What He Doesn't Know(7)

The first night he took me on a date - a real date - he drove me in his  beat up clunker of a car. It was an old Pontiac, one that he spent  nearly every weekend trying to keep running. I'd been so nervous, the  book worm going on a date with one of the most popular guys on campus;  captain of the hockey team, our star player, and he was aloof to all the  other girls. Cameron Pierce was a mystery, and I didn't know a single  girl who had been granted more than one night in his bed to try to  figure him out.                       
       
           


///
       

Until me, that is.

My hands shook that night in his car as he drove us to a small Italian  diner off campus. I'd tucked them between my thighs, trying to keep them  both warm and still. Cameron had asked me if I was nervous, and I'd  only blushed and nodded. Then, he'd reached over and placed his right  hand on my knee.

That one touch had set me on fire and calmed me all at once.

And ever since then, whenever he drove us anywhere, his hand always  found me - my knee, my thigh, my hand. It was always there, it was  always mine.

I couldn't remember when that stopped.

My brows drew together as I stared at his hand, trying to remember the  last time that hand had touched me, the last time it'd comforted me.

"Are you okay?"

Cameron was watching me, and I cleared my throat, peeling my gaze away and pinning it on the road. "Fine. Just a little cold."

He stared at me a moment longer before shifting in his seat. My heart  skipped with hope that he'd read my mind and was reaching for my hand.

But he leaned forward to adjust the heat instead.

I glanced outside the passenger side window just as my old house rolled  into view. Maxwell and Gloria Reid lived in a mansion, but it just  looked like home to me. I didn't bat an eyelash at the tall, intricate  metal gate that we had to wait for Mom to buzz us inside of. The long  drive with beautiful flowers and trees lining each side didn't leave me  in awe. I barely looked at them before we were parked in front of the  grand entrance to the west wing.

It was where Mom and Dad hosted their guests, where the nice china and  newest furniture was housed. It was where I'd helped them host parties  my entire young adult life, where I'd celebrated my graduation from  Westchester and Garrick, both.

It was where Cameron had asked me to marry him, with little fuss, in front of the people who mattered most to me.

Cameron parked the car and cut the ignition before jumping out and  jogging over to open my door for me. He helped me out of the car, his  left hand reaching for mine. I still stared at his right one.

"There they are!" Dad called from the front door, his voice booming. He  stood with the front door open waiting for us, the same door that was  usually answered by the butler or the maid. But on family dinner nights,  my parents would give the help the night off. Mom always insisted. She  wanted to be the one to wait on and cook for her family.

"Hi, Dad," I said, leaning up to kiss his cheek as he took my coat.

"Hey, sweetheart. How's my girl?"

"Just fine." I forced a smile, crossing my arms over my middle as we  both turned to Cameron. He was already reaching forward for my dad's  hand, and Dad pulled him in for a bear hug before Cameron could protest.

My dad was a bear of a man, standing a few inches taller than Cameron  and weighing about a hundred pounds more, too. His belly had grown in  size over the years, which I didn't mind. If anything, he seemed even  more jolly now that his belly shook a bit when he laughed. His brown  hair had grown gray over the years, his mustache matching it, but he  always dressed to the nines. My dad's philosophy: Be ready to impress,  because you never knew who you'd run into, even if it was at home.

Dad and Cameron were already talking about the Pittsburgh Penguins match  against the Tampa Bay Lightning that night. I didn't know much about  hockey, other than what I'd picked up over the years watching Cameron  play at Garrick, so I took my coat from Dad and hung it on the rack by  the door.

Cameron had always loved hockey, even before his grandparents had helped  him get started playing in high school. He was well behind the curve of  the other players by that point, but the coaches couldn't teach the  other kids to do what Cameron could do from natural talent alone.

He'd stopped playing after college, assuring me his only interest was in  me and our future family, but I'd still purchased a Penguins season  ticket for him and renewed it every year since. I'd offered several  times to get him a second ticket so he could take someone with him - my  dad or another friend - but he'd insisted he'd rather go alone.

That was Cameron. He was a loner, and he preferred it that way.

"I see it didn't take them long to start talking about sports," Mom  teased as she rounded the corner into the foyer. She'd been in the  kitchen, no doubt, the pastel pink apron still tied at her waist as she  leaned in to hug me.

"Never does," I said as she hugged me. "How are you, Mom?"

"Just wonderful," she said with a sigh, squeezing me once more before pulling back. "I'm so happy to have you here for dinner."                       
       
           


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"We come for dinner at least three times a month," I reminded her.

"Well, it's never enough. And with Graham living in Arizona now, you're going to get twice the dinner invites."

My brother, Graham, had moved to Arizona shortly after his wedding the  previous summer. His wife had her own dental practice there that had  been handed down through the family, and he'd moved to support her. I  missed when he was around for family dinners, too.

Mom held me there, hands on my arms as she looked me over, questions  hidden behind her eyes. If my dad was a bear of a man, my mom was a bird  of a woman - just like me. Her bones were petite, waist tiny enough for  dad to wrap his hands around with thumbs and fingertips touching. Her  hair was the same color as mine, a chocolate brown, though she wore hers  down in a classic bob while mine always stayed tied in a bun on top of  my head.

I tried to smile as she searched my eyes with a concerned gaze. She'd  looked at me that way for five years now, like she was trying to find  her little girl beneath the woman who stood before her. But before she  had the chance to ask if I was okay, the way she always did, Reese  appeared behind her, holding a dark cocktail in one hand and a glass of  wine in the other.

His eyes found me first.

Something happened in that moment, in that instant where I saw him  standing in such a familiar place. He was back in my home, in a setting  I'd seen him so many times before, only back then he was younger.

Back then, he wore basketball shorts and old t-shirts with the sleeves  cut off. Tonight, he wore black dress slacks and a charcoal gray sweater  with a light blue button-up shirt peeking out from underneath it. The  collar of it poked out above the neck of his sweater and the wrist cuffs  were the only other part of it visible.

He looked grown, sophisticated, and my eyes drank him in along with the  memories he caused to resurface just by being in the place he once used  to be.

"Your wine, Mrs. Reid."

"Oh! Thank you, Reese," she said, taking the glass from his hand with a  shake of her head. "And stop it with that formal stuff. You used to call  me Mom, what happened to that?"

Reese chuckled, lifting his glass to take a sip. His eyes were still on me.

"Sorry. Gloria. That better?"

"It'll do," she conceded.

"Hello, Charlie," Reese said next, reaching for my hand with the one not wrapped around his glass. "You look beautiful."

He lifted my hand to his lips, pressing a soft kiss onto the back of it.  He used to greet me with high fives and a ruffle of my braids that I'd  have to fix when he was done.

"Thank you. I see you found the cocktails."

"At your mother's request, of course."

"Surely," I teased, and he grinned before finally letting go of my hand.

"Reese, my boy," Dad said, joining us in the middle of the foyer. "This  is Cameron Pierce, my daughter's husband. Cameron was the captain of the  hockey team at Garrick where Charlie went to college. Hell of an  athlete," he said proudly. "And hell of a man, too. One of the top  associates at Reid's Energy Solutions."

Dad was the Chairman of the Board and former CEO of an energy company  he'd started with his brother. They'd built it from the ground up,  riding the solar energy revolution, and Cameron joined the company right  after graduation. He'd quickly moved up to be one of the top project  managers. It was another part of his life I didn't understand, but one I  was proud of nonetheless.

"Treats our little girl pretty great, too," Mom added with a sweet smile, leaning over to kiss Cameron's cheek.