Page 34 of Best Laid Plans
“No.” A single word, but it spoke volumes. Elle resisted cracking a smile.
Cam seemed so in his element with a knife in his hand or in front of a flat top grill, but it was hard to imagine him schmoozing and working a room. But then again, he had just won a major televised cooking competition and worked at an insanely popular restaurant, so what did Elle know?
Sandy nodded. “I know it’s a huge ask and very short notice. Vanessa was hoping you could come by the club tomorrow to check out the space and get into the finer details.”
Cam’s posture was tight, and Elle could see how his jaw was clenched. He didn’t like this idea one bit. “I’ll think about it.”
But even just hearing that Cam was open to the idea, Sandy’s whole body relaxed, and she heaved a sigh of relief. “Wonderful. This is Vanessa’s business card,” she said, handing it over to Cam, who took it silently.
Elle knew the way this world worked. In passing, she’d even caught glimmers when she’d been dating Grant and friends with Chelsea. People for whom money was no object and the optics were everything.
Two years ago, at Grant’s side, she’d thought that she was on track to be one of them. And a month ago, standing on her own two feet with her MBA and employment at one of the best consulting firms in the country, that path had come back into sight.
Money bought freedom, as far as Elle was concerned. She’d seen how much her parents had struggled over the years. Howhard they worked to just make lifework. And look at them now, on the verge of losing what they’d built over the last thirty years, all because a new business swooped into town and unexpected health issues had cropped up.
She didn’t want to suffer the same fate.
It was a good reminder about what she should be focusing on, given the way she’d been letting her libido drag her around for the last week. Whatever had been happening with Cam was nothing more than a distraction. From getting her life back on track and finding solid footing again. It felt good in the moment, but it wasn’t going to get her where she wanted to go.
Now that Sandy had done her duty to relay the information about the charity event, she was peppering Cam with questions about the festival and how he’d liked it, if he had any feedback on what could be improved.
Elle glanced at Cam, who looked like he wished he could be anywhere else. Served him right.
Elle tuned out their voices and looked at her phone. She’d gotten a text fifteen minutes ago.
Becca: Zoe and I are at the festival! We tried to come by your stand but it was closed.
Becca:Are you still around? Want to meet up?
Elle texted Becca back and put her phone in her pocket. She wasn’t going to wait to see whatever half-assed excuse that Cam would come up with once they were alone again. “I’m going to find Becca. You two have fun,” she said with a backwards glance. She caught the dark look that flashed across Cam’s face, but she was already weaving around the parked cars and toward the main event area.
Cam, and whatever games he was playing, were behind her. And that’s where they–and he–needed to stay.
The first thing that Elle did when she got home from the festival on Sunday night was take a shower. Twelve hours in the heat. It felt like it had taken her at least that long to scrub the briny, salt-infused air off her skin under the hot showerhead. She’d eaten an ungodly amount of fried food–not that Heads & Tails held a candle to anything Pierce’s Seafood Co. had been selling–but Zoe had insisted on ‘sampling’ from multiple vendors. Elle had laughed at the shrug of acceptance Becca had given her when Zoe had made her intentions clear, grabbing each of them with a small hand and leading the way. Elle appreciated a woman with a vision.
Back in her room, she towel dried her hair and put on her favorite sleep t-shirt. Which belonged to Cam, coincidentally. That wasn’t her fault, and she refused to let him disrupt one more thing in her life.
She was sitting on the bed, brushing through her hair when there was a knock on the door.
“What do you want?” If she could get this over quickly, she’d still have time to do her full skincare routine before she fell asleep. And that process, honed over a decade, was far preferable to whatever excuses Cam was going to level in her direction now that they’d had time apart.
Cam opened the door but didn’t come into the room. Instead, he leaned on the doorframe, taking up most of the space. He was wearing a pair of basketball shorts and a hoodie, and even from where she sat, she could smell the clean scent of his body wash.
Elle continued brushing her hair. “If you’re looking for styling tips, I’m sure there are YouTube tutorials you could watch.”
“Elle…” It was just her name, but she felt it in her bones. The way he said it, so wanting. His eyes were focused on her, watching as she methodically pulled the brush through her tangles, the sharp, quick pain whenever one of the bristles snagged keeping her centered.
“Your tortured hero act has run its course, Cam. Congratulations. I no longer think that sleeping with you is a good idea.” Even if her body rebelled at her traitorous words, it was the right call. There was no way she was going to keep letting him have this power over her.
She’d discussed it with Becca earlier, at least in the words she could find that were kid-friendly enough for a five-year-old to possibly overhear. And where she’d settled was that she wasn’t going to let Cam keep jerking her around. He could keep his masochistic cup filled jerking himself around, in every sense of the word.
“I’m trying to be–”
She cut him off. “What, Cam? You’re trying to be annoying? Or frustrating? Or to send mixed signals?”
He scratched at his stubble, clearly not liking the way this conversation was going. Well, he could deal with her mood swings for once instead of the other way around. “You’re acting like it’s my fault that Sandy showed up. It’s not like I texted her to run interference. And you’re the one who ran off, not me,” he glowered, finally matching her own frustrated look.
Elle’s whole body was electrified. She wanted, no–needed–them to get this out of their systems. To finally put Cam in his sanctimonious place and give him the dressing down of his life. “Because I didn’t need to hear some version of the speech I’ve already gotten numerous times. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice…”
