Melt for You (Slow Burn #2)(70)

Cameron and his mother lived with Sir Gladstone until her suicide when Cameron was eighteen, the same year he was recruited to the Red Devils. Sir Gladstone and Catherine McGregor were rumored to be romantically involved at the time of her death, but he denied the reports.

I stare at the screen in shock.

Both his parents killed themselves. He was an orphan by the age of eighteen. He was poor, weak, beaten, and bullied, utterly disadvantaged, yet somehow managed to find the strength to become one of the world’s foremost athletes.

I feel as if I’ve been flattened by a steamroller. Everything I assumed about Cameron McGregor is wrong.

“Joellen.”

I start at the sound of Cam’s voice, thinking I must be going insane. But when I swing around, he’s standing there in the entrance to my cubicle, the receptionist hovering nervously a few feet behind him.

“This gentleman said you were expecting him, Joellen?” says the receptionist, Kim, a sweet girl with a nervous tic in her left eyelid. She always looks like she’s sending a conspiratorial wink.

“Don’t tell me you forgot our lunch date,” Cam drawls when I sit frozen, mystified by his presence.

“Lunch date?” I repeat blankly. When I see Kim’s eyes widen in alarm, I quickly backtrack. “Oh! Yes! Sorry, I was just so absorbed in work I lost track of time!”

Cam’s gaze cuts to my computer screen.

I leap to my feet like my chair is on fire and hit the power button so hard I almost knock the screen over. Then I turn breathlessly to Cam and Kim. I’m grinning maniacally like a circus clown. “Okay! All set!”

Kim drifts away with a confused smile, while Cam just stands there, taking up all the space in the room.

From my peripheral vision, I see the top of Shasta’s head begin to creep over the cubicle wall. Whispers are starting up all around us because Cameron McGregor is huge, handsome, and impossible not to notice. His shoulders are almost as wide as my desk.

With my crazed smile plastered firmly in place, I say between my teeth, “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing, lass.” His smile is almost as absurd as mine, but while mine is hysterical, his is smug.

He totally caught me googling him. Life as I know it is over.

He’s more dressed up than I’ve ever seen him, which only means he put on a black sport jacket over his jeans and T-shirt. Paired with his scruffy jaw and boots, the overall effect is one of effortless cool. He looks great, and he knows it.

So do all the females on the floor, who are collectively soiling their panties. Shasta’s eyes above the lip of the cubicle wall are like saucers.

Then the worst thing that could possibly happen, does.

“Well, this is certainly a surprise. I recognize you from the tabloids. Cameron McGregor, am I correct?”

Cam and I turn our attention to Michael, who’s stopped in the hallway a few feet away. He’s gazing at Cam like he’s a bug he’d like to smash under the sole of his calfskin Hermès loafer.

Cam jerks his chin at Michael and sends him one of his signature shit-eating grins. “Aye. You’ll be wantin’ an autograph, I’m sure, but you’ll have to excuse me, mate. I’m just’ leavin’ for lunch with Joellen.”

Michael—resplendent in a couture Brioni suit the color of Cam’s eyes when he’s particularly mad—sets his shoulders. “I wasn’t asking for an autograph.”

They gaze at each other as I fight the urge to dive under my desk and curl into a ball until all the chest beating is over. I can tell Cam recognizes Michael, too, but he’s pretending like he has no clue who he is—just another fan dazzled by his presence.

If he wanted to piss Michael off, he picked the perfect way to do it. Michael’s neck has flushed a deep, angry red.

I know exactly what makes pretty rich boys tick, Cam told me. Here’s an unmistakable bit of proof.

Things take a turn toward the melodramatic when Portia appears behind Michael, slinking up like a fox past the henhouse door. She looks Cam up and down, her foxy nose twitching at the scent of fresh meat. “Oh. Pardon me,” she purrs. “Am I interrupting?”

God, between the three of them I feel like I’m in the Bermuda Triangle. I blurt nervously, “We were just leaving for lunch!”

Portia’s gaze slides toward me. I’m surprised to see curiosity in her eyes, not the usual hostility. She looks at Michael, then at Cam, then back at me, but doesn’t respond.

Michael says stiffly, “It’s a bit early for lunch, isn’t it? It’s barely past eleven o’clock.”

Cam responds with a knowing chuckle. “Joellen couldn’t wait. Called and asked me to come sooner.”

The flush in Michael’s neck creeps up toward his ears, but, more interestingly, the curiosity in Portia’s gaze turns into something different. Relief? No, that wouldn’t make sense. But I don’t have time to think on it because she blows me away by smiling.

“How nice! You work so hard, Joellen. You deserve to take a long lunch. I’ll speak to you later this afternoon. I just wanted to go over your current workload with you. It can wait. Gentlemen.” She nods at Michael, then at Cam, then leaves with a spring in her step.

I gape at her retreating back, convinced I’ve suffered a recent traumatic brain injury. There’s no way that just happened.