Chapter Fourteen

It wasn’t a date.

Rachel kept telling herself that. She and Cam were meeting to go Christmas shopping for Sofie together while her mother watched the baby. That was all it was. An effort at co-parenting and being more open and trusting with one another.

But she was as nervous as if it was a date.

Ever since the conversation in her office when he’d told her about his ex, she’d been finding it harder and harder to keep him at a safe mental distance. She found herself remembering the first time they met, the memories no longer twisted by bitterness and recriminations.

She’d been volunteering at a cystic fibrosis fundraiser TD Events was throwing, all part of her plan to meet Trista and score an interview with the premiere event planner in the Denver area. She hadn’t noticed Cam, totally focused on making a good impression on Trista—and it had worked. At the end of the event, Trista had asked her to come by for an interview in a couple weeks and Rachel had let herself celebrate with a single glass of champagne on the balcony.

She hadn’t expected Cam to join her with a fresh bottle and a glass of his own. She was usually so guarded around men, so careful with her heart, but he’d congratulated her—somehow knowing she was celebrating without even knowing why—and something had clicked into place. She didn’t remember the details, didn’t remember what they’d talked about. She only remembered the feeling. Like she was alive for the first time, just like he’d said, electrified from the inside by a spark she’d never known was missing.

She wasn’t impulsive, but with him she had been. And it had been magical. But could they really get that magic back? Did she want to?

Cam rang the doorbell promptly at six. Rachel had barely had time to rush home and change after work—which meant she hadn’t had time to obsess over what she was wearing. Much. She was barefoot in jeans and a soft red sweater when she rushed to the door, past her mother spooning yogurt into Sofie’s mouth at the table.

Cam stood on the front step—and once again he looked like something out of a freaking magazine. Coat open, hands shoved into the front pockets of faded jeans, the beginning of beard scruff on his cheeks. Then he smiled and her chest tightened at the familiar grin. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Heat warmed her cheeks and she told herself it was just a reaction to the cold outside. “Come on in. I just need to grab my shoes and my purse.”

He came into the entryway as Rachel rushed to find shoes and socks—and his grin turned outright dopey as he clapped eyes on Sofie. “Hey there, baby girl! Whatcha got there? Is that yogurt?”

Rachel ducked into the bedroom, giving herself a quick and ruthless lecture on keeping her head. Just because he was insanely hot and went gooey at the sight of their daughter and actually appeared to be a genuinely good human being who would financially support his ex-wife through cancer even after she left him…she’d lost her train of thought. She’d been going in a don’t-fall-for-him direction, but she couldn’t seem to remember the reasons why.

Cam was making faces at Sofie when she came out of the bedroom, and Andie was trying to hide a smile—and failing—as the baby giggled.

“Ready to go?” Rachel asked, all business. One of the ornaments on the tree looked like it had fallen down to a lower branch, but she forced herself not to fix it with Cam watching, moving instead toward the door and putting on her coat.

Cam clapped his hands. “Let’s do this.”

Rachel looked past him to her mother. “We won’t be long.”

“Take your time. We’re good,” she assured them, smiling in a way that was entirely too hopeful.

This isn’t a date.

Even if he did put his hand on her arm as they crossed the parking lot toward his car. It was icy. He was being courteous.

But the touch still made her shiver and words rushed out of her mouth to cover her nerves. “I already ordered most of Sofie’s presents from my mom and Yaya and me. I’m not sure what you had in mind to get for her, but I can point you toward things that she isn’t already getting—”

“Didn’t I just hear you bemoaning the fact that you hadn’t had time to do your Christmas shopping?” Cam hit the key fob to unlock his Range Rover and opened her door for her—which was not a date thing to do. He probably did that for everyone.

“That was two days ago,” she reminded him.

“Of course it was. My bad.” He laughed as he shut her door and rounded the hood to climb into the driver’s seat.

She shoved more words into the car with them. “There was one thing I couldn’t get for as good a deal online—this interactive Sesame Street learning toy with really good reviews—so I put it on hold at Target, though they didn’t have it in stock at the close one, so I’ll need to head up to the Longmont store, but I can do that on my own if that doesn’t fit into the schedule tonight. What did you have in mind?”

He arched a brow as he clicked his seatbelt. “I have to have a plan?”

“It’s easier to figure out where we should be going if we know what you’re looking for.”

Cam shrugged, turning on the engine of the posh SUV. “I figured something would grab me.”

“Right.” She forcibly restrained herself from pulling out the list of possible present options she’d made on her phone. This was Cam’s idea. Cam’s present for Sofie.

He glanced over at her as he pulled out of the parking space. “It’s going to drive you crazy, isn’t it? Not having a plan.”

She pressed her lips together, but the words burst out. “It just sounds like a really inefficient way of going about it. Where were you even going to go?”

“A mall? Or better yet, we’ll go pick up your Sesame Street thing and see if anything jumps out at us up there. Does that plan meet your standards?”

“I like being organized,” she defended against the teasing note in his voice. “There’s nothing wrong with being a planner.”

“You’re absolutely right,” he agreed. She studied him for traces of sarcasm, but he seemed sincere. “As long as you don’t miss the spontaneous stuff.”

“Spontaneous Christmas shopping sounds like a good way of ending up with things that don’t suit anyone on your list.”

“True. But if you only look for the things that are on your carefully planned list, you might miss out on things that people would love even more. You’ve gotta be open to the unexpected.”

“I’m open. I’m not incapable of seeing things that aren’t part of my plans,” she argued as he pointed the car toward Longmont. “I just like knowing what I’m looking for and where I can find it. It’s efficient.”

“And I love it.” He grinned. “How is the world’s most symmetrical tree, by the way?”

She rolled her eyes, trying not to remember that one ornament and how it had slipped down two branches. “Were you this annoying when we met before?”

“Absolutely. It’s my charm. You were helpless in the face of it.”

“Was I though?”

“Definitely.” His grin was broad—and unsettlingly intimate—when he flicked a glance at her. Thankfully he was driving and couldn’t hold her gaze because she probably would have turned to putty if he had. Where had her defenses against him gone?

“So Sofie’s into Sesame Street, huh?” At the comment, Rachel glanced over, frowning, and Cam explained, “The toy?”

“Right, yeah, it’s, um, educational. And she’s a little obsessed with Elmo.”

“Good to know.” He stared out the front window, giving her a chance to admire his profile. “Thanks for doing this, by the way. I wouldn’t have the first clue what to get her. It’s weird. Not knowing what she likes. Though I’m going to. By her birthday, I’m gonna have this down.”

It was the first mention of the future and Rachel tried not to react to it. Sofie’s birthday was in the middle of the baseball season. He’d be back in LA, doing his job. How often would they even see him? Or would he expect her to bring Sofie to LA? Would he fly them out on weekends? Put them up in fancy hotels…or with him? It felt too soon to even be thinking about things like that when she didn’t even know what the next two weeks would bring, but she couldn’t seem to stop her brain once it burrowed down that rabbit hole.

He asked what other things Sofie liked and Rachel kept up a running monologue of Sofie stories during the thirty minute drive up to Longmont.

The Christmas crowds were out in force, even on a weeknight, and the parking lot was packed when they arrived. Cam pulled into the first available space and Rachel’s story about Sofie’s bizarre I will eat only broccoli phase trailed off as they exited the car.

“I’ll go straight to the pick-up counter and meet you back in the toy section when I’m done.” She moved quickly toward the store, focusing on her purpose and not the man at her side—until they stepped through the automatic doors.

Cam caught her arm, guiding her out of the way of a woman who wasn’t watching where she was pushing her cart, and every cell in Rachel’s body hummed with awareness of him. He released her almost immediately, but she’d lost her train of thought, her brain scrambling to reboot after the incidental touch. How was she supposed to get through this night if he couldn’t even brush her arm without her hormones going crazy?

And she apparently wasn’t the only one who was hyper aware of him. Even in the hurried rush of pre-Christmas shopping days, Rachel saw several harried mommies give him a lingering glance, their steps hitching as they walked past. Did they recognize him? Or was it just his unfair GQ good looks?

It was tempting to stare them down, marking him clearly as hers, but he wasn’t. Not like that. So she forced herself to turn toward the pick-up counter. “I’ll see you back there.”

Cam looked lost for a moment, but he rallied quickly, saluting and starting toward the back of the store as Rachel headed toward the—thankfully short—pick-up line.

Fifteen minutes later she had the Sesame Street toy paid for and tucked into a reusable shopping bag as she headed back toward the kid-topia at the back of the store.

She half expected to find Cam surrounded by a swarm of helpful mommies batting their eyelashes at him—but what she saw when she stepped into the first toy aisle might actually have been more horrifying.

“No.”

Cam stood with one hand on a shopping cart that was literally overflowing with a lion stuffed animal that looked to be life-sized. It had a giant red bow around its neck and Rachel started shaking her head as she approached.

“Sofie does not need a stuffed animal the size of a small horse.”

“No one needs a stuffed animal,” Cam conceded, but his eyes were gleaming with excitement. “But don’t you think she’d love it?”

She would. But it was wildly impractical. “We don’t have the space. Can you imagine that in my apartment? It’s bigger than most of the furniture.”

“So we keep it at my place,” Cam offered instantly.

Rachel shot him a look, but he missed it as he patted the stuffed lion on the head, already off and running with his new plan. “I should set up a space for her over there anyway. Get some toys. A crib so she can stay overnight—”

Rachel’s stomach knotted at the thought of Sofie spending a night away from her. Things were moving too fast again, faster than she could keep up. Then she spotted the price tag. “Two hundred and eighty dollars? Are you kidding me?”

“It’s a showstopper.”

“It’s pointless. And ridiculously overpriced.”

Cam shrugged. “What’s Christmas for?”

That certainly answered the question of whether he was going to try to spoil Sofie with extravagant gifts. Irritation snapped through her. “Am I always going to have to be the rational one while you always get to be the fun one who breaks the rules?”

“I didn’t know there was a No Giant Stuffed Animals rule.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “That isn’t what I meant and you know it. Is that the kind of parent you want to be? The Fun Dad?”

* * * * *

Cam met her eyes, his enthusiasm retreating at the irritation in hers. Was that really what she thought of him? That he only wanted to be the Fun Dad? That he would balk at the first hint of responsibility?

His fingers sank into the silky-soft fur of the plush lion. He’d just wanted to get it right.

“I don’t know what kind of dad I’m going to be,” he said slowly, after a long moment. “I’m still figuring it out. I just…I don’t know her. And I want her to love the first thing I give her.” He’d already missed so much. He looked away from her, back at the lion. “If you really don’t want me to get it, I won’t get it.”

“I’m sorry,” Rachel whispered, and he glanced up to see guilt written across her face. “I’m being a jerk. I know you want it to be perfect for her, just like I do. I can’t be mad at you for being excited about Christmas with her when I’m the same way.” Her gaze flicked past him to the lion. “They have giant stuffed animals at Costco too,” she offered. “I don’t know if they have a lion, but they definitely have bears and dogs. They’re almost as big and I think they’re only thirty or forty bucks.” She swallowed. “She’d love one.”

Cam’s heart lifted. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Rachel’s lips quirked in a small, shy smile and he couldn’t stop the massive smile that spread across his face.

“See? Teamwork. We’ve got this.”

She laughed softly, but wouldn’t meet his eyes, taking a sudden interest in the toys around him as he replaced the massive lion on the shelf.

She was still so hesitant with him, so reluctant to let him in, but he could feel the momentum shifting, like a game where he was behind by five runs and the first few batters started to get on base. He was closer to winning her back with each smile—and he wasn’t going to stop trying to earn them.