One and Only by Jenny Holiday (18)

Cam was fine until they got there.

Well, fine in relative terms. He had been, after all, trapped in the ’Vette with Groomsman Kent, he of “Isn’t Jane cute?” fame, for two and a half hours on the drive to the wedding site.

Kent was nice. He was an accountant at Jay’s firm. So he was probably pretty well off. He was blandly handsome—with his jeans, Polo shirt, and wavy, short brown hair, he was like a Ken doll come to life. Ken Doll Kent.

And he clearly had a crush on Jane.

Which, to be fair, was totally understandable.

He wasn’t gross about it, at least. There were no crude remarks, no sexist jokes. He was a gentleman. Respectful. Which was a hell of a lot more than Cameron could say about himself when he’d first met Jane.

And Kent wanted to talk about Jane, and nothing but Jane, the whole drive. He thought he was being subtle, in the way that people under Cupid’s spell always were, seizing on any opportunity to bring the conversation back to their target.

“I think it’s so cool that she writes books, don’t you? I mean, do you know anyone else who writes books? It’s kind of a big deal.”

Cam made a vague grunting noise.

“Have you read any of her books?” Kent asked.

“Nope.”

“You should. They’re good. Really clever.”

“Aren’t they for kids?” But Cam asked himself why he hadn’t. He’d read about her books online. They were well reviewed. Everyone seemed to like them. And he was an avid reader—or he’d become one, anyway, in the Middle East.

“I guess technically. But they’re like the Hunger Games books. It doesn’t really matter that they’re classified as young adult. She draws you right into the world she creates.”

She draws you right into the world she creates.

Cam grunted again and stepped on the accelerator, enjoying the vroom of the engine.

“I noticed that you guys left together from the bachelor party,” Kent said with studied nonchalance. “That was just you trying to get her away from that guy who was hitting on her, right? What happened after you left?”

What happened after we left is that she took me home, and I fucked her.

But of course he didn’t say that, merely grunted something noncommittal. His gentlemanly streak might have been late blooming when it came to Jane, but he didn’t kiss and tell. Oh, how he wished he could say that, though—that and more. You’ve read her books; I’ve been inside her body. I know what her pussy tastes like. Ha. That would have derailed Kent the Ken Doll Accountant once and for all.

But it wasn’t like he had any meaningful claim to her. In the twenty-four hours since Jane had left him at Jay’s, she had made it clear that they were done. Not overtly, but in the coolly polite way she’d responded to his texts. Gone was the abashed sexting. He would text, and she would reply, sometimes hours later, with short notes about how busy she was with wedding stuff.

He’d gotten the message.

It was for the best.

It was also unexpectedly disappointing.

Somehow, Jane Denning had wormed her way into his heart. The only way he could make sense of it was to conclude that he, erroneously assuming that he didn’t have any heart left to speak of, had foolishly left it unguarded.

But regardless of the fact that his little fling with Jane was done, Kent the Ken Doll Accountant was not what she needed. She needed someone who appreciated Goddess Mode. No, someone who would cultivate Goddess Mode, who would treat it like a goddamned imperative.

As they turned onto the dirt road that would take them to the farm, Cameron sighed. Resigned himself to spending the next four days being treated with friendly indifference by Jane and fucking frolicking in nature with Kent-Ken and the rest of the wedding party.

He just hadn’t realized exactly what the “nature” part was going to be like.

It should not have been a problem. And at first, it wasn’t. There was a B&B on site, and the wedding party was staying there while the guests would be bused in from neighboring inns on Saturday for the ceremony. As Cam and Kent drove into the parking area, a woman emerged from the administration building. “Welcome to Fournier Farm! I’m Lacy, one of the event coordinators here.” The chipper blonde looked like she had stepped out of a brochure for a dental office. “You’re the first ones here!” She clapped her hands like it was an accomplishment worthy of an award rather than a logical consequence of Cam’s lead foot. “Oh, but look, here’s everyone else!” Lacy walked toward other cars, which were pulling in and parking. “Where’s my bride?”

Much squealing ensued as Lacy and Elise found each other. Everyone watched them shriek-talk until it was decided that the whole gang should immediately go out to inspect the lavender fields to decide specifically where they should have the ceremony.

He watched Wendy and Gia look at each other and shrug. Jane appeared to be struggling under the weight of…a bunch of small chalkboards? He moved to help her, but she twisted away from him. “I’ll actually leave these in my trunk for now.” He tried again to take some of them from her, but she trilled, “I’m fine!” in a voice he easily recognized as false.

Screw that. She might not want to screw him anymore, but she didn’t have to be purposefully difficult.

“Will you let me help you?” he snapped as he pushed past her, opened the back of her hatchback for her, and guided her—the pile of chalkboards semi-obscured her sight—to the trunk.

Everything was fine, he told himself. Fine-ish. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to inspecting lavender fields. Or to any of this so-called bucolic “escape,” especially given that he apparently was going to spend exactly zero percent of it in Jane’s bed, but it was fine. Fine-ish.

Until it wasn’t.

Lavender fields were nothing like the desert. It was apples and oranges. Lavender fields and the desert. It shouldn’t have mattered.

And yet.

He’d become pretty adept at avoiding wide-open spaces since the PTSD hit after his first deployment. Christie’s apartment was in the urban part of Thunder Bay, such as it was. He’d been fine there. Fine-ish. But he’d learned pretty quickly that as soon as he got out of the city limits, the panic would hit and he’d be left sweating and shaking. So he learned to stay safe, which meant limiting himself to places with a certain density of buildings and concrete and people.

And anyway, it had gotten much better. He’d thought.

Regardless, as they trudged away from the main buildings, across a series of gardens and a meadow that bordered the herb fields, it started happening. It didn’t matter that the air was ripe with the scent of lavender instead of the sulfurous smell of gunpowder. It didn’t matter that the sun was shining on purple fields as far as the eye could see instead of sand as far as the eye could see. It didn’t matter that it was a pleasantly warm seventy-five-degree day in freaking Canada and not a balls-melting one hundred ten with ISIS fighters and IEDs hiding all around them.

His stupid body didn’t know the difference, even if his brain did. His heart was jackhammering out of his chest, his lungs were constricting, and he was sweating so much he might as well have been back in the unrelenting desert heat. Fuck.

He tried to tune into what was happening. What was actually happening, which was that the mundane details of a wedding were being discussed. Elise’s mouth was moving, and he struggled to make out what she was saying through the roaring in his ears. Something about not wanting the guests to be blinded by the afternoon sun and should they have made sun hats for everyone?

He was safe, he tried to tell himself. Everyone was safe. He was home in Canada.

But it wasn’t working. He was starting to see gray spots in front of his eyes. He had to get out of there before he made an utter fool of himself.

But where to go? He started to stumble back down the trail they’d followed to get to the fields. He didn’t have a room yet. There was nowhere he could escape.

His car. The Corvette.

Having a destination calmed him a little. Not enough to stop the panic in its tracks, but enough to allow him to propel himself forward in space.

He didn’t even bother getting in the driver’s side. The passenger side was closer, and as much as he wished he could rev the engine and fly out of here, he was in no condition to drive. So he hurled himself inside, doubled over, rested his head on the dashboard, and settled in to wait out the storm.

“Cameron is being kind of weird, don’t you think?” Wendy said as she and Jane put their feet up in Jane’s room later that night after dinner was done and the evening’s duties discharged.

“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Jane said, lying through her teeth.

“Yeah, I get that he’s kind of antisocial by nature, but he keeps bailing on everything,” said Wendy with a sigh. “The lucky dog.”

It was true. Jane had noticed, because she apparently noticed everything about Cameron now. In fact, she had attained the “if they were in junior high she would have his class schedule memorized and would be ‘accidentally’ running into him outside chem lab” level of noticed.

But to be fair, it wasn’t like he was being subtle about it. When they’d come back from the fields, he’d been sitting in his car. It kind of reminded her of a kid in time-out, near but separate from the action, except he’d put himself there.

Later, they’d opted for a picnic dinner near a stream that ran through the property, but he hadn’t come with them. And though he, along with the other groomsmen and ushers, had been asked to walk around the property helping the bridesmaids put up the stupid way-finding signs, he had spent about five minutes actually doing his job before slipping away.

He was quite clearly avoiding something. And she wasn’t stupid. She knew what that “something” was.

It didn’t matter, though. This was what she’d wanted, right, when she’d awkwardly extricated herself from Jay’s condo after their spectacular sex-fest two nights ago? She hadn’t handled that well, but he’d obviously interpreted her weird, sudden coldness correctly. She was actually uber-relieved that she hadn’t had to talk to him today. She had a lame little “we had some fun, but since it’s never going to last, best to quit while we’re ahead” speech worked up, but she was happy not to need to make it. He was getting the message.

She just hadn’t expected that in getting the message, he would have retreated so utterly, so much that he couldn’t even stand to look at her.

And it was hard to see him, harder than she’d expected. She wanted him still, so badly. The hardest part was that she could probably have him if she wanted. She could say the word, and he’d be back in her bed. But, stupidly, maddeningly, casual sex with Cameron wasn’t enough anymore.

So it was better that he was hiding.

“Well, it’s probably for the best,” said Wendy. “Because aren’t you still supposed to be babysitting him?”

“I don’t know,” Jane said, huffing a laugh because the idea of being forced to spend time with Cameron, that she had been so averse to him initially, was so absurd now.

“Well, if he’s going to sulk in the corner by himself the whole time, how much damage can he do?” Wendy went on. “Less work for you.”

“Hmm,” said Jane.

“Three more days, and you never have to see Cameron MacKinnon again.”

“Yes,” she said. “Great.”

Because that was what she wanted.

Right?