CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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Sawyer was done sweeping this attraction he had for Camryn under a rug. He had a habit of doing just that with quite a few parts of his life he’d wanted purposefully camouflaged. His entire adult existence had been spent with a tight group of men, evidence of his time in the Corps. Well, SSI was as close as family. The one thing an individual didn’t want to do among a group of competitive Type A men was share his or her weakness. It would be like a trail of blood on the ground for a pack of wolves. He would have to overcome his personal conflicts with sharing, because he recognized something special within this woman he could no longer ignore.
“How did you know I like my coffee with a hint of cream?”
The question came completely out of left field. It was so random, it was like taking a tight curve where he’d had to downshift gears in order to keep up with Camryn’s twisting thoughts. There were a lot of things she could have asked in response to his declaration that he’d like to get to know her better despite his working with her brother, but this hadn’t been one he thought he’d encounter.
“You really don’t want to know the answer to that,” Sawyer said truthfully, unable to hold back a grin at her obvious interest. “Seriously, any way I answer that is going to make me sound like one of two things: one of those obsessed fans who have nothing better to do with their time than to stalk actresses or a complete asshole who used the fact that you are an amazingly beautiful, sexy actress to intentionally agitate your brother.”
“You know that I’m now picturing you surfing the web at three o’clock in the morning with a sock in your hand, don’t you?”
Sawyer burst out laughing, amazed that she could literally take such a serious conversation and turn it into some sort of comedy. He looked down at their hands, seeing that their fingers were now intertwined…and neither one had any intention of letting go.
“There’s a reason your brother reacted the way he did when he discovered I helped you out in New Orleans,” Sawyer admitted, figuring it was best to come clean before someone from the team outed his secret. “You see, no one here at SSI—except me—was aware that the Camryn Novak was Brody’s sister when we first started to work together. I may have taken things a bit far in razzing Brody about your fame.”
“It’s a rather easy thing to do, isn’t it?” Camryn smiled and took a sip of her coffee, seeming to enjoy his simple confession. “You should have seen some of things I used to do on purpose when we were teenagers just to see how far I could push him before he went off the cliff.”
“That doesn’t surprise me one bit. You should have seen his reaction when we had Royce stop at the bakery in town. It’s quite noteworthy to watch the lengths to which Brody would go to try to get the one and only chocolate éclair in the box, when it’s Keane favorite as well.” Sawyer left out the fact that the entire team would purposefully tilt Brody’s monitors, move his papers around, and even dismantle with his favorite stool every once in a while. Honestly, no one had attempted the latter ever since Brody had landed on his ass after a screw went missing somewhere. “Anyway, I pulled up quite a few websites dedicated to you and your career to have some details on hand to mess with him. I wanted you to know that I’m not proud of that, especially after finding myself in this position. Although I do have to say that it’s amazing how much information those websites have on you that is there for anyone to find.”
“Unfortunately, interviews are part of the job.”
“Do you like that part of it?” Sawyer truly wanted to know the answer to that question, because he couldn’t imagine living a life so open to the public. Maybe it had more to do with his chosen profession, but he doubted it. “Do you ever get tired of a lifestyle like yours…living in a fishbowl?”
“I love what I do,” Camryn replied, her brown eyes lighting up in a way that he’d never seen except once before. “There’s something so magical in bringing to life stories for people to enjoy. I can be anyone I want to be using any combination of traits to bring a character to life, and yet still be me when the cameras stop rolling.”
“You could technically do that by reading a book,” Sawyer threw out there, causing Camryn to roll her eyes at his intentional misunderstanding. She was so theatrical that he could understand her love for acting. She was a natural, and he meant that compliment in every way. “Seriously, how is it different?”
“The detailed involvement in the making of a story, I guess.” Camryn gave a small shrug but leaned forward in her excitement to share her love for her work. “Think about all that goes into making a movie…from the actors learning lines, to the directors capturing the right moments to demonstrate the plot and advance the storyline, or a crew of filmmakers coming together to make a two-minute scene seem flawless when it most likely took ten or twenty tries to flesh it out. A multi-million-dollar movie that employed hundreds of people for months on end to create only costs you eight dollars to enjoy or fifteen dollars to own. The magic that is created if it is done right is beyond description, and to know I was a part of so many films is a gift that I will always cherish.”
“Brody was adopted, wasn’t he?”
Camryn laughed again, this time so hard that she spilled her lukewarm coffee over both of their hands. He didn’t care, reaching for a paper towel and wiping up the excess liquid. It was nice to find that she’d turned her hand upward for his after they’d dried themselves off.
“So let me get this straight,” Camryn started off after that interruption, her tone rather lighthearted. “You researched me on the Internet and therefore think that you’re aware of every single personal fact about my life. Let me just say that most of what you think you know is probably horseshit.”
“Hey, those gossip columnists were right about the way you take your coffee.” Sawyer took a drink from one of Calvert’s sturdy mugs, savoring the luxuriant flavor of the imported, rich coffee that even Starbuck’s didn’t serve. For once, he didn’t care that he was drinking caffeine this late at night when he should be sleeping, considering the long day he had ahead of him. “Although I’m betting they got your love of dark beer wrong. You strike me as the margarita type.”
“You’d be mistaken.” Camryn moaned as she feigned appreciation for a drink she wasn’t consuming, though his thoughts at the moment were on something else entirely. “I love most types of dark beer, but especially Sam Adam’s Black Lager.”
“It looks like at least some of those gossip rags do their research,” Sawyer surmised, wondering about a few other facts that he’d read along the way. He wouldn’t put any stock into what was printed unless he heard it directly from her perfectly bowed lips.
“This isn’t fair,” Camryn declared, scooting forward on her stool and tightening her hold on his hand. “It’s like you were given a book on my likes and dislikes, when I don’t know a thing about you other than you enjoy annoying my brother for laughs. See? We have a lot in common already.”
“What do you want to know?” Sawyer was bound to get into trouble for asking that question, but it wasn’t like he had anything truly heinous to hide. He was basically an open book. At least, he thought so before he basically just handed her a free-for-all. “I reserve the right to not answer, though. Don’t you give those reporters questions they can’t ask?”
“My publicist has been known to do that, but we shouldn’t have any issues here,” Camryn said casually, her brown eyes sparkling a little too much for his liking. “Let’s do a fast round.”
“A fast round?” Sawyer wasn’t sure he wanted to know what that term meant. She was constantly surprising him, and she did little to ease his worries when she lifted her eyebrows in anticipation. “Why don’t you just—”
“What’s your favorite color?”
“Blue,” Sawyer answered automatically, still trying to attempt to stall this type of interrogation. “Shouldn’t we—”
“What’s your go-to food?”
“Mashed potatoes.” Okay, Sawyer could go along with this if she stuck to these kinds of questions. “My mother always made them from scratch.”
“Movies or books?”
“Movies.” Sawyer waited for her to say something to his response, but she was on a roll.
“Drama, action, or comedy?”
“Action.” What man didn’t like action flicks?
“Guns or knives?”
“Guns,” Sawyer said with a laugh, wondering where that question had come from. She was soaking all his answers in but appeared to want more. “Hands down.”
“Beach or mountains?”
“Beach.”
“Coffee or tea?”
“Now you’re just messing with me,” Sawyer laughed, shifting his weight and realizing he’d been standing for quite a while. He glanced at the clock, seeing that almost forty minutes had passed. Chalk it up to the caffeine or the company, but either way he wasn’t tired in the least. “Let’s go into the living room, unless you’d rather get some sleep.”
Camryn’s gaze drifted over his shoulder to where the green illuminated numbers told the time, and something in her mannerisms gave him pause. She wasn’t still thinking of going to that photo shoot, was she? Before he could ask, she grabbed her mug and held it out to him for a refill.
“Fill me up, Madison.”
Sawyer wasn’t one to usually let innuendos pass, but he wisely took both of their cups and filled them up with what coffee was left in the carafe. He grabbed the creamer out of the fridge and then added a touch to hers before putting the carton back in its place. He found her curled up on one side of the couch with her silky long hair surrounding her shoulders. She’d taken the hair tie out. She should have left it in, because now all that consumed him was the need to run his fingers through those soft strands.
“I would have taken you for a mountain man type.” Camryn carefully took the cup of coffee from his hands before he took a seat at the other end of the couch. He leaned back against the armrest so that he was facing her as she continued her so-called interview. “Even though you technically have a surfer appearance, your personality is more reserved.”
“You’ve met Townes Calvert, right?” Sawyer was already aware she’d never met Coen, who could rival Calvert when it came to being aloof. Neither man liked to talk about their past, and both could level a man with one look in a matter of a half-second. “I think you have us mixed up.”
“Mr. Calvert is definitely an enigma,” Camryn conceded after she’d taken a sip of her coffee. “I’m talking about this…underlying tension you have under that boy-next-door dimple of yours.”
“Oh, don’t you start with that psychobabble crap,” Sawyer warned lightly, having heard this many times over. “I’m basically an open book. My parents couldn’t have raised a more average, well-adjusted boy if they’d tried. Now don’t get me wrong, joining the Marines might have influenced how I view life in regards to potential threats, but that was our job…and it carried over to what I do now.”
“I think you’re misunderstanding me,” Camryn said softly, leaning forward so that those mesmerizing strands touched the back of his hand when she reached for him in her bid for clarification. “I’m not complaining at all about your disposition, Sawyer. I find it very much to my liking.”
Sawyer inhaled her sweet perfume, though it could very easily have been the shampoo she’d used earlier the previous evening. He thought he’d heard the shower running when he’d stopped in to speak with her last night about canceling the photo shoot this morning. Granted, it could have been one of the other women in the house, but Ashlyn had been in Calvert’s library while Remy and Cailyn had been talking in the kitchen. As it was, she had an alluring fragrance unlike any other that was beyond enticing.
“That’s the second time you’ve looked at the time,” Sawyer said rather evenly, truly not wanting to change the subject. He had noticed when Camryn’s gaze drifted toward the large grandfather clock in the corner of the living room a moment before. “Please tell me that you’re waiting for the right time to call and cancel that photo shoot.”
Sawyer hadn’t realized just how grounding her touch had been until her fingers slowly drifted away from his one by one. Not even the softness of her hair remained, and he steeled himself for words as if they were bullets from his weapon.
“I can’t cancel the photo shoot, Sawyer,” Camryn said regrettably when that really wasn’t the case at all. Had she truly listened to what he had to say? “I’m sorry, Sawyer. I have to go, but I promise you that I will have Dylan by my side the entire time. There are several security people on set, and they keep the crowds at bay. Anyone who tries to get too close will be snatched up quickly. Listen, remember those missions you were going on when your mother called? You still went on them, but you remained vigilant for trouble. You couldn’t just cancel on a hunch. And neither can I. This is a major photo shoot that has been scheduled for months. The photographer and all the staff involved are counting on me, not to mention everyone involved with the movie and at Vanity Fair. This isn’t some everyday modeling gig or a portfolio shoot. This is a considerable undertaking that involves hundreds of people and their livelihoods.”
“That’s not good enough, Camryn.” Sawyer drained the rest of his coffee in one gulp, figuring he might as well make another round. He tried to rein in his frustration, but it was a useless attempt. It was rare that he felt completely helpless, and yet she managed to trigger that response in six words. “It’s just not good enough.”