Page 34 of Rocky Mountain Cowboy Christmas
“Sorry,” Camille grumbled quietly to Steve. She didn’t want to be a bad influence on his daughter, but Deanna was a chatterbox—andshe was Mrs. Lin’s daughter-in-law, which meant that it was going to be hard to escape the upcoming conversation.
“I completely agree,” Steve muttered back, and Camille had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning.
“Oh!” Deanna eyed the three of them with a smile. “Don’t you look like the sweetest little family?” Her expression turned puzzled. “I thought June said that you and Ryan were dating?”
Even though Steve’s exasperated look was directed at Deanna, Camille still felt an urgent need to at least try to set the record straight…again. “There’s not anything between me and Ryan. He just sold me some barn wood.”
Leaning closer, Deanna lowered her voice to a carrying whisper. “So you didn’t just have a huge lovers’ quarrel at Birdie’s?”
“What? No. No quarrel, and Ryan and I are definitely not lovers, so no. Not a lovers’ quarrel or anything even close to that.” More words of denial wanted to spill out, but Camille managed to hold them back as she glanced down at Maya, who was watching with avid attention. “We talked for a minute, that’s all. Ryan flirts with everyone without meaning anything by it. Maybe that’s what your informant saw.” Her tone became a little bitter on the last few words, but Deanna was unintentionally ruining the toasty warm feeling Steve and Maya had caused. With them, for just those few moments, she’d felt like a normal person, someone who could possibly fit into their family. Now they were watching as she reverted back to the town weirdo.
Although Deanna was good-natured and obviously not intending to cause distress, Camille desperately wanted the conversation to be over so she could slink out of the store and return to the safety of her workshop.
“Informant?” Deanna blanched, looking confused by the snap to Camille’s words. “You make it sound like I have a whole team of spies reporting back to me.”
Despite her irritation, Camille couldn’t help but laugh. “That actually sounds like something Mrs. Lin—June—would do. Aren’t you getting her night-vision binoculars for Christmas?”
Deanna’s smile tentatively returned. “It does sound like her. How’d you know about the binoculars?”
“She let me know that she’s going to be keeping better watch over any goings-on at my house.” Camille grimaced. “I wish someone interesting would move into the old Smith place across the street so that she’d have someone else to obsess about.” Remembering that she was talking to Mrs. Lin’s almost-as-gossipy daughter-in-law and that everything she said would likely get back to her—and that Maya was listening to everything with wide eyes—Camille closed her mouth.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Deanna’s gaze flickered toward Steve, a small smile quirking up the corners of her mouth. “Your life seems plenty interesting to me.”
In her periphery, Camille saw Steve glance at her, and she inwardly cringed. Why hadn’t she just sucked it up and eaten that solitary can of bamboo shoots for dinner? She would’ve been hungry, but at least she would’ve been spared this humiliating conversation.
“I should go.” Suddenly, Camille couldn’t stand there another second. “My milk’s getting warm.” She gave Maya, who was still leaning against her, a quick side hug as a goodbye and pushed her cart forward before Deanna could say anything else.
As she passed Steve, he caught her cart handle, stopping her. She hesitated to look up at him, worried that she’d see doubt in his face, that he’d join the ranks of Borne gossipers who thought she was strange and antisocial. She stiffened her spine. Even if she was strange and antisocial, it wasn’t his or anyone else’s business. Emboldened by her rush of indignation, she looked up and met his gaze.
His eyes weren’t judging her, though. Instead, he looked warm and affectionate and even sympathetic, and Camille was caught, unable to look away. She vaguely heard Deanna saying something, but she didn’t really care what it was, not while Steve was looking at her in that unexpectedly lovely way.
“Will you be coming out to the ranch soon?” he asked, his voice quiet and so intimate that goose bumps spread over her skin.
“Yes. Tomorrow, probably.” She couldn’t have told him no at that moment if her life depended on it. Besides, she couldn’t wait to get out to the ranch. Except for when she was in her workshop, everything else in her life seemed so hard and uncomfortable, like a pair of shoes that didn’t really fit. With Steve and his kids, though, she felt as if she clicked effortlessly into place, as if they’d made a spot in their family just for her. The thought immediately made an alarm sound in the cautious corner of her brain. She was just getting to know the Springfields. If she continued thinking like that, she knew she’d end up getting hurt. Somehow, though, with Steve looking at her with that sweet yet intense way, it was hard to stay coolly pragmatic about what could be.
“Come for dinner,” Maya said, sounding excited. “It’s my night to cook, so Dad’s helping me make pizza.”
Camille glanced at her, happy to see that Deanna must’ve left while she was focused on Steve. “By ‘make pizza,’ do you mean sliding a frozen one in the oven? Or putting sauce and cheese on half an English muffin?”
Steve laughed softly as Maya answered. “Neither. We actually make the crust and roll it out and throw it in the air and everything.”
“Non-frozen, homemade, hand-thrown pizza? How can I refuse?” It was only after she’d accepted that she remembered to check with Steve, since accepting an offer from one of his very generous children seemed a little too close to inviting herself to dinner. “If that’s okay?” she asked him.
Steve came amusingly close to rolling his eyes. “Of course. We love having you.” They beamed at each other, and Camille forgot where she was again for a moment, until he tipped his head toward her cart. “You should probably go before your milk gets any warmer.”
“Oh!” She gave an embarrassed half shrug and lowered her voice. “I just said that so I could get away from Deanna. Some of the gossip she and Mrs. Lin come up with is just crazy. I mean, Mrs. Monroe thinks I have a thing going withBarry? Really? They couldn’t have made up a better booty buddy for me than him?”
Steve’s laugh boomed out, and Camille smiled as she watched him. His face was totally transformed by happiness, and it was even more beautiful than usual. “I agree,” he said. “You deserve so much more than Barry.”
His words made her float as she pushed her cart away from them.
“Dad?” Maya’s high, clear voice reached her ears clearly. “What’s a booty buddy?”
Heat flooded Camille’s face as she rushed toward the checkout at the front of the store. Despite her embarrassment, the warm residue of Steve’s words remained with her. Even Mrs. Murphy’s risqué stories about her life before she’d married Mr. Murphy couldn’t dim her happiness. Camille paid, scooped up her groceries, and walked out the door, giving thanks that Mrs. Murphy couldn’t follow her.
When she reached her house, she scurried toward the workshop door before Mrs. Lin could catch her. Camille knew that Mrs. Murphy had definitely found a moment between customers to text Mrs. Lin everything that’d happened at the grocery store. She was pretty sure that Mrs. Lin would be lying in wait for her to get home so she could either lecture her some more about her man-hoarding ways or try to pry more details out of Camille so that she’d have more information to lord over Mrs. Murphy at their next gossip club meeting or whatever they did when they got together.
Darting through the door, Camille quickly shut it behind her, letting out a huge breath of relief. Lucy jumped down from the edge of the scrap-metal bin where she’d been perched next to the rejected horse sculpture. It hadn’t quite made it into the bin, but Camille had managed to perch it on the edge, mainly to free up more room on her workbench.
