Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 67675 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 271(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67675 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 271(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
Landon wasn’t one for compliments, so this one stunned me.
“I dated a few French girls after you disappeared. All because their lips reminded me of yours.”
I frowned, some of the lusty haze clearing from my head. “Oh you did, did you?” I could hear how bitchy my voice sounded. How jealous.
Landon didn’t seem to notice. He smoothed the pad of his thumb over my lower lip. “It was no good, though. They weren’t you.”
All at once, the haze descended again. He was all but admitting he had missed me. That he had looked for me in other girls but none had lived up to me.
“Didn’t stop me from trying to pretend for a while,” Landon went on. Then, suddenly, his voice changed. He dropped his hands from my hair and took a step back.
“What happened?” I asked, my breath still coming fast. I meant, what had happened just now. Why was he moving away? Landon answered the question like I meant what happened with the other girls.
“I realized I couldn’t recreate you. Trying was a waste of time. What I needed to do was forget you. And I did a damn good job of that.”
Hurt lanced through me. “Well good for you. I had a harder time forgetting seeing as I was raising your child,” I snapped, not caring how unfair it was.
His eyes went deadly cold. “Don’t ever rub that in my face again, Cami, or you’ll regret it.”
I had no doubt he meant it. It was like I was suddenly looking at a stranger. Again, I heard Casey’s voice.
He doesn’t exactly look safe.
Though part of me wanted to apologize, the part responsible for self-preservation wouldn’t let me. Instead, I pushed past him and practically ran back to my room.
This time, I shut the door all the way.
15
LANDON
Forget three weeks.
The first three days with Cami everywhere I turned felt like a lifetime. She’d never been one to layer up, and the sight of her in brief shorts and tissue-thin t-shirts that clung to the dip of her slender waist and the swells of her breasts was driving me insane. Every move she made seemed designed to make me want to pull her into my bedroom, lock the door, and finish what we started four years ago. The worst part was, she wasn’t doing it on purpose. The poetic beauty of her dark, arched brows and full pouting lips, the casual, sensual way she moved, the silky, thin dresses – it was all just part of her.
We took Emma all over the city together, keeping a careful distance as the tension still crackled between us. Irritation and attraction were at war. Emma was our neutral ground. We could talk about her without wanting to kill or fuck each other. The trouble came when she took her afternoon nap and after she went to bed for the evening. When we were effectively alone together, skirting the past. Careful to never run into each other in the kitchen again.
Still, she was too close.
On the fourth day, I called Potts.
“I need a house,” I said.
“Most people call a realtor for that, Campbell,” she said.
“Something in a gated community. High walls. No celebrities.”
Amusement crept into her voice. “Most people start with the number of bedrooms they want.”
“Four.”
“I’m still not a realtor, boss.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I know, but do you know any good ones?” It had been nearly twelve years since I bought this place, and I’d heard through the grapevine that the realtor I’d used had retired. If Potts couldn’t help, my next call would be to Con. The man collected property like other people collected stamps.
“I can find you a good one.” Curiosity replaced amusement. “You’re looking for a family friendly house?”
“As opposed to what, Potts? An NC-17 house?”
“I just mean, if this is about that woman who came into your office, you might need to think about more than the walls. Like open staircases should be off the list. Gates around pools. That sort of thing.”
“Just find me a good realtor, please.”
The next morning, Con and I went out with a man named Lorenzo who kept hinting that I might get a better price on a house if I agreed to be featured on his reality show.
“You’re wasting your time,” Con told him finally, as nicely as he could. “There’s no way in hell this guy would ever agree to be filmed. You know how hard it is just to get a picture of him?”
Lorenzo turned back to the road, disappointed.
“Speaking of pictures, you know that as my best man, you’re going to have to be in the wedding pictures,” Con said, pressing the button to raise the divider between the front and back seats of the town car we were riding in. He was getting married in a little over a month to a woman named Lily who was close to Cami’s age. I remembered with some ironic amusement how much shit we’d given him for falling in love with a woman in her early twenties. But Cami was twenty-seven, I told myself, and I wasn’t falling in love with her, so it was different.