and that stylish hair cut curling over her left eye. And those long, long legs. The camera must have loved them. She was almost, but not quite, as tall as Alex. She wore a white faux fur coat and a clingy black dress underneath it. They looked a little out of place here where everyone else was dressed casually. The bistro went a little quieter as people checked them out. I was having trouble breathing.

  Microphone man spied Alex. He was, after all, hard to miss.

  “Mr. Cameron. How nice to see you. And your lovely companion. Would you introduce us?”

  I knew Alex would rather eat nails than be caught in this kind of spot light. But when I expected him to push the rude guy aside, Alex glared into the bright light of the camera and said, “This is Collette.” The woman nodded politely to the interviewer.

  “Are you a friend of Mr. Cameron’s…” he hesitated and then said slyly, “or are you something more?”

  “Mr. Cameron and I have known each other for…a while. More I cannot say.”

  “How about it, Mr. Cameron? Will we hear wedding bells ringing soon?”

  “If you do,” Alex growled, “you should get your ears checked.”

  Alex took hold of the incredibly slender woman and guided her straight toward me. I think he was a little blinded from the camera’s bright light.

  Out of the deep well of anger and hurt, I pulled courage. If he thought he was going to walk by without acknowledging me, he had another think coming.

  “Hello, Mr. Cameron.”

  He stared at me as if he didn’t know me.

  I said in my sweetest most sycophantic voice, “I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving with your family.”

  He still stared at me, but finally he got himself together enough to say, “Very nice, thank you. Now if you’ll excuse us…”

  When they had walked by me, I heard “Collette” say, “Alex, who was that girl?

  Not woman. Girl. I couldn’t hear what Alex answered. He put his hand on “Collette’s” back and guided her to a private booth out of sight of the hoi polloi.

  “So.” Collette’s husband Giovanni rose fr
om the booth. “How was the ballet?”

  “Wonderful.” She turned to Alex. “Thank you for taking me. It’s so nice to have an escort who is not fidgeting in his seat like my husband does, dying for it to be over.”

  “My pleasure,” Alex said, thinking he wished very much that they had not been spotted by the media…and Susan. What must she think?

  I stood very still. I did everything I could to stave off the pain. I wanted numbness. But finally the pain broke through, like water rushing through a hole in the dam. And it hurt very, very badly. I could not believe he would date a has-been super model after all we’d shared.

  “Hey, hey,” Betsy said. “You can’t think he really cared for that woman? She was eye candy…well maybe she was eye candy past the sell-by date. But he must see women like her frequently.”

  “He’s never dated a woman like that. Not in the time I’ve worked for him.” What a fool I’d been to think he could care for me. We’d shared a little play time together…and that’s all it was. Playtime.

  I felt really stupid. I put my beer glass on the counter very carefully and said to Betsy, “Do you mind if we go?”

  “Good idea.” She drained the last of her drink and slid off the stool.

  I had used my car to go to the club. I delivered her back to my loft so she could pick up hers.

  Betsy said, “I don’t know what to say. I can tell you’re really hurt. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “I’ve just had a major dose of one of life’s important lessons. Now if I could just figure out what it was.”

  Betsy gave me a hug, stepped out into the cold and hurried to her car. I watched to see that she got the motor started, then I headed to my loft.

  So it had happened. I’d given my body…and my heart to a man who…who what? I couldn’t even think of a word for it. It wasn’t betrayal. There had been no promises asked, none given. And yet he’d stayed with me when I was sick and I had done the same for him. I still remembered the heat in that bed, the lazy turn of the fan overhead, the exquisite pleasure of bringing him to climax and when he returned the favor, crying out with overwhelming sensual release under his hand.

  I went through the ritual of getting ready for bed, showering, brushing my teeth, doing everything I could to get the scent of liquor and perfume off my skin, trying to scrub away the memory. I climbed into a pair of flannel pajamas and went to bed to stare up at the ceiling. Having a loft downtown meant if you didn’t have curtains over the windows, there was always light streaming in from the street lamps. So the light played over my beloved industrial heat runs. And I finally let myself think about my dilemma. What was I going to do?

  I had three choices. I could go to work and act as if nothing had happened. I could go to work and give my two weeks’ notice. Or I could go to work and confront Alex. Number one would be the safe thing to do. Number two would be disastrous, both to my psyche and to my bank account. Number three was extremely dangerous.

  I decided I wasn’t in a good frame of mind to make a decision. I only knew that if I quit, which seemed the most viable option emotionally, I would lose my wonderful loft and my equally wonderful salary. Worst of all, I would lose all contact with Alex. I needed to step back and give myself some time to recover.

  In the end, I decided to go with option number one for now. It wouldn’t hurt to go to work and simply act as if nothing had happened, at least for a week or two. I was sure Alex would never bring up anything about his sudden desire to date an out of date model.

  I was right. Alex simply announced that there would be an acquisition meeting at ten o’clock and Hunter wanted me there. I’d been included in these meetings before, but my focus had always been on Alex. Now I wanted my attention to be anywhere but on him, so I studied his two brothers. Hunter seemed older, more mature than he had a year ago. Having a wife and family had had a calming influence on him, I thought. Justin sprawled back in his leather chair. He still looked like a mischievous teenager, although he was just a few years younger than Alex. His blond good looks were such a contrast to his brothers. Then my eyes went to Alex. I couldn’t help it. His face was a face that drew the eye, so well-proportioned as it was. I tried not to think about how he had looked leaning over me, touching me. But the more I tried not to think, the more I remembered how he‘d suckled my breasts and brought me to climax.

  “Susan? Do you have any thoughts to share with us?” Hunter asked.

  Share my thoughts with you? Not in this lifetime. I sat up and tried to look intelligent. “I’m just wondering how much money you want to sink into the two chanciest projects, the one in Iowa and the one in Pennsylvania. They seem off the beaten path to me. Will there be a buyer for them?”

  “I believe I just mentioned that I had a buyer for both of them,” Hunter drawled, his eyes dancing.

  Oh, boy. Totally caught out. I tried to recover. “Well, then, that’s all right.”

  “Any thoughts on the other properties?” Hunter’s mouth quirked. He was enjoying himself.

  I said, “No, no thoughts.”

  When the meeting was over, I fled the room. I’d decided I was going to eat lunch out. Let the man who dates models get his own damn sandwich.

  I had thrust one arm through the sleeve of my coat when Alex came out of his office. “You’re going out to lunch?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Are you meeting someone?”

  I just stared at him. I couldn’t believe he was asking me that question. He said, “I just thought if you weren’t meeting anyone, we could go out together.”

  “Yes. I am meeting someone.” Which of course was a lie.

  “Oh. Well, have a good lunch then.”

  The idiotic man stood watching me as I gathered up my purse and walked down the hall. Kenneth Johnson was coming out of his cubicle just as I passed. I grabbed his arm and said under my breath, “Walk with me to the elevator, will you?” I smiled up at him as I said it. He was confused but game. “Sure,” he said. “I’m going that way anyway.”

  Alex

  Justin wandered into my office and sat on the corner of my desk. If there was anything I didn’t want, it was a cozy chat with the brother who was the most perceptive of the three of us.

  “Not going out for lunch?” He picked up a paperweight from my desk and appeared to be absolutely engrossed with the fleur de lis pattern embedded in the bottom.

  “No.” I thought if I was rude, he would leave. I should have known better. He knew me too well. My obvious unwillingness to talk to him just egged him on.

  “You know, none of us can figure out what’s wrong with you. You’ve been like a bear with a sore head since you came back from that last Caribbean trip. We all know you’ve fallen hard for your hot babe assistant, but we can’t figure out why that should make you so grouchy. Mother’s worried about you, and frankly so am I.”

  “Don’t you mean Ma?” I asked with a touch of irony in my voice.

  “I only call her that to her face. She loves it.”

  She probably did. Unlike most mothers, she reveled in all her children’s quirky traits. She had always enjoyed Justin’s pranks and his ability to poke holes in pompous people. I suspected Justin got his sharp tongue from her side of the family, since his blond good looks came from his mother’s male line of nobility.

  “I remember the time when we were close, Alex. We used to pull some good jokes on Hunter. Now you’re just…all business. And frankly bro,” he put the paper weight down and slid off the desk. “I liked you better when you were helping me gang up on big brother. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to tell us what’s eating you. Mother’s not going to stand for too much more of your sour face.”

  “I don’t have a sour face.”

  “Look in the mirror. You’d be surprised at what you see. I’m going to get something to eat. I suggest you do the same. Might improve your temper.”

  Nothing was going to improve my temper. Particularly after seeing S
usan walk out with Kenneth Johnson. That man was entirely too friendly with all the female employees who worked in this office. On a couple of occasions, I’d been on the point of calling him up on the carpet to talk to him. Hunter counseled me against it. If he wasn’t really stepping out of line, if he was just talking to a woman on his break time, I had no right to interfere.

  Office politics. Always tricky.

  I suppose that my appearing with Collette in that pub had shocked Susan. I thought about explaining that she was a friend with whom I attended the ballet once a year, and we were meeting her husband, but that sounded lame even to me. I hated the cool, controlled look on her face when she came into the office this morning to go over my schedule with me. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise. I’d wanted distance, hadn’t I? Well, I got it in spades.

  Chapter 9

  Susan

  I got through the week somehow. When the weekend came, I decided there would be no more pub crawling for me. If Alex was going to date his gorgeous women, he’d have to do it without me watching.

  Besides, I had other excitement. Sam had taken the job in Cobber Pedy and Betsy was getting married next weekend, not in the spring as she had planned. She’d decided that she was going to go with Christmas colors and she wanted me to wear red. I was more than happy to oblige. With my brown hair and brown eyes, I needed to wear a strong color.

  At work, I was often on the phone with her, helping her plan the wedding and reception. Alex would come out of his office with a contract to go over or an estimate of reno work he wanted me to check and he would have to stand and wait until I cut off my conversation. The bachelor party was my responsibility. I thought I’d have it in my loft. There was plenty of room for all her female friends. Yeah, unlike me, she had female friends. There would be twenty-five of them all together. I didn’t have time to cook and wasn’t skilled in that department anyway, so I made all the arrangements while I was at work. I called a caterer and luckily, found one who had had a cancellation and was available on such short notice. I also hired a couple of male strippers. I’d just finished with that call when Alex came out of his office looking pretty much like a thundercloud.