But now was not the time for a pity party, so she smiled back at Elise. “No problem.”
“You need to meet his plane, take him to Jay’s, and make sure he doesn’t do anything crazy. Jay will be home as soon as he can after work, and then you can leave for the evening and we’ll figure out the rest of the schedule from there.”
“Got it.”
Elise reached out and squeezed her hand. “Seriously. Making sure Cameron doesn’t ruin my wedding is the best present you could give me.”
She waved away Elise’s thanks. This was going to be a piece of cake. Or at least better than tea set spray-painting duty. After all, how bad could this Cameron MacKinnon guy be?
Chapter Two
WEDNESDAY—TEN DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING
How bad could this wedding be?
Cam kept asking himself that question as the plane taxied endlessly to its gate and he stretched—as much as he could in the tiny seat—to shake off the sleep that had overtaken him.
The flight from Thunder Bay had been short, but he’d conked right out and fallen immediately into dreams of the Middle East. Snippets of dreams, really, everything from both tours all jumbled up: sand and heat and boredom and fear. His instrument panel. Haseeb’s face when he’d realized they weren’t going to be able to diffuse the bomb. Becky’s cries for help.
The trial.
Objectively speaking, Jay’s wedding was not going to be as bad as Iraq. Cam knew that. And, he consoled himself, he was in Toronto.
A city. Civilization. Steaks. Ice cream. Hell, fresh vegetables. He smiled to himself as he hoisted his backpack onto his shoulder and shuffled down the aisle.
A drink. Maybe even a joint. He perked up as he ambled down the Jetway. Despite his reputation, he wasn’t really into drugs, but after the last couple years, maybe he could get into the concept of temporary oblivion.
Television. Trashy American television. Or boring Canadian television, even. Television in English, was the point. Falling asleep with the TV on, warm under a pile of his mom’s quilts.
Winter, he thought, as he followed the signs toward baggage claim. Not for five or six months yet, but even just knowing it would come was a relief. And before then, the leaves of fall. Cool nights.
Warm beds.
Women.
It wasn’t a bad list. And ticking off the items on it was going to help get him out of the damned country music song he was currently living in. Kicked out of the Canadian Forces and dumped by the girlfriend he’d stupidly remained faithful to for two deployments—the first in Afghanistan and the one he was just coming off of, in Iraq. He was even homeless on account of the fact that the plan had been for him to move in with Christie when he got back to Thunder Bay. All he needed was to get a dog so it could die and make his wretchedness complete.
So much for turning over a new leaf. He’d been trying to remake his life, but apparently a person couldn’t escape his destiny.
But whatever. He’d spent his whole childhood wanting to get out of Thunder Bay, so why the hell would he want to move back to that remote shithole of a town now that he had no reason to be at the reserve unit? Christie had done him a favor, actually.
He was totally free.
He closed his eyes and let his mind return to his list as he approached the still-empty baggage carousel. His dream girl…she’d be what? Blond? Yeah. Sleek blond hair. What else? Petite. Hell, if he was going to imagine his ideal hookup, he might as well embrace his inner caveman. He would run his hands all over her—they’d practically span her waist. He started a little as the baggage carousel leaped to life but then closed his eyes again. One more second living in his fantasy: blond hair, blue eyes, a pixie of a girl. Someone with a big, wide smile who would be happy to see him. Exactly…
“Cameron MacKinnon?”
…the opposite of the chubby, mousy woman standing before him.
“Yeah?” Did he know this woman from somewhere? Another Thunder Bay escapee maybe? With her jeans, unadorned white T-shirt, and mud-colored hair scraped back into a ponytail, she sort of had that small-town, unadventurous look he recognized from home. He wouldn’t go so far as to call her a hick—her skinny jeans were flattering and looked expensive, but she didn’t seem like the big-city type.
“You look exactly like I imagined,” she said, regarding him with her hands on her hips and smiling with satisfaction, almost as if she had manifested him with her mind.
“And you look nothing like I imagined,” he answered.
The smug smile disappeared, and she narrowed her eyes. They were the color of mossy mud. To match the mud hair, he supposed, though really her hair was the color of rusty mud. He laughed, both at her confusion and at himself. He’d gone and conjured a woman, all right, but apparently the universe had decided to give him the opposite version of what he’d ordered.
“I’m Elise’s friend,” she said. “She sent me to pick you up. My name is Jane.”
“Elise?”
“Jay’s fiancée?” said the woman he now knew was called Jane. Plain Jane. Muddy Jane.
“Right.” He spied his duffel sliding down the chute and jogged over to retrieve it. “So, Jane,” he said as she caught up to him, “I hope my brother’s marrying up.”
“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said, her nose wrinkling. She had a cute nose. Especially when she scrunched it up like that. It went a little way toward counteracting all that mud.
“It was a joke, Jane.” She still didn’t look amused. Didn’t even crack a smile. Well. His tiny blond dream girl would have laughed. “Let’s just say that although Jay presents pretty well these days, he and I both come from what you might call white-trash origins. So I’m pretty sure he can’t help but be marrying up.”
One—only one—eyebrow slowly lifted. “Are you ready?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’ve got a car rented.” He looked around for signs for the rental companies. “So you didn’t actually need to pick me up, Jane.” He switched to looking her up and down. The skinny jeans showcased the way her waist nipped way in and then gave way to rounded hips. Pixies aside, there was something to be said for a curvier figure. The proverbial hourglass.
“Jay lives downtown. You don’t need a car.”
“And yet I’ve rented one.”
“He lives right off the subway,” she went on, apparently bent on ignoring him. “It will be impossible to park near his building.”
“Look, Jane. I’ve been driving around the desert in a G Wagon for the past five months. Cruising along a paved road behind the wheel of a good old North American hot rod? I’ve been dreaming of that.” He raised his eyebrows. “Among other things.” A pixie, primarily. The kind of woman who would appreciate the kind of car he was imagining.
She sighed like a weary kindergarten teacher, and annoyance flared in his chest. He hadn’t asked her to come here, boss him around, and then act all put upon when he was exercising the goddamned freedom he’d been overseas defending.
But he wasn’t a bully—he might be a lot of things, but a bully wasn’t one of them—so he bit his tongue and turned, setting off for the car rental counters.
He could feel her following. And when they reached the edge of the carpeted area outside baggage claim, he could hear the clicking of her shoes on the polished concrete floor. He sped up. So did the clicks. Click-click-click, like a ticking timer signaling an imminent bomb blast.
He knew what was happening. Jane wasn’t here as some kind of innocuous welcome wagon. Jay had sent her because he didn’t trust Cam not to fuck up in some way. He expected Cam to embarrass him. And, really, wasn’t that fair? From Jay’s perspective at least? Jay had no idea that Cam had been three years into Operation: Become an Honorable Person when it had all come crumbling down around him. He was back to being the unreliable loser of a younger brother, but as far as Jay knew, that was what he had always been. At least he didn’t have to look into his brother’s disappointed eyes after this latest disgrace. If people’s expectations of you were already in the gutter, it was hard to disappoint them.
He could probably manage it with Elise, though. Cam hadn’t been joking about marrying up. Cam paid attention to his brother’s letters—lived for them in fact, though he’d never admit it. So he knew Jay’s fiancée was an interior designer. Elise and Muddy Jane were probably peas in a pod: uptight, refined, humorless.
Click-click-click-click-click.
He stopped suddenly, and she crashed into him. Her breasts hit his back, and they were soft and yielding as they met his torso. It was only an instant, but it was enough to remind him—to remind his dick—how much he had missed breasts.
A pixie would not have breasts like that.
He could feel her correct by stepping back, and as he turned, she tripped over her own feet. Instinctively, he grabbed for her, intending only to help her find her footing, but she jerked away from him with enough force that she stumbled even more and landed on her butt a couple feet from him.
He tried not to laugh. He really did.
“Stop laughing.”
Oh, she was mad. She had pressed her lips together so hard, they had entirely disappeared. The rusty-mud ponytail had come a little loose, and some wisps of hair framed her face—he could almost imagine them as puffs of red steam. She looked like Yosemite Sam about to have a temper tantrum.