“You think it’s an act?”she asked after another considering sip of champagne.
“Aren’t we all acts?”
“Touché.”She pointed her fork at him.“But is my way of being—a free spirit, I bet you’re thinking…”
He jolted a bit at the hit.
“And your aloof man in charge of his world vibe a conscious mask of pretending or has it become instinct?Part of our essence?”
He had no idea.“Cam likes to play two truths and a lie on dates, and also when he’s sizing up a potential business swoop.”Why did he share that?
Her smile was wicked.“A swoop.That’s a first for me.Ladies first?”
“Sure,” he said, expecting her to tell him three things about herself.
“Why does the wordlegacybother you?”she asked as she poured a bit more champagne in her glass.He’d barely touched his and should have poured.Cam would have kicked him under the table for his boorish manners.Again, he had this unreasonable flash that she was sent by Cam’s spirit to kick his ass into gear in some way.
That would so be like Cam, even dead, to keep directing everything.And it was reassuring in a way it probably shouldn’t be.Had his mother sent him signs that he’d ignored in his wild grief and catatonic months of grieving?
Was this mystical boho fairy of a woman a sign?
She seemed to… he couldn’t even think of a word or even a phrase that would explain her… but she didn’t seem like a messenger that Cam would have chosen.
Do you get a choice in heaven picking messengers?
He ran his fingers through his hair.They were shaking.He was being absurd.She was a real woman.The hostess had seen her.The somm.The server.He half stood and then sat again.
She paused in the act of sipping more champagne, eyed him over the flute’s rim, sympathy and curiosity stamped in her bourbon gaze.“You can pass on the question.It’s Cam’s game, not ours.”
Ours.The word felt like a bullet.He was alone again.He wasn’t awe.Nothing would again beours.
“It’s something Cam started talking about recently,” he said uneasily, reached for his glass and downed half of it, infusing his mouth and throat and gut with bubbles that turned to acid.
He needed to tell her.He needed to accept reality so he could figure out his next move.He’d been staying in their corporate suite to feel closer to Cam, continuing on with business deals they—he—were in the middle of.Hell, he hadn’t even called the coroner’s office to find out when he could claim Cam’s body—and what would he do with it?Had Cam specified?Neither of them were religious or had family.He hadn’t had the courage to read the will, though Sydney had reached out to him to make an appointment.
“Is that why he wanted a mail-order bride?Children could be seen as a legacy.”
There was something in her tone that was off, and her eyes darkened, became more luminous—a place where he could hide.
He shook himself mentally away from that ridiculous image.He was a man.Not a child hiding, though his life felt under attack.He’d stood with Cam for nearly two decades.He’d stand on his own now.He owed that to Cam—perhaps that would be his legacy.Carrying on.Not that he had a choice.
“Cam was… is… turning forty got him thinking.Roots.Neither of us have them.Family.A wife.Kids.He wanted three.Montana.”He could barely choke that word out.“He wanted land.To start building his own family history.Create a future that wasn’t just the business.”
As he spoke, she leaned forward, listening with her whole body, expression open, finger lightly running up and down the stem of the champagne glass in a distractingly sexy manner.
“Came out of nowhere.Cam’s a life force.Always thinking, doing.He was about the business.Being a billionaire before forty was his idea.We’ve been friends and business partners for… most of my life, but a month ago, in the middle of a huge deal that could have gone either way, he said he’d connected with an agency.Sounded so… western frontier, like a mail-order bride.I didn’t think he was serious and then…”
He wondered if he should tell her, that some of those back-and-forth texts had been from him because Cam had been busy or unavailable, and he wanted his future bride to knowshe would always be first.
Even though she didn’t.
The thought felt disloyal, and he had trouble swallowing it.
“The game’s getting off track.”
“Doesn’t feel like a game, does it?”
How did she keep doing that?He wasn’t even sure what she was doing that unnerved him, but he felt as if she could reach into his soul—if he had one—and read his deepest thoughts.It reminded him of texting idly with Vesna, in between late-night communications with an unhappy and disloyal coder at a start-up software company he and Cam were trying to disrupt and make a bid for before they went public.Vesna had sometimes asked disconcerting questions that had made him stew—confused and uncomfortably aroused him.He’d felt like dirt communicating with Cam’s potential future wife, with her thinking she was him.And disgusted by his… attraction felt like too weak a word.
