Page 40 of Forged in Peril
“Dinner was wonderful, Bristol, even though I ruined the ending. I think I’d better get outside and start my watch.”
She winced. He hadn’t ruined anything. That was all her.
“No,” she heard herself saying. “Wait.”
He obeyed, resting one muscled arm against the wall and leaning against it, waiting.
“Look, Cam, it’s–it’s not what you think,” she said, the words jumbling together as she tried to figure out how to explain feelings that she didn’t understand herself. “It’s not you. Goodness, it’s not you.”
She risked a glance up at him, letting her eyes linger on his handsome face, a face that she knew as well as her own, even after all this time.
“I love it when you’re near me,” she confessed, her voice lowering until it was nearly a whisper. “Even though I’m terrified, and you’re my boss, and it’s the worst idea ever, that’s the truth.”
He lifted his hand again, but before he could rest it against her cheek, he drew it back.
“So what is it, then? Did I move too fast?”
He looked so concerned that her heart somehow managed to melt even more. Despite all of the ways that she’d been prickly toward him, he still thought only of making sure that she was comfortable.
It was a gentleness that she hadn’t seen from a man since… well, since she’d walked away from him the first time.
She drew a deep breath.
In spite of her fears, Grace was right. Cameron was a good man. Perhaps the best man she knew.
And he deserved to know as much of the truth as she could bring herself to share.
“This is going to sound stupid,” she said, biting her lip.
“Try me.”
His blue eyes burned into hers.
“My fears and what I want clash sometimes,” she said, searching for the right words. “I wanted you to lean in. I wanted you to kiss me. But my body rebelled before I could think about it.”
He waited for her to finish, and she wondered how much more she was ready to say.
“Being alone with men scares me. I told you it was stupid, but that’s just how it is,” she said, not bothering to hide the defensiveness that snuck into her voice. “When I saw you again, even that first day at FBS, I was surprised that I didn’t feel that fear around you. Even when no one else was around. But tonight, here, with you in my house… I guess my body is still nervous, even if my mind–and even my heart–knows better.”
She knotted her fingers in the hem of her dress, hoping that he would accept that partial explanation of her actions, at least for now. She needed a chance to catch her breath before she dared broach the topic with any more depth.
“That doesn’t sound stupid,” Cam said firmly. “It sounds like I was moving too fast and making you uncomfortable.
“Please, I–”
“I noticed that you seemed nervous when I first stepped onto your porch, and I should have backed off. Instead, I chose to pursue what I wanted, without thinking of why you might have seemed anxious. I’m sorry for that.”
Before she could figure out how to respond, however, she heard a scuffling sort of sound coming from the back of the house.
Cameron stood up straight in an instant, his fingers moving for the gun at his belt before she’d had a chance to understand the potential danger she’d suddenly found herself in.
“Don’t run. Go into your mother’s room and lock it. Now,” he said under his breath, his tone leaving no room for her to argue.
She obeyed, walking quietly on shaking legs until she reached the front end of the trailer and the yellow-painted door that led into her mother’s modest bedroom. She went inside and closed it behind her as softly as she could, the click of the lock deafening in the silence.
She stood there for a moment, struggling to slow her breathing as a familiar panic took hold of her insides.
Should she hide in the closet? Under the bed?
