“Put it on.” Beaming, she held out her wrist and waited while he fastened on the simple red rose corsage.
“It’s a bit trite, but Trudy up in the floral section of McSweeney’s Market doesn’t have a whole lot to work with. We don’t have a proper florist anymore.”
“It’s perfect.” Her eyes, deep and dark and serious, searched his for a long moment before she rose to brush her lips over his, a feat much more easily managed in the heels she wore. “God, you’re sweet. Thank you.”
He was feeling something in response to that kiss but sweet wasn’t it.
“Just let me go grab my coat.” She sprinted up the stairs at a speed that should’ve been impossible in the ridiculous and very sexy shoes.
Miranda picked up her purse. “You know, I feel like part of me should be gagging at the cuteness here, but the pair of you are just too adorable.”
“Is that approval, cuz?”
“That was exceptionally thoughtful.”
Cam shrugged. “It’s just a flower.”
“Admittedly it doesn’t top digging up evidence clearing her of blame for what happened in Morton, but still, thoughtful. It’s normal. She hasn’t had a lot of that in her life.
“Too many people look at her and see what she can do, not who she is. And she’s spent a long damned time buying into it. I aim to change that, give her a little balance.”
Miranda studied him with open curiosity. “You get her. Most people don’t. They like her, are impressed by her, but they don’t understand her.”
They don’t love her. He cast a glance back up the stairs. “I’ve been waiting for her all my life.”
Miranda gave an uncharacteristically watery, “Oh, Cam” as she reached up to cup his face.
He gave her a squeeze. “Jesus, don’t cry. You’ll mess up your makeup.”
“I’m allowed to get emotional over the fact that my favorite cousin is in love with my best friend.”
“Yeah well, pull yourself together. I’m not ready to tell her yet. She’s wigged out enough about how fast this is moving.”
“Fair enough. A word of advice, though, as somebody who’s known her a lot longer than you. If she balks or tries to run, go after her. Hang on. No one else ever has.”
Norah’s footsteps from upstairs put a stop to any reply he might’ve made. She descended the stairs at a considerably more sedate pace, a coat draped over one arm and a bulging messenger bag slung over her shoulder. “Sorry. I had to throw some things together.”
Cam eyed the bag with suspicion. “If that’s more of your folders and legal pads, we’re going to have to have a serious talk.”
She stopped in front of him with a slow, sexy smile. “Talking wasn’t what I had in mind.”
His mouth went dry.
Miranda did an abrupt about face. “I’ll take my own car.”
“Don’t wait up,” Norah murmured. As the door shut behind his cousin, she said, “When I make up my mind about something, I’m all in.” When he said nothing, the smiled dimmed a fraction. “Is this okay? It seemed more practical than getting up an hour earlier than the crack of dawn to come back over here for clothes before our work day tomorrow.”
He gripped her hips, already imagining the feel of bare skin. “God bless your practical soul.”
She blocked his mouth with two fingers. “Oh no. If you get that mouth on me, we won’t make it to the dance.”
“I fail to see the problem with this plan.”
“You promised me crepe paper streamers and construction paper hearts. I expect you to deliver.”
Cam sucked in a long breath and worked on chaining down his roaring libido. “So I did.”
“Besides—” She scraped one nail lightly down the column of his throat to trace his collarbone. “—there’s something to be said for anticipation.”
“Yeah, it just might kill me.” He opened the front door. “Get in the truck, woman, before I go all caveman and throw you over my shoulder.”
“Promises promises.”
With a considerable show of self restraint, Cam drove to the community center rather than back to his place. He had himself under control—mostly—and was calculating how long it would take to give her the classic high school dance experience before he moved her along to their private after party, when the sound of raised voices spilled out along with music from the open door.
“What on earth?” Norah asked.
Cam quickened his pace. The last thing they needed was some kind of fight breaking out.
“Now Jim, nobody wants any ugliness.” Mamie Landen, who sported a lemon yellow hairdo tall enough to commune with God on its own, had both hands fisted on her generous hips.
Jim Vernon, one of Vick’s cronies, stood before the ticket table, red-faced and sputtering, while his wife looked on with pinched lips. “It ain’t right.”
“What’s the trouble here?” Cam asked.
“They’ve gone and doubled the cover in the name of a ‘fund raiser.’” Jim actually used air quotes.
Cam looked to Mamie for explanation.
“The dance committee decided to use this as an opportunity for an additional fundraiser for the coalition. Half the proceeds go toward the cost of the party, the other half to the downtown revitalization project.” She turned a glare on Jim. “It’s a good cause.”
It was also the first Cam was hearing of it. A quick glance at Norah said she’d been unaware of the plan as well. He slipped out his wallet and offered Mamie a smile. “Two please.”
“That’ll be forty dollars.”
Cam slid out two twenties and passed them over. “A small price to pay for a good cause and a night out with my best girl. There’s nothin’ like dancing cheek to cheek with your sweetheart with the lights down low and good music playin’, don’t you think, Jim?”
Plainly Jim didn’t agree, but his wife Irene turned that pinched expression on him, arms crossed.
“We oughta be able to choose whether or not to donate.”
“That wouldn’t make for a very effective fundraiser. Nobody’s making you pay anything. You’re welcome to turn right back around and leave. But if you expect to see your favorite fried chicken any time in the next decade, you’ll quit being a cheapskate and bring your wife in to enjoy the party.”
Evidently realizing the wisdom of this advice, Jim stopped arguing and pulled out his wallet.
“We appreciate your community spirit. Y’all have a good time.” Crisis averted, Cam took Norah’s hand and tugged her toward the gym.
“I wonder how many people have had that reaction?”
They stepped inside to find a packed dance floor and at least a hundred people crowded around the tables. “Not that many.”
The promised crepe paper streamers and construction paper hearts dripped from the ceiling, but the dance committee had classed the place up a bit this year with the addition of little tea light candles and mason jars of flowers on each of the covered tables. Adele’s second in command, Joe Fowler, manned a cash bar adjacent to the punch station. A DJ was set up at one end of the gym. On the dance floor, a trio of older women were shaking their collective groove thing, gyrating with their hands in the air as Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back” rocked out over the PA. As he watched, one of them began to twerk.
“Oh God,” Cam grimaced. “I could’ve gone my whole life and not seen that.”
“She’s got better rhythm than I do.”
“Shut your mouth. That’s my seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Jennings. She usually doesn’t get that…enthusiastic until after several glasses of wine.”
“You’ve had occasion to see that before?”
“She cuts loose at every non-Baptist wedding reception where there’s alcohol.” Spying a pack of old ladies headed their way, he wrapped an arm around Norah’s waist and said, “Brace yourself. You were worried about the family. You didn’t give a single thought to our debut to the rest of the town.”
She laughed. “What?”
“It’s the Casserole Patrol.” He pasted a smile in place to greet them.
Without preamble, Miss Betty Monroe asked, “Did you try my Jello mold?”
“I’m afraid we haven’t had the opportunity. We just got here.” He began introductions, but Miss Maudie Bell Ramsey rolled right on over him.
“Well, of course, we know who Norah is. Glad to see you’ve got the good sense to snatch her up.”
“Been wonderin’ who was going to take you off the market after all this time,” Delia Watson said. “S’pose it makes sense. If you were gonna pick a local, you’d have done it by now. Who are your people, honey?”
Before he could come up with a means of rescuing Norah from the question, she launched in, explaining that while her mother was a Royce from Charlotte, NC, her father hailed from Bay St. Louis. “His family went way back in the area, so I actually have very old Mississippi roots.”
“Do you still have kin there?”
“My grandparents passed when I was little. I don’t think there are any relatives still there now. At least not more than distant cousins I’ve never met.”
“Burke.” Miss Maudie Bell tapped her chin in thought. “That wouldn’t happen to be Benjamin Burke, would it?”
“Anderson. Benjamin was his first cousin on his daddy’s side, I think.”
There followed a complicated discussion about how Miss Maudie Bell’s family was connected to Norah’s.
Cam stroked a thumb over the pulse in her wrist and felt it jump, though she didn’t falter in saying her grandmother had been a Fitzpatrick before her marriage.
“So I reckon that makes us third or fourth cousins, twice removed,” Miss Maudie Bell concluded in triumph. “See there, bet you didn’t know you had family here.”
“No, I certainly didn’t! Not beyond the Campbells, whom I’m not actually related to.”
Miss Betty beamed at the pair of them. “Oh, I expect that won’t stay the case too long.”
Miss Delia nudged Miss Maudie Bell conspiratorially. “These two will make beautiful babies, don’t you think?”
Norah froze, mouth half open, cheeks flushing pink.
Cam was searching for a polite way to redirect the conversation when his mother’s personal assistant neatly inserted herself into the conversation, laying a hand on Cam’s arm. “I’m sorry, ladies, I need to steal the Councilman and Norah. City business.”
Cam could’ve kissed her. He offered a rueful smile to the Casserole Patrol. “Duty calls. Excuse us.”
Avery led them through the crowd to where Dillon had a table staked out. She made quick introductions and sat, accepting the glass of punch he offered. “You looked like you needed rescuing.”
“I’m pretty sure they just married us off and gave us 2.5 kids.”
“Five more minutes and the kids would be named and their college funds started.” Cam turned to Avery, “You’re getting a raise. I don’t know where we’re finding the money, but I owe you.”
“Feel free to bring that up at the next City Council meeting. But anyway, it wasn’t a lie. We have news.”
Cam and Norah slid into chairs. Beneath the tablecloth, Norah laid a hand on his thigh and started to drag it higher. Tensing, he pinned her hand in place with his own and struggled to focus.
“One of my professors looked over the economic impact study,” Dillon said. “It’s not wrong—if this was the 1980s. Their conclusions are founded in old theories, old data. She doesn’t have time to get through a full study herself before the meeting, but she’ll absolutely be here to help rebut and tear them apart in the court of public opinion.”
“Excellent.” Norah’s eyes brightened with challenge.
Cam could already see the gears in her brain starting to turn, sorting out the best means of presenting the rebuttal. Before she could get immersed in more discussion, he shoved back from the table and tugged her up. “Nope. No more work tonight. No more thinking. I brought you here to dance, and by damn, we’re going to dance.”
“See y’all in the morning,” she called as he dragged her toward the middle of the gym.
Of course it wasn’t that easy. They made it all of fifteen feet before she got stopped by Babette Wofford of Brides and Belles.
“We have a little problem about tomorrow.”
Norah gave him a look of apology. “Five minutes.”
“Five minutes.”
As soon as she stepped away, Tully Kauffman snagged him wanting to talk about why the trash pick up schedule should be changed. He listened with half an ear, watching as Norah crossed the room, getting stopped another four times by various other people before she made it over to Molly Montgomery and a cluster of other coalition members. She listened intently, offered some response.
“—if you switched Cedar Hills to Tuesday-Friday and put Garrett Park on Monday-Thursday…”
Five minutes turned into fifteen, then edged into twenty before Norah managed to separate herself from the group. Cam had long since stopped paying attention to Tully’s treatise about the trash schedule. When Norah finally stepped away and looked at him, Cam felt the punch of it from across the room. She angled her head just slightly toward the far end of the gym where one set of the expandable bleachers was deployed.
Cam grabbed Tucker as he passed. “Tuck, didn’t you need to talk to Tully about that thing?”
He didn’t wait for assent before breaking away to head toward the bleachers. Norah did the same, holding his gaze as she skirted the periphery. Another half dozen people tried to stop him for one reason or another, but rudeness be damned, he kept going, never losing eye contact as they inched ever closer to their destination.
“Crawford!” Quentin Irby stepped right into his path. “I’ve been wanting to set up an appointment with you to talk about a new landscaping project for my wife for our thirtieth anniversary.”
Mitch appeared out of nowhere, swinging an arm around Quentin’s shoulders. “Now if you really want to impress Janine, you’ll let me have a go at putting that sunroom off the back of the house. You know she’s been wanting one for years now.”
“Oh yeah?”
Cam blessed his cousin as he shook loose and made it the last twenty feet to the dark corner where Norah waited.
She pulled him underneath the bleachers. Her hands fisted in his shirt, as she dragged his mouth to hers in a long devouring kiss that had every drop of blood draining from his head. “What’s the quickest way out of here?”
“I thought you wanted to dance.” He tugged her head gently back so he could taste the line of her throat.
“God.” She shuddered. “Changed my mind. Too many damned people here. We’ll never even make it to the dance floor without being unforgivably rude.”
“Then allow me to introduce you to the time-honored tradition of sneaking out past the chaperons.”
~*~
Norah already had Cam’s sport coat off and his shirt untucked by the time they stumbled their way inside his loft. He spun her, using her body to shut the door, then pressing her up against it, cursing when he couldn’t dislodge the bolero jacket.
“Give me just a second,” she gasped, breathless as he ran his hands up her hips, around to cup her ass.
The floor abruptly shifted beneath them. Norah hung on, shielded from the sudden earthquake by Cam’s body.
“Down. Down, damn it!”
Not an earthquake. Hush.
Norah reeled a little as Cam let her go and reached for the dog, who’d jumped up against his back in greeting.
“Get the damned jacket off. I’ll take care of her.” He yanked open the door again and dragged a whining Hush down the stairs. “C’mon girl, there’s bacon downstairs. You want some bacon?”
Norah shucked the jacket and considered stripping off the rest to speed things along. Her pulse hummed in delicious anticipation. She’d wanted him since that first night, wanted to lose herself in the heat they made together. With the feelings she’d developed since—she
was all but drunk with desire.
In less than two minutes, Cam bounded back through the door, shutting and locking it. Hush howled from the barn below, sounding for all the world as if she’d been put in prison.
“I feel bad for her. She sounds so pitiful.”
“We’ll make it up to her,” Cam assured her as he crossed the room to the stereo. “I’ll fix her chicken and peanut butter. But I don’t have any intention of being interrupted before morning.”
“Thank God for that. I’ve had enough interruptions for the night.”
Something slow and jazzy spilled out from the speakers to block out the sound of the dog.
“There won’t be any more, so let’s slow things down a bit.”
She shook her head, reaching for him again and making quick work of the buttons of his shirt. “Fast now to take the edge off. Slow later.” Parting the fabric, she gripped one side in each fist and pulled him to her so she could nip lightly at the tendon in his throat.
“But I like the edge.” Nudging one strap of her dress down her shoulder, he followed the trail with his mouth.
Her body tightened, her breath skipping in response. “The edge makes me crazy.”
“I’m gonna make you crazier.” Cam backed her across the loft, toward the bedroom, sliding down the other strap. “See, I’ve had considerable time to think about what I wanted to do when I got you here like this.”
“Oh yeah?” She shoved the shirt from his shoulders. He was beautifully made, the lean lines of his muscles sculpted from hard physical labor rather than a gym. She wanted to map him with her hands, learn his contours with her mouth.
“One thing I’ve noticed about you is that you never stop thinking. The wheels in that sexy brain of yours are always turning. So I’ve got one goal.” He dragged down the zipper of her dress, until the only thing holding it up was the press of his body to hers.