Crazy about Cameron: The Winslow Brothers #3
Katy Regnery
Chapter 1
Cameron Winslow pressed the call button on the elevator, checking his watch as he waited for it to descend. Ten thirty. Yet another fifteen-hour day.
Since his brother Christopher had decided to bail on their financial company, C & C Winslow, to pursue a congressional bid, Cameron had been left high and dry and in charge of the accounts they’d painstakingly built up together. Somewhere deep inside, he knew that he couldn’t continue on like this, and yet . . . they’d inherited the company from their late father and had worked hard not just to respect their father’s legacy, but to make C & C Winslow their own. He couldn’t give up yet. He wouldn’t.
The lobby door whooshed open, and Cameron turned to see Margaret Story step onto the marble floor. The building super, Diego, rushed to take her wet umbrella, and Margaret smiled at him, her lips tilted up in a demure grin. Cameron’s eyes trailed hungrily down her petite body, taking in the short tan raincoat she had belted at her tiny waist and her gorgeous legs in two-inch heels. Sliding his eyes back up, he focused on her dark brown hair, pulled back severely in a smooth bun, and black-rimmed glasses covering her cognac-colored eyes.
He felt his body tighten in response and turned away from her, facing the shiny brass door of the elevator as it dinged softly.
Margaret Story was the unaware star of Cameron’s filthiest naughty-librarian fantasies.
Always had been. Always would be.
And yet Margaret was a lady—someone who deserved his respect and admiration. He had no business thinking about her like that. There were women you did filthy things with . . . and women you married. He knew plenty of the former, but Margaret was firmly the latter. And since Cameron Winslow wasn’t exactly in a position to be considering marriage, his deeply embedded moral code insisted that Margaret Story was strictly off-limits to him.
Not that she was available, he thought, clenching his jaw. She’d been dating some self-important * at her father’s company for the past several months. Cameron had had the misfortune of being trapped in the elevator with Shane Olson and Margaret once or twice, and he wasn’t anxious for it to happen again anytime soon. It was hard enough to see Margaret at all—seeing her with her smug, overconfident boyfriend, when she deserved so much better, was almost unbearable.
Cameron glanced back at her quickly, glad that Shane was absent tonight, but hoping that she’d chat with the handyman for a few more seconds so that he could make his way upstairs alone.
“Thanks so much, Diego,” she called as the elevator door opened. He heard her heels clack across the marble floor as she rushed toward the elevator. “I’ll give him a call tomorrow!”
Cameron turned around just in time to see her step inside the suddenly tiny box and give him a careful smile.
“Cameron.”
“Meggie.”
She flinched at his use of her childhood nickname, her pretty lips pursing. He knew she didn’t like it, but using it kept some distance between them, and Cameron needed that distance if he had any chance of behaving decently around her.
She leaned forward to press the eighth-floor button, and the slight movement released a scent of lilac that made Cameron groan quietly. She smelled like spring, and it made his mind switch from rational thought to spring fever whenever he was close to her.
Margaret turned around to face him, lifting her chin. “Honestly, Cameron, I don’t know what I ever did to you.”
This was a familiar conversation. She initiated it at least once every couple of weeks when they bumped into each other, and as much as Cameron dreaded it, he sort of longed for it too. It meant that he mattered to her—on some level, insignificant though it may have been, prim, perfect, pristine Margaret Story cared that Cameron appeared not to like her.
Cameron did his best to look bored, glancing at her with half-lidded eyes and shrugging.
“Fine,” she said, shaking her head, her expression just shy of hurt. “Be that way.”
She turned back around, pushing her purse to her elbow and crossing her arms over her chest.
He’d grown up with Margaret Story—their estates separated by the Rousseaus’ house on Blueberry Lane in nearby Haverford. And she’d always, more or less, been the person she was now. Even as a child, she’d been bookish and severe, likely to blow the whistle on any misconduct and get adults running over to spoil the kids’ fun. Cameron really hadn’t paid her any attention until her legs suddenly got long and coltish and her small breasts started to tease him at neighborhood pool parties.
He’d watched her then, studied her, quietly fascinated by her innate serenity. She was more comfortable hanging back, the second of five sisters, perennially in older Alice’s shadow and looking after her younger sisters, Betsy, Pris, and Jane. He had a sense that she liked flying under the radar, which made her his favorite target for teasing: the attention, to which she was unaccustomed, always made her red and flustered, and Cam had savored her reaction to him. He loved pulling her braids—teasing her in an attempt to loosen her up—and when it backfired and she stomped away in a snit, he couldn’t help wishing he could somehow figure out how to be the boy who could make her loosen up, make her smile.
But at thirteen years old, just when Cameron might have mustered up the courage to steal a kiss from twelve-year-old Margaret, whom his barely-teen heart loved desperately, his father died suddenly of a heart attack. His whole world changed overnight, ending in his move to London with his mother, brothers, and little sister . . . and Margaret Story became a dim memory attached to happier days he’d just as soon forget.