To Get Me To You: A Small Town Southern Romance (Wishful Romance Book 1) (39 page)

“Good, because I’m really ready to make up.” Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she leapt, wrapping her legs around his waist and fusing her mouth to his.

Cam took about a nanosecond to get on board with that plan. With a noise somewhere between a sigh and a growl, he hitched her higher. In a dozen strides, he was kicking the bedroom door shut. They fell to the bed, gasping, grasping, rolling, desperate to get to skin.

Norah tugged off his shirt and then her own, when it got caught around her shoulders. She took her mouth on a sprinting journey down his torso as she made quick work of his belt and jeans and found only him beneath.

“Behind on laundry,” he muttered, dragging her back to return the favor. Both brows winged up as he found her bare as well. “What’s your excuse?”

“Optimism. I was banking on fabulous make up sex.”

“You make optimism look really good.”

They dove at each other, gorging themselves on touch and taste in frantic, greedy bites, as if the speed and heat could eradicate the distance of the past weeks. Fevered, she scissored her legs around his and rolled until she straddled him. Capturing his hands, she curled her fingers through his, pressed them back against the bed and lowered herself, glorying as he filled her in one long stroke. She held at the edge for a long, humming beat, body gripping him, the last of the space between them gone.

At last.
She was home.

Cam freed his hands, pulling her down to take her mouth in a kiss that left her branded. She began to move, driving him with a blistering pace that sent them both careening toward the peak. His tongue danced with hers, echoing the rhythm she set. She took him deeper with every rocking thrust, her muscles coiling, his breath straining as skin slid against slick skin, until she shattered, dragging him into the free fall with her.

Boneless and quivering, Norah lay draped over Cam, her face pressed into his throat. Her heart—or maybe it was his—she couldn’t tell—continued to gallop as little aftershocks trembled through them both.

Cam’s hand slid limply down her thigh. “That was…”

“Cathartic.”

“I was going to say mind blowing.”

“That too.” She folded her hands across his chest and propped her chin so she could see him. “I missed you. Not just this—although definitely this—but everything else. You’re the first person I think about in the morning, the one I dream about at night. You’re the one I want by my side, Cam. A partner in the truest sense of the word. I don’t ever want you to have reason to doubt that again.”

He stroked a knuckle across her cheek, a feather light touch that soothed, even as it aroused. “I’m not perfect. I’ve got issues, and I’ll do stupid things. But I learn from my mistakes. I won’t doubt you again.”

She kissed him, softly, sweetly and then grinned.

“What’re you smiling about?”

“I’m still wearing my socks.”

“How is that possible?”

“They weren’t all that important in the get naked portion of the program.”

He rolled her beneath him. “I take that as a personal challenge.” He pressed his hips forward to prove it.

“Then I suppose you’re honor bound to rectify the oversight.”

~*~

Cam shut the door to his truck and, for the first time in his life, stared at his grandmother’s house with trepidation. “I can’t believe you called a family summit this early in the day.”

“It’s the most expedient means of putting everybody at ease and catching them up on my situation. You weren’t the only one I didn’t talk to while I was away.” Norah linked her hand through his and dragged him up the walk. “Come on, I’m desperate for more coffee.”

So was he, but Cam would’ve preferred having that coffee at home. Or better yet, skipping the coffee all together and spending the day in bed, sleeping and making love as they’d done most of the night. But Norah had rousted him at 6:30, with little more than a shower and one measly travel mug of coffee to prepare him to face the entire family—all of whom had wanted to string him up the day before.

In accordance with custom, everybody was in the kitchen. And they all promptly stopped talking the moment he and Norah walked in. The weight of their stares hit him like a slap. Yep, they were still very much on Norah’s side, even without knowing the details.

Miranda, clearly at least two cups shy of functional, pinned them both with a furious glare. “You barely talk to me for two weeks, send
one
text to say you’re back in town, then you freaking
disappear
for the rest of the day, without answering anybody’s call or text. I took a double shift and spent half the night at the ER waiting for you to show up in an ambulance. And now you haul my ass out of bed after only an hour without an IV drip of coffee?”

Without batting an eye, Norah strode up to the lion and hugged her tight. “I’m sorry I worried you. I’m sorry I worried all of you. But I had to talk to Cam first.”

Miranda took her by the shoulders and gave her a hard once over. “Are you pregnant?”

Cam choked on the last of the coffee in his travel mug.

Norah’s face went slack with shock. “Oh my God. No.
No.
”
She spread her hands in the universal sign for
no good
. “Why on earth would you think that?”

“Because you’re the most hyper-rational person I know and you’ve been behaving decidedly
irrationally.
Why else would you call us all together like this?”

“You are kinda glowing,” Reed added.

Norah’s face went beet red. “I have completely lost control of this situation.”

“Well that was your first mistake,” Grammy said. “Assuming you were in control to begin with.”

“Need I remind you that you’re the one who thought facing the Inquisition at this hour was a good idea,” Cam pointed out.

“It wouldn’t be a bad thing,” Aunt Liz offered.

Cam and Norah both stared at her.

“Well it wouldn’t! Neither of mine are in any hurry to make me a grandmother.”

“Neither are we,” Cam said.

Norah poured them both cups of coffee. “I’d rather marry him first, thanks.”

“How’s Saturday?”

The ripple of surprise swept through the room. Nobody knew which of them to look at. Cam kept his gaze fixed on Norah. She rolled her eyes at him, vexed. “Even if you were serious, you’re busy Saturday.”

Oh, I am serious
. But he let it pass because this wasn’t the time or place for asking her. Instead he dimpled at her. “That wasn’t a no.”

She just arched a brow.

“Okay, I’ll play. What am I doing on Saturday?”

She handed him coffee. “Formalizing your design for a park at Hope Springs and meeting with the new owner.”

Cam felt the balance of power in the room shift. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Even if the referendum fails, GrandGoods can’t touch Hope Springs. It’s permanently out of their reach and will be donated to the city.”

“How?”

“Because I bought it.” And she just sipped her coffee, calm as could be, as if she hadn’t just rocked his world.

“You did what?” Mitch asked.

“I bought the entire parcel of land out from under GrandGoods with cash. Tucker handled the closing. It’s why I saw him first when I got back yesterday. I had to sign the paperwork. And before you get angry with him for not telling you, I had him sworn to secrecy because it was supposed to be a surprise. And he’s acting as my attorney, so that trumps whatever unspoken bro pact thing you think you have with him.”

Cam’s brain was still stuck at the beginning. “You bought Hope Springs.”

“All 254.5 acres.”

“But that had to cost—” Uncle Pete began.

“Yeah, a lot.” Norah winced a bit at that. “I liquidated every asset I had. It’s why I flipped out when I found out what Philip had done. Given I’m two steps away from being broke, my reputation and employability are kind of an issue.”

“Jesus,” Cam said. “Why would you do that? Risk that? Have you lost your mind?”

“Nope. Just my heart.”

Cam took her coffee away, set it aside with his own. “Norah.”

She sighed and linked her fingers with his. “I’ve never owned anything. Nothing that actually mattered, nothing that meant any kind of roots or permanence. I believe in what we’re trying to accomplish here, and I’m not afraid to put my money where my mouth is. I promised I’d save your world, Campbell, and this was my best shot.”

He slid his hand up to cup her nape and pressed his brow to hers. “You humble me.”

“You should’ve heard the original speech I had planned.” She tipped her mouth up to kiss him briefly, before slipping away to reclaim her coffee and address the rest of the family. “And this concludes the warm and fuzzy good news portion of this morning’s meeting. Please collect your caffeine and breakfast pastry of choice and make your way to the kitchen table. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.”

Cam watched the mask slide into place, the smooth, calm exterior over the spine of steel. “It’s like watching a Transformer when you do that. Why are you armoring up?”

“Because it’s how I survived the last two weeks.”

That ominous remark left him with a whole helluva lot of foreboding about whatever was coming next. What had he left her to handle alone?

He sat to her left, Miranda to her right, and the rest of them spread out around the big farmhouse table with considerably less commentary than was usual at a Campbell gathering.

She picked up a croissant. “I want to apologize for how I left, without talking to anybody.”

“Emergency protocols apply,” Miranda said. “We get that.”

“It was still rude. I’m not…good with family. Not your kind of family, where check-ins don’t require some kind of performance benchmark. And I’m not good with disasters. Or, to be accurate, I’m fantastic with other people’s disasters. I don’t have a lot experience with any of my own. So when this one hit, I didn’t necessarily handle it the best way possible.” This last she addressed to Cam, eyes full of the apology she’d already made.

He rubbed at her shoulders. “I didn’t win any awards for how I handled it either. Water under the bridge.”

“I’d thought that once I got up there, I’d be in a position to spin some damage control. My old intern got me copies of all the outgoing emails from Philip, so I knew some of what was out there. It’s…ugly.” Something flickered over her face, before the mask reasserted itself. “Apart from the allegations of professional misconduct, there were a number of more…personal accusations. Between the emails and the affidavits from some of my former coworkers, it was evidence enough for my attorney to file a lawsuit for defamation.”

“I’m sensing a gigantic ‘but’ in everything you’re not saying,” Mitch said.

She glanced up at him before returning to shredding the croissant in her hands, “But that’s about all I can do. I can’t stop what Philip started. I can’t undo the damage. Even if I win—and that’s an enormous
if
according to my attorney, because it’s a whole lot of
he said, she said
—there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. My professional reputation is completely trashed. Most of my contacts wouldn’t return my calls, and those who did don’t want to earn Philip’s ire by taking my side. He has a helluva lot more social capital to burn than I do and no compunction about using it to knock me to rock bottom as payback for all the existing clients they lost when he fired me and the new ones who won’t go near the firm since I left.”

Alone. She’d been dealing with all of this completely alone because he’d been too full of his own imagined hurts to be what she needed. Guilt coated Cam’s throat, all but choking him.

If not for him and his cause, his town, she wouldn’t even be in this mess. “This is my fault.”

Her eyes flashed hot. “Don’t be absurd.”

“If I hadn’t—”

She cut him off. “No. Don’t you dare. I stayed of my own free will. I chose you, and I have no regrets.”

How could she not have regrets? “But you lost everything you worked for.”

“And gained everything that matters. My pride will heal, and I’ll figure out some means of earning a living—preferably sooner rather than later because my attorney isn’t cheap—but I’m not giving you up. Period. End of story.”

“Have you told your parents yet?” Uncle Pete asked.

Norah shifted her attention to him and Aunt Liz. “I just told the only ones who matter. Hell will freeze over before I give my father that kind of weapon.”

Knowing what Joseph Burke had said to her regarding what she’d unknowingly been involved with in Morton, Cam could only imagine how he’d twist this to try and bend her. For all the good he focused on doing in the world, how could he not see the damage he did to his own daughter with his expectations?

“What about Peyton?” Cam asked.

“Peyton?” Sandra asked.

Norah ignored that. “What about him?”

“Is the job offer still on the table after all this?”

“We haven’t talked about it since I approached him as an investor.”