Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 379(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
She sauntered over to him, throwing her tatted, silver-bangled arms around his neck, kissing his chin and cheeks and saving his mouth for last. She didn’t hold back, plunging her tongue between his lips and grabbing the back of his head before he could think to pull away.
“Etty,” he said against her lips, tugging her arms back down to her side. “I thought you weren’t back ’til next week.”
“It would not have been a surprise if I’d told you any differently.” Her French accent and warm smile wrapped around the words like a light, flaky croissant. “Eez fine, no?”
“No. I mean, yeah. Sure. It’s your suite. I just had a friend staying tonight.”
“Ooh la la.” She lifted her long lashes to dart naughty blue eyes between Cam and Jo. “A gift for me, yes? How you say…threesome? Ménage?”
“No! No, not a gift. Not a…” Cam cast a quick glance at Jo’s face, a frown cracking the line of her brow. Lips tightened and displeased. “She’s just a friend.”
“Mais nous pourrions avoir beaucoup de plaisir.” Her throaty voice dropped lower, smoking up with a memory Cam would rather forget. “Rapelle, Amsterdam, Cameron.”
Jo cleared her throat and took a step closer to Etty. “It’s actually really rude to have private conversations in French when someone doesn’t speak the language. And just useless and silly when they do,” Jo said…in perfect French.
Etty slapped Cam’s shoulder, a delighted laugh gurgling from her throat.
“I like this one.”
“Figures.” Cam rolled his eyes and gestured between the two women. “Jo Walsh, meet Etinette Chevalier.”
“This is my family’s hotel.” An impish grin stretched Etinette’s mouth from its usual pout.
“I gathered.” Jo tightened the knot of hair on her head. “I can go to Walsh’s place, Cam. Pierce can come get me.”
“No, please don’t leave.” Etty pressed a hand flat to Cam’s chest. “Cam and I are fine sharing a room.”
Jo swallowed and looked down at the black polish on her toes before looking up and buffing her smile to a high shine.
“Of course. Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll turn in.” Jo walked to her borrowed bedroom and turned at the door, looking from the hand Etty still laid on Cam’s chest to his face. “See you in the morning.”
“How about caramel French toast in the morning?” he asked.
Although he’d been pushing Jo away all night, the chasm stretching between them felt too wide. He could practically hear his own voice echoing back to him she felt so far away.
“I think I’ll get up and run in the morning.” Jo pulled open the door and walked through, giving him one more glance over her shoulder. “We’ll see about breakfast after. Good night, Cam. Um…Etinette.”
“All my friends call me Etty,” the petite French girl said, apparently oblivious to Jo’s we’ll never be friends vibe.
“How nice for you.” Jo offered a Sweet’N Low smile before closing the door.
“She is, how you say, a fryer cracker.”
“Etty, it’s firecracker.” Cam’s mouth turned up, his smile involuntary. Etty was a lusty piece of baggage he always had to fend off, but she was entertaining.
“Yes, well, she is that.”
A firecracker. Jo certainly was. But if he wasn’t careful, she was the one who would get burned.
Chapter Five
Wipe that foolish grin off your face.
Jo tried relaxing the muscles around her mouth, so practiced at disguising joy as dispassion. Sorrow as indifference. The muscles that flexed and pulled her lips into a straight line, yielding nothing, just would not obey this morning.
Jo turned down the music in her earphones, focusing on the way her body cut through the stillness of New York’s early summer air. She focused on her feet pounding into the pavement of the park trail, every step stomping out her old nemesis.
Hope.
She had hoped the first time she wore a bikini in ninth grade and caught Cam eyeing her body all night at the pool party.
She had hoped when Cam punched Russell Carrolton for cheating on her in her junior year in college.
She had hoped on Cam’s wedding day, up until the vows were said and gone, that he’d change his mind. Not marry Kerris after all.
She had hoped this morning when she emerged from the bedroom and seen Cam sleeping on the couch instead of in Etinette’s bed.
She had hoped when she stepped close enough to see his lashes brushing his cheeks and her sneaker-clad foot disturbed sketches on the floor.
Sketches of Jo.
There’s that foolish, shit-eating grin again.
This would not do. Hope was not her friend. Hope didn’t give it to her straight but fed her the lie that one day Cam might notice she was in love with him. Might love her back. The last fifteen years or so had taught her that hope was a sneaky bitch who sidled up to you, ingratiated her way into your good graces, only to shove a knife in your back when you least expected it.