“Wait. He didn’t tell you that?” Camilla blinked, blinked again. The bench seat of the swing felt suddenly hard beneath her body. She had to stand and pace across the porch to sit on the railing. She hadn’t even noted the possibility his statement could’ve meant Falcon guaranteed Camilla as a perk of Zane’s hiring, she’d been so focused on the promotion aspect.
Zane looked at the sky, at the ground, and finally at Camilla. He huffed. “At first I was just teasing you, trying to get your goat. Then I took it a little further, thinking you’d come back around and call me on it, tell me I was full of garbage, see my flirting, and not my joke. You had so much court experience, I was sure you’d have your BS-o-meter on high. And then I could admit to the lie that Falcon would guarantee you’d fall for me and we’d both laugh. Maybe kiss a little more. But when you burst into flames, I didn’t know what to do. I just sat there stunned as you bolted into the night.”
Whoa. That was not what she was expecting. And to hear it from his perspective, and for him to admit to the lie—boy, that muddy water churning in her puddle of a soul hadn’t begun to settle. Not yet.
Zane took a step toward her. “Look, I know I should have chased you down. And I should’ve forced a heart to heart any of a dozen days since, but I was just plain embarrassed. And you were so ticked, I didn’t know if you’d even believe me. Can you? Now? Believe that whole thing was a spun sugar fantasy? Because that’s all it was.”
Camilla sat staring at the grass, her breathing slowed, time ticking by as her mind raced. He’d let her operate under a false assumption, one that made her very unhappy, for all this time. Miserable, she’d been.
But, then, he was right—she should have been able to see through it—or at least sense that he was joking. She reviewed the conversation that night in her mind. That was part of the deal for me coming here to work for Falcon. He said I had to prove myself, but that he’d make sure I got everything I wanted. Haw. The haw. She should have read that clue. Especially because, in retrospect, she remembered he’d given a double entendre eye-crinkle to that bit about “everything I wanted.” He’d implied Camilla was what he wanted, not the deputy job. She’d jumped down his throat and stormed off. All the while, he was either talking about something else or joking.
She’d been too sensitive. He’d unwittingly hit a raw nerve, his words playing on her insecurities like a violin.
“Listen, Camilla. I should’ve made things right. Pride kept me back. When you ditched me on our date, everyone at the whole staff campout knew it. If I chased you down, I’d look like the idiot I was, and not the manly man I want you to see me as.” His eye twinkled. “Ah, my buffoonery. It’s just a residual flaw from my years away from polite society, I guess.” He must have been referring to the Army. “I have, indeed, been a bad boy. Just like my dad always claimed.” He frowned, and then he reached up and pushed a lock of hair out of Camilla’s eyes where it had fallen. “But he also always said what I needed was the guidance of a good woman and I’d be all right.”
Camilla rolled her eyes. How many good women had been lured into awful relationships with that kind of attitude? Far too many over the course of millennia, she’d guess. However, being a jokester and being a liar were two different things.
“You’d have to prove yourself loyal, trustworthy, honest, brave…”
“So, you know the Scout law.”
Not really, she didn’t. She knew what she wanted in a husband. And someone who could laugh and joke—that mattered. She might have to get used to his sense of humor, but if he could forgive her for being obtuse to it, she could help him work the edge off it in the future, maybe.
“I’m sorry I made you cry.”
“You didn’t make me cry, actually.” She steeled herself to just go ahead and tell him. If it had to end badly, with him running off in a terror anyway, she might as well get it over with. “Actually, it wasn’t you at all.”
“I didn’t? Then…? Why don’t we walk a bit.”
She nodded. How to tell him, she still formulated in her mind. With court appearances, she had days to prepare her arguments. And she’d had days to think this line of reasoning through. However, just like it’d always been from first sight with Zane Holyoake, she got tongue-tied whenever she saw him, and her mind went blank. Everything else in the world faded out to just Zane. And…Camilla. And the two of them.
But it could never work.
Zane took her by the hand. They left the porch and walked down the sidewalk that led to the side of the house. It became pavers and led around the yard through an arched gate overgrown with now-fading wisteria vines. In the spring they’d be heavenly, dripping with grape-bunch-like flowers. She could almost smell their fruity scent now. It gave her courage.
Behind the house they found a water feature, a pond with lily pads and a fountain trickling and a stone bench. The sun had settled behind the line of oleander bushes, creating a secret garden feeling. He brought her to sit beside him on the stone bench. It was solid, and it didn’t creak or tremble when she moved. She could tell him now.
With a deep breath, she took him by both hands. “I like you.” A lot. She should say that. “A lot. So much so, that I’d almost sacrifice what’s best for you in order to have what I’d like to think is best for me.”
Zane sat blinking. He listened well. And that quality deleted one lie for sure.
“It’s just that, when you asked me about a future, I just can’t let you down like that.”
Zane knit his brows. “Are you saying—?” He paused a moment, clearly formulating his questions. “Did this happen when I mentioned having children?”
She nodded, staring at the ground. Moss had grown from the edge of the pond, green and spongy in its turf. He was so perceptive. He hit the heart of her worry instantly. Man, it would be incredible to be with someone who “got” her like that. She’d give anything for that.
Almost.
“If it’s that you don’t want to have children…”
“Oh, no. More than anything I’ve wanted, it’s to be a mother.” That wasn’t a lie. She’d wanted it so much she’d driven away a lot of potential husbands. “It’s not—”
He shushed her and took her in his arms. She relaxed into him, enfolded in his comforting embrace. “Sweet Camilla Sweeten. This is the modern age. There are ways. There’s adoption…”
“Oh, no.” She yanked herself from his warmth. “It’s not that! I mean, I don’t know if I could or couldn’t have them. I’ve never tried. But I just can’t.”
“Can’t…?” He cocked his head, and she read in his eyes an unspoken follow-up question: Can’t, or won’t? Suddenly he looked like this was a deal breaker. But he took a deep breath and said, “I look at you, and I’ve seen all your great qualities. You care about people, about life, about the world. It’s only natural that you will make an excellent mother.”
“And you want a family?” She held back some emotion. So many men she’d met wanted the wife, but the kids were just unfortunate side effects of having the woman at their beck and call. “Kids?”
“Of course. Fatherhood. I want to take my boys on hikes, to do that father-daughter dance with my girls at their wedding. It’s the whole point of this life. Miss that, and you’ve missed…everything.”
She frowned.
“You disagree?”
“No. It’s not that. In fact, I couldn’t agree more.” It came spilling out. “My dad. He won’t ever be there for my daddy-daughter dance. He and mom. They missed a lot. My college life, my law school experience. They won’t see my wedding, their grandkids.”
“That’s so for them. But they had you. They had that joy of teaching you to be a good woman.”
“I was still a girl when they left.”
Zane scooted toward her. He put an arm around her. He sat there a long time without saying anything. It was like he understood that she’d been abandoned, and he was going to take her home now.
Or at least pretend to. And
then cast her back into the street. She couldn’t let herself think there might be a safe landing for her.
“They missed a lot of things, didn’t they?” He stroked her hand.
She nodded, empty. Too empty to cry anymore.
“What I don’t get,” she said at last with a shuddering breath, “is why even have me, if they were going to wait so long. They missed the bulk of my life by postponing parenthood to their late forties.”
She just couldn’t bring them into the world at this point, when she’d be too old to enjoy all their lives and be there for them.
“I bet you feel kind of cheated.”
Exactly. He’d hit it on the head.
“And maybe a little betrayed?”
The tears started flowing again.
“I just want you to know, I will never betray you. A Scout is loyal, and this one is too, to a fault.”
She pulled a little wan smile. He still didn’t know why she couldn’t let this happen. She was going to have to lay it out there in black and white. She bit her lip and winced.
“I wish you wouldn’t make these promises. I love them so much. But I can’t accept them. I can’t be the mother of your children.”
“You said…”
“Look. I tried really hard to get married when I was younger. Too hard, in fact. I ended up pushing away a lot of guys by how eager I was to get started on a family.” Burns Pilsington’s pinched reaction jumped to mind. “And it ended badly. So I put it on a shelf. And now, all this time has passed.” She twisted a strand of hair around her finger tightly, so much it hurt and she had to unravel it. “It’s too late now.”
“What’s too late?”
“Motherhood. Don’t you see? I just can’t do that to them. I swore I wouldn’t do that to any kids I had. I would be young. I would raise them. I would be there for them.” She ached for him to be able to understand, but he kept looking at her like she was speaking Martian, so she kept explaining in hopes he’d get it. “I can’t start having a family this late. If we’d met, say, five years ago. Even then it would have been pushing it. “
Zane stared at her, blinking and blinking. It was like he was a computer, processing the information. Finally he asked, “How old are you, Camilla?”
“I’ll be twenty-eight next June.”
“So, twenty-seven.”
She felt her face contort at the mention of it, and she had to sniff against the running of her nose.
“And your mother was how old when she had you?”
“Forty-eight.”
“Forty-eight.” He nodded, drumming his fingers on the back of the stone bench. “That really is a late start. Some people are grandmothers by then. A lot of people are.”
“Right?” See! She knew he’d understand. He just finally made the connection. Late starts were just so unfair to the kids. She swiped away her tears, and her face relaxed into a smile. “I loved my parents. They really gave me everything—just not for long enough.”
Zane pulled out his phone and opened an app, the calculator. It was the kind that showed all the steps of the problem. He punched some buttons and then held up the phone’s face to show her. “Have you done this math?”
The face of the phone read 48 - 27 = 21.
“Sure. That’s correct. And? Your point is?”
“Think about it, Camilla. That’s the age difference between you and your mother. Twenty-one years. If we did, as you said the other night, get started right away, you’d have more than a two decade jump on her.”
When he put it in decades, it hit her like a two-by-four to the chest. Decades? She had extra decades—plural? The words rang in her ears, and the numbers from the math problem floated in the sky over her head, is in a word bubble. Twenty-two. That was a lot of years. That was almost as many years as Camilla had been alive total.
“But what if—”
Zane reached out and pressed a finger over her lips, touching them softly and silencing her. She’d done that to him once before. “There will always be what-ifs. No one knows if we’ll live or die or when. Just because your parents died in their sixties doesn’t mean you won’t live to a hundred. There are no guarantees. As a lawyer, you should know that. The answer to every single legal question has to start with ‘that depends.’ Everything in life is fraught with ‘that depends.’”
He was right. He was exactly right.
She started asking herself a thousand questions, and they came shouting into her mind. Would she still be able to be there for her kids if she’d waited this long? That depends. Would she have been there longer if she’d married Burns Pilsington five years ago? That depends. Would she have even been able to have kids back then? That depends. Would she be able to now? That depends. And would she live a happy, interesting life if she let Zane Holyoake get as close to her as he seemed to want to?
That one looked a lot more likely than a mere that depends.
“Say. I’ve perpetrated another lie.”
“What? You have?” She felt a little sick.
“Well, not exactly. I mean more like I broke a promise.” When she looked at him sideways, he went on. “I promised on our first date that I’d take you digging, and I never have.”
“It’s not something I’m tapping my foot with impatience to hold you to, Zane.”
“Well, it would be if you’d ever experienced it.”
That may or may not be the case.
“On my ‘ranchette,’ if you will, I’ve got a nice little hill with the perfect trail. It’s not quite vertical, so it’s barely a challenge for Baby, but the vista from the top is something that gets you right here.” He put a fist to his heart.
“I like vistas,” she said, and in about two seconds he was whisking her up from that vacant house’s lovely backyard and speeding toward where Baby was garaged after its tune-up.
An hour later, Camilla stood atop the hill, overlooking the late autumn of Zane’s three-thousand acre ranchette. The sun soaked into her skin. It felt like a familiar old friend. She could get used to this being outdoors thing again.
“Wow. Just wow.” She exhaled at the grandeur. And it was all his, as far as the eye could see.
“Right? There are places no Beemer could ever take you.”
True. So true. “I’m thinking about selling mine. Do you think your buddy Garrett is interested in offloading Baby to a short girl who needs a running board to even climb in her?”
Zane laughed so loud it echoed off the next peak and came floating back to Camilla’s ears with double merriment. “I’ll ask him next week when he gets back. But don’t write the check yet.”
She ran a hand down his arm and let her fingers intertwine with his.
“The ranchette has a reservoir. Up there.” Zane waved toward the northwest. “I could have it stocked with trout, if you like. It’s got a spring feeding it with cold water. They’d do fine.”
Into her mind came the picture of Camilla and her dad out there in Horsethief Lake, hip boots on, fly rods in hand. Was it possible? Had she just hooked the big one? Could she reel it in, finally?
Zane Holyoake—he kind of seemed like the big one, the catch she’d been tying lures for all this time and waiting for far too long. She’d baited the hook, unwittingly. He’d taken that bait and tugged against her line. Could this be the moment when she finally reeled him in?
“I bet you look good in hip boots.” Zane wrapped his arms around Camilla and spun her to face him. A breeze rippled his hair, and the smell of diesel floated to her nostrils. It was a heady mixture, the altitude, the fumes, the strength of Zane’s embrace. He placed a kiss on her mouth, and then she placed one on his. It was only polite to give a gift in return when one was given.
“I can’t believe it.” Zane pulled back and ran a hand through his hair. He climbed up on the hood of Baby and pulled her up beside him.
“Can’t believe what?”
“I may be jumping to conclusions, pulling in on my line too fast, but…”
; “But what?” The air crackled. Camilla stared into Zane’s deep brown eyes.
A smile tugged at the left side of his mouth. “But—I think maybe I hooked the big one.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Complex Litigation
“The courtroom will please rise for the Honorable Judge Harper.” The bailiff requested everyone’s respect as the judge for the Superior Court of Yavapai County entered the room. Camilla smoothed down the wrinkles in her dress.
It was funny. She always wanted to get married in a church, but somehow this seemed more appropriate. There, across the room, was where she’d first seen Zane, where he’d first completely thrown her off her game and made her into a blithering idiot in front of Judge Harper.
In just a week, Zane would be standing across from her, both of them within jaw and claw reach of that burly old bear. And Zane would likely be making her a blithering idiot so joyful she could hardly put three words together in a sentence. Luckily, there were only two words in the sentence she’d need to say that day.
I do.
For now, she mused about Zane looking smashing in his tux. She got dreamy staring across the room at him where he sat in the audience of the courtroom, waiting to be a witness in today’s case—the one she’d never, ever forget, even though neither she nor Zane ended up getting to prosecute it.
Because today neither of them had to make arguments in front of Judge Harper’s growling gaze. And neither did Falcon, surprisingly enough. Once it was established that Dutch Swede’s alleged theft didn’t make him the Beemer Bandit, Falcon lost all interest. The press died down. The whole thing pretty much fizzled. Obviously, Zane couldn’t take the case, since he needed to be a witness for the prosecution. And Camilla couldn’t take it, since she was dating Zane. Yeah, dating. In fact, engaged to. The ring sparkled on her finger, glinting and sending rays of happiness into her soul.
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