Cam shook his head.
“So, basically, you want me to dog sit.”
Another shrug. “If you’re busy…”
“I’m not busy. But you might owe me another game of cards for this.” I might have been thinking a little bit that maybe if we played cards he might kiss me again, but I didn’t want him to know that.
He narrowed his eyes at me, but a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Cards, huh?”
“Please?” I almost told him how much I hoped maybe he’d kiss me again some time.
“Fine.” He sounded grumpy, but a flicker of a smile crossed his face, and I suspected he didn’t mind the suggestion. “This time I’m not letting you win.”
Cam went out then, and I was left alone in his house with the dogs. The little pups wriggled and nosed at their mother, their soft fur and rounded snouts making my heart melt every time I looked at them. The mother dog was exhausted, I could tell. “I’m sure anyone would be tired,” I told her. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been going through—away from everyone you know, having to start again.” I let my hand smooth her matted coat. “Maybe I know a little bit. But you’ve got little ones to look out for too. And did you get in a fight? Did you meet the mountain lion?”
After a few minutes I stood up and stretched, and then let my eyes roam the living room. Cam’s house was comfortable, but not very personal. There were no photos on the walls, no knick-knacks or mementos on the shelves or countertops. The kitchen was clean and functional, and though I didn’t work up the nerve to check, I suspected his bedroom would be much the same. Cam lived in this house—had for a couple years, as I understood it—but the house had all the warmth of a briefly occupied hotel room. It made me feel a little bit hollow, looking around at the stark impersonal space—a little bit lonely on his behalf.
Cam was a mystery in a lot of ways. I guessed he didn’t share his beliefs about being cursed with most people, and I wondered if even his sister knew about that.
I should probably have been telling myself to let him be. But my own loneliness and curiosity prevented it. I knew I shouldn’t, but damn if I didn’t find myself wanting to save him, wishing I could shine some light inside the darkness that let him believe he could never get close to anyone again.
The big dog whimpered, and I returned to her side, laying a hand against her flank so she’d know I was still there. “It’s okay, girl.”
After about twenty minutes, Cam returned with a woman at his side. They stepped through the door as I stood up, and I recognized Annie immediately—the wild curls, the perfect dark skin, and the aura of fun that seemed to glow around her, shining from her almost-gold eyes.
“Harper?” she said, a wide grin breaking across her face as she walked toward me.
“Hi Annie,” I said, mirroring her smile. “It’s been forever.”
“Oh my God. I haven’t seen you since we were…”
“Like seven,” I told her.
She pulled me into a hug then, and I hugged my old friend back. It had been years—decades—that was true. But Annie and I had been co-conspirators as little girls, sharing secrets and having wild adventures together when we escaped our parents’ watchful eyes. I’d admit I hadn’t thought of her in a long time, but seeing her again felt like truly coming home in a way that just being in Kings Grove didn’t, in a way that seeing my father again definitely had not. Here was a piece of me, in this beautiful woman who I’d known as a little girl—here was a piece of my past that only she held. I had no siblings, and my childhood secrets were shared mostly with Annie, whispered promises and giggled ideas about everything from the salamanders we’d fish out of the stream to the someday weddings we dreamed about. Something loosened inside me when she hugged me, and I found myself feeling more centered than I’d ever managed to through any amount of yoga.
“It’s great to see you,” she said, and when Annie said something, you could tell she really meant it. Her authenticity radiated from her, making me feel included, understood.
“You too.”
“We’re going to have to catch up for real,” she said. “But first, I’d better take a look at mom dog over here.” Annie crossed the room and lowered herself next to the dogs. “Cam,” she said, as she picked up each pup and looked it over before replacing it at the big dog’s stomach, “I never pegged you for the soft-hearted rescue dog type.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” he said, settling in an armchair nearby.
“That’s not exactly true,” I said, earning myself a narrowed gaze from him. I plopped down in the chair next to him, watching Annie examine the bigger dog. “We heard the dog crying and howling, and he took her food and water. He pretends to be all tough and distant, but I suspect Cameron here has a pretty mushy interior under this hard shell.” I glanced at Cam and poked him in the arm. He looked surprised at my words, caught off guard.
“Guess you can think whatever you want,” he said, the hard edge of his voice missing.
“Thanks,” I teased, grinning at him.
I could tell he was trying not to let me in, didn’t want to smile, to banter, but I kept my smile aimed at him and after a few seconds, one side of his mouth lifted as he shook his head. Cameron was a tough nut to crack, but breaking through the protective barrier he erected around himself was a reward in itself—and I was a gold star kind of girl. Driven to achieve and to beat whatever challenges lay before me. Plus, when Cam smiled, my insides flipped over in a way I was coming to enjoy a lot.
“Mom’s dehydrated and probably exhausted,” Annie said. “And this wound definitely needs cleaning.” Annie went back to the door and picked up the medical bag she’d dropped there. She gave the dog a shot of something, “just to keep her calm,” she explained. And then she went to work, using a pan of warm water and some gauze to clean out the nasty gash on the dog’s tail end, and then stitching it up carefully after she’d shaved around the wound and injected some anesthetic. Finally, she smeared on some antibiotic ointment and covered the gash with a bandage. “You’ll need to change this each day,” she told Cam.
“If the dog will let me touch her,” he said, sounding doubtful.
“I can help,” I volunteered, kneeling by the dog’s head.
Annie attached the IV, and once the dog was resting, her babies nuzzling at her tummy, Cam offered us some coffee.
Seated around his small table, Annie said. “She doesn’t have a collar. You going to name her?”
“Don’t know that I’m keeping her,” Cam said.
“Well, you’re keeping her for six weeks or so,” Annie said with a mock-stern tone. “Until the pups are big enough to give away or sell. Might want to give her a name until then, at least.”
“Cinderella,” I suggested, shooting out the first thing that came to mind.
Cam wrinkled his nose at me. “No,” he said.
“Princess?” Annie suggested.
That wasn’t a good fit either though, and we all dismissed it almost immediately.
The conversation turned to other things, and Cam sat back as Annie and I caught up, though twenty years was hard to cover in fifteen minutes. She and I made plans to meet at the bar at the Inn later in the week, and then, when the IV was finished, Annie cleaned up and prepared to leave.
“I think you should keep her,” she told Cam.
“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Thanks for coming by, Annie.”
“Yeah, sorry I didn’t get your call,” she said. “I need to get that phone stitched to my hand or something.”
I stood as Annie got to her feet, trying to imagine a life in which my phone wasn’t basically glued to my fingertips. “Give me your number,” I suggested. “I’ll call you about this week.”
She did, and we spent a couple more minutes chatting.
When she’d gone, Cam walked me to the door. “Thanks,” he said, his voice low and warm. “I probably didn’t need to bother you, but I felt better not leaving her here alone.” He rubbed
his hand across the back of his neck, a habit I was coming to anticipate and like. “She won’t even let me near her though. Makes it hard to imagine her staying here for six weeks.”
I frowned. “She let me touch her.”
“A person would have to be crazy not to let you touch them if you wanted to.”
A little thrill ran through me at those words, and I lifted a hand, tempted to touch him again, to trace my hand down the line of tattoos snaking around his forearm. “She’s not a person. She’s a dog.” Our eyes met and our gazes held, heat smoldering between us.
“You know what I mean.” He didn’t break eye contact, and I felt like the world around us stopped, silenced, waiting to see what would happen.
“I know what I hope you mean,” I said, maybe telling him too much, admitting too much about the way I felt in his presence. I wanted him to touch me, to trace a finger down my jaw, to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. Anything. My breath was coming quicker as Cam inched nearer.
“Harper,” he said, his hand lifting, his face serious. His fingers were inches from the skin of my cheek and the moment seemed to hang there, my name floating between us, caught between his fingertips like rapidly dissolving strands of filament almost too fragile to be real. He let his hand drop slightly, and my heart fell with it.
“I—” I caught his hand with my own, my body moving to keep the closeness I felt between us before my mind had even planned to do so. I held his solid flesh in my own, felt the roughness and warmth of his skin as my fingers wrapped his, and I lifted his hand back to my face, leaning into the backs of his fingers as I pressed them into my cheek.
“What?” he asked, his voice a hushed shadow. He didn’t pull his hand away, and his blue eyes grew darker as they held mine.
“I’d like to get to know you better,” I told him, throwing caution to the wind. “I don’t know why, but I think about you when I’m up at the house, wonder what you’re doing. I find myself wishing I could come down and see you, spend time with you.” It came out in a whispered rush, half-truths and suggestions of the real feelings I couldn’t exactly explain and definitely couldn’t reveal. “I—“
He lifted his other hand to my chin and kissed me then, swallowing whatever words I’d been about to add. Our lips met in a rush, not softly but with a gentle urgency that conveyed everything we both had a hard time saying. His arms slipped around me, leaving my face and exploring my back, pressing me to him.
I melted into his embrace, my own hands finding smooth hard planes of muscle over his back, one palm finally wrapping deliciously around the back of the thick corded neck I’d been dying to touch. Our lips moved, our tongues touched, and our breaths mingled as my mind floated free in a way it never had when Andrew had kissed me.
My time with Andrew had been full of intent, mired in shared goals and pursuit of accomplishment. With Cam, all I felt I wanted was him. To know him, to understand him, to unburden him if I could.
We kissed for what felt like hours, our heartbeats matching as they found each other in our embrace, and when he finally pulled away, we were both breathing hard.
Cam’s fingers traced my cheek as his other hand kept me near. “Harper,” he breathed, and then he touched my forehead with his own and his eyes slid shut again.
I held onto him, allowing him the quiet of the moment, though my own body was screaming to press forward, to get more, to take more. When I could stand it no more, I pressed myself to him again, and his reaction was immediate. His arms pulled me into his solid body and together we moved to the long couch in the center of the living room where he laid me down and covered me with his weight.
I felt surrounded and protected in those long delicious moments on the couch in Cameron’s little house, as if my life had been narrowing in focus, funneling me slowly toward a single point. This. Here.
We explored one another, our clothing discarded in a pile on the floor beside us, and as we lay in each other’s arms, Cameron finally spoke, and the words were not what I’d expected to hear.
Chapter 11
CAMERON
God, I was weak. I’d just decided to keep my distance, and here I was, doing the exact opposite.
I lay with Harper in my arms on the couch in my living room and felt a disturbing blend of emotions welling up inside me. First was concern—there was a reason I didn’t get close to people, but telling Harper that seemed only to bring her nearer. And that was my fault, for not saying no. Beyond that? Guilt bubbled hot and sickening in my gut. What was I doing? I’d known this woman just over a week, and I’d let myself develop some teenaged infatuation. I was beyond this. I was—had been—a married man. Didn’t I owe to to my dead wife to at least ponder a new relationship more than a week? Didn’t I owe to it what we’d shared to avoid diving headfirst into anything else without really thinking about it? I felt sick and worried as I lay there, wishing I saw an easy way to undo what I’d just done.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, still physically unable to let her go. Her body was soft and warm, molded to mine in every way, matching me like a custom-cut joint with only one possible partner piece. Despite the feelings of self-hatred I was nursing, there were other feelings warring inside me, telling me to keep her close, not to let go of this warm comfort I’d found after years of cold solitude. But I knew I couldn’t.
She pulled her head up to look at me, confusion clear in her eyes, the wrinkle between her brows. “What?”
“We shouldn’t have done that,” I said, dropping her gaze but unable to release her from my arms, to give up her warmth yet. I’d hold her a few minutes longer, hang on to the way she felt nestled against me, tuck this feeling away and hope I could retrieve it later when the loneliness came back cold and icy. “This isn’t … I mean. This can’t happen again. I’m not …”
“You’re not what?” Her voice was more shrill. Was she getting angry? I wouldn’t blame her. God, I was an idiot.
“I can’t …”
She sat up then, her arms releasing me and her back straightening. She turned to face me as she sat on the edge of the couch. “Don’t you dare say this was a mistake. Don’t tell me it can’t happen again. Don’t become a cliché, Cam. Just spare me that much.”
But that was all true, except the mistake part. It was, maybe, but I’d never take it back. It was a delicious mistake I intended to remember for a long time. But not one I could repeat.
When I didn’t answer immediately, she went on, her voice deepening as she leaned toward me, her eyes never leaving mine. “I’ve wanted to do that from the moment I first met you,” she said. “I know it’s not cool for women to say things like that. I’m supposed to play the game, to be hard to get. But that’s not my style, and I don’t think it’s yours either. The fact is we’re attracted to one another, and lord knows we’ve got proximity on our side.” She waved a hand toward the house she was renting, just a few steps outside my front door. “We’re two consenting adults, so don’t you dare throw me lines about mistakes and regrets.”
She stood and pulled her panties back on, completely unaware that her defense of what we’d done, her complete dismissal of my self-loathing, and the way her body moved as she dressed herself had me wavering on the edge of doing it all over again. She pointed a finger at me. “I’m going to go back up to that big empty house now,” she said. “And I’m going to spend the day remembering exactly how fucking much I wanted this, so don’t you dare tell me that you’ll be down here regretting it. And I’ll tell you something else,” she continued. “I’ll be up there wondering when we might do it again. I’ll be thinking about where we might do it again too, considering options as I look around that oversized empty mausoleum up there. The big bathtub seems like an option, the master bedroom for sure. Maybe the front porch if the mosquitos aren’t too bad. Don’t you dare tell me this was a mistake, Cam. Because it wasn’t. It was fun, it was good, and if I have anything to say about it, we’ll be doing it again. Sooner rather than later.”
Harper’s cheeks were blazing red and her eyes were glassy. Her hair was falling down around her shoulders, perfectly messy and beautiful, and I realized then how much trouble I’d created. She was standing there, lecturing me about all the places she hoped we might have sex again, and I wished fervently that somehow it were all possible, that in some alternate timeline I could stop worrying about death, stop mourning, and just face forward and live. God, I wanted that, but something inside me made it impossible.
And wanting something didn’t change things.
I stood, still undressed, and parts of my body made it glaringly clear the effect Harper’s words had on me. And I surprised myself. I pulled her back into my arms, and then leaned down, scooping her up like a child with her legs dangling over one of my arms. And I carried her into my bedroom to repeat the mistake we’d just made.
“I thought you were busy being Mr. Regret,” Harper teased, running a finger over my chest as we lay in my bed late that morning after making a couple more mistakes of various kinds.
“You made a very convincing argument.”
“I do have a history of getting my way,” she said, her voice light and calm.
I tightened my arms around her. “You definitely had your way with me this morning.” Light banter didn’t come easily to me. I heard the forced sound of my own voice and cringed, hoping she didn’t notice.
“Why were you running away in the first place?” she asked. “What is it you keep here, locked up so tight?” She tapped a finger against my temple softly.
“Confusion is pulling me apart,” I admitted. “I’m worried about getting close—I told you that.”
“The curse,” she said softly, inviting more.
I didn’t make a habit of talking about feelings. I never had. “Yeah. And guilt,” I said, unable to explain more than I already had why I wanted to keep her away.
“Right.” She looked thoughtful, but she didn’t move out of my arms. She wasn’t giving up.
Love Reclaimed: (Clean Small-Town Romance) (Kings Grove Book 4) Page 11