Prescription For Love (The Kingsley Series) (26 page)

And she hadn't asked him how to help this depressed friend or that emotionally challenged neighbor. She hadn't been dying to jump into bed with him like so many easy women he'd dated, but she'd come to him willingly, afraid and yet still willing to trust. She'd been willing to trust in him, willing to risk her heart and her body, placing both in his hands. And when he reminded himself that in the aspect of willingness, he was essentially her first true lover, he couldn't stop the grin that spread his lips; he couldn't contain the contentment that lowered his mouth to hers.

Smiling against her lips, he slipped his tongue out to trace the curve of her mouth, his fingers losing themselves in the wild curls of her hair. Hearing the gasp leave her lips hardened him, excited him, and for a moment, he allowed himself to deepen the kiss.

"You'd better go," she said after what seemed like only seconds. Judging by the catcalls behind them, it must have been rather longer than that. He grinned over her shoulder, winking to the crowd of females clapping and cheering for Cameron. Taking her hand, he turned her to face the crowd, raising their joined hands above their heads and using his other hand to gesture toward her flaming face.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" he bellowed. "I give you, for now, Cameron Kingsley!" And bowing, to the chaos of the crowd, he laughed. Cameron turned to him, her face shocked. Still, she was laughing as she swatted his arm, and his laughter carried him away from the lively crowd as he left the yacht.

By the time he'd reached his motorcycle, his legs had remembered how to work on land, and his sense of balance had returned completely, but his sense of humor was still working overtime as he felt the buzzing of his cell phone in his pocket.

"Mackenzie Caswell," he answered, still chuckling.

"Dad?" Logan's voice was in his ear, and Mac switched into what they jokingly called 'dad mode.'

"Hey, dude," he said. "What's crackin'?" He slung a leg over the seat of his motorcycle, adjusting his weight until he was comfortable and bracing his feet on the ground on either side of the bike to keep it steady.

"Oh, jeez, Dad, please tell me you don't talk to your girl that way. 'Cause you don't sound cool, you sound like an old dude trying to sound cool."

"Actually, son, I speak to her sweetly. I tell her she's pretty and special, and that she's better than, uh ... Supergirl."

"Dad, everyone knows Storm is hotter than Supergirl. Are you coming home?"

"Sure am, kid. How was your night with Grandma?" He asked, propping his helmet between his knees and patting his pockets to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything.

"It was good, Dad, we played Monopoly and I made Grandma sell all her stuff to me and be my slave. Did you have a fun night?"

Mac threw his head back and sighed, trying to throw away the image of Cameron's naked body rising up above his in the night. "Yeah, I had a fun night, son. I had lots of fun. I gotta start the bike now so I can get home, okay?"

"Okay," Logan said missing the sudden stress in Mac's voice. "Love you!"

"Love you, too, kid," Mac said, his chest tightening with the truth of the statement. Ending the call, he slipped his phone into his pocket and lifted his helmet, pressing it down over his head. He started the motorcycle, missing the way it felt to have Cameron beside him. Or behind him on the bike. Or under him. Or, oh man, above him, with those breasts bouncing, and ...

At the edge of the parking lot, Mac shook his head. "Get it together man," he muttered, watching the street before pulling out and turning the bike toward home.

As he rode, Mac's mind was on his night with Cameron, but eventually, his focus combined with the image in his head of his son laughing up at her. It was a clear vision, and hard as he tried to throw it off, it simply wouldn't let him rest. Allowing himself to daydream a little as he took the familiar left into his neighborhood, Mac imagined the curve of her lips smiling down at Logan, laughing at the silly child's antics. The mental image of those same lips pressed to his son's forehead decided it.

He wanted her to meet his son. He wanted Cameron and Logan together, same time, same place, getting to know each other. It was a scary idea for Mac, causing his stomach to churn as his house came into view, because it confirmed to him how important Cameron had become in his life. He called on his memories of Alex, almost begging her to give her blessing, to share her son, but as always there was no answer; he felt only the usual sense of warm freedom that he always felt when consulting his dead wife.

Turning into the drive, Mac cut the engine of his bike and waited; he dropped his helmet between his knees as the front door of the house exploded outward, and his little boy came barreling out.

"Good grief, I was only gone one night!" Mac exclaimed. "And look at you, grown bigger than before! What are you, forty now? You been shaving with my razors?"

Logan laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he grinned openly at his father. "Dad, you're a goof; I'm still nine! But I still say I can ride that thing cooler than you can. And probably faster."

Mac gripped the boy around the shoulders with one arm, stilling him so that he could slip a hand around his ribs, tickling relentlessly as he dragged the boy onto the bike in front of him. His helmet rolled off the bike with a thud on the driveway, skittering into the yard as Logan shrieked with laughter.

Looking up, he saw his mother in the window, smiling out at them, and he raised one hand in a lazy wave. She waved back and disappeared behind the curtains. "So tell me, son," Mac laughed. "How much trouble did you get into today?" He allowed Logan to scramble down from the bike, carefully blocking him from accidentally touching anything hot on the way down. Swinging his leg over the back of the bike, he kicked the kickstand into place and mussed Logan's hair as they walked together to the front door.

"Well, I beat her at Yahtzee again," Logan answered, as Mac opened the door and stood back to let the boy go in first. "And I didn't cheat at the math this time, either."

"That's good, you know how important honesty is to me," Mac answered, his chest tightening in anticipation of the coming talk. What if Logan wasn't interested or outright didn't want to meet Cameron? Worse, what if he grew resentful or rebellious? "So," he went on, "you know Cameron, right?"

"Your girlfriend," Logan sang out, giggling. "Oooh, Dad's got a girlfriend!"

"You know I've had girlfriends before though, after mom?"

"Yeah," Logan sobered at the mention of his mom, looking up at Mac through eyes like warm chocolate, eyes he'd inherited from Alex.

"Well, I really like this one; Cameron, I mean. I like her a lot, kid," Mac said nervously.

"Better than me?" Logan asked.

Mac smiled. He'd forgotten how simply his boy saw the world. "No way, dude, never better than you. But I do like her, an awful lot."

The boy’s eyes grew wide, his face serious in the beams of sunlight shimmering through the window. "Better than mom?"

Sighing, Mac ran his fingers through his hair. Pulling Logan in close to him, he said, "Not better than mom. Different than mom, maybe. Your mom was very special to me, and I will always remember her, just like you will. But Cameron can be special to me, too, right? Your mom wouldn't have wanted us to be on our own, son."

"I know. I heard her once, telling you to go find a new wife."

Mac's heart ached, imagining his young son listening in on conversations about his mother's death, as she lay still alive but almost totally helpless. Mac and Alex had talked frankly about what she wanted as she had lain dying in their bed, and he hated to think what else Logan might have heard. "I don't know if Cameron even wants to be married, or if she'd want to be married to me, kid. But I'd like for you to meet her. What do you think of that?"

"What if she doesn't like me?" Logan pulled away slightly, looking up cautiously to meet his father's eyes. "You'll be sad then, huh?"

"I won't be sad, because she'll like you fine. She asks about you all the time."

"She does?"

Mac laughed. "She does. So what do you say, son?"

"You talked to Logan about meeting me? And what did he say to that?" Cameron asked.

"He said I spend a lot of time with you these days, and that you are obviously important to me."

Hearing the words, Cameron's heart swelled. Was she really so important to this man, so important that even his son couldn't miss it? Could she really meet the boy, touch him and look into his eyes? Could she learn to love him, not just for Mac's sake, but for his own? And could he love her someday in return, the way she suspected his father did?

"And he really wants to meet me? He isn't scared to?" she asked. Curled up in the corner of her couch, Cameron had her legs tucked underneath her, a blanket wrapped around her waist and a bowl of popcorn in her lap. She'd stopped paying attention to her movie long ago; 'Grease' might be a classic but Mac trumped John Travolta without even having to try.

"Well, I think he's a little scared," Mac answered. "He's not, like, terribly shy but knows you matter to me, so he wants you to like him. He thinks I'll be disappointed if you two don't get along at first."

"You won't?"

"Not more than a little," he laughed. "Of course I'd love you both to be fast friends, but it doesn't usually work that way with Logan, and it doesn't usually work that way with you. You both take a little warming up, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you take a while to warm up to each other. I do think you’ll like each other, though; you’re both easy enough to like. But if I'm gonna be honest with myself, and with you --"

"Please do," she broke in, slipping the popcorn over to the table beside her and re-tucking her legs.

"If I'm going to be honest with myself, and with you," he repeated, laughing again, "Then I'll admit to myself that what I want to happen with you and Logan, my ideal, is unlikely to happen. It's rare for a kid to meet anyone their parent is dating and just love them right off, unless they're faking it for approval. And it’s rare for the kid to never act up or annoy the person their parent is dating. I’d love you guys to just match up from the start, but if not, it won’t kill me. I mean, really, when Logan was born, it took him a good six months just to like
me
!"

Cameron laughed. "So are you saying he won't like me then? Because of my hooked nose and my shrewish personality?"

"No, I’m saying that in the end, I think he will. But he's like you; he's careful about who he lets in. Losing Alex was hard for him, you know; kids expect their parents to be there all the time, and never leave, and certainly never die. I'm just thankful that he's not angry or anything like that."

"Yeah because otherwise, you might have had to find him a therapist or something. Can’t imagine where’d you’d find one," Cameron joked. "Really though, Mac, how do you think it will go?"

"Well, in my head, you walk up and he smiles and we all chat, and maybe we take a walk or something, and by the end of the night you've both got stars in your eyes. I won't lie, Cameron, you do mean a lot to me now, no matter how quickly this has gone. I feel like you and I fit, and I want you to fit with my son, for him to enjoy your company and to want to be around you, to respect you and care for you like I do."

Cameron's eyes filled, listening as Mac poured out his daydream to her. He was sharing the desires of his heart, sharing with her the longing to have a complete family once again. He'd told her countless times how broken he felt, walking through life while his wife lay in the ground. But his son? Mac was more affected by his love for Logan than anything else she could think of. He loved his child so strongly that Cameron already loved him a little, simply through the eyes of the boy's father. Could she earn a place in the boy’s heart, as she had with his father?

There was a part of her that wanted to meet him, that wanted to touch the hair she'd seen in pictures, to stroke his little-boy cheeks and find out if they were as soft as Mac's were coarse. Smiling, she remembered telling Mac that once; that she wanted to touch Logan's face and snuggle him close to her because he was so cute. Mac had joked that Logan would only allow it if he was sleeping. At nine years old, the boy found most girls to be ridiculous and stupid and worst of all, girly.