Hot Commodity(73)

"I-I’m sorry," Olivia said softly.

Cameron shifted uncomfortably as he watched the two women. He suddenly felt crappy for being rude as soon as he’d opened the door. He wasn’t sure if he should offer his condolences. Hell, he wasn’t even sure who Nolan was, though he suspected it was Vivian’s husband, the same old geezer he’d kicked out of Olivia’s hotel room in Chicago, because Vivian continued with, "I have no one now. I need you."

She stared her daughter straight in the eye and made no comment about Olivia’s bandaged wrist or the paleness in her cheeks. There was no way the woman could’ve missed them. Cameron was all too aware of everything mommy dearest skipped over, like asking whether Olivia’s new husband had been treating her right or telling her daughter she loved her.

"You must come back with me, Olivia. I can’t be by myself."

Olivia blinked her long-lashed eyes and looked blankly startled. "I-I’m sorry, Mother," she said, looking seriously regretful. "But I’ve started a life here. I’ve made friends, gotten a job, and—"

"You really did get a job?" Cameron blurted out.

She spared him a brief, hard glance for interrupting and, as he

snapped his mouth shut, turned back to her mother.

"You might need me, Vivian. But I don’t need you. And I’m sorry for your loss, but I know how quickly you bounce back after your spouse dies. You’ll find some poor man to control in no time. Besides, my life is here. In Kansas City."

"Olivia," Vivian nearly whispered. "Please."

She opened her mouth, looking absolutely clueless as how to deal with this stranger her own mother had become. "I-I...No," she said. "I’m staying."

Vivian’s face frosted over. Her back straightened, and she once again became the woman they both knew and despised. "This is it then," she said with a sneer. "You just made your bed with him. Don’t ever come crawling back to me. And don’t bother trying to retrieve your things either. They were gone the day after I got home from Chicago."

Cameron watched his wife swallow a lump in her throat. But she bravely tilted her chin up and answered, "That’s all right. I didn’t need anything from your house, anyway."

Pausing a moment to send her one last evil glare, Vivian turned on her heel and stormed from the house. She brushed by Cameron, knocking him back a step, and slammed the door on her way out.

No one spoke for a good minute after her departure. For once, Cameron couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Olivia was obviously still steamed at him over the whole cut-wrist misunderstanding.

"Did you call her?" she finally said.

His mouth dropped. "What? Hell, no."

She gave a single, thoughtful nod before asking, "What’d you do to her?"

Cam was suspiciously quiet for a moment. Then cautiously, he countered, "Why do you think I did anything?"

"Oh, maybe because you said, ‘I’ll stop screwing you over like you tried to do to me’."

Cameron grinned suddenly. "Oh. That."

"Yeah. That. You must’ve hit her hard. I’ve never seen her look so beaten before."

"Well, we, uh, we kind of screwed her out of a business deal, or rather into a business deal."

Olivia shook her head, not comprehending.

"Boston and I had been looking into buying out this company, you see. And, well, your mother found out about it. I guess she was still ticked at me for taking you away, so she tried to buy it out from under us and screw me over. But what she didn’t know was that we were going to merge it with this other company we own. So, when your mother starting putting in these outrageous bids to make us raise our offer, I decided to let her win the auction."

Cameron shrugged helplessly. "Now, she owns a failing company she paid an arm and a leg for." He sighed, looking pleased. "She took a direct hit in the pocketbook for messing with us. I doubt she’ll try it again."

"That was pretty ingenious." She cocked her head to the side as she studied him. "Have you always been this smart?"

He nodded seriously. "Oh, always."

Olivia grinned. But she didn’t smile for long. As she stared at him, she seemed to remember the discord between them, and her lips quivered a moment before falling. Cameron watched helplessly as she drew back inside herself. He wanted to reach out and shake her, make her come back, make her keep smiling.

He swallowed and looked away. "So, you found a job, huh?"

Olivia nodded. "Your dad hired me."

"He did?" The traitor. "When?"