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To Catch a Camden
To Catch a Camden

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To Catch a Camden

Язык: Английский
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A head-honcho Camden was ordering the cake himself? Her ex-husband and the rest of his family would never have bothered.

“How about you? How do you know this place?” he asked.

“I work around the corner and come at least once a day.”

Derek Camden’s well-shaped eyebrows rose. “Every day?” he said, taking a quick glance at her body as if wondering where the calories went.

“Sometimes it’s the only thing I eat all day,” she confessed.

“Chocolate every time?”

Her shrug confirmed it.

He laughed. “You are a chocoholic.”

Gia didn’t deny it.

“What do you do around the corner?”

“I’m a botanist. I work for a company that makes herbal supplements and medicines.”

The eyebrows went up again. “Really?”

“My ex said I’m just a glorified gardener.”

“Well, I’m just an accountant, so it sounds more impressive than that.”

He was being humble. Gia knew he was the chief financial officer of Camden Incorporated. But she preferred humility to arrogance. Elliot had been all arrogance.

Not that she preferred Derek Camden, she amended in her thoughts. The only way she wanted to compare him with her ex was in terms of their similarities—like the fact that they both came from big, powerful, rich families willing to do dishonest, shifty, devious and deceitful things.

“How did you get my cell phone number?” she asked then, continuing the vein of small talk while they waited for their desserts.

“My grandmother is friends with Jean Paulie—I believe she was one of the church members at your meeting last night—”

“She was.”

“Jean is one of the people who brought the Bronsons to our attention—her and the guy who cuts my hair because he had a donation jar in his shop. Anyway, I asked my grandmother if Jean had your number and she did.”

Gia nodded.

“My turn—how did you know who I was last night?” he asked.

“My best friend is Tyson Biggs. You dated his cousin and I saw a picture of you with her.” Gia didn’t add that the image had stuck with her because he was so terrific looking. Or that now that she’d seen him in person she couldn’t shake his image from her mind at all....

He grinned. “Sharon. Dragon nails, always in stilettos, carried a purse that was also a fish tank—complete with her goldfish in it—claimed to be psychic...”

“That would be Sharon,” Gia confirmed.

He smiled conspiratorially, in a way that was much too engaging. “Did she ever get a reading for you right?”

“I’ve never had her do one of her actual readings. She’s offered, but on the two times I’ve met her she told me out of the blue—”

“To prove her powers—she likes to do that,” he said as if it amused him.

“Well, the first time she told me I was pregnant and I wasn’t. The second time she said to watch out because I was going to lose my job. Luckily, that didn’t happen, either.”

“Yeah, she’s never gotten anything right that I know of. She isn’t even good at guessing,” he concluded with a laugh that wasn’t at all disparaging or unkind. “I haven’t seen Sharon in...I’m not even sure how long.”

“So long that you’ve had time to get married and settle down?” she asked because she was curious. She’d heard about Sharon and about her friends that he’d dated later—also all wackjobs, according to Tyson. But Gia didn’t know anything about Derek Camden beyond that, and she reasoned that if he’d married and settled down he might be more trustworthy in the Bronsons’ eyes.

But the question that shouldn’t have been difficult to answer instead seemed to puzzle him.

“Huh...” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and suddenly making a face that conveyed discomfort and confusion. “I was going to jump in and say no, never married. But then I remembered that that isn’t exactly true anymore. Is annulled a marital status?”

“Annulled... I don’t know, I’ve never met anyone who was annulled.”

“Yeah, me, neither...” he said with a frown.

Their desserts arrived and when the shop owner left them to eat he didn’t explain further, leaving Gia curious but not feeling free to ask more than she already had.

Then he changed the subject and she really couldn’t indulge her curiosity.

“So did you talk to the Bronsons about accepting some help from us?”

“I did.”

He smiled at her tone. “It didn’t go well?”

“It went the way I thought it would. But they did come around. They said they would let you help me help them.”

He nodded slowly as he ate a bite of his pie. “Okay. A little convoluted but still something. And I’ll take what I can get at this point. So what do you have planned?”

Gia had taken a bite of her own dessert as he said that. And when it came to chocolate, there was no rushing her. So she held up a finger in front of her mouth to signify a pause as she savored the warm, rich, dark chocolate of her lava cake.

He smiled. “No hurry, enjoy yourself.”

“The lemon pie is good, but next time try one of these,” she advised when her mouth wasn’t full. “It’s just the right blend of chocolates and just melty enough and just...amazing.”

His smile stretched into a grin. “Not a big chocolate guy so I’ll take your word for it.”

If anything could turn her off, it should be that!

But somehow it didn’t make him look any less appealing to her, so she just filed the information away and answered his inquiry into what she had planned to help the Bronsons.

“There’s a day of yard work and a day of home repairs to get their place in better shape,” she said. “And I’m cleaning out their stuff and collecting things to sell at a yard sale that I’m hoping will also raise some money—if you want to bring anything for that, do it. This coming Saturday is the yard work, the Saturday after that will be the home repair day and the Saturday after that is the yard sale.”

“So yard work and home repairs—they haven’t been able to keep their place up,” he deduced.

“They haven’t had the money, and they’re just getting too old to do most things—”

“Should they be moved into a retirement home or assisted living?”

It was a perfectly reasonably suggestion, one she and Tyson had swatted back and forth, one she’d thrown out to the Bronsons.

And yet hearing it from Derek Camden made her recall Larry and Marion’s concern that the Camdens were after their house.

Which still didn’t seem at all likely to Gia.

But even though there wasn’t anything intimidating about Derek Camden—in fact, he seemed down-to-earth, open and friendly—she’d also heard so much from the Bronsons about the evil Camdens that she felt some concern herself.

“Retirement homes and assisted living are expensive, too, and the Bronsons are really against going somewhere with old people—”

He laughed again. “They’re how old themselves?”

“Eighty-nine and eighty-seven,” Gia said with a hint of humor at the irony of that. “But staying together in their house is a big deal to them.”

“Okay. So beyond their home needing some work inside and out, what else is going on with them?”

He’d said the night before that he wanted to get the full picture, not to merely give money but to make sure the Bronsons had what they needed all the way around. So logically, what he was asking was just a way to get that full picture.

But still, Gia was a little uncomfortable giving this man too many details that would let him know exactly how vulnerable the couple was.

“A lot of things are going on with them,” she said ambiguously, opting only to give him an overview. “They live on a very limited budget. Costs for everything are always rising. They aren’t in bad health for their ages but there are some issues—they both have high blood pressure and some heart things, some arthritis, Marion has osteoporosis. And every time they go to a doctor there’s another medication added—”

“Not your herbal supplements and medicines?”

“I can’t really recommend any of those because they take so many prescription meds I’m afraid of interfering with something or giving them a supplement that reacts badly with a prescription drug—so no. But I help them pay their bills and balance their checkbook—because they both have trouble holding a pen and seeing small print—and there are months when I can’t believe the cost of their prescriptions.”

“Do they need better insurance? A cheaper place to get their prescriptions filled?”

“I’ve looked into both of those things and done the best I can for them, but the bottom line is that some things fall outside of their coverage and there’s nothing that can be done about it.”

“Except to get them more money to pay the expenses they have.”

Gia conceded with a shrug and hoped she hadn’t said too much.

“So where do I start to help you help them?” he asked as he finished his pie.

Gia couldn’t risk telling him too much about the Bronsons’ predicament until she was sure his motives really were pure. But the only way she could think to get a better feel for him was to get to know him a little and see if he seemed trustworthy. And she didn’t know how else to do that except to enlist him in the manual-labor portions of what was going on and spend some time with him. Talking to him. Watching him.

Even if it meant tempting Larry to turn the hose on him or Marion to lace lemonade with laxatives....

So, in response to his query about where he should start to help, she said, “Like I said, Saturday we’re starting with the yard and we can always use two more hands....”

“Okay,” he said without skipping a beat. “Are the Bronsons going to throw rocks at me if I show up on their doorstep, though?”

Maybe he was psychic....

“I hope not,” was the best Gia could promise. “Their bark tends to be worse than their bite—”

“At eighty-seven and eighty-nine their teeth probably aren’t their own.”

“Every one of Marion’s is and she’s very proud of them,” Gia corrected his joke. “But I’ll run with the you-helping-me-to-help-them angle and I think you’ll be safe.” She didn’t add that the Bronsons liked the idea of a Camden working for them, so they were apt to gloat about it—whether to his face or not she couldn’t be sure.

“Then just tell me when and where to show up and I’ll be there,” he said.

Gia gave him the details and finished her lava cake. There didn’t seem to be any more to discuss at this juncture, so she offered to pay for her own dessert as a signal that the meeting had come to a conclusion.

“It’s going on the tab,” he reminded her, refusing to even allow her to leave a tip.

He stood up when she did, and Gia tried not to be bowled over by the pure magnitude of the man as she slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder, thinking that talking to him so far had not been a hardship, and watching him work on Saturday likely wouldn’t be, either....

“Thank you for playing go-between,” he said then.

“I’m just looking out for Larry and Marion,” she countered.

“They’re lucky to have you.”

“I’m the lucky one—I don’t have any family and they’ve become that for me.”

He nodded as if he understood something about that, although she had no idea what and he didn’t offer an explanation.

Instead he said, “I guess I’ll see you Saturday, then.”

“I’ll supply the gloves,” she added as they said goodbye and she left him to deal with the bill for their desserts and his office cake.

Then she returned to her car, studying him through the plate-glass windows again as she did and counting how many days would have to pass before Saturday came.

So many...

Oh, no—I don’t have any reason to think that! she silently shouted at herself when she realized that was what had actually gone through her mind.

And to punish herself, she spent the short drive home recalling what it had been like to be married to a man who could well be Derek Camden’s counterpart.

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