Jordan bit his tongue. At one time, he thought he was an expert on Cam’s likes and dislikes. Turned out, he was wrong.
“Isn’t tomorrow night that dinner fundraiser thing?” Susan asked.
“The Duke Delgado Awards Ceremony.” He knew it well, had accompanied her to several over the years they’d dated.
Susan punctuated the air with her index finger. “Yeah, that thing. Figure out a way to get her alone there and talk to her. As a former player for their football team, you should be able to finagle an invitation.”
Probably. But since his Vanguard teammates weren’t any more thrilled with his abrupt departure from New York than Cam had been, he doubted they’d toss out a welcome mat for his return.
“Take advantage of any insight you have, any string you can pull,” Susan suggested. “Beg and plead for her forgiveness, if that’s what it takes. Hell, crawl on your belly if you have to. Just get her to buy the property.”
Bitter ashes filled his mouth, and he swallowed hard, then grimaced at the taste. “Let’s start smaller than that, if you don’t mind.”
He’d be damned if he’d ever beg Cam for anything ever again.
Chapter 3
“What the hell?” Cam entered the front office to find a forest of roses erupting from her receptionist’s desk.
“The delivery kid just dropped them off,” Val replied from behind the mélange of ivory-frosted crimson blooms. “Three dozen roses for you.” Her blond head popped up from behind the garden like a prairie dog’s. “I wish some guy was so head-over-heels in love with me, he’d order a bouquet like this and have it delivered to my office where all my coworkers could see and be jealous. Must be nice.”
Nice? Not particularly. Even before she pulled the florist’s envelope from the plastic stick, Cam had a sneaky suspicion she knew who’d sent the Overkill Bouquet.
“Toss them out.” She waved a hand, noticed her ragged nails, and shoved her fists—with the florist’s card still clutched between her fingers—into her jacket pockets. “But not here. Take them to the hallway trash. Anywhere in here, and they’ll make the whole floor smell like a funeral parlor.”
An odor she’d rather not relive in the coming few hours. She had enough reminders to overcome tonight.
“Umm...”
Val’s unusual hesitancy ruffled Cam’s already frazzled interior. Rising on tiptoes to stretch to full-force-intimidation-six-foot-height, Cam peered over the flowers. What had happened to the competent woman she’d come to admire? Right now, her assistant blushed like a teenager with her first crush.
“Spit it out, Val.”
The woman’s teddy bear gaze darted in a dozen directions before landing on the ostentatious blooms. “Can I keep them? I mean...you probably get flowers like these all the time...but...well...”
Cam rolled her eyes. Oh, I so do not have time for this right now. The awards dinner is in six hours. I still have to shower, change, and now it looks like I need an emergency manicure. Why did I let Hank and Luis goad me into shooting pool last night?
Because her nerves were stretched taut, she needed the stress relief, and she’d assumed a quiet game of pool would be kinder on her hands than a bout of kickboxing. Fool.
As if rubbing salt in Cam’s bleeding wounds, Val folded perfect cotton candy-painted fingernails into a clasp of prayer. “Please? I bet they cost a fortune. It’d be a shame to just throw them in the trash.”
Annoyance sparked, and for a moment Cam considered using the water in the vase to douse her rising ire. Finally, she sighed. “Put them in the kitchen area until you leave today.”
While Val reached eager hands to the cut-glass vase, Cam strode into her office and shut out the world. On the other side of the door, she lifted her purse to eye-level in front of her, dangling it from her fingertips by the thin strap.
Mimicking an announcer’s tone, she murmured, “Delgado lines up for the kick.”
A quick drop...
A swing of her right leg...
Contact!
Her bag soared through the miniature goalpost standing sentry on the other side of the room. Da-thump! The black canvas clutch landed in a small vinyl storage box sitting directly behind a pair of white plastic uprights on the carpeted end zone.
“A perfect extra-pointer,” she exclaimed in her best sportscaster voice. “And that’s the game!”
Exhaling air to imitate the sound of a roaring crowd, she shimmied to her desk in a victory dance. When she sat in her office chair, the ergonomic hiss was a welcome sound in her inner sanctum. She pulled the florist’s card from her pocket. The envelope displayed the name of a high-priced Manhattan flower boutique. When she removed the cardboard square, the words kinked her stomach in spirals of torment.
Please don’t let our past ruin what could be a bright future for hundreds of kids. Your dad wouldn’t want that to be his legacy. Call me.
-Jordan
Her gaze strayed to the gilt-framed photo on the corner of her desk. Daddy’s smiling face, shadowed by the football helmet askew on his head, stared back. Almost thirty years had passed since that horrible night. Yet, she still heard her mother weeping, still felt that gnawing hunger in her belly, still shivered as icy realization clutched her heart.
The dire words floated through a miasmic sea of memories.
“... storm over Guadalupe... ”
“... plane went down... ”
“... rain forest... ”
“... no survivors... ”
The tiny white envelope fluttered to her desktop.
How dare he? Jordan Fawcett, the one man she’d ever dared to let into her private life, the man who’d betrayed her, insisted on trying to do business with her. And now he thought he could use the memory of her beloved father to goad her into submission. As if nothing
