by Raye Morgan
And she had.
Cam hadn’t exactly planned to do this. In fact, he’d been pretty rough on himself, swearing he wouldn’t do this or anything like it in rather strong terms. All those things she’d said had been rattling around in his head for the last two days. The more he thought about it the more they didn’t make any sense to him—and his own reaction to them made even less sense. He’d always known she had a bit of a crush on him, but he hadn’t taken it seriously. That had been long ago—kid’s stuff. Things had changed. He’d changed. That was just the point.
So had she changed, too? Were his instincts right? Had her crush turned into something stronger? And if so, what was stopping her from following her instincts and responding to these new currents between them?
The baby’s father, of course. What else could it be?
On a certain level, he had to respect that. The bond between a woman and the father of her baby was sacred, even if there were problems between them. He had to stay back, out of the way, and let her deal with the things she needed to deal with.
On the other hand, where the hell was the guy? What kind of a jerk was he? How could he leave Di alone to handle all these life changes on her own? She needed support. She needed her friends around her, if nothing else. As a good friend, how could he ignore that?
But she’d asked him to stay away. Reluctantly he would do the honorable thing and keep his distance, leave her alone.
But, dammit, how could he do that if she showed up in his bedroom like this? Game over, Diana!
He had her in his arms and he wanted her there. He had her fresh, sweet scent in his head and the excitement of her touch on his skin and the feel of her soft, rounded body against him and he wanted to drown himself in her body. There was no going back now.
Diana was finally beginning to gather the strength to resist where this was going. It was so hard to push away the man she’d wanted close for most of her life but she knew she had to do it. She couldn’t believe, after all she’d been through, after all the serious thinking she’d done on the subject and all the serious preparations she’d made to resist her feelings toward him, here she was, lost in his kiss and loving it. How could this be?
Maybe her response to the temptation that was Cam was so strong because it had been so long since a man had held her and kissed her…but no, it wasn’t a man’s touch she craved. It was Cam’s touch. Only Cam.
She finally mustered the force to pull away from him, leaning back, still in his arms.
“Oh, Cam,” she said in despair, her gaze taking in his beautiful face and loving it.
“Hush,” he whispered, leaning forward to drop a kiss on her neck. “Unless you want Janey bursting in here to demand an explanation.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “Admit it. This isn’t working.”
He kissed her collarbone. “What isn’t working?”
Reaching up, she pushed hard to make him release her. “Our plan to stay away from each other.”
He looked amused. “Hey, don’t try to pin that plan on me. I never liked it much anyway.”
Her sigh was a heartfelt sign of regret. “I thought once I told you face-to-face…”
“That didn’t work, did it? Want to try something else?”
“What?”
“This.” He leaned closer again and began to nibble on her ear.
She pushed him away. “No! Cam, we have to try harder.”
“Hold on.” He shook his head, looking down at her in disbelief. “Di, you need to decide what you really want. You order me out of your life, then show up in my bedroom. Either you’ve developed a split personality, or you’re conflicted in some way.”
“I was just delivering flowers,” she said plaintively, knowing it wasn’t going to fly as a serious defense.
“Ah, the old delivering flowers ploy.”
“Cam, I didn’t mean to start anything like this.”
“Didn’t you?”
“I thought you were gone.”
“You were wrong.”
“Obviously.” She managed to get a little more space between them, her gaze lingering on his wide shoulders and the beautiful planes of his naked chest. Just looking at him made her stomach do a flip and made her knees begin to tremble. She had to get away from him quickly or she was going to be lost. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, then opened them again with more determination. “Now how am I going to get out of here without running into your sister?”
“I heard her go back downstairs a minute ago. You should be in the clear.”
She stared at him. She hadn’t heard anyone go by again. She’d been deep into kissing him, too deep to be able to process anything else. But he hadn’t been, had he? That was something to keep in mind.
Turning away from him, she gathered her supplies, her hands shaking and fingers trembling, and headed for the door. He pulled it open for her and smiled.
“Give me a minute and I’ll get dressed and…”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m going, Cam. This doesn’t change anything.”
His eyes darkened. “The hell it doesn’t,” he muttered.
She shook her head again, looking out into the hall to make sure it was clear. “Goodbye,” she said. Avoiding his gaze, she hurried away.
She made a quick trip through the first floor rooms, giving her arrangements a last-minute check, then turned to leave and almost ran into Janey.
“Hello.” Cam’s sister was dressed in a black leotard with a bright pink sweatshirt worn over it. Her hair was up in foil, being colorized. Diana quickly made the assessment that the voice she’d heard in the hallway was her hairdresser. She knew the woman came to the house on a weekly basis.
“I saw your car,” Janey said. “I was wondering where you were.”
“I was putting flowers in a number of rooms,” Diana said, trying hard to sound innocent and casual. “And I’m running late.”
Janey’s green eyes flickered. “Well, how’s that baby coming?” she asked.
Something in her tone put Diana on alert. “Just fine, thank you,” she said, looking at Janey hard before starting for the kitchen.
To her surprise, Janey stepped forward and blocked the doorway, looking at her speculatively. “You know, there are people who have practically come out and asked me if Cam is the father.”
Diana’s heart lurched but she stood her ground. “How interesting. Too bad you don’t know the answer, isn’t it?” She felt a twinge of regret. Why didn’t she just tell the woman Cam wasn’t the father and put the question to bed? But hadn’t Cam already tried to do that? Janey wouldn’t believe her no matter what she said.
“Mother is still planning her parties,” Janey said coolly, her eyes flashing. “You do understand what these parties are about, don’t you?”
“I think I have a vague idea.”
Janey nodded. “We need Cam to marry a rich girl. That’s pretty much our only hope of getting out of our current financial difficulties.”
Diana held her anger in check, but it wasn’t easy. “Good luck to you,” she said, and stepped forward in a way that signaled she wanted to go through the doorway.
Janey didn’t move out of the way, but her eyes narrowed. “So tell me, how does that fit in with your plans, exactly?”
She glanced down at Diana’s rounded belly, making it very clear what she was talking about. She was worried that Diana was going to try to snag Cam for herself. Diana’s anger was truly simmering now. How dare she! Well, she could just go on wondering. No matter what she was told, she wasn’t going to believe it.
“I don’t have any plans, Janey,” she said, meeting the other woman’s gaze with her own clear vision.
Janey arched an eyebrow. “Don’t you?”
“No.” She arched an eyebrow in return. “In fact, the parties are going to have to go on without me. I’m going out of town for a while. So you’re going to have to find someone else to try to bully.” With one firm hand, she gen
tly pushed a surprised Janey out of the doorway and made it past her. “So long.”
She walked quickly through the kitchen and out to her car, swearing softly to herself as she went. That woman!
It wasn’t until she was in the driver’s seat and starting the engine that she remembered what she’d said to her and she half laughed.
So she was going out of town. Funny, she hadn’t realized she had a trip in her future until she’d told Janey. But now that it was out in the open, she was glad she’d thought of it. It was probably her only hope to stay away from Cam. And with a little distance and a bit of perspective, she might even think of a way to fall out of love with him.
CHAPTER SIX
DIANA was back in town.
She’d been gone a little over a week. She’d left her occasional assistant, Penny, in charge of supplying arrangements to her weekly clients, and she’d spent a few days in San Francisco with her old roommates.
She’d made a run up to Sacramento as well, hoping to catch her cousin, Ben, but he was gone on business, so she missed him. They had since connected by phone and he was coming to Gold Dust today so they could meet. He had some things to show her.
She was very curious as to what he was up to. Having her uncle leave them a piece of property together was interesting but she wasn’t sure if that wasn’t going to be more trouble than it was worth. Hopefully Ben would clear some of this up when he arrived.
They were meeting at Dorry’s Café on Main and she was on her way there now. She lucked into a good parking place in front of the library under a big old magnolia tree. It was a short walk to the café, but she needed the exercise.
She had a lot of things on her mind, but mostly, she was thinking about Cam. Had absence made the heart grow fonder? Not really. She couldn’t get much fonder. But there definitely had been no “out of sight, out of mind” involved, either. Thinking about Cam sometimes seemed to be her main state of being. She was getting better and better at it. And it had to stop.
But there was something else on her mind as well—or should she say someone else? She could feel Mia move, just a flutter, like a butterfly caught in a magic net, but that tiny bit of movement made all the difference. Mia was real to her now like she hadn’t been before. Mia was her baby, her child, the center of her future and that meant that Mia was all the world to her.
She was definitely showing, and proud of it. But that made for a different atmosphere as she walked down the streets of the little Sierra town she’d lived in all her life and interacted with the people. Strangely she felt almost as though someone had painted a big red A on her chest when she wasn’t paying attention. Suddenly everyone was noticing that she was carrying a child, and most of the looks she was getting were not sympathetic.
Still, what she saw wasn’t really old-fashioned small town disapproval. What she had to face every day was even more annoying—blatant curiosity. Everyone wanted to know who the father was. They all knew very well that she hadn’t dated anyone for over a year. She had taken a few trips to San Francisco, but other than that, she was busy working with her flowers and hanging out at her lake, with nary a male in sight.
Of course, things were different now. Cam was back.
And it seemed Janey wasn’t the only one with suspicions. It was amazing how many ways people could contort a simple conversation into hinting around at the question—was the baby Cam’s?
Everyone knew that Cam had been her champion once upon a time. Now she was pregnant—and he was back. Was there a connection? It was difficult to find a way to come right out and tell them there was nothing to the rumors when they never actually put the darn thing into words she could refute. They just said something here and left a little hint there and gave her looks that spoke volumes.
She was working on a way to deal with the problem without getting too rude, but as time passed and more and more people got bolder and bolder with their probing, she was beginning to think rude might be the only way to go.
But she smiled and nodded to passersby as she made her way to Dorry’s. Maybe this was just the price you had to pay for living in a small town. And bottom line—she loved it here.
Cam saw her going into Dorry’s and he stopped on the street to have a two-minute argument with himself. He knew she didn’t want to see him or talk to him, but the fact was, he wanted very much to see her and they had plenty of things to discuss. She’d been gone for a week and he’d missed her. That morning in his bedroom had proven one thing—she wanted him. The fact that he wanted her was a given. But no matter how she protested, she’d let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. Left to its own devices, her body would take him in a New York minute. It was just her heart and mind he had to convince.
Just thinking about that morning made him throb and he knew it was going to be very hard to stay away from her. He wanted to talk to her. Hell, he wanted to be with her. Should he leave her alone, give her a few more days of peace? Or should he get on with this?
They were friends, first and foremost. He valued her like he had valued few others in his life. And from the moment he’d seen her the other night, a new element had been added. Of course she knew that. He hadn’t been very subtle about it. She attracted him in every way possible.
But he wasn’t a nut case. He knew she was out of bounds right now and he respected her need to stay away from him most of the time. He didn’t agree with it and he didn’t like it, but he had every intention of keeping his distance—for the moment. Until he convinced her it was pointless.
But did running into her here in town count? Not at all, he decided at last. After all, this was casual and public and totally nonthreatening. So he might as well go on in and say hello.
Great. That was settled. He strode confidently toward the café and went in, waving to plump, friendly Dorry with her head of gray curls and nodding to Jim, the tall, skinny mechanic who had worked on fixing his car and was now up to his elbows in a big, juicy cheeseburger. But all the time, he was searching for a familiar looking blonde.
And there she was.
“Hey, good-lookin’,” he said, sliding into the booth across from her and smiling.
She looked up and winced. It was like looking into the sun. The light from the big bay window shone all around him, giving him a halo effect. That, along with his dazzling smile, sent her reeling for a split second or two. He was too gorgeous to be real. Maybe she’d just invented him in her head.
Everything about him looked smooth and clean, from the tanned skin showed off by his open shirt, to his beautiful, long-fingered hands. For a moment, she thought she’d lost the ability to breathe. Whenever she saw him unprepared, he made her react this way. No other man had ever affected her like this. Why oh why? It just wasn’t fair.
“Go away,” she said hopefully, but there was no strength of will behind her words.
“No,” he said calmly. “You’ve admitted that we are friends. Old friends. Dear friends. And friends get together now and then and shoot the breeze. That’s what we’re doing here.”
She raised her gaze to the ceiling and said plaintively, “It would be better if you would go away.”
“We’re adults, Di,” he said pleasantly as he reached across and took a bread stick from the basket the waitress had put on the table. “We can sit in a café and talk.”
She looked worried. “Can we?”
He grinned and waved the bread stick at her. “You bet.”
Diana shivered and shook her head, trying to ground herself and get back to reality. “Some other time, maybe,” she said, and as she said it she seemed to pick up confidence. “I don’t have time today. I’m meeting someone.”
“Oh?” He tensed and his sense of humor seemed to evaporate without a trace. Suddenly he was very guarded.
“You’ll have to leave before he gets here.”
So the person she was waiting for was male, was he? Cam stared across the table at her. She looked nervous. Her usual calm was not evident and her hands
were fluttering as they pushed her hair back behind her ear, then reached for her glass of water, then dropped back into her lap. Was he making her nervous? Or was it the pending arrival of her visitor?
He went very still and stared at the wall. His first guess was that this was the father of her baby whom she was meeting in this public place. Had to be. In which case he wasn’t leaving until he got a good look at him.
He turned his gaze back and met hers squarely. “Diana, I’m going to be up-front about this. My instincts are to throw you over my shoulder and run off to a cave for the duration.”
Diana had unfortunately just taken a drink of water and she nearly spewed it across the room. “What are you talking about?” she sputtered hoarsely, still choking on the water as she leaned across the table in hopes no one else would hear this.
“I’m serious.” He leaned forward, too, speaking as softly as he could, but with definite emphasis, and gazing at her intently. “I want to take care of you. I want to protect you. I want to make sure you and your baby are okay.” He grabbed her hand and held it. “Everything in me is aching to do that. And I have to know.” He grimaced. “Are you going to marry this guy?”
She blinked at him. “What guy?” she asked in bewilderment.
“The father of your baby. Mia’s father.”
“Mia’s…Oh, Cam.” She almost laughed, but not quite, and her fingers curled around his and then her eyes were suddenly shimmering with unshed tears. “You’re crazy.”
His hand tightened on hers. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Who says I have to give you an answer?” She smiled through her tears. “But I will. No, I’m not going to marry anyone. I’m like you. No wedding in my future.”
He set his jaw with resolution and looked deep into her eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Then I’m warning you, I’m going to do what I have to do.”
“As long as you leave me with my feet on the ground,” she teased him. “And no caves, okay?”