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So all she asked was, “Why?”
He shrugged. “Because I worked through lunch and I was hungry, and because I figured it would be difficult for you to put together dinner for yourself with those stitches in your hand.”
It sounded not only reasonable but thoughtful, and she was undeniably tempted to invite him in. There was something about Cam Turcotte that had always tempted her, but she wasn’t a teenager anymore and she had no intention of letting down any of her barriers where he was concerned.
“I’m not hungry,” she lied.
“You should eat anyway.”
Still, she hesitated. “Contrary to whatever Irene might have told you, I don’t need anyone looking out for me, Dr. Turcotte.”
“It’s just a pizza, Ash.”
He was using his doctor tone again, patient and reasonable, and she knew that she was being anything but reasonable.
As he said, it was just a pizza. And she was hungry.
She stepped back from the door.
“Fine. Bring in the pizza.”
Her welcome left something to be desired.
As Cam stepped into the foyer, he wondered again why he was there when it was readily apparent that Ashley wished he wasn’t. He’d known he was taking a chance when he looked up her address in the file, but he’d never been able to think clearly when it came to Ashley Roarke.
“Nice neighborhood,” he said, conversationally.
“We like it.”
“We?” he queried, following her through to the kitchen.
“Megan and I bought the house a couple of years ago and lived here together until she got married. I guess I haven’t quite got used to being on my own yet.”
“I thought you were talking about the fiancé,” he admitted, setting the pizza box in the middle of the table.
“Ex-fiancé,” she clarified.
She opened the cupboard to get plates, but he reached over her head for them so that she didn’t have to stretch.
“Yeah. I got that from what Irene said,” he admitted.
“You mean she didn’t give you the whole sordid story?”
“Is it sordid?”
She shrugged as she moved toward the refrigerator. “Let’s just say he didn’t think the act of putting a ring on my finger mandated exclusivity.”
“Bastard,” Cam said.
Ashley smiled, appreciating his unequivocal assessment and deciding that she might enjoy his company after all.
“The official term, at least among my friends, is ‘cheating bastard,’” she told him.
“I’m sorry, Ash. You deserved better than that.”
“Well, as Paige likes to remind me, at least I found out before we got married.”
“I don’t imagine that was much consolation.”
“No,” she admitted, peering into the refrigerator. “Beer, wine or soft drink?”
“Beer would be great.”
She snagged a bottle for him and a soft drink for herself and carried the beverages to the table.
Again, before she could ask for help, Cam had both of the drinks open.
His unsolicited assistance reminded her of the days when they’d been dating, when he’d somehow been able to anticipate what she wanted without her saying a word. Like instinctively knowing the type of movie she wanted to see on a given night, or whether she preferred to stay home rather than go out. Bringing her flowers to brighten her day when she hadn’t even known she was feeling down, or stopping by simply to spend time with her before she’d acknowledged that she was lonely.
Just like tonight, she realized now, and felt a funny little flutter in the vicinity of her heart.
She picked up the soda he’d opened for her and took a long swallow. She didn’t want to be feeling any flutters, not now and definitely not because of Cam Turcotte.
“Premium beer,” Cam noted appreciatively, picking up his bottle.
“My brother-in-law’s company,” she said, gratefully latching on to the neutral topic.
“That’s right.” He lifted a slice of pizza and slid it onto her plate before taking another one for himself. “Your sister married Gage Richmond. I read about his career change—and their marriage—in a business magazine somewhere.”
“The Richmond name always makes good copy.” She pulled a piece of pepperoni off of her pizza and popped it into her mouth.
“Megan works at Richmond Pharmaceuticals, doesn’t she?”
She nodded. “Recently promoted to VP of clinical science.”
“Impressive.”
“No kidding. Whenever she tries to talk to me about something she’s doing at work, my eyes glaze over.”
“As I’m sure her eyes glaze when you want to discuss the intrinsic value of finger painting.”
She smiled at that. “Very few people over the age of ten appreciate the intrinsic value of finger painting,” she told him. “But with Megan, it’s not that she doesn’t understand, just that she has an irrational fear of any human being less than three feet tall.”
“I take it she doesn’t plan on having kids then?”
“Not anytime in the near future,” she said, then realized she was no longer certain it was true. After all, her sister was married now and starting a family with her new husband wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. She pushed the thought—and the irrational spurt of envy—aside.
“I appreciate the pizza,” she said. “But why are you really here?”
“I just wanted to see you, to talk to you, without an audience.”
“Why?”
“For a lot of reasons,” he said. “But primarily because we’re living in the same town again, which means our paths are going to cross on occasion, and I don’t want things to be awkward between us.”
“Our paths are only crossing now because you showed up at my door.”
He helped himself to another slice of pizza. “Actually, my door is just down the street.”
She frowned. “Excuse me?”
“Number fifty-eight. The SOLD sign on the front lawn.”
The pizza in Ashley’s stomach suddenly felt like a ball of lead. “You bought that house?”
“The rent they were asking was astronomical,” he said, as if that was a perfectly logical response to her question.
“I can’t believe you bought it,” she said.
But what she was thinking was that she was completely unprepared to be neighbors with her ex-lover. It was one thing to accept that he’d returned to Pinehurst—it was a big enough town that she wasn’t likely to run into him at the grocery store very often—and quite another to know that he would be living just down the street and that she would have to pass by his house every single day on the way to and from her own.
“I thought you weren’t sure this was a permanent move, that’s why you wanted a one-year contract …” She let the words trail off, realizing she’d already said too much, admitted too much.
“You asked Elijah about me,” he guessed.
She shrugged, an implicit admission that she’d done just that after Paige had warned her of Cam’s impending return. “I was curious about the rumors that you were coming back. It’s not like he violated any doctor-patient privilege by confirming it was true.”
“Curious in a good way?” he asked her.
She lifted her hand to brush her hair away from her face, winced. “Just curious.”
Cam frowned at the expression of discomfort. “Are you still experiencing pain?”
“A little.”
“You shouldn’t have any with the meds I prescribed.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You did take the medication, didn’t you?” he prompted.
“No,” she admitted.
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “I don’t like taking anything stronger than over-the-counter drugs.”
“Honey, you didn’t come into the office because you had a headache, you had fifteen stitches put in your hand.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “And don’t call me ‘honey.’”
“You didn’t object to Irene calling you ‘hon,’” he pointed out.
She didn’t say anything.
“Or was that okay because she hasn’t seen you naked?”
Ashley blushed at the reminder that he had seen her naked, as he knew she would, but tilted her chin. “Actually, Irene has seen me naked.”
He lifted his brows.
“But not since I was in diapers,” she admitted, and gave him a small smile.
She’d always been beautiful. But when she smiled, when the light of humor sparked in the depths of her violet eyes and those soft pink lips curved, she was absolutely radiant.
Sitting across the table from her now, looking at her over a pizza box, he wondered how he’d ever settled for anything less, how he’d ever believed that his feelings for anyone else could compare to the emotion that filled his heart when he was with Ashley.
His gaze locked with hers, held. And suddenly the air was sizzling with the attraction that had always sparked between them.
“Did you have those five freckles at the base of your spine when you were in diapers?” he asked.
He could tell by the darkening of her eyes that mention of those freckles had stirred memories for her, too.
“I don’t know,” she said softly.
“Do you still have them?”
“I don’t know,” she said again.
Obviously the ex-fiancé had never kissed each and every one of those freckles, as Cam used to do. But he wasn’t going to mention the other man’s name again. He didn’t even want to think about her being with anyone else. He wanted—
The scrape of chair legs against the floor tiles severed his thought as Ashley pushed her chair away from the table. Which was probably for the best, because he had no business thinking about what he wanted to do with Ashley when so much of his life was still unsettled.
“I should, uh, clear this up,” she said.
He carried the plates into the kitchen for her, and pulled out the waste basket to scrape them before loading the dishwasher. But he paused when he saw what was in the receptacle.
“I’m guessing this is the eleven-by-fourteen,” he said.
“What?” She turned around, saw that he’d found the broken picture frame. “Oh. Yeah. It is.”
“It’s a good picture of you,” he said. “You look happy.”
She shrugged. “I was.”
And the man in the photo with her looked happy, too. Of course, he had Ashley in his arms, so he had reason to be happy. Which made Cam realize her former fiancé wasn’t just a bastard, he was an idiot. He’d been poised to start a life with this beautiful, vibrant woman, and he’d thrown it away.
Okay, so maybe he was being a little bit hypocritical. Because twelve years earlier, Ashley had wanted to talk about their future and he’d let her go. But he’d barely been nineteen years old, too young to be thinking in terms of “till death do us part” and too stupid to know what he was giving up.
