Tucker McGee was a hard core flirt. The man practically oozed charm, so the fact that he was currently oozing said charm all over Norah had Cam grinding his teeth and repressing the urge to plant a fist in his friend’s face. He wasn’t concerned Tucker was actually getting somewhere with her, but that was his woman, and he hadn’t even gotten a chance to greet her before Tucker had swooped in to escort her from the car to the refreshment tables. Not that Cam could give her the greeting he wanted with Miranda trailing right behind, looking irritable.
“—and here, the pièce de résistance, s’mores fixin’s. And over here we have the roasting rods.” Tucker pulled a slim handled rod from a cluster in a tube and handed it to her, hilt first.
Norah inspected it. The metal was bent back on itself and wrapped to make a sturdy handle. “Swanky. I thought you were supposed to use coat hangers.”
“That’s for amateurs. We take the art of bonfire to the next level. Do you need a refresher on the proper roasting technique?”
“I’m not that citified.”
Tucker held up both hands in a gesture of peace. “Just checking. I didn’t know.”
“There’s something else you don’t know about me.”
“And what’s that?”
She sank into a fencing stance. “I am not left handed.” Tossing the rod to her right hand, she lunged forward.
Hooting with laughter, Tucker stumbled back, grabbing another rod on the fly and bringing it up to parry. Having spent half his life on the stage in one community theater production or another, Tucker was given to theatrics. He let them fly with flashy swordsmanship and more quotes from The Princess Bride as the pair of them circled around the refreshment tables.
Cam watched as Norah steadily drove him back, her movements tight and controlled compared to Tucker’s dramatics. “She actually knows how to fence, doesn’t she.”
“Yep. Three years of fencing club in college.”
Cam chuckled, waiting for Norah to hand Tucker his ass.
“Be careful, cousin.”
Cam pretended not to hear the warning in Miranda’s voice. “Mmm?”
She looked up at him. “Look, I’m not blind. I see how you are around Norah. You aren’t obvious, like Mitch, but you watch her when she walks into a room. You’re into her.”
He should’ve known Miranda would notice something. She knew him better than almost anyone. “Well, yeah. Last time I checked, I do have a pulse.”
“It’s not a good idea.”
Right, because he’d proved he couldn’t make good choices in the relationship department on his own and needed to submit the candidates for review. Cam chained down the surge of temper and kept his voice even. “Are you warning me off for her sake or for mine?”
“Both. I don’t think she’s in a good place right now. I know something’s going on with her that she hasn’t told me, and I’m worried about her. But quite apart from that, you know exactly why I think she’s a bad idea for you.”
Cam scowled. “It’s not the same.”
“Don’t get pissy. I just don’t want to see either of you get hurt.” She shot a glance back at Norah, who handily disarmed Tucker. “You’ve both been hurt enough.”
“Thanks for the warning, but I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”
“Surrender, McGee! You’re bested!” Norah shouted in triumph.
Tucker dropped to his knees, the tip of her impromptu sword at his throat. “I yield, milady. Do with me what you will. Only tell me you’ll come back and do the fight choreography for our summer production of The Pirates of Penzance.”
She mimed cutting an N in the air, then bowed to enthusiastic applause. “Acquire me marshmallows, and I might consider it.”
“As you wish.” Tucker scrambled up as Norah turned to join Cam and Miranda by the fire, her cheeks flushed from cold and exertion.
“You seem quite cheerful,” Cam observed.
“Winning agrees with me.”
“Your marshmallows, milady.” Tucker presented them with a flourish.
“Thanks.” She threaded one on the rod and held it into the fire.
Tucker made a sound of protest. “I thought you remembered how to do this.”
Ignoring him, Norah lifted the marshmallow free of the blaze, watching it burn for a minute before she blew out the flame and tipped the rod toward Miranda. “Perfectly charred, exactly as you like it. A peace offering because I know you didn’t want to come out tonight.”
Miranda plucked off the marshmallow, tossing it from hand to hand to cool before chomping in. “Your tribute is appreciated. Make me another, and I might even forget I’ve already stopped feeling my ass.” She rotated so her backside faced the bonfire.
“It’s not that cold.” Norah stuck the second marshmallow into the flames.
“You haven’t been below the Mason-Dixon long enough to lose your tolerance yet. One summer down here and you’ll be back to freezing at forty degrees, like the rest of us.”
Faint strains of music limited Norah’s retort to, “Wimp,” as she dug out her phone. One look at the display had her smile fading. “Excuse me.” She passed the roasting rod to Miranda and strode toward the line of cars parked at the edge of the pasture.
Cam gave her five minutes’ lead time before he headed in the same direction on the pretense of grabbing a blanket from the truck for his cousin. He found Norah leaning against the wheel-well of his truck, hidden from view by a Suburban. Her hands were empty.
“Who was that?”
She grimaced. “My dad.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No. Because I’m a coward. He just wanted to check in since he’s finally back from Saint Bart’s.”
Cam leaned beside her. “Have you told anybody else?”
“Just you.” She flashed a humorless smile. “Somehow, you’ve become my official secret keeper. I don’t know if that’s because you’re circumspect or because you’re one of the secrets.”
“The sneaking around we’ve done the last two weeks isn’t what’s putting those shadows under your eyes.” He skimmed a thumb down her cheek. “Honey, you’re not built for keeping secrets. Hanging on to this is eating you up inside.”
“I can’t come clean about it until I’ve figured everything out.”
“Have you actually been working on that?”
She dropped her gaze. “I’ve been trying to figure you out.”
He tipped her face back up. “I’m a simple guy.”
She frowned. “You want people to think you are. You’ve got this easy, good ole boy, Zen gardener thing going on. But really you’re hanging out behind the scenes taking care of everybody around you, all quiet-like, so most of them don’t even realize it. Me included. Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Nobody takes care of me, Cam.”
He braced himself, scrambling to think of some response that would make her see that it had nothing to do with him thinking she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself.
She laid a hand over his heart. “Most people assume I don’t need anything or anyone. I’ve got years of experience proving exactly that. It means a lot to me that you see that I’m not invincible, that you’d do what you can to lighten the load in such a way that it’s supportive rather than overbearing. But until I figure out some direction, I’m kind of stuck in the stewing portion of the process.”
Because her fingers felt like ice, he took them between his hands and began to rub. “Has it occurred to you that coming clean might help you figure it out? That holding on to this secret is keeping you from moving forward? You’re so focused on the dread, you can’t look beyond it to what’s next.”
“I don’t know what’s next.” Frustration sharpened her tone.
“Maybe you don’t. And that’s okay. But I’m gonna make some observations. You’re happy here. You’re among friends and family. I haven’t seen you look anything but stressed out and unhappy whenever Chicago comes up. That ought to tell you something.”
“I haven’t been happy in Chicago for a long time.”
Cam could tell the admission was grudging. “Well there you go. Seems like a pretty big sign from the Universe. If your life isn’t making you happy, you change it. Period.”
Norah stared at him as if he’d just started speaking ancient Greek. “I can’t just change everything without a lot of careful thought.”
“That’s fine, if that’s what you need to do. You take your time, consider all the angles. Just be sure to factor this into the equation.” He pressed her back against the truck and lowered his mouth to hers.
She rose to meet him, hungry, heated, her hands sliding up his chest and into his hair. God, he loved how responsive she was, loved knowing that beneath that calm, collected exterior, she was a fever.
Still waters…
With considerable effort, Cam eased back, waiting a moment for his breath to even out. “You matter, Norah. I didn’t expect it, wasn’t looking for it. But there it is.”
“This was supposed to be a vacation for me. Downtime and a chance to think. You were supposed to be a distraction. I didn’t expect…more.”
Neither had he. And thank God for defied expectations. “Life would be pretty boring if we always got what we expected.”
“Cam! I’m freezing my butt off. Did you get lost?” Miranda’s shout came from somewhere down the line of vehicles.
They untangled themselves in a hurry, and Cam pulled open the door to grab the blanket from the backseat. “Go do your analysis, Wonder Woman. I’ll still be here when you’re through.”
~*~
“Get in here and give me a hug.” Lisbet Campbell opened the front door to Grammy Campbell’s house and pulled Norah in for a good, hard squeeze. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You just saw me last week.” Norah hung on, nonetheless, basking in the feeling of momness in her embrace.
“Yes, but we don’t know how much longer you get to stay, so every time I see you is like a fresh visit,” Aunt Liz said.
Since Norah had no answer to that question, she searched for a new topic. “Grammy painted.”
“Oh my goodness, yes.” The woman herself came bustling in from the kitchen, a vintage half apron tied around her slim hips. “Hello, sugar.”
Grammy was the only member of the Campbell clan shorter than Norah’s 5’4”. Norah could only presume that Grammy’s statuesque children were rocking some of her late husband’s genes. He’d passed before Norah had a chance to meet him. Grammy’s hug was like being embraced by a stick of summer-scented dynamite. How she managed to smell like honeysuckle in the dead of winter, Norah had no idea.
“She has us rearranging something every other weekend.” But Uncle Pete softened the gripe with a smile. Tall and broad, like Mitch, Uncle Pete’s blond hair had silvered completely since Miranda had first brought Norah home. “Come on over here, honey.”
Norah moved from one to the other, giving in to the urge to press her cheek to the aged flannel of his shirt. He smelled faintly of sawdust and motor oil.
She eased back. “You’ve been out on your motorcycle.”
Aunt Liz grinned. “We had a date for lunch. Rode up to Little Mountain for a picnic.”
“Wanna go for another ride?”
Grammy intervened. “Not until after dinner. It won’t be long. I just need to make the gravy.”
Norah sniffed, drooled a little. “Is that country fried steak?”
“And mashed potatoes, homemade biscuits, and the last of the purple hull peas from the freezer.”
All of her favorites. Norah mimed a kowtow. “I’m not worthy.”
“Of course you are. It’s not every day I get to cook for my other granddaughter. Come on back to the kitchen.”
The kitchen was a wide, spacious room with windows that overlooked what Norah knew was a long slope of yard. Not that she could see any of it now in the winter dark. Cherry cabinets stretched all the way to the top of the ten-foot ceiling and dark granite countertops gleamed. Mitch hunched over one, gingerly lifting a cloth napkin in a basket.
“Mitch, get your hands out of that bread basket!”
He jerked his hand back as if she’d slapped it. “But Grammy…”
“You can wait fifteen minutes without starving to death.” Grammy picked up a spoon and waved him away.
From the kitchen table Aunt Anita, Reed and Ava’s mom, waved hello. Several shoeboxes and photo albums were spread out across the surface.
“What’re you working on?” Norah slipped off her coat and peeked.
“Torture,” Reed said, a bouquet of silverware in his hand. “She’s organizing family photo albums, meaning she’s accruing blackmail material.”
“I’m doing no such thing.” Anita shooed him into the dining room to finish setting the table.
With a roll of his eyes, Miranda’s dark-haired cousin disappeared into the other room. Norah slid into a chair and reached for the nearest album. “May I?”
“Knock yourself out, hon.”
The first page was full of pictures from their childhood. A gap-toothed Miranda, maybe five or six, sat beside another grinning, tow-headed boy. “Is that Mitch? No, he’d have been much bigger than you at that age. Cam?”
Miranda came to lean over her shoulder. “Yeah, back then, people often mistook us for twins. We’re only three months apart.”
“I can see why. He looks so much like his mom.”
Miranda flipped the page and pointed to another shot, this one of Sandra and Cam, identical smiles beaming at the camera. “Check her out.”
“She looks so young.”
“Younger than us.”
And already a mom of a six- or seven-year old. Norah couldn’t fathom that. In the next photo, he wore a baseball uniform and mugged for the camera beside another man.
“Who’s this?”
“Cam’s dad. May he rot in hell.”
Norah lifted a brow. “Is he dead?”
“Officially, no. As far as our family is concerned, he might as well be.”
Studying the photo, Norah thought she could see something of Cam’s build in his father, but nothing more. Everything else was pure Campbell. “What happened?”
Grammy picked up the thread. “He and Sandra were high school sweethearts. Got married straight after graduation. It wasn’t an…easy marriage.”
“It was a mistake,” Uncle Pete said with an uncharacteristic scowl.
“It wasn’t a mistake because it led to Cam,” Grammy corrected.
“She should have dumped his ass right after Cam was born,” Uncle Jimmy put in.
“Well now, that may be. But that’s not how it happened. Waylan was the kind of guy who’s never satisfied with what he’s got. Always wanting something more, admiring the greener grass and all that. He took keeping up with the Joneses to a whole new level. When Cam was eleven, Waylan left in pursuit of his grand ambitions, abandoning them on the verge of bankruptcy. Just got up one morning, told Sandy he was leaving. No discussion, no argument. And he left. Without even telling Cam goodbye. The divorce papers arrived a few days later.”
Norah straightened in outrage. “Who does that?”
“The weak. They were well rid of him.” Anita tugged the album over and passed Norah a different one. “Better memories in here.”
The next album started with Reed’s high school graduation. He grinned, arms around both his parents in what appeared to be a high school gym. His cap was cocked rakishly atop a shaggy mop of hair and his chin sported a faint scruff of goatee. The camera flash glinted off the lenses of some truly awful black-framed glasses.
The man in question wandered back in from the dining room, clean-shaven and wearing a pair of horn-rims that accentuated his hazel eyes. The hair that had looked merely unkempt back then now edged toward attractively rumpled.
“I had no idea you were a hipster before it was cool,” Norah teased.
Reed came to peer over her shoulder and groaned. “See, told you. Blackmail material.” At her peals of laughter, he said, “Yeah, you keep on laughing. You’re in all this somewhere.”
“I am?” Norah immediately began to wonder which of her and Miranda’s antics they’d managed to capture on film.
Reed flipped a few pages, bringing up a shot of Norah doubled over with hilarity, hair hanging in wet ropes down her shoulders as multiple water balloons exploded around her. “See, wet t-shirt contest.”
“That’s a swimsuit under that t-shirt.”
“Didn’t you end up nailing Mitch with the water hose?” Miranda slipped into the chair beside her.
Mitch bent to look over her shoulder. “You totally did.”
“Hey, you boys unearthed contraband SuperSoakers. It was only fair.”
“We got our revenge.” Mitch flipped to the next page with a picture of him dangling her upside down from the knees after he’d wrested the hose away.
Miranda chuckled. “You’re so lucky that wasn’t me. I’d have pantsed you from that position.”
“I had no desire to be that up close and personal with your brother’s—” She could hardly say junk in front of Grammy. “—well. I was laughing too hard to retaliate by that point anyway.”
They kept turning pages, filling in Norah’s gaps in family knowledge with stories and jokes. Cam appeared again in the later album pages. He looked more like Mitch back then, easier and more carefree. That had to be before his mother’s cancer.
“Ugh, somebody get a Sharpie,” Miranda said. “I need to draw some devil horns.”
“On who?”
“Her.” Miranda thumped a finger against the face of a red-head Norah didn’t recognize.
Norah studied the picture. The girl was tall. A younger Cam, maybe twenty or so, stood with his arm around her shoulders, easily able to look into her laughing face. She was gorgeous, with perfect creamy skin and blue eyes that seemed to wink at the camera. And he was in love with her.
The punch of jealousy was quick and vicious, despite the fact that this was obviously years ago.
“Who is she?”
“Melody.” Miranda sneered the name. “Cam’s college girlfriend.”
“I’m getting a very powerful sense of gut-hating here. Why?”
Aunt Anita picked up the thread. “Oh he dated that piece of work all through college. She was bright, beautiful, and always had an eye on bigger, better things.”
“In a grass is always greener, cheated on him kind of way?”
“Not that we know of,” Aunt Liz said. “But ruthlessly ambitious. Top of her class. She couldn’t wait to get out of the South.”
“She was a nice enough girl,” Uncle Pete added. “Polite whenever she came to visit.”
Aunt Liz snorted. “Polite. Sure. She had all you men practically drooling.”
“Gross.” Miranda grimaced.
“He was planning to propose,” Reed said. “But the weekend he came home to buy the ring was when the news broke about Aunt Sandy’s cancer. It was bad. Really, really bad. Cam quit school and came home to take care of her.”
“And this Melody had a problem with that?” Norah couldn’t fathom the kind of person who would.
“No, not as such,” Miranda said. “The issue came when it was time for her to go to grad school. Melody got into law school at Ole Miss and George Mason. But she’d applied before the cancer, and Aunt Sandy was in bad shape, to the point the doctors didn’t think she was going to make it. You remember how bad it was. Cam was devastated. Any decent human being would’ve stayed close to support him.”
The outcome was painfully obvious. “She picked George Mason.”
“It was the better, more prestigious program. She believed if she turned them down, she’d never get another shot at it, and her career was too important to put on hold.”
“So she dumped him?”
“Not then,” Anita said. “They did the long distance thing for a while. Couple years, if I remember. He didn’t see much of her. She didn’t come down here much, and he wasn’t willing to go far from Sandy. At least not until she’d stabilized. Even then, we had to practically kick him out of the house to make him go up to Virginia to surprise her.”
“He drove up and came back in just over twenty four hours,” Aunt Liz said. “Never did tell us what happened, just that they’d decided to go their separate ways, that they wanted different things. Cam’s not the sort to bad-mouth anybody.”
Grammy harumphed. “You ask me, they could’ve figured that out without all that driving. I think she’d moved right on without him and didn’t have the decency to say so on account of she couldn’t figure out how to break it to him given what was going on with Sandy. Figure our boy walked in on something.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Miranda flung a hand toward the album. “I mean, seriously. What kind of woman puts her own ambitions ahead of what’s supposed to be the most important relationship in her life?”
A woman who wants more out of life than being a wife and mother, trapped in a small town that doesn’t support her career choices. But she kept the comment to herself. She didn’t condone the way Melody had handled the situation, but she understood the choice the girl had faced in a way that no one else here could. She understood because she’d watched her mother live with the wrong one for far too long and then dealt with the fallout when Margaret finally made the tough call that her career and the lives she could save were more important than family.
“At least she figured it out before he married her. Before there was a child to be impacted by the inevitable divorce.”
Miranda leaned in to give Norah a hug. “You shouldn’t have had to pay for your parents’ selfishness.”
“It’s better than if they’d stayed together. All those years before the divorce was like watching my mother slowly die. Better that they be true to who they really are, what they really want.”
Which leaves me, where exactly? Norah wondered. Who am I and what do I want?
A month ago she could’ve answered that question without hesitation. But now? Here she was without the job she’d worked her ass off to earn, unexpectedly involved with a man who’d so rapidly worked his way under her skin, she couldn’t imagine going back to a life without him in it. But neither could she imagine what life with him in it would look like. And she was lying to her best friend and the rest of his family about their involvement because, quite clearly, they wouldn’t approve.
When exactly had she become someone who knowingly hid the truth? So much for that moral compass.
Reed jolted her back to the conversation. “Either way, she did a number on him. As far as we know, he hasn’t had more than a couple of dates with anybody since his mom went into remission.”
Yeah, about that…
“So Mitch is dating enough for them both?” she asked, hoping to shift the conversation.
“Hey! I resemble that remark.”
Aunt Liz put in her two cents. “Cam needs to find a nice local girl. That boy was made for marriage, family, and babies. He needs somebody that can actually appreciate the deep sunk roots he has here instead of being all bound up in career.”
In other words, someone who isn’t me, Norah thought. And that was the clincher of all of it. She recognized and respected Cam’s roots, found his connection to family and the community unaccountably appealing. But she wasn’t local—couldn’t be local and keep the career she’d poured herself into. And even if, by some miracle, she could sort that mess out, she wasn’t made for a traditional role of wife and mother any more than her mother had been.
Grammy pivoted with a casserole dish in her hands. “Everybody take a bowl into the dining room. Dinner is served!”
Norah stood and took the bread basket on autopilot, but she found she’d lost her appetite.