Ask Me Why (2 page)

Both women watched expectantly as he took a bite.

His blue eyes lit up. “Holy Moses, that's good.”

“
Right?
” Cameron said, pleased by his obvious pleasure. “I limit myself to two a week, or I wouldn't fit through the doors around here. Come on upstairs and check out the office. See you later, Dottie.”

“Bye, Cam. Nice to meet you, Patrick.”

“You, too.”

He followed her through the store, stopping to look at various items as they went.

“That's Hannah's jewelry,” Cameron said of the pieces that had stopped him for a closer look. “She's Will's older sister, twin to Hunter, who's the company CFO.”

“She does beautiful work.”

“I know! I'm a huge fan. I have a couple of her bracelets. Helps to have friends in high places.”

“I'm glad you're making friends here.”

They proceeded up the stairs to the offices on the second floor. “So many friends. And now Lucy's here a lot, too, which makes it even better.”

“Back so soon?” Mary asked when they arrived in the reception area. “I didn't think I'd see you here again for at least two weeks.”

“I wanted you to meet my dad, Patrick.”

Mary came around her desk to shake his hand. “So nice to meet Cameron's dad. We adore her here.”

“So I'm hearing. Nice to meet you, too.”

“This is our office.” Cameron opened the door and turned on the lights so her dad could see her workspace.

“
Our
office?”

“Mine and Will's.”

“You two
share
an office? They didn't give you one of your own?”

“We tried,” Mary said. “Those kids are inseparable.”

Cameron blushed and shrugged. “What she said. Besides, if I'm in another office, how am I supposed to play footsie with him during the day?”

“Ugh,” Patrick said with a grunt of laughter. “TMI. I'd go crazy sharing office space with anyone, especially such a small one.”

“Not everyone can have an acre in the sky to call their own,” Cameron said disdainfully.

He tweaked her nose. “It's not a full acre, and I do need my elbow room.”

“You're a spoiled, pampered brat, and we all know it.”

Mary laughed at their sparring.

“Don't listen to her, Mary,” Patrick said with a wink, which had Mary blushing to the roots of her brown hair. “We all know who the spoiled brat is here.”

“Yeah, and it's not me.”

“I'm afraid I have to side with your daughter, Patrick. There's nothing spoiled about her. She works harder than all of us put together.”

“Thank you, Mary. I'll make sure Hunter hears about your fifty percent raise.”

They left Mary laughing as they went back downstairs.

“What's her story?” Patrick asked.

“Who, Mary?”

“Yeah. She's adorable.”

“Dad . . . Don't. She's a really nice person. Leave her alone. She wouldn't stand a chance against your brand of charm.”

“Why can't I have a little fun while I'm in town?”

Cameron stopped on the landing and turned to him. “She's off-limits. I mean that.”

“Don't be so touchy, Cam.” He kissed her cheek and proceeded ahead of her into the store.

She watched him go with a growing sense of unease. She'd be watching him this weekend and keeping him far, far away from Mary—and all the other single women in Butler.

AFTER A WINDSHIELD
tour of Butler and the surrounding area, Cameron took her dad home to their cabin in the woods. “I want to make sure you know it's kind of rustic,” she said, biting her lip nervously. “You might find it primitive compared to what you're used to.”

“Believe it or not, I wasn't always a billionaire with a Park Avenue penthouse. You forget I grew up in a six-room ranch house in New Jersey with a single bathroom shared by five people. I can do rustic.”

“It's just . . . I know you'll be tempted, but don't make fun of the cabin. Will loves that place, and he built it himself.”

“Not sure what you take me for, sweetheart, but I'm not about to poke fun at my future son-in-law's home.”

“Okay,” Cameron said on a deep sigh of relief.

“I wish you'd relax. I've got no plans to rain on your parade. I know you're happy here, and that's all I've ever wanted for you, believe it or not.”

Cameron tried to do as he requested. What did she care, really, if he hated everything about her new home? It wouldn't change how she felt about it. Except . . . she wanted him to understand why she'd chosen to live here. His approval had always mattered more than it should have. That was just a fact of her life.

“Right here is where I first met Fred the Moose,” she said, pointing to the spot on the road where her life had changed forever.

“He's the one who crushed the MINI, right?”

“Yep, only he'd tell you the MINI crushed
him
, not the other way around.”

“And you have conversations regularly with this moose?”

“More often than I'd like to. Lincoln says he has a crush on me.”

Patrick laughed. “Is that right? Well, I hope to meet this fellow while I'm here so I can gauge his intentions toward my daughter.”

“I hope none of us lay eyes on him this weekend,” Cameron said hopefully. By now, she knew better than to expect a day completely free of Fred. He seemed to turn up with alarming regularity wherever she was. The thought of Fred crashing the wedding was one that Cameron refused to entertain.

“And here we are at home sweet home.” Cameron took the right turn onto the dirt road that also served as their driveway. “When I first came here last spring, it was mud season and this road was full of potholes.” Why was she telling him that? What did he care?

“It's nice and smooth now. Does Will have to fix it every year?”

“
Every
year.”

“Sure is pretty out here.”

“We think so, too.”

“But remote. Seriously, Cam. What do you do when you need milk?”

“We wait until the morning and get it when we're in town.”

Patrick shuddered dramatically. “I'd go crazy.”

“I thought I would, too, but it's amazing how quickly I adapted to life without everything at the tip of my fingers. Being way out here is an adventure, and I love it.”

“Will you still love it when you have babies and need diapers in the midst of a blizzard?”

Cameron laughed. Leave it to him to come up with a worst-case scenario. “I'll send my mountain man out to get them for me. A blizzard is nothing new to him.”

“Better him than me.”

“Definitely better him than you. As I recall, you've never changed a diaper in your life.”

“Touché,” he said, chuckling.

They drove around the final bend in the road before the cabin came into view with a huge white tent off to the left side of the house. The autumn foliage was now past peak but had retained a breathtakingly beautiful golden hue that would perfectly match the dark gold silk dresses her bridesmaids would wear on Saturday.

As she brought her car to a halt outside the cabin, she was relieved to park next to Will's big truck. She was glad he was here to help her welcome her dad to their home. At the sound of Cameron's car arriving, their yellow Labs, Tanner and Trevor, came running around the cabin to greet her.

“There're my boys,” she said to Patrick. “Come meet them.” She got out of the SUV and was immediately accosted by the dogs, who were now hers as much as they were Will's. “Hi, guys! How was your day?” Cameron gave them both an equal amount of love and attention, which was richly rewarded with wet dog kisses that she absolutely adored.

“Boys, this is your grandpa, Patrick. Dad, meet your granddogs, Trevor and Tanner. Trevor has the black collar and Tanner's is red. That's how we tell them apart. And Tanner has this sweet white patch on the top of his head.”

“Nice to meet you, boys.”

“Sit.” Both rear ends dropped at Cameron's command. “Now shake a paw and say hello properly.” Two left paws were extended to Patrick, who played along, laughing as he shook each one.

“They're adorable.”

“I know, right?”

“They only do that for her,” Will said as he joined them, extending his hand to Patrick.

Her dad surprised them both when he bypassed Will's hand to hug him. “Good to see you again.”

“You, too.” Will seemed pleased by Patrick's warm greeting. “Welcome to our humble home.”

“It's beautiful.” Patrick took a long look around at the towering evergreens and Butler Mountain in the distance. “I can see why you love it here.”

“It's our own little slice of heaven.” Cameron leaned into Will's one-armed embrace, closing her eyes when he kissed her temple. She opened her eyes to find her dad watching them with a smile on his face. “Come on in and see the rest.”

“I'll get your bags,” Will said.

“Thank you.” Patrick offered his arm to Cameron. “We need to practice for Saturday. I've heard I'm supposed to give you away or some such nonsense?”

Cameron laughed. “It's not nonsense, Dad. It's
tradition
.”

“What if I give you away and then decide I want you back? Does this arrangement come with any sort of return policy?”

“Absolutely not,” Will said from behind them.

“I had a feeling he would say that,” Patrick replied glumly. “A girl owns your heart and soul for thirty years, and then you have to
give
her to another guy? It's wrong, I tell you. Wrong, wrong,
wrong
.”

Cameron and Will laughed at his running commentary as they led him into the tiny cabin they called home. Will had lit the woodstove, so the space was warm and cozy and immaculate, thanks to the hours they'd spent the night before cleaning in preparation for her dad's arrival.

She'd been a nervous wreck about making everything perfect, working until well past midnight when Will declared that it was as good as it was going to get. He'd picked her up and carried her to bed over her vociferous objections.

“This is great, you guys,” Patrick said as he looked around at their home. “I love it.”

Will took Patrick's bag up the ladder to the loft.

“That's your penthouse for the evening,” Cameron said, pointing.

“Looks good to me.”

Cameron went to him and hugged him. “Thanks for being such a good sport about everything.”

He returned her embrace. “I have no idea what you were expecting.”

She looked up at him and rolled her eyes dramatically, making him laugh. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Molly and Lincoln are coming for dinner.”

“I can't wait to see them,” Patrick said of his Yale University classmate. It had been Lincoln's idea to hire his old friend's daughter to build a website for the store, which is what had brought her to Butler in the first place.

“Dinner is already in the oven,” Will said of the lasagna they'd made themselves.

“Smells amazing,” Patrick said.

“How about a beer?” Will asked.

“I'd never say no to that.”

While they waited for Will's parents to arrive, they sat on the sofa with beers and the crackers and cheese Cameron put out to hold them over until dinner.

“So talk to me about the wedding plans,” Patrick said.

Cameron glanced at Will, who gestured for her to have at it. “Everything starts tomorrow afternoon with a rehearsal here followed by the rehearsal dinner at Lincoln and Molly's.”

“Who's coming to that?”

“The wedding party and a few friends.”

“Tell me again who's in the wedding party. I know Lucy is your maid of honor.”

“Right, the others are Emma, Will's sisters Hannah, Ella and Charley, and Simone is the flower girl.”

“What about you?” Patrick asked Will.

“I asked Colton to be my best man since we're practically marrying sisters,” he said, referring to Lucy, Cameron's best friend from the city and now Colton's fiancée. “My other five brothers will be groomsmen along with Troy.”

“That's a big wedding party,” Patrick said.

“I know,” Cameron said, “but we couldn't narrow it down, so we decided to have everyone we wanted.” She shrugged. “This is what happens when you marry into a family of ten kids. Everything is big!”

“Ten kids.” Patrick shook his head. “I still can't believe my old college buddy has
ten
kids.”

“Neither can he,” Will said. “They joke that by the time they figured out what was causing all these kids to arrive, they had ten of them.”

“I can hear him saying that,” Patrick said, chuckling.

“He also likes to talk about the long, cold winter in Vermont and the lack of things to do,” Cameron added.

“Does that mean you're going to have ten kids, too?” Patrick asked.

“Oh, hell no!”

“We've agreed to stop at eight,” Will said.

“He lies.”

Patrick cringed at the thought. “I sure hope so.”

“I've agreed to two, and then we'll see,” Cameron assured her father.

“I can live with that.” Patrick put down his beer and shifted on the sofa to face them. “So there's something I wanted to talk to you guys about, but I didn't want to do it over the phone.”

Cameron was immediately on alert for bad news. “What's wrong?”

“Oh, honey, absolutely nothing. I swear. It's just kind of a sticky issue where you're concerned.”

“What is?”

“Money.”

“Dad—”

“Hear me out and then you can do whatever you want with no hard feelings. I promise.”

“Okay . . .”

“I didn't bring this up before now, because I know how fiercely independent you are, and I didn't want to step on any toes as you were planning your wedding. I had a feeling you wouldn't let me pay for anything, so I didn't offer. That said, I'd still like to do something for you—anything you want if you'll let me.”

“You did do something,” Will said. “You made the plane available to us for our honeymoon. That's huge.”

“That's nothing,” Patrick said with the wave of his hand.

“It's not nothing to us, Dad. You made it possible for us to go to Fiji. We never would've been able to afford that otherwise.”

“Well, um, you should know that your stay there has also been covered.”

Cameron couldn't believe her ears.
“What?”

“You heard me. It's all set. And you've been upgraded, too.”

“Dad . . .”

“Don't ‘Dad' me. You're my only child, and you're getting married. Let me have my fun, will you?”

Cameron glanced at Will, who seemed equally stunned.

“You didn't have to do that, Patrick.” Will took Cameron's hand and gave it a squeeze. “But it was very nice of you just the same.”

Following Will's lead, she decided to be gracious about her dad's grand gesture. “Yes, it was.”

“You're not mad?” Patrick asked warily.

“No,” Cameron said, laughing at his obvious concern, “we're not mad. How could we be when you're being so generous?”

“I know you, and I know how annoyed you get when I interfere.”

She affected a stern expression. “I'll let it slide this time, but don't make a habit of it.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And that's more than enough of a wedding gift,” Cameron said. “We have everything we could want or need.”

“You're sure?”

“Positive.” Cameron hugged him and kissed his cheek. “Having you here with us is the best gift of all.”

Molly and Lincoln arrived a short time later, preceded into the house by their dogs, George and Ringo. They frolicked with Trevor and Tanner, who were George's puppies. Yes, George was a girl, but that didn't matter to the Beatles-obsessed Lincoln Abbott, who named all his dogs after the Fab Four.

Patrick stood to hug Linc and Molly.

“Never thought I'd see you here again,” Lincoln said.

“Never thought I'd be here again, but who could've seen this coming?” He gestured to Will and Cameron, who stood arm in arm as they watched their parents say hello.