The Bake-Off (24 page)

“Linnie.” The door opened, revealing Cam in a starched white undershirt and belted khakis. Judging by his surprised expression, he hadn't known she was out here. “What a pleasant surprise. If you'll give me a second, I'll get dressed and—”

“No need.” She wet her lips with her tongue and stepped over the threshold into a high-ceilinged apartment that made their luxury suite look like a shabby dorm room. “I'm here to seduce you.”

He froze for a moment, waiting, and when it became clear that she had nothing else to add, he nodded. “I'll consider myself on notice.”

She tossed back her hair and tried again. “No, I mean right now.”

“You'll want to close the door then.”

She complied, but startled when the door slammed shut behind her.

“Okay.” He braced himself, settling into a slight crouch in anticipation of her tackle. “Fire when ready.”

Linnie remained rooted to the carpet, her arms folded tightly across her chest. Her gaze bounced from the gleaming hardwood floors to the grand piano across the room to the view of the park and the glittering skyline outside the window, everywhere except for him.

“You all right?” He'd gone from sounding amused to concerned.

“I'm fine.” She took a deep breath and wiped her palms on her jeans. “I'm just showing up at your door unannounced, some might say rudely—”

He reached over and grazed her wrist with his fingers. “I'm delighted to see you, and may I say you look lovely.”

“No, you may not.” She shook her head, exasperated. “You're not supposed to say I look lovely. You're not supposed to say
anything
because you're too busy being mauled by me.”

He opened up his arms, indicating his total cooperation. “By all means, maul away.”

“Damn it!” She stamped her foot, the sound echoing through the cavernous space. “This is supposed to be steamy and spontaneous.”

“If I may make a suggestion—”

“Argh! Stop being so gentlemanly! Stop saying ‘may'! You're ruining the mood.”

“Okay, then,” he drawled, giving her a slow and scorching once-over with those gleaming dark eyes. “Take off your shirt, woman.”

She started laughing. “I want a do-over.”

“Good idea.” He stepped around her, opened the door, and escorted her back out into the hallway. “Let's try again. I'll be checking my BlackBerry in here, totally unsuspecting.”

“All right. Okay.” She inhaled, exhaled, and gave herself a little shake. “Oh, and you might want to move any breakables out of reach and take off your watch, because it looks expensive and I don't want to accidentally damage it.”

He raised one eyebrow. “
I'm
ruining the mood?”

“Can you please just play along?”

“Linnie, look at me. Do I look like I care if you break my watch? I hope you do. I hope we trash this hotel room like rock stars on a three-day bender.”

Her hand fluttered to her throat. “Oh my.”

“Bye now. See you in a minute.” He shut the door in her face.

She stared blindly ahead, trying to catch her breath and sort through the sudden whirl of thoughts and urges.

Cam cracked the door open again and prompted, “This is the part where you're supposed to knock on the door and attack me like a pack of ravening wolves.”

“Hang on.” She braced her palm on the doorframe. “I just need a minute.”

The door opened wider. “It's easy. Here, I'll give you your cue:
knock, knock
.”

“I can't.” Linnie hung her head and conceded defeat.

“You can!” He caught her hand and pulled her back into the penthouse.

“No, I can't. I realize you don't know me, but this is the way I am.” She sighed, disgusted with herself. The luxurious apartment was lit solely by the moonlight pouring in through the tall windows and balcony doors. If she couldn't seduce a guy here, she was hopeless. “I'm not spontaneous. I'm not sensual. I wasn't even hoochie enough to stay in the hoochie room in the casino.”

There was a long, confused pause. “What?”

“Never mind. I need a drink.” She leaned back against the wall. “Do you have any wine?”

He kept his hand clasped around hers. “You don't need a glass of wine. Getting buzzed is the easy way out.” He pulled her against his chest. “Seduce me. Not because you're drunk, not because you have something to prove, but just because you can.”

“I can't.” She tucked her head beneath his chin to hide her face. Now that she had a better view into the living room, she noticed a gilt-trimmed chess set on one of the decorative tables by the bookshelf. “I can beat the pants off you in chess but I can't seduce you. Sorry.”

He pulled back and peered down at her. “You play chess? Really?”

“Absolutely.” Linnie nodded. “I hate to brag, but I'm virtually unbeatable.”

“What if I told you that I was the captain of my prep school's chess team?”

She smiled at the mixture of pride and embarrassment in his voice as he confessed this. “I'm sure you're a very skilled player, but trust me, I can beat you.”

“You're sure?”

“Very.” She slipped off her shoes and allowed him to lead her across the woven Persian rug toward the chess set.

He pushed aside a pair of heavy club chairs and set down the game board on a patch of rug bathed in luminous white moonlight. Then he toyed with the tiny metal zipper pull on her sweatshirt. “Care to make it interesting?”

 

“
C
heckmate.” Linnie used her index finger to slide her queen along the board until it came to rest next to her pawn and Cam's now-unguarded king. He'd fallen right into her trap of taking her knight with his rook. “You can't escape.”

Cam blew out his breath as he recognized her strategy too late. “I can't believe I didn't see that coming. In my defense, it's been years since I've played, and you're very distracting.”

At this point, Cam had lost his belt, his watch, his pants, and his shirt—everything except his boxers, which turned out to be green tartan, in a pattern remarkably similar to Linnie's bra and boy shorts. Linnie, at a distinct wardrobe disadvantage due to her lack of layers and accessories, was also down to underwear only.

He'd surprised her with his skill, and, though she'd never admit it, there had been a moment or two when she'd actually worried she might lose the game.

“I'm enjoying the view, at least.” He gazed across the chessboard. “How did you know I have a thing for plaid?”

A few hours ago, Linnie would have turned away from him or covered herself with her hands. But tonight, for the first time in memory, she felt beautiful.

“How did you know
I
had a thing for plaid?” she countered, smiling up at him as he moved to sit next to her. His fingers threaded through her long hair, and she rolled onto her stomach to afford him better access.

“Your hair is very unusual back here.” He traced two spirals on the back of her head. “Do you have two crowns instead of one?”

“Mm-hmm. It's called a double whorl.” Linnie rubbed her curled toes against his bare calf. “It's rare, but it happens. Some geneticists think Einstein had a double whorl. That may be why he had such an unruly hairstyle.”

“You and Einstein, huh?” His hands moved from her hair to her shoulders and back. “No wonder you trounced me in chess. You must be brilliant.”

“Not really,” she said. “I never finished college.”

“I did, but it took me a few tries. I was too busy partying to crack a book. Is that what happened to you?”

She sighed and shifted position. The short woolen bristles of the rug chafed against her skin. “Not exactly. You know, now that we've played chess
en déshabillé
, I really should ask your name,” Linnie said. “I assume Cam is a nickname?”

“It is.”

“Cameron?” she ventured.

He shook his head. “Guess again.”

“Camden?”

“Claudius. My mother has a thing for Roman history. She wanted something regal.”

“How on earth do you get Cam out of Claudius?”

He resumed his roving massage. “My middle name is Augustus. Yeah. Take it up with my parents. My initials are C. A. M. By the time I started kindergarten, I figured out I'd be better off as Cam than Claudius.”

“I have a weird name, too.” She stopped swinging her foot as his fingers dipped just beneath the waistband of her boy shorts. “Linnie's short for Vasylina. It's Polish. My sister, Amy, started calling me Linnie when we were both little. You remember Amy—she's the horrified bystander who interrupted us on the sofa the other day.”

“Oh, I remember,” he assured her. “Are you close to her?”

“No. We had a falling-out a long time ago; it was my fault.” Linnie surprised herself with her own casual candor. She'd never confessed this aloud to anyone before. “I—I stole something from her.” She expected to be suffused with shame, but instead she was flooded with relief. It felt so freeing to let this secret out, to confront the person she truly was instead of the image she tried so hard to project.

“Boyfriend?”

Linnie had to laugh. “No. God, no. Her boyfriends were slavishly devoted to her. What I did was much worse than stealing her boyfriend. I stole her ideas. I stole her creations.” She stopped, waiting for him to react.

“I'm not following.”

“I cheated,” Linnie said, splaying her fingers across the intricate pattern woven into the carpet. “I cheated my way into college. When I applied, I was fourteen, and even though my SAT and AP scores were off the charts, the dean of admissions expressed some concerns that I wasn't emotionally prepared. I believe the phrase she used was ‘adding too much steam to a pressure cooker.' She told my parents that I needed to demonstrate to the admissions committee that I was a well-rounded, creative individual. Which I wasn't. But my parents and my teachers kept urging me to put something together, and my whole identity was wrapped up in being gifted and extraordinary, so I sent in my sister's art portfolio as my own.”

He didn't say anything, and she felt a perverse surge of satisfaction that she'd shocked him, that she'd shown him how much less appealing her interior was than her exterior.

“Amy is the creative one. She has an instinct and a vision that I will never have. She was getting ready to apply to college, too, and had spent months putting together a collection of her best work. These were paintings she had done all through high school, and I knew they were good. Her art was the one thing that really made her stand out, and I took credit for it so that I could impress everyone.”

“And she ratted you out, and the college asked you to leave?”

“No, the college never found out.” She had spent months in a state of unrelenting anxiety, always certain that she was on the verge of being discovered and disgraced, but the accusations never came. The suspense of waiting had been far worse than any administrative punishment. Once she had broken down and begged Amy to retaliate, scream at her, or at least acknowledge how much Linnie's betrayal had hurt her, but Amy had simply looked at her with expressionless eyes, said, “I guess you needed it more,” and then stopped speaking to her entirely.

“The only people who knew were me, my sister, and my parents,” Linnie continued, “and we never said a word about it, even to one another. Amy packed those pieces away and never looked at them again, as far as I know. Everything changed after that.”

She waited and waited through another long pause, and then finally, Cam said, “You applied to college when you were
fourteen
?”

“Were you not listening to the rest of that story? What kind of person does that to her own sister? Go ahead and say it,” she challenged. “Don't hold back.”

“I'm not going to judge you.”

“Why not?”

“Because, as you yourself pointed out, I don't know you.”

“Well, I would never forgive someone who did that to me—who took my ideas and passed them off as her own. I thought I deserved to get everything I wanted just because I was ‘special.' I was going to be a doctor. Not because I wanted to help people, but because I excelled at science and that's what my parents wanted for me. But it turned out that the dean of admissions was right about me. I had a breakdown the day after finals.”

“You panicked and flunked the exams?” Cam asked.

“No, I aced them all.” Now the shame and humiliation started to resurface. “I wanted to flunk out so I could have an excuse to leave, but I was incapable of throwing a test. My ego wouldn't allow it. So instead I just moved back home at Christmas and never went back to campus. My parents were mortified, especially my mom. You should have seen her face when her friends asked why I wasn't at college anymore. And would you like to know what I do now? I deal blackjack in a Vegas casino.”

“You can keep going with this all night, and I'm still not going to judge you.”

“I just want you to know who you're dealing with: A cheater. A quitter. A failure.”

“Did you cheat at chess?” He kissed the instep of her foot. “Because it might assuage my ego if you did.”

“This is never going to go anywhere, you know,” she said. “I'm due to fly back to Nevada in three days.”

“As it happens, McMillan Hotels is currently developing a new resort in Vegas.” His lips moved to the sensitive skin behind her knee. “I can arrange to fly there frequently for business. We could see each other—go out, stay in.”