A Very Daring Christmas (The Tavonesi Series Book 8) (25 page)

“Go on a date with me,” he said as he stood and tugged her up from the bench. “To the coast. To the sea. Let’s get away from all this... all this fuss. Maybe take a hike. Someplace quiet. Someplace wild.”

“I’d like that,” she heard herself saying.

“Truth?”

“Yes, truth.” She pulled her hand from his to quell the trembling that had begun to rumble in her belly. It was the truth; she did want to get away with him. She liked the idea more than she wanted to admit. She liked Jake more than was probably good for her.

Liked?

The problem was that she’d started to fall in love with him. Just a little. But
was
there even such a thing as being a little bit in love? As they skated over to where their friends waited at the other side of the rink, she hoped maybe there was.

Because if it were true that you could be just a little bit in love—if she could avoid being all in—then she wasn’t doomed. She could enjoy and explore the feelings he ignited and yet pull out before she fell too far. She could regain her balance before she joined the ranks of women who were just another of Jake’s momentary interests. Before she became just another woman in his past. A woman whose name he didn’t remember.

Chapter Eighteen

“I thought we would
never
get out of that arcade this morning,” Sabrina said. “If Dimitri hadn’t bested Gage and then teamed up with Sophie to trounce Max and Tyler in that last game, I’m sure we’d still be there.”

She toed off her shoes beside her bed and motioned to Cameron. “Sit. Have some tea. Coco is on her way up, and she’s in a state. I’ll need your immense talents at remaining calm.”

Cameron settled into a plush chair that had a view of Sabrina’s balcony and the vineyards stretching to the horizon beyond. “My immense talents at remaining calm are being sorely tested.”

“Do tell.”

“I’ve agreed to go out to the coast with Jake.”

“Earthshaking.”

“I’m serious. I know I’m playing with fire. And why aren’t you warning me off him? He’s a playboy. He’s not a safe man for my heart or probably anyone else’s. So why do I have the suspicion that you’re encouraging him?”

Sabrina shrugged one shoulder and slowly shook her head. “I haven’t encouraged him in the least. He has eyes. He has ears. And he has other body parts I could mention in detail—”

“
Whose
body parts are you about to mention?” Brigitte said as she sailed into the room on a cloud of perfume. “One of my favorite hobbies, you know, men’s body parts.”

“Cameron’s going to the coast with Jake. On a date.”

Brigitte raised one perfectly threaded brow.

“I didn’t say it was a date.” Cameron heard the defensiveness in her voice.

“Who has a date?” Coco said as she entered the room. “I
need
a date. I need
several
dates. Maybe all at once. Anything to make me forget this morning.”

The crispness of Coco’s Italian accent made her words sound like a command to the heavens.

Brigitte stopped pouring tea from the big blue pot on the table beside Sabrina’s bed and tilted her head toward Cameron. “Cameron has a date. With Jake Ryder.” She waved the teapot toward Coco. “
You
should have captured that one when he was hot on your scent.”

“Chemistry
matters
,” Coco said. “I must have that chemistry, that magic, if I am to be serious about a man. Jake is too much like my brothers.”

Brigitte lifted the cup of tea she had just poured and sipped. “I, on the other hand, can have great fun without such nonsense.” She turned her gaze to Cameron. “I heard our dear Jake has a three-date rule.” She tilted her head at Sabrina. “Alyssa Bentley told me. She thought she’d be the one to break his streak. The woman always was an optimist.”

Embarrassment crawled up from Cameron’s belly into her throat
.
She didn’t have sisters, and she wasn’t used to having her love life discussed so candidly. Unless the tabloids counted.

“He has rules about dates?” Coco scoffed. “I will never understand American men.”

Cameron swallowed the lump rising in her throat.
Three dates
. She’d already had three dates with Jake. Unless he didn’t count the beach picnic. Who the heck knew how he counted? And what kind of man had such stupid rules anyway? Did she need further evidence that she had already stepped too far into the crazy zone?

“Three dates with that man should be enough to rock a world,” Brigitte practically purred.

“I assume you’re all talking about me,” Parker said as he waltzed in and planted a kiss on Coco’s cheek.

“You are
not
invited in here, Parker,” Sabrina said in a loving tone that belied her words. “This is strictly girl talk.”

“Sounded like man talk to me. Or talk of men, in any case.” He took Coco’s hand. “What’s this I hear about your computer crashing?”

“All my photos disappeared. All of them.”

“And none too soon,” Alex said as he and Jake walked in. “Now you can start over and use some of the outstanding nature shots you have and—”

Parker extended his hand to Coco and pulled her up from the settee. “Don’t yank her chain, Alex. She’s worried.”

Sabrina’s room was spacious, but no room could contain all the energy buzzing in it right then. Coco’s distress was palpable. And seeing Jake so shortly after Brigitte’s revelation about his dating rules hadn’t given Cameron any time to digest the feelings warring in her. She glanced at him and found him staring.

“I’m afraid to go back home,” Coco said, her voice trembling. “What if that horrible man has returned? What if he did this?”

“Vico?” Parker shot Alex a glance. “There’s no way it’s him. But we’ll go back over with you and check out your system. And then I insist you stay here with us until Adrian and the rest of the family return. Jake, you in?”

“Sure, but I warn you I know nothing about computers. I barely know how to charge my cellphone.”

“Thank you,” Coco said, her voice noticeably more steady. “Maybe I’m making too much of this, but with everybody in Rome, Casa del Sole feels like a ghost village.” She focused her gaze on Jake. “If we can get my system back up, I’ll show you the latest designs. You really would be perfect for my calendar.”

Jake gave a nervous-sounding laugh. “Are you playing on my sympathies? It won’t work.”

Coco pulled herself up to her full five-foot-three height. Next to Jake, Alex and Parker, she looked like a pixie. She crossed her arms and squared off, facing Jake and Alex. “You do realize your visibility doesn’t really belong to you? It’s not really yours—it’s social capital. And if
you
don’t spend your social capital, someone else will.”

Jake winced. Cameron knew enough to recognize the effort he was making to control his emotions. Knew enough about his view of the subject matter to understand that holding back and remaining polite weren’t easy for him. But hey, he’d taken the Nike contract—would posing for Coco be any different?

“It takes a village to be famous,” Coco went on. “I want to help people the rest of the world would like to forget. People who in their own way have a hand in the success of the careers of athletes and celebrities.”

Cameron shifted. What sort of psychic storm had entered Trovare Castle to skewer her by touching on excruciating subjects?

Jake raised a brow and looked from Coco to her.

Did he think that she’d scripted Alex’s sweet cousin to lay the track for her campaign to convince him to go to Washington? That she’d set him up? He couldn’t still think she’d do something like that.

“And we
will
help you,” Jake told her. “But spending social capital and helping people do not go hand in hand with baring our butts. Or our souls.”

The look Jake shot Cameron could’ve nailed her to the chair.

And then it struck her, the difference between her fame and Jake’s. Athletes used their bodies to play a game. Sure, some liked the limelight. But most of them probably just wanted to play the game they loved but otherwise be left alone.

But being a public persona was part and parcel of being a film star. She would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that she’d known from the start that the studios expected a high level of visibility from their big-money actors. She just hadn’t realized what it would cost her. But over the past year the increased harassment from the paparazzi and the tabloid articles had run that lesson home. Coco was right—she had a choice regarding how to use the power that came with fame. And she’d made her choice. Jake had every right to do the same.

After the guys went off to help Coco, and Sabrina and Brigitte went into town, Cameron ached to head out for a run. But even the crisp December air and the beauty of the path through the forested trail didn’t clear her head.

What right did she have to think Jake had any obligation to the Dominia project? The answer rang clear with each thud of her foot against the leaf-cushioned path. No right. No right at all. He had his own interests, and they didn’t need to match hers.

Just as none of the guys had to pose for Coco, no one had to assume her passions. Everyone was entitled to follow their own interests without pressure to take on someone else’s. And without being made to feel guilty about their own choices.

And that meant there had to be another way forward.

Back in her guest room, she ran a hot bath. And tried not to think about the date she’d promised to Jake for the following afternoon. Tried not to think about the yearning that wafted into her cells with every whiff of the steamy, rose-scented water. She stepped out of the bath and toweled the fragrant drops off her skin. And wished she could just as easily blot away the memories of Jake’s hands on her body.

Maybe it would’ve been better to have never known the depths of feelings he could call up in her. Maybe it would’ve been better not to have discovered the power of her body, a power that he’d somehow freed and sent shocking through her like an earthquake shifting the landscape of life as she’d once known it. She’d never know now. What he’d awakened, she’d never forget. Maybe didn’t want to.

Three dates
. Whether what Brigitte had reported was true or not, the words knifed into Cameron’s heart, carving away at a hope she hadn’t even allowed to spring to life. She’d lied to herself, to her friends. She wanted a man in her life. And not just any man.

Was the universe laughing at her? Taunting her? Enjoying the fact that she now wanted Jake with every molecule of her being? Jake, a man who had no concept of long-term commitment to a woman? He wasn’t a narcissist like Elliott, but his heart was just as far out of reach. And she’d seen enough of Jake’s heart, of his soul, to know that the man beyond the carefully constructed and secure boundaries was the kind of man she could love.

With unsteady legs, she sank down onto the edge of the bathtub, unwanted tears stinging the truth home. Her chest tightened, and the moan that escaped her opened the dam. Shuddering, she pressed the towel to her face in an attempt to muffle her sobbing cries. Slowly, eventually, the storm passed, her tears slowing like the last drops of a hot summer rain. An encouraging thought pinged like a message in the darkness, a realization that had her dragging the towel from her eyes and taking a deep breath.

She’d survive. She always had.

Her cellphone rang in the bedroom. She stubbed her toe on the foot of the bed running to grab it.
Linda
. Maybe with good news. But right then, any news would be a welcome distraction from staring into the face of unwelcome truths.

“How goes it up there at the castle?” Linda asked. But her voice wasn’t cheery.

“It goes. Tree trimming, ice skating, the works.”

“You said you wanted to experience a real Christmas.”

“You know what they say—be careful what you wish for. But I doubt you called to discuss my Christmas.”

“I would’ve waited, but I knew you’d want to know. The funding’s been called off.”

Cameron dropped onto the edge of the bed, the phone suddenly feeling as heavy as a lead weight in her hand. “Why?”

“Not why, who. The International Aid Bank is having second thoughts. If the U.S. doesn’t come in, and come in soon, we may have to start from scratch.”

“I’m lining up some PR with my team for January,” Cameron said, feeling like she was spitting into a strong wind. “And I’ll see what else I can leverage.”

“No Jake Ryder?”

“No. And I can’t ask him again. I don’t want to go into it all right now, but just believe me. We can’t get Jake Ryder.”

“Well, we’re working on Senator Levinson. He’s on the Foreign Relations Committee. I’m trying to get him down here before mid-January. But he’s in Fiji at some remote resort. I’ll keep you posted. And, Cameron?”

“Yes?” What else would Linda drop into her lap?

“Don’t take this too hard. We’ll get there. Everybody’s grateful for all your help. It takes a village. Have a good Christmas.”

“You too.”

It takes a village. She was beginning to hate the phrase, even if it was true.

She threw on a simple sheath, slipped on her shoes and went looking for Sabrina. Her savvy friend just might have some ideas. And right then, any idea would help.