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26
CAMI
We landed in Morocco late at night. I carried Emma off the plane, her head lolling on my shoulder, her weight straining my arms. A woman saw me struggling and took my bags, walking with me all the way to security where Robert was waiting.
I hated that, even as I thanked her profusely, I wondered if she had been a littletoonice. Was she the one who had sent the threats? I stared at her face, trying to place her. I’d been to plenty of the Livin’ Lavigne Loco events, done team building exercises and given out awards and socialized for days on end. But there had been thousands of consultants. Nearly a hundred thousand, at its peak. The fact that this woman with her kindly brown eyes and hair that was frizzing to gray at its temples didn’t look familiar didn’t mean anything.
Robert thanked her, too, taking the bags off her arms and then wrapping a long arm around my shoulders, pulling me and Emma away.
“You don’t think…” I asked quietly, glancing over my shoulder to make sure she hadn’t fixed us with a long, lingering stare like some villain in a bad thriller.
“I don’t think what?” Robert asked. Then he noticed where my gaze had gone and squeezed my shoulders. “No, Cami. You’re safe here, I promise.”
I relaxed somewhat. Robert never made idle promises. If he said we were safe, it was because he believed down to his bones that we were.
Emma slept in the car, and Robert quietly told me how things were going for him and my mother. Their stop in Mauritius had been uneventful. They’d arranged for the Renoirs to be sold. Once the money came in, they would buy a place in Morocco. Something smaller than the villa they were staying in now. According to Mom, it was “too much house.”
“Do you think it’s too much house?” I asked Robert.
Robert paused, then said diplomatically, “I don’t think it is the size of the house that puts me off.”
I smiled into the dark. If Robert hadn’t fallen in love with my mother, he likely would have ended up in a place much like Landon’s. Spare and minimalist. Then my heart squeezed painfully at the thought of Landon, and my smile fell away. Over the last long twelve hours, I’d had to exorcize him from my thoughts. If I let myself think about him – his green eyes or his wry laugh or, more importantly, the way his whole face softened when he looked at Emma – I couldn’t have left.
Robert sensed the shift in my mood and fell silent. He was good at that. My mother wouldn’t have been able to help herself. She’d have tried to make me feel better by dismissing the idea that there was anything about Landon worth missing. She would have tried to distract me by telling me about all the handsome men there were in Morocco, andrichtoo, as if all I needed was a replacement. Then, when all that failed, she would have needled at me, telling me that I never should have gone to him in the first place.
Robert, on the other hand, drove us the rest of the way without saying a single placating word.
I was surprised when we reached the villa. It was huge and beautiful, but I didn’t see a single security guard. When we walked in, I saw the security system was a standard model and unarmed. My parents must really feel safe here to forego the precautions we’d taken in Los Angeles.
Robert saw me looking at the unarmed system and said again, gently, “You’re safe here, Cami.”
Emma’s bedroom was off of mine, and despite Robert’s reassurances, that made me feel better. I laid her down in the bed that seemed too large for her small body and backed up, pulling the door closed quietly behind me. If she woke up in the night, disoriented and scared, I would hear her.
Then, overwhelmed by exhaustion that was both physical and mental, I crawled into my own bed and fell asleep instantly.
* * *
When I woke the next morning, I was the one who was disoriented. By falling asleep so quickly, I thought I’d escaped the thoughts of Landon. Instead, he followed me into my dreams. I saw him the way he’d been the first time we were together. Remote, and then reluctant, and then, finally, giving in to what we both felt. I saw him the way he looked in the dark, those pale green eyes catching the moonlight, his hard, handsome face over mine. Then I saw him at the wedding, resigned and resolved to marry me. That was the nightmare. Not even the dreams in which he found me and raged at me for taking Emma away were worse than the look on his face when he told me it would be our turn next. As though he were pronouncing his own life sentence.
There was a tight ball of pain in my chest. I wanted to curl up tighter under the blankets, pull my knees up to my chest as if that could protect my heart, but I forced myself to get out of bed. I pushed back the comforter and slid off the high bed to the floor and, as if she’d been waiting, listening for sounds of life, Emma opened the door between our rooms.
She looked disheveled and disoriented. I wondered if she’d ever fully woken up between the plane and arriving here.
“Where are we?” she asked, her voice thin and high, the way it was before a tantrum.
“We’re with Gram Gram and Pop Pop,” I said soothingly.
Emma’s face brightened incrementally. “They’re here with us? In the house?”
“Yes, probably already downstairs. Go see them.”
“Is my daddy here, too?”
“No, honey.” I swallowed. “He’s not.”
Emma’s face fell. “Why not?” Her voice was climbing again.
“He has some work to finish up.”
