Love At Last (Lily's Story, Book 3) (12 page)

His eyes seemed to have softened. “It’s okay. You haven’t scared me off yet.”

I laughed quietly. “Well, that’s good.”
 

Just then, the naturalist announced that a humpback whale was on our side of the ship. I grabbed the binoculars from the table and pressed them to my face.

“Over there, Lily,” Cameron said, pointing to a spot not too far away. “I just saw the spout.”

I pulled the binoculars away to see where he was pointing, then looked through them again. “Oh! I see it!” I watched for a few moments, then handed the binoculars to Cameron.

“Oh, yeah,” he said as he looked through the binoculars. “That’s so cool.”

“I’m really excited for the whale watching trip in Juneau,” I said. He handed the binoculars back to me and I looked again.

“I am too. I’ll bet we’ll be able to get even closer to the whales.”

The whale faded in the distance as we sailed forward, and I set the binoculars on the table. “That was awesome.”

His grin matched mine, and the mood from our heavy conversation vanished. I looked through the glass wall into my room and saw that Natalie was starting to wake up. “Do you want to come inside with me?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

I took his hand and led him into my room. Natalie was sitting up in the crib and held out her arms to me as I approached. “Hey, baby girl,” I murmured as I lifted her. I held her on my hip and turned to Cameron to see what he would do.

His eyes on her, he tentatively reached out and touched her hand. She looked at him with uncertainty, but didn’t cry, which was good. He smiled at her, and after a moment, she smiled back.

“Look, she smiled at me,” he said, clearly pleased.

His pleasure at my child made me happy, and I smiled.

Apparently feeling more comfortable, he tickled her neck with his fingers. She scrunched her shoulder, then giggled. I watched Cameron’s reaction, and I could tell he was charmed by Natalie. I kissed the other side of her neck and she went into peals of laughter, which made Cameron laugh.

His gaze met mine. “She is really cute, Lily.”

My smile widened. “Thanks. She’s a really good baby.”

A look of uncertainty came over him. “Do you think she’d let me hold her?”

Surprised, but thrilled with his request, I nodded. “I think so.”

He held out his hands and took her from me. He held her out in front of him and gazed into her face. She stared back, her expression serious, then her eyes squeezed closed and she let out a wail. Cameron hurriedly handed her back to me. With a look of distress, he said, “I don’t think she likes me.”

I held back a laugh, and instead just smiled. “No, no. That’s not it at all. She’s just at an age where she can sometimes be scared of people she doesn’t know. Especially men.” She settled down after a moment.

He laughed, his mortification seeming to lessen. “I see. She’s sexist.”

“Maybe a little. But that’s not uncommon with babies.” I paused. “Plus, she just woke up and is probably hungry.”

He seemed to relax. “Okay.”

“I need to feed her. You can stay if you want, but I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable when I nurse her.”

He looked confused for a moment, then his face reddened as he must have understood what I meant. “Oh, you mean . . .”

“Yes.” I smiled. “I still breastfeed her several times a day. She’ll take formula, but I try to minimize that.”

“Maybe I’ll just leave you alone to . . . uh . . . feed her.”

I laughed. “Okay.”

“Do you want to meet me somewhere when you’re done?”

Pleased that he wanted to be with me, and warmed by his sweetness, I nodded. “Give me forty-five minutes or so.”

“Okay. Let’s meet on the Lido deck, where I ran into you yesterday.” He grinned. “You know, where you were when you were eating the ice cream.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Bring your binoculars and I’ll bring mine.”

My face lit up. “Maybe we’ll see more whales.”

“That’s what I’m hoping.” He walked toward the door. “I’ll see you in a while, Lily.”

“Bye.” After he left, I changed and fed Natalie, snuggling her close while she nursed. I gazed at her sweet face, my heart filling with love for her. I thought about Cameron and how he’d interacted with her. He’d probably had very little experience with babies, so I was delighted with his willingness to try to get to know Natalie.

Forty-five minutes later I pushed the stroller out of our room and to the glass elevator. We rode up to the Lido deck and I headed toward the meeting place. I wasn’t sure I remembered exactly where Cameron was talking about, but I went to the general area and smiled when I saw Cameron sitting next to the window, looking out over the water through his binoculars.

I slid into the seat across from him. “Hey,” I said, and he turned to me with a smile. “See any whales?”

“Not yet. But I’ve seen a few chunks of ice float by.”

We watched out the window, with Natalie on my lap, and enjoyed the gorgeous view. “Look at the waterfall,” I said, pointing to the stream of water rushing down the side of the mountain.

“Oh yeah. All that snow higher on the mountain is melting.”

“I’m starting to get hungry,” I said after a while. “What about you?”

“Yeah.” He looked nervously at Natalie. “Do you want me to hold her while you get something to eat?”

I smiled. “Are you sure you want to?”

He smiled and shook his head, but said, “Yeah.”
 

I laughed at the contradiction. “It will just take a few minutes to get some food.” I placed her on his lap so that she was facing away from him. “Just let her face all the activity in the room and I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“Okay.”

I walked toward the buffet lines, smiling to myself, and picked up a tray. After I got my food, I went to the dessert buffet and grabbed a slice of chocolate cake, then filled a plastic cup with lemonade. As I walked back to the table, I hoped Natalie wasn’t giving Cameron a hard time. As I approached the table where we’d been sitting, I felt a moment of confusion.
 

Is this the right table? I didn’t see Cameron or Natalie anywhere. Or the stroller or binoculars, for that matter. Feeling certain that I was in the right place, alarm began growing inside me.
Where are they?
Trying to quell the alarm that crawled up my throat, I set my tray on the table and slowly turned in circles, my gaze darting from one table to the next.

Chapter Thirteen

They couldn’t have gone far, I reminded myself. We
are
on a ship, after all. “Natalie,” I called out, ignoring the diners who looked at me with curiosity. A feeling of deja vu crept up my spine, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
This is not like Trevor, this is not like Trevor, this is not like Trevor
. Though I chanted the words to myself, they didn’t do much to calm me.

“Natalie!” I called out again as tears filled my eyes.

“Over here, Lily,” I heard Cameron call out a moment later.

My head jerked in the direction of his voice, but I couldn’t see him through the curtain of tears. Blinking rapidly, I wiped my eyes, and once my vision cleared, I saw him sitting at a table with Alyssa’s parents, Natalie happily playing with a necklace as she sat on Barbara’s lap. A mix of anger and embarrassment rushed through me. I’d been panicked for no reason, except that I had a very good reason—my baby wasn’t where I’d left her.

I turned away, took a few deep breaths, picked up my tray, and calmly walked to the table. I set the tray on the table and sat in the empty seat next to Cameron. “I didn’t know where you’d gone.” My voice shook as I spoke, betraying the feelings I was trying to hide.

“Sorry. I saw Paul and Barbara and thought it would be fun to join them.” He looked at me more closely. “Are you okay?”

Feeling a little foolish for my momentary alarm, I smiled and nodded. “I’m fine.”

“I was telling them how we saw that whale earlier,” he said.

Trying to push my worry aside, I focused on Alyssa’s parents. “It was really exciting.”

“I’ll bet,” Barbara said. “Hopefully there are more out there for us to see.”

“I’m going to grab some food,” Cameron announced, then he stood and walked away.

“Do you want me to take Natalie so you can get some food?” I asked Barbara.

“Sure.”
 

She handed her back and I held my baby close, relishing the warmth of her small body in my arms. I felt tears threatening, but blinked slowly a few times to keep them at bay.

“We’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said, then she and Paul left.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I murmured in Natalie’s ear. She giggled as my breath tickled her ear, then she reached out and grabbed my nose. I smiled at her, then kissed her soft cheek.
 

A few moments later Cameron set his tray on the table and sat down. I glanced at him, and decided to let him know how I felt—not to scold him, but because I was sure he had no clue the terror his actions had given me. “Cameron, I need to talk to you.”

He turned to me, a questioning look on his face. “What’s up?”

“Earlier, when I got back to the table and you and Natalie weren’t there, I was . . . well, I was scared.”

His brow creased. “I don’t understand.”

I bit the inside of my lip, wondering how much to tell him. “I’m not sure how much Ty told you about what happened to me, but there was an . . . incident . . . where Natalie . . . well, she was taken from me.”

His eyes widened. “I didn’t know about that.” He glanced at my baby, who sat contentedly on my lap, then looked at me. “I’m sorry I moved to another table without telling you.”

I just nodded, not sure what to say.

We ate our meal with Paul and Barbara, then moved to the window so we could see the beauty of the fjord as the ship cruised toward the glacier. After a while, Paul and Barbara left. “I’m fine on my own, Cameron, if you want to spend some time with your friends.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Okay. Maybe I’ll go see what they’re doing.” He paused. “Do you want to come?”

I didn’t know if he meant it or if he was just being nice. “No, I’m fine here with Natalie.”

“Are you sure?”

I smiled. “I’m not a big social person, so I’m perfectly happy on my own.”

“Okay.”

“Natalie takes an afternoon nap, so if you want to stop by my room later, we can sit on the balcony again.”

He smiled. “I’d really like that.”

“Great. I’ll see you later then.”

I watched him walk away, then I turned back to the window.

That afternoon after I put Natalie down for her afternoon nap, I settled in to read, not certain if Cameron would actually come, but half an hour later he did.

He held up two small bowls, each filled with chocolate soft-serve ice cream. “I thought you might like this.”

I took one of them and smiled. “Chocolate’s always a sure bet with me.”

He laughed quietly. “That’s what I thought.”

We went out to the balcony and sat in the chairs. He took his binoculars from around his neck and set them on the small table next to mine. We ate our ice cream in silence as we watched the scenery pass by.

“Did you notice how the color of the water changed?” he said.

I went to the railing and looked at the water. “Oh yeah, you’re right. Before it was kind of a murky gray, and now it’s a beautiful emerald color.” I turned to him and smiled. “I suppose you know why.”

“Actually no, I don’t.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Really? I’m surprised.”

He laughed. “I don’t know everything.”

“Evidently not.”

His face turned serious. “For example, apparently I don’t know that much about what happened to you.”

I gazed at him a moment. “Are you sure you want to know?”

He looked thoughtful. “If I’d known, I never would have taken Natalie somewhere without asking you first.”

I nodded. “That’s probably true.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

I thought about it for a minute. Did I want to share my sad tale with him? So far, we seemed to be hitting it off. Would my story scare him away or make him pity me? I didn’t want either of those outcomes, but if I wanted to prevent another incident like today’s, it would be helpful if he knew what had happened to me in the past. I decided to give him the condensed version of events. “No, it’s okay.”

I sat in the chair next to his. “The short version is, I married Natalie’s father and he turned out to be different than I’d thought. I left him, basically going into hiding, but he tracked me down while I was still pregnant. After Natalie was born, I let him spend some time with her, but after I’d made it clear I wasn’t interested in getting back together, he took her away from me.”

“Oh wow. That’s awful.”

The events of that day ran vividly through my mind, and for a moment the emotions I’d felt when I’d woken after Trevor had knocked me out, and then discovered that he’d taken Natalie, came rushing back. I closed my eyes. “It
was
awful.” I opened them to see Cameron watching me. “That was the worst day of my life.”

“How did you get her back?”

“I had something he wanted. Some money. I met him at a park to make a trade—Natalie for the money. But when I got there and he’d made sure I’d brought the money, he told me he had no intention of giving her back to me.” As I thought about that confrontation, I felt adrenaline pulse through me. “When he tried to attack me, I fought back and I was able to get Natalie.”

His eyes were wide as he listened, but he didn’t speak.

“I went back to my house to get my purse, thinking he wouldn’t be able to follow me—I’d taken his car with Natalie in the back seat. But I’d forgotten that I’d left my keys in the trunk of my car, so he showed up at my house right after I did.” I paused. “At the end, he tried to strangle me, but my dog was able to get out of the backyard and she took him down. She saved me.”

“So where is he now? Is he in jail?”

I smiled sadly. “No. He’s dead. My dog crushed his windpipe.”

Cameron gasped.

“If it wasn’t for her,
I’d
be dead. Trevor was on top of me and I was blacking out.”