A Very Daring Christmas (The Tavonesi Series Book 8) (18 page)

He turned and walked to where Alex was showing Tyler the grip for a fastball. Using an
egg
. He’d fallen into a theater of the absurd.

Jake grabbed the cookie recipe and handed it to Tyler. “If we’re to win this baby, we’d better get cracking.” He gestured to the gas range. “Stove should be working just fine now,” he said to Alex. “Plenty of heat.”

Alex eyed him. There wasn’t much the guy missed. And the tension between Jake and Cameron didn’t require any special sensitivity to register.

“Fastballs later,” Alex said as he headed for the door. “You too, Sophie. No reason a girl can’t learn to throw hardballs.”

Sophie dashed over to Cameron. “We can beat them. Our cookies have
icing
. Parker loves decorations.”

Cameron gave Jake an unreadable look, her face as blank as an unplugged screen. “Oh, we’ll beat them, honey. One way or another.”

The tightness in Jake’s chest was more than a warning. The opening in his heart that he’d known would be dangerous pulsed. He rubbed at his chest.

Rules had their place, and he should’ve stuck to his. He would now. Cameron Kelley was a force he wouldn’t be messing with.

Chapter Fourteen

“Why so glum?” Sabrina asked as she joined Cameron at the barn. “It’s a hayride and a Christmas-tree hunt.”

Cameron crossed one jean-clad leg over the other and scooted over on the hay bale to make room for her friend. “My PR team only managed to line up one interview, and it’s not until the second week in January. The
LA Times
wants to leverage the article with the announcement of the new film.”

“Seems like a good strategy.”

“Better than nothing, I guess,” Cameron admitted. “But the clock is ticking. The Water for Life project needs funding soon, or it’ll go the way of all good ideas that politicians ignore.” She toed the hay-strewn brick floor of the barn. “At least I trust the reporter the
Times
has assigned. I’m not about to risk talking to anyone that Roberta or I don’t know. That last so-called interview was a disaster.”

She filled Sabrina in on how she’d been duped by the sweet-smiling Vi.

“Jake’s angry.”

Her eyes shot to Sabrina’s. “How do you know he’s angry?”

“Any guy would be. Well, anybody not used to being the sensational focus of tabloid lies and gossip. But Alex told me. He said that there was tension in the kitchen this afternoon.”

“Like I said, spies in the castle.”

Sabrina’s eyes lit with a smile. “We leave the spying to the Italian side of the family. Although Coco’s dad has threatened to retire after this year. The cyber-cartel sting last month and the resulting publicity have pretty well blown his cover.”

“He’s a real spy?” Cameron asked. “And you can just retire from being a spy?”

“Probably about as much as a person can retire from being an actor or a baseball player or from any other passion—I think love stays in the blood forever.”

“I’m hoping that’s not true.”

Sabrina sat on the hay bale and put an arm around Cameron’s shoulders.

“Hey, I should’ve told you that Alex invited Jake up here. But you are so stubborn. And since Elliott, you’ve been gun-shy. You wouldn’t have come. And I just had this feeling about Jake and you, and—”

“Forget it, Sabrina. I hit a nerve. I mean, okay, I did try to get him to go to DC to pitch the project to the president. But what I didn’t tell you is that I asked him after I’d slept with him.
After
he’d blown my mind and body with the most amazing sex of my life. After I realized I was way more into him than I wanted to be.”

“Seems like a good time to me.”

“Not if you’d seen his face. So stony. So cold. He accused me of
seducing
him to get him to do the PR. Seducing him! As in using my body to get him to fold, to do what I wanted. Like the sex—and my interest in him—like it was all an act. And I can’t forget the feeling I had at the table that morning in the cottage, like I’d stepped into some sort of other realm, like it wasn’t even me he was seeing. But he sure didn’t stick around to talk about it.” She kicked the heel of her boot against the hay bale. “And while I feel terrible about that
Star Weekly
article, yesterday when I was in the kitchen and heard he was doing the Nike contract, I got mad.”

“Good for you. I’ve never seen you get mad. It’s about time. You let Elliott stomp all over you.”

“
Waltz
is more like it. I didn’t even know how much he was using me until the end. Our relationship was more like a merger—the perfect Hollywood couple. And then when he saw a better career opportunity, he bolted. He actually said that I’d see it was better for business. For
business
! His, of course.”

“I know
that
experience, sister,” Sabrina said. “Derrick nearly ate my heart with a spoon before I wised up. At least you grew up in Hollywood. When I first landed, I wasn’t prepared at all.”

Cameron snorted. “Evidently the experience didn’t do me much good. I swore I’d only date normal men.
Swore
it. You need to help me stick to that.” When Sabrina didn’t respond, she added, “Jake’s doing
everything
he told me he wasn’t interested in doing, that he absolutely wouldn’t do. Public face and all that. And I believed him.
Why
do I believe these guys?”

Sabrina pulled her close, and she fought the tears stinging her eyes. She was not going to let another guy with a raging ego rip her heart out.

“I mean, Jake can do an ad for a big lump of cash, but he can’t put in a good word for some kids? They’re
dying
down there. And not just in Dominia, all over the world. I jabbed at him, and I shouldn’t have; it is his life, of course it is. But I know how much he could help if he wanted to.”

The barn door flew open, and Alex and Jake stood on the other side. Backlit by the sun, they looked like a poster for every woman’s dream. But Cameron knew better now. Only one of the men outlined in the sunlight had a heart she could trust. And it sure wasn’t Jake Ryder.

“Let’s get this shindig up and running,” Alex said. “The kids are down by the winery. I just need to grab an ax.” He turned to Jake. “Entertain these ladies while I try to remember where I put it.”

Within fifteen minutes Cameron found herself riding on the back of a horse-drawn wagon and cruising with five kids out to the back acreage of Trovare—with Jake squeezed in beside her and Sophie on her other side. She’d tried to cajole Sabrina into sitting next to Jake, but her friend had chosen to drive the wagon with Alex. Though she’d tried to talk it down, her anger jabbed under her ribs. He’d told her he wouldn’t be a public face and then sold out to Nike? Would have his face and body plastered on billboards and buildings all over the world? It was all she could do to sit there and not give him a piece of her mind.

But wriggling under her anger was the fact that she
had
tried to get him to help the Dominia project. But she sure as hell hadn’t used her body to get him to do it.

Betrayal
.

That was the problem. Her problem. Jake couldn’t know the raw nerve he’d exposed by accusing her of manipulating him.

She’d
been manipulated all her life by her mother. After her mother’s star status had waned and Cameron had become a child star on TV and in film, her mother had leveraged Cameron’s status to get parts for herself. At first Cameron hadn’t known. And then she hadn’t minded. But once Cameron hit the big time and got the first Oscar, her mother had campaigned so relentlessly that Cameron dove into a few weeks of therapy just to figure out how to handle her. The therapist had helped her glimpse the patterns her mother had laid the tracks for, the patterns that made her doubt herself and others. Patterns fueled by fear that made it hard to know what was real and what she could trust.
Who
she could trust.

But back then she hadn’t been ready to touch the feelings she’d shoved deep. When a location shoot took her from LA, she’d stopped seeing the therapist, stopped the digging. At the time, she’d decided some bones should stay buried. But the experience with Jake told her that they’d rattle until she dealt with them.

The woods grew dense, and the wagon slowed. Tyler and three boys she didn’t know roughhoused up near the front. The boisterous boys grabbed pine cones from a bucket and pitched them at every tree they passed. Tyler got Jake to throw a couple, and he hit his target every time. The boys shouted with glee and threw harder. Jake was their hero, no doubt about that.

She looked into Jake’s eyes for the first time since they’d jumped up onto the wagon. He gave a half smile that shouldn’t have wriggled through her defenses. She snapped her gaze back to the road receding behind them.

He was hero material. Gorgeous beyond what any man should be and with a body that made her ache. And he was funny. She loved that in a man—in anyone, really. Too bad he had a hard heart.

For a moment she found herself wondering what had hardened that heart. Kids started out with open hearts. The world taught them to shut down—she’d seen that over and over. If she ever had kids, she’d never do anything to shut their hearts down.

Never.

“Okay, guys,” Alex said as the wagon stopped. “And gal,” he said to Sophie. “Stay within shouting distance. Each of you take one of these ribbons. When you find the tree you think is
the
one, tie your ribbon to a branch and come back here. Jake and Cameron will decide which tree will grace the Great Hall of Trovare this year.”

“Not me. I’ve never even gone out to choose a tree from a lot,” Cameron protested.

“Time to get those chops up, then,” Alex said as he handed Cameron a small saw. “Take this. You and Jake can cut some greenery for the garlands. The kids never want to help with that. Sabrina and I will head that way and go for the mistletoe.”

“Mistletoe!” Sophie shouted. “I love mistletoe.”

“Want to come with us, then?” Sabrina asked.

Sophie looked at the boys grabbing their ribbons and then out to the forest. “Nope. I want to find the
perfect
tree. Alana said”—she looked at Jake—“Alana’s my mother. Well, she’s not
really
my mother, but I hope my mother doesn’t mind that I think of her that way. I think Mama can see me from heaven. Anyway, Alana says I have a
very
good eye.”

Alex handed her a ribbon. “Best get on with it, young lady.”

The kids dashed off. Alex and Sabrina took off in the opposite direction. Cameron clutched the saw to her chest.

“I think we got the grunt work,” Jake said.

Was there a twinkle in his eyes? She was not going to fall under the spell of his charm. Not again.

She cradled the saw and headed down the path to the right of the wagon. Then stopped. “Don’t they have to tie the horses to something?”

She wasn’t up for being stranded in the woods, even if they were beautiful woods.

Jake laughed. “Those horses aren’t going to pull that wagon anywhere they don’t have to.”

“Great. So... what sort of greenery are we looking for? The closest I’ve been to a holiday bough is in the Christmas department at Macy’s. Those are plastic. I don’t see any plastic out here.”

He laughed again. She’d meant to make him laugh. But hearing his laughter melted another edge off her irritation.

“Not much experience with things Christmas?”

“Most Christmases we spent in Hawaii. My mother liked to rub shoulders with the Hollywood crowd that escaped Christmas to hide out in the islands. She thought it furthered her career.” A long exhale didn’t smooth the spiky feeling in her belly. “The only Christmas tree I remember was the one from the year I was five. My mother made a huge deal about decorating that year. I discovered it was only because
Time
magazine was coming to do a feature on her. I think her stylist decorated the tree. I wanted homemade ornaments and gingerbread people, and what we got was a silver metallic tree with green and silver balls and sterile blue lights.”

“Metal trees never made sense to me. Loses the sense of the season. Yule log and all that.”

“There was no life to that tree,” Cameron added as the memory came into sharper focus. “It was pure style and no life.”

“Here’s a good branch.” Jake pointed to a tree twice her height with low-hanging branches. He held out his hand. She stared at it, remembering when he’d helped her up from the blanket on their date at the beach. He gestured, and she realized he was asking for the saw.

“Maybe I could try,” she said, hoping that the blush she felt spreading on her face wasn’t noticeable under the thick layer of sunscreen she’d lathered on.

“Sure.”

She knelt and began to slide the saw over the branch about halfway along it.

“Cut nearer the trunk. It’s better for the tree,” he said gently, as if he was accustomed to coaching, to instructing. It was the same gentle, almost coaxing tone he’d used in bed to get her to relax, to let go, to let him take her to a sensual height she would never forget and might never recover from. She gripped the saw and willed the memory away.

The branch nearer the trunk was the diameter of her arm. The saw kept skidding and she couldn’t get the teeth to take hold.

He was behind her before she realized it. He slid his arm around hers and took her hand in his. “Angle it, Cameron. Here, let my hand guide yours.”

He spooned around her as she crouched, the pressure of his body heavy against hers, his hand firm as it guided her strokes. The rhythm he set and the angle had the saw gliding through the branch, the sound that it made punctuated by his breath near her ear. Her traitorous body forgot all her vows and all her lessons, and the wanting she’d tried to shove down rose in her, spreading, overtaking her.

“Are you listening?”

Jake’s voice snapped her back to the branch, the tree, the man.

“I asked if you’d like to try the last few strokes on your own. I can hold the weight of the branch to make it easier and to keep it from snapping off.”