Tempting the New Boss(48)

“No! Of course not.”

Their denials were simultaneous and pretty loud.

Brandy glanced over with interest from where she and Joey were taking an inventory of the mini-bar.

“Accidents happen. Mix-ups.” Her mother stared intently into her eyes, and Camilla wondered if she was talking about the clerk or something else.

“Don’t think a thing about it, sweetie,” her dad said. “We just want you to relax, and maybe your sister will come and check on you in a little while. See how you are.”

“Did you leave your suitcase in the plane?” her mom asked.

“Oh, yes.” She just remembered.

“No problem. You know how Brandy over packs for everything. She’ll bring you something fresh when she checks on you.”

“Come on, gang,” her dad called out in the direction of Brandy and Joey. “Let’s leave your sister to rest.”

Joey protested, but with additional hugs and kisses for all, they were gone.

As much as she wanted to be with her family, they were right. She was exhausted and needed some alone time.

But the growl emanating from her stomach reminded her she was starving. She had half a mind to call for some room service, but when she saw it was the same number as the front desk, she thought better of it after the hissy fit she had thrown with the clerk down there just now.

It was a little over the top in the outrage department, since she had already slept with Mason and might have even done so again, God help her, if they had started out with two separate rooms, sneaking behind her parents’ back as the unwritten pact between the Anderson girls and their parents required. But it was the presumption that infuriated her. It was the principle of the thing. Besides, she needed her own room to steady herself—it had been pretty intense—before she talked to him again.

There was a knock on her door, and since she hadn’t called for room service, she had a sneaking suspicion she knew who it was. She ought to just leave him standing out there in the hall. But she had a sudden vision of him clutching her in his arms as the plane descended and asking her all those silly questions he didn’t have the slightest interest in and never would have under normal circumstances.

She opened the door.

It wasn’t Mason, and she ignored the disappointment in the pit of her stomach that was worse than the hunger pains.

“Hi,” her sister said, handing over neatly folded jeans and a sweater, fresh socks nestled in the bundle as well. “I’m supposed to give you these, but I think Mom and Dad sent me back here so quick to see if you wanted to talk.”

Camilla shut the door, set the clothes on a chair, and went to the mini-bar to take out a Milky Way and hand Brandy a bag of popcorn. With a bottle of water for each of them, she wandered back to the bedroom and folded her legs up beneath her in the flowery armchair. “I thought they wanted me to sleep.”

Brandy bounced on the bed. “I’m also supposed to make myself scarce if you really do want to be alone.”

“So is this about the one room thing for me and my boss?”

“What?” Her sister burst out with a laugh. “You’re kidding!”

“Oh, guess not.” Mom and Dad were more circumspect than she would have thought.

“You and your boss shared one room? Was this like, when you were at the deserted ranger’s station in the middle of the woods or whatever? His assistant mentioned that you’d rested at one when she called back.”

Mmmm, so Marcia knew about the ranger’s station. Of course she did. She’d booked the Bridal Suite for her boss and his new hook-up.

“That’s not so bad,” Brandy continued. “There was probably only one bed, right? Did you put a curtain up between you like in that old movie?”

With one bite of the caramel and chocolate, Camilla decided to come clean. Since her oldest sister, Mary, was twenty years older than she was, their parents were of a slightly older generation than the rest of her friends’ parents and even if they hadn’t been, they were Irish Catholics from the cradle. More like cafeteria Catholics when it came right down to it, though, adhering to the parts of the church they liked and conveniently ignoring any too strident doctrines. Camilla was pretty sure her parents didn’t object in principle to their daughters having pre-marital sex so much as they didn’t want to hear about it.

No such prohibition on conversation among the sisters. If not, how else would she have learned about the birds and the bees? Brandy may have been a decade older, but now that Camilla thought of it, she had first learned about the birds and the bees from this particular sister. No need to hide anything about sex from her.