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“It was my mom’s middle name.” I fiddled with the hem of the skirt, then forced my fingers to stop. Fiddling was a terrible habit. I could practically hear my dad say it, just like he had over and over when I was younger. It was what led to the etiquette classes.
“What brings you to Portland?”
I sighed, dropping my head back against the panel wall. “How much time do you have?”
Cameron spread his hands out. “Plenty, apparently.”
My answering laugh was quiet.
Being stuck in that elevator felt like someone shoved me into a confessional.
We weren’t Catholic or anything, but I’d always imagined how freeing it must be to tuck yourself into that dark, quiet little space and not be able to see the person who sat on the other side listening.
To purge all your fears and sins, walking away a bit lighter than you’d come in.
It made me want to be someone else.
Someone who’d sit and talk easily with the big, tall stranger with rough hands. Just maybe, I could pretend I wanted to be here. Like I was the kind of woman who could roll with what was happening and enjoy getting to know someone who was—at a very short glimpse—undeniably handsome, with rough hands and strong arms.
My throat went a little dry because pretending to be someone else was the antithesis of my upbringing. I’d always felt like my real personality bubbled dangerously underneath the surface of every single interaction.
Can’t be too mouthy.
Can’t be too smart.
Can’t be too sharp, but heaven forbid I was too soft.
The men I’d met in my life were either intimidated by me—whether my name or my looks or my upbringing—or they wanted to conquer me.
Those assholes were easy to ignore.
When would I ever be in a situation again where my reputation—and my family’s—didn’t precede me?
This man had no idea who I was. And that felt an awful lot like freedom.
I didn’t need to clasp the lid tight on who I was. For once, I could just be me.
“I was here getting my mom’s wedding dress redesigned. It’s terribly out of style. I hate it, if I’m being honest. But I’m expected to wear it all the same. The seamstress next door to the hotel was actually the one who made it for her when my parents got married,” I told him, smoothing a hand over the voluminous skirt.
“Ahh. Was that the woman calling after you? Your mom?”
My heart squeezed just a little. That reaction did get the lid tightened.
Ruthlessly.
“No. She died when I was just a kid.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice low and sad.
“Thank you.” Then I shrugged and decided on another un-Ivy-like answer. Honesty was much easier to give when you were both sitting in the dark. “I don’t really remember her, though.”
“I can still be sorry you lost something.”
The straightforward way he said it plucked at a chord under my ribs, and I felt the furrow in my brow as a result.
“So you’re about to get married?” he asked.
That was a harder question to answer.
