Crazy about Cameron: The Winslow Brothers #3(41)
“You are.” She reached up and palmed his cheek gently. “How is it that I’ve known you forever, but I’m just getting to know you now?”
“I’m falling for you,” he said softly, wincing as the blurted words faded away. “Bad.”
“Me too,” she said, with a whisper of a smile.
He pressed his lips to her palm, holding her eyes with his, with a scorching tenderness that made her body come alive, that made tendrils of pleasure unfurl from the place where he kissed her.
“Miss Story?”
Margaret dropped her hand from Cameron’s face and felt her cheeks flush with heat. She’d forgotten that they were in the lobby of their building, sharing an intimate moment while on public display.
“Franklin. Ahem. Yes?”
The concierge, grinning knowingly, approached with a small FedEx box. “This just came for you, miss. From Mexico.”
“Mexico?”
She took the box and glanced at the return address. “Oh. It’s from Baja.”
Cameron looked at her inquisitively.
“The best wines in Mexico come from Baja California, and I recently inquired about vine acquisition. I bet this is a proposal.”
“I can’t say that I’ve ever drunk a wine from Mexico,” he said.
“You have. You just didn’t know it. Mexico has a very ancient winemaking tradition. Believe it or not, the very first winery in the Americas was in Mexico, and those grapes, which originally came from Spain, were imported to Napa Valley in the early 1800s. So all the best California wines are, in essence, Mexican.”
“Actually, they’re Spanish,” said Cameron.
“Purist.”
“I assure you my thoughts right now are far from pure,” he said, letting his glance drift from her face to her chest before recapturing her eyes suggestively.
She grinned at him. “Naughty.”
“With you? I wish.” He took the FedEx box from her and placed it on top of the collection of albums, diaries, and frames, then lifted the whole box in his arms. “Shall we?”
“Absolutely.”
***
Hours later, after tasting all of Harrell Reserve’s summer wines, they sat side by side in Adirondack chairs while a local band played a decent cover of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.” Cameron watched Margaret’s lips move silently to the words of a song that could have been written about her, and her face was a soft gold, lit by the late-afternoon sun. She had a fair smattering of freckles that she probably concealed with makeup most days, and he loved the way they sprinkled playfully over her nose and cheeks. He turned back to face the band and sighed, barely resisting the urge to draw her face to his and kiss each and every one of them.
He’d learned a lot about her today.
She’d been fired from Story Imports on Friday.
Her father was a bona fide bastard.
Her mother had been dutiful and quietly ineffectual before an aneurysm took her life a few years ago.
She loved her sisters.
She intended to start living in Newtown as soon as Geraldo finished her apartment and she could put it on the market.
In the past several hours, all of Cameron’s feelings for her had been quietly and firmly reinforced. The innate sense of serenity that had always drawn him to her inspired in him a desperate longing never to leave her side, never to be without the peace her presence afforded him. In a loud and obnoxious world filled with deadlines and business, Margaret was an oasis of tranquility.
She was soft and graceful, gentle and kind. Her forbearance with her father and unconditional love for her sisters made him yearn for her constant company, made him rethink the entire path of his life with a prudence—a cautious thoughtfulness—that he’d never exercised.
Today he’d also learned something crucial about Margaret’s yin to his yang. On the outside, they might have looked, as she suggested last night, like a librarian and a hothead, but the beauty of their inverse symmetry was that he somehow encouraged her to loosen up, and she somehow inspired him to grow up. And the net of the equation was a feeling of profound rightness when they were together.
He no longer needed to think about his decision for Barrett.
He would sell.
C & C Winslow, his beloved father’s legacy, would always be something that Cameron had tried to keep afloat for as long as possible, to honor his father’s memory. But, unless he let it go, he would sink with it and drown . . . and forever lose his chance to fall in love with the most amazing woman in the world. And what he had suspected, but learned definitively today, was that there was no legacy, no memory, no duty lodged in the past that equaled the privilege of time spent with Margaret in the present and future. There was simply no other place in his life that afforded the sense of peace and belonging that he found sitting beside her. And once a man found that place—that person—he had a responsibility to secure her to his side with every drop of determination in his being.
Finding himself on the precipice of falling in love with Margaret, there was, quite simply, nothing he wasn’t willing to do in order to clear a path to her door.
He’d said it to her weeks ago—When I come for you, there’ll be no half measures, Meggie. When I come for you, I’ll be coming with everything I’ve got. And now? Now it was time.
Reaching over, he covered her hand with his and curled his fingers around hers. Without turning to him, she ran her thumb lightly over the back of his hand, and Cameron inhaled deeply, his decision settling in his mind with purpose, finality, and the deep satisfaction that he was finally taking his life in the right direction.