No, she wouldn’t bring them. Apart from the risk someone might think they were in a ménage relationship, if she did bring them it would destroy the effect of her networking. She’d want to dance with them and talk to them, when she needed to be out meeting new clients and making herself known. But that was a weird few moments in her life. It’d been many years since she’d actively thought about inviting a friend—well two friends in this case—to a party with her. She was usually quite the other way around, annoyed when she had to bring someone with her.
It was interesting. She really did like them and want to spend time with them. But not to the detriment of her career ambitions. No way.
* * * *
Saturday 9:00 a.m. Wear workout clothes. Bring a change of casual clothes.
Fergus sent the text message to Sierra and Cam then sat back and relaxed. It was all planned, organized, and ready to go. He’d gotten quite friendly with Sierra’s secretary. He’d used Ambrielle, the clinic’s office manager, to contact her the first time, but had been talking directly to her for several weeks now, planning their dates around Sierra’s court appointments. This next date had been more difficult to organize because it needed to take place in daylight and it had to be either a day when he and Cam weren’t working or at least one when they could swap shifts with some of the other nurses. Since the clinic was very small, two of them needing to be off on the same day would have been hard to arrange. Fortunately Sierra had no urgent cases coming soon, so Saturday worked for them all.
The days flew by until Saturday. They’d agreed to meet at Sierra’s apartment as Cam could leave his car there all day in a visitor’s parking space. Shortly before nine Fergus drove down into the basement, two levels down as she’d told him, and over to the south wall. Sure enough she was leaning against the wall beside two empty parking spaces. He pulled into one and jumped out, popping the trunk of his car. He picked up a small backpack and dropped it into the trunk. “That’s all?” he asked.
“You said casual clothes, right, so that should be all I need.”
Yes, that made sense. She’d read the instructions and been organized about what she wanted. She wasn’t the kind of woman who needed to take three pairs of shoes with her in case she changed her mind. He liked that about her. He appreciated a woman dressed in sexy shoes as much as the next man did, but he also liked a woman who didn’t make him late for an appointment by not being able to decide which outfit to wear. He guessed in her job if she’d been late too often she’d have been unemployed. Keeping the judge waiting would be just as fatal to her career as being late to work could be in a factory.
He hadn’t even had time to shut the lid of the trunk before Cam arrived, parking his car beside Fergus’s and jumping out, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He dropped the duffel into the trunk of Fergus’s car beside Sierra’s backpack and Fergus’s own larger soft-sided carry bag, then Cam leaned over and kissed Sierra on the cheek. “Hi, gorgeous.”
Fergus blinked and slammed the trunk shut. It hadn’t even occurred to him to kiss Sierra or to call her by a pet name, but the fact that Cam did it so naturally shouted at how Cam felt about her. That was information he needed to know. Sierra didn’t back away or remonstrate with Cam either, and although that may have simply been her training, since they were basically alone in a parking lot, he thought she’d have said something if she disapproved.
Fascinating indeed.
“How about you ride in front with me this time, Sierra, and Cam goes in the back,” he suggested.
“The death seat? I’m just as happy for Cam to sit there.”
“Death seat?” asked Fergus.
“And you a nurse, too. If one passenger in a car is killed in a traffic accident, it’s way more likely to be the person sitting beside the driver than anyone else. And that includes idiots travelling in the tray of a truck as well as everyone being good and wearing their seat belt,” Sierra explained. Nevertheless, she sat where he’d suggested and he was pulling out of the parking lot by the time she’d finished talking.
Cam asked her some questions and that left Fergus free to concentrate on making his way out of town, around a maze of on and off ramps, to the interstate, and then onto the small two-lane road he needed to take them to their destination.
“This is the middle of nowhere. Where are we going?” asked Cam suddenly.
“Blue Quarry.”
Fergus flicked his gaze from Cam in the rear view mirror to Sierra beside him. It didn’t appear as though either of them had heard of the place. That was good. He was pretty sure they’d never guess the full extent of what he’d planned for the morning, but if they didn’t know about it at all so much the better.