A soft knock on his office door snapped Brock from his spiraling thoughts. It was hardly an interruption when he wasn’t getting any closer to a resolution, anyway.
“Come in.”
If he hadn’t already been sitting, someone could have knocked him over with a feather at the sight of Camilla in the doorway.
“Camilla.” Brock couldn’t stop himself from letting her name fall from his lips, his genuine surprise evident. He stood, though he didn’t know what for. “What are you doing here?”
“The liaison office downstairs told me where to find your office.” She didn’t come into the room any further. “I want to talk to you. About yesterday.”
Brock looked down at the pile of essays to his right, then to the opened one in front of him. “I’m really kind of busy right—”
“What happened?” she interjected. Camilla’s eyes were wide and shrouded in confusion.
“Nothing,” Brock replied. “I just—”
“You just dismissed me, like the night before didn’t happen,” she insisted. “Like what you and I did together didn’t matter. Then, you arranged for Rynn to go to your mom’s? That was a low blow, Brock, especially when I don’t know what the hell is going on.”
“You’re a fine one to talk about low blows,” he snapped. A loud sigh fled his mouth and he raked a hand through his hair. “Come inside and close the door, will you?” The last thing he needed was the rest of the faculty hearing about his extracurricular activities with the nanny and his misguided attempt at a relationship.
Camilla stepped into the office and closed the door, then she whirled around, probably intent on ripping into him, but Brock had rounded his desk to make sure the door was, indeed, shut, and, judging by the wideness of her eyes, he was closer to her than she expected.
“What do you mean by that?” If her words were meant to be strong and assertive, they were lacking in both.
Brock felt as though he was hanging on by a thread. First, she had the audacity to screw him over the way she did, then she tracked him down at the university—at his place of employment, where he was respected and where he kept a lid on his personal life—to rehash the juicy demise of the relationship they’d barely begun? The relationship that she planned to end in the first place once she got whatever it was she wanted from him?
“Is the problem that I ended whatever was going on between us before you got the chance to? Is that what this is about?” There was an edge to Brock’s voice, but he couldn’t deny, he was genuinely curious.
“The problem is that it ended at all, Brock.” The mix of exasperation and hurt in her voice had him immediately rethinking his choice of words, making his gut twist tightly. “I want to know why you ended it, though,” she added. “I want to know why you ended us before we even had a chance to see where it would go.”
Brock let out a hollow scoff. She had a lot of gall, that was for sure. “You know what, Camilla? You can play your little games with me, but don’t you dare play games when it comes to my daughter.” He held up a finger. “On second thought, don’t bother playing them with me, either. It’s not my thing.”
Camilla’s eyes narrowed, her mouth opening and closely. If she was at a loss for words, Brock sure as hell wasn’t.
“I heard your phone conversation,” he blurted out. “Rynn and I aren’t going to be someone’s temporary anything. You seemed pretty confident yesterday that you and I weren’t going to last—” He made quotation marks with his fingers. “—so I went ahead and made sure of it, before anything went any further.”
She stared at him, bewildered. Then, Brock watched as all the pieces seemed to fall into place and Camilla finally understood what he was saying. “Wait, that’s what this is all about?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what this is all about.” Like her, he wanted to sound damn sure of himself. Except, he wasn’t feeling that sure at all, purely because Camilla’s reaction wasn’t at all what he expected, and she suddenly didn’t look nearly as distraught as she’d been when she first showed up.
Camilla took a step forward and shoved her purse onto his desk, zipping it open to fish through it. When she found what she was looking for, she pulled it out. A rectangular piece of cardstock was between her fingers, pale yellow in color with gold foil calligraphy on one side. “Actually, that’s exactly what this is about.” She shoved the card toward him, forcing him to take it.
Brock turned the card in his hands. It was a wedding invitation with the image of a sunflower on it. He held it up to her. “What the hell does this have to do with anything?”
“Everything!” Camilla exclaimed. “You only heard my side of the conversation, Brock, and you just chose to hear what you wanted to hear. When I mentioned things being temporary and that they wouldn’t last, I was talking about my friend, Shannah, and her fiancé. They’re arguing about their damn wedding again, and it’s my duty as her maid of honor to calm her down. Obviously, my words did little to calm you down, however.”
Brock stared at the yellow invitation, then up at Camilla’s face, and back again. All the air had been sucked from the room. “So, you weren’t talking about us.”
“I never even mentioned you in that conversation, Brock. She never let me get a word in about anything other than the wedding and the bridal shower.” She reached out for the invitation. “I’m not playing games with you and Rynn,” she added, her voice softer. “And I sure as hell had no intentions of ending this, you and I, before it even got started.”
Brock grabbed her by the arm she had extended and he pulled her to him. His lips crashed against hers, and he kissed her with every ounce of apology and pain and passion that warred within him.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” he panted out, his lips still grazing against hers as he clutched her against him.
Camilla’s chest heaved as well, and it wasn’t until Brock held her close that he realized she was trembling with the emotion she struggled to keep at bay.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, her eyes heavy-lidded and ignited with the turmoil he’d caused her. “Make it up to me.”
Brock guided her backward until her thighs met the edge of his desk. He’d never been so happy for her to wear a skirt. His mouth trailed from her lips, down the side of her throat where he could feel the wild pulsing just beneath her skin, to her collarbone, where he sucked and nipped at her tender flesh as he worked at hiking her skirt up her thighs and pushing her up onto the edge of his desk.