While the idea of regaining his dignity on the pool table had seemed like a good one at the time, playing with Cam came with a unique set of challenges he hadn’t considered. Every time she bent over the pool table, her curvy butt was directly in his line of sight. Her fun-loving, competitive spirit woke up and took center stage. Every time she pocketed a ball, she’d rush back to his side and wrap her arms around his shoulders to celebrate. When she missed a shot or their opponents pocketed one of their balls, she’d grab his hand and squeezed his fingers as if to reassure him.
Currently, the teams were tied, with each pair having pocketed three of the opponents’ balls. He and Cam were the stripes, tasked with sinking balls numbered nine through fifteen. Meanwhile, Luis and Kenny had to sink solids one through seven. First team to sink all their balls, in numerical order, followed by the eight ball, won.
Cam took her shot. Crack! Click.Click.Click. The cue ball slammed into several balls before hitting the purple twelve, sending it directly toward the corner pocket—where it stopped half an inch from falling.
“Ohhhh! Too bad, sunshine. That’s tough luck. For you.” Luis snickered, and Kenny followed suit.
Cam’s expression remained placid as she gave a nod, turning the table over to Kenny.
He strode around the table, surveying the four ball from a dozen different angles, crouching here, leaning there, and frowning all the while. In moving the twelve ball closer, Cam had also caused a chain reaction that put the eight ball in a vulnerable position with the four.
While Kenny played his mind voodoo over the felt table and Luis looked on with some concern, Cam came to stand beside Jordan, and clapped in an up and down motion, as if smacking dust off her hands. “That should take some of the air out of those two windbags. Kenny’s bank shot is his weakest move.”
Having her so close to him played havoc with his memories. At one time, he’d been crazy in love with her. He’d loved her curves, her softness, her huge appetite for life—and love. In the bedroom, in the boardroom, in every place and every way, Cam gave and took with equal measure, but always in generous amounts.
Resentment simmered beneath his surface. After his injury on the field, he’d yearned for her to be there with him. The Cam he thought he knew would have dropped everything to stay by his side through the surgeries and the rehab and the endless hours of doubt and despair. Too bad the Cam he thought he knew had turned out to be a fantasy.
Yet, tonight, in Brady’s Place, he saw a few embers of the old Cam: the silly pajamas she wore with the same dignity she’d display while dressed in a designer evening gown or a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, her quick rush to his defense when she’d learned Luis had fleeced him, her vulnerability when she talked about dinner at her mother’s, the confidence she oozed while playing this game, the music, her slightly off-tone singing, the dancing. All of it, pure Cam.
Don’t fall for it, stupid. Not again.
He had to remind himself that the real Cam was the one who’d cut him from her life and never looked back. This charming woman beside him would only last until the ink dried on the sale contracts for her beloved building. And then, poof! All their mutual goodwill would disappear.
Crack! Kenny made his shot. Cam grabbed Jordan’s hand and held on tight while she sucked in a long, slow breath.
“No!” Luis shouted and sank to his knees, his palm over his chest.
Jordan swerved his attention to the table just in time to see the eight ball sink into the left side pocket.
Cam threw her arms in the air and, in her best announcer voice, shouted, “And that’s the game!”
She broke into laughter, a sound that rippled down Jordan’s spine. When she turned to face him, her face flushed with victory, he forgot about all the negatives he’d been listing in his head only moments ago. She managed to sidle between his legs and collapse into him in a full- frontal hug.
“We won! Woo-hoo!” she exclaimed.
His hand slid into her hair, bringing her lips closer to his. She tilted her head, and the only natural reaction was to kiss her. So he did.
He remembered the taste of her, the feel of her in his arms, and casting sanity to the wind, he indulged his senses in happier times. She melted into him, sitting on his thigh, the way she always would, molding herself into the perfect fit, his perfect match. Because despite their bitter past, despite the ugliness of the last few years without her, she was still his Cam.
“Jeez, you two,” Luis admonished, “get a room.”
He ignored the jibe and the hoots that erupted around them and held fast to this quicksilver woman. If he broke away, he’d lose her. Right now, right here, he could stop time.
“Ah, so that’s how it is,” another voice remarked from somewhere outside the realm they’d created.
Time returned, along with reality. And Marcus.
Jordan broke the kiss and stared into Cam’s starry eyes with regret. She blinked several times and clumsily got to her feet.
“Sorry,” she murmured, her gaze pinned to her sneakers. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I guess I got carried away. I should go.”
She stumbled away
