Cam smiled slightly, the corners of his mouth lifting just the smallest of degrees, and there was something in his eyes that spoke louder, his eyes telling her he wasn’t thinking of Emily.
Jolted by his gaze, Lydia unraveled her legs and stood, heading back into the kitchen.
“Are you hungry?” Her eyes fixated on the cubbies in the kitchen where she kept take-out menus. She’d had the cubbies built into the kitchen when she’d done the remodel, and each had small chalkboard labels with fine brilliant white titles with what it contained. She plucked the handful of menus from their spot and spun around, her eyes never leaving the pamphlets in her hands. “Thai sounds good.”
“It must be something truly awful that you must ask of me for you to ignore me so much,” Cam said.
Lydia’s eyes shot up at his words, her pride stung. “I’m not ignoring you,” she said.
He followed her into the kitchen, and her skin prickled at his nearness.
“Avoiding me then.” He set down his whiskey glass on the peninsula and moved towards her.
She would not back up, but she did hold the take-out menus to her chest like some sort of shield.
“Why don’t you just ask me what it is you need, Lydia?” he said when he stood little more than two feet in front of her.
The look on his face, so soft, caring, inviting, coaxing, drew up a memory she had thought long suppressed.
He had sat here in this kitchen, on one of the metal and wood barstools at the peninsula. It was the morning after the wedding. He had been drinking a cup of tea that was so hot she could see the steam rise up from the cup. She had stood watching him in the doorway, unsure of how to walk in on the man who was now her husband. He had been wearing boxers, and they rode up on his thighs as he rested his heels against the stool. The paper had been spread out in front of him, and he had been studying it until suddenly he turned. Lydia still was not sure if she had made a noise or if he had just sensed her, but he had turned toward her, his sleepy face relaxing into a sleepy grin. The look so much like the one he wore now.
Such a simple memory and yet—
And yet she burned with the intensity of it. Burned with the intensity of his closeness, with his utter presence once more in her life. When he had been nothing more than an idea in her mind, a person that existed as a part of her life, but not in her life, she had been able to ignore him. But not now. Now he stood in front of her, a virile man that could still pull at the senses she tried so hard to control.
With that simple look, she was undone. The tension she had been riding as a protective barrier between her and her youthful, naive mistake broke, her rioting feelings spilling out like a drunken bachelorette party from a rented limousine.
Lydia waited, not daring to move and not daring to think. If she thought, she would realize her heart raced with anticipation. She would realize that her stomach churned with need. She would realize that she wanted him this close, that she wanted him closer, that she wanted him—
He kissed her.
Tears came instantly to her eyes with the memory of his touch, his smell, his taste. She closed her eyes and sprang into it, sprang at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him closer as her shield of take-out menus crashed to the floor. His arms slid around her dragging her up the length of him. He was solid and warm and good. She forgot if her heart raced or even beat at all, because his mouth devoured hers in a way she would never forget. This was her husband. She had loved him enough once to commit the rest of her life to him. And she had loved him enough once to let him go.
She shoved him away so hard her back collided with the built-ins behind her. Her breath rioted in and out, but Cam looked just as shaken, his lips red and his chest heaving. But then he smiled. It was that slow sure smile he always gave her right before he would say something that would make her want to hit him.
“There’s the woman I fell in love with at Quincy’s Pub.”
Cam did not disappoint.
“I don’t recall you using that fucking trick to get my attention at Quincy’s,” she finally said when she thought her voice would be steady enough for it.
He laughed, the sound once more too pleasant and familiar. He moved, and she wanted to back away, even though there was nowhere for her to go. But Cam simply walked past her to the sink and turned on the water. He pooled water in his hands and splashed it on his face, around his neck and ran his fingers through his mussed hair. The effect was slightly mollifying, but his hair stayed mussed. Only now it was wet and mussed.
Lydia eased away from him, her fingers trailing the cool surface of the marble counter top. Her kitchen had always been a room where she went to soothe her emotions and her mind. Its dark cherry cabinets, contrasting counter tops, gleaming pots and pans she never used suspended from the ceiling in an artful arrangement. But now someone had come too close, and nothing about her kitchen would be soothing any longer.
“No matter how many times I take that flight from Gatwick to Logan, I cannot get used to how grimy the airplane seats make me feel,” Cam said.
He looked at her with a grin and shook his head. Water droplets sprayed, and she held up a hand as if to deflect them. He grinned harder at her and reached for a paper towel. He started toweling himself off but stopped suddenly. Lydia was not sure why because she had not spoken since he had grabbed her.
“I kissed you, Ms. Baxter. You needn’t stand there biting off your tongue in shame.” He grabbed another paper towel, ran it along the back of his neck. “I just wanted to see if the woman I married was still inside of this cool, matronly woman who answered the door of your townhouse.”
There it was again. The Cam she wanted to throttle.
“Fuck you.” She glared at him as she bent to retrieve the dropped pamphlets, scooping them into a pile on the floor.
“You always had a little too much class,” he said on a fading laugh, but she got the feeling that he was speaking more to himself than to her.
She did not like the way his accent lengthened the A and made her feel inferior in its archness. She stood.
“I would beg to differ on that point. I do not believe anyone can have a little too much class.” The last word was flat and American, and Lydia stuffed the menus back in their cubby.
She had never expected to feel uncomfortable in his presence, and she was not sure if that was what she felt now. Her emotions were such a roiling mess, and he had not helped her when he kissed her. She should have been angry with him about that, but it had been so long…so long since…
Well, anything.
Since Cam surely, but since Cam there had been frighteningly little with which to distract herself. She could have dwelt on that, or she could have convinced her husband to help her.
“Cam, please take a seat.” She gestured to the stools at the peninsula.
“I’d rather stand, thanks. I sat for seven hours across the Atlantic. My legs would rebel if I sat now.”
Lydia thought about the disadvantage of having him stand through this. He was six foot two and counting, and his shoulders intimidated doorways. After having shoved him out the door a mere four months after their marriage, she did not feel at all certain that he would be receptive to what she was about to say.
But then why had he immediately gotten on a plane to come to Boston? She had sent the email a scant three days before, and he was already here. How much had he paid for that plane ticket?
“So get on with it. What is it that you’ve dragged me this far to ask me? You know we have telephones now. They can cross the length and breadth of the biggest ocean, and you feel as if the person is standing right there in front of you,” Cam said, gesturing with the crumpled paper towels he held in his hand.
She had been lost in her own thoughts, but her vision suddenly focused on him. Cam held his arms aloft still, and she recalled a long ago time when Cam had swept her in with his big stories and his bigger storytelling ways. He winked at her, and she knew he was remembering the sa
me thing. She cleared her throat.
“I need you to be my husband,” she said.
Cam wasn’t sure he had heard her right.
“I’m sorry?” he said, although the words sounded strained and unnecessary in his head.
“I need you to be my husband,” Lydia said again, and Cam straightened, turning ever so slightly to the side as he let the words flow over him.
Five years ago he had walked out of this house, walked out of the life he had so newly created, and away from the wife he loved with more of his heart than he had ever loved another thing. And all because he thought it would make her happy, the only thing that could possibly make her happy. It was all that he had wanted to do from the moment he had met her in that bar down on Arlington. He wanted to take care of Lydia Baxter then, and he wanted to take care of her now.
That was why he had boarded a plane in London at a simple email from his estranged wife.
“The last I knew of it, lass, I still am your husband.” He turned back to her. “Unless you’ve seen to make that something else in the time we’ve been apart.”
Lydia was quick to shake her head, and it had him straightening more, this time in wariness instead of curiosity.
“No, of course, I didn’t,” she said. “It’s just that…well, it’s about…”
Her hands fluttered against the pearl at her neck, the gesture unlike her in its indecision. Cam’s eyes riveted to the line of her mouth, the arch of her fine brows, the way her defined cheekbones set off the sweep of her high brow, and long waves of dark hair. God, she was beautiful. Always had been, and probably always would be, and he could only stare. He hoped she would never find the words, and they would be locked in that moment forever. What a beautiful thing that would be.
But she said, “I could land the biggest client Baxter’s of Newbury has ever seen if I just appear to be a happily married woman of good morals.”
Cam blinked. “That sounds completely ludicrous.”
Lydia closed her eyes, hands clasped to her chest in a move best suited to a Shakespearean stage.
“I know it does, and I know this whole fucking thing just sounds totally absurd, but please, Cam.” She opened her eyes, and he was lost.
It was that simple. A look from her was all that it took, but when she asked for his help, well, he was a goner.
But he had been burned once by Lydia Baxter, and he wasn’t about to let it happen again. The business man in him perked up, his head maneuvering around the subtleties of negotiation.
“What is it exactly that you need me for?” He took a step back and then another, his hands going into the pockets of his trousers as he made his way to a bar stool at the peninsula.
When he turned around, Lydia had relinquished her dramatic clasp of hands.
“I need you to pretend to be my husband.” Her face cleared.
For a moment when he had stood before her, he was certain he had her. That she had seen him for the person he was and not the person she had made him out to be in her mind. It had been a moment of euphoria for him, but it appeared to have been a fleeting one.
Her face tensed suddenly, her defined cheekbones going taut and even more pronounced with her focus.
“I am your husband,” he said weakly. “In case you have forgotten.”
Lydia stumbled forward, her step unsure in a way he had rarely witnessed. In fact, he could say for fairly certain that the only other time he had seen it falter like that was the night they had met during a pub crawl, and then it had been the consumption of alcohol that had made her falter and not him.
“I mean, I need you to act the role of husband for real.” She stopped on the other side of the peninsula.
Her eyes were alight with a drive he knew only came from one source: the need to prove her father, Edward Baxter, wrong. Cam sighed. It was an involuntary thing, but just then, he didn’t have anything else in him. It had always been Cam versus the great Edward Baxter in Lydia’s mind, and Cam had always been on the losing end of that battle. Lydia’s endless desire to show her father that women could be just as successful in business as the great Edward Baxter, was something Cam could only understand at the surface. Lydia was driven, of that there was no doubt. But there was something about her drive being exclusive of everything else that bothered him. Her desire didn’t leave room for much else, including her husband.
“I am your husband for real.” He slid his now empty whiskey glass from hand to hand along the counter. “However, if you wish to elaborate on that topic, I am happy to listen.”
Lydia placed her hands on the marble countertop with a snap. “I have the chance to land an account so large, it will put Baxter’s of Newbury in every bridal magazine and on the lips of every designer for years to come. I need this account, Cam. But—”
He watched her face, the light dancing in her eyes. “But?” he prompted when she didn’t speak.
“The mother, the mother of the bride that is, she’s rather eccentric. Old-fashioned even, and she wants to do business with a boutique that meets her ethical standards.”
He let a grin slip to his lips, his eyebrow going up ever so slightly. “I do not call you and your friends the fearsome threesome lightly, lady wife. Does this eccentric mother of the bride know the person she is dealing with?”
Lydia’s frown drew a single line between her eyebrows. “No, and she doesn’t need to know,” she all but snapped.
He smiled harder now. “Lydia Baxter, thwarted by a woman with standards,” he murmured, which earned him a glare.
“I need us to appear as a happily married couple, Cam,” Lydia went on. “Or she won’t let her daughter dress her wedding at my shop.”
“Happily married couple,” Cam repeated. “I’m not sure exactly what that is.” He leaned his head on his hand as he rested his bent elbow on the counter top. “Perhaps you can illustrate what that means for me.”
“Cam, I need you to be a fucking grown up for just a minute,” she said, her voice flat and harsh.
He raised an eyebrow, not surprised by her comment at the same time he wished he were.
“Oh, we’re bringing up that subject now too, are we?” he said, getting up from the stool to help himself to more whiskey. “Why don’t we air out all the topics that put Lydia Baxter’s panties in a twist? If we get them all out of the way, we can enjoy a peaceful evening of Thai take-away and a glass of fine wine with a name more complicated than its taste, and then Lydia Baxter will feel comfortable in her own skin. Because God himself knows, it’s all about Lydia Baxter.”
He reached for his glass to take a swig of whiskey only to remember it was empty. Staring into the empty glass, he wondered for a moment from where that outburst had come and just how much of it were true. In the nearly five years he had known Lydia Baxter, never once had he pointed out her selfishness. He had just accepted it, made a part of the problem that he so ardently worked to resolve. For Cam knew that Lydia’s narrow focus caused much of her grief, but he couldn’t figure out a way to fix it.
Now he had another chance. She had given him another chance. He turned to look at her, his vision cleared from the momentary haze of truth. He found her where she was, her hands splayed across the countertop, her fingertips white as she pushed her hands into the cold marble. The rain beat down all around them, little pulses of sound echoing through the silence, the fading light of late afternoon pushing its way into the room only to be stopped in the waterfall of rain.
But her face.
Her face had gone blank, her eyes empty and her mouth slack. It was a look he had only seen one other time on her face. The day he had left. The day he had finally made Lydia Baxter speechless.
He sighed again.
“Let’s make it pizza,” he said and poured himself more whiskey. “Who exactly is this eccentric mother of the bride that requires such an ethically upright bridal boutique?”
“Evelyn Hatfield.” Her voice was so soft he almost didn’t catch it.
But he�
��d heard it, and his stomach clenched at the sound of the Hatfield name spoken by another.
“Evelyn Hatfield?” he asked, feeling his throat grow narrower and narrower.
She blinked, her gaze finally focusing on him once more.
“Yeah, of the Hatfield Hotels family,” she said.
His throat all but closed. “Ronald Hatfield’s wife?”
Lydia had stilled, her body a quiet rendering in the rain-dappled light that struggled through the bay window in the kitchen.
“Yes,” she said, her voice nearly as still as her body.
With that single word, Cam knew that he would fail Lydia Baxter once more.
Two
Lydia stuffed the third slice of meat lovers pizza in her mouth, chewing so voraciously she was sure her jaw would snap off with the effort.
“Explain it to me again,” she said after she swallowed the bite.
“I bought a property development out from under Hatfield about a month ago. Swooped in and stole it right from under his nose while he was tanning in the Bahamas. Never saw it coming.”
Cam took a swig of the pale ale she had found in the back of her fridge from a late summer get together with Shannon and Emily.
“Stole?” she decided to say, thinking this may be the part where she required further explanation.
After all, real estate was a tricky business. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as Cam made it sound.
Or maybe it was worse.
She was already in a precarious position. A well-known, wealthy family with not one but three daughters wanted to obtain the complete wedding party’s attire from Baxter’s of Newbury for their oldest daughter, and Lydia simply had to show them that she operated a respectable firm with which to do business. That Baxter’s not only had the most fashionable and well known designs, but that it was also dependable and reputable. It would seem easy as Lydia already had a husband she kept tucked away in a storage bin under her bed, and she had thought she could just whip him out, steam him up a bit, and parade him about in front of the Hatfields. This would land her the account, and all of the great business that was sure to come with it.
When She Falls Page 2