She wriggled on the couch, folding her arms over her chest to camouflage the bit of bulge at her waistline that no hydraulic underwear could hide.
“Stop that,” he growled, pulling her arms apart. “You’re perfect, Cam. A real man likes a woman with curves.”
A block of tears clogged her throat, and she swallowed them back, then patted the space beside her. Her palm slapped the slender chain of her evening bag, and she wrapped her fingers around the cool silver links before flinging the accessory over the back of the couch. A clink-thud erupted when the purse hit the polished wooden floor.
“Sit,” she said, her voice rough as sandpaper. “I need your shoulder.”
“Uh-oh.” He settled next to her, his bulk sinking the cushion so that she rose a tick—no small feat, considering her own meatiness. She frowned, and Bertie wrapped a brawny arm around her to bring her closer. His every inhale and exhale echoed against her ribcage, a soothing tempo she’d enjoyed since childhood. She let the rhythm calm her frazzled nerve endings, snuggling closer, her ear pressed to his chest until his vibrato broke the spell. “So... what’s up?”
On a weighty sigh, she straightened again, mentally scrambling to figure out where to begin. “Okay, so you know how I’ve been trying to find a new space for the midtown center?”
“Uh-huh...”
One of the many things she loved about Bertie, he never pressed her or interrupted when she needed to talk. He always let her move at her own pace.
“Well, there’s a building about five blocks from our current site that looks perfect. Plenty of space for our growing pains, convenient to bus and subway stops, and in our price range.”
“But...”
She uttered the statement in one breath, without a pause. “But the real estate agent is Jordan Fawcett.”
Bertie gave a curt nod. “Ah.”
“Yeah.” She grimaced.
She didn’t have to say anything more about her feelings. Without additional details, Bertie understood how painful this situation was for her. After all, he’d been the one to fly to Texas to help gather up her shattered pieces when Jordan rejected her at the hospital. Not her mother—never her mother—whose only advice was the constant, “If you’d only lose some weight, you could have your pick of men.” Like she could fight the genetics that made her build more like Duke Delgado’s instead of the frail-bird-stature of her mother’s family.
“Why do I sense you’ve got more to say?”
Good old astute Bertie. She tangled her hands in the fabric of her skirt. “Because I do. Guess who was waiting for me outside the building when I came home tonight.”
His lantern jaw unhinged and hung open. “No.”
She nodded.
“How’d he look?”
“Wet,” she retorted. “He must have hung outside here for hours, waiting for me.”
“Well, that’s interesting.”
“Ya think? I find it idiotic. He could wind up with pneumonia.”
He quirked a brow. “Would you care if he did?”
“Of course I would.” She punched a fist into the throw pillow beside her. “Do you have any idea how much damage a diagnosis like that could do to a man in his physical condition?” He gave her a scrutinizing look, and heat crept into her cheeks. “Yeah, okay. I looked it up.”
His eyes bored into her over-exhausted brain. “Uh-huh. Care to tell me why?”
She waved her hand, partly in dismissal, but also to cool her face. “It was ages ago. When he was first injured. I wanted to know more about his condition, what changes he had to make in his life.” God, she sounded like a stalker. “I was worried about him, okay? He and I were close for years. We almost got married. I can’t just turn off my concerns because he ditched me. I mean, I’m not as heartless as my mother.”
“Your mother’s not heartless. She’s had to be strong her whole life. It’s made her...” He paused, searching for the right word. “...tougher than most people take her for. She’s got a soft, gooey center—like you, and some cretins have taken advantage of that. So she’s learned to hide that part of her. You haven’t, and she dreads the idea you might be hurt the way she was.”
Yeah, right. Cam sniffed. The only softness in Mom came from the finest skin care regimen money could buy. “I will never understand how you can continue to defend her.”
“We all have our flaws, sweetheart.” He poked her nose again. “Including you. But we’ve gotten off-topic. We were talking about Jordan. I guess he really wanted to see you, so he must’ve thought it worth the risk of pneumonia. I mean, he could’ve called the corporate office if it was about showing the property. But, no. He hung around here in the rain.”
“Yeah.” She gazed up at the ceiling, unable to look him in the eye. “About that.”
“Ah,” he repeated with the same realized inflection. “He did call the corporate office. I take it you initiated the correspondence about the building before you knew the identity of the agent in charge of the property. So, how many times after that initial interest did you pass him off onto Val?”
She shrugged. “Val took the original call. I’ve had no contact with him at all. As soon as I realized he was the selling agent, I told her to forget it.”
“Okay, let me get this straight. He’s got a property that’s ideal for your needs, a property that could make a helluva commission for its agent, but once you discovered Jordan was the agent, you had Val go radio silent on him. Did you think he wouldn’t try to follow up?”
Realizing this was a rhetorical question, she didn’t answer. What could she say?
“Well, if you refused to take his calls, it’s no wonder he tried to talk to you here. You should’ve expected it. What’d he say when he saw you?”
The message on the card from this afternoon’s floral arrangement, burned into her memory, came to her lips unbidden. “He said
