One and Only by Jenny Holiday (14)

Cam texted Jane the next morning. They were moving to the rural wedding site on Wednesday, so he had two empty days ahead of him. He had done everything on his list except smoke a joint, and, really, he’d added that item because he could. Pot wasn’t really his style. At least as an adult—he’d smoked enough of it as a kid to last a lifetime.

He couldn’t stop thinking about repeating certain items on his list, though.

One in particular.

But still, as hot as Saturday night had been, as enthusiastic as Jane had been as she’d come apart in his hands—and under his mouth—he had decided that texting her a straight-up booty call was a bad idea. He’d freaked himself out with his weird, post-coital home repair session yesterday, and he was sticking to his stance that if anything more was going to happen, she should initiate it.

In other words, if there was going to be any booty-calling, she should be the caller and he should be the call-ee.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t give her the opportunity to make the call.

So he texted to invite her to Canada’s Wonderland. Because for some reason the image of Jane on a roller coaster had lodged itself in his mind. He didn’t want her to be scared like she’d been in the haunted house, but another exhilarating experience in the vein of the CN Tower would be just the thing to…set the mood. So he’d done a bit of research and come up with the idea of the amusement park that was a little ways outside the city. They would go on the gentler rides, and she’d shriek and clutch at him, but also laugh. Her russet hair would fan out behind her, and when the ride was over she would be pink-cheeked and tussled.

Just thinking about it was making his dick hard.

Her return text made him laugh. He could just see her scrunching her nose in confusion.

After he pressed send, he started composing another text because he knew she was going to take some convincing.

What could he say to convince her that she was more adventurous than she realized? He needed to see her in goddess mode again, but he could hardly say that. It turned out he didn’t have to say anything.

When Cam pulled up in front of her house an hour later, Jane was already outside. She speed-walked down the path to meet him where he was parking on the street. She was wearing white jeans, and this time her T-shirt was a flowing, silky bright yellow. Instead of flats, she wore cute little tennis shoes covered with tiny yellow daisies. She was like a fucking ray of sunshine.

Man, she was really busting her ass to get to him. He couldn’t help grinning. He wanted to kiss her but checked the impulse. She was in charge here. Still, it stroked his ego to see her rushing to reach him. Kind of stroked something else, too.

“Just remember, I’m sorry,” she said, making an apologetic face.

“Sorry for what?”

His question was answered by the appearance of Wendy, Gia, and Elise, who came spilling out of Jane’s little house like clowns out of one of those mini cars. They were all talking a mile a minute, too, about roller coasters, whether anyone would brave the water rides, and the importance of sunscreen.

“I don’t want anyone getting tan lines for the wedding,” Elise said. “Or—God help me—a sunburn.”

Jane did the single eyebrow raise and shot him a knowing look. But then she added, “I’m also sorry about—”

“We can’t take your muscle car, Cameron. It’ll be too tight in the backseat,” Elise said. “We’ll take my SUV.” She tossed him the keys. “But you can drive.” She clapped her hands excitedly. “Yay! Spontaneous amusement park trip!” Then she turned to Wendy. “See? I told you taking the whole week off work would be worth it.”

And so he found himself navigating a giant-ass Ford Explorer through the narrow streets of Jane’s urban neighborhood with four grown women in the back arguing about something that sounded like “twall,” but he suspected was spelled differently.

Unlike most group car rides, no one had called shotgun. They’d all slid into the two rows of backseats like he was their chauffeur, chattering a mile a minute about whether the black and white “twall” dishes Elise had registered for were a mistake and should she have gone with the more classic blue and white?

Well, they were all chattering except Jane, who was seated on the opposite side of the car in the row behind him. He had a perfect view of her in the rearview mirror.

And she was looking right at him. He pressed his lips together in an attempt not to grin. She raised her eyebrows in amusement, and a kind of tender affection flooded his chest. This must be what parents felt like in a car full of hyper kids, like they were in on a secret together, each other’s lifelines. While he could see how long-term doses of the bridezilla might grow tiresome, he liked Elise and the others. Elise had spunk, and he could imagine, if that spunk was directed at something other than her upcoming nuptials, that she was a lot of fun. And as much as he and his brother had grown apart, he could still see Elise complementing Jay.

So, it wasn’t the day trip of his dreams, but, hey, he’d take it.

“Cameron!” Elise called from the far backseat.

“At your service, ma’am,” he said, playing up his chauffeur role.

“This is really nice of you to drive us to Wonderland. Are you really the bad boy everyone says?”

“Depends how you define bad,” he teased, refraining from pointing out that it wasn’t so much that he was “driving them” as they had crashed his planned party of two.

“How many tattoos do you have?” Elise asked.

“Well, really only three, if you count the sleeve as one,” he answered.

“That’s a little disappointing, actually,” said Elise. “I imagined you covered with them.”

“Well, they’re really big, so he kind of is,” Jane said. He whipped his eyes to hers, shocked that she’d told her friends about their encounter. But then the panic that appeared in her eyes as she clamped her mouth shut suggested that she actually hadn’t.

“So you’ve seen his tattoos,” Gia said.

“No,” said Jane. “I mean, yes, but…”

“She arrived at Jay’s one morning when I was walking around in my pj bottoms,” he said, rushing to cover for her for reasons he couldn’t fathom, given that he’d spent the first few days of his acquaintance with Jane bent on hassling her. “You know, when she was doing her assigned babysitting duty, Elise.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elise said. But then she added, “Jay said you have a criminal record.”

“I did,” he said, watching Jane in the mirror. They hadn’t talked about his past. “I was a juvenile, though, so it was expunged when I turned eighteen.”

“What did you do?” Wendy asked.

“I burned down a barn,” he said.

“On purpose?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters a lot.”

“Wendy’s a defense lawyer,” Jane said. “It’s like you’re waving catnip in front of her.”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” he said. “I knocked over a candle when I was, ah, otherwise engaged.”

“What were you charged with?” Wendy asked.

“Arson.”

“433 Arson—disregard for human life, or 434 arson—damage to property?”

“Huh?”

“She’s quoting the criminal code,” Jane said.

“I think the property one,” he said. “But I don’t really know. It was a long time ago.”

“Well, your lawyer should have gotten it down to at least 436 arson by negligence, if not just disorderly conduct.”

“Didn’t have a lawyer, really, just some legal aid guy I met in the hallway five minutes before my court date.”

He couldn’t see Wendy, but a scoffing noise came from her general direction, and Gia said, “Down girl. Concentrate on your own stable of criminals.”

“Who I’m hanging out to dry this week while I ride roller coasters and…stuff,” Wendy said. Cam could see Elise’s eyes narrow, and he suspected a bridal death glare was the cause of Wendy’s aborted complaint.

“So!” Jane chirped. “I had a look at the Wikipedia entry for Canada’s Wonderland.”

He shook his head and grinned. Of course she had. But he was all for her blatant attempt to direct the conversation away from the mistakes of his youth. He waited for her to pull some printouts from her purse.

And, bingo. She rustled through her papers for a moment, then said, “Yeah, so there are sixteen roller coasters at this place, and a twenty-acre waterpark.”

“Did everyone bring bathing suits?” he asked. He’d instructed Jane to do so when they were texting.

A chorus of affirmative answers broke out behind him.

“But no tan lines, guys,” Elise ordered. “No. Tan. Lines.”

“I’m really, really sorry,” Jane said the moment she could get Cameron alone. They’d just entered the park, and the other girls had gone to the bathroom en masse. “There was this group text after we made our arrangements. Elise wanted to do something ‘fun.’” She made air quotes with her fingers. “I was trying to get out of whatever she had planned, but somehow it ended up being…this.” She wasn’t even sure how it had happened, really, but somehow, she’d lost control of the conversation and all of a sudden they were on her doorstep and Elise was lecturing them about sunscreen.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

Jane flashed him a relieved smile as the bridal party returned. She was glad he didn’t mind the company, but also glad things weren’t going to be weird between them. They hadn’t communicated since he’d left her house yesterday—left her house and yard in tip-top shape—so she wasn’t really sure where they stood. She had been hoping to see him again. Well, truly, she’d been hoping to bone him again. Ha! Look at her, the queen of casual sex! So things being “not weird” between them was a promising sign. She might actually get her wish.

Eventually.

It was going to be a long day.

“All right,” she said, perusing the map and trying to figure out the most logical way to tackle things. “What do you say we do rides in the morning, then lunch, and then we can spend the afternoon at this Splash Works thing?”

“Whatever you say,” Elise said at the same time that Gia said, “You’re the boss.”

“Okay.” She looked around to orient herself relative to the map she was holding. “Why don’t we walk to the far northeastern corner, and then we can work our way back. That will maximize—hey!”

Cameron had grabbed the map from her hands. “Or we could go on that thing because it’s right here.” He pointed at a yellow and blue monstrosity with huge plunges and sharp angles.

She read the tall yellow lettering at the entrance to the coaster. “Leviathan.” The word was surrounded by some kind of dragony sea monster–type creature with enormous teeth.

“I’m in!” Gia said. “Will you hold my stuff, Jane?”

Wendy, who wasn’t an overt thrill seeker the way Gia was but was nevertheless quite the adventurer in her quiet, determined way, silently handed Jane her backpack.

“Whoa,” Jane said, lifting her hands over her head so she couldn’t accept any of the bags and sunglasses being shoved at her. “If we need someone to hold stuff, we’re going to have to go in shifts, and I’m going to be on the first one.” Heck, better to get it over with.

She was confronted with three dropped jaws and one wide grin.

“What is she doing?” Elise was speaking to Wendy—and looking at Wendy like she was Jane’s mom instead of her best friend. Wendy shrugged.

Elise sniffed. “Well, I’m not going on that thing. Normally I would, but I don’t want…”

Jane was glad that Elise’s hesitation drew everyone’s attention away from her.

“I don’t want anything to happen to me before the wedding.” She smiled sheepishly. “I know that’s irrational. I’ve been kind of insane lately, you guys.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Gia said, giving her a squeeze. “Your wedding is going to be amazing.”

“It’s going to be the most beautiful wedding in the history of weddings!” Wendy said, slinging an arm around Elise’s shoulder from the other side, as if she hadn’t been calling the forthcoming nuptials the “w-word” a day ago.

“It’s going to blow the lid off Pinterest,” Jane chimed in. There were no sides of Elise left to hug, but she blew a kiss, which of course Wendy had to “catch” with a wink.

“Hey!” said Elise with mock outrage. “That was mine!” But then her eyes filled with tears. “I love you guys so much.”

“Aww! Group hug!” Gia yelled as she let go of Elise enough to make room for Jane to slide into the pack.

Jane was suffused with emotion. The wedding had everyone on edge, but at the core of things was her crew of girls, and that would never change. She was so lucky. Her friends, her brother: people didn’t get better than them.

She felt someone watching her and lifted her eyes from the hug.

Cameron.

Right.

“Should we get this show on the road?” he said, and she shivered.

She really was scared of the ride she was about to get on. But one of the things she’d learned from Cameron in the past few days was you could be scared of a thing and still do that thing.

Jane was scared of the coaster. Cam could tell by the determined way she marched to the end of the lineup. Wendy and Gia chatted and exclaimed as the ride made crazy loops above them, but Jane remained silent, staring straight ahead as they inched their way toward the head of the line.

As they moved closer, it became apparent that there were four seats to a row on the coaster. Jane walked onto the platform first, still concentrating on her target and seemingly oblivious to everything else.

But he must have been wrong about that, because when he hung back, gesturing out of politeness for Gia and Wendy to precede him up the steps, she whipped her head around, her eyes darting all over until she found his gaze. She hung back then, which initially caused a traffic jam because Gia and Wendy came to a stop behind her. She waved them ahead of her, avoiding their eyes. It was hard not to arrive at the conclusion that she wanted him to sit next to her. It was also hard to disguise the stupid, proud grin that idea generated.

“Want to wait for your boyfriend?” one of the teenagers working the ride said. “That’s so sweet.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Jane said, just as Cam was about to issue the same correction. It was good to know they were on the same page in case she wanted to get busy later. Please let her want to get busy later. He even had condoms this time.

They settled themselves into the coaster. Jane was silent, her lips pressed into a thin, determined line. She was turning inward, like she had as they’d begun shuffling out onto the deck outside the CN Tower. He wanted to take her hand. His own were itching to touch her somewhere, anywhere, and not only because she needed soothing. But he didn’t want to get her into trouble with her friends, whom he gathered were already on her case about matters of dating and relationships.

As the coaster made its way slowly up the first hill, its ominous clacking had his own heart beating fast, and Wendy and Gia on the other side began squealing.

Jane, still staring straight ahead, grabbed his hand, took as much of his arm as she could grab, in fact, into her lap. He grinned and squeezed tight.

As the car approached the top, Jane shut her eyes. After what seemed like ages teetering there, it tipped. People started screaming. He only had eyes for Jane. He watched her like a hawk. She squeezed her eyes tighter and twisted her face into a harsh grimace.

Just when he was starting to fear he had miscalculated, that maybe roller coasters hadn’t been a good idea, her eyes popped open, and so did her mouth. She turned to him as much as she could, given the restraining apparatus, and whooped. Her eyes danced, her grin was as wide as the sky, and her hair was a curtain of fire.

There she was in all her glory: his goddess.

It was almost as good as watching her come.

Almost.

“Are you sure you want to go on this one, though?” Cameron asked when, one hour and three rides later, Jane pointed to a ride called Wonder Mountain’s Guardian. He would gladly follow Jane around the park all day and strap himself into any contraption she liked to be flung around defying gravity in any way that suited her. But this particular ride didn’t seem like a good match. “It’s dark,” he said, reading about it in the brochure they’d been given on their way into the park. “They give you 3D glasses, and you shoot at creepy-crawlies.”

“That’s fine,” Jane said.

“Jane.” He grabbed her arm. “It’s a haunted roller coaster.”

“No problem,” she said again, shaking off his hand and following her friends into the line. He wasn’t going to be able to bodily carry her out of this one, but, hey, she was free to make her own mistakes.

As they prepared to board the coaster, she did that same thing where she maneuvered so she was sitting next to him. She probably thought she was being subtle, but Gia was onto them. Every time Jane did it, Gia raised her eyebrows at him, and this time was no different, except she added an “I’m watching you” gesture by moving her index and middle fingers back and forth between her eyes and him.

He shrugged and sat where Jane wanted him to. Each car had four seats—two facing front and two facing back. Jane had arranged things so Gia and Wendy were facing front. She seemed unconcerned as the ride began to move, which wasn’t altogether surprising. With each subsequent ride they had gone on after the Leviathan, she’d appeared less nervous out of the gate. He wanted to offer his hand, but he didn’t think she needed it. Or wanted it, frankly, because she was pretty much ignoring him.

As the coaster ascended the first hill, her face remained impassive. This wasn’t as steep a coaster, but still. It was like she had been desensitized. As they made the first dip, which was combined with a turn, he gave up looking at her and focused on what was ahead of them, which seemed to be a tunnel. That was probably the dark part.

“What the hell?”

He recoiled instinctively against the sensation of someone coming after him, but calmed when he realized that all that had happened was that Jane had grabbed his 3D glasses off his face. He was about to protest, to say that the glasses were the whole point of the ride—you couldn’t see the stuff you were supposed to shoot at without them—when they plunged into darkness.

And that’s when he realized that the point of the ride was actually to make out with the clever girl sitting next to you.

Jane grabbed his head and brought it down to hers. Their mouths missed each other in the dark—his lips ended up on the bridge of her nose, and she giggled. It was perfect: not only was it dark, but Gia and Wendy were back to back with them so Jane’s fellow bridesmaids would never see what they were doing. Her fingers came to his mouth, as if she were trying to feel her way to him. He sucked one into his mouth and bit down gently on it. She leaned up as far as she could, he leaned down, and this time, their aim was better.

He didn’t waste any time. The ride was going to be mere minutes long, and who knew how long they would be in the dark portion of it? He’d been tamping down his desire for Jane all day, hoping that tonight they’d be able to maneuver some privacy and she would initiate something. The notion that she couldn’t wait that long opened the floodgates on all that restrained lust. So he grabbed the sides of her head to make sure she didn’t move, plunged his tongue into her mouth, and feasted. He licked deep into her mouth, and when her pulse immediately kicked up as a result he felt it as a surge of possessive triumph in his chest. She kissed him back, her tongue battling his in an aggressive, almost-confrontational way that made his dick go hard as iron.

The car rotated 180 degrees, and he tightened his hold on her head as her hands came up to his forearms as if he were the only thing tethering her to the coaster. It was like they were spinning in the center of it all, the quiet but mighty energy source that was powering the whole ride and, hell, maybe even the whole world. He wanted to lose himself in her forever, but he needed to protect her, too, which meant keeping his senses divided. The sounds of laughter and good-natured screaming made up the soundtrack for their silent, furtive kiss. He deepened it, tilting her head back to improve the angle, even as he remained attuned to what was going on around them.

When he could sense they were coming out of the tunnel, he lifted his hands from her face like she’d burned him. His break from her mouth was less clean. He tried to stop the kiss, but she hummed her displeasure, and he almost gave in. Almost said, fuck it, turn on the goddamned spotlights. But he couldn’t do that. He wasn’t her boyfriend, as she’d told the kid operating the first ride. It would be better for her if this…thing between them stayed in the dark where it belonged.

He started to pull away again. She kept trying to resist, to cling to him. His ego loved it. His dick loved it. But he was stronger than his dick and his ego. He was stronger than her. So he pushed her away for her own good.

Pushed her away for her own good. Now there was a metaphor for his entire entanglement with Jane.

The car emerged from the tunnel, its inhabitants, including Gia and Wendy behind them, exclaiming and laughing and generally making a ruckus. Well, most of its inhabitants. The one next to him remained silent and still. Blinking and shell-shocked, she might have been able to convince an onlooker that she was overwhelmed from having battled schools of killer fish on a haunted roller coaster, but he knew the truth.

So did she. She turned to him with stunned eyes and a swollen, red mouth rounded into an O of shock.

He winked.