Attractive Nuisance (Legally in Love Book 1) (12 page)

“Could it be?” Lydia hiccupped.

“They’ve found her!” Camilla grabbed Lydia’s hand and they raced like their feet had wings back to camp, where they found Destry rubbing her head and being embraced by Sheldon in a pure dad-hug. Lydia fell into them and broke into tears.

“Sweetie. Oh, thank heaven!”

Destry chuckled. “I don’t know what everyone was so worried about. Sorry—I never meant to go into the wrong tent. I was just so tired of Mr. Torres’s annoying stories I fell fast asleep on that sleeping bag. Thought it was mine.” She shrugged, and almost everyone else walked off, leaving just Camilla, Zane, Falcon and Sheldon’s family. Camilla came and hugged Destry, then hugged Lydia again, whose breathing had appeared to return to normal.

Destry apologized again as they walked back toward their real tent. “I didn’t mean to cause all this hullabaloo. But I didn’t mind waking up to see the face of
that
search and rescue worker.” She aimed a thumb at Zane. “Not a bad reason to fake a need for a rescue.”

“In a few years maybe I’ll assign him to take you on a pity date. Heh heh.” There went the Falcon Camilla knew and hated so much right now, shooting off his mouth, as if the joke would be funnier the second time. Camilla stopped in her tracks, as did Zane, putting a hand out against Falcon’s chest to stop him too. In embarrassment, Lydia shuttled her family away.

“Hey, Falcon. That’s a lie and you know it.” Zane crossed his arms over his chest in defiance. What was he doing? He’d better not take on Falcon. There were consequences—big ones, career and personal, if Zane really was the son of Falcon’s college buddy.

“Oh, simmer down, Holyoake. You’re just like your dad. You can’t take a joke. What’re you going to do, go all PTSD on me?”

Oh, shoot. That was a low blow. Some people should
not
drink. Camilla hugged herself against the wretched words that fell from Falcon’s flesh-tearing beak. She’d always wondered what it would be like to be on his bad side, and now she was seeing the fearsome possibility.

“You don’t want to rile up a former soldier, Falcon, and you know it.”

“You only went in the army to run away from your dad.” All the air sucked out of the sky and atmosphere. Camilla didn’t dare move. Someone might throw a punch here soon.

“I did not. And that’s not the point here. Let’s stick to business. I’m on a date with Camilla Sweeten because she’s gorgeous and smart and has the best legs of any lawyer in a thousand mile radius. It’s not a mercy date, even if you did have to con her into it.” The tension in the air started to ease. “Otherwise she’d never have anything to do with a loser like me, and you know it. You tried before to get her to go out with me, and she wouldn’t. So I begged you to take me on as staff. I’d been here ten weeks before she’d even give me the time of day. It’s ridiculous. Usually I’m fighting girls off with a stick.”

Camilla, frozen a moment ago in pain and fear, thawed, then warmed, then her insides turned to hot lava. Zane Holyoake, defender of feminine virtue! Bless him! The tears that stung her eyes from Falcon’s insults now stung from relief. And—was that?—a first blush of what felt like it might be love?

She definitely loved being defended. She loved being protected. She loved being praised and having the best looking guy she’d ever seen announce that she was gorgeous and smart. She stared up at him as he stood there, fists still balled and ready to fight more if he needed to. Zane’s eyes locked on Falcon’s. Falcon stood two inches taller and had fifty pounds on Zane, but Zane had the advantage of youth and all that time hiking with the Boy Scouts.

Camilla bated her breath, watching the sparring pair. Finally, Falcon spoke.

“Okay, okay. Maybe I went too far. And fine, it did sound mean. But the other part, the spray tan part, I meant. She spends too much time in the office. Get the girl out into the sun somehow, Holyoake. Take charge.” All the electricity arcing between them settled.

“No one takes charge of Camilla Sweeten other than Camilla herself.” Zane turned to look down at her. Now the electricity had shifted and was fizzing between Zane and Camilla. Her skin crackled and the air zapped. If she reached out and touched him, would it ground her, or would it electrocute her? She couldn’t tell.

But then Zane blinked and frowned. He turned back toward Falcon and stopped him from leaving. “And I’ll have you know, Camilla’s not some recluse avoiding the sun. This girl can fly fish. In fact, she holds the state record for catch and release, biggest Gila trout. Sixteen inches, caught—and released—right here in Horsethief Lake. So lay off the vampire comments.” He looked back at Camilla. “Besides. Everyone knows too much sun’ll give ya cancer.”

Oh, the cheesiness returned. And all the tension between them and Falcon melted like that same cheese on top of a pizza. Except the tension between Zane and Camilla went up and was peaking at an all time high—like a tight rope strung between them.

“That’s it, folks.” Falcon clapped his hands and stumbled toward the bonfire’s embers, leaving Zane and Camilla alone in the flagging firelight.

“We missed dinner here. But I brought something just in case. You hungry?”

Oh, yeah. She was hungry. But maybe not for food.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Own Recognizance

Camilla took Zane’s offered hand, and with his flashlight cutting the darkness he led her through the tangle of fallen branches and roots safely toward the truck. The touch of his hand on hers sent pulses of that earlier electricity through her hand, up her arm, to her core, where it radiated outward, making her tingle everywhere. He blazed the trail so confidently—he was such a man. A man she craved like she hadn’t craved the attention and affection of in years. Not since college had she met anyone she wanted the approval of so much.

“How did you find Destry? Tracking skills you learned in Boy Scouts?”

Zane chuckled. “No, just logic. If I was a kid in the dark and all the tents looked alike, I’d go into the wrong one. Happened four times to me or my friends back on campouts over the years. Not exactly rocket science. I just poked my head in all the tents that were the same color as Sheldon’s.”

Zane unzipped the tent flap and held it open so she could enter. To do this, he had to let loose her hand, and she instantly felt its absence, like someone unplugged the microwave mid-nuke. All she could think was how much she wanted him to be touching her again.

“I hope you like Kentucky Fried Chicken.” He opened a large camping cooler he’d dragged inside here when she was arranging her bedding in the truck earlier. “Forgive me for saying that stuff about the Colonel. You were right—it’s much better than Church’s, or Popeye’s, or…”

She took his hand and shut the cooler. He stopped talking and looked up at her. The lantern hanging from the arched peak of the tent swayed, sending his shadow dancing back and forth against the tent’s walls and reminding her that anything they did would be visible in silhouette to anyone passing by. And at this moment she didn’t care.

“Camilla.” He pressed his hand against hers. “I—”

She reached up and stopped his protests with a single finger over his lips. “Shh.” She left her finger touching those lips. They had the same softness with an outer crust as the palms of his hands. Maybe that was his whole deal. Crusty with a soft layer just beneath. It was masculine. She leaned in closer. He smelled like a fresh pine campfire and those intoxicating diesel fumes, and she tugged for him to sit beside her atop the cooler.

“No chicken for now?” He whispered. It came out a little husky.

She shook her head. “You defended me. Thank you.” There was so much more to say about this, but how to convey it, she could only think of one way—to show him. With a gentle press of her lips to his cheek, she kissed him, right on the chicken pox scar beneath his right eye. When her lips touched it, his eyes closed and a tiny sigh escaped him. Pulling back, she watched his face, and his eyes opened and looked right into hers.

“It was my honor.” He slid one arm around her waist and touched a finger under her chin, lifting it. Her lips parted slightly, and in the dim of the tent, she could still see the flash of his eyes. They fluttered closed, and he pulled her body to his with his strong arm and slid the other hand around behind her neck. Then his lips were on hers, and their dryness first scratched but only for a second because the softness came through as he became a little less gentle and coaxed her into a return of the affection that might have lasted ten seconds or an hour. She couldn’t know. Time warped, and the only thing that existed was the two of them, the smell of pine smoke and this kiss. Something like a little bird that’d been caged inside Camilla’s heart suddenly released, its cage door flung open, and it soared outward and upward into the starry night toward Orion and Scorpius.

“I’ve been wanting to do this since I first laid eyes on you last year.”

“Last year?” she murmured, her head pressed against Zane’s chest. The thumping of his heart echoed in her ear. It matched her own pulse. “You only met me two months ago.”

“No, I mean at this campout. Falcon invited me. But you showed up with someone else, and I hung back, waiting for you to have a free minute, but you left early and I didn’t get my chance.”

“You were at this picnic last year?” When she’d been occupied with Statutory Sam? Her face burned at the memory.

“Yeah. When Falcon told me later you and that dirtclod you came with, sorry for the derogatory term—”

“No, you’re absolutely right. That guy was a dirtclod.”

“—that the two of you weren’t a steady thing, I started trying to figure out a way to meet you again.”

He did? She got warm inside. Zane Holyoake wanted to meet her? After one glance—and a bad one at that?

“When you were arguing with Falcon, he said you were his friend’s son. A fraternity brother’s son?”

“Yeah. We’ve known the family for years.” Zane reached around behind him and grabbed one of the sleeping bags. He untied it and threw it out on the ground then pulled her down to sit beside him on it. It was much softer than the top of the ice chest. “He and Dad stayed close after college.”

“You’re close to your family?”

“Sure. Are you?”

“Like I said, my parents aren’t with me anymore.”

“Of course, but I guess I meant siblings, grandparents.”

This was ground Camilla trod too often mentally shortly after losing them, but which she’d avoided walking for the last few years, each step too painful.

“They married young, you know? High school sweethearts. But then they both started on these careers. Dad was an attorney. Mom was an architect. They kept saying, ‘Next year we’ll start our family,’ and then next year never came and never came. And then, when Mom was forty-five, she went into a panic about her biological clock and realized she’d probably missed the window. It took two and a half years, but they finally conceived me. And I was loved. Really loved.”

Zane didn’t say anything. He started drawing circles on her back with his fingertips with just the right amount of pressure to soothe her. If she hadn’t been in such an emotional time machine thinking about her parents it might have made her shiver with longing for him. But not just now.

“They died, you know? At a regular age. Dad was sixty-eight. Kind of early, I know, but even fly fishing didn’t help him unwind from the stress of the legal office, and his heart gave out. Mom went the next year. She gave up after he left. I was gone to college, and she was alone. And she just missed him too much is what I think happened.”

Zane nodded, then leaned over and rested his chin on her shoulder. His nearness comforted her in a way nothing had for a long time. She pressed her cheek against his, and it felt right. So right.

“Your parents are only Falcon’s age, I take it. They haven’t even started to grow old.” She realized he couldn’t know how it felt to see them decline, the fright it caused, the worry. The desperation to find someone else to cling to through it. It was why she’d been so overt in pushing her college boyfriends toward marriage—and scared off more than a few guys. That, and her utter determination to not wait to start a family until later in life. She refused to do to her own children what her parents had chosen for her. She wanted nothing more than to give them herself in her youth and vitality. And to be there to see them grow and become adults and parents and enjoy all that along the way.

But she’d only come across as desperate.

And possibly crazy.

And when she realized it after the final total confidence smackdown, when Burns Pilsington refused to let her lead him toward a proposal, maybe she gave up. Shut down. Pulled back entirely. She was only twenty-two at the time, but in her dysfunctional view of her life’s timeline, she was past her sell-by date and would never have kids young enough now. She’d have to settle for removing bad people from society if she couldn’t be the means of adding good people through being a nurturing mother.

But she’d never tell Zane about any of that. She couldn’t tell anyone. Ever. At least not ever again. It’d pushed away too many great potential husbands in the past. She may have been a great fly fisher back at that time, but she’d been horrible at luring one enough to reel in the big one, the one catch she really needed.

“Not yet. Although I’m afraid some of the stuff I did in life gave them gray hairs.” He gave a little shrug. “They’re glad I’ve finally calmed down, I’ll bet.”

“The military?”

“That helped. I had to fill my time with productive stuff to keep myself together. Volunteering for the Boy Scouts helped. Getting this job helped.”

“But I thought you had a big career in Flagstaff.” As the Jury Whisperer, she didn’t say aloud. “Weren’t you headhunted for this job?”

He gave one of those hollow laughs. “Are you kidding? No. You heard me out there. I begged Falcon for this job. I even got my dad on board. I guess I shouldn’t admit that. It’s going to sound like some kind of desperation move.”

“Desperate? How so?” Nothing,
nothing
about Zane Holyoake smacked of desperation. He was the cool of the other side of the pillow in every way. “The economy in Flagstaff take a hit on your practice?”

“No. No, I mean—” Zane turned his body toward hers, and adjusted her to face him. “I just had to meet you. I’d seen you, tried to get Falcon to set you up with me—and you turned him down flat. Then what choice did I have? Changing jobs just to meet a girl—that’s totally desperate. I know. But can you blame me?”

All his face spelled vulnerability, and a thread of gold from her soul spun out toward him. She could imagine it encircling him, drawing him nearer, both in spirit and body. She leaned her face toward him and gave him a tender kiss just to the left of his lips.

In a whisper he said, “Can you blame me? I mean, look at you. Everything about you, Camilla. It’s exactly what I needed to pull me away from everything I’d known and give me hope for something else. A different life. A different me.”

Then he kissed her with gusto, like he’d been holding it all inside him, all this emotion for months and years. He pressed his mouth to hers, then kissed her cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids, the tip of her nose, her neck, oh how he worshiped her neck. She fingered the ripples of his biceps and the musculature of his upper back. His strength of body lent her a strength she hadn’t felt in ages, maybe ever.

More than that—he’d been desperate—for
her.
For Camilla. It sent her soul aloft. He’d wanted to be near her so much he left his life behind and came to her.

From day one, he’d watched her. Okay, he’d initially discombobulated her. Completely threw her off her game. He was a total attractive nuisance. Not in the legal sense of the people who live in a neighborhood of small children and refuse to put a fence around their swimming pool despite repeated requests from nearby parents and then get sued when some kid gets hurt. No. But instead, he was just plain attractive. And it’d become an instant nuisance, throwing her off in every way. Distracting her from her bigger calling of keeping the bad guys off the street. She’d had to bat down all his invitations for lunch. She’d pushed him away as much as she could. He’d been persistent.

Now, maybe she knew why. It made her smile, and the smile required her to stop the kiss and pull away.

“You have to know, I’m not some pillar of perfection, Zane. Don’t try to put me up there. You’ve seen my messy apartment.”

His ribcage rose and fell with heavy, cinnamony breath. The lantern swung above them. “I’ll admit, I didn’t even see a mess. I was just so stoked to be in your house, that you’d invited me in—finally.”

“Uh, I’m not sure I did invite you in.”

“Okay, you didn’t. But let me live my fantasy here for a second.” His eyes got the wicked crinkle on the side. “Now I’m here with you, just a year later on this date, and it’s going so much better than I even dared expect.” He gave her another kiss that made her sigh in relief and, maybe,
love.
“We’ve had some good dates up to now, but this is the best.”

Dates? “Isn’t this our first date?” Lunches didn’t count. Dinners didn’t count. That time he made Italian…well, that should count. He’d been so thoughtful. And going to his friend Wyatt’s? That was a working dinner.

“If you want to be the kind of girl who lets a guy kiss her on the first date, it is.”

A pang shot through her. That wasn’t who she was. In fact, for a long time she’d considered herself a third-date-kiss kind of a girl. The kind of girl who kissed (or more) on the first date was the kind of girl a guy didn’t take seriously enough to consider a “possibility.” If Camilla let a guy spend this much time on her lips, like Zane just had, on the first date, she was in serious danger of being thrown in his not-too-serious or not-a-possibility pile. And she’d been there too many times in the past, even though she’d made the guy wait three dates for his kiss.

“Aha. See?” Zane’s wicked twinkle flashed at her. “I knew we’d come to an understanding.”

“Oh, okay. You win. So, what date is this? Our third?”

“Um, hello. No. This is about our fiftieth date. We’ve been dating ever since I started working at the office months ago, whether you knew it or not. Whether you admitted it or not—I should say, because I know in your heart you knew it. Everybody in the office knew it. Falcon, even. So for not being one to kiss on the first or second date, since then, you’ve made me really, really work for my reward.” He ran his hand up and down her arm. “And that’s why I’m being so assertive about accepting it.” Another bout of kissing followed, this time with a sincere, wholehearted return on her part.
This could be it. Zane could be the one. Even if it’s too late to start a family, I could have a very nice life with him. I like how he keeps me company. I like how when I’m with him, I suddenly don’t feel alone anymore.