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The server came to take their order. Cameron looked at Piper. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah. I’d like pizza.”
Once they’d ordered, Cameron looked around. He liked this place. It was quieter than the resort.
Piper smiled at him. “What do you think? Did I choose well?”
“Yeah. I like it. And I like that it’s quieter.” They’d come to a little restaurant named Giuseppe’s on the edge of town.
“Me too. I like the resort, and I like the band, but this is more me.”
“It’s funny, when we were at the bachelor party, I thought you were the clubbing kind.”
She laughed. “What on earth gave you that idea?”
“The way you were up dancing most of the time, the way you gave guys the brush off. It looked like you were used to it.”
She shook her head. “No. Not at all. I was up dancing because Kenzie and your sister kept dragging me up there, and as for brushing guys off, I’m not used to that at all.” He raised an eyebrow, and she laughed. “I’m not! I don’t normally get dressed up, and guys don’t tend to notice you when you wear boots and jeans and sweatshirts.”
“I noticed you the first time I saw you. I’d notice you no matter what you were wearing.”
She laughed. “I doubt that. Even the first time you saw me, I was all dressed up by my usual standards. I was here on vacation, visiting Laura. I’d bought new clothes and everything.”
Cameron smiled. He was more used to women who wore thousand-dollar dresses and dismissed them asthis old thing.Piper’s attitude was so refreshing. “So what made you buy a whole bunch of new clothes and go on vacation?”
She shrugged. “I was bored. I was tired of being stuck in the same old rut, but I didn’t see any way out of it. I knew a break from work would do me good. I’d been miserable for a long time. And, in case you’ve never noticed, when a woman is feeling down, she tends to buy new clothes to help her feel better more than to make her look better.”
He had noticed that. It made him wonder if that was why Chelsea and Mary Ellen were going shopping this weekend. Was his sister down about something?
Piper gave him a puzzled look. “What’s up?”
“Sorry, I was just thinking about Chelsea. I think there’s something going on with her.”
“She seems nice. Do you work together?”
“Not really. I told you she never wanted to come into the offices. Chelsea’s more an outdoor kind of girl. She took over one of the wineries and made it her own. Whereas I oversee the whole operation, she’s very much the winemaker—and a damned good one.”
“Wow. That’s so cool. I tend to think of winemakers as men; it’s nice to think of her doing that.”
Cameron laughed. “She said the same thing about you being a pilot.”
Piper grinned. “I think she and I would get along well.”
“I know you would. In fact …” He hesitated; he’d been about to ask her to come to Napa next weekend. He’d like her and Chelsea to get to know each other, but at the same time, he didn’t want to throw her to the wolves, as Mary Ellen had put it.
“What?”
He decided he may as well lay it out for her. Let her decide for herself. “I was thinking it’d be cool if you wanted to come see me next weekend. We could hang out with Chelsea. I know the two of you would hit it off. I’m hosting a big charity dinner. I’d love for you to come, but …”
She was frowning at him. “But what?”
Was he really going to warn her about Larissa and Mel and Natasha? No! He wasn’t. She’d been so leery of him when she’d thought he was just a player. He didn’t want to go reinforcing that by telling her how all the women he usually slept with would be there. “But I don’t know if you’d enjoy that kind of thing, and I don’t even know if you’d want to go there with me for the weekend.” He smiled, hoping to get her to relax again. “Maybe you just want to import me as a plaything for the weekends till you get settled here.”
She looked incredulous for a moment, and then she laughed. “Me import you as a plaything? Ha. That’s funny. I can see that being the other way around.”
He shook his head. He didn’t want her to think that was why he was asking her to go to Napa, but he could hardly tell her that he had no shortage of playthings there. “Nope. You’re the one with the upper hand here, sweetie.”
Her eyes widened, but he nodded. “It’s true. Think about it. You’re just getting on with your life. I’m the one who’s going out of his way to be around you.”
