To Catch a Camden (16 page)

“I wasn’t talking about the Bronsons,” he said. “I will do everything I said I would for them—that’s not and never will be at issue.”

“And that’s all there can be to it,” she said with finality. “This—” she waved her hand between them again “—was just...one of those things—something that happened along the way. And now needs to end.”

Then she pushed away from the cupboard she was leaning against. “I’ll change into something else and give you back your shirt.”

His brow was a mass of lines—he looked as if he didn’t know what had hit him, and didn’t seem to have any idea what else to say to her as Gia left him standing in the kitchen and went to her bedroom.

But seeing that rumpled bed where everything had been so, so good all of last night and this morning cost her. Tears came flooding.

And she couldn’t let him see that.

So she opened her bedroom door slightly, took off his shirt, hooked it on the outer knob and closed the door again.

Then she pressed her back to the wall beside the door and closed her eyes, just listening to him go.

* * *

I’ve lost my freaking mind....

That was what Derek told himself as he parked across the street and four houses up from Gia’s place on Sunday night. He was positioned with a view of her house and the Bronsons’, just hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

I’m worse than a crazy teenager. I’ve turned into her stalker.

And yet he didn’t drive away. He shut off his engine and stayed where he was, staring at Gia’s house and thinking the worst of himself.

It was just after dark. He’d left his grandmother’s dinner and it was as if his car had driven itself to University Boulevard rather than home.

He hadn’t heard from Gia since Friday when she’d called to tell him she’d convinced the Bronsons to accept all he and his family wanted to give them, that she’d spoken to the bank and taken the Bronsons there afterward, that the title papers on the house had been signed and so had the signature cards on the account he’d set up.

Her voice had been a little soft, a little shaky, but otherwise just businesslike. Until he’d asked if they could talk. Then she’d said a clipped “not about anything but Larry and Marion,” and hung up.

And he was a damn mess.

He hadn’t slept in the three nights since he’d left her.

He couldn’t concentrate on work.

Television couldn’t keep him from thinking about her.

He’d eaten very little because no food he could think of sounded good.

The one night he’d tried booze to get himself to sleep he’d just ended up drunk and morose and then had a hangover the next day.

And today, after not even being able to focus on a Bronco football game, he’d gone to GiGi’s for Sunday dinner, where he’d been through-the-roof miserable.

How could he have been anything else when so many of his siblings and cousins had turned into such ridiculously happy couples! And remembering the past Sunday dinner when Gia had been there with him, he’d wished so damn bad that she was with him tonight that he couldn’t wait to get out of there.

He’d begged off dessert, and since he’d been so quiet and withdrawn all through the evening, his grandmother had decided he must be coming down with something and encouraged him to go home to bed.

But bed was his torture chamber now, and instead here he was, parked a few houses away from Gia’s, wondering what he was going to tell everybody if he got arrested for loitering or stalking or something.

What the hell is going on with me?

He hadn’t ever gone through anything like this.

He’d been dumped a few times before, but it had never affected him this way. He’d always taken it in stride. In fact, he’d always seen it coming and actually been on the verge of doing the dumping himself, so it had saved him the trouble.

But this? This was something else. Something different. This was extreme....

As he watched Gia’s house, the porch light at the Bronsons’ place came on and caught his eye. He trained his gaze there, hoping Gia might have been visiting the elderly couple and was leaving.

He could feel his pulse gain speed at just the thought, and he began instantly to consider whether or not to intercept her if she did. To try to get her to talk to him now....

But it wasn’t Gia who came out of the house next door to hers. It was Larry and Marion. Dressed in sweat suits—Larry’s a plain heather-gray but Marion’s a more flashy silver and purple—they were each carrying a bowl they took with them to sit on the chairs on their porch.

Ice cream. Derek thought they were probably having a bowl of ice cream before they went to bed. Enjoying the end of summer warmth of a September night.

They hadn’t had an easy life, those two, he thought, feeling bad about his family’s part in that on top of how bad he felt in general. But they had each other, he reminded himself. They still had each other.

And Gia was right; more than merely having each other, they did seem to still care for each other and enjoy each other’s company, because there they were, talking and laughing when Larry stole a bite of whatever it was in Marion’s bowl, then held out his own to offer her a taste of his as consolation when she put up a fuss.

God, he really did need some sleep when just the sight of that made his eyes sting.

And all he could think was that he’d give anything to be sitting on the porch next door to the Bronsons with Gia, just like that.

Just like that....

His own thought surprised him a little.

All that the Bronsons were doing was sitting on their porch, eating something, keeping each other company the way they had for seventy years. And that was what he wanted?

No boundary pushing? No line crossing? No rule breaking? No novelty in any way? Just sitting on the porch? Talking? Playing around like they must have a million times before?
That
was what he wanted?

But yeah, it was, he acknowledged with surprise. And a little skepticism.

Was
he really envying something that plain and simple?

Pre-Gia, he certainly wouldn’t have been. He’d have thought that it was nice for the Bronsons, but that it would be mind-numbing for him.

So why was he not only
not
thinking that, but wishing it was what he had?

It struck him as very weird.

And what made it even weirder was that if he imagined himself in that situation with anyone he’d ever met other than
Gia, it didn’t appeal to him at all.

A lifetime of Sharon the psychic? Of Celeste the head shaver? Of Carol the food police? Of Lila the statue?

Not a chance.

Not any more of a chance than with Brittany or Reagan or Nancy—the
regular
women who hadn’t kept his interest as long as Sharon, Celeste, Carol or Lila.

But plug Gia into the picture and everything lit up like a neon sign for him.

Maybe Louie knew what he was talking about....

Because it had been the Camdens’ handyman who had suggested that the strange women didn’t keep his interest any more than the normal ones did. But that the
right
woman would....

He hadn’t been sure
any
woman ever would. But all of a sudden here he was, realizing that he hadn’t lost a drop of interest in Gia no matter how much time they were together. That it was the opposite, in fact—the more he got to know her, spend time with her, learn about her, the more he wanted to know. The more interested he was.

The more interested and enthralled and captivated and fascinated. The more charmed...

And yet she wasn’t unusual at all.

But still he’d found even the small workings of her mind intriguing—her inventiveness, how she decided what to eat, her innovations for helping the Bronsons. It was nothing big, but it had left him with half a dozen instances since he’d met her when he’d wondered what she might think of something, how she might look at it differently than he did, what she might see in it that he didn’t, how she might think to improve on it.

He just liked the way her brain worked. Somehow he’d discovered excitement in that. More excitement than he’d found in all the edginess and strange stuff with other women.

She surprised him in small ways—nothing elaborate or showy, nothing with any kind of shock value. Silly things like a simple comeback remark. The fact that she was obsessed with chocolate but ate vanilla ice cream. Nothing wild or bizarre, just things that were the tiniest bit out of the ordinary that made him feel like he could never be too sure what might come next....

He didn’t know what Larry had said to Marion as he went on watching the two of them, but the elderly woman gave her husband a teasing little kick.

Moving with surprising speed, the geriatric Larry caught her ankle, bent over and kissed it, making both of them laugh.

There was still a spark there—Derek could even see it from where he was. And it helped him understand why Gia felt so strongly about not letting anything separate them.

Which made him think that there was also something so appealing—and even sexy—about that understated fierceness Gia had shown for her cause, about the energy she’d put into saving them, about how much she cared.

Again, it wasn’t banner carrying or picketing or loud protesting—it had just been donation jars and a savings account and her yard sale and hard work getting the word out, and yet he admired her methods more than anything that had come before her.

He admired her....

And the longer he sat there thinking about her, watching the Bronsons and feeling the way he did, the more he knew that he just wanted to be part of a couple like they were, as long as the other person could be Gia.

Gia, who he suddenly knew was that
right person
Louie had talked about.

Gia, whose passion and sexiness were understated, too, until they were unleashed in the bedroom.

But Gia had shown him the door....

With good reason, he admitted then.

Because even he had thought she might be a subconscious overcompensation for the Vegas debacle. A sharp recoil from that to someone who was the exact opposite.

Even he had thought that when that recoil subsided he probably wouldn’t be so infatuated with her. That he might revert to his old pattern and lose interest in her....

“God, you’re an idiot,” he said to himself as he realized that what he felt for Gia wasn’t just infatuation. It wasn’t about what had happened in Vegas.

He’d fallen in love with her.

That was why it was the way it was—the way she’d said it was between Larry and Marion. That was why it didn’t take anything big or flashy or freaky for her to light up a room for him. All she had to do was walk into it.

That was why he thought every tiny detail about her was so special and intriguing and brilliant.

That was why it didn’t matter to him that the wildest thing about her was her hair.

That was why he was going out of his mind without her.

And that was all why he had to get her back.

If he could....

The thought that he might not be able to sent him into a tailspin.

She’d stopped everything cold.

She hadn’t given him even a hope for things to go on.

She wouldn’t even talk to him on the phone about anything except the Bronsons.

The Bronsons...

Who were sitting on their porch at that moment.

Who she just might listen to if he could get them on his side....

Had he found enough favor with them to get
them
to play go-between with Gia?

He was afraid he hadn’t.

But at that point he was willing to try anything.

Anything!

He had to.

Because suddenly he knew that the rest of his life was at stake. That Gia was the only one for him. And that if he couldn’t convince her of that, he was never going to have what the Bronsons had.

So he restarted his engine, waited for a break in traffic and moved from his watching spot to park at the curb partially in front of the Bronsons’ house and partially in front of Gia’s.

Hoping
this
didn’t get the hose turned on him....

Chapter Eleven

“Y
ou’re having Larry and Marion get you in
my door?”

When Gia’s doorbell rang Sunday evening, she was surprised to
peer through her peephole and see her elderly neighbors on her front porch.

And that was all she’d been able to see through her
peephole.

Of course, she’d opened her door to them instantly.

Which was when she saw Derek standing at the bottom of the
porch steps behind them.

“I figured if I could convince them, maybe they’d help me
convince you,” he said, coming up to join the Bronsons.

“Convince me of what?”

“We think you should hear him out, sweetheart,” Marion said
before he could answer her question.

“We saw his car out here the other morning,” Larry
contributed.

Gia had been grateful that they hadn’t mentioned that before.
Tyson had. But not the Bronsons.

“We know you, Gia,” Marion continued. “We knew when we saw that
that we were right about you—you’re taken with this man. And we know you’ve been
putting on a cheery face for us, but we can see you’ve been sad since he hasn’t
been around—”

“We blamed him—” Larry added, still easily falling into his old
familiar criticism of the Camdens.

“But he says it was you who kicked him to the curb—is that
right?” Marion asked.

“I didn’t... I just thought that for all our sakes... Yes, it
was me....” Gia stammered her admission under her breath because she was
embarrassed to have to be talking even in a roundabout way about the night she’d
spent with Derek. The night that had unleashed too many things in her and caused
her to suffer horribly without him ever since....

“Well, we’ve heard him out and we think you should, too,”
Marion concluded.

“But if you need us we’re right next door. And you know I can
come running if I have to,” Larry said with a still-not-completely-trusting
glance out of the corner of his eye at Derek.

“Just talk to him,” Marion encouraged. “Then, if you still want
to hand him his walking papers, go ahead. But hear him out first.”

The elderly woman took her husband by the arm then and turned
him away from the door, tugging him toward the stairs.

“Right next door,” Larry said over his shoulder, but Gia wasn’t
sure whether it was a reminder to her or a warning to Derek, who was now
standing in front of her looking as tired as she felt. Though not as puffy eyed
as she was from crying instead of sleeping since she’d sent him away....

“There’s nothing to say,” she told him when the Bronsons were
headed next door again.

“I have a lot to say,” he insisted firmly. “A lot to say that I
just figured out—and if it helps, part of it is that you were right.”

“Then why do we need to talk?” she asked. She didn’t think she
was strong enough to listen to him confirm that it wouldn’t have worked out
between them. It was bad enough having to go through what she was already going
through without adding to it by hearing it from his own lips.

Lips she wanted to be kissing, in spite of everything, and was
suffering with the knowledge that that would never happen again....

“You need to hear me out because you
were
right—past tense—to think what you were thinking. But now that I’ve had
some time to come to grips with myself and what’s really going on with me, to
open my eyes...you aren’t right anymore.”

About which part? He still had a huge family to appease, a huge
family he was intensely loyal to, and he still had a pattern for the kind of
woman he wanted.

So Gia remained standing on her threshold, blocking his way,
staring at him and wishing things were different but reminding herself of the
realities that had caused her to send him away in the first place.

“Do I have to bring Larry and Marion over here again to get me
in the door?” he threatened.

“I can’t believe you talked them into getting you this far,”
Gia said, because while she’d persuaded the Bronsons to accept all the Camdens
were doing for them, they still had hard feelings about the past. They wouldn’t
have conceded had she not convinced them all over again that what they were
getting was nothing more than the Camdens owed them. That it was restitution
they were rightfully due, and that Derek had admitted as much to her.

“They brought me here because they believed me when I told them
what I just want the chance to say to you.”

Gia continued to study him and keep him cooling his heels on
her porch as she argued with herself.

She trusted the Bronsons, so if they’d brought him to her, they
had to have felt that what he had to say was worth hearing.

And even though she didn’t want to feel it, there was also
hope—however fruitless it might be. Hope that there was something—anything—he
could tell her that could fix things....

She sighed and swiveled so that her back was to the inside
door, her arm outstretched to keep the screen door open, freeing a path for him
to pass in front of her and come in.

He did, the scent of his cologne wafting to her along the way
and making her wilt and pray for the strength not to give in to just anything
that might mean she could be with him again....

Once he was inside, she closed the door and stood with her back
against it, watching him again as he moved several feet into the living room
before he turned to face her.

Why did he have to look like that? she bemoaned silently.
Because even appearing as if he hadn’t slept any more than she had since
Wednesday night, he was still a sight for her very sore eyes in gray slacks and
a black sport shirt that made him look dark and dashing.

And here she was in a pair of old jeans and a double layer of
tank tops—gray over white—with her hair haphazardly pulled up into a ponytail to
get the unruly curls out of her face.

“I just came from GiGi’s Sunday dinner,” he began. “I couldn’t
get past hating that you weren’t there with me. And I also couldn’t help
thinking that if you said to them what you said to me on Thursday about being
with you just to please them, it would have made them all laugh and scoff. It
would have caused an uproar. Because I’m the last one in the family who’d do
anything just for that reason. And I’m sure—especially after Vegas—that they
wish I would.”

“Maybe subconsciously you are,” she suggested.

“Not subconsciously, not unconsciously, not consciously. When
it comes to you, I might as well be an orphan, because nothing to do with you
has
anything
to do with them. So take that off the
table right now!” he commanded.

Gia didn’t say anything to that.

“And you need to get something else straight about my family,”
he continued. “Yes, I’m loyal to them. But when any one of us partners up or
starts a family,
none
of us expects to take priority
over the relationship—”

“In an emergency—”

“A flat tire is not an emergency,” he said, referring to the
story she’d told him about her ex-husband. “And even in an emergency there are
lots of us—whoever is available would show up. But if you didn’t need me and I
was the one running to help them, I’d drag you along so I could have you with
me—because I’d
want
to have you with me, I wouldn’t
want to do it alone.”

That carried weight for her. Leaving her behind was something
Elliot had done whenever he’d answered any call from his family, emergency or
not. Nothing would have pleased her more than if he’d actually wanted to have
her by his side. He just never had.

“And when any one of us
chooses
someone,” Derek went on, “that someone becomes family. So completely that
I’m willing to bet you that of all the people you met last Sunday there’s at
least one or two you think were born Camdens who weren’t....”

He was wrong. She knew exactly who the Camdens were and who
among them weren’t.

But she also knew what he was getting at because the more she’d
thought about that dinner a week ago, the more she’d acknowledged to herself
that spouses and fiancés of the Camdens were not treated the way spouses and
fiancés of the Grants had been. That even she hadn’t felt as much like an
outsider with them as she had among the Grants right to the end of her marriage
to Elliot.

“I know that your family
now
is
different than the Grants,” was all she said to that.

“But even though you were dead wrong about the family stuff,”
he went on in a more peacemaking tone, “it was reasonable for you to look at my
history and figure there was some cause for concern about where my taste in
women has led me before. To worry that it might lead me there again....”

If the Bronsons had gotten him in her front door so he could
tell her she was right to stop things from going any further between them
because she wasn’t his type, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to forgive them.
Because she wasn’t sure she could bear to hear him say it.

“There’s just one really, really big factor that you couldn’t
have known about,” Derek continued. “You couldn’t have known about it because I
just realized it myself....”

Gia raised her chin in question, steeling herself for the
worst.

“I never actually had a weakness or proclivity for bad girls or
rule breakers or psychics or zealots or weirdos in general. It’s that
their...colorfulness...offered enough of an extra to cover up the fact that I
didn’t actually feel much for them. A little attraction, sure. But that’s all.
So what their oddity or fervor about things did was fill a gap. They provided a
few thrills and chills—entertainment—that distracted from the fact that I could
take the women themselves or leave them. And with the few normal women... Well,
there was nothing to cover up the fact that I could take them or leave them, so
I—”

“Left them,” Gia concluded fatalistically, still afraid he was
acknowledging that she was in that category.

“That makes it sound worse than it was. My interest in them
just ran out quicker,” he amended. “But tonight—after being so down since
Thursday morning that I’ve been pathetic, when I was actually parked down the
street just hoping to be able to see you through your window or on your porch or
in your yard—it came to me....”

He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe he’d been so
dumb.

“It came to me when I compared how I feel about you with how I
felt about each and every one of the women I’ve dated or been involved with. It
came to me that I’ve just never had strong feelings for any one of them. There
was just more of a charge if there was something else going on with them.”

Gia wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. For all she knew,
hope was skewing her understanding.

“How you feel about me?” she said softly.

And then he told her.

He told her about watching the Bronsons on their front porch.
About seeing for himself what was between them. About wanting that for himself.
Wanting it with her and only with her. About how and why every little thing
about her gave him chills and thrills. About how she fascinated and interested
him. Endlessly...

“And it isn’t even just what I already know about you,” he went
on. “It’s that I can’t wait to see what will come next—what you might do, what
you might say, the way you might look on the beach at sunset or bundled in ski
gear on top of a mountain. I can’t wait to see you pregnant. I can’t wait to see
how you’ll be as a wife, as a mom, as a grandma and a little old lady....”

Just the thought of that made him laugh and take a step closer
to her before he said, “I love you, Gia. You’re my Marion....”

But could he be her Larry?

“I have to think....” she said.

“Think. All you want. I’ll wait. But I’m not getting out of
here,” he said, planting one hip on the arm of her couch to prove it. “It was
too hard to get back in. Larry and Marion weren’t easy to convince.”

Because of what they thought of the Camdens in general, Gia
surmised.

But in thinking that, she could honestly say that she believed
the current Camdens weren’t unscrupulous or unethical the way the Grants were,
the way previous generations of Camdens had been.

She’d watched all Derek had done for the Bronsons, she’d tested
and followed up to check out everything he’d claimed and promised and arranged,
and she hadn’t found that a single thing he’d said or done was anything but what
it appeared to be.

Regardless of who or what had come before him, he was
trustworthy. He was a man of his word.

And if he was a man of his word, then maybe she could believe
him when he said that her appeal for him did
not
lie
in the fact that she might be more acceptable to his family. That he wasn’t
trying to please them or make it up to them for having embarrassed them.

Which also meant that maybe she could believe him when he said
that he would never put his family before her, too.

But what about the rest? The most important part of it all?
Could his feelings for her keep him interested?

She didn’t know. How did anyone ever know if someone they loved
would go on loving them and finding them interesting?

That was the leap of faith that had to be taken, but she’d
already taken it once and failed. And Elliot hadn’t seemed like a risk at
all....

Because Elliot had only shown her what he wanted her to see,
she thought. About himself. About his family. About everything.

But when she thought about it, she realized that that wasn’t
true of Derek. Despite the fact that she’d worried about it, feared it, been
suspicious, there hadn’t been any subterfuge from Derek. And not merely when it
came to the Bronsons.

He hadn’t hidden anything about his past from her, including
his history with unusual women and the trouble it had gotten him into.

He hadn’t even hidden what he was most ashamed and embarrassed
about—the Las Vegas wedding.