More Than a Playboy (6 page)

C
ameron buried his fingers in her hair, dislodging the clips so her curls spilled over his hands, and lifted his lips. Sandy raised her lashes and blinked up at him, her golden gaze dark with passion, her red lips devoid of lipstick. He suspected he wore a good portion of it.

He stepped away from her, ran a shaky hand through his hair, and rubbed at the heat scorching the back of his neck. Kissing Sandy had been a mistake. He blew out a frustrated breath. Rather than satisfy a curiosity, it had made things worse. One kiss wasn’t enough to satisfy his craving for her.

“Tell me now that you don’t want to take this to the next level.” He knew he challenged her with his gaze, dared her to deny what had happened between them a moment ago.

“Why me, Cameron? Why are you so intent on making me your mistress?”

“Whoa! Mistress?” Where had that come from? “First off, mistress is a little old-fashioned, don’t you think? And secondly, I don’t remember mentioning the word ‘mistress’.”

She tightened her lips as if that alone would make him cower. “Tell me why you’re pursuing me when you can have any woman you want.” She jabbed a forefinger toward the ballroom. “Almost every woman in there would fall into your bed if you asked. Why bother with me?”

There was only one thing left for Cameron to do—lay his heart at her feet. “I love you, Sandy.”

He clasped her hands in his, her icy fingers urging him to warm her. All she wore was a strappy satin dress beneath his jacket. He pulled her back into his arms, using his body to shield her from the cold.

Rubbing his cheek against her lustrous hair, he inhaled the sweet-scented silk. “I think I fell in love with you the first time you called me ‘trust-fund baby’.”

When Sandy didn’t chuckle along with him—didn’t respond—Cameron leaned back enough to get a glimpse of her face.

Shell-shocked was the only word he could think of to describe her expression. A tremor began in the hands pressed against his chest, then moved to her whole body. She pushed against him, wanting him to release her, so he did.

“Sandy?”

“I-I—”

He watched in disbelief as she turned, bunched the skirt of her dress in her hands, and ran.

SANDY SLAMMED the door shut as she stumbled into her small apartment, dropped to her knees, and clasped her hands in front of her face. “Dear, Lord. Please give me the strength to see past this man’s beautiful countenance to his heart, and not walk the same path as my mother.”

She scrambled off her knees and, frantic to get some perspective on what had happened between her and Cameron, pushed her hair off her face and paced. Grabbing a handful of tissues as she passed the tissue box, she blew her nose, past caring how unladylike it sounded.

Forget turning up to work on Monday. She could never show her face at TDA again after her dramatic Victorian maiden re-enactment. What had possessed her to hike up her dress and run from the ball like that? Good grief, even Cinderella had the good grace to let the Prince know she had to leave.

What had she done? Humiliated herself because Cameron was the first man ever to say those words to her? Like a spectre his words came back to haunt her.
I love you, Sandy. I think I fell in love with you the first time you called me ‘trust-fund baby’
.

She flopped down on the couch, an anguished groan echoed through the sparsely furnished room as she covered her heated face. “Why didn’t I say something? What kind of crazy person came out with something like that, anyway?”

She knew couples who’d been dating for months, and they couldn’t even bring themselves to say I love you. She and Cameron had barely spent any time together. And the very first time he kissed her, he dropped a bombshell like that.

Who could blame her for running? She swiped away more tears with fresh tissues. She wished she had the courage to say the words back to him. If she had, they wouldn’t have been a lie. She’d been in love with Cam since the first day he’d strutted into TDA, flashed his sexy smile, and said, “Hi, I’m Cameron Berkeley-Scott. I have an appointment to see Jamie-Leigh Stephenson.” Then she’d found out he was a rich-kid and armed herself against his charm. Hidden her attraction, and used insults to keep him at a distance.

Now she could no longer hide from the truth. She loved Cameron Berkeley-Scott. It seemed all her efforts to avoid her mother’s mistakes had failed. No matter how she tried to pray it away, her path was not much different from the woman who had promised to be there to watch her grow up. The woman who had danced with her around the kitchen table, holding wooden spoons dripping dough on the floor while they sang
Just the Two of Us
.

The beautiful mother who had taken Sandy to Prague for her twelfth birthday—then leapt to her death from the hotel’s highest balcony.

Sandy allowed the tears she’d never let herself cry for her beloved mum to wrack her body. She owed Cameron an explanation. At the very least, an apology. But she’d deal with that problem soon. Right now, she’d stay curled on her couch, and let go of the grief she’d carried around since that awful day in July when her mother killed herself.

8

C
ameron
had to admit he was pathetic.

Not only was he listening to his old Grease CDs, he was belting out the lyrics at a decibel that wasn’t fair to nature. He was on the last why-
yi
-
yi
-
yi
when a loud throat clearing drew his attention to the glass balcony in his duplex. He looked over the balcony of his open plan den to find his butler looking up at him.

The old man stood ramrod straight, his weathered face set in its usual can’t-crack-a-smile mode. “Would you be wanting to spend some time at the country house, sir?”

“Is my singing that bad, Sedrick?” He didn’t think he could ever go back to his country residence without reliving the moment when the woman he’d offered his heart to, trampled it into the limestone floor.

“Sir, the neighbours are complaining.”

Cameron chuckled. It was a hell of a thing when even his laugh sounded rusty only after two weeks of self-imposed exile. A fortnight since he last saw Sandy running away from him as if he had the Plague.

“Tell the neighbours—” Cameron cleared his throat and tried again. “Sedrick, will you tell the good neighbours I shall desist immediately.” He jabbed a button on the minuscule remote control, cutting off John Travolta in the middle of a heart-wrenching ‘
Saaan-dy
’.

“Right away, Your Highness.”

“Sedrick!”

The old man turned around with an air of stiff upper lip.

“I asked you not to call me that.”

“But your father—”

“No longer employs you, I do. The name is Cameron, or since you insist—sir. Or any one of the choice names I’m sure you must have for me when I’m out of earshot—but never that.”

Sedrick gave a small head bob. “Sir.” Turned and left Cameron scowling at the spot on the parquet floor where the man—who’d been more of a father to him than his own—had stood. For as long as he could remember, Sedrick had been around. First as his father’s butler, then after his father’s death five years ago, the old man had stayed on as Cameron’s. And in between, he’d been the only person who knew the loneliness Cameron had experienced as a child when his father’s ‘duties’ had kept him away from the family home for weeks at a time. His four older brothers were too busy with their own lives to notice quiet, studious Cameron, who had been his mother’s last-ditched attempt to save a crumbling marriage. He’d later found out ‘duties’ was code for I’m off with my latest mistress.

Within moments, Sedrick was back. “Master Cameron, you have a visitor.”

“Tell whoever it is, I’m out. I’ve told you I don’t want to see anyone.”

“From the incessant racket you’ve played for the past two weeks, I should think you will want to see this young lady.”

Cameron gulped. Nah, it couldn’t be. Not Sandy? He came alive, scrambled off the easy chair, and nearly fell flat on his face.

“Are you all right, sir?”

He righted himself but only just. He gave the plush royal blue carpet the same glower he’d given the parquet floor a short while ago. “Yes.” He spun around, his gaze running over the mess of scattered CDs and untouched breakfast. Where did he put his shirt? Giving up the search, he leaned over the glass balcony in an effort to get a glimpse of the ‘young lady’.

All he saw was Sedrick’s stern frown. The same one he used to get when he was ten and thought sliding down the long winding banister at his father’s house was fun.

He lowered his voice. “Who did she say she was?”

“A Miss Sandy Donovan, Your—sir.”

He was so juiced that Sandy had come to see him he couldn’t be bothered to pull Sedrick up on his near-slip. He came down the stairs at a bare-footed gallop, missing out several treads in his haste. “Where’d you put her?”

“In the sunroom, sir.”

“The apartment has a sunroom?” He’d lived here five years, and he didn’t know that.

“Over there, sir.”

He was pretty sure Sedrick was overdoing the ‘sirs’ to get a rise out of him. “Knock it off, Sedrick. I’m not too nice to fire you, old man.” Cameron headed toward the room where his butler had pointed—the lounge.

“You will need a shirt, Master Cameron.”

Cameron spun around, not missing a step as he walked backwards toward the room where Sandy waited. “Great idea. Grab me a fresh one, will you? I seem to have misplaced the other one.” He turned back toward the lounge.

He pushed open the door, surprised to find his hands shook. Mid-morning winter sunshine streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows filled the room, but it was Sandy’s sheer radiance that captivated him. She sat on the edge of a chair, her back straight, looking slimmer than when he’d last seen her, hands clasped in her lap as the sun highlighted the gloss in her rich golden curls. Her gaze landed on him with an arrested expression as she jumped to her feet.

His heart tripped.

She wore faded blue jeans with frayed slashes too symmetrical to have been the result of age and a soft, plum-coloured long-sleeved cotton top, which hugged her flat stomach and firm breasts the way he wanted to. The sight of her, the fragrance of her intoxicating scent filling his senses had his heart throbbing against the tightness in his chest.

He stepped inside. No woman had ever undone him like this before. Not even when he was a skinny, moody teen in the throes of his first infatuation. Cameron clenched his jaw. Not only had Sandy stepped all over his heart, she’d done so while giving his pride a swift kick. He doubted she came here today to declare her love for him.

His gaze zeroed in on her lush pink lips. How many times had he relived that kiss? Even two weeks on the memory still lingered.

Hurt pride became the antidote to his physiological reactions. Cameron hardened his voice, instilled a mimicry of hostility to hide how much she’d hurt him and said, “Hello, Sandy.”

WHEN CAMERON stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, Sandy’s heart tried to leap out of her chest.

Shirtless, he knocked the breath out of her. Her palms itched to travel over his wide, tanned shoulders, and solid biceps with the bulge of blue veins snaking under the surface of skin covering the defined muscles.

She longed to explore the contours of his chest with its smattering of silky dark hair that ran a happy trail down his flat, muscle-defined belly to disappear into the waistband of jeans that rode low on his hips. Since his kiss, she’d been plagued with endless fantasies. Looking at him now she realised her imagination hadn’t done his sculpted body much justice.

She’d come to apologise to Cameron for running out on him, explain why she did it, then get her life back to normal.

Two weeks at her Grandparents’ house in Cambridge had turned out to be a valuable part of her grieving process. She had found her mother’s diary—a documentation of torment—in one of the storage boxes her Gran had kept containing her mother’s belongings.

She’d discovered that Penny had been far more distraught than Sandy could have imagined, and her heart had gone out to the mother who, despite her desire not to live without her lover, had made the effort for her child’s sake. She now knew her mother’s periodic melancholy had started with her broken heart, which postnatal depression had exacerbated until it had culminated in her mother losing the twelve-year battle.