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 canfindyou 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.
“Shit tons of pictures,” Con added. “You know how wedding photographers are.”
“I know I’ll be in the pictures,” I said, irritated. Con and my other friends thought it was fucking hysterical I did my best to stay away from any sort of notoriety. Of all the towns to hide out in, they said. I wasn’t hiding out, but in my line of work, it didn’t make sense to draw attention to yourself. You had to blend in as well as you could so you could spot the danger before it spotted you.
“Speaking of my wedding, do you want to revise your RSVP?”
I grunted. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you want to bring Cami or Emma? Or both? You know they’re welcome. I just need to tell the wedding planner before she makes the seating arrangements and finalizes the catering.”
That caught me off guard. “How much time do I have to think about it?”
Con shrugged. “A few weeks.”