One and Only(32)

He couldn’t stop thinking about repeating certain items on his list, though.

One in particular.

But still, as hot as Saturday night had been, as enthusiastic as Jane had been as she’d come apart in his hands—and under his mouth—he had decided that texting her a straight-up booty call was a bad idea. He’d freaked himself out with his weird, post-coital home repair session yesterday, and he was sticking to his stance that if anything more was going to happen, she should initiate it.

In other words, if there was going to be any booty-calling, she should be the caller and he should be the call-ee.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t give her the opportunity to make the call.

So he texted to invite her to Canada’s Wonderland. Because for some reason the image of Jane on a roller coaster had lodged itself in his mind. He didn’t want her to be scared like she’d been in the haunted house, but another exhilarating experience in the vein of the CN Tower would be just the thing to…set the mood. So he’d done a bit of research and come up with the idea of the amusement park that was a little ways outside the city. They would go on the gentler rides, and she’d shriek and clutch at him, but also laugh. Her russet hair would fan out behind her, and when the ride was over she would be pink-cheeked and tussled.

Just thinking about it was making his dick hard.

Canada’s Wonderland, like, the amusement park?



Her return text made him laugh. He could just see her scrunching her nose in confusion.

Yes. I’ve got roller coasters on the brain.



After he pressed send, he started composing another text because he knew she was going to take some convincing.

I know you probably think you’re not the roller coaster type, but…



What could he say to convince her that she was more adventurous than she realized? He needed to see her in goddess mode again, but he could hardly say that. It turned out he didn’t have to say anything.

I am. I am the roller coaster type. What time are you picking me up?







When Cam pulled up in front of her house an hour later, Jane was already outside. She speed-walked down the path to meet him where he was parking on the street. She was wearing white jeans, and this time her T-shirt was a flowing, silky bright yellow. Instead of flats, she wore cute little tennis shoes covered with tiny yellow daisies. She was like a fucking ray of sunshine.

Man, she was really busting her ass to get to him. He couldn’t help grinning. He wanted to kiss her but checked the impulse. She was in charge here. Still, it stroked his ego to see her rushing to reach him. Kind of stroked something else, too.

“Just remember, I’m sorry,” she said, making an apologetic face.

“Sorry for what?”

His question was answered by the appearance of Wendy, Gia, and Elise, who came spilling out of Jane’s little house like clowns out of one of those mini cars. They were all talking a mile a minute, too, about roller coasters, whether anyone would brave the water rides, and the importance of sunscreen.

“I don’t want anyone getting tan lines for the wedding,” Elise said. “Or—God help me—a sunburn.”

Jane did the single eyebrow raise and shot him a knowing look. But then she added, “I’m also sorry about—”

“We can’t take your muscle car, Cameron. It’ll be too tight in the backseat,” Elise said. “We’ll take my SUV.” She tossed him the keys. “But you can drive.” She clapped her hands excitedly. “Yay! Spontaneous amusement park trip!” Then she turned to Wendy. “See? I told you taking the whole week off work would be worth it.”

And so he found himself navigating a giant-ass Ford Explorer through the narrow streets of Jane’s urban neighborhood with four grown women in the back arguing about something that sounded like “twall,” but he suspected was spelled differently.

Unlike most group car rides, no one had called shotgun. They’d all slid into the two rows of backseats like he was their chauffeur, chattering a mile a minute about whether the black and white “twall” dishes Elise had registered for were a mistake and should she have gone with the more classic blue and white?

Well, they were all chattering except Jane, who was seated on the opposite side of the car in the row behind him. He had a perfect view of her in the rearview mirror.

And she was looking right at him. He pressed his lips together in an attempt not to grin. She raised her eyebrows in amusement, and a kind of tender affection flooded his chest. This must be what parents felt like in a car full of hyper kids, like they were in on a secret together, each other’s lifelines. While he could see how long-term doses of the bridezilla might grow tiresome, he liked Elise and the others. Elise had spunk, and he could imagine, if that spunk was directed at something other than her upcoming nuptials, that she was a lot of fun. And as much as he and his brother had grown apart, he could still see Elise complementing Jay.

So, it wasn’t the day trip of his dreams, but, hey, he’d take it.

“Cameron!” Elise called from the far backseat.

“At your service, ma’am,” he said, playing up his chauffeur role.

“This is really nice of you to drive us to Wonderland. Are you really the bad boy everyone says?”

“Depends how you define bad,” he teased, refraining from pointing out that it wasn’t so much that he was “driving them” as they had crashed his planned party of two.

“How many tattoos do you have?” Elise asked.

“Well, really only three, if you count the sleeve as one,” he answered.

“That’s a little disappointing, actually,” said Elise. “I imagined you covered with them.”

“Well, they’re really big, so he kind of is,” Jane said. He whipped his eyes to hers, shocked that she’d told her friends about their encounter. But then the panic that appeared in her eyes as she clamped her mouth shut suggested that she actually hadn’t.

“So you’ve seen his tattoos,” Gia said.

“No,” said Jane. “I mean, yes, but…”

“She arrived at Jay’s one morning when I was walking around in my pj bottoms,” he said, rushing to cover for her for reasons he couldn’t fathom, given that he’d spent the first few days of his acquaintance with Jane bent on hassling her. “You know, when she was doing her assigned babysitting duty, Elise.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elise said. But then she added, “Jay said you have a criminal record.”

“I did,” he said, watching Jane in the mirror. They hadn’t talked about his past. “I was a juvenile, though, so it was expunged when I turned eighteen.”

“What did you do?” Wendy asked.

“I burned down a barn,” he said.

“On purpose?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters a lot.”

“Wendy’s a defense lawyer,” Jane said. “It’s like you’re waving catnip in front of her.”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” he said. “I knocked over a candle when I was, ah, otherwise engaged.”

“What were you charged with?” Wendy asked.

“Arson.”

“433 Arson—disregard for human life, or 434 arson—damage to property?”

“Huh?”

“She’s quoting the criminal code,” Jane said.

“I think the property one,” he said. “But I don’t really know. It was a long time ago.”

“Well, your lawyer should have gotten it down to at least 436 arson by negligence, if not just disorderly conduct.”

“Didn’t have a lawyer, really, just some legal aid guy I met in the hallway five minutes before my court date.”

He couldn’t see Wendy, but a scoffing noise came from her general direction, and Gia said, “Down girl. Concentrate on your own stable of criminals.”

“Who I’m hanging out to dry this week while I ride roller coasters and…stuff,” Wendy said. Cam could see Elise’s eyes narrow, and he suspected a bridal death glare was the cause of Wendy’s aborted complaint.

“So!” Jane chirped. “I had a look at the Wikipedia entry for Canada’s Wonderland.”

He shook his head and grinned. Of course she had. But he was all for her blatant attempt to direct the conversation away from the mistakes of his youth. He waited for her to pull some printouts from her purse.

And, bingo. She rustled through her papers for a moment, then said, “Yeah, so there are sixteen roller coasters at this place, and a twenty-acre waterpark.”

“Did everyone bring bathing suits?” he asked. He’d instructed Jane to do so when they were texting.

A chorus of affirmative answers broke out behind him.

“But no tan lines, guys,” Elise ordered. “No. Tan. Lines.”





“I’m really, really sorry,” Jane said the moment she could get Cameron alone. They’d just entered the park, and the other girls had gone to the bathroom en masse. “There was this group text after we made our arrangements. Elise wanted to do something ‘fun.’” She made air quotes with her fingers. “I was trying to get out of whatever she had planned, but somehow it ended up being…this.” She wasn’t even sure how it had happened, really, but somehow, she’d lost control of the conversation and all of a sudden they were on her doorstep and Elise was lecturing them about sunscreen.