Читать книгу The Dare Collection July 2019 - Nicola Marsh, Katee Robert, Katee Robert - Страница 16

“NO. ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT.” Cameron shoved out of his chair and nearly threw his phone across the room. It wouldn’t help anything and finding a new phone was a pain in the ass, but that didn’t kill the impulse to banish Aaron’s voice from his ear.

His partner was, naturally, totally unsympathetic. “I already had Trish book the flights. Concord Inc. is a huge company and if we can impress them, they’ll keep us on retainer going forward. That’s not the kind of account we can afford to turn away just because you’re an asshole who hates people—or because you have a history with the COO.”

“I don’t hate people.” He didn’t sound convincing, which was just as well because he and Aaron had had this conversation more times than he could count. “They just waste my time.” He growled. “And it’s hardly a history.”

“For the potential price tag attached to this account, it’s the opposite of wasting your precious time. Hell, I took time out of paternity leave to talk to Nikki Lancaster. They’re not going to wait on this.”

Cameron paced another circle around his office but slowed as everything Aaron said finally penetrated his irritation over being commanded to leave the city. “You said ‘flights.’ Plural.”

“Yes. I did. Because Trish is going with you. It’s a huge-ass leap to toss her into shark-infested waters by doing this, so you’re going to have to buck up and try not to make her job harder than it’s already going to be.”

“She can’t go.” The sentence burst out before he could stop it.

For the first time since Aaron called, he paused. A second. Two. Three. “Why can’t she go?”

Because I have the picture of her naked imprinted on my brain and I’ve jacked myself off to the thought of tracing her freckles with my tongue every night since. A truth he would cut out said tongue before admitting aloud. Cameron scrubbed a hand over his face. “She’s too new. Nikki Lancaster will eat her alive.” Nikki had taken over as COO of Concord Inc. when it was a struggling corporate business and had almost single-handedly turned it into a Fortune 500 company over the last five years. Aaron was right—securing that account would not only be a shit ton of money in the bank, but it would open further doors.

Tandem Security wasn’t hurting for cash. They accepted the contracts they wanted, when they wanted, and without having to travel to do it.

“Trish can handle it,” Aaron said carefully, as if feeling his way.

“It makes more sense for her to stay here and handle the office while I go and deal with Nikki.” There. That was a nice logical solution.

That Aaron shot down without hesitation. “She’s too new to be left alone, and having on-site experience negotiating with a new client is an asset.” He paused.

“Unless there’s some problem neither of you have told me about?”

“No problem.” No way to get out of this without setting off Aaron’s internal alarms, either. He had no choice but to go forward with this trip. Cameron sat on the edge of his desk and stared hard at his closed door. “We have this covered.” He might not like the idea of being in close quarters with her—closer quarters, technically, since they’d been working together for over a week since the morning she overslept. It didn’t matter if they were going over notes before a client meeting or painting the boardroom. Trish kept a painfully bright barrier between them and deflected anything that might resemble flirting with a beaming smile and blatant change of subject. There was no sign of the temper she’d flashed before she took off in that cab, and the lack bothered him almost as much as having her tear him a new one had.

“Cameron?”

Shit, he needed to keep his head in the game. “Sorry. I missed that.”

“I can tell.” If anything, Aaron sounded more concerned. “Do you want me to come in and go over the details with you before you go?”

He clenched his jaw to keep his first response inside. Recent years hadn’t been kind to his track record when it came to dealing with clients, so Aaron’s offer wasn’t completely out of line. Aaron knew him better than anyone. Cameron’s patience wore thin with increasing regularity, and he found himself snapping at them before he had a chance to dial it back. So he stopped bothering to dial it back at all.

He and Aaron had met in college, and he knew his friend always assumed there was a deeper backstory to his being a dick. Some tragic past he never talked about. Some defining event that made him wash his hands of all the social niceties.

There wasn’t.

Cameron’s parents were good people. Nothing outstandingly bad had happened to him growing up, and if being a black man in this country came with its own set of bullshit and headaches, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. There were always others who had it worse.

No, the truth was that he preferred machines to dealing with actual humans because machines made sense. There was always a concrete answer, one that wasn’t open to interpretation. Every aspect of a computer was clearly defined and had its own set of rules to work around—but those rules were clearly stated from the beginning.

People were nuanced and managed to be multiple things, often at the same time. They said things they didn’t mean, and then got pissed when he took those things as truth and acted accordingly. They had masks within masks and motivations they rarely put out in the open. Cameron didn’t get people, and maneuvering through their needs and emotions, even for surface-level interactions, left him exhausted and feeling like an asshole.

Because he fucked it up. Every single time.

Just like you did with Trish.

I couldn’t take what she was offering. It would backfire and she’d have been hurt in the process. There is no good exit route once we step past the point of no return.

Could have handled it better, though.

Yeah, no shit.

“Cameron, you’re not even listening to me.”

He scrubbed a hand over his head and mentally made a note to shave his head again soon—before they went to London, for sure. Cameron might not handle people well, but he knew Aaron as well as he knew himself. The man didn’t want to come back to work yet. He just needed Cameron to say the right thing to assuage his guilt and let him take the break he’d more than earned.

He cleared his throat. “I have this covered. Go back to doting on your fiancée and baby and stop worrying about us.”

Another hesitation, but shorter this time. Aaron loved Tandem Security as much as Cameron did, but he loved his new family more. Which was how it should be. Aaron’s relationship with Becka had started unconventionally enough, but they’d found a good balance and their love for their new daughter filled up a room in a way that made even Cameron smile. It didn’t hurt that Summer was cute as hell and seemed to like him just fine. Babies were simple—simple needs, simple desires. If she cried, it was because she wasn’t having some need met, and that he understood.

Too bad adults weren’t that easy to figure out.

He didn’t begrudge his best friend his happiness. He just wished Aaron would stop worrying about the company. He was only gone for a couple months. Cameron could manage to apply a filter to himself for a couple months until his friend was back in the office. He wasn’t that much of a lost cause.

His partner got a dreamy tone. “Summer smiled at me today. The book says it’s probably just gas, but I don’t give a fuck. It’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

That, he believed. She was adorable. Cameron managed a smile. “I’m glad you’re happy.” If anyone deserved that happiness, Aaron did. He was a good guy, and he’d spent too many years putting up with Cameron’s shit not to have earned a good turn or two.

“Thanks. That means a lot.”

Cameron checked his watch. “I’ll check in once I have things lined up.”

“Talk to you then.”

He hung up and checked his email. Sure enough, confirmation for a flight to London had appeared. Since there was one for Trish as well, he assumed she had her passport updated. You’re focusing on minor details to avoid focusing on the fact that you’re going to be traveling with her.

Easier to remember why she was off-limits when in this office. There was no escaping the constant knowing that it was inappropriate to follow through on the look he sometimes saw lingering in her blue eyes, or to submit to the gravitational pull between them that seemed to grow stronger with every day he didn’t give in.

Put them in a different country, in a hotel together...

Getting ahead of yourself. Trish might have been interested before, but she’s made it pretty fucking clear she’s not now.

That was a good point.

Cameron sighed and rounded his desk to sink into his chair. Whether Trish did or didn’t want to start something still was irrelevant. They had business to conduct and they’d more than proven they could work together when required. He just had to keep his head in the game and not be the one to fuck it up.

Easy enough. Work comes first—end of story.

He had absolutely nothing to worry about.

* * *

Trish paced from one wall to the other and back again. “I can’t do this. It’s going to blow up in my face.”

“It might be helpful if you explain exactly what you’re not doing.”

She glanced at her almost-sister-in-law, Becka Baudin. She sat on the couch with Summer propped carefully on a pillow, nursing away. When Trish pictured her big brother with someone, it was some straitlaced woman who probably thought doing taxes was fun and drank expensive red wine and vacationed to exotic places with topless beaches.

On second thought, Becka probably fits the last one.

She didn’t fit much else when it came to expectations. She was a blue-haired beauty who was both a personal trainer and led a bunch of hard-core fitness classes—at least before her pregnancy got too far along. She was also hilarious and nice and loved Aaron to distraction. In short, she was perfect.

Trish wasn’t here for perfection, though. She needed advice. “I’m traveling with Cameron. To London. Alone. For as long as it takes to secure this account.”

“I know it’s not super normal for the guys to travel but...” Becka trailed off and her blue eyes went wide. “Oh. Oh. You and Cameron?” She leaned forward and winced. “Sorry, Summer.” A quick adjustment and the baby was nursing happily again. Becka frowned. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

“Because there’s nothing to know about.” Nothing except she kept throwing herself at him and he kept setting her gently back and trying to explain why he would never touch her. Nothing except her pride being bruised beyond all repair because of her impulsiveness.

It was the height of insanity to still want him after he’d turned her down—more than once—but apparently her self-control had taken a vacation somewhere along the way. She couldn’t be in the same room with Cameron without ogling him, and it didn’t help that he kept wearing those fitted faded T-shirts that clung to his body like Trish wanted to.

Oh my God, I’m jealous of a piece of clothing.

“That tone of voice says there’s definitely something to know about, but okay. Nothing to know about.” Becka shook her head. “If you’re worried about doing something to screw up the account, neither Aaron nor Cameron would send you if they thought you weren’t capable. So they obviously think you can handle it.”

“I’ve been working there like two weeks. I heard Aaron say that Concord Inc. can boost Tandem Security up to the next level. If I botch this, they won’t get to that next level.” She’d already failed so many freaking times. There was absolutely nothing in her track record that should cause everyone around her to give her yet another vote of confidence.

Not everyone.

She’d bit the bullet and told her parents last night that she’d be out of the country for a while on work and they’d reacted about as well as she would have expected. Oh, her dad was supportive, if worried about his little girl out in the big world without someone to protect her. She didn’t hold it against him—he treated both his daughters like that. Her sister just never gave him cause for worry. It seemed like all Trish did was worry him, even when she tried not to.

And her mom...

She sighed. “My mother had some choice words on the subject.” Choice words that ended in tears, and demands to know what she’d done as a mother to drive Trish to cross an ocean to get away from her. It had taken two hours and a promise to visit over the weekend once she got home to calm her mother down and get her back to some semblance of normality.

“Oh.” Becka made a face. “Look, I’m hardly the authority on healthy parent-child relationships, and your mom is a nice lady, but she really needs to get a hobby that has nothing to do with her adult children. Knitting. Charity. Pole dancing classes. Doesn’t matter, but it might distract her from the whole empty nester thing she’s got going on.”

Trish stared. “You did not just list pole dancing classes alongside charity and knitting as activities my mom should try.”

“Why not?” Becka gave a wicked grin. “It’s great core work.”

“I’m going to tell Aaron you said that.”

“It’s been a couple days since I shocked him, so I’m about due for another one.”

Trish burst out laughing, and the sound drained out the anxiety that had been building since Aaron called her with instructions for the trip. She sank onto the chair across from the couch and shook her head. “Thanks. I needed that.”

“I know.” Becka shifted Summer to the other side and adjusted her clothing. “Here’s the deal—you’re not going to fuck up. Thinking you might is just going to undermine your confidence and ensure you do screw up. So do that brilliant shining thing you do and just power through it—fake it until you make it. They’ll be so relieved not to have to deal directly with Cameron, they’ll fall all over themselves to give you whatever you ask for. Aaron already negotiated a preliminary contract, so it’s just a matter of ensuring the actual contract is laid out to his specifications.”

She made it sound so easy when she put it like that. Nice and simple. Trish ran her hand over the smooth fabric of the chair. “Why is everyone so down on Cameron? He’s kind of gruff, but he’s not a total asshole like everyone says.”

Becka shrugged. “Cameron is a difficult personality. I know because it takes one to know one, though we’re different flavors.” She shifted back and sighed. “I think the real question is, why are you trying so hard not to jump to his defense?”

She shouldn’t talk about it. Positivity was Trish’s gig, and there was nothing positive about the shame she’d been carrying around since that first kiss. Maybe she could have recovered if she hadn’t dropped the towel and had him turn away in response. Maybe. Either way, it wasn’t fair to dump her issues on her brother’s baby mama and fiancée.

But under those sympathetic eyes, she found herself speaking. Trish shifted her gaze to the pattern on the rug because it was easier to spill her secrets there than to the woman across from her. “I kissed him. And after he politely—for him—told me that it wasn’t going to happen, I faked my way through being totally professional and okay with it. Right up until I forgot to set my alarm, slept in and had him show up on my doorstep. I, uh, panicked and it ended up with me naked and him once again explaining that it most definitely wasn’t going to happen.”

A muffled snort brought her head up. Trish glared. “Are you laughing at me? I’ve been rejected twice and even if he’s right about it being a bad idea to bang like bunnies, it still stings. And if he’d stop looking at me like he does, it would make it a whole lot easier to bear.” Sometimes she would turn and catch such heat in Cameron’s gaze that it was a wonder she didn’t turn into a pillar of lustful flames right there in the office. But he turned away.

Every. Single. Time.

“Oh God, you poor thing.” Becka let loose a peal of laughter that filled the room to the brim. “Like running headfirst into a brick wall, isn’t it?”

“That’s not...inaccurate.”

Becka grinned. “I’m familiar with the feeling. You’ve got freckles all over, right?”

The change in subject made her frown. “Sure. Why?”

“Tell me one thing—actually, tell me two things. How long did it take him to turn away when you dropped the towel?”

“Um...” Trish’s skin went hot at the memory. “It wasn’t instant, if that’s what you mean.”

“Mmm-hmm. And when he looks at you... Is it possible he’s retracing your freckles all over mentally?”

Now that she mentioned it, his gaze did tend to take a specific path when he thought she wasn’t looking. A very similar path to the one he’d traced in the air above her skin that day. She cleared her throat. “It’s possible.”

“That’s what I thought.” Another laugh. Becka’s smile promised all sorts of wicked things. “Have fun on your work trip, Trish. I sure as hell would in your position.”