When You Are Mine (8 page)

K
erris leaned back in the small boat Cam had rowed out to the middle of the river¸ closing her eyes against the brightness of the August sun. After cleaning the mayor’s house all morning and breathing those fumes, Kerris appreciated the clean summer air. She slitted her eyes open, realizing Cam had stopped rowing.

“You okay?” She sat up, searched the somber lines of his face. “You look so serious.”

“For once, I am serious.”

“What’s up?” She trailed her fingers through the cold water.

“Remember what you said on the Fourth of July? That the woman I want to marry should know everything?”

Kerris’s fingers went limp in the water. For the first time in the August heat, she felt sweat break out under her arms and between her breasts. She wasn’t ready for another proposal. There were too many unresolved issues, too many questions she didn’t have the right answers for yet. She was still sorting through what had happened with Walsh. Could she actually marry Cam, knowing she didn’t feel as deeply for him as he felt for her? He said he’d take whatever she had to offer, but what if some day down the road, it wasn’t enough?

“Do you remember that?” Cam’s frown pressed her when she looked at him without responding.

“I remember.”

“I want you to know everything.” He swallowed loud enough for her to hear. A gulp telling the story of his anxiety. “I’ve never shared this shit with anybody except Walsh, but I want you to know.”

“Okay.” She watched her reflection in the water, giving him space to tell her in his own way.

“My mom was a crackhead.” He looked at her from beneath his straight, silky brows. “You know that, right?”

Kerris nodded, feeling like a voyeur about to look on a past possibly more obscenely painful than her own.

“She started tricking before she had me, I guess to get the drugs. I know my mom was mixed, half white, half black. Her name was Sarah. My old man—who knows. One of her johns.” He chopped the words up finely, pushing them to the side to make room for more. “I’m guessing he wasn’t black because of how I look. Maybe white or Hispanic. Guess we’ll never know.”

Even with such gaps in his identical mosaic, Kerris envied him the knowledge of his mother. The vital pieces of the puzzle she had been. Her face, her hands, her hair, her smile. Even her vices, the mistakes she’d made that set his life on the course it had taken. Kerris didn’t have even that.

“We lived in a hellhole. It was rough.”

By the look on Cam’s face, Kerris felt pretty sure that was an understatement. She recognized the painful thought of that place twisting in his eyes; eyes that were no longer seeing her, but looking back along a darkened corridor of memory.

“I mean, my mom was a crackhead who whored for money, so yeah, it was bad, but bad is relative. It could’ve been worse. It
did
get worse.”

He let his last words settle around them and drift away with the river’s strengthening current before drawing a shallow breath and continuing.

“My mom met this guy, Ron MacKenzie, when I was about nine. He became her pimp and drug dealer, and then it got…much worse.” Cam paused, running his eyes down the river before starting again. “We shared a room, me and my mom. I slept on the floor. She slept on the bed. Well, not just slept. That’s where she did business.”

Kerris closed her eyes against the horrific images invading her mind. A young boy subjected to the filth of that lifestyle. The sounds, the smells, the sights of adult moral squalor robbing him of his innocence.

“I saw it all. It was bad enough having to listen to my mom fucking some stranger, blowing guys off while I was doing my homework or whatever.” A perverse smile played around Cam’s mobile mouth. “Sounds pretty fucked up now that I say it out loud, but I got used to it.”

“Mac was a real piece of work.” Cam pulled his brows down around something Kerris wasn’t sure he wanted to share. “He would beat my mom some, but not too bad, if she kept him happy. You know, brought in enough cash and other stuff that he wanted. He, um, he liked boys.”

Kerris’s breath stilled in her throat, her eyes glued to Cam’s shuttered face. She could see the red crawling up his neck, but wasn’t sure if it was shame, anger, embarrassment, or some witch’s brew that stirred them all together until one was completely indistinguishable from the others. Dread filled her.

“He liked boys.” Cam said it again and looked at her without flinching or hiding. “He liked me, Ker.”

The summer sunshine toasted and dried Kerris’s tears before she realized they’d slid down her cheeks.

“It was about a year.” He plowed on, looking at his reflection in the water before quickly looking away like he couldn’t stand what he saw. “For about a year he…you know, molested me. He had me and my mom both hung up. Told her that if she didn’t let him have me, he’d cut off her drugs. And he told me that if I fought him, he’d kill my mom. And I knew he would, so I stopped fighting.

“We got lucky,” Cam continued in a voice as flat and dead as his eyes had become. “He died.”

Kerris remembered the relief she’d felt when the man who had hurt her died in prison. Like she could breathe easier just because he was no longer in the world.

“What happened?”

Cam looked over her shoulder, his face hiding secrets.

“He got what was coming to him.” Cam’s eyes, cold as a corpse, shifted back to Kerris. “Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

Kerris shivered in the sun. The Cam sitting across from her was not the man she knew. Rough around the edges, but tender and quick to smile. This man had granite for eyes and turned the air around him deadly. Kerris remained quiet, fingers floating in the water, until Cam’s face softened and he returned to her. Cam rubbed his eyes, wiping away the last vestiges of that hardened stranger.

“After that, Mom got arrested when she approached some undercover cop posing as a john. I saw her only one more time after that. She signed all her parental rights away and I got tossed into foster care.”

“And how was foster care?” Kerris was afraid to unearth anything worse than what he had already revealed.

“Not bad.” He shrugged like a man who knew what bad really looked like. “In the first one, there was this guy who liked punching on me, but nobody was ever gonna have me by the balls again like Mac did. I told my social worker, and she got me out of there. Put me with these really sweet folks I stayed with until I graduated high school. They moved to Florida my freshman year of college, but we still talk from time to time. They’re the ones who found out about the Walsh Foundation’s summer camp.”

She smiled at how his face relaxed when he talked about that first summer. How he and Walsh had rubbed each other the wrong way, only to become best friends. How Jo was the sister he’d never had.

“And Ms. Kris.” His features softened in a way reserved for Walsh’s mother. “I hadn’t ever met anyone like her. Walsh has no idea how lucky he is to have her.”

“They’re like family to you.”

“They’re not family, though, Kerris.” He leaned forward in the small boat, capturing one of her hands still floating in the water. “I love them, but they’re not my family. That’s what I want with you. Even with them, I didn’t belong to them. My mom was the only person I ever belonged to, and she sold me out for crack.”

Kerris understood parental betrayal, when the person everything in nature dictated should preserve and protect you had abandoned and hurt you the most.

“I want you to be my only.” Cam stripped every barrier away from his eyes, leaving them wide open and vulnerable. “The only other person on earth I belong to, and who belongs to me. And then we can start a family from scratch. Something we never had.”

If she’d never met Walsh, never gotten caught with him in an electric storm, she would have told Cam yes with no hesitation. She had resigned herself to a marriage where the greatest fruit would be their children, expecting no real pleasure, no rush of emotion at the sight of her spouse. What a bitter irony that the man who cracked open the emotion she dammed away could never be hers.

Cam’s phone ringing jarred her, pulling her eyes to meet his considering stare. He didn’t look away even when he reached in his pocket for his phone.

“Yeah.” He listened and released a short breath, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “Okay, I’ll be right there. Gimme a few minutes. I’m at lunch.”

He ended the call and started rowing swiftly back toward the bank.

“Everything okay?”

“Just a glitch with that project I thought was wrapped.” Cam’s strong shoulders flexed with the force of his exertions. “I think fixing this thing might take the rest of the afternoon. This client keeps making changes.”

“It’s okay. Drop me off at my apartment. Do you need me to meet you at the party?”

“No way. I’m picking you up and we’re riding together. I want to be the first to see you. I know once you’re there and all dressed up, I’ll have to fight ’em off.”

“I doubt that. All those women tonight will be dressed up in couture. I’ll be in dime vintage. No comparison.”

“You got that right.” Cam’s smile, so tender and open, jerked her heart around like an errant kite with a guilty tail. “I can guarantee there won’t be any comparison.”

They zipped over to her apartment on his Harley. She pressed her cheek against Cam’s back and wrapped her arms around him.

He was a good man. His edges were rough, his mouth was foul, and before he met her, he’d been a player. But when he looked at her, he made her feel that everything he’d ever wanted in the whole world was standing in front of him. If she had still been a praying woman, she would have asked God if He could please, please, please make her feel the same.

W
alsh glanced around the room, searching for one petite woman who could easily be lost in the crowd assembled for his mother’s birthday. The large room sparkled, the crystals of the chandeliers overhead vying for shine with the overdecorated women laden with diamonds. The room had been cleared of all furniture, giving everyone room to mingle and preparing them for later, for the dancing his mother loved so much.

He would have preferred a barbecue out back in the yard leading down to the river, just family and a few close friends. Not his mother. Not for her fiftieth birthday. She had turned this special occasion into a charity extravaganza, packed wall to wall with big spenders who’d trade their cold, hard cash for the chance to rub up against the high-profile partygoers Kristeene Bennett could bring together.

Jo walked up beside him, wearing high-waisted black satin tuxedo pants and an emerald green blouse that molded the sleek muscles of her arms and peekabooed her generous cleavage. Walsh looked frighteningly like his father, but Jo could easily be Kristeene Bennett’s daughter. Same dark hair, streaked with burned chestnut. Same impossibly high regal cheekbones. Dark brows arching in her creamy skin. Two things set Jo apart. Where his mother’s eyes were hazel, Jo had Uncle James’s startling gray, nearly silver eyes. And though Jo was tall and lean like his mother, she curved more, especially in the hips and butt. Walsh glared at some idiot he caught staring at his cousin’s ass.

Jo flashed Walsh a knowing grin.

“Leave the poor man alone.”

Walsh frowned, grabbing her hand and folding it over his forearm.

“I’ll never get used to guys eyeing you like a piece of meat.”

“At least someone does.” Jo twisted her lips and slid him a sideways glance, moving on before he had a chance to probe. “So who were you looking for?”

And just like his mother, Jo had a way of disarming him. Lulling him into forgetting just how damn sharp she was.

“No one in particular.” Walsh made his face as bland as beige. “You?”

“No one in particular.” Jo looked up at him, the silence making him uncomfortable before she relaxed her mouth into a smile. “Your mom’s in heaven. All this money in one room, all locked, loaded, and aimed at her favorite cause.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” Walsh pulled her close enough to drop a kiss on her forehead. “I was also thinking how much alike the two of you are. You look beautiful tonight, by the way.”

Some hybrid of surprise and disbelief flitted across Jo’s smooth features. He leaned in closer, considering for the first time that Jo, his fortress during his parents’ tumultuous divorce and his rock in the madhouse life he led now, might not know how awesome she was.

“
Is
there someone you’re looking for, Jo?”

She’d know he didn’t just mean at the party tonight. She’d definitely had romantic interests through the years. He and Cam had vetted every one of them, fiercely protective of their Jo. If Cam was the brother he’d never had, Jo was certainly the sister.

“I’m not looking.” She smoothed the sleek cap of hair that had grown to hang just above her shoulders. “I’m too busy trying to get you and Cam settled. There’ll be plenty of time later to figure out my own situation.”

“I’m not settling down any time soon.”

“That’s not how Sofie tells it.” Her laugh told him how his face must look. “Would it really be so bad to marry a supermodel?”

“Look, Sof and I have been friends forever. She’s great. She’s just not my type.”

“I thought your type was willing and breathing.”

“This is me you’re talking about, not Cam.”

“Cam has been a one-woman man for some time now.” Jo looked over his shoulder, a tight smile tugging at her lips and dulling her eyes to pewter. “And that one woman is on his arm right now.”

Walsh glanced to the doorway, where Cam and Kerris were laughing with his mother. What a picture Kerris made in her yellow dress. A lemon iced confection that would melt in his mouth. Sweet and tart.

A white orchid nestled behind her ear, contrasting against the rumpled elegance of the dark hair pulled up and away from her face. A beaded bodice topped the strapless dress, and a nipped waist flared to an A-line skirt floating just below her knees.

His stomach roller-coastered. All the blood in his body migrated south and pushed against the zipper of his tailored slacks. He fought the urge to retreat up the stairs to his room like some teenager suffering from his first crush.

It was bad enough he’d had to watch Cam and Kerris together all summer. Now he had those stolen moments in that hospital room to torture him. Kerris’s butter-soft skin, her sweet vanilla scent, the silky weight of her hair. Damn, the feel of her leg under his hand and the firm curve of her breast…

“Walsh, you’re hurting my hand.”

“What?” Walsh wrenched his gaze back to Jo, surprised to find her hand squeezed between his. “Shit. Sorry.”

“Walsh, you know Cam is serious about Kerris, right?” Jo used her don’t-play-a-player voice on him. “He’s going to propose again.”

“What’s that got to do with me?” Walsh’s eyes itched to look away, but Jo pinned him to the wall with those orbs.

“Nothing.” Jo threw the word at him low and hard like a ground ball he couldn’t catch before she threw the next one. “It’s nothing to do with you. Don’t forget that.”

“What are you two arguing about?” Cam asked. He and Kerris had crossed the room without their noticing.

“We’re not arguing.” Jo cleared her frown, offering a quick smile designed to reassure Cam and Kerris. “I’m just reminding Walsh of a few home truths.”

“Unnecessarily.” Walsh poured his displeasure into that one word and compressed his lips into a straight line around it.

“You look beautiful, Jo.” Kerris offered his cousin a sweet smile.

“So do you.” Jo softened her expression for Kerris. “Everyone can’t wear that color, but it looks just right on you.”

“Thanks.” Walsh saw Kerris touch the lemon chiffon skirt and glance around at a cluster of well-dressed women.

“And those shoes are incredible.” Jo pointed to Kerris’s small feet.

Kerris smiled, looking down at the shoes, too. Kitten heeled, with delicate gold straps and topped with a crystal orchid, they might have been the most adorable things Walsh had ever seen on anyone’s feet. And thanks to his mother, he knew shoes. “Hey, looks like it’s time for dinner.” Cam snagged Kerris’s hand and leaned down to brush her cheek with a kiss that lingered a moment, staking a subtle claim before leading her away.

Walsh flashed a smile he’d been cultivating in expensive schools and exclusive parties since he was twelve years old, hoping no one was the wiser. As long as he avoided Jo and Cam at the other end of the long table laughing with Kerris, he probably wouldn’t be found out. One of the Walsh Foundation’s largest donors had questions about the orphanage expansion under consideration, but Walsh struggled to focus. Sofie’s wandering hands weren’t making it easy.

“Excuse me just one moment,” he said to the silver-haired donor, turning in Sofie’s direction. “Sof, we’re friends, right?”

“At the very least, Walsh.” Her eyes, set at a low boil, traced his features.

“And we’ve known each other a long time, right?” He lacquered his smile to a high shine for those watching them.

“Yeah, what are you getting at?” Sofie allowed a rare frown to pleat her perfectly smooth forehead.

“Well, given our history, I’d hate to embarrass you, but if you don’t remove your hand from my
very
upper thigh, I will.”

She flashed him a chagrined smile, shifting her slim hand under the table to his knee, where she squeezed for good measure.

“A girl’s gotta try.” No shame. “One day, Walsh, you’ll be ready and I’ll be right there waiting.”

“Don’t hold your breath.” He made sure not to smile so she’d know he meant it. “There’s a line of guys waiting for you, Sof. Don’t wait on me.”

“You’re the one I want.”

“It’s not gonna happen.”

“We’re still young.” She patted the knee she’d just squeezed. “You have wild oats to sow.”

“We’re friends. Leave it there.”

“Walsh,” his mother said from the head of the table a few feet north of him and Sofie. “Will you open the dancing with me?”

Walsh lobbed a silent yes-get-me-out-of-this expression to his mother. She returned with a mama-always-knows smile. Walsh walked the few feet down the table to extend his hand to his mother. She certainly didn’t look fifty, whatever that was supposed to look like. They stepped to the center of the floor cleared for dancing.

“No Sam Whitby tonight?” Walsh asked.

“No Sam Whitby, period.” She twisted her carefully painted mouth into a resigned smile. “He’s just a friend who got the wrong idea. Thanks for working the crowd, by the way.”

“I have no idea what you mean.” He kept his face perfectly straight.

“I saw you talking to Mr. Donovan. You know he’s one of our biggest donors.”

He swirled her with a flourish, smiling at her girlish laugh.

“I do recall.”

“Hmmmm.” She smiled up at him, the no-strings love and maternal pride clear for him to see. “You’re such a good boy.”

“Not too loud. I have a reputation to maintain.”

“Like you need it with Sofie around. That girl has been chasing you since the fifth grade.”

“Actually, since first grade, but she hasn’t caught me yet, and she won’t.”

“Try telling her that.”

“I
have
tried. She doesn’t listen.”

“Now here’s a man who’s been caught.” Kristeene looked past Walsh’s shoulder, affection softening her expression. “Cam, where have you been all night? I haven’t seen you since you first got here.”

“Well, you’re seeing me now.” He danced Kerris over closer to them. “Walsh, lemme cut in for a dance with the birthday girl.”

Walsh and Kerris shared a knowing glance. Finally, Walsh nodded, handing his mother over to Cam and stepping aside to stand in front of Kerris. His palms moistened, wet with the excitement percolating in his belly. Tension marbled his shoulders.

“We
are
in the middle of a dance floor.” He slipped the words between tightly held lips, reaching for her elbow to pull her into his arms. “Seems crazy to just stand here.”

The heat of her body this close made him forget where he was and what he wanted to say. Her sweet vanilla scent seduced him. The muscles in his abdomen contracted, drawing the tension of the moment into his core. Her eyes were trained on the top button of the dress shirt he wore without a tie. The silence lengthened and tightened, a thread on the point of snapping. She gnawed the pillowed flesh of her bottom lip. He exhaled a short breath.

“This is ridiculous.” He pressed the small of her back, forcing her to look up at him. “Let’s get this out of the way. I’m sorry I kissed you at the hospital.”

“Shhhh!” She conducted a quick, furtive survey of the dancers around them. “Good gosh, could you
be
any louder?”

“I’m sorry.” He swallowed an ill-timed chuckle. “I didn’t think I was that loud.”

“Can we just forget it happened?”

Her eyes begged him to conspire with her; to pretend his heart didn’t swell up in his chest every time he was near her.

“Yeah, we can forget it.”

He lied. He’d never forget. She had brushed up against his soul in that hospital room and exposed newly discovered nerves and emotions.

“And you won’t…tell?” Kerris’s words were only for him to hear. “You won’t say anything to Cam?”

He couldn’t help but tease her. She was so adorable.

“I’m sorry.” He cupped one ear to hear her better. “I didn’t make out that last part. You said I won’t tell who?”

“Will you stop it?” She loaded her look with censure. “This is serious.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” The brief humor drained from him like a fast tire leak. He returned his hand to her back. “I won’t mention it.”

“Thank you.” He felt her release a breath of relief, a false, forced smile like a stain on her pretty face. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Like what?” he asked, deliberately uncooperative.

“How about your trip to Kenya. How was that?”

“Hard.”

She pressed on like he wasn’t being an ass.

“I’m sure everyone is grieving for Iyani.”

Her sweetness was chipping away at the hardness he wanted to hold on to.

“Yeah. She was something else.”

“She was.”

“You did so much to make the last few months of her life fun.” He stroked the hand he held as they danced.

“No, you did that.”

“Okay, we did that.”

“We did that.”

She rested her hand on his chest for a moment before pulling away. He trapped her hand under his against his chest. He wasn’t ready to lose her. Wasn’t ready to give up the rare moments alone.

“Now what should we talk about?” he asked into the silence that had lost the hardness and tightness of before.

“Cam said you went to New York before you came back. How was that?”

“It was work.” He pulled shutters down over his face.

“What’s that look?”

“What look?”

“Your face. You look…kind of mean.”

“Oh, that. Work. My dad.” He made a conscious effort to relax his facial muscles. “He brings out the worst in me because I have to be
like
him to deal with him.”

“And how’s that?”

“A narcissistic, mercenary douche bag.”

“I can see that.” She nodded, teasing him with a smile.

“Oh, you can? How about this?” He ran his fingers mercilessly and surreptitiously up her ribs, making her erupt in laughter. “Can you see this?”

She dipped her head to his shoulder, still fighting laughter. Several dancers turned in their direction.

“Stop, Walsh.”

He refused, leaving her gasping, wriggling, and squeezing her eyes shut.

“People are looking at us.”

“They can’t help themselves. You’re the most beautiful thing in this room.”

Kerris sobered, standing still and pulling away when the music conveniently stopped.

“I’m sorry.” He was only sorry because he’d made her pull away. “I shouldn’t have said that.”