“My mother has taken up residence in the Tuscany region of Italy and has apparently struck up an affair with a local.”
Lydia raised both eyebrows. “Scandalous.”
Cam smiled, but it was hesitant as if he were unsure of the person sitting across from him. Lydia was unsure of that person as well, so she didn’t fault him the hesitation.
“Even more so when your mother tries to talk to you about her sexual escapades.”
Lydia’s eyes went wide. “She does that?”
For a split second she thought of Annette Baxter sharing coitus secrets with her and nearly tossed up what little wine she had drank.
“She tries. Repeatedly and with great fervor, but I somehow always manage to deflect her.”
Lydia laughed at the way Cam wiggled his eyebrows as if to indicate his mad mother-deflecting skills.
“Homosapiens!”
Lydia spun around on her stool at the call and saw Tabitha strolling into the bar, arms outstretched as if she were dead set on giving her and Cam a hug in greeting. Lydia picked up her wine glass and held it in front of her like a shield.
“Are we ready for a little luau?”
Tabitha placed one hand on the vibrant print of her Hawaiian shirt and swung her hips hard enough to have her board shorts knocking back and forth. Cam saluted her with his whiskey.
“As ready as I’ll ever be!” he called across the bar.
Tabitha threw them two thumbs up before heading out of the bar in the direction of the courtyard.
Cam stood and took her elbow, and she let him lead her to the proverbial moment of truth. She faltered, her feet catching on the thick carpet.
“Cam,” she said, her grip tightening around her wine glass. “What if I can’t do it?”
He stopped and looked at her. The sight of his eyes crinkling at the corners somehow made her feel better.
“You can do it,” he said. “Just stay away from the koi pond.”
Fourteen
Stay away from the koi pond.
Seriously.
That wasn’t her fucking fault. She let it go as they stepped down into the courtyard of the Lockridge. The space was nearly filled with small tables covered in pristine white table clothes and circled in bamboo chairs. There looked to be at least three tiki bars set up with thatched roofs and copious amounts of tiny umbrellas and pineapple wedges. Lydia tilted her head back, taking in the night sky and the blanket of stars that swarmed it. Evelyn Hatfield seemed to have commanded the weather as well on her birthday. Lydia was not at all surprised.
They took a table near the side, and Lydia set her wine glass on the table before her, watching the other partygoers mingle and fight for space at one of the bars. The crowd seemed thicker tonight than it had earlier at the croquet match. It seemed croquet had a smaller fan club than luaus. Lydia guessed everyone was up for a luau with enough rum in them.
“How many people do these Hatfields know?” Cam asked, seeming to read her mind.
Lydia shrugged, which left a twinge reverberating through her shoulder, and she made a mental note not to do that again.
“All of them,” she said, and Cam gave a responding grunt.
A young girl raced by them, dashing between the tables as her turquoise dress flew out behind her like a sail. The image was startling in the sea of cheesy Hawaiian shirts and tiny umbrellas, and for whatever reason, an image from their wedding popped into Lydia’s mind.
“Remember our flower girl?” she asked before she’d thought better of it.
Cam swiveled in his seat just enough to look fully at her. “What’s brought this up?”
Lydia shrugged, again wincing, and now deciding drinking more wine would help the situation.
“That little girl that just ran past reminded me of her.”
“Wasn’t she a cousin or something?” Cam scratched his head.
“My cousin’s husband’s niece’s stepdaughter.” A small laugh slipped through her lips. “We couldn’t even find a proper flower girl within the family. We had to take one that had married in.” She laughed harder, remembering how difficult it had been to find a girl of a suitable age to play the part. Sometimes being an only child presented interesting problems. Flower girls were apparently one of them.
“All I can remember was the cake.”
Lydia snorted. She quickly covered the lower half of her face with her hands as the sound emerged, casting a wary glance at Cam. The cake could still make her laugh even without Cam there to recall it. Sometimes she would just be going along her day, and her wedding cake would pop into her head and a laugh would pop out.
“The blue frosting?”
“That cake was better suited for a 1980s roller skating rink.”
Lydia laughed harder now, so hard it made her shoulder throb. “It wasn’t supposed to be that…blue!” she ended on a burst of laughter.
Cam was laughing, too, now, wiping tears of laughter from the corners of his eyes. “And the band.”
Lydia couldn’t help it. She straightened up and reached for the linen napkin set at her place at the small table. Whisking it off the table, she opened it to dab at her streaming eyes.
“They played that song from those teenage girl pop stars as the opening song,” she croaked.
“And they were all a bunch of lads,” Cam said. “Didn’t make sense that.”
Lydia let the laughter ease out of her, taking with it a tension she had been carrying for nearly five years. A tension she hadn’t known she’d let into her, let pool along her shoulders and neck, in her stomach and most importantly, her heart.
The laughter stopped suddenly as Cam caught her eye, and in that moment, the rest of the night fell away. It was just them, sitting next to each other, sharing a memory that had meaning only to them.
In the quiet, Lydia realized she wanted to kiss him. This man she shared so many memories with, so many of life’s moments with. But Lydia Baxter would never kiss someone in public, not at a gathering like this.
Lydia moved closer, ran her hand along Cam’s jaw, felt the scrape of his beard. She kissed him. The smallest brush of lips, the taste of each other sliding past, and nothing more. She pulled back, but then Cam’s hand was at the back of her neck, urging her forward, and she slid into him. His lips found hers in an explosion of sensation, taste, and memory. There was the hint of the whiskey, the pull of his heat, the feel of his stubble against her cheeks.
She leaned in as far as her seat would let her, her hands going to his shoulders, threading through his hair as she reached up, pulled him closer. All thoughts of decorum fled as the taste of her husband melted into her, as the feel of his hands along the bare skin of her neck and shoulders thundered through her. God, it felt so fucking good to feel him, to feel this, to just feel.
“Whoa, get a couch!”
Lydia broke away, pulling back so fast she nearly fell off her chair. Tabitha and Stacy stood on the other side of the table, colorful drinks adorned with matching tiny umbrellas in hand.
“You’re like a couple of teenagers,” Stacy giggled, taking a sip of her neon green drink.
Cam let out tumble of laughter, slapping his hands on his thighs. “And you both are just jealous that a bum like me snagged such a beautiful lady.”
Tabitha saluted him with her drink.
“Nailed it!” she said. “Hey, are you two competing in the games?”
Lydia’s shoulder gave an involuntary tug at the word games.
“We are always up for a good game. Right, lassie?” He cast his gaze in Lydia’s direction.
Lydia’s shoulder, again, did not think so. But if she needed to woo one Hatfield, she needed to woo them all.
“Yes, always,” she said.
“Radical,” Tabitha said with a bob of her head before signaling to someone over the top of Lydia’s head. “You game, Becky Necky?”
Lydia spun around in her seat, her eyes flying to the young woman seated at the table directly behind them. Rebecca stared
back at her, her eyes vacant dark pools, unreadable in the dim light of the courtyard. Lydia wanted to vault out of her seat and run away as her brain calculated the possibility of Rebecca having seen her nearly devour her fucking husband in the middle of a fucking social gathering.
Fuck.
It wasn’t until her heart stopped racing that Lydia noticed Rebecca was alone at the table behind them.
Double fuck.
A warm sensation cupped her bare knee, and she looked down to see Cam’s hand squeezing her leg. She looked up. His expression was still smiling and calm.
“I’m sure Rebecca would love to join us. Eric, too,” Cam said softly, his accent thick and manly.
Lydia winced at the mention of Eric and his obvious absence, but as if he’d heard them, he suddenly appeared, a glass of wine in one hand and a fruity drink in the other.
“Uh oh, talking about me when I was gone, eh?” Eric said with a squiggle of eyebrows behind his thick glasses. “I told you it was okay to expound on my virtues when I’m present.”
Lydia blinked. It was the first time she had heard Eric Flickinger try to be funny since she had met the man. And it was nearly genuinely funny.
Cam laughed, so it either was truly funny or Cam merely felt bad for the young man. She cast a quick peek at Cam, wondering why it was she had missed his tender side. His ability to communicate with everyone and make anyone feel comfortable in a situation that may not lend itself to such.
“We’re going to sign up for the after dinner games. You in?” Tabitha called across the tables.
Eric raised his drink. “Yeah, I’m in.” He gave a disturbing little wiggle of his hips.
The oddest thing happened at that moment. A thing so strange Lydia feared her heart might stop beating.
Rebecca Hatfield smiled.
She smiled a sincere, warm smile that almost, almost, showed her teeth.
Lydia realized she was grinding her own teeth and quickly stopped as she blinked at Rebecca Hatfield.
“I think games would be fun,” the young woman in question said, and Lydia was certain her fucking heart had stopped.
“Righteous,” Tabitha said.
The group said their goodbyes just as waiters began emerging from the main house carrying trays of food. Everyone settled into their seats as buckets of spare ribs, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, and cornbread were set on the tables. Everything literally came in a fucking bucket, and Lydia sat back, staring at the array of food on the table.
“I’m not from any locale that may be considered tropical,” Cam said, “but is this typical luau fare?”
Lydia shook her head, snatching up her wine glass before the waiter could knock it over with a sizzling cast iron pan of cornbread.
“This must be the cookout part Stacy was talking about. I’m guessing Evelyn Hatfield likes her some home cooking,” Lydia said, trying her best at a Southern accent, which failed miserably and made her sound like she was trying to shed her Massachusetts accent using a weed whacker.
When Cam laughed again, Lydia focused on his face. Watched the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, his mouth opened to a smile genuine and wide.
For a moment, she could forget how sad he had looked.
Cam poked at the remainder of spare rib on his plate and thought back four weeks to the email Lydia had sent him. An email. Not a phone call. And wondered if when he’d read that email, he had ever imagined he would be at a luau in the Berkshires enjoying some fine Southern barbecue.
He thought not.
A band had started playing when the dessert course was served. It was some kind of banana and cream concoction that Lydia said was sometimes called a slush cake. Cam called it good and ate it while the band played songs heavy on the steel drum. The night buzzed around them with people of all kinds drinking, eating, and even dancing. Eric and Rebecca had remained at the table behind them where Tabitha and Stacy had joined them after the first round of buckets had been placed on the table.
Every once in a while Cam would sneak a look and saw Rebecca smiling for the first time in weeks. Perhaps Tabitha was a good influence on her older sister, or if Cam were feeling generous, he would take credit for her sudden seeming happiness. He stole a glance at Rebecca now. Had what he said in the bar made any difference to her? It certainly had to him. He moved his gaze to Lydia, picking at a piece of cornbread on her plate, her gaze moving about the crowd.
She looked so…beautiful, sitting in a wrap dress plastered in fronds and neon flowers, shoulder just beginning to bruise, hair swept up, surrounded by barbecue debris and a steel drum band. She looked like she should have been on the cover of Vogue and not sitting next to him. Had he told Rebecca the truth? That there was a connection there even if one couldn’t see it?
He hoped to hell that was true or else everything he had done until now, everything he had tried to do to help Lydia, meant nothing.
Lydia was right. There were from two different worlds. Sure, they both ran successful businesses, were raised in a family of entrepreneurs and given certain expectations to fulfill in those terms.
But that was it right there.
They were given different expectations.
Lydia had her own illusions as to what Edward Baxter required of his daughter while Cam had had to make it up as he went along. He thought he had done his da proud, but who was to tell? He looked up at the night sky, taking in the stars, trying to find the brightest one thinking that was where his father might have taken up a seat for the show.
Cam lowered his gaze, shaking his head.
He was on his own in this, and on his own is how he did it best.
He caught Lydia staring at him, and he smiled belatedly. “How’s the cornbread?”
“You’re making that face again,” she said without answering his question.
He knew what she meant, but he smiled harder, avoiding the question.
“I wonder what the games are,” he said, deflecting her inquisitiveness.
As if his da really were looking down from the brightest star, the band cut the music as a man stepped up to the microphone.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!” he cried into the microphone.
The man was skinny and short with animated features and long, gangly arms that swung the microphone as the crowd erupted.
“Let’s wish a gigantic happy birthday to Evelyn Hatfield!”
More eruption from the crowd.
“Who’s ready for the fun and games part of this night of wonder?”
Cam rolled his eyes as Lydia snorted. They looked at each other, a moment passing unspoken between them that radiated something like hope for Cam.
“For those of you brave enough, it’s time to step forward on the dance floor with your partner and get ready for the challenges ahead.”
A sound effect like that of an exploding volcano reverberated through the speakers, and the crowd laughed and hollered again.
Cam stood, taking Lydia’s hand as the couples at the table behind them stood and made their way to the dance floor. They stood in awkward clusters like teens at homecoming while the rest of the brave players trickled onto the floor.
Finally, the emcee cried into the microphone, “Who is ready for your first challenge?” and held up an orange.
A single orange.
Cam looked at Lydia who only shrugged, and he saw her wince. He put his hand gently on the shoulder that had taken the brunt of the mallet swing earlier, and she smiled softly at him. Again, that feeling of being alone with her swamped him, and he had to look away.
“You will group yourselves into teams of six and line up in rows. The orange will start under the neck of the person first in line, and you must pass the orange to the person at the very end. The team with the orange that reaches the end of the line first wins!”
The crowd whooped and hollered while the players looked about. Tabitha strode up to them, dragging Rebecca behind her.
“We’re all a team, right?” she yelled
over the noise.
Cam nodded as Lydia smiled. He could see the tension in her eyes and knew for certain she was hating every moment of this, but that she wouldn’t stop because the outcome could mean finally proving her father wrong.
Eric and Stacy sauntered up behind them and the six of them lined up, Lydia and Cam at the very end.
“Now here is the tricky part, mi amigos, you can’t use your hands!”
Cam knew this was coming, but the crowd were good sports and hollered their enthusiasm. Lydia swung around to look at him.
“We’re passing this orange from person to person without using our hands?”
Her eyes were wild, voice strained, and Cam looked over her shoulder to see Eric Flickinger had taken the spot in front of her in line.
Cam wiggled his eyebrows and grinned. “I hope he showered,” he whispered into Lydia’s ear.
She punched him.
The band exploded into song, steel drums ringing through the night as Tabitha turned to Stacy and bear hugged her, pressing the orange held under her neck against the other woman. Stacy squealed, and then what happened should have been indecent in public, but the crowd laughed, hollered, and encouraged the unmentionable display of trying to pass an orange from one person to another without using hands. The orange slipped down Stacy’s chest, and Tabitha dove to retrieve it.
Finally, the orange passed, and it was onto Stacy and Rebecca. The funny thing here was how much taller Rebecca was than Stacy, and with very little effort, Rebecca bent only slightly and seemed to pluck the orange from Stacy. Stacy giggled harder and reeled backward as the orange released, crashing into Tabitha who chanted her sister’s name.
The tension rolled off of Lydia like fresh donuts from a conveyor oven, hot and moist. He took a step away from her to get a better angle of the machinations occurring between Eric and Rebecca. The pair were about the same height and body make up, tall, skinny, lanky, with long necks. What he didn’t expect was for Rebecca to be smiling. Smiling so much the whites of her teeth shown in the flickering flames of the tiki torches.
When She Falls Page 17