“Oh, Cameron, why do I have these dogs?”
His mum never failed to ask the same question nearly every day, and Cam only smiled. His mum had always accessorized with dogs, but when his da had died three years ago, the dogs had multiplied. He figured coping with a loss like that with an explosion of canines was healthier than the alternatives. So he had contributed with his own Westie, whom she had promptly named Puddles, because he had a love of jumping in them and getting thoroughly sodden. Puddles was a bit more demure than the Corgis and could often be found lounging on a chaise or sofa somewhere rather than tagging along after this mum.
“Because you love them,” Cam replied. “Where is Puddles today?”
His mum laughed, the sound vibrant in the quiet space of the townhouse.
“He’s on the chair by the front door. Joseph always drops the market order on Saturdays, and he’s waiting for him.”
The gardeners gathered around the fountain that took up the center of the courtyard, each picking at a part of the facade that Cam thought was already immaculate but apparently required attention.
“Just be careful, Cam,” his mum said. “You know what she’s like.”
He did know what she was like, and that was the reason he was here, wasn’t it? He was here to take care of the wayward Lydia Baxter. While her drive for success might sustain her for now, he knew at some point, she would find the crash, the inevitable crash when one meets one’s hero, when one achieves the single goal that has consumed one for too long and finds it isn’t enough. Cam had always sworn to be there when it happened, to take care of Lydia, pick up the pieces. She had just given him the chance to come back.
“I’ll be careful, Mum.” They exchanged good byes just as the sound of Puddles erupting into barking echoed through the phone.
The day was stretching into late morning. Lydia had been at the shop for several hours now, but in his mind, he still saw her. Standing there, her slim arms covering her torso, the water glistening down her body, shimmering along like the hands of a lover. It had taken everything he had to turn around and walk away when he’d seen her like that. When he had come back to the townhouse, he had thought she would have gone to shower and get ready to go, but he had also expected her to close the door.
The music, on the other hand, was a rather interesting surprise.
In the brief duration of their marriage, Cam had only heard the usual suspects when he was in Lydia’s presence. Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and her favorite, Chopin. It had not been Melissa Etheridge, and Lydia never sang along. He stood there watching the gardeners busy with their work and pondered what he would do with that little nugget.
He glanced at his watch. It was nearly eleven, and there were several land surveys he needed to review. But the day was warm and bright after several days of rain, and his body itched for movement. He glanced at his watch again.
Perhaps his wife would need some lunch.
Some days Lydia truly wished matricide was legal. Or maybe, just legal when it was deserved.
“Lydia. Dear. The Feinsteins are here.”
Her mother rushed into the back room where Lydia kept a desk, her speech in the stilted pattern it assumed when her mother felt particularly heightened. Lydia put down the stock receipts she was reviewing and looked up at the clock.
“They’re early,” she said. “Can you put them in the green room and offer them some refreshment? I’ll be in shortly.”
The first three appointments of the day had already been rather disastrous, and Lydia was not ready to start in on this one. The first one had been a no show, the second had been an all-out war between a mother and a stepmother, and the third was currently in the fitting rooms arguing over how much breast it was appropriate to show.
“But Lydia, it’s the Feinsteins,” her mother stressed.
Lydia finally looked up from the paperwork in her hand, willing her face to remain neutral, her back straight, shoulders even. Her mother stood a mere five foot four in solid heels, her graying hair long in careful waves along her face, her brown eyes not as bright as they once were. But the thing that annoyed Lydia the most about Annette Baxter, was her too big smile. For such a petite woman, she had a megawatt smile that stretched from one side of her face to the other. It should have been beautiful, beckoning, alluring. But Lydia had always hated it because it never reached her mother’s eyes.
With a nearly silent sigh, Lydia stood.
“All right,” she said. “As with every party that arrives, I will drop what I am doing and treat them like a royal family,” she muttered.
“Don’t mutter, Lydia,” Annette said. “It’s unbecoming.”
“What if I stick my tongue out?”
“Don’t get fresh.”
Her mother spun around and left the office, her heels clicking on the wooden floor.
Lydia drew in a deep breath. It was always the same with her mother, and it always would be. Lydia had no doubt of that, and she took a few more deep breaths to set herself.
“Lydia Baxter!”
Lydia jumped, knocking the stock receipts off the table that she used for a desk, sending the ream of paper scattering. She turned to see her assistant, Shelly Bancroft, short, angular in features with giant thick rimmed glasses.
“What is it?” Lydia hissed.
“Cam McCray just walked in!”
Shelly had been working at Baxter’s of Newbury long enough to know exactly who Cam McCray was. She had also been working there long enough to see a reaction when Lydia made none.
“Holy monkey trunks, you knew he was in the city!”
“Shhh!” Lydia hissed again, motioning at the door as she dragged her assistant through it.
She closed the door nearly all the way, leaving only a crack through which to peer.
“You did know he was in town, and you are not at all surprised that he would show up here!”
“Shelly, calm down. It’s only my husband.”
Shelly actually jumped up and down, her arms flailing in excitement, which in the small room could have proven deadly.
“That’s exactly why I can’t calm down. It’s your husband! You’re smoking hot, incredibly sexy with his hi there lassie accent husband! I can’t calm down!”
This entire outburst was carried out sotto voce, and Lydia didn’t bother to turn around to take in any more of Shelly’s well-rehearsed theatrics. She couldn’t see much through the crack in the door as it was blocked by the racks of new arrivals they kept near the front of the shop.
“Um, Lydia?”
Now Lydia did turn around at the remarkably pleasant tone in Shelly’s voice.
“Your mother is out there.” Shelly pointed to the room beyond.
“Shit.” Lydia bolted through the door.
But it was too late.
Annette Baxter had found him.
“Cam McCray!” came her mother’s carefully articulated cry. “You’re in Boston.”
“That I am, lassie,” came the reply.
Lydia stopped to roll her eyes at a rack of Jennifer Whiting bridesmaid gowns. There really must be a dimmer switch for that accent.
“You look just as good as the last time I saw you, Cam,” her mother went on.
Lydia picked up her pace, dodging the shelves of bridal shoes and coming around the dais where brides stood in front of a panel of mirrors and inescapably felt like Cinderella.
“You still know how to dress, don’t you?” her mother said now.
Lydia gritted her teeth, feeling the muscles along her jaw vibrate. The last thing she needed today was a reminder from her mother at just how badly she had erred when selecting her husband. Lydia had been twenty-five for God’s sake. She wasn’t thinking long term potential. She was thinking potential for right now.
She finally made it around the last display of gloves, and there they were. Cam and her mother. Cam slouched with his hands in his pockets, his hair a spray of locks, and pants looking as if he had pulled them from atop the crus
hed laundry bin. And her mother, that fake smiled plastered from here to eternity. No, Lydia did not need this today.
“What brings you to Boston, Cam?”
Lydia did not miss the note of disdain in her mother’s voice. The way it fluctuated just at the end, the emphasis on his name.
“Cam is here on business.” Lydia kept her voice strictly even as she slowed her pace until she reached them.
Her mother turned, her hair swinging in a perfect arc. “Oh, Lydia,” her mother beamed. “Your husband is here.”
Her mother was good at the subtle clues, the inflection in tone, the emphasis on certain words. She always managed to sound perfectly sincere, but Lydia knew better.
“Yes, I see that.” Lydia smiled at Cam but not too much. “Annette, will you get that refreshment for the Feinsteins, please?”
Annette blinked at her as if they had not just had a conversation regarding the Feinsteins and their incredible importance.
“Feinstein. The eleven thirty appointment,” Lydia prompted.
Annette continued to blink.
Cam finally said, “Mrs. Baxter, I was hoping to take Lydia out to lunch so we could talk.”
Lydia looked sharply at him, but Annette lit up like a Christmas tree in July.
“Oh, how lovely. Well, then I’d better hurry the Feinsteins along.”
Lydia looked back at her mother, feeling not unlike an abused ping-pong ball. Her mother gave one of her flitty waves and traipsed off in the direction of the Feinsteins. Lydia turned back to Cam, a glare firmly affixed to her face.
“Why did you have to tell her that?” Lydia asked, forcing her voice to remain neutral.
Cam looked directly at her, his hot gaze slicing through her center, and she realized it was the first time they had seen each other since that terrible encounter that morning in her bathroom. Or perhaps their bathroom as they were sharing it.
No, it was still her bathroom.
Seconds passed, and he only looked at her. Once more, she wanted to flay her arms in front of her as if to cover herself, but she was perfectly clothed in a cream and pink sheath. She had on her best pearls and pink heels the exact shade of the accents in the sheath. Her fingers twitched, wanting to reach up and smooth the chignon she had twisted her long hair into, but the motion would have given too much away.
Cam kept staring.
“What is it that you had thought to tell her about me suddenly reappearing in your life?” Cam asked.
Lydia blinked at him. “I had thought you wouldn’t see her at all.”
Cam’s face changed. The motion was small, and it was mostly a loosening of the skin along his eyes, a sort of fall without a fall.
“That sounds about right,” he said. “How about some lunch then?”
He rocked back on his heels, his eyes going wide as he put on an overly chipper smile as if to coax her into something he knew she really didn’t want to do.
“I’ll order something,” she said. “I have an appointment.”
She turned to walk away from him, but a hand on her arm stopped her. She looked down, down at the place where his touch burned her. She wanted to shove him off, shove him away, but even more, she wanted to not feel his touch. She didn’t want it to thunder through her, make her heart race, her breath catch.
“You need to talk to me at some point, Lydia,” he said. “We live in the same house and yet I can honestly say I see the pope more than I see you.”
He stood so close to her she could smell him, sandalwood and soap. She wanted to lean forward, draw his scent deeper, tilt into him, feel his entire body against hers.
“Why do I need to talk to you?”
The question was ridiculous, but she hoped he didn’t notice.
He grinned. “Because it’s part of my counteroffer, and you made a deal. Lydia Baxter wouldn’t back out on a deal, would she?”
She hated that he knew which buttons to push.
“If dear old Dad were to find out…”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence because Lydia finished it in her head. It didn’t matter that her father would never hear of this awkward arrangement, of this farce of a deal she had made with her husband. The mere mention of Edward Baxter ever learning that his daughter did something less than aboveboard and amazing in the wheelings and dealings of business was enough to have her back up.
“Fine,” she said. “But it’s a quick one. My next appointment is at one.”
He relinquished his hand on her arm, and she hated how much she missed it.
“How does Quincy’s Pub sound?” Cam asked, the smirk once more on his face.
“Don’t push your luck, McCray.”
Four
“Sometimes I have a hard time believing you are actually my wife. How could I have nabbed someone as lovely as you?”
Lydia finished fastening her earring. She watched Cam’s reflection in the dressing mirror as he adjusted his bow tie.
“You happened to be in the right bar at the right time.” She took perverse pleasure in Cam’s responding frown.
“I like to think some of my outstanding charm and robust personality had something to do with it.”
Lydia turned from the dressing mirror and fully looked at him.
Standing there in a tuxedo, he did not remind her much of anything but a hunk. What had Shelly called him? Smoking hot. She frowned, but she couldn’t deny that the tuxedo, made of supple fine cloth, was so perfectly tailored it made start rethinking her life choices.
Lydia began to make bets with herself on how long it would take him to get it wrinkled.
“What charm?” She slid past him to go downstairs.
Her insides were a mess of anxiety, tension, nerves, and the turkey bacon avocado sandwich she’d had for lunch. The knots had knotted into themselves, and she was sure at any moment she would simply collapse from the agony. Tonight was the night she’d find out if this entire thing was going to work or not. Tonight Ronald Hatfield would either get in a brawl with Cam, or Cam would have Evelyn Hatfield swooning at his feet. Of the two options, she rather liked the idea of Cam getting his ass kicked, but she thought the second was more likely to help her put Baxter’s of Newbury on the map.
“What is this thing again, exactly?”
She would have jumped if she had not had such control of herself. She turned, not realizing Cam had followed her downstairs.
“It’s a charity dinner or gala or something,” she said, turning back toward the foyer and her wrap and bag that lay on the table just inside the door.
“What kind of dinner?”
The wrap was fine spun cashmere, and she wanted to hold it up to her cheek, run it along her skin to enjoy the exquisite feel of sensuous fabric. But Cam was watching. So she merely picked it up.
“What kind of food will they be serving or what is the charity?”
“Either I suppose.” Cam shrugged and took the wrap from her hands.
He deftly unfolded it and held it up, so she could step into it. She stared at him for a moment. The man she had picked up one night in a bar did not perform gallant gestures such as this.
“I’m not sure on the food,” she said, quickly stepping into the wrap, letting him drape it across her shoulders, “But the charity is Margo’s House. An after school program for refugees. It focuses on English as a second language and cultural immersion studies.”
She was halfway out the door when she realized Cam wasn’t following her.
“What?” he said when she finally looked at him.
“What do you mean what?”
All of her manners slipped out of her when she had conversations with Cam. Mrs. Hendersmith, the headmistress at the Franconia Notch School for Girls, would be so disappointed in her. She straightened her shoulders and held her head up higher as if to compensate for bad manners with good posture.
“I thought we were going to cure cancer or something.” He tossed his hands up as if to visually exemplify his frustration.
“Well, to the people who attend the school, it is like curing cancer. Can you imagine what it’s like being forced away from your home, thrust into another world, and being told this is the rest of your life?”
Cam’s face darkened. Lydia wasn’t sure if it was real or just a trick of the light, but he suddenly looked empathic. Cam had never looked empathic. At least, not that she could remember.
“Tell me about it.” He took her elbow to help her out the door.
Farmicelli’s was a North End staple, and tonight it was packed with elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen, all of the town’s big wigs, high rollers, and social elite. The restaurant took up the ground floor of a converted warehouse. The ceilings were twenty feet tall with ornate tin inlays, and the front wall had been replaced with sliding glass doors that looked out over the harbor. They were open tonight, and the thick sea air poured in.
The screech that reached them as they entered, though, did not quite fit in with the rest of the decor.
“Lydia, my absolute love!”
If Mrs. Hendersmith had done anything less than a stellar job, Lydia would have cringed at the glass-breaking sound.
Lydia held out her hands as Evelyn Hatfield flung herself at her. She was as wide as she was tall, and Lydia took the full force of the impact in her elbows. They exchanged elegant air kisses before Lydia was released from the terrifying greeting. Evelyn Hatfield was wealthy. Ridiculously wealthy. And powerful. She had many a state senator and a governor or two in her pocket.
But she did not understand what it meant to be wealthy.
Tonight it appeared she had taken down the wallpaper from her bathroom and was wearing it as a dress. Her hair was like tarnished silver with the texture of steel wool, and Lydia desperately wanted to give the woman a little boxed miracle from the hair aisle at the drug store. To top it off, Mrs. Hatfield wore absolutely no jewelry. What was the point of being ridiculously wealthy if you weren’t going to show it off with some bling?
When She Falls Page 5