A Perfect Fit (25 page)

His brows pulled together and he frowned. “Why did they
contact you? I mean, it was nice and all, but with HIPAA regulations and
everything, isn’t that odd?”

Cami pursed her lips. “It would be, but when I contacted
them, I said that I would help with transportation costs for the donor and
arrange lodgings while they were in the area. So Liesel contacted me, but now I’m
not feeling nearly so generous.”

“That’s understandable. Matilda’s betrayal is hard on all of
you girls—especially you if you were helping her out like that.” Blake sat back
in the chair and gave her a steady look. “Okay, I don’t want to get your back
up, but I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a moment. Do you think Robert
knew about his wife’s spying?”

She allowed herself a moment to consider, but based on how
Mrs. Grady had talked when she was arrested, she didn’t think so. “No.”

“Did you think he needed your help before?”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you think he deserves the transplant less than before?”

Cami’s jaw tightened as the emotions roiled inside her. It
took her several seconds to answer. “No.”

“So are you going to punish him because his wife was so
desperate to dig their way out of debt that she betrayed you?”

“I thought you were just playing devil’s advocate. This
sounds like more.” She shot him a hard look, but felt tears rising in her eyes.

His gaze held hers for a long moment. “You have every reason
to be upset with Matilda, to be angry and feel betrayed. But I want you to
think about why you helped out in the first place and decide if you still
believe you were right.”

There was a long moment of silence as Cami struggled with
his question. “I know in my head what happened shouldn’t affect things for
Robert. Feeling that way is another matter.”

“We could always find someone else to head up fundraising
efforts, but try to let your head do some of the talking,” he suggested. “It’s
really easy to listen to hurt feelings and not consider all of the details.” A
sad, faraway look came into his eye and his mouth turned down in frustration.

Cami couldn’t help but comment on his reaction, which obviously
had nothing to do with their current discussion. “Are you talking about what
happened between you and Lana?”

His brows lifted. “What did she tell you about us?”

“Nothing. But I see the way you two bump off of each other.
I know you used to be friends, at least, and now she’s royally pissed about
something.”

His lips twitched, as though he were trying to smile, but
failed. Sadness filled his eyes. “I can’t talk about it if she doesn’t want to
tell you, but you’re on the right track.” He turned the picture of Cami and
Lana that sat on the edge of her desk and stared at it.

“You love her.” Cami was surprised, then wondered why she
hadn’t seen it from the beginning. She’d wondered if they’d had a relationship,
but she hadn’t thought it ever got this far.

His gaze flashed to hers. “Yeah, I do.”

She desperately wanted to ask if Lana loved him and what had
happened, but he’d already said he wouldn’t discuss it, so she didn’t push. Him.
Lana was another issue. “Well, whatever happened, I hope you can work things
out with her.”

“I will. Eventually.” But his expression wasn’t nearly as
certain as his words.

~*~

Now Vince knew what he was competing with to keep Cami in Juniper
Ridge, he found it nearly impossible to get time alone with her. They had
already begun training new employees, and she worked fourteen-, sometimes
sixteen-hour days putting the finishing touches on the hotel, and tracking all
of the contractors as they installed equipment and making sure it worked. Then
there were the linens to unpack, wash and spread on the beds, the alarm clocks
to test, add batteries to and set, and the thousands of inventory items that
had to be catalogued and organized.

It made his head spin.

The first five days after their return from Chicago, all
Vince managed was to reach her for a couple of quick phone calls, and once he
caught her on the grounds while he prepped the yard and she ran between her car
and the hotel. He stopped her for a kiss and heard her brief apologies for all
but ignoring him. He knew this was temporary and wasn’t mad at her for being so
busy, but he missed her.

It was late August, and while things were slowing down at
the nursery, they were still in the swing of peak season for the landscaping
end of things. After taking two days off to run to Chicago with Cami, Vince had
to put in plenty of long days to catch up on his own work.

Still, he searched for an elusive hour alone with her.

A week after returning from Chicago, he finished putting his
equipment away as the sun dropped out of sight. It would be dark before he
caught up with Cami at the hotel, but it was past time she took a breather.

After several queries, he found her making beds on the
fourth floor. She looked exhausted in her figure-hugging jeans and a company-logoed,
white polo shirt. Cami and Lana worked on opposite sides of the bed, tucking
and smoothing as they went, chatting about some snag Lana had dealt with
earlier.

“Well, well. You’ve gone from the board room to becoming
maids?” he teased as he appreciated the way Cami’s jeans hugged her rear end when
she bent over.

Lana flashed a grin at him. “We’ve both made our share of
hotel beds. We started out in housekeeping when we were only fourteen.”

He felt his brows lift. “You two are always a bundle of
surprises, but you certainly look like you know what you’re doing.”

Cami plumped a pillow and snugged it at the top of the bed. “If
practice makes perfect, half my staff is going to be very good at all kinds of
jobs around this place. We’ve been cross-training everyone, but decided to take
on a couple of rooms to refresh our skills.” She pushed the auburn curls back
from her face as she turned to him.

He crossed the room in two steps and pulled her into his
arms. “You’re ready to drop. When was the last time you ate?”

When she had to stop and think about it, he knew it had been
too long.

“I had lunch.” She checked her watch and groaned. “Eight
hours ago. No wonder I’m ready to collapse.”

“You too?” he asked Lana over Cami’s shoulder.

She shook her head. “We all stopped to eat a couple of hours
back, but Cami was in the middle of a conference call. I didn’t realize she
didn’t break for dinner after she finished.”

Vince rubbed his thumb over Cami’s cheek, noticing the dark
circles under her eyes. The worry lines by her mouth were more pronounced too. He
was dying to cover her mouth with his. “Unless you object, I’m stealing her, feeding
her and putting her to bed early.” He said this to Lana, but didn’t take his
eyes off Cami’s face.

“Since she stayed until nearly eleven last night and was
back at it by six this morning, I think that’s a great idea,” Lana answered.

“Oh, but I have so many things to do still,” Cami objected.

Vince quieted her with his mouth. When he had her full
attention, he pulled back. “I think you just got an order from your boss.”

“It wasn’t an order,” Cami said.

“Oh, yes it was.” Lana adjusted the ponytail of red hair at
her nape. “In fact, I’m going to insist everyone go home shortly. We’re all
worn out.”

“But there are still stacks of supplies in my office area,
and inventory to do—”

Cami kept speaking as Vince scooped her into his arms and
headed for the elevator. He called over his shoulder to Lana. “I’ll have her
back here around seven.” Eleven hours wasn’t nearly long enough, but he’d take
what he could get.

“Sounds fine. See you later.”

Cami continued to object, weakly, until the elevator doors
shut between them and he kissed her again. “You ought to let me down. Otherwise
people will think I’m sick,” she muttered against his mouth.

“Who cares what they think?”

“Mmm. I have to work with them, Vince.”

Regretfully, he let her slide down until her feet touched
the floor. “If you say so.” He lifted his head when the elevator doors opened
and he released her before they stepped into the foyer.

Twenty minutes later they were at his house, a bag of
takeout on the counter, and Cami was a puddle of exhaustion on his sofa.

Vince brought in a plate with the chicken sandwich and fries
he’d ordered for her and set it on the coffee table.

“I shouldn’t eat so much. I’m going to grow into a whale,”
she protested as she swirled fries in ketchup.

“If you spent all day running from one end of the hotel to
the next, I don’t think gaining weight is going to be a problem. Eat before you
fall asleep where you sit.”

She shifted her feet to the floor so he could sit beside her
and they talked about the day while they polished off the food.

Having her in his home gave the place an air of comfort. Cami
drove away the loneliness and just seeing her shoes kicked off by the front
door made it feel more lived in, more real. Vince thought of the ring he had
tucked away in a drawer upstairs and considered bringing it down to her, but
she was too tired to think right now. While that could work to his advantage,
he didn’t want to ask her to marry him while she was like this. It wasn’t fair.
And he wasn’t sure yet that she’d say yes.

When Cami had eaten most of the food on her plate and her
eyes drooped, Vince cleared everything away and took her hand, leading her upstairs.
There wouldn’t be time or energy for anything but sleeping tonight, but holding
her in his arms would be good enough.

“You’re awfully well rested, considering you spent the night
at Vince’s,” Rosemary observed when Cami walked into the boardroom for the
usual eight o’clock meeting.

“Poor guy. I think I was snoring before my head hit the
pillow. The last thing I remember was eating dinner and him leading me up the
stairs.” Cami felt her face warm, though she managed to control her expression.

“I could have sworn he had other plans,” Lana teased as
Blake sat beside her.

Joel and Sage came in, taking the last chairs between Delphi
and Jonquil. The head of engineering crammed in the far corner.

“Sometimes,” Blake said, “looks are deceiving.”

Lana’s face tightened. “And sometimes they aren’t.”

“Oh-kay, if we can change the subject back to something
relevant.” Cami didn’t want people discussing her private life at the meeting.
She glanced at Rosemary, whose eyes darted to Lana and Blake, then back to Cami,
and her brows quirked in question. Cami lifted her shoulders to show her
confusion.

Lana started the meeting with the day’s company message,
before shooting right into what still needed to be accomplished. They would
have guests on the premises in three days, after all, and the to-do list barely
seemed to have shrunk at all.

~*~

Thursday night Lana sent everyone home and locked up the
hotel for the last time. Security did one last sweep to make sure the place was
empty and left a couple of guys to patrol the halls overnight.

Cami called a gathering at the house, including Blake and
all of the other department heads, the main chefs, head of housekeeping and
assistant managers of each department along with their significant others,
which meant Vince was by her side.

They ate takeout, hashed over plans for the next day, and
mingled for over an hour before people started to leave to get a good night’s
sleep.

When the rest of the department heads left the sisters,
Joel, Blake, Harrison, Alex, and Vince at the house, Cami sent Vince to her
room to get the package that had arrived from Tiffany’s a few days earlier. As
he came back down the stairs, she called everyone to order. “I know that at
work Lana is the boss, but as I’m now the oldest member of the family—” she
pointed at Alex. “You don’t count this time, sorry—I decided it was my job to
step up, at least tonight.” She took the box from Vince and clutched it to her.
Her mouth was dry from nerves, and she felt more emotional than she cared to
admit.

“It’s been a rough summer and we didn’t exactly come
together under the most ideal circumstances.” That brought a round of chuckles.
“But I have to let you all know how proud I am of you.” She paused as her voice
broke. “How proud Dad would have been of all of us. It’s going to take a while
for us to adjust, to figure out how we all work together, but I feel like we’re
already starting to mesh, despite the inevitable rough spots along the way.”

Jonquil flashed one of her infectious smiles. “And if we don’t
mesh, Rosemary will step in and straighten us out.”

“You got that right,” Rosemary put in.

Cami felt the knot in her stomach start to loosen. “Anyway,
during my trip to Chicago a couple of weeks ago, I realized despite all of his
many, many mistakes, Dad had the right idea putting us together. And I think we
make a pretty awesome team. The media has been trying to tear us apart, destroy
the family name, but it’s not about them, it’s about us, and what we can
accomplish when we stick together.” She saw tears in Lana’s eyes.

“Hear, hear!” This came from Blake.

Vince snaked an arm around Cami’s waist and gave her a
squeeze of support.

“So, I wanted to commemorate what we’ve accomplished here
and send a message of unity to anyone who sees us. We’re sisters. We stick
together, and no one is going to count us out.” She fumbled with the jewelry
boxes, setting them onto the counter as she spoke. “I discussed options with
the jeweler for a while before we came up with the right thing. I got one for
each of us. Don’t open them until everyone has one.”

Cami’s hands shook as she passed the boxes around to her
sisters, then returned to her spot beside Vince and picked up her own. “I
decided a lapel pin was the most sensible option, considering our various
uniforms. Open them.”