To Catch a Camden Read online

  “And those things work?”

  “You’ll never know until you try them,” she challenged as they went into her small office. “Sometimes a spoonful of vinegar works, too.”

  “So you’re anti–contemporary medicine?” he asked.

  “No. But I’ll always try something natural before I’ll go the other route,” she said as she took the tailored white blouse draped on her desk chair and put it on, buttoning it over her tank top. “And there are a lot of things that work as preventatives, too. Like the gingko in the greenhouse—that’s good for the brain and the memory,” she said, pointing to her head. “I take it every day.”

  He grinned again. “Is that what makes your hair so curly.”

  “No, that’s genetic,” she said with a bit of a grimace.

  “What? You don’t like it?”

  “It kind of has a life of its own.” She wished she’d worn it some way that tamed it a little more today, but there was nothing she could do about it now.

  His grin just got bigger and he reached to gently bounce his palm off the top of the geyser. “A wild life of its own—I think it’s great.”

  Not sure she believed that, Gia just made a face and took her purse from her desk drawer before pointing at the door.

  Blouse or no blouse, she still felt woefully underdressed at his side as she guided him to the sandwich shop she’d mentioned.

  It was a place everyone from Health Now frequented, so the owner knew her by sight. After placing their orders, Gia slid the donation jar next to the cash register toward herself and said, “I might as well take this with me today, Nick. It’s the last jar I have out and I’m going to the bank later. Since we’ve started to use the money, I’ll deposit it. Thanks for letting me leave it here, though.”

  “For you, anytime. My kids had better take so much care of me when I’m that age. Or maybe I’ll have to come get you.”

  “I’m always right up the block,” Gia assured him as they accepted their drinks and meatball sandwiches.

  Derek carried the tray with everything on it so Gia could take the gallon-size pickle jar that was three quarters full—mostly with change, but with a few dollar bills in sight, too.

  They took everything out to one of the four small tables on the sidewalk in front of the shop. As they sat down, Derek said, “First the dessert shop, now the sandwich shop—do you just make friends wherever you go?”

  Gia shrugged. “I’m a creature of habit. I see the same people over and over again. We talk. I get to know them and they get to know me.”

  “And like you.”

  She shrugged again. “Maybe. But it takes me going in over and over again. One day with you and everybody I work with seems to think you’re great.”

  He laughed. “Why do you say that as if I did something wrong?”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that.” She’d just been thinking about her ex-husband’s surface charm and what it had concealed and wondering if the same was true of Derek. “I’m only saying that with me it takes some time and repeat business before I get where you got with the people I work with in a single day.”

  “With everyone but the Bronsons.”

  Who had cause to be wary because they’d seen beneath the surface of the Camdens.

  “What about tomorrow did you want to talk to me about—if you’re still coming?” Gia asked, changing the subject as they began eating.

  “I wanted to let you know that I’ve hired a crew of professional plumbers and electricians to check everything out and fix whatever they might find wrong.”

  “We can’t pay for that.”

  “I’m paying for it. After seeing the age of that house and the shape it’s in, I thought it should be inspected—especially the wiring, since it could be a fire hazard. And I know you’re trying to get everything done in a hurry, so there will be big enough crews coming in to do just about anything that needs to be done in the one day.”

  That had to cost a fortune, and while she wanted to believe it was purely an act of generosity, she couldn’t help recalling the Bronsons’ concerns about his interest in the place and getting slightly suspicious.

  “You don’t want their house, right?” she asked as he took his first bite of sandwich.

  He chuckled and frowned at the same time. “Why would I want their house?” he asked when he’d finished chewing.

  “Your family took their hotel. Larry and Marion are a little worried that now—”

  “We want their house?” he said in disbelief. “Do they just think we want to persecute them for some reason? That we’re targeting them?”

  “You aren’t, are you?”

  “No, of course not. There isn’t a reason in the world we would. In fact, after hearing that their house is mortgaged, the other thing I wanted out of this lunch today was to get a better idea of what their financial situation really is. Are they deeply in debt? Are they behind in their mortgage payments? How much is the mortgage as a whole...?”

  Gia purposely took a bite of her sandwich so that her mouth was full and she couldn’t answer. She wanted to buy herself time to gauge what to do.

  She hadn’t been forthcoming with him on this subject before out of paranoia that the Bronsons might somehow be right in worrying that there was a self-serving motivation behind the Camdens’ help.

  But it just didn’t seem reasonable that they would want the Bronsons’ house for any reason. And since the Bronsons needed a lot more help than the jars of spare change like the one at her feet could provide, she decided to trust him. A little anyway. And just with some information.

  So when her mouth was empty she said, “The only debt they have is on their house. But they just can’t keep up the payments anymore. They’re in arrears and the bank has notified them that if they don’t come up with the back payments, foreclosure proceedings are going to start.”

  “So you decided to mow the lawn and paint the walls?” he said as if he didn’t understand her thinking.

  “I decided to try to raise money for them. My fantasy was to raise enough to pay the back payments, then maybe get the house refinanced so the payments could be more what they could afford—”

  “So shouldn’t every penny be going toward the back payments?”

  “I waited to see how close I was coming. But unfortunately it wasn’t close enough. With what I’ve raised so far all I can do is make a dent in the back payments—unless the yard sale brings in a lot, and I know that isn’t likely. So I’m going with the contingency plan—”

  “Which is to paint the walls and mow the lawn?” he said, still confused.

  “If I can’t pay the back payments completely, then the next best thing is to pay enough to stall the foreclosure so the house can be sold—”

  “Ah, I see—so you’re putting some of the money you’ve raised into getting the place in better shape in order to sell it.”

  “Right. And the better shape it’s in, the better the chance of getting a higher price, which—I’m hoping—means that the Bronsons would come out with a small amount of cash.”

  “Then what? If they can’t stay in their house, what happens to them?”

  She told him about her plan to move them into her basement apartment.

  “Really? You’d do that?”

  “A couple they knew was in the same situation a few years ago. Social Services ended up involved because they were elderly and didn’t have any family. But Social Services put the wife in one nursing home and the husband in a different one—both of them not very nice places—because it was just a matter of available beds. After being married for over fifty years, those people died without ever seeing each other again. And I won’t let that happen to Larry and Marion.”

  “So you’ll move them into your basement apartment and be responsible for them, and wh
at? Charge them rent they can afford?”

  “I couldn’t take money from them. I’ll just move them in—”

  “And become responsible for them.”

  “I’ll take care of them whether they’re next door or in my basement. It’s just that they don’t want to lose their house. They want to stay in it, and I can understand that, so I’m giving it the best shot I can—and who knows, maybe the yard sale will put us over the top. But in the meantime I have to be realistic and get the place in selling condition, too. I’m not using much of the money—all the labor and most of the materials are donated—but it has to be done....”

  He nodded and seemed to be lost in thought as he finished his sandwich.

  Then he said, “Have you told me everything? Because it gets a little bleaker every time I persuade you to talk about it, and I really am trying to see the whole picture so I know what to do for them.”

  “That’s the whole picture,” Gia said as she wadded up the paper her own sandwich had been wrapped in, hoping she hadn’t put the Bronsons farther out on a limb by revealing it all to him. “They live a simple—and really frugal—life. It’s just gotten away from them.”

  “And they honestly don’t have any other debt—credit cards, a car?”

  Gia shook her head. “Their car is twenty years old and mostly sits in the garage—Larry drives a little if he has to and if it isn’t too far, but that’s it. They have a credit card for emergencies, but only for emergencies. I put them on my cell phone plan with a freebie phone so they could cancel their landline and cut that expense. For Larry’s birthday I paid off his dental bill because the payments they were making to the dentist were strapping them, so that’s gone. It’s just the house, utilities, food and medical stuff—they live hand-to-mouth...”

  “And apparently have friends who do, too...” he said, frowning again.

  “People who live on a fixed income have trouble making ends meet—it’s a fact of life.”

  “An ugly one.”

  Gia didn’t say anything to that, wondering if it was ugly enough to send him running.

  But then his eyes in all their blue glory looked squarely into hers and he vowed, “We’re going to take care of this.”

  Then her ex and his family flashed through her mind and something else occurred to her.

  “There’s not going to be anything in it for you, right?” she said firmly. “Because the Bronsons would be furious if you used them to make the Camdens look like saints for lending a hand. If that’s what’s behind this I’ll throw rocks at you myself.”

  He held up both hands, palms outward. “Nothing in it for us, I promise. How would it make us look good to say we’re helping out a couple who might not be in the position they’re in had a Camden store not gone where their hotel used to be?”

  “And I’d stir up that whole story, too,” she warned.

  “There’s not going to be a reason to,” he assured her. “This is your deal—we’re just trying to give some of the help you’ve asked for.”

  Gia decided to take a chance and trust him. While her past experience gave her reason to be wary, so far there was no indication that he had ulterior motives where the Bronsons were concerned.

  “Okay,” she conceded. Then, because it was true, she said, “I should get back to work.”

  “What, no chocolate dessert at lunch?” he teased, showing that he hadn’t taken offense at her suspicion.

  She appreciated that and leaned forward to say under her breath, “Nick only has some Italian cookies that aren’t very good.”

  “I saw them in the case—they’re also not chocolate,” Derek whispered back. “Could that be the reason you think they’re not very good?”

  “It’s possible,” she conceded.

  “How about somewhere else? We could go back the way we came and around the corner to the bakery.... Lava cake...”

  He thought he was tempting her with chocolate. And while that was always a temptation for her, she discovered that it was equally as tempting to prolong this time with him despite the apprehensions he aroused in her just by being who he was and coming from the family he came from.

  There was just some kind of chemistry that got activated in her with this guy that she wished she could deactivate. At least she could try not to indulge it, so she held the line.

  “I really can’t,” she insisted.

  “Well, I guess I’ll get to see you tomorrow, so I’ll let you go today,” he said, making her wonder if he was merely being charming or if he actually wanted to spend more time with her.

  It doesn’t matter! she silently shouted at herself.

  Derek took their tray and dumped the lunch remnants in the nearby trash, and then turned to pick up the jar of money.

  “This can’t be lightweight. Let me carry it.” Gia didn’t argue because it was heavy, and she hadn’t been looking forward to toting it herself. But Derek carried it under one arm, against his hip, and didn’t seem to exert himself too much.

  “So do you grow everything your company needs in the gardens here? Right in the middle of the city?” he asked as they headed back to Health Now, clearly making an effort to put things securely back on more neutral ground.

  “No,” Gia answered. “This is just where the company started. We expanded about four years ago to an area outside of Broomfield. We produce about a quarter of what’s needed here and the rest there.”

  “Does that mean that you work in Broomfield, too?”

  “It does. All the offices are in Denver—Broomfield is just greenhouses and another outdoor garden that’s about the size of a football field—but the botanists and horticulturists go back and forth to care for the plants. That’s where Peggy and Marshall are today—you met them last Saturday, too.”

  “Right, I remember—Peggy is the really, really skinny woman and Marshall is—”

  “The really, really not skinny guy,” Gia supplied for him.

  “He’s a big man,” Derek agreed with a laugh. “Knows a lot about music and computers.”

  “Yes, he does—his two passions outside of work.” Again Gia was surprised that Derek had bothered to get so friendly with everyone.

  Maybe that was what she was responding to, she told herself. Maybe it was just his general friendliness—the same general friendliness he showed to everyone—and she’d been out of the single world for so long that she somehow read more into it than was there.

  The possibility made her feel all the more ridiculous for having thought about him as much as she had for the past week. For having made-up, flirty conversations with him in her head. Flirty conversations that were so much wittier than anything she’d pulled off today....

  He insisted on taking the jar all the way inside to her office, where she assured him it was safe to leave it on her desk.

  But once he’d done that and she was waiting for him to leave so she could take her blouse off again, he instead turned his focus onto her.

  “Thanks for going to lunch with me today,” he said.

  “Even if I gave you a hard time?”

  He grinned. “There does always seem to be a minute or two when we’re together when you narrow those big brown eyes and look at me like I’m the enemy. You’re just not sure about me yet, are you?” he asked.

  Gia shrugged.

  And that made him grin. “You’re not,” he said, as if it amused him. But also with what sounded like affection.

  Or maybe she was just imagining it.

  She was probably just imagining it.

  Along with the sense she kept having that there were small sparks shooting between them as he studied her face.

  “You were on my mind a lot this past week,” he said then. His mouth eased into a small, thoughtful smile as his gaze rose somewhat and he added, “Must be t
he hair.” His blue eyes returned to hers. “But it made me want to touch base with you on our own just a little before we’re in the middle of everything and everybody tomorrow....”

  So that was what had prompted the lunch....

  Gia nodded because she suddenly couldn’t think straight enough to say anything. Instead, her thoughts were drifting to the idea of him kissing her....

  Kissing her...

  That was something else she’d thought way, way too much about since last Saturday night.

  Something that certainly had no place here and now, at work....

  And yet he was looking at her so intently that it caused her to actually entertain the notion that he might be thinking about it, too.

  That couldn’t be...

  But he wasn’t even making small talk anymore. He was standing there—dashingly handsome in a suit that probably cost as much as her car—just looking into her eyes.

  Then down at her mouth....

  The outer office had been empty when they’d come in. Everyone was probably in the lunchroom, and her office couldn’t be seen from there. Plus, she’d probably be able to hear something if anyone came back....

  Her chin went up a fraction of an inch as she looked into those astonishingly blue eyes...and was shocked to find herself ready.

  Ready to be kissed by someone other than Elliot.

  Ready to be kissed by this man she hadn’t been able to get out of her head for two solid weeks now....

  And she really, honestly thought he was going to do it as she watched him move forward.

  This is crazy!

  And yet she didn’t back off....

  But then Derek did. He caught himself and stood a little straighter.

  Without the sound of anyone coming, Gia realized. Without any indication that she would have rejected him. Still, he’d backed off.