Prescription For Love (The Kingsley Series) (9 page)

"From a therapist?" Cass asked, surprised.

Cameron laughed. "Well, sure, silly. He can't be a therapist all the time, can he? And when he’s not working, if he wants to be a hottie with ripped jeans and a five o'clock shadow, who rides a sleek black motorcycle, then I doubt I'll complain much. Besides, that’s only my conception of the leather-jacket-wearing biker types. They may look bad, but I bet they’re all softies under that gristle."

"Well that's all fine and dandy," Eva muttered, “but don't you get on that thing, you hear?"

With the sounds of laughter in her ears, Cameron shook her head. "Aww, mom, that's cute. But he hasn't exactly invited me." She winked devilishly. “Not yet anyway.”

"Hmph," Eva replied, unable to contain her grin as the other women continued laughing.

***

Walking through the door to what she thought of as her starter home, Cameron kicked off her sandals and admired again the wild ice blue toenail polish she'd chosen as part of her pedicure. Ignoring the fact that she'd chosen the color because it was so like Mac's eyes, she hung her keys on the hook by the door and moved into the living room, pulling her cell phone from her pocket and turning it on.

"Voice-mail already! All I did was get a pedicure with the girls," she grumbled, watching the boot screen on her phone give way to the regular home screen, and light up with the voice-mail indicator. Sighing, she tapped the on-screen button and held the tiny cell phone to her ear.

"Well, look at that." Mac's voice rumbled through the speaker, a hint of laughter in his tone. Cameron froze, her lips curving up in a grin as she listened. "I did it. I mustered up - what was it that you said I needed? Balls? Well, I've mustered up the balls to call you, and there, you didn't answer. I guess the balls are in your court now, pretty lady. Let's see if you have the fortitude to juggle them."

She laughed and played the message again. "Feisty one, then, aren't you?" she muttered to herself, pressing the icon that led to her missed call list. She tapped his number, and wandered to her room as she listened to the ringing on the line.

"Hello?" he asked, when he answered the call.

"Fortitude? You want to know if I've got fortitude?" Cameron laughed.

"Ah, the pretty lady from the diner! Well, I've proven I've got balls, I guess," he laughed. "It was your turn to prove something."

"I see," Cameron said. "Shall I mark this as a tie on my scoreboard then?" She piled several pillows against the upholstered headboard and flopped against them, stretching her legs out and crossing her ankles.

"I'd rather you didn't, actually," he answered, sobering. "I prefer not to keep score in a relationship. It's a long-term philosophy; I always say I'd rather be happy than always be right."

"Oh a therapist, a biker boy, and now a philosopher. You are really quite the catch then, aren't you? All those personalities in there; I’d have all the variety I can handle, all in one man," Cameron laughed, twirling a dark curl around one finger.

"Oh yes, the women are just beating at my door. I tell you, some days, I don't know how I fight them all off. Vultures, I tell you; they all want a piece of this." His laughter rumbled through the phones, flowing into Cameron's ear and igniting a flame in her blood.

"I bet they're just trying to get through you to your son," she laughed. "A tiny version of you has got to be just the cutest thing on the planet. What's his name?"

He was quiet for a while, long enough for Cameron to wonder if he was still there. She held the phone away from her face, checking that the call timer was still counting. It was. "Mac?" she asked.

"His name is Logan," he answered, his voice steady and quiet.

"Look, Mac, I'm sorry. If you don't want to talk about him, I understand, and --"

"I don't mind," he interrupted. "I'm a parent; of course I want to talk about him. It's just that on the dating scene, most women prefer that I pretend he doesn't exist. I'm not used to women asking about him, about that part of my life."

"I bet you get lots of willowy blondes that want to know your favorite color and what's your sign, huh?" Cameron laughed nervously, slipping the button loose in the waist of her jeans. Slipping the zipper down, she shoved the snug jeans down over her hips, kicking them off and over the edge of the bed.

"Not as many as you might think," he answered, as she adjusted the elastic waist of her yellow boy-short panties and covered them with the long t-shirt she had on.

"Really? You prefer redheads then?" she teased.

"Lately, I prefer you," he answered, causing Cameron's breath to trip, bunching up in her chest.

"How do you know that?" she asked, pulling the thick quilt from the bed and swirling it around her legs. "You don't know me at all."

"In my line of work, I usually get a good idea of who someone is within thirty minutes of meeting them. I didn't with you, but you somehow got me to blurt out about my wife, and now about my son. I've never dated anyone who asked me to talk about my son."

"Really?" This seemed surprising to Cameron, until her usual pessimism rose up to remind her of how selfish and uncaring people could be. She knew from experience how cold the dating scene could be, how cruel people could be, how thoughtless.

"Really. Dating is unbelievably different from when I was first dating my wife. You know, back then, you wanted to know everything about each other, and you worked up to the bigger aspects of a relationship. But now, everything is much faster, and much less personal. Is it different for you?"

"Oh yeah, lots different," Cameron said dryly. "Because you're exactly right, and that's the reason I don't date. I'm not into the whole hooking up, one-night-stand thing. And a lot of guys now have this two-date or three-date rule, where if you don't put out by then, you're not worth the investment of his time. I'm not into all that, you know? I’m just not that kind of girl. When I'm lonely, I'd rather be lonely by myself than to be lonely with someone right beside me who doesn't care to know me."

"Exactly!" Mac laughed. "That's exactly it!"

"Does that happen with women too? That women are just looking for something quick and then they move on?"

"Oh yeah, especially if I tell them about my son. Every woman who knows about him automatically seems to think I'm sizing them up for mommy material."

"I should think you'd feel obligated to," Cameron answered softly. "With your son, you have to think that any woman who has dating potential might have permanent potential. And that means you need to think about whether you want your son exposed or not. Right?"

"Exactly. Still, I don't sit around listening for wedding bells until I've dated someone for a while," Mac said.

"I see. And how many have lasted long enough for you to hear wedding bells?"

He sighed. "You want the truth?"

"Of course. Honesty is the best policy, right?"

"Right," he laughed.

"Okay, then?" Cameron prompted.

"Well, there has been exactly one woman in my life that made wedding bells chime in my ears," Mac said slowly. "And that was my wife."

"What was her name? I know you told me once, but I’m sorry to admit I don’t remember," Cameron said, sitting up in her bed. She crossed her legs, tucking her quilt around her to keep out the slight chill of the room.

"Her name was Alexandra. Alex. We met when we were in high school, and married after graduation. We spent all our time and all our money getting me through school, so that she could be a stay home mom when we had children. And then we had Logan, and then she had cancer. And then she was gone."

"Mac, I'm sorry. That must have been so hard on you," Cameron whispered. Speaking any louder would have felt disrespectful to his wife, somehow, disrespectful of his grief.

"It was," he answered quietly. "It's been years now, though, and I'm much better off than I was then. She wouldn't have wanted me to drown in grief. She'd have wanted me to move on, to find happiness again."

"She was a better woman than me, then. I wonder if I were married, and I died, would I want my husband to move on, or would I feel like he'd replaced me? I don't know."

"You can't know," Mac said, his voice gruff. "You can't know until you've been there. But she wouldn't have wanted me to suffer. She was a hopeless romantic, in love with love. She wouldn't have wanted me to stay alone forever, and she'd have wanted someone to be here for our son. She told me once, before it was all over, that she wanted me to find someone new someday, to look after me," he laughed.

"That's kind of her," Cameron said, nodding, her fingers tangled in the fabric of her quilt, a tear slipping down her cheek. "She was really sweet to release you in that way. Did she suffer greatly, Mac?"

"Nah," he said, clearing his throat. "It was all very fast. She had a lot of headaches, and they got worse and worse, until nothing helped. She finally got irritated enough to see a doctor because the headaches affected her daily life in a lot of ways. Within a few weeks of her diagnosis, she was gone." His voice broke toward the end of his story, and Cameron's heart broke with it, cracking open with the sound of his pain.

"Oh, Mac. That's so fast," she whispered, unable to find full volume.

"It was, but it was merciful. She didn't have time to suffer a lot, and I think honestly, it was fear and her own grief that took her from us. She was so afraid and so guilty of leaving Logan, leaving me. I've often wondered if she wouldn't have had more time, if not for the way she felt about everything."

"And how did Logan take it all?"

"I can't believe I'm saying all this," Mac laughed, sniffling. "I hardly know you, and I'm telling you about the lowest moments of my life."

"I don't mind. I'm not a one-night-stander, remember?" Cameron laughed back. "And if we're going to go on that second date, or any other dates, eventually we're going to have to talk about more than our favorite movies, anyway. Maybe it's good to cover all the heavy stuff from the beginning."

"Your turn's coming, then, because I want that second date," he said. "I have to go for now, I need to get Logan from school. But I'll call you later to set something up, and I'll expect you to tell me something big one day soon. You owe me now."

"Oh, is that so?" she teased, hoping he wouldn’t call in her debt anytime soon. "Well, I'll tell you what, daddy man. You go pick up your boy from school, and have a good time with him today. And I'll try my hardest to experience something major that I can tell you about."

Because it'll have to be something new,
she thought.
I sure as hell can't tell you anything big from the past.

***

"Dinner was really great, huh?" Mac said, reaching for Cameron's hand. His breath formed a soft cloud in front of his face, instantly dissipating in the crisp evening breeze.

"It really was," Cameron answered. She kept her eyes focused on her feet, trying not to let her nerves get the best of her. Each time he came close to her, her past rose up in front of her like a screaming demon, and she had to squash it down, struggling to look through her fears and find the gently rugged face of the man in her present.

She watched the toes of her boots peek out from under the hems of her jeans as she continued to move one foot in front of the other, allowing the quiet to grow between them. The spaces between her fingers burned with the presence of Mac's fingers, laced with hers as if they were made to fit together. It was an awkward feeling for her, the feeling of safety and certainty in the presence of a man who was not her family. She hadn't felt that in just under a decade.

As they walked, Mac swung their hands gently between them, the thud of his boots on the pavement masking the slighter sound of her own footsteps, the low click of her heels. Clearing his throat nervously, he stopped, drawing her close to him at the railing and releasing her hand to drape an arm gently around her shoulders. Standing together, they watched the flow of the river beside them, and Cameron tried desperately to sink into the simple feeling of being held, the warm pleasure of a man's arms around her. Nothing worked; she couldn't turn off the sensation of being caged.