Lover's Leap (23 page)

Of course, everything made her smile today. Sarah dipped her paddle into Hummingbird Lake filled with a sense of peace and a little hum of happiness.

The day was going well. Cam and Lori were getting along together about as well as Sarah could have hoped. While a part of her continued to be a bit resentful over his high-handedness with the car, she couldn’t deny that it had been a brilliant move. Presenting a gift couched in the terms he’d used—legitimate parental concern over a child’s safety—took wind out of any protest she might have tried to make. Lori valiantly had tried to hold on to her snit but failed. She’d totally loved the car, and as a result, her resistance toward him softened. Sarah had seen it even if Cam couldn’t.

He’d been so cute as he showed off the car’s features to Lori in the few minutes they’d had before making their way to the lake. He’d reminded her of Duke when the dog brought a dead rodent to drop at her feet, then waited expectantly to be petted and praised.

He didn’t know Lori well enough to recognize her cues, her reaction to Devin being the biggest. From the moment she’d accepted the teen’s kayak challenge, she’d treated him like a younger brother. That was a huge step for Lori, the beginning of acceptance. Sarah could tell that Cam didn’t realize it, and she intended to help him see that the first chance she got.

“This is pitiful,” Devin observed as Cam and Lori’s kayak glided past the finish line. “We’re a good thirty seconds behind. I hate to lose.”

“Then you shouldn’t have given Lori the chance to choose your dad as her partner.”

“Yeah, but that’s the reason we’re out here, isn’t it? So that Lori will choose Dad?”

“You are a good kid, Devin Murphy. Smug but good.” Sarah lifted her paddle from the water and propped it across the bow of her boat. “Now paddle me home.”

“Hey, no deadweight allowed.”

“Are you calling me fat?”

She heard him fumble his paddle. “Uh, no, ma’am! I would never do that, even if you were fat. But you’re not, of course. You’re tiny.”

She laughed, delighted with his panicked-man reaction, until Cam maneuvered his kayak around and—for the first time—she saw Lori share an open, unguarded, triumphant laugh with Cam.

It was a picture-perfect moment. Beautiful daughter laughing with her handsome father, sitting in a boat on sapphire Hummingbird Lake, surrounded by snowcapped mountains. Sarah’s heart melted, and tears stung her eyes. What a joyous instant in time.

So why did it make her want to cry?

As the crowd on shore cheered, a dozen different thoughts bombarded her like bullets. They should have had a lifetime of moments like this. Or at least a decade of them. Why had her mother and father stolen that from Lori and Cam, from the three of them? Why hadn’t Cam tried harder? Why had he let them do it? Why had he gone and hit Andrew Cook to begin with?

And at the core of all of those … 
You can’t have her. She’s mine
.

“Oh, I’m messed up,” Sarah murmured as Devin took them across the finish line.

“Winner winner chicken dinner,” Lori called, her accompanying laugh just short of maniacal. “That would be me, not you. Too bad so sad, Devin.”

Then, as Sarah’s kayak glided close, Lori caught sight of her mother. “Mom? What’s wrong?”

Sarah attempted a stoic smile, then realized she failed miserably when even Cam started to frown. “Sarah?”

“I’m fine,” she called out. Then when both her lover’s and her daughter’s expressions grew doubtful, she lied, “I had a cramp.”

“Gee, Sarah,” Devin said as he paddled toward the pier. “I told you to stretch.”

“I’m fine.” Sarah waved away the comments as Devin guided the kayak toward the fishing pier behind Cam and Lori. After Lori climbed from the boat, Cam motioned for Devin to draw close.

“Ladies first,” he said.

Sarah hauled herself onto the pier, as Cam pulled alongside it. Just as Lori plopped down onto the pier, Sarah felt a bump at the back of her legs. Gabe Callahan’s boxer, Clarence, rushed to greet his old friend, Lori, and knocked Sarah off balance. She teetered, windmilling her arms, then tumbled forward.

On top of Cam’s boat.

Tipping Cam’s boat.

Both she and he spilled into the icy-cold waters of Hummingbird Lake.

   “I’m so tempted to drop-kick that kid off the end of the boat dock,” Cam grumbled, glaring toward his son, who continued to chortle with laughter as he described the spill to his baseball friends.

“I’ll be right beside you, shoving Lori overboard,” Sarah added, scowling at her daughter, who giggled like a child while she explained the incident to Ali and Mac Timberlake. Clarence stood beside her, his crooked tail waving.

“I’m so sorry,” Nic said as she hurried onto the dock and handed Cam and Sarah towels. “I don’t know what got into Clarence. He pulled the leash right out of Meggie’s hand and raced toward the water. He never does that sort of thing.”

“It was great entertainment, though,” her husband added, wrapping a quilt around Sarah’s sopping shoulders. “I didn’t know you could reach those high notes with your squeal.”

“Oh, bite me, Callahan.” Sarah hunched her shoulders and shivered. “Your dog is officially in my doghouse. Has he been hanging around Mortimer, by any chance?”

“Hey, now,” Cam protested. “The devil dog had nothing to do with this.” Then he called to his son, “Hey, Chuckles. Where did you park?”

His laughter finally subsiding, Devin responded, “I’m all the way on the other side of the lake.”

“I’ll drop you off, Cam,” Sarah said as she waved to get Lori’s attention, then called, “I think the concert is about to start. Are you going to sit with your grandmother?”

“Sure, Mom.” Lori scratched Clarence behind the ears and said, “I’ll be right there.”

Cam waited while Sarah spoke with Ellen, who sat between Celeste and Pauline Roosevelt in the front row of a section of folding chairs while the Eternity Springs Combined School Choir lined up on risers for their concert featuring patriotic songs.

“We’ll keep Ellen company,” Celeste told Sarah. “Don’t fret, and don’t feel as if you have to rush back. Take your time.”

Five minutes later, inside her car, Sarah twisted the dial to turn on the heater. “Wearing wet blue jeans is bad enough. The fact that they’re cold adds insult to injury.”

The offer to help her take them off hovered on the tip of Cam’s tongue, but he surpressed it. No sense starting something they couldn’t finish, so he turned his thoughts in a different direction. “How do you think it’s going with Lori?”

“Honestly, better than I expected. Your bribe was brilliant.”

Brilliant?
He hadn’t expected that. “So you’re not mad about it?”

“Mildly annoyed but smart enough not to do the bite-off-the-nose-to-spite-the-face thing. That car of hers has been a real concern.” She paused for a moment, then asked, “Did you enjoy the race?”

A warm smile stole across his face as he recalled the event. “It was great. Once we were on the water, she wasn’t guarded at all. Maybe because she didn’t have to look at me to talk to me. It was a great icebreaker. She actually asked me some questions about home.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a good sign from Lori.”

He reached across the seat and rested his hand on her thigh. “It’s a beginning. I’m hopeful. I feel as if I have a chance with her now. Thank you, Sarah.”

She dropped her hand from the steering wheel and gave his hand a squeeze. “I’m glad I asked her to come home. It was time. She’d had time to adjust to the fact that you’ve come to meet her, but putting it off any longer would have made it a higher hill to climb.”

Cam abandoned his valiant effort not to stare at the way her wet, transparent shirt clung to the fullness of her breasts. Her shirt was white, her bra a delicate peach. He could see the dusky circles of her nipples outlined against the fabric.

She said something about Devin, but he didn’t catch just what. He’d gone as hard as the granite on Murphy Mountain, and all thought of the kids in his life had evaporated. She was so beautiful. So beautiful, so good-hearted. So courageous.

He loved her. He’d never stopped loving her. He always would love her.

Marry me
.

The words flashed into his mind and floated to his tongue, but he had sense enough to bite them back. It would be downright stupid to broach that subject without serious consideration ahead of time. This involved more than just the two of them. They had Lori and Devin to think about, not to mention the minor little detail that the female half of the family lived half a world away from the male half.

Of the family
.

A family. With Sarah
. Maybe they could even have another baby.

“What?” she asked.

“Hmm?”

She braked her car to a stop in front of his house. “What’s with the weird look?”

He couldn’t begin to explain the thoughts flittering through his brain, so he cut to the heart of the matter: “Come inside with me, Sarah. I need to take you to bed.”

Her eyes widened. Her tongue peeked out of her mouth to make a slow, deliberative circle around her lips. “I’m all nasty. I fell in the lake.”

“Sometimes nasty can be fun.”

A wary light entered her eyes at that, so he added, “Or we can shower first.”

“I think I would enjoy another shower.”

He climbed out of the car, walked around to the driver’s door, opened it, and held out his hand. “Come inside with me.”

She placed her hand in his, and he led her inside 354 Seventh Street. Today, old ghosts didn’t meet him at the door. Right now he had room in his mind, his heart, his soul, for one thought only.

Sarah
.

He shut the door behind her and took her into his arms. Accompanied by phantom music in his mind, he whirled her to AC/DC, the music of their youth. He twirled her to the calypso tunes of those long, lonely years as he’d bounced his way across the world from one boat deck to another. Then he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her to the sound of every love song he’d ever heard.

And he kissed her.

And he kissed her.

His hand slipped under her shirt, moved slowly up her slender back, then down the tantalizing curve of her spine as she melted into him, pliant and open to his desire. Her hands were wrapped around his neck, her fingers idly playing with the damp strands of his hair. Touching her, tasting her, was as vital to Cam as air and water.

He had crossed the globe trying to escape her, but she had always traveled with him. She had come to him in his sleep, and in his dreams he would touch her and love her and be with her. He would awaken warm and happy and content. Then reality invariably returned, and with it, loneliness.

He’d been lonely for Sarah for so long.

He skimmed his hand across the silk of her bra to capture the full, soft weight of her breast. Her own hand slipped beneath his shirt, splayed across his chest, and her thumb brushed across his nipple.

Heat ignited, shot through his entire body, and stark, demanding hunger clawed at his control. He wanted bare skin and a yielding body. He wanted to throw her down onto the floor and strip away her jeans and take her, hard and fast. He wanted to claim her once and for always as his own.

He knew the delight that awaited him. Knew how she would whimper with need, how her moist, hot flesh would clench around him. How she would meet and match his deep strokes with a fierce surge of her hips, driving them higher and higher and higher until their own intimate version of Fourth of July fireworks would burst in hot, pulsing splendor across their personal sky and they’d drift back to earth aglow with glittering pleasure.

With effort, Cam fought the instinct back. This time was different. This time was more than heat and physical satisfaction.

This time was love.

How did I ever survive without her?

Cam broke the kiss and took a necessary step back. “Why don’t you take that shower.”

She took the suggestion like a douse of cold water. A pinch of petulance spicing her tone, she said, “What, do I stink?”

He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed it. “Not at all. I need to slow down.”

“Why?”

Cam drew a deep breath and held it. This was the moment. He should do it now.
Say it now
. Here in this house, within these walls filled with such bitter, painful memories. Here, where he’d been vulnerable. Where he still felt vulnerable.

Do it. Tell her
.

Here in this house?
he silently questioned.

Yes. Here. Now. Tell her
.

“Because I don’t want to have sex with you, Sarah. I want to make love with you. I’m in love with you. I love you.”

SIXTEEN

I love you
.

Sarah blinked. He’d said that? He’d really said that?

She didn’t know how to respond. She hadn’t a clue about what to say to him. Loving this man would take a leap of faith that she didn’t know if she could take. “Cam … I … Oh. I thought we were keeping it simple.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a crooked smile. “I know. I did, too. I guess my mind and heart weren’t on the same page.”

She shut her eyes for a long moment, then met his gaze and spoke from the heart: “It’s too fast for me, Cam. It’s barely been a month since you came back.”

His wince was so fleeting that she would have missed it, had she not been watching so closely. Then he cupped her face in the palm of his big hand. “I’m not trying to rush you, sugar. I just needed to say it, needed you to know. I don’t want things unsaid between us. I’m not going to let my pride or ego get in the way.”

He sent her off to his shower, which was way too small to fit two, but he managed to make it yet another supercharged erotic experience by standing in the doorway and watching her until steam coated the glass and hid her from his sight. The hot water felt wonderful, chasing away the lingering chill from the spill into the lake, and Sarah dawdled with Cam’s declaration echoing through her mind.

I want to make love with you. I’m in love with you. I love you
.

Wow
.

It made her heart sing but at the same time left her quavering with—what?—trepidation? Distrust? Fear? She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around how she felt about it. What if she went for broke and gave him her heart once again? Could she trust him to keep it and care for it this time around? She’d been down that road before, and look at how that turned out: Sarah Reese, roadkill on the highway of love.

Not that she was immune to him now, because she wasn’t. All he had to do was look at her in that heavy-lidded, hungry way and she melted. But ever since that day at Eagle’s Way, she’d been telling herself it was just sex. How could it possibly be anything more? Logistics alone were enough to stop a relationship before it started. Her romance with her last lover hadn’t been able to survive a distance of a few hundred miles. How could she and Cam possibly make anything work long-term? The man couldn’t take tours out to the Great Barrier Reef from the fishing pier on Hummingbird Lake.

That wasn’t the only obstacle in their path, either. There was Lori. Her mother. Not to mention Sarah’s own doubts and insecurities. Could she ever trust him to stick? Could she ever have faith in his love? Could she ever drop the shields around her heart and love him back? And if she couldn’t, then what? Would he resent her? Would love turn to hate? Where would that leave Lori?

It’s too much
. There were simply too many obstacles, too much history between them. The risks were too big.

She shut off the water. He was probably mistaken about his feelings, anyway. It had been an emotional twenty-four hours for him, first with Devin’s trouble and then meeting Lori. It’s understandable that he’d be mixed up. This wasn’t love. He couldn’t love her. He hadn’t had time to fall in love with her.

I’ll tell him. I’ll explain that
.

They probably should forgo the sex. Darn the bad luck. It was obviously confusing things.

She opened the shower door to find Cam gone and a fluffy white towel and a black terry-cloth robe waiting for her. A single red rose likely cut from the bushes outside lay atop the robe. Soft, romantic music played in the background. “Oh, Cam.”

He wasn’t going to make this easy. She took time to blow-dry her hair, bracing herself for the conversation to come. She stepped out of the bathroom and turned toward his bedroom, expecting to find him there. The sight that met her eyes shocked her speechless.

Cam wasn’t in the room, but he’d been there. The bedcovers were turned back in welcome. Dozens of red rose petals lay scattered across the white sheets.
He must have stripped the bushes outside bare
.

A black velvet jeweler’s box lay on one of the pillows. Her breath caught even as it registered that it wasn’t a ring box.

Behind her, the bathroom door snicked shut. She heard the shower switch on. Sarah knew she should move and look for something to wear. Devin wouldn’t mind if she borrowed a pair of his shorts and a T-shirt, would he?

But she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the bed, the rose petals, and the box, and before she knew it, Cam stood behind her, a towel draped around his hips. “Hey, there.”

“This is … romantic.”

“It’s a little fantasy I’ve had. Care to indulge me?” He stroked his hands up and down her arms, and when she leaned back against him in silent surrender, she felt a tug on her belt. The robe floated to her feet.

Cam scooped her up into his arms and carried her to his bed, where he sat her gently atop the rose petals. Reaching for the jewelry box, he said, “I’ve had the big stone for years, won it off a miner in a game of dice. When I went to buy earrings for Lori, I showed it to the jeweler and asked him how to best display it. I wouldn’t admit it to myself at the time, but I had the necklace made for you, Sarah. I knew all along that this stone was meant for you.”

He flipped open the box, and Sarah gasped. The gold necklace held a free-form pendant that took her breath away. Set against gold and accented with diamonds, the dark stone at the center provided a surface for brilliant colors to dance upon. Scarlets and oranges and yellows blazed around a splash of purple at the center of the stone. “Oh, my gosh, it’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like that. What is it?”

“Australian black opal.”

“The colors are … gorgeous. Like bright coral surrounded by a deep blue sea.”

Cam shook his head. “No. It’s you. Violet eyes at Lover’s Leap in autumn when the aspens are changing.” He took the necklace from the box and said, “Will you wear it for me, Sarah? Here? Now?”

She drew in a deep breath of rose-scented air and nodded. When he moved around behind her, she sat staring into a mirror. Her mouth went dry as he draped the necklace around her. The pendant nestled against her skin at the swell of her bare breasts, its cool weight a contrast to the vision of heat in the colors on its surface. Cam cupped her breasts with his large hands and met her gaze in the mirror. “Magnificent.”

Then he dipped his head and kissed her neck, and Sarah gave herself up to the moment and the man.

She lost track of time as he took her on a slow, sensual journey unlike any she’d ever known before. Sometimes hot and fierce and fast. Other times so sweet and slow that she wanted to weep. Cam Murphy told her he loved her wordlessly and with words. He told her he loved her without touching her anywhere and by touching her everywhere.

When finally she lay boneless and spent and deliciously sated, he placed one last tender kiss upon her lips and spooned against her, holding her as if she were the most precious thing on earth.

Sarah wanted to weep and wasn’t sure why. The other times she’d been with Cam, she’d felt delicious and upbeat in the aftermath. Today she felt … reflective. Uncertain. Even confused. Was it because the experience had been so romantic and bittersweet? Or was it because she recognized that Cam had made love to her, but she’d held something back with him?

The mood remained with her as she rose from his bed and dressed in Devin’s gym shorts and a T-shirt that Cam provided. Glancing into the mirror above the dresser, she touched the necklace that looked so gorgeous—even against a Colorado Rockies tee. Cam might see Colorado in the gemstone, but Sarah saw the Great Barrier Reef. Emphasis on the words
great
and
barrier
. He said he wanted a relationship, but had he considered the changes that a relationship would entail? Surely he didn’t expect her to yank out her roots here in Eternity Springs. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t. Even if they could find a way to make it work living half a world away from Lori, whose education plans tied her to Texas for the next few years at least, Sarah couldn’t leave her mother, and neither could she uproot her. Sarah was as bound to Eternity Springs today as she’d been when she was a teenaged mother dependent on her parents for support.

But what if Cam was ready to repatriate? The idea whispered through her mind like a song.

Maybe … just maybe …

The back door opened, and she heard the clatter of paws on the kitchen floor as Cam brought Mortimer in after a backyard potty break. She walked into the small living room, where she noticed the clock and registered the time. “Oh, no. Cam, we’ve been here well over an hour!”

“You don’t rush perfection, sugar.”

She couldn’t help but smile. Perfection was an apt description. “Nevertheless, I need to get back to Mom, and I still need to run by home and change. I don’t think I should show back up at the picnic wearing Devin’s clothes.”

The drive to Sarah’s home took less than five minutes. Since they’d be only a couple of minutes, she parked in front of Fresh so they’d have the straight shot up Aspen toward the lake. They walked around the corner to enter the house from the front door, and with her thoughts divided between the past hour and the rest of the day to come, Sarah didn’t notice the car in her drive or the person waiting on the front porch until Cam murmured a soft, “Oh, hell.”

Lori stood on the front porch, her arms folded and a thundercloud on her face. “Really, Mom? You leave your car parked in front of his house for more than an hour? In the middle of the day? For all the town to see? Really? And you leave wearing different clothes than you wore when you arrived? Not to mention that the freaking windows were open! For all the town to hear!” She mimicked in a whorish, falsetto tone, “Cam. Cam. Oh, Cam!”

   
Oh, crap
.

Cam watched the color drain from Sarah’s face, then almost immediately return in a flush of embarrassment.

Lori took a step toward her mother, her face tight, her eyes emerald flames. “How could you, Mom? How could you!”

Calmly, Cam said, “Why don’t we go inside to discuss this.”

“What does it matter?” Lori fired back. “She already told the whole town. And you weren’t exactly silent yourself!”

Cam felt his face flush with embarrassment.

Lori’s charge wasn’t true, of course. With the picnic and other holiday events taking place out at Hummingbird Lake, the town proper looked like a ghost town. Cam didn’t bother to argue the point. He’d rather the whole town had heard instead of his daughter. What mattered right now was damage control.

Sarah appeared rooted where she stood, shaken and tense. He placed his hand at the small of her back and applied gentle pressure, pushing her forward as he quietly said, “Sarah, let’s go inside. We don’t need to do this in your front yard.”

“Why not?” Lori said. “You’ve already let Eternity Springs see you soiling the linen. Why not air it out in public, too?”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Save me from young drama queens
. Shifting from embarrassed to slightly annoyed, Cam didn’t respond to his daughter as he escorted her mother up the front steps and inside her home. Ellen Reese sat in her customary chair, sleeping, and he put the clues together. When Lori’s grandmother got tired, Lori had brought her home. When she didn’t find Sarah, she must have gone looking for her.

Cam ushered Sarah through the front room to the kitchen, where Sarah was most comfortable. He pulled a chair out from beneath the table and gestured for her to sit down. Then he turned to face his daughter, who had followed them inside. “Why don’t we all sit and discuss this like adults?”

When Lori marched over to the table and sat, he recognized that he’d chosen the right approach to take with her. He joined them, but neither woman appeared to notice. Their attention was focused on each other. Lori’s eyes shot daggers. Sarah looked stricken. Cam glanced from one woman to the other, helpless about what to do or say until he was distracted by the dripping faucet at the kitchen sink. He’d thought he’d gotten that fixed the last time he was here. It was easier to think about the faucet than the disaster in front of him.

Lori placed her hands on the table and leaned forward. “It was never about me, was it? All this time you’ve been pushing me to have a relationship with him, it was never about me. All that talk about why I needed to try with him, why I needed a father, that was just an excuse. You didn’t summon me home for me. You did it for you.”

Sarah’s voice trembled as she replied, “That’s not true. Lori, it’s not like that.”

Cam literally bit his tongue, sensing that now wasn’t the time to interrupt. Lori was obviously feeling angry and hurt. Let her vent, and then maybe she’d listen.

“What’s the deal, Mom?” Scorn filled Lori’s voice. “You never outgrew being the town good girl who just can’t resist the bad boy who wears leather and rides a Harley?”

“Stop it.” Now Sarah shoved to her feet. Tears swam in her eyes. “What happened between me and Cam is our business. It’s not your place to judge me or to question my morals. I don’t need your permission or your approval.”