MELANIE MILBURNE - Unwrapping His Convenient Fiancée

Shut up! Funny, but she was never lost for words around Cam. She talked too much. She couldn’t seem to help it nor could she explain it. He wasn’t intimidating or threatening in any way. He was polite, if a little aloof, but he had been a part of her family for long enough for her to get over herself.

But clearly she hadn’t got over herself.

Cam pulled out the chair opposite and sat down, his knees gently bumping against Violet’s underneath the table. The touch was like an electric current moving through her body, heating her in places that had no business being heated. Not by her brother’s best friend. Cam was out of her league. Way out.

‘I was in the area for a meeting. It finished early and I remembered you mentioning this café once so thought I’d check it out,’ he said. ‘I’ve only been back a couple of days. My father is getting remarried just before Christmas.’

Violet’s eyes widened to the size of the saucer under her skinny latte. ‘Again? How many times is that now? Three? Four?’

His mouth twisted. ‘Five. And there’s another baby on the way, which brings the total of halfsiblings to six, plus the seven step-siblings, so eleven all together.’

Violet thought her three nephews, two nieces and the baby in the making were a handful—she couldn’t imagine eleven. ‘How on earth do you keep track of all of their birthdays?’

His half smile looked a little weary around the edges. ‘I’ve set up automatic transfers via online banking. Takes the guesswork out.’

‘Maybe I should do that.’ Violet stirred her coffee for something to do with her hands. Being in Cam’s company—not that it happened much these days—always made her feel like a gauche schoolgirl in front of a college professor. He was an unusual counterpoint to her older brother who was a laugh a minute, life of the party type. Cam was more serious in nature with a tendency to frown rather than smile.

Her gaze drifted towards his mouth—another habit she couldn’t quite control when she was around him. His lips were fairly evenly sculpted, although the lower one had a slightly more sensual fullness to it that made her think of long, blood-heating, pulse-racing kisses.

Not that Violet had ever kissed him. Men like Cameron McKinnon didn’t kiss girls like her. She was too girl-next-door. He dated women who looked as if they had just stepped out of a photo shoot. Glamorous, sophisticated types who could hold their own in any company without breaking out in hives in case someone spoke to them.

Cam’s gaze briefly went to her bare left hand where she was cradling her coffee before coming back to hers in a keenly focused look that made something deep in her belly unfurl like a flower opening its petals to the sun.

‘So, how are things with you, Violet?’

‘Erm...okay.’ At least she wasn’t breaking out into hives, but the blush she could feel crawling over her cheeks was almost as bad. Was he thinking—like the rest of her family—Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride?

‘Only okay?’ His look had a serious note to it, a combination of concern and concentration, as if she were the only person he wanted to talk to right then. It was one of the things Violet liked about him—one of the many things. He wasn’t so full of himself that he couldn’t spare the time to listen. She often wondered if he’d been around to talk to after that wretched party, during her first and only year at university, her life might not have turned out the way it had.

Violet stretched her mouth into her standard everything-is-cool-with-me smile. ‘I’m fine. Just busy with work and Christmas shopping and stuff. Like you, I have a lot of people to buy for now with all my nephews and nieces. Did you know Lily and Cooper are expecting? Mum and Dad are planning the usual big Christmas at Drummond Brae. Has Mum invited you? She said she was going to. The doctors think it will be Grandad’s last Christmas so we’re all making an effort to be there for him.’

Cam’s mouth took on a rueful slant. ‘My father’s decided to upstage Christmas with his wedding on Christmas Eve.’

‘Where’s it being held?’

‘Here in London.’

‘Maybe you could fly up afterwards,’ Violet said. ‘Or have you got other commitments?’ Other commitments such as a girlfriend. Surely he would have one. Men like Cam wouldn’t go long between lovers. He was too handsome, too rich, too intelligent, too sexy. Too everything. Cam had never broadcast his relationships with women the way her brother Fraser had before he’d fallen madly in love with Zoe. Cam was intensely private about his private life. So private it made Violet wonder if he had a secret lover stashed away somewhere, someone he kept out of the glaring spotlight that his work as an internationally acclaimed naval architect attracted.

‘I’ll see,’ he said. ‘Mum will expect a visit, especially now that her third husband Hugh’s left her.’

Violet frowned. ‘Oh, no. I’m sorry to hear that. Is she terribly upset?’

Cam gave her a speaking look. ‘Not particularly. He drank. A lot.’

‘Oh...’

Cam’s family history was nothing short of a saga. Not that he’d ever said much about it to her, but Fraser had filled in the gaps. His parents went through a bitter divorce when he was six and promptly remarried and set up new families, collecting other biological children and stepchildren along the way. Cam was jostled between the various households until he was sent to boarding school when he was eight. Violet could picture him as a little boy—studious, quietly observing on the sidelines, not making a fuss and avoiding one where it was made. He was still like that. When he came to visit her family for weddings, christenings or other gatherings he was always on the fringe, standing back with a drink in his hand he rarely touched, quietly measuring the scene with his navy-blue gaze.

The waitress came over to take Cam’s order with a smile that went beyond I’m your server, can I help you? to Do you want my number?

Violet tried to ignore the little dart of jealousy that spiked her in the gut. It was none of her business who he flirted with. Why should she care if he picked up a date from her favourite café? Even if she had been coming here for years and no one had asked for her number.

Cam looked across the table at her. ‘Would you like another coffee?’

Violet put her hand over the top of her latte glass. ‘No, I’m good.’

‘Just a long black, thanks,’ Cam said to the waitress with a brief but polite smile.

Violet waited until the girl had left before she spoke. ‘Cra—ack.’

His brow furrowed. ‘Pardon?’

She gave him a teasing smile. ‘Didn’t you hear that girl’s heart breaking?’

He looked puzzled for a moment, and then faintly annoyed. ‘She’s not my type.’

‘Describe your type.’ Why had she asked that?

The bridge between Cam’s ink-black eyebrows was still pleated in three tight vertical lines. ‘I’ve been too busy for any type just lately.’ His phone, which was sitting on the table, beeped with a message and he glanced at it before turning off the screen, his lips pressing so firmly his mouth turned bone-white.

‘What’s wrong?’

He forcibly relaxed his features. ‘Nothing.’

The phone beeped again and his mouth flattened once more. He clicked the mute button and slipped the phone into his jacket pocket as the waitress set his coffee down on the table between them. ‘So, how’s work?’

Violet glanced at the invitation peeping out of the pages of her book. Was it her imagination or was it flashing like a beacon? She surreptitiously pushed it back out of sight. ‘Fine...’

Cam followed the line of her gaze. ‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing... Just an invitation.’

‘To?’

Violet was sure her cheeks were as the red as the baubles on the invitation. ‘The office Christmas party.’

‘You going?’

She couldn’t meet his gaze and looked at the sugar bowl instead. Who knew there were so many different artificial sweeteners these days? Amazing. ‘I kind of have to... It’s expected in the interests of office harmony.’

‘You don’t sound too keen.’

Violet lifted one of her shoulders in a shrug. ‘Yeah, well, I’m not really a party girl.’ Not any more. Her first and only attempt at partying had ended in a blurry haze of regret and self-recrimination. An event she was still, all these years on, trying to put behind her with varying degrees of success.

But secret shame cast a long shadow.

‘It’s a pretty big affair, isn’t it?’ Cam said. ‘No expense spared and so on, I take it?’

Violet rolled her eyes. ‘Ironic when you consider it’s a firm of bean counters.’

‘Pretty successful bean counters,’ Cam said. ‘Well done you for nailing a job there.’

Violet didn’t like to admit how far from her dream job it actually was. After quitting her university studies, a clerical job in a large accounting firm had seemed a good place to blend into the background. But what had suited her at nineteen was feeling less satisfying as she approached thirty. She couldn’t shake off the nagging feeling she should be doing more with her life. Extending herself. Reaching her potential instead of placing limitations on herself. But since that party... Well, everything had been put on pause. It was like her life had jammed and she couldn’t move forward.

The vibration of Cam’s phone drew Violet’s gaze to his top pocket. Not just to his top pocket but his chest in general. He was built like an endurance athlete, tall and lean with muscles where a man needed them to be and where a woman most liked to see them. And she was no exception. His skin was tanned and his dark brown hair had some surface highlights where the strong sunlight of Greece had caught and lightened it. He had cleanly shaven skin, but there was enough dark stubble to suggest he hadn’t been holding the door for everyone else when the testosterone was dished out.

‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’ Violet asked.

‘It’ll keep.’

‘Work or family?’

‘Neither.’

Violet’s eyebrows lifted along with her intrigue. ‘A woman?’

He took out the phone and held his finger on the off switch with a determined set to his features. ‘Yeah. One that won’t take no for an answer.’

‘How long have you been dating her?’

‘I haven’t been dating her.’ Cam’s expression was grim. ‘She’s a client’s wife. A valuable client.’

‘Oh... Tricky.’

‘Very. To the tune of about forty million pounds tricky.’

Forty million? Violet came from a wealthy background but even she had trouble getting her head around a figure like that. Cam designed yachts for the super-wealthy. He’d won a heap of awards for his designs and become extremely wealthy in the process. Some of the yachts he designed were massive, complete with marble en suite bathrooms with hot tubs, and dining and sitting rooms that were plush and palatial. One yacht even had its own library and lap swimming pool. But, even so, it amazed her how much a rich person would pay for a yacht they only used now and again. ‘Seriously? You’re being paid forty million to design a yacht?’

‘No, that’s the cost of the yacht once it’s complete,’ he said. ‘But I get paid a pretty decent amount to design it.’

How much was pretty decent? Violet longed to ask but decided against it out of politeness. ‘So...what will you do? Keep ignoring this woman’s calls and messages?’

He let out a short, gusty breath. ‘I’ll have to get the message across one way or the other. I’m not the sort of guy who gets mixed up with married women.’ His mouth twisted again. ‘That would be my father.’