by Tracy Wolff
“No! I mean, not permanently.”
“Not permanently. Okay.” His heart began a tentative climb back up to its regular place. He worked to keep his voice normal. “So, how long are you going to be gone?”
“I don’t know. A few weeks, maybe.”
He thought of the ticket he’d booked five days from then, of the breakneck pace he’d set trying to get home to her as quickly as possible. “I see. Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’d been thinking about a short trip to Mexico or Jamaica—”
He ground his teeth, bit back his instinctive protest about developing countries and pregnancies and the kinds of places she liked to stay at. He knew Camille—knew that when she traveled, she liked to get the local color, that she resisted staying in big hotels or resorts if she could avoid it.
He also knew if he made a big deal about it, she’d be twice as likely to go where he didn’t want her to. She was contrary like that. But damn it, that was his baby she was carrying. He had a right to be concerned, to worry about its health and well-being. To worry about her well-being, too.
“But then I figured I should probably stick closer to home—for the baby’s sake.”
He blew out the breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding, murmured a quick prayer of thanksgiving that she was showing more sense than he’d originally credited her for. “So where did you decide on?”
“I didn’t. I’m just going to get in my car and drive. Where I end up is where I end up—it’ll be fun. An adventure.”
“You’re just going to drive?” There he went again, sounding like the stupid parrot he always was when he was around her. But damn it, was she trying to kill him? This was craziness, absolute insanity.
“You don’t have a plan or hotel reservations or a map?” He was proud of the fact that he managed to get all fifteen syllables out without raising his voice. “No one’s expecting you anywhere?”
“Nope. Just me, a suitcase and the open road.” Her voice was full of excitement at the new adventure, and he knew, in her head, she was already gone. “It’ll be fun.”
“Fun” wasn’t quite what he’d call it. Still, he tried to keep his cool, tried not to tell her what an idiotic idea—“Camille, you can’t do that!”
“Excuse me?” The excitement was gone, replaced by ice.
“It’s not safe. A woman traveling alone, with no destination. Anything can happen. And are you renting a car or taking that death trap you’ve been driving?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my car!”
He banged the back of his head against the wall. “Did you at least get new tires and an oil change? Take the car to a mechanic and get it checked over? If you break down in the middle of nowhere—”
“I’ll deal with it, like I always do. I’ve traveled nine-tenths of the world on my own, Matt. I think I can manage a drive through the American South.”
“Is that where you’re going? To the South?” He thought about the 2010 hurricane season, which was right around the corner. Of the biker gangs roaming the interstates. Of a show he’d watched about numerous, mysterious disappearances along I-10 in the past few years.
“I just said I’m not sure where I’m going. I’ll drive until I don’t want to drive anymore.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a great plan.” He’d muttered the words, hadn’t planned on her hearing them, but the sudden intake of breath on the other side of the Pacific told him he hadn’t been as quiet as he’d thought.
“We don’t all have to map out every second of our lives. I like being able to pick up and go wherever the mood takes me.”
“You’re almost seven months pregnant, Camille!”
“Believe me, I know that better than you. I’m the one with the swollen ankles and the weird cravings and I’m also the one who’s starting to look like she swallowed a beach ball. So don’t preach to me from halfway around the world about the fact that I’m carrying a baby.”
“You’re carrying my baby.”
“And mine. And in less than three months, I’ll be stuck in one place for God knows how long. So what’s so wrong with me wanting to take off for a while before that happens? Before I have to give up everything.”
“Is that how you see it? As giving up everything?”
“Isn’t that how you see it? Both of our lives are changing, Matt.”
“Yes, but look what we’re gaining. A baby, Camille.”
“I know that and I’m excited, Matt. I really am. And it’s not like I’m taking off forever—I have to be back in Austin in three weeks for the sonogram, remember.”
No, he hadn’t remembered. Maybe he would have saved himself a lot of angst—not to mention a lot of backpedaling—if he’d remembered that one fact before going off the deep end.
But no, her uncertain return date wasn’t his biggest problem with the whole cockamamy plan. It was the idea that she really thought getting in an old, unreliable car and traveling the country alone was a good idea.
“Matt?” Hiroko, the head of construction, stuck his head out of the conference room. “We’re ready for you now.”
“Yeah, give me a minute.” He turned his back on the man.
“You need to go.”
“I want to talk about this some more.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” Her voice softened. “I’ll be fine, Matt. I promise. I’ll take very good care of the baby.”
“And yourself.”
She laughed. “And myself.”
“At least take my car.”
“What? No! My car—”
“Is a disaster on wheels. If you’re dead set on doing this, use my car. It’s just sitting in the garage, gathering dust.”
“Matt.” Hiroko again. “They’re getting restless.”
He held up a hand. “Yeah, okay.”
“Go, Matt! It’ll all be good. I promise.”
He gritted his teeth. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
She giggled, and he could almost see the sparkle of her smile. “Take care of yourself, Camille.”
“I will. And you take care of yourself.” A soft ssh sound told him she had blown him a kiss. “Bye, Matt. See you in a few weeks.”
“I—” But she’d already hung up. Flipping his phone closed, he headed back into the meeting room behind Hiroko. And fought the very uncharacteristic, very unprofessional urge to punch the nearest wall.
CAMILLE CRUISED DOWN I-10 into New Orleans, the top down on Matt’s very cool BMW Roadster. She’d almost ignored him, had almost taken her own car, but at the last minute had put her suitcase in his instead. And she hadn’t regretted it once. Man, this baby could fly!
She tried to avoid thoughts of Matt, of his obvious disapproval and the nearly overwhelming need she’d had to please him. When she’d hung up the phone, a part of her had already decided to stay, had figured a quick road trip wasn’t worth the hassle of dealing with an angry, upset Matt.Which was exactly why she’d left. After throwing a few outfits and some toiletries into a suitcase and turning off her cell phone, she had all but run out the door. No man was going to tell her what to do and there was no way she was going to stop doing what she wanted just because it made him unhappy.
Her one concession had been the car, but it wasn’t as if it was a hardship. Pressing down on the accelerator, she zoomed around a couple of sedans, reveling in the freedom of the open road.
The air was thick as soup, hot and humid and redolent with the scents of the Deep South—magnolia blossoms, swamp water and chicory. It was an odd combination, but one she remembered from her own childhood, and she found a strange kind of comfort in that, though she would have denied it to her dying day.
It had been years since she’d been to New Orleans, even longer since she’d hightailed it out of town at seventeen, swearing never to come back. She’d broken that promise seven years ago, when her mother had died, and was breaking it again now, as she drove through Kenner, Louisiana, on her way to the
French Quarter.
A lot had changed since she’d been here last—courtesy of Hurricane Katrina and the federal government. She found it amazing, and horrifying, that there were still abandoned cars by the side of the road; that molded-out, falling-down houses existed side by side with brand-new construction.
She cruised into downtown, swept down Canal amid lights and traffic and horns honking. In the distance she could hear music pouring into the streets from one of the many nightclubs the city was known for. New York might be the city that never slept, but the Big Easy was the city that never stopped partying. Every day was a brand-new adventure.
Functioning almost completely on autopilot, she turned onto North Rampart—the street that bordered the French Quarter to the north—and headed toward a little bed-and-breakfast that she remembered from her childhood. The price of a room was probably astronomical, but she was only planning on staying a couple of nights, if that. Especially since she wasn’t sure what had driven her to New Orleans to begin with, when she’d set off from Austin with a vague idea of ending up in Nashville.
She shrugged and turned off the car stereo so she could hear the mixture of jazz and rock and zydeco floating out from the side-street bars, carried along by the thick air and steamy, nighttime wind. Already she was itching to go out, to immerse herself in the streets and bars and culture of her childhood, to grab her sketch pad and record the sights that had been her salvation when things had gotten bad at home.
She snorted, amended her thoughts. When things had gotten worse at home—they’d always been bad, but she’d only escaped to the Quarter when they’d become downright untenable.
Pulling to a stop in front of the B and B—it was still functioning as such, after all these years—she climbed out of the car and stretched. Then she went inside to check in.
Ten minutes later, both she and her luggage had made it to her third-floor room. The decor was charming, New Orleans French at its best. Pale yellow walls, sumptuous bedcovers, a toile-covered love seat and ottoman.
She yawned once, fought back a second one—along with the urge to curl up in her pretty bed and just go to sleep. The night was still young and the French Quarter was waiting. Besides, she was starving.
Taking a few minutes to splash water on her face and reapply some lip gloss and mascara, Camille slipped into her walking shoes and hit the door. There was no use changing—her maternity wardrobe was still incredibly limited, so the best she could hope for was another T-shirt and pair of jeans similar to the ones she was already wearing.
Though her stomach was growling—and the baby kicking in protest—she took her time walking through the streets, taking in the sights and reacquainting herself with a place that never changed. It was strange, eerie even, to walk these streets after fifteen years and find that everything had remained the same.
Pat O’Brien’s was still doing a brisk business in hurricanes and piano music. The daiquiri stands still ran twenty-four hours, their frozen-drink machines loaded with alcoholic beverages of every color. Even the Jax Brewery was still standing, despite its close proximity to the water. The overpriced shops and restaurants that were the mainstay of the old building were thriving and she thought about stopping in for a minute, buying one of the pralines she’d loved as a child, but in the end she didn’t want to stop her tour of the Quarter.
She wandered past Café Du Monde and the old French Market, toyed with the silk scarves and ribbons, the coffee beans and feathered masks, all the time immersing herself in the goods around her so she didn’t have to think.
So she didn’t have to acknowledge the memories that hovered just under the surface.
When she couldn’t ignore her hunger any longer, she headed to the other end of Decatur and grabbed a bowl of French onion soup and a muffaletta from Café Maspero’s, then wandered down to Jackson Square to watch the street musicians and vendors.
Settling herself next to an artist hawking watercolor street scenes of New Orleans, she pulled out her sketch pad and began to draw. It had been nearly fifteen years since she’d lined her own pockets with tourist dollars, selling her own wares right here against this same black iron fence.
It was amazing, really, how so much had changed for her in the past decade and a half—and so little. She slipped into the rhythm easily, sketching the horse-and-carriage ride cruising down Decatur, the carriage listing to one side, the horse old and tired. Then she moved on to the little boys with bottle caps on their shoes, tap-dancing for dimes and dollar bills.
More than once a tourist came up, wanted to see what she was drawing. She showed them, was surprised—and then amused—when more than one offered her money to draw a picture of him and his wife/lover/girlfriend. She accepted on a whim, and by the end of the night had made nearly two hundred dollars sketching tourists in front of Andrew Jackson’s statue or the imposing St. Louis Cathedral that bordered the square to the north.
But even as she worked, her charcoal flying over the pad, she was aware of a yawning loneliness deep inside of her—a need to connect when there was no one around to really connect with.
It was the same loneliness she’d felt as a child, as a teenager, and it was humbling to realize she’d run for years, only to end up right back where she started from.
Part of her wanted to pack up right then, to run back to her B and B, throw her bag in the car and get the hell out of town as fast as Matt’s car could carry her. But another part of her wanted to stay, was fascinated with how this whole trip was going to play out.
No one had been more surprised than she when she’d cruised through Baton Rouge on her way to the Crescent City, and now that she was here she couldn’t help wondering what she was looking for. What she expected to find in this city where she’d experienced only pain.
Because she couldn’t answer the questions—and because she didn’t want to think too hard on them—Camille did what she always did. Pushed everything away and let the art take over.
Let her fingers fly over the sketch pad as the music and mayhem of the Big Easy flowed all around her.
Let the worries and the loneliness settle back, deep beneath the surface, where she didn’t need to acknowledge them.
When the air finally grew quiet and the street cleaners rolled through the streets—sometime after 3:00 a.m.—she was still there, her charcoal crayon worn to a nub and her alienation more acute than ever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MATT STEPPED OUT OF THE CAB, paid the driver and took his luggage from the trunk before slowly making his way up the driveway.
The house was dark, unwelcoming, and he cursed himself for those last kernels of hope he’d been holding on to all the way across the Pacific. That last little belief that Camille would have changed her mind, that she would be home waiting for him, not driving through the South with a bunch of Hell’s Angels on her heels.God, he’d wanted her to be home. Had needed her to be here when he got home. Over the past months, he’d gotten used to her being here—even if she wasn’t the best housekeeper, even if she burned dinner more often than not, even if she exasperated him twenty-three hours out of twenty-four, he’d grown to appreciate her presence. To relish it, just as he relished the light she always left burning for him.
He was an idiot, he told himself, as he dragged his suitcase along the sidewalk that led to his front door. An idiot to have hoped that she would be here and a bigger idiot for thinking that her absence meant something other than the fact that she’d gotten restless feet.
She would be back. She’d promised. If not for him, then for the baby—for her doctor’s appointment.
But for how long? That was the question. Leopards didn’t change their spots. The old cliché—a favorite of his mother’s—played through his head as he unlocked the door. The air-conditioning was off and he was hit by the dull, stale smell of a house that had been empty—almost as if Camille had been gone longer than four days.
But that was absurd, as was all this angst. There was nothing he
could do about it, after all, and whining about it wasn’t going to bring Camille back any faster.
Still, he was in a piss-poor mood as he deposited his luggage in his bedroom and headed to the kitchen for a snack—he’d been traveling for nearly twenty hours and he was starving.
How had this happened? he wondered as he reached into the fridge and found it empty save a few cans of his favorite beer. Again?
It wasn’t like the last time, when he’d walked into the thing with Camille blindly, not knowing that he was going to fall for her when they were just supposed to be having fun.
This time he had known better. This time he’d been hyperaware, with both eyes wide-open. It was a kick in the stomach to realize it hadn’t mattered in the slightest. After all the promises he’d made to himself, he was right back where he was almost seven months ago—alone, in love with Camille and waiting for her to realize that he meant more to her than a piazza in Italy—or a road trip in a convertible.
He’d been wrong about what he meant to her six months ago, and surprise, surprise, he was wrong again.
When had it become love? When had his attraction for her and interest in her and the baby become something more? Become everything?
He couldn’t pinpoint the specific date—his feelings hadn’t changed overnight, with a lightning bolt of emotion coming down from the sky to zap him. He’d been falling for her for quite some time, and it had been the little things that had sunk him.
Little things like the paint she often had smeared on her cheeks and down the side of her nose.
The blues she listened to at all hours of the day and night.
Her smile, with its shy little dimple and sunshiny sexiness.
There was so much more to Camille than he had originally thought, so much more than he had originally fallen for. She was smart and kind and funny and amazingly sweet underneath her acerbic exterior. She hated to say she was sorry, but she hated hurting someone more and always owned up to her mistakes.
But knowing these things about her didn’t make her any easier to understand. Why was she so commitment-phobic? Who had hurt her so badly that it was easier for her to turn her back on love than it was to accept it?