The Next Right Thing (Harlequin Superromance) (17 page)

He examined her face with amused tolerance. “Point taken.”

“But I also know you wanted an opportunity to negotiate a possible settlement with her. So here’s our plan. If she seems relatively calm, I’ll cue you to join me at the door.”

“What’s the cue?”

She thought about this for a moment. “We’ll call each other on our cell phones before I get out of the car. My phone will be in here—” She pointed to the pocket on her T-shirt. “This material is thin enough that you’ll be able to hear anything I say. Cue will be the word...
rooster.
”

“I hear the word
rooster,
I head to the door.”

“Right.”

A shadow darkened his features. “Let’s do it.”

* * *

T
EN
MINUTES
LATER
, Marc parked across the street from a fifties-style, flat-roof house perched on the hillside with a view of the Pacific Ocean. An arched wooden gate led to a courtyard, the only entrance to the home. To the right of the gate was a driveway leading to a two-car garage.

“Someone’s been home recently,” Cammie said, securing her long hair into a knot with a rubber band.

“How can you tell?”

“In the driveway, see the tire tracks in the dirt?”

He squinted. “Barely.”

“With the garage door closed, it indicates someone probably recently backed out a car. Not necessarily Laura, though.”

He nodded, his blue eyes turning frosty. “Boyfriend. Or husband.”

She hadn’t wanted to bring up that possibility.

“I know we agreed you’d walk to the front door by yourself,” he said, “but I don’t like that I can’t see you in that courtyard.”

She punched in his cell number. “Remember I’ll have my phone in my pocket, turned on, so you can hear everything that’s said.”

His phone rang. He punched the talk button. “We need a cue word for trouble.”

“Okay, how about...
Tolstoy?
”

He smiled. “Emily can never know.”

After dropping her cell in her pocket, she put on her sunglasses and stuck the folded papers into a pants pocket. “I’m heading up there now.”

“I’ll be listening. And, Cammie...”

She had her hand on the door handle. “Yes?”

“No wading into gray areas.”

“Marc?”

“Yes?”

“You’re getting on my nerves.”

After exiting the car, she walked briskly toward the gate. Over the years, she’d learned it was smart to work fast when conducting process services, and to keep the papers out of view until the last moment so as to not alert the person what was coming.

The wooden gate creaked as she opened it. She tried to leave it slightly ajar so she could quickly exit, but the heavy gate shut with a solid thud. She walked past a pond with fat golden koi fish surrounded by manicured bonsai trees. Cyprus trees scented the air with a sage-woodsy scent. Laura McDonald lived in a nice place. Cammie had to wonder why Laura would invest the time and effort to romance Marc and pull off such a risky scam for a mere thirty thousand dollars.

She punched the doorbell once, twice.

No answer.

She knocked loudly.

No answer.

Cammie stood, listening carefully. Didn’t hear voices, no sounds of TV or music. Not even a dog barking.

She stepped off the porch and onto a rock-strewn path that curled around expansive plate-glass windows. Stepping off the path and over a small hedge, she cupped her hands around her eyes and looked inside the house. Teak furniture, oriental rugs, a painting of a beach scene over a fireplace. The woman who called herself Swagtastic had expensive taste. On a coffee table were two coffee cups—one with lipstick marks—and several dirty plates.

Laura McDonald lived with someone.

Cammie retraced her steps to the car and climbed inside.

“Nobody home,” Marc said.

“That’s right.” She retrieved her phone and turned it off.

“See any signs of people being recently there?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

She didn’t want to lie, but she also didn’t want to hurt him by describing the two coffee cups. Sure, Marc had already mentioned there might be a boyfriend or husband in the picture, but intellectually understanding something didn’t mean a person was emotionally ready for it.

And, after all, he’d been engaged to Laura-Gwen. He’d loved her. He might still love her.

“There were...some dirty dishes,” she said casually, “so someone is around.”

She hadn’t lied. In fact, it was technically the truth. But leaving out significant details—that there were two cups, two sets of plates—felt bad because, in an attempt to spare his heart, she’d waded into its gray area. At least she hadn’t promised not to go there.

* * *

O
VER
THE
NEXT
HOUR
AND
A
HALF
, they returned twice more to the house. Both times, nobody was home.

“It’s almost seven,” Cammie said. “I’m thinking that she’s out for the evening.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“Rather than driving back and forth, which can be a problem if neighbors start noticing, I activated a motion detector program on my smartphone and left it on a corner of the window ledge.”

He blinked. “You sound like that sleuth and her electronic gadgets in that old TV show
The Avengers
.”

“You’re a fan of that show, too?”

“Yes, Mrs. Peel.”

“Excellent, Mr. Steed. Let’s take off. I’m starved.”

He frowned. “Shouldn’t you have left the phone near the front door?”

“There might be an entrance to the home from inside the garage. I figure she’ll pick up those dirty dishes after she gets in, which are close enough to the window to trigger the motion sensor. The phone will take fifteen seconds of video and send it as an attachment to your email.”

“But won’t she notice your smartphone when the camera light goes on?”

“Turned it off. Figured there’d be enough light inside to see her.” As they drove off, she asked, “Did Gwen like to stay out late?”

“Always. She’d complain if we got home before ten.”

“We shouldn’t serve her papers that late. People tend to get squirrely when their doorbell rings after nine or ten at night.”

He puffed out a breath. “This is becoming a long day. If—and that’s a big
if
—we serve her by ten, we wouldn’t get back to Vegas until 3:00 a.m. I vote for our finding a few rooms at a motel.”

“Good idea. If the motion detector alerts us that she’s home at midnight, we’ll show up on her doorstep around seven tomorrow morning.”

“Is that a little early?”

Cammie shrugged. “If she’s working, she might be leaving the house at that time.”

“Working.” He snorted under his breath. “More like plotting to steal from some employer who probably thinks she loves him.”

Cammie pondered his comment as they wove their way down the hill. All the time Marc believed that someone, Gwen-Laura, who loved him actually didn’t, he never knew that someone else, Cammie, did.

But did she still?

The past few days with Marc had been confusing, at best. She’d like to blame that near-kiss interlude on aphrodisiac-laced doughnuts, but the truth was there had been an overload of chemistry. In hindsight, she wondered if
she’d
been overloaded and Marc had been, well, slightly loaded. That the passionate burst, like a voltage surge, had been nothing more than a system malfunction.

To be totally honest with herself, her part in that malfunction could have simply been a result of her long-buried, pent-up feelings. Kinda like what scientists called a
false positive
—a given condition appears to be present, but it’s really not. Maybe she’d carried her overloaded feelings for Marc for so long, she mistakenly believed them to be true, but they no longer were.

She released a small sigh. At least her smartphone still worked properly.

CHAPTER TWELVE

O
VER
THE
NEXT
HOUR
, Cammie and Marc picked up some incidentals from a convenience store and found a couple of available rooms at The Beachcomber, a family-run lodge with private yards that led to the beach. From there, it was a short walk to the San Clemente pier and its Fisherman’s Restaurant, which advertised itself as being the best seafood in town.

After checking in, they headed to the restaurant, where they purchased two T-shirts from its gift shop so they would have something clean to wear the next day. Cammie got a pink T-shirt with the words
Live, Love, Surf in San Clemente.
They had only one left in Marc’s size. It was black with the words, in big white letters,
Chicks Dig Me, Fish Fear Me.

“Maybe I’ll wear it to court sometime,” Marc joked.

“Right,” Cammie agreed. “It screams ‘like me’ to a jury.”

A young man, his sun-bleached hair flopping into his eyes, led them to their table on the pier. Heat lamps and a Plexiglas wall protected them from chilly breezes and spray from the crashing waves below. As he lit a candle at the table, Marc ordered a bottle of wine.

“Where’s your phone?” Cammie asked.

He patted his shirt pocket. “On vibrate
and
ringer. I’ll feel and hear it when that motion detector sends the message.”

“Good.” Cammie looked out at the white-capped waves as they rolled toward the shore. “My mom and I used to fantasize about visiting the ocean, but we never did.”

“This is your first visit?”

“Second. Uncle Frankie and Regina invited me to join them on vacation to San Diego. We stayed in Little Italy and visited the zoo, went to the beach, even visited Tijuana.”

“Regina?”

“His first wife. They were besotted with each other. After she died, I didn’t think he’d ever love like that again. Then years later he and Delilah found each other.”

“Why didn’t you and your mom—”

The waiter appeared, opened the wine and poured two glasses. Marc ordered the swordfish, Cammie the white salmon.

After taking a sip, she answered his question. “When Mom was feeling good, she loved to talk about ‘Racy Tracy’ traveling and visiting places. But the truth was she rarely left the house.”

“Racy Tracy?”

“Oh, that’s what she liked to call herself. She wasn’t racy—that term refers to her love of horse racing. Her name was Tracy.”

A question flickered across his face. “Isn’t that—”

“My contribution to Trazy’s name, yes.”

His eyes searched hers. “When did she die?”

An old ache gripped her heart. “When I was sixteen.”

He waited. “Is it all right to ask...?”

“I came home from school and found her lying on the floor,” she said, keeping her voice level. “Aneurysm, they said. Supposedly she went quickly.”

“You’d always been there for her,” he said gently.

Cammie nodded.

“Her caretaker.”

“Not a very good one, obviously,” she scoffed.

“You couldn’t help that she—”

“Died when I wasn’t there?” She took another sip, set down the glass. “That was my greatest fear. Didn’t matter how many times I called in sick to school so I could stay home with her, or came home early to check on her, or the evenings and weekends I didn’t go out because I didn’t want her to be alone.” Cammie looked at the setting sun, its orange-and-yellow light sliding down the horizon. “She checked out all by herself. Didn’t wait for me.”

Their food arrived. As the waiter fussed over the table, she shook off her painful thoughts. Did no good to talk about what happened. Much better to keep a lid on it, let the past be the past.

As they ate, she said in a chipper tone, “Did I mention that Val and I want to open a detective agency?”

“Val?”

“Christina Aguilera at the Shamrock Palace.”

“Well, she’s obviously good at disguises.” He swiped his mouth with a napkin. “I’ve often thought that women make better investigators because, generally speaking, they’re more intuitive about people. Compassionate, too. I know you’re fond of Philip Marlowe, but that style of tough-guy shamus is better in movies and books. In reality, it can be off-putting to people.”

“You view me as intuitive and compassionate?”

He gave her a serious look. “Absolutely.”

When it came to his opinion of her work as an investigator, he was full of compliments, which was more than a little ironic. He thought she was intuitive, compassionate and as clever as Mrs. Peel. He’d chased her a thousand miles from Denver to Vegas to hire her. If she was so great at her job, why had he put her on probation? What would he have done if he’d thought she was incompetent? Shoot her?

She realized that she might have taken offense too quickly. Marc might have been willing to forgive and forget her slip into the gray area if she’d stuck around and negotiated with him. But she’d been hurt for reasons that had nothing to do with her job.

She’d been desperate for his approval.

It felt more than a little embarrassing to admit that to herself—after all, she’d always prided herself on her independent ways—but back in Denver, she probably would have done backflips for a smile, a congratulatory nod.

Now, it seemed, she had that approval back on a professional level. He couldn’t stop applauding. It was time to give him some approval, too. Time to cut him some slack and stop obsessing about the probation. Like her uncle had said, life was short, and she didn’t want to waste any more of it on old recriminations.

A young man strumming a guitar walked below them on the shoreline, the notes floating through the air as the last golden drop of sun disappeared off the edge of the world.

* * *

A
FTER
DINNER
THEY
WALKED
along the beach to the motel. Deep in the west, the sky burned orange. Overhead, seagulls squawked as they circled, flashes of white against the approaching night. The lights from the pier cast a hazy glow on the beach.

Cammie, swinging her sneakers by their shoestrings, walked barefoot at the edge of the receding waves.

“This wet sand and cold water feels better than a foot massage,” she said, teetering a little.

They’d shared a bottle of wine, less than two glasses each, so he chalked up her imbalance to the slanting shore.

“Your pants are getting soaked.” Marc wove his arm through hers and gently pulled her onto drier sand.

In the distance, breezes blew toward the shore ripples of dark water, which built in intensity until they crashed in white frothy waves.

She halted and smiled up at him, the lights from the pier burnishing the ends of her dark curls. “You’re such a gentleman.”

“I try.”

“Wish you wouldn’t be.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Come on, it’s a short walk back to our rooms.”

But she refused to budge. “What’d you think I meant...when I said you shouldn’t be a gentleman?”

“Cammie—”

“I
meant,
” she said, leaning forward, “that you should roll up your pant legs, too, and feel the water. But you thought I meant sex.”

Maybe her nearly two glasses had had more of an effect because she’d eaten so little prior to dinner. “Cammie—”

“But while we’re on the subject, I think it’s time we talked about sex.”

“How’d we get from walking barefoot to sex?” When she started to speak, he made a cut-off gesture. “Don’t answer that. Let’s bench this discussion for later—”

“No. I want to talk about it now.”

He knew that tone in her voice. Had heard it plenty of times over the years when they’d worked together. She wasn’t budging from this subject for one millisecond, so he might as well listen.

“All right.” He sucked in a big breath of fortifying air. “Go for it.”

She stepped right up to him, so close he could smell that familiar scent of flowers and almonds. The hazy light played across the swell of creamy flesh over the neckline of her top. She stared up at him, a look on her face he couldn’t decipher.

She let go of her sneakers. They dropped to the sand with a soft whump. She lifted her hands and cupped them around his face, her touch soft and warm.

“I love you,” she whispered.

The words hit him with an invisible force, as shocking as a splash of cold water. Reminded him of the times as a kid when he’d cannonball into a pool, the onslaught of chill ripping the very breath from him.

That’s how he felt right now.

Stunned.

Speechless.

Still cupping his face, she tilted her head toward the first stars as though they’d encouraged her boldness. Hell, it couldn’t have been
only
that measly glass and three-fourths’ wine. Ocean breezes scurried past, lifting her hair. The long dark strands seemed to float about her face.

The moment felt surreal, yet magical. His senses felt sharpened, raw. He was acutely aware of the waves pounding the shore, her pale oval face framed with a wild afterglow of sunset, her excruciatingly silken touch on his skin. She was breathtakingly beautiful. Like a nymph risen from the dark depths of the sea.

With a secret risen from the depths of her heart.

Just like when he’d been a kid barreling into the pool, after the initial shocking splash and some flailing about, the waters turned warm and welcoming and became the only place he wanted to be.

Cammie heaved an audible sigh and dropped her hands. “I take that back. I loved you when I worked for you, and I loved you after I moved here, but I’m not sure I love you anymore.”

“Uh...” It was the most intelligent thing he could think to say.

She leaned over and picked up her shoes. “I feel so much better getting that off my chest. Let’s get to our rooms. Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.”

“Uh.” He trudged behind her, glad one of them felt better.

* * *

A
SHORT
WHILE
LATER
, Marc wandered around his room. Pressed his hand against the bed mattress. Firm. Good. He checked out the kitchenette. Old stove, but clean. In the cabinet were an assortment of pots and pans, dishes, a red plastic colander. On the linoleum counter sat a coffeemaker that looked as if it had logged several thousand cups of java. He’d bought a toothbrush and toothpaste earlier in the day. Had a clean, funky T-shirt to put on in the morning.

Home sweet motel-home.

He pulled off his shirt, hung it on one of the wire hangers in a cramped closet next to the bed. Tugged off his loafers. Caught his image in a mottled mirror hanging on the wall.

His hair was disheveled.

He needed a shave.

That hungry look in his eyes had nothing to do with food.

“Damn it,” he growled, raking his fingers through his hair. Outside, the turbulent surf hissed and pounded. Felt too damn warm in here. He stomped to the window and shoved it open. The curtains danced and fluttered as ocean breezes surged into the room. He licked his lips, almost tasting the salty wetness in the air.

He walked in a half circle, turned and paced back. Images of Cammie seared through his brain. Cammie in a corset, Cammie with her hair piled high and eyes thick with liner, Cammie in a body-clinging red dress.

Cammie on the beach, holding his face, whispering that she loved him.

He halted, blew out a pent-up breath.

So that’s what she’d meant by his being clueless. Damn, she was right.

But then she’d wiped the slate clean. Taken the words away. Something about loving him years ago, even recently, but not now.

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

To think he’d wanted to hear a term of endearment, just one, from his daughter, then Cammie lays it on him in one humdinger of a confession that she then rescinds. Just like that.

Not fair.

Shaking his head emphatically, he stormed to the door. Just because
she
decided the conversation was over didn’t make it so. Even Cammie knew that in a courtroom, both sides had the right to present their case.

* * *

C
AMMIE
WAS
CHECKING
OUT
the cramped bathroom, wondering if the kitschy yellow-and-pink wallpaper was new retro or leftover from the nineties, when a pounding on the door made her jump.

She felt her pocket, belatedly remembering she’d left her smartphone at Laura’s. Shit. What if she needed to call 9-1-1?

More pounding. “Cammie, open up!”

Marc?

She crossed to the door and opened it.

He stood there, shirtless, out of breath, one arm pressed against the doorjamb. He was insanely masculine, from his wild mass of chestnut hair to the determined, simmering look in his eyes, to his hairy, muscled chest.

Which she couldn’t stop staring at.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen a man’s chest before, it’s just that she hadn’t seen Marc’s, and it had a helluvalot more hair and muscle than she’d given him credit for. Dark hair feathered his forearms, building to a carpet of the stuff from his clavicle to his pecs. It spilled over the latter, converging into a line that meandered over a tight stack of ridges before ending at a juncture between his flat, brown stomach and the button of his pants.

She sucked in a breath of air as her insides turned liquid. Nobody said anything, so she figured she should...say...something. That or start climbing the man.

“Hot.” That pretty much summed it up.

Maybe he stepped inside, or maybe she fell against him. Whatever, they closed the space between them faster than the Big Bang.

The next thing she knew, their lips met and she was lost in a kiss that tasted like wine and the sea. Ocean currents barreled through the open door, carrying the sounds of the angry, pounding surf that merged with their hammering hearts, creating a swirling vortex within which only the two of them existed.

She had no pride, no sense of decorum, was only aware of her unleashed desire and need. She ravaged his mouth with hers while exploring his naked chest with her hands, stroking his muscles and fingering slick strands of chest hair. He returned her ardor with a carnal fury, kissing and nibbling and licking like a man who had been denied food and drink for too long, and she was his banquet.