“You used to tease me about it when we were teenagers,” she says as I pull her to her feet.
“Did you ever stop to think that teasing you was my way of flirting with you?” I ask as I guide her into the bathtub. I sit behind her and tug her back against me, then wrap my arms around her stomach and simply hold on.
“Well, if you were trying to flirt, you were bad at it,” she says, and bats at the bubbles with her hand.
“I was a teenager. Of course I was bad at it.” I chuckle and kiss her neck, just under her ear. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m just quiet, Landon,” she says, and leans her head back on my shoulder, takes a deep breath, and relaxes against me. “There’s nothing wrong.”
“Will you tell me if that changes?”
“If you like,” she says.
“I want you to talk to me. I want you to tell me anything and everything.”
“You’ll get sick of hearing my voice,” she says, and looks up at me with a smile.
“Impossible.” I kiss her nose. “Your voice is the best part of my day.”
“My voice? Not my body, or my mouth?”
“Those are both impressive,” I reply, and tuck her arms under mine, hugging her around her shoulders now. “But it’s your voice that makes my day.”
“That could be the sweetest thing that anyone’s ever said to me,” she says.
“Oh, there’s more to come, sweetheart.”
Chapter 9
~Cami~
“What’s up with you?” Addie asks me as I walk into the office and close the door behind me. I stop and look over my shoulder, as if she might be talking to someone else. “Yes, you.”
“Well, I was going to balance our corporate checkbook,” I reply, and walk over to my desk. “And I need to write a check out to the newspaper for the ad we bought. I also need to balance the tills from last night.”
“Not that,” Addie says, and rolls her eyes. She sits in the chair by my desk and crosses her legs. “The other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
“I noticed it at Riley’s party on Sunday,” she says, watching me closely. “When you get quiet¸ it’s because your brain is in overdrive.”
“It is?” I frown and sit back, thinking over the past four days. “I thought I just got quiet.”
“Yeah, because you’re thinking.” She smiles. “Spill it.”
“Well, this is new information,” I reply.
“Are you happy?”
“Yes.” I think about all of the time I get to spend with Landon. I love my house. I love my job. I even have a cat that’s beginning to tolerate me. “I have no complaints.”
“Okay, good. But something is bothering you.”
I frown and sigh. “So, things with Landon are good.”
“It looked like it, if the way he looks at you and can’t keep his hands off of you is any indication,” she replies with a wink. “But I can hear a big, fat but at the end of that sentence.”
“It’s a little but.”
“Okay, hit me with it.”
“But when’s the other shoe going to drop?” I ask, and sigh in relief. I didn’t even realize that I’d been agonizing over it, I just knew that there was something that was bothering me.
“The designer heel, or the steel-toed work boot?” she asks.
“I don’t have any shoes to drop,” I reply, spreading my hands wide. “He knows all about my past. It’s no secret.”
“And you think he has secrets?”
“I don’t know.” I stand and pace the large office that we all share. “Maybe. Probably not secrets per se, but there’s things that bother me.”
“Like?”
“Like the Navy,” I reply, spinning to look at her. “He loved the Navy. He loved to fly, to live all over the world, and now he has to settle for being here, and what if he gets tired of being here?”
“How do you know he will get tired of being here?” she asks.
“Landon’s always had a wandering soul. He’s talked about living in far-off places for as long as we’ve known him. I like it here, Addie. I don’t want to move away. I don’t think I could. I have a home and a business to run.”
“Whoa, Cami. He hasn’t even said anything about moving away.”
I blow out a breath. “I know, I’m overthinking it.”
“What are you really worried about?”
I bite my lip and feel the tears that I’ve been trying so hard to keep at bay fill my eyes. “What if he doesn’t feel the way I do?”
“How do you feel?”
“I love him. But I’m afraid to tell him because what if it sends him running?”
“Sometimes you just have to take the risk,” Addie says.
“I’m not a risk taker, Addie. I always play it safe. I’m the numbers girl. But being with Landon has been the biggest risk I’ve taken because I’ve fallen completely in love with him, and not in a childish crush way, and he could just be in it because I’m a distraction that he needs. This whole thing makes me very, very nervous.”
“I think you’re way overthinking all of this,” Addie says. “Which shouldn’t surprise me because you’ve always been an overthinker. Cami, he’s always cared about you. Always. You’re the one that he’d pull aside to ask your advice, or hang out with. And the way he looked at you at my house on Sunday? A guy doesn’t look at a girl like that if she’s just a convenience.”