“You fixing to flip houses here like you did in California? Want to film a new handyman show? Because you won’t find that many run-down neighborhoods in Royal.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m done with all of that.”
She waited, but he didn’t offer any more information and Beth didn’t ask. She wanted to, but damned if she’d give him the satisfaction of knowing she was curious. Was he finished with the flipping business because Julie was gone now and he couldn’t bear to do it without her? Had he loved his wife that much? Were memories of Julie haunting him? A twinge of pain ached in her heart. Beth pushed it aside, though she couldn’t stop the questions rushing through her mind. Still, she kept quiet.
“Fine,” she said finally. “I’ll do what I can for you at the TCC on one condition.”
His brown eyes narrowed on her. “You already laid down your condition. We don’t talk. We avoid each other. Remember?”
“Yeah, but now that’s not enough.” She had him and they both knew it. He needed her and she wasn’t going to waste this opportunity.
Wary now, he asked, “What do you want?”
“A very hefty donation to my favorite charity.”
Both eyebrows rose. She’d surprised him. Well, good. Maybe that would convince him that he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did. They’d both changed a lot over the years.
“We’re going to build a new children’s wing at Royal hospital and I’m in charge of raising the money.” She smoothed the skirt of her dress. “I’m fund-raising now, and I think a donation from you will go a long way toward convincing the TCC membership that you’re the kind of man they want as a member.”
His eyes narrowed on her suspiciously. “Sounds like blackmail to me.”
“That’s an ugly word.” She examined her fingernails and made a mental note to get a manicure tomorrow. “I prefer the term extortion.”
He snorted.
“There’s going to be a big charity ball at the TCC in October to raise money for the new wing,” she said, catching his eye. “And if you make a substantial donation, I’ll make sure you’re a member before then.”
He took a deep breath and let it out again. “Hell, you’ve got more of your father in you than I ever noticed.”
Beth knew he meant that as an insult. Her father hadn’t liked Cam at all back in the day. Cam, of course, had decided it was because his mother had been a Tigua Indian.
Trent hadn’t cared about that, though Beth had never been able to convince Cam of it. Her father’s resistance had come from the fact that he hadn’t wanted his daughter falling in love with a simple ranch hand. She was a Wingate. That meant she had a duty to marry someone as rich as they were. To continue the dynasty.
Beth had ignored her father’s plans for her because, back then, all she’d been able to see was Cam. And, she told herself, look where that had gotten her. Thankfully now, her eyes were wide open.
“If you mean that, like my father, I know how to get things done, then yes. You’re absolutely right.”
He snorted again.
“That’s so rude.”
Cam grinned. “I know. Okay, we have a deal.”
“The whole thing,” she qualified. “The donation, the staying away from each other…”
“And the membership in the TCC,” he put in.
“Agreed.” She held out one hand and his right hand enveloped hers.
THREE
Instantly, Beth knew she’d made a mistake in touching him. Heat erupted, shooting up her arm to her chest, where it settled and burned with an intensity she hadn’t known in fifteen years. Shaking hands with Cam had obviously been a bad idea—yet she couldn’t regret feeling that burn again.
She’d been with other men since they had broken up, of course. Most recently, Justin McCoy. But it was only Cam who could make her feel like this. Only Cam who could make her blood sizzle with a look. Make her yearn with a mere touch.
When she tried to pull away, he tightened his grip, holding on to her hand as he locked his gaze with hers. Electricity seemed to dart back and forth between them, forging a link that blistered and burned.
“Stay away from each other?” he asked, and his voice was so deep it rumbled in the still air.
She swallowed hard. “Yes. Definitely, yes.”
He let her go and she curled her fingers into her palm in a futile attempt to somehow keep that heat close.
“All right.” He nodded. “We’ll do it your way. Again.”
Well, that had her head snapping up and her eyes firing into his. The fresh memory of heat and hunger disappeared in the rush of fury. “Again? What are you saying? Somehow this is all my fault?”
“You’re the one who broke up with me, remember? Who the hell else’s fault could it be?”
Beth laughed as she stared at him, dumbfounded. “I didn’t break up with you. That’s only what you heard. All I said was we had to slow down.”
“Right.” Cam snorted. “Slow down. Female code for ‘see ya.’”
Stunned, she gaped at him. “Wow. That is so sexist.”
“I’m not a sexist.”
“So you just say stupid things.”
“Not stupid, either,” Cam retorted, his gaze drilling into hers.
“And I don’t speak in code.”
He laughed shortly again and she thought the sound was so damn annoying it grated on her every nerve.
“All women speak in code.”
“Just because men don’t understand anything that doesn’t begin with their zippers…”
“Ah, sure”
“And lumping me in with my entire gender is insulting.”
“Too bad. You just lumped me in with mine.” Shaking his head slowly, he kept his gaze fixed on hers. “You might not like the memory, Beth, but that doesn’t change a damn thing. You were the one who set this all in motion. Just you.”
“No, you don’t.” She took a step closer and kept her gaze fixed on his so he wouldn’t miss the outrage glimmering in her eyes. “If you want to rewrite history, do it with someone who didn’t live it with you. I’m not the one who turned away and married the first person they saw and then left the damn state.”
“If that’s the way you’re looking at it, you’re wrong. You walked away, Beth,” he said tightly. “I just walked farther than you did.”
Her head snapped back as if she’d been slapped. Did he really look back and see that he was the good guy? The innocent? How long had it taken for him to absolve himself? Until his wedding night with Julie? Is that when Beth had been shoved neatly into a drawer and forgotten about?
Or had it been sooner?
“I can’t believe this.” Her voice was low, carrying the ring of astonishment. “You’re defending what you did? Do you know how humiliating it was for me around here? For months after you and Julie left town, people stared at me. Wondering what had happened. Spreading rumors.”
She’d never forget it. The sympathetic stares from people or, worse, the amused glances of girls she’d thought were her friends. “My own mother thought I was pregnant and that’s why you left. Everywhere I went, whispered conversations stopped when I got close. There were guys who thought they could move right into your place. And my so-called friends turned on me like rabid snakes, gossiping, laughing.
“There was no way to avoid any of it. I was alone because you were gone. I finally left for college and it felt like an escape.”
He laughed a little under his breath. “Wow. You escaped. Good for you. Do you want a prize? Do you know the crap I heard when my friends found out you’d dumped me?”
“I didn’t dump you. You dumped me. Pretty damn publicly, too. And you didn’t have to listen to them for months, did you?” She glared up at him, feeling the fury that had been buried inside her for fifteen years rising up to the
surface. “Just how long had you been cheating on me with Julie?”
Clearly shocked, he blurted, “What?”
“You married Julie like a week after we broke up—”
“So you agree, you broke up with me.”
“No, I didn’t say that. And don’t change the subject. You and Julie got married and skipped town in like ten seconds. And I was left here, trying to explain how my boyfriend of three years had married someone else!”
His brown eyes turned thunderous and a part of Beth was happy to see it. Why should she be the only one upset?
“I don’t owe you an explanation, Beth,” he ground out.
“Yeah, you do. But I’ll never get one.” She whirled away, took a step and looked back. “You go ahead and tell yourself whatever lie you have to, to make yourself feel better. I know the truth. And whether you admit it or not, so do you.”
He was after her in a heartbeat. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. She’d forgotten how fast he could move. Beth gasped as he took her arm, spun her around and then held on to her shoulders. He was looming over her and he did it well. He was so tall she had to tip her head back to meet brown eyes that were flashing with indignation.
“You think it was easy for me?” he demanded.
“Yes,” she snapped. “You’re damn right I do. You and Julie got out. Just the two of you. It’s more than I had.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “Nothing about leaving here was easy.”
She hoped not. “I don’t care.”
“Yeah, you made that clear the last night we were together.”
He kept trying to make her feel guilty about that night. But she’d done nothing wrong. She couldn’t regret it even now. She’d been right to go with her gut. With her heart. It hadn’t meant she didn’t love Cam. It felt as if she’d always loved him. And a part of her still did. Naturally, she kept that part locked away in a corner of her mind she never explored.
“I was only eighteen, Cam.”
“And I was nineteen,” he reminded her. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, I did what I had to. You didn’t see how young I was—how young we were—back then, and you still don’t.”
“I saw it,” he argued. “I didn’t care. Didn’t think it mattered. We had a plan, Beth. And you scrapped it without a thought. Well, I did what I had to do, too. I found a way to survive what you did to me.”
She laughed again and the sound was painful, even to her. “Marrying Julie was a survival technique? Well, hell, Cam. You should teach a course on that at the city college. How to Get Over Heartbreak by Marrying Someone Else. I’m sure tons of men would sign up for that one.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what you said.”
“Damn it, Beth.” He shook his head, stared up at the sky for a slow count of five, then looked back at her. “You always had the hardest head.”
She inhaled sharply and held up one hand. “Don’t. You don’t get to pretend you still know me. I’m not that young girl anymore. We’re not together now and we’re never going to be.”
“Who said I wanted us back together?”
His words stung in spite of what she was feeling. She wouldn’t let him see the hurt, though. “Good, then we’re on the same page.”
“Almost.”
She huffed out a breath. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, hell, if we’re going to avoid each other and we’re never going to be together again, then we need to do something we didn’t do fifteen years ago.”
Actually, Beth couldn’t think of a single thing they hadn’t done back then. And remembering everything they had done made her heartbeat skip and her blood hum through her veins. It seemed fury wasn’t enough to squash the kind of desire that pumped through her whenever Cam was near. “What’s that?”
His gaze fixed on hers, one corner of his mouth lifted into a tiny, secretive smile that used to drive her crazy with need. “Well,” he said softly, “we never did kiss goodbye.”
And he swooped in on her just like he used to.
* * *
She’d pushed him, just as she used to. Made him feel too much, just as she used to. And just like when they were kids, Cam swept Beth off her feet and pressed her tightly to his chest. Then he fused his mouth to hers as if she held his next breath. And while he fed a need that had haunted him for years, one corner of his mind was alert to her reaction.
Would she push him away? Would she tear her mouth free and shout “no”? It would kill him to stop, but damned if he’d hold her if she didn’t want him to.
But she hooked her arms around his neck almost instantly and everything in him roared into life.
The taste of her filled him. Her scent seemed to surround him, drawing him in, drawing him back to a time when she was everything to him.
But memories paled when compared to having her back in his arms again. She parted her lips and at the first slide of his tongue against hers, Cam was electrified. His body turned to stone, and all he could think was more. He held her tighter, pressing her body to his so that she had no doubt of what she was doing to him. His hands swept up and down her spine, and every time she shivered, he felt the fires inside erupt.
Years fell away. Old aches, hurts and regrets faded into the rush of heat that swamped him. All he wanted was to carry her inside to his bedroom, stretch her out across the mattress and bury himself inside her. He craved that connection as he did his next breath.
And that was enough to have Cam breaking the kiss, setting her on her feet and taking a single step back from her. Damned if he’d seduce her on his driveway when a dozen cowboys could glance over at them and get a show.
He looked at Beth as she stared at him while she struggled to catch her breath. He knew how she felt. His own heartbeat was raging, and the ache in his balls made him want to brace his hands on his knees and do some deep breathing until the pain eased.
He hadn’t asked for this to happen, though he’d known that coming back to Royal would mean being around Beth again. And maybe pretending it wouldn’t happen again really would be lying to himself. What he had to do was remember that she’d betrayed him. Yeah, they were different people now, but how could he trust her, remembering?
Maybe Beth’s idea to keep their distance was a good one, but damned if he could see that bargain lasting for long. Royal wasn’t big enough for them to avoid each other. But one more episode like this one just might kill him.
“Okay then,” she said finally, sounding a little breathless. “You’ve had your goodbye kiss…”
“Yeah. About that.” He locked his gaze with hers. “Didn’t really feel like goodbye. It tasted more like welcome back.”
“No, it didn’t.” She shook her head as if that action would help.
He grinned in spite of everything. Hell, he remembered Beth arguing even when she was wrong and knew it. In fact, she’d fight back even harder if she was wrong. Like she was now.
“Well, then let’s try it again,” he challenged, even though another kiss at the moment would bring him to his knees. “See which one of us is right.”
She skipped backward a couple steps. “I don’t think so. I already know who’s right and it’s not you.”
“Guess we’ll see, won’t we?” Oh, this wasn’t the end of whatever was still simmering between them. Cam knew they were just starting and she knew it, too. Which was why she was inching ever closer to her car.
“Whatever you might be thinking, Camden?” she said, fumbling behind her for the car door handle, “I haven’t been standing still waiting for you to come back. You got married. Moved on. Well, so have I.”
Surprised, he asked, “Seriously?”
“Is that so hard to believe?” She looked insulted.
“No. But I didn’t hear anything
about you being married…” And he didn’t like thinking about it. Whether it made sense or not didn’t matter.
“I’m not,” she said. “But I didn’t join a convent, either. In fact, there’s a man right now who wants to marry me.”
“Who?” His guts twisted.
“None of your business. I’m not here for you, Cam. We’re not going to hook up again just because we’re in the same town now.”
His gaze dropped to her left hand. Empty. He hated that he was relieved to see it. “Well, you’re not wearing a ring. So I guess we’ll just see what happens, won’t we?”
“Nothing’s going to happen, Camden.”
“Something already did, Beth. Hell, you felt it, too, when we kissed.”
She shrugged that off. “It was just a kiss.”
“Uh-huh. And a Texas summer is just warm.”
She opened the car door and pulled it wide. “I’m not playing this game with you, Cam.”
He dropped one hand on the car door and leaned in. “Not a game, Beth.”
“Whatever it is, I’m out.”
“For now,” he said.
“Forever.”
He didn’t believe that. Not for a damn second. Cam still held on to what she’d said to him their last night together. How she’d walked away from him and everything they’d planned. She’d cut his heart out with a few well-chosen words. But he could also feel the sizzling threads still connecting them. One kiss and he wanted more. And when he had more, he knew it still wouldn’t be enough.
Hell, if he was willing to set aside the past, she would be, too. She just had to argue about it for a while.
He could wait.
“I’ll get you that donation,” he said abruptly.
“Right.” She nodded, swallowed hard and then slid into her car, the hem of her dress riding high enough on her thigh to make his mouth go dry. “Once you do that, I’ll talk to membership at the TCC and get that ball rolling.”
“You’re going to wait until you get the money? Don’t trust me?”
Harlequin Desire June 2020 - Box Set 1 of 2 Page 4