Читать книгу To Catch a Camden - Victoria Pade - Страница 8
ОглавлениеChapter Two
“Georgie! You feisty little beanbag, where are you?” Derek called when he went into his grandmother’s house midmorning on Tuesday.
“She’s in the greenhouse.”
“Oh, hey, Jonah. Hey, Louie. I didn’t see you guys up there.”
Jonah Morrison—Derek’s grandmother’s old high school sweetheart and new husband since their wedding in June—seemed to be working on something on the stairs. Louie Haliburton—the male half of the married couple who had worked for the family as live-in staff for decades—was helping him.
“What’s going on?” Derek asked the two older men.
“Fixing the banister,” Louie answered.
“Or trying to,” Jonah added.
“Need help?” Derek offered, even though he was in the midst of his workday and had only stopped by on his way back from a meeting with Camden Incorporated’s bankers in his capacity as chief financial officer.
“Nah, we can handle it,” Louie assured.
“I’ll head for the greenhouse, then. Holler if you change your minds.”
Derek went across the wide entryway, down the hallway that led straight to the kitchen. There he found Louie’s wife, Margaret.
“Hey, Maggie-May,” he greeted the stocky woman, who was old enough for retirement but was still on her hands and knees cleaning one of the ovens.
“Derek! Did we expect you today?”
He leaned over and kissed her rosy cheek. “Nope. Just stopped by to talk to Georgie.”
“She’s in the greenhouse.”
“So I heard. That’s where I’m headed.”
“Staying for lunch?”
“Can’t. Have to get back to the office. I only have a few minutes.” He went through the kitchen to the greenhouse, where his grandmother was watering her prize orchids.
“Georgie...don’t let me scare you...” he said in a mellow tone once he got there, because his grandmother’s back was to him and he didn’t want to startle the seventy-five-year-old.
Georgianna Camden was the matriarch of the Camden family, the woman who had raised all ten of her grandchildren after the plane crash that killed their parents and her husband. The rest of the family called her GiGi. Derek had always affectionately called her Georgie.
“As if I didn’t hear you shouting from the doorway,” his grandmother said, turning off the water.
He crossed the greenhouse to kiss her cheek, too, putting an arm around the shoulders that—like the rest of her—felt as cushy as a beanbag chair.
He gave her a little squeeze before letting her go. “I’m on my way back to the office, but I thought I’d stop for a few minutes to tell you that I went to that church your friend belongs to last night—”
“Jean didn’t see you. I talked to her this morning.”
“Checking up on me?” he asked with a laugh. “I went but I didn’t get in. Some hot little number named Gia Grant caught me at the foot of the steps to the basement and wouldn’t let me go any farther.”
“I know that name—Jean can’t say enough good things about her. She doesn’t belong to their church, she’s the Bronsons’ neighbor and—”
“She’s the one behind this deal to help the Bronsons—I know, the guy who cuts my hair told me. But last night she was also the guardian of the gate. Your friend Jean was right about the meeting to organize the work for the Bronsons, but what she didn’t say was that the Bronsons themselves would be at the church. Gia Grant spotted me coming, recognized me somehow and wouldn’t let me out of the stairwell. She said a Camden would ruin the Bronsons’ night.”
“Oh, dear...”
“Yeah. We might not have known about what went on between H.J. and those people until you read about it in the journals, but it isn’t something they’ve forgotten.”
The man who had started the Camden empire—Derek’s great-grandfather H. J. Camden—had kept a journal while he was alive. Only recently rediscovered, it confirmed what H.J., his son, Hank, and his grandsons, Mitchum and Howard, had long been accused of—ruthless, unscrupulous business practices that trampled people and other businesses.
After reading the journals, Georgianna Camden and her grandchildren were determined to make amends for some of the worst of the wrongs done. Including what had been done to the Bronsons.
“Gia Grant says that no matter how much trouble the Bronsons are in,” Derek informed his grandmother, “they have too much pride to take anything from us. Her recommendation was that we just donate money anonymously.... And the anonymity wouldn’t be so bad for us, because then we’d be avoiding any admission of guilt....”
GiGi shook her head at that suggestion. “I know we need to keep from making any kind of open, public acknowledgment of wrongdoing so we don’t have people coming out of the woodwork to sue us for things the Camdens didn’t do—”
“Big corporations and money make for easy targets,” Derek confirmed. “And you know there are stories out there accusing us of stuff that didn’t happen—so, yeah, if we say some of the accusations are well founded, there’ll be an avalanche of see-I-told-you-so lawsuits for unfounded complaints that will tie us up in court until hell freezes over.”
“We also don’t want to come out and say that H.J. and your grandfather, father and uncle really were involved in underhanded business practices—there’s family loyalty at stake here, too,” GiGi said under her breath, because this was something that she didn’t discuss if Jonah, Margaret or Louie were around.
“So a payout would be a whole lot easier, but it wouldn’t protect us,” Derek acknowledged.
“And we wouldn’t necessarily achieve our goal of making amends with a simple payout,” GiGi added. “In this case in particular, just donating some money might not be the best answer for the Bronsons. Jean says they have no family. No one beyond that Gia girl—and she’s only a neighbor—to look after them or help them. They’re in their eighties, so there are some health problems, and Jean isn’t sure they should be living on their own anymore. And what if one of them dies and the other is left all alone—?”
“You want to just move them in here?” Derek joked.
“You know how I feel about this one, Derek. It’s going to need some involvement on our part for what remains of the Bronsons’ lives,” GiGi insisted. “And you know that just donating money doesn’t guarantee that the money will get into the right hands or get used in the ways it should be used, especially down the road. We have to know that these people have whatever they need to finish out their lives—financially and otherwise. And their needs can change depending on how their health or situation changes. We have to have some kind of presence in their lives. So you have to make nice with them. Win them over and establish a relationship with them so we can help later on, too, if need be. For their sake.”
“I touched on some of that with Gia. But I still couldn’t even get in the door....”
“Well, you’re going to have to do whatever it takes to accomplish that, honey. Maybe first you’ll have to win over the guard at the gate....”
That brought a vivid image of Gia Grant to mind—something that had been happening at the drop of a hat since he’d met her last night.
Maybe because of that hair, he thought.
That hair was just great!
Every time the memory of it popped into his head it made him smile.
Full and thick and shiny and wildly curly...
That was probably why it appealed to him. He liked things that were a little on the wild side.
And he’d loved that hair....
Plus, she had big, beautiful brown eyes the color of espresso sprinkled with gold dust.
And peaches-and-cream skin that didn’t show a single flaw.
And a straight nose that turned up almost imperceptibly and just a little impudently at the end.
And a picture-perfect mouth that was exactly the kind he liked to kiss because her lips were slightly full and sumptuous-looking....
All on top of a body that was tight but still soft and curvaceous even if she wasn’t particularly tall....
Oh, yeah, he’d done a lot of thinking about Gia Grant since last night....
For no reason he could put his finger on.
“I did ask her to intervene on my behalf, but she wasn’t too optimistic that she could convince the Bronsons to accept anything from us,” he told his grandmother when he’d pulled himself out of his thoughts of Gia.
“Like I said, win her over first, then,” GiGi advised. “The better she likes you, the more apt she is to sell you to the Bronsons. And from what I understand from Jean, that shouldn’t be too painful for you—Jean says she’s never met a nicer, friendlier, more helpful person, and that she’s beautiful to boot and doesn’t even seem to know it. So she’s humble, too. I know Jean has her eye on her for Lucas once his divorce is final, and she and the other ladies in her church committees are all worried that their pastor is very taken with this Gia Grant—”
“So wouldn’t that make her perfect for their pastor—a paragon of virtue like that?”
“Shame on you for saying that like it’s a bad thing! That’s what gets you into trouble.”
No truer words were ever spoken, so Derek couldn’t deny it. Besides, he didn’t dare. Not after his most recent blunder, the one that had really caused him to cross the line.
The one he wanted to kick himself over.
The one that had cost him a bundle and most of his dignity....
“If she’s all that your friend says she is, why wouldn’t the church ladies want her for their pastor?” he asked more respectfully.
“She’s divorced.”
“And that’s an issue?”
“It’s only an issue when it comes to their minister—they want someone purer for him, I guess. Plus, like I said, Jean wants Gia for Lucas—”
“Lucas Paulie is a weasel,” Derek said, not understanding why it rubbed him wrong to think of the woman he’d spent all of about five minutes with either the church pastor he didn’t know or the guy he did know.
“I didn’t realize you disliked Lucas Paulie so much,” GiGi said.
“I just wouldn’t wish him on some poor unsuspecting do-gooder.”
“There it is again, Derek James Camden! Do-gooder—that is not a bad thing. A nice girl is what you need. You’d better start looking for one and stay away from what you’ve been bringing around here since you were a teenager. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?”
“I have, Georgie,” he said on a sigh. “I just can’t help it if the...tame ones don’t do it for me. I like a little spice.”
“What you’ve brought around here is not a little spice. And this last one—”
“I know. You don’t have to tell me—again—how damn stupid that was.”
“And yet here you are, barely out from under the mess you were in, looking down your nose at someone doing some good.”
“I’m not looking down my nose at Gia Grant.”
He was doing anything but that, if the truth be known. He sure as hell hadn’t been thinking bad things about her since last night.
It just didn’t matter. He knew the way things went for him—regardless of how beautiful the woman, regardless of how much he might respect and admire her or what she was doing, in no time the good girls just couldn’t keep his interest. In no time they started to seem ordinary. They started to get predictable. They started to bore him to tears.
But he wasn’t a kid anymore. And he had no business letting himself be sucked into situations with the bad girls anymore.
It had been bad enough when he was a kid, but now it was inexcusable. Especially when it embarrassed the whole family right along with himself. Like this last time.
Which was why he was lying low. Why he was doing some self-imposed penance by staying away from all women for a while. Why he was putting his energies into work and the Camden Foundation and trying to make things up to the Bronsons the way his grandmother had asked him to. Even if he was reasonably sure that his grandmother’s intent was to keep him well-occupied so he wouldn’t have time to get involved with anyone else for a while.
Not that he could blame her....
“I gave Gia Grant my card and told her if I didn’t hear from her I’d track her down,” Derek said then, ignoring how much he was looking forward to seeing her again. “She apparently lives next door to the Bronsons, so even if I have to knock on the wrong door before I get the right one, I’ll find her. Then maybe I can try to go through her to get to the Bronsons. I think she may have seen the benefit of our help over her donation jars and church volunteers, but whether or not she can convince the Bronsons—”
“You’ll find a way in,” Georgianna said.
“I really will, Georgie. I’m not going to let you—or any of the rest of the family—down again.”
“I hope not,” GiGi said. “Maybe you should try to let this Grant girl be a good influence on you for a change....”
“You never know,” he said, rather than defend himself the way he might have done before the latest fiasco. “But for now I’d better get back to the office.”
GiGi nodded. As she reached to turn the water on again, she said, “You’re a good boy, Derek. I don’t know why you have such a soft spot for bad girls. Maybe you can turn over a new leaf.”
“Tryin’, Georgie, I’m tryin’.”
But even as Gia Grant’s oh-so-lovely face came to mind again, he wondered if he could.
* * *
“A chicken and steaks and a roast, Gia? You could freeze these, you know,” Marion lectured.
“I already froze a bunch. It’s cheaper to buy at the bulk warehouse, but I end up with more than I can use. You’re helping me out by taking some of it.” It was the same thing Gia said every time she brought Larry and Marion groceries. Their budget was so strapped that meat had become a luxury item. But pride wouldn’t allow them to let Gia provide that for them unless she made it sound as if they were doing her a favor. So that was the slant she put on it.
“Well, thank you. You’re too good to us,” Marion said as she put away the groceries that included some other things Gia knew they liked but couldn’t afford for themselves.
“Let’s open one of those beers right now,” Larry suggested.
Marion obliged her husband and opened the cupboard to get glasses. “Will you have some of this, Gia?”
“No, you guys go ahead,” she said. She declined their offers every time, too.
“I know you didn’t buy this for yourself,” Marion said as she poured the beer into two glasses.
Gia laughed. “And I know how much you and Larry like your little swig of beer before dinner,” she said, using the term they used.
They were in the Bronsons’ kitchen late Tuesday afternoon. Gia had left work at three o’clock, done some shopping and was now delivering groceries as a pretext for what she really came to talk to the Bronsons about.
The couple had been in such good spirits when they’d left the church the night before that Gia hadn’t wanted to dampen them by bringing up Derek Camden. But he’d somehow gotten her cell phone number and left a message this afternoon about the status of persuading Larry and Marion to let him help them.
Gia hadn’t returned his call yet, but his invitation to meet her for coffee at seven to talk had inspired this visit.
And given the boring evening she was facing a whole new spin....
Not that she was eager to see Derek Camden again, she told herself. Even if he had shadowed her thoughts since she’d first set eyes on him last night. It was just that she didn’t have anything else to do tonight and hopefully the evening would end up benefitting Larry and Marion.
When they were all seated around the Bronsons’ aged, scarred kitchen table, Gia said, “There’s something I want to talk to you guys about. You didn’t know it last night, but a Camden showed up at the church—Derek Camden....”
Marion looked alarmed. Larry was instantly angry.
“What’re they doing, coming for the money you’ve raised to help us?” Larry said.
“Didn’t they get enough when they took everything from us? Are those richy-riches even after our pennies now?” Marion said, her tone harsh.
This was the reason Gia hadn’t wanted Derek Camden to crash last night’s get-together.
“There’s no way they could get hold of what’s been donated—that’s in a secure account at the bank under your names and mine,” Gia assured them. Then she added cautiously, “Derek Camden said he came to help... I’m not sure how—”
“Some way that’ll put more in his pocket!” Larry again.
“They’re probably looking to take our house now!” Marion said, sounding genuinely afraid. “Like with the hotel—right when we were struggling to keep it, they swooped in and made it so we couldn’t. Now when the bank wants the house, they’re coming for that, too!”
“No, no, no,” Gia said quickly, trying to calm the elderly woman’s fears. “I’m sure they don’t want your house—”
“They probably want the whole block. The whole area for another one of their damn stores!” Larry said, getting more and more worked up. “You’d better watch out, Gia, they could be coming for your place, too!”
“They already have two stores nearby—the one that was built where your hotel was, and the one on Colorado Boulevard. And we’re zoned residential—”
“They pay off people to change zoning—don’t be fooled by that,” Larry contended.
Gia had known this was not going to be easy. “Okay, I know how you both feel about the Camdens—and with good reason—”
“You bet we have reason—they robbed us,” Larry ranted.
“I know—”
“Dirty crooks!” This from Marion.
“But what was done to you two was a long time ago, by H. J. Camden. And I’m not defending what he did—” Gia said quickly, because she could see that more comments were coming from the elderly couple “—but H. J. Camden is long gone and maybe—just maybe—the Camdens in charge now want to make up for what H. J. Camden did....”
“Did they say that? Did they admit what he did? Because we couldn’t prove anything, but if they confessed, maybe we can sue their pants off now!” Larry sounded excited by the prospect.
“He didn’t admit anything,” Gia said. “Derek Camden only claimed that he wanted to help.”
“How could we ever sue them even if they confessed?” Marion reasoned with her husband. “We’d still be going up against a million of their lawyers. And with what? Where would we even find a lawyer to take them on? Or hire one with no money? They’d crush us like bugs—again!”
“But the three of us know that they still owe you,” Gia said, hoping to ride the wave of Marion’s logic. “Derek Camden said they want to help financially, but that they also want to make sure you guys are taken care of all the way around. And we could use help like that....”
“Not from Camdens we couldn’t!” Larry proclaimed.
“We could, though,” Gia said gently. “We’ve raised a few thousand dollars and we have people coming over to help clean up the yard and paint the house, but a few thousand dollars isn’t going to keep the bank from foreclosing for long—the best it will do is pay some of the back payments and stall so we can sell the house after it’s been fixed up.”
Gia hated—hated—when she had to remind them of the cold, hard facts, because it just deflated them both and made them look as old as they were. Both were white haired—Larry only had a wreath of hair around a mostly bald head, and Marion wore hers in a short style she cut herself. There wasn’t an ounce of fat or much muscle left on Larry’s five-foot-eight frame, and Marion could easily qualify as frail—she was barely five feet tall and didn’t weigh a hundred pounds. They both had blue eyes that still showed a zest for life, and ordinarily they both stood straight and moved fairly spryly. But whenever they discussed their current predicament, it just sucked the life out of them right before Gia’s eyes.
“You know I’m with you if that’s the best we can do,” she added to reassure them. “My basement apartment is yours and I’d love to have you with me. But I know that neither one of you wants to do that. You want to stay in this house. And with the kind of money the Camdens have...” She shrugged. “Not that Derek Camden made any promises, but if there’s any chance left of coming up with enough to maybe keep you here...”
“I still think they have something up their sleeve,” Larry grumbled.
“You can’t trust them,” Marion concurred.
And they both sounded so beaten that it broke Gia’s heart.
But as much as she wanted to side with them and tell them she would throw whatever Derek Camden offered back in his face on their behalf, she had to look out for what was best for them. And if the Camdens followed through on their promise, it could mean better than what she’d been able to accomplish.
“I’ll do anything you want. This is completely up to you,” she told them, in hopes of making them feel as if they had some control, some power, some choice in the matter. “But if you’ll accept help from the Camdens, I’ll make sure there are no strings attached to anything they give. That there’s nothing up their sleeve. That nothing about this can hurt you—”
“Or you,” Marion contributed.
“Or me—in any way. And if you never want to set eyes on Derek Camden or any other Camden—”
“Get him over here to pull weeds and let me turn the hose on him,” Larry muttered.
“You can’t turn the hose on someone like that,” Marion chastised. “He’d probably sue us!”
“I can turn my hose on anybody I want to turn my hose on,” Larry contended cantankerously.
“We could bring him lemonade while he works and lace it with laxative—then he’d never know what hit him!” Marion suggested, making Gia laugh.
“So you want me to get him over here to help work so you can have a little payback?” Gia asked, reasonably sure that they wouldn’t actually do either of the things they were threatening.
“A Camden working for us...” Marion mused.
“That’d serve them right,” Larry added.
Gia could tell that they were both finding some fuel in their retribution plots, and she was glad to see them rally.
“So you’ll let me talk to Derek Camden about what they’re offering? And you aren’t opposed to having him come over here and do some of the work?” she said, since she thought she should strike while the iron was hot.
“We don’t want anything to do with them,” Larry reiterated.
“No, we don’t,” Marion confirmed. “But you can take whatever they’re offering, Gia,” she said, as if anything coming from the Camdens through her made it more palatable. “As long as you watch them like a hawk—because they do owe us, and whatever helps you help us we’ll take.”
“But don’t say anything that lets them off the hook for anything, those lousy shysters!” Larry added.
Gia marveled at a phenomenon she’d witnessed before—sometimes it was as if they’d communicated with each other and come to a decision without ever having talked about it. Apparently seventy years of marriage put them on the same wavelength somehow. Or maybe they’d always been on the same wavelength and that was why they’d been able to stay married for so long.
But regardless of how they’d come to this particular conclusion, Gia was just glad they had.
“Then I’ll tell Derek Camden that we’ll take his help.”
The scowl on Larry’s face and the dour, forlorn creases on Marion’s brow told her how unwillingly the offer was being accepted. But Gia thought it was better to get out before they changed their minds. Besides, it would give the Bronsons some time alone to rant and rail about it to their hearts’ content while she went off to deal with Derek Camden.
And why she felt as excited as a teenager who had just finagled permission from her parents to see someone forbidden—who she really, really wanted to see again—Gia didn’t quite understand.
She was a long way from being a teenager.
Larry and Marion weren’t her parents.
And Derek Camden was forbidden because Gia was forbidding herself from him.
Because even if she was ready to date, she wouldn’t date a man like Derek Camden. She might not have a grudge against the Camdens the way Larry and Marion did, but her own past experience taught her to avoid men like Derek.
Her ex-husband was also a man with deep-rooted loyalties to a big, corrupt, ruthless, unprincipled clan-like family, and that was a hot-button issue for her.
So Derek Camden was not someone she would even consider getting involved with.
Personally anyway.
For Larry and Marion’s sake, she would have contact with him—and she would watch him like a hawk, as Marion had ordered—but that was the beginning and end of it.
So any sort of excitement at the thought of seeing him again was something to squash hard and fast.
Which she did as she said goodbye to the Bronsons and left them sitting at the table.
And yet on her way home, a tiny blip of excitement still registered when she started to consider what she was going to wear to see him tonight....
* * *
When Gia returned Derek Camden’s call, he asked if they could meet at a Cherry Creek bakery rather than the coffee shop he’d suggested in his message.
It didn’t matter to Gia where they met, so she agreed. Then she fixed herself a sandwich for dinner and decided she couldn’t wear anything different for this meeting than what she had on.
Not that she didn’t want to change out of the brown slacks and tan pin-tucked blouse she’d worn to work. She just couldn’t let herself. This wasn’t a date and she needed not to forget that.
But she told herself that it was purely for her own comfort that she unleashed her hair from the ponytail it had been in all day, brushed it out and let it fall loose and full into its naturally curly mass.
And when it came to refreshing her blush and adding a neutral eye shadow, some eyeliner and more mascara, it was merely to look at the top of her game in order to warn him that he’d better not try to put one over on her.
Arriving at the bakery five minutes early, she spotted Derek Camden through the storefront windows as she pulled her sedan into a parking spot.
He was also still in work clothes, although he’d taken off his tie and suit jacket. He was wearing gray-blue suit pants and a pale blue dress shirt, and Gia’s first thought was that no one should look that good after a full day.
But there was just the hint of scruff to his sculpted jawline, and his dark hair was the ideal amount of disheveled; combined with the perfectly tailored shirt and pants, it formed a very sexy contrast.
A split second after the thought occurred to Gia, she reprimanded herself for it.
Handsome and sexy did not make the man. Handsome and sexy could, however, provide camouflage for something very ugly under the surface or behind the scenes.
It was a fact of life that she’d learned well and wouldn’t let herself forget.
It would have been easy to, though, because when she went into the bakery and Derek noticed her, he smiled a smile that said he liked what he saw. And it made her heart beat a little faster.
“Hi, thanks for coming,” he greeted her.
“Hi,” Gia responded simply.
“Excuse me just a minute.”
For a moment his attention turned back to the woman behind the counter. “So I can pick up the cake tomorrow at one—that’s great, just what I need.” Then, with a nod toward Gia, he said, “Let me add what we have now to the tab and I’ll settle up with you later?”
When the woman agreed, he said to Gia, “I don’t know if you’ve been here before, but you can’t go wrong with anything—”
“Lava cake, Bea,” Gia said to the woman, who was already taking one from the case and putting it on a plate.
“Heated with an extra dollop of hot fudge on top,” the woman recited her order from memory.
Derek laughed. “Ah, I see I’m not introducing you to anything new.”
“She’s our favorite chocoholic,” the owner of the bakery informed him.
He ordered lemon-meringue pie, and they both asked for iced tea. Then, while the shop owner got everything ready, Derek led Gia to one of the small café tables.
“We order all of our office celebration cakes here,” he explained. “Tomorrow I’m surprising my assistant with a little engagement party.”
A head-honcho Camden was ordering the cake himself? Her ex-husband and the rest of his family would never have bothered.
“How about you? How do you know this place?” he asked.
“I work around the corner and come at least once a day.”
Derek Camden’s well-shaped eyebrows rose. “Every day?” he said, taking a quick glance at her body as if wondering where the calories went.
“Sometimes it’s the only thing I eat all day,” she confessed.
“Chocolate every time?”
Her shrug confirmed it.
He laughed. “You are a chocoholic.”
Gia didn’t deny it.
“What do you do around the corner?”
“I’m a botanist. I work for a company that makes herbal supplements and medicines.”
The eyebrows went up again. “Really?”
“My ex said I’m just a glorified gardener.”
“Well, I’m just an accountant, so it sounds more impressive than that.”
He was being humble. Gia knew he was the chief financial officer of Camden Incorporated. But she preferred humility to arrogance. Elliot had been all arrogance.
Not that she preferred Derek Camden, she amended in her thoughts. The only way she wanted to compare him with her ex was in terms of their similarities—like the fact that they both came from big, powerful, rich families willing to do dishonest, shifty, devious and deceitful things.
“How did you get my cell phone number?” she asked then, continuing the vein of small talk while they waited for their desserts.
“My grandmother is friends with Jean Paulie—I believe she was one of the church members at your meeting last night—”
“She was.”
“Jean is one of the people who brought the Bronsons to our attention—her and the guy who cuts my hair because he had a donation jar in his shop. Anyway, I asked my grandmother if Jean had your number and she did.”
Gia nodded.
“My turn—how did you know who I was last night?” he asked.
“My best friend is Tyson Biggs. You dated his cousin and I saw a picture of you with her.” Gia didn’t add that the image had stuck with her because he was so terrific looking. Or that now that she’d seen him in person she couldn’t shake his image from her mind at all....
He grinned. “Sharon. Dragon nails, always in stilettos, carried a purse that was also a fish tank—complete with her goldfish in it—claimed to be psychic...”
“That would be Sharon,” Gia confirmed.
He smiled conspiratorially, in a way that was much too engaging. “Did she ever get a reading for you right?”
“I’ve never had her do one of her actual readings. She’s offered, but on the two times I’ve met her she told me out of the blue—”
“To prove her powers—she likes to do that,” he said as if it amused him.
“Well, the first time she told me I was pregnant and I wasn’t. The second time she said to watch out because I was going to lose my job. Luckily, that didn’t happen, either.”
“Yeah, she’s never gotten anything right that I know of. She isn’t even good at guessing,” he concluded with a laugh that wasn’t at all disparaging or unkind. “I haven’t seen Sharon in...I’m not even sure how long.”
“So long that you’ve had time to get married and settle down?” she asked because she was curious. She’d heard about Sharon and about her friends that he’d dated later—also all wackjobs, according to Tyson. But Gia didn’t know anything about Derek Camden beyond that, and she reasoned that if he’d married and settled down he might be more trustworthy in the Bronsons’ eyes.
But the question that shouldn’t have been difficult to answer instead seemed to puzzle him.
“Huh...” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and suddenly making a face that conveyed discomfort and confusion. “I was going to jump in and say no, never married. But then I remembered that that isn’t exactly true anymore. Is annulled a marital status?”
“Annulled... I don’t know, I’ve never met anyone who was annulled.”
“Yeah, me, neither...” he said with a frown.
Their desserts arrived and when the shop owner left them to eat he didn’t explain further, leaving Gia curious but not feeling free to ask more than she already had.
Then he changed the subject and she really couldn’t indulge her curiosity.
“So did you talk to the Bronsons about accepting some help from us?”
“I did.”
He smiled at her tone. “It didn’t go well?”
“It went the way I thought it would. But they did come around. They said they would let you help me help them.”
He nodded slowly as he ate a bite of his pie. “Okay. A little convoluted but still something. And I’ll take what I can get at this point. So what do you have planned?”
Gia had taken a bite of her own dessert as he said that. And when it came to chocolate, there was no rushing her. So she held up a finger in front of her mouth to signify a pause as she savored the warm, rich, dark chocolate of her lava cake.
He smiled. “No hurry, enjoy yourself.”
“The lemon pie is good, but next time try one of these,” she advised when her mouth wasn’t full. “It’s just the right blend of chocolates and just melty enough and just...amazing.”
His smile stretched into a grin. “Not a big chocolate guy so I’ll take your word for it.”
If anything could turn her off, it should be that!
But somehow it didn’t make him look any less appealing to her, so she just filed the information away and answered his inquiry into what she had planned to help the Bronsons.
“There’s a day of yard work and a day of home repairs to get their place in better shape,” she said. “And I’m cleaning out their stuff and collecting things to sell at a yard sale that I’m hoping will also raise some money—if you want to bring anything for that, do it. This coming Saturday is the yard work, the Saturday after that will be the home repair day and the Saturday after that is the yard sale.”
“So yard work and home repairs—they haven’t been able to keep their place up,” he deduced.
“They haven’t had the money, and they’re just getting too old to do most things—”
“Should they be moved into a retirement home or assisted living?”
It was a perfectly reasonably suggestion, one she and Tyson had swatted back and forth, one she’d thrown out to the Bronsons.
And yet hearing it from Derek Camden made her recall Larry and Marion’s concern that the Camdens were after their house.
Which still didn’t seem at all likely to Gia.
But even though there wasn’t anything intimidating about Derek Camden—in fact, he seemed down-to-earth, open and friendly—she’d also heard so much from the Bronsons about the evil Camdens that she felt some concern herself.
“Retirement homes and assisted living are expensive, too, and the Bronsons are really against going somewhere with old people—”
He laughed again. “They’re how old themselves?”
“Eighty-nine and eighty-seven,” Gia said with a hint of humor at the irony of that. “But staying together in their house is a big deal to them.”
“Okay. So beyond their home needing some work inside and out, what else is going on with them?”
He’d said the night before that he wanted to get the full picture, not to merely give money but to make sure the Bronsons had what they needed all the way around. So logically, what he was asking was just a way to get that full picture.
But still, Gia was a little uncomfortable giving this man too many details that would let him know exactly how vulnerable the couple was.
“A lot of things are going on with them,” she said ambiguously, opting only to give him an overview. “They live on a very limited budget. Costs for everything are always rising. They aren’t in bad health for their ages but there are some issues—they both have high blood pressure and some heart things, some arthritis, Marion has osteoporosis. And every time they go to a doctor there’s another medication added—”
“Not your herbal supplements and medicines?”
“I can’t really recommend any of those because they take so many prescription meds I’m afraid of interfering with something or giving them a supplement that reacts badly with a prescription drug—so no. But I help them pay their bills and balance their checkbook—because they both have trouble holding a pen and seeing small print—and there are months when I can’t believe the cost of their prescriptions.”
“Do they need better insurance? A cheaper place to get their prescriptions filled?”
“I’ve looked into both of those things and done the best I can for them, but the bottom line is that some things fall outside of their coverage and there’s nothing that can be done about it.”
“Except to get them more money to pay the expenses they have.”
Gia conceded with a shrug and hoped she hadn’t said too much.
“So where do I start to help you help them?” he asked as he finished his pie.
Gia couldn’t risk telling him too much about the Bronsons’ predicament until she was sure his motives really were pure. But the only way she could think to get a better feel for him was to get to know him a little and see if he seemed trustworthy. And she didn’t know how else to do that except to enlist him in the manual-labor portions of what was going on and spend some time with him. Talking to him. Watching him.
Even if it meant tempting Larry to turn the hose on him or Marion to lace lemonade with laxatives....
So, in response to his query about where he should start to help, she said, “Like I said, Saturday we’re starting with the yard and we can always use two more hands....”
“Okay,” he said without skipping a beat. “Are the Bronsons going to throw rocks at me if I show up on their doorstep, though?”
Maybe he was psychic....
“I hope not,” was the best Gia could promise. “Their bark tends to be worse than their bite—”
“At eighty-seven and eighty-nine their teeth probably aren’t their own.”
“Every one of Marion’s is and she’s very proud of them,” Gia corrected his joke. “But I’ll run with the you-helping-me-to-help-them angle and I think you’ll be safe.” She didn’t add that the Bronsons liked the idea of a Camden working for them, so they were apt to gloat about it—whether to his face or not she couldn’t be sure.
“Then just tell me when and where to show up and I’ll be there,” he said.
Gia gave him the details and finished her lava cake. There didn’t seem to be any more to discuss at this juncture, so she offered to pay for her own dessert as a signal that the meeting had come to a conclusion.
“It’s going on the tab,” he reminded her, refusing to even allow her to leave a tip.
He stood up when she did, and Gia tried not to be bowled over by the pure magnitude of the man as she slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder, thinking that talking to him so far had not been a hardship, and watching him work on Saturday likely wouldn’t be, either....
“Thank you for playing go-between,” he said then.
“I’m just looking out for Larry and Marion,” she countered.
“They’re lucky to have you.”
“I’m the lucky one—I don’t have any family and they’ve become that for me.”
He nodded as if he understood something about that, although she had no idea what and he didn’t offer an explanation.
Instead he said, “I guess I’ll see you Saturday, then.”
“I’ll supply the gloves,” she added as they said goodbye and she left him to deal with the bill for their desserts and his office cake.
Then she returned to her car, studying him through the plate-glass windows again as she did and counting how many days would have to pass before Saturday came.
So many...
Oh, no—I don’t have any reason to think that! she silently shouted at herself when she realized that was what had actually gone through her mind.
And to punish herself, she spent the short drive home recalling what it had been like to be married to a man who could well be Derek Camden’s counterpart.
