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I hummed, noncommittal, but a faint hint of pink stained the bridge of her pert nose, and I wondered…
Ivy’s green eyes flicked toward mine in the mirror. “Can I ask you a question, darlin’?”
“Sure.”
Her hands came to rest on my shoulders. “Now, you don’t gotta say nothing you don’t want to, but curious minds want to know.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Might you have a bit of interest in my Camden?”
The polite smile I attempted to paste on came out rigid and twitchy. “What do you mean?”
She cocked her head, and we stared at each other for a moment in the mirror.
“Never mind.” She threaded her fingers through my hair. “It ain’t my business.” The flutters in my stomach settled, but less than ten seconds of silence passed before she said, “It’s just… If memory serves—please, correct me if I’m wrong—I recall an awful lot of tension between the two of you last week.”
I said nothing.
She twisted a portion of hair up and pinned it. “My mama taught me no matter how you dress it up, there’s only one kind of tension that exists between a man and a woman.”
I coughed. “It’s nothing. There’s no tension.”
She raised her eyes to mine, full of skepticism. “He let you drive his Lambo. The boy lets no one drive his Lambo.”
“Okay, fine.” I deflated. “Maybe there’s a little tension.”
She grinned. “Go on.”
“I—may have had a crush on him.” I stared at my hands. “When we were kids.”
“When you were—” She blinked several times, digesting that. “Does he know that?”
A laugh bubbled up. “I don’t know.”
Still looking a bit shocked, she squeezed my shoulder. “You should tell him. It’d absolutely make his day. He thought you hated him.” Her eyes went distant. “Spent graduation night like a sad, drunk puppy, complaining to me he blew his chance with you. Ruined my night, if I’m honest.”
“He—what?”
Her brow creased. “I probably shouldn’t’ve told you that.”
“He didn’t blow his chance. I would’ve— If I’d known—”
She went back to my hair.
“Look, he was just so handsome. And he had this…stare. It was—” My hand slid over my eyes. “So sexy. And the way he spoke, too. So clever. I was crushing hard, but he was Camden Shepherd! So out of my league.”
When I lowered my hand from my eyes, Ivy’s face in the mirror was bewildered.
“Are we talking about the same Cam? I’ve loved that boy from the cradle, but the Cam I remember was gangly and quiet. When he did speak, he said smartass things that no one else understood, and his hair always needed brushing. That Cam?”
It had never occurred to me that other women might not find him attractive. That straight females existed on this planet who might not be into him.
No accounting for taste.
Regardless, I felt compelled to argue. “You can’t have an opinion. You’re basically his sister.”
“And as his sister, I was privy to a lot of things. He was so obvious about his interest in you that I called him HoneyCam when we were alone.”
