TWELVE
The moan coming from across the table would do a porn star proud.
“Sweet Jesus. Oh, for the love of all that’s holy. That’s so bloody good. Ach, it’s like a party in my mouth. Like an orgy in my mouth! If I died at this moment, I’d be happy, because I would’ve finally discovered the meanin’ of life.”
Trying not to be too pleased by Cam’s extravagant praise, I allow myself a small smile. “The meaning of life is rigatoni carbonara?”
“No, lass. The meanin’ of life is rigatoni carbonara with homemade garlic bread, black-truffle gnocchi, and a weird fruity salad.”
“It’s a fennel, orange, mint, red chicory, pomegranate, balsamic, and extra virgin olive oil salad, not a ‘weird’ salad.”
Eyes closed, Cam waves his fork in the air like he’s the pope performing a blessing at mass. “Details. My point is that it’s pure braw. Pedro.”
“What’s ‘braw’ and who’s Pedro?”
Cam opens his eyes, and they’re sparkling with laughter. “It means ‘amazin’.’”
“You could’ve just said that.”
“I did!” He shovels another forkful of rigatoni into his mouth and winks at me as he chews.
“I’m glad you like it. But don’t expect this for the remainder of your bribery meals, because today we’re celebrating.”
“Oh yeah?” he says around a mouthful. “What’re we celebratin’?”
“I got a raise.”
Cam stops chewing.
“And there’s an associate editor position open, which the HR director encouraged me to apply for.” I beam at Cam as he swallows his mouthful of food.
It’s a moment before he answers. “Congratulations, lass. You deserve the raise, I’m sure.”
There’s something funny in his voice that gets my hackles up. “Why does that feel like one of those backhanded compliments I get on blind dates, like ‘It’s great that you’re not obsessed with how you look’?”
Cam takes a swallow of water from his glass before answering. When he does, he keeps his gaze on his plate of food. “Just seems a little coincidental is all.”
“How is it coincidental? I applied for the raise a month ago!”
His gaze flashes up to mine. “Uh-huh. And you’re gettin’ it the week pretty boy replaced your chair and I sent you roses.”
“God, you’re a buzzkill.”
“Just pointin’ it out. What’s the deal with the position that’s open?”
The memory of Ruth’s face when Michael stuck his head in her office gives me a moment’s pause, as does the odd way she cut him off when he was talking about Maria. At the time I was too busy being thrilled to notice how strange it was, but now . . .
“The girl who had the job left suddenly.”
As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I know it’s a mistake. Cam’s brows fly up. He leans back into his chair and pins me with a pointed look.
“McGregor, your imagination is almost as overactive as mine. There’s no conspiracy here, you big lug! It’s just an open position! People leave their jobs all the time!”
He stares at me without blinking. “Do they?”
The urge to smash his plate over his head is strong, but I’m still in too good a mood to go for it. “So this is interesting. I’m discovering new aspects to your personality every day. Giant ego, check. Fetish for tight leg wear and bad music, check. Ingrained suspicion of good luck and active paranoia, check.”
“It’s not paranoia if you’re right.”
“Let me get this straight.” I sit back in my chair, pushing my glasses up my nose so I can see him better. “Your theory is that Michael Maddox has targeted me . . . for career advancement?”
Cam lifts a shoulder and goes back to shoveling food into his mouth.
“You could make Mother Teresa go on a multistate killing spree, you know that?”
“You give the best compliments, darlin’. Get yourself a plate before I finish all this food.”
“I’m not eating.”
A wolf’s growl fills the kitchen.
“Be quiet, White Fang. You’ll frighten the neighbors.”
“Did you eat today?” he demands, inflating in that Wolverine way he has.
“Yes.”
He glares at me. “Besides the protein drink I gave you this mornin’?”
I purse my lips and inspect my cuticles.
Cursing under his breath, Cam shoves his chair back from the table and stomps over to my cupboards. I let him bang around for a few moments before telling him the plates are in the cupboard above the coffee maker.
More stomping, more banging, some aggravated huffing. It’s as if I’ve got a wildebeest roaming around in my kitchen. Then he’s at the stove, spooning pasta onto a plate with more force than necessary. He adds garlic bread and salad and sets the plate on the table in front of me with a clatter.
He points at it. “Eat. Now.”
I smile sweetly at him. “I don’t have a fork.”
Nostrils flared, he stares down at me. “You’re pushin’ your luck, woman.”
“Unlike some people in this kitchen, I’m not a big fan of eating with my fingers.”
The look of anger on his face is perversely satisfying. He spins away, stalks over to the drawers, and starts to pull them out one by one, searching for the utensils. I watch him, still smiling.
“If I’d known it sets you off when people skip meals, I’d have gone on a hunger strike the moment I met you.”
Cam comes back with a fork in his meaty fist. He holds it out to me, his eyes burning. “It’s not the meal skippin’,” he says, his voice rough. “It’s the reason behind it.”
Our gazes hold for a moment. Then I decide it’s not worth the argument and take the fork from his hand.
He settles into his chair and glares at me until I relent and take a bite of pasta. Mollified, he goes back to shoveling food into his mouth but keeps a wary eye trained on me while he eats. I have a feeling he’ll try to force-feed me like a goose being groomed for a fatty liver if I don’t keep up a brisk pace, so I’m careful to look busy.
“Pushin’ your food around with your fork and takin’ spider bites doesn’t count as eating,” Cam says after a minute.
“Okay, Dad,” I mutter, and take a normal forkful of food. I chew, swallow, then stick out my tongue, opening my mouth wide to prove to the Mountain that I’m a good girl and he can stop badgering me.
“Better. Do it again.”
I sigh, roll my eyes, and eat more. I’m starving, so my willpower crumbles pretty fast. In a second, I’m plowing through rigatoni like someone’s holding a gun to my head.
Cam grunts in approval.
I hate myself for liking that grunt.
“Speakin’ of your father,” he says casually, looking now at his plate, “what’s his deal?”
“My dad? Oh, he’s a photographer. I mean he was. He’s retired now.”
“Yeah? What kind of pictures did he take?”
“He did some work for the movie studios, but his bread and butter was fashion photography. Modeling shoots, magazine spreads, that kind of thing.”
“So he worked with a lot of models.”
I nod, chewing garlic bread like a farm animal. “And actors. ‘The beautiful people,’ he called them.”
“And your mum?”
“She was a runway model. They met on a shoot in Paris, actually. Now she mostly gets colonics and obsesses over finding the perfect macrobiotic lettuce on her daily trips to the farmers market.”
Cam is quiet for a moment. “And your sister’s a beauty queen.”
“Yup, Jacqueline made it all the way to the Miss America pageant. Got beat out by a farm girl from Kansas. I don’t think she’s ever recovered. Her and my mom are practically identical twins—your classic leggy California blonde type. My dad, too. He looks like a surfer—very tan and fit.” I chuckle. “My sister used to tease me when we were kids that I was adopted, because I look nothing like anyone in the family.”
Cam looks up from his plate. His eyes are dark, and his face is serious. “That explains a lot.”
I pause with my fork halfway to my mouth. “What are you talking about?”
“Your negative body image, damaged self-esteem, and conflicted relationship with food.”
I slowly lower my fork to my plate, my face burning hot and my stomach twisting. “Excuse me?”
Cam says, “You’ve got a model mother, a beauty queen sister, and a father surrounded by perfect-lookin’ people his entire career—”
“You’re in no position to criticize my family or psychoanalyze me,” I interrupt stiffly, my heart pounding hard inside my chest. “And let’s not forget, you’re pretty taken by your own looks, too, McGregor.”
“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. But I’d never make someone else feel bad about themselves because they didn’t conform to my idea of perfection.”
“And that’s what you’re suggesting my family did to me?”
“Didn’t they?”
I’m so mad my whole body shakes. Making things worse is that he’s right. “I think your forty-five minutes are up.”
I stand, take my plate to the sink, and dump the rest of my food into it. I throw the plate on top of the uneaten food and blink hard, trying to clear my eyes of the water pooling in them.
“Joellen—”
“Stop. Not another word. You can let yourself out.”
There’s a long, heavy silence behind me. Then Cam sighs. I hear his chair scrape back from the table as he rises. “Are we still on for the mornin’?”
I count to ten before I answer so my voice doesn’t shake. “Yes.”
“Okay,” he says, his voice softer. “Good.” He takes a few steps away but pauses before he gets to the door. “For what it’s worth, lass . . . they’re wrong.”
I close my eyes. A lone tear squeezes out beneath an eyelid and tracks down my cheek. Then my front door opens and closes, and I’m alone with Mr. Bingley twining around my ankles and the realization that I’m not the only one who’s peeked behind a curtain.
If I’ve seen the real Cameron McGregor, he’s seen right through Joellen Bixby, too.
That night I don’t sleep. Cam’s words swirl around in my head like a tornado, kicking up all kinds of nasty, ancient dirt. I hate myself for getting so affected by his simple observation and worry that if he can see me so clearly, everyone else must, too.
But when I think about it, I realize he’s the only one who’s looking.
In the morning, it’s awkward.
“Hi,” he says in a subdued voice, dwarfing my doorway when I open to his knock. He’s got his hands shoved into the front pockets of a black hoodie, the hood drawn down over his forehead, a pair of black sweats and black athletic shoes completing the look.
“Hi. This is the least skin I’ve ever seen of yours. Are you feeling okay?”
His lips twitch, but he smiles using only his eyes. “If you want, I can take off my shirt. It’ll cut at least five minutes off your warm-up time.”
“There he is. Good morning, prancer.”
“Mornin’, dragon lady.” He reaches around his waist and produces a plastic bottle of the green goo he fed me yesterday morning. When I take it, he looks relieved, like he was expecting a fight.
“Wait.” I stare at the bottle in my hand, then look up at Cam with furrowed brows. “Where did this come from?”
“My blender.”
“You have a blender in the back of your pants?”
“It was in my waistband.”
That gives me pause. “You thought it was a good idea to carry a bottle of liquid in your waistband for a five-foot walk across a hall? Are both your hands broken?”
He makes jazz hands at me, breaking into the smile he’s been trying to hold back. “The hands are fully operational, lass. In case you’ve a mind to give a lad a tactile tour of your majestic lady parts, as you’d put it.”
“Please tell me you’re wearing underwear and that this bottle wasn’t, like, resting on your butt crack.”
With a straight face, he says, “Aye, lass, you caught me. It’s a bottle of butt crack juice. Drink up, it’s full o’ vitamins.”
“Vitamins?”
My imagination starts to run wild. I once read a cookbook titled Natural Harvest written by a man who thought every dish could be improved by adding a certain “natural” ingredient produced only by a pair of male testicles. The photo accompanying the recipe for Slightly Saltier Caviar haunts me to this day.
“Just drink the bloody thing, lass. It’s juiced veggies and protein powder!”
I close the apartment door behind me and shove my keys into the little zippered pocket on my fleece vest. “Fine. But if this tastes suspiciously salty, I’m kicking your ass.” I open the bottle and sniff the contents, listening to the Mountain chuckle.
“The only salty thing in this hallway is you, darlin’.”
His voice is as warm as his gaze when I meet it over the bottle. He shaved today, but somehow his usual scruff suits him better. He’s not the kind of guy who should be buffed to a shine, manscaped and manicured, pretty. All his rough edges combine to make something more interesting. More . . .
Masculine.
I guzzle the green goo and wipe my hand across my mouth when I’m finished, looking away because my face is suddenly flaming.
Cam cocks his head. “Uh-oh. You must’ve had a dirty thought about pretty boy Michael. Your face just turned to beet.”
When I answer with only a smile and a stiff nod, Cam chuckles again. “A little early in the mornin’ to be feelin’ frisky, innit, sweetheart?”
Hearing him call me sweetheart makes my face go even hotter, and now I’d like to kick my own ass for being a dope.
“Let’s get started,” I tell him, a little too sharply.
He’s amused by my sudden shift in manner. “Okay, okay, no need to get testy.”
I leave the empty bottle on the floor next to the door and we do warm-up stretches in the hallway while I listen to him ramble about target heart rates and runner’s euphoria and all kinds of other healthy things I can’t focus on because I’m too busy trying to avoid noticing his rugged good looks again.
It must be the lack of sleep that has me so flustered.
Either that or I just realized that in his own annoying, arrogant way, the Mountain is actually pretty hot.