He shrugs, his shoulders rising and falling. “I’m not laughing.” He coughs, totally lying because he’s absolutely laughing.
“Yes you are. My employee saw my bits! This is terrible. Is there some kind of law against this? Am I going to get sued?”
He brings my glass of wine over, handing it to me. I suck down a large gulp of it to try and ease my mortification. “She stopped it before she saw anything. She was only looking because you’d forgotten to lock the door, and she wanted to make sure no one broke in.”
I take another drink, squeezing my eyes shut as I pray to god that I didn’t ruin Lexi forever. I’m going to have to have a very awkward conversation with her and apologize for whatever she did end up seeing.
“God, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that. I’ll never be able to look at her the same.”
“It’s okay. She didn’t see anything. And even if she did, I bet my face covered anything intimate, anyway. I was very dedicated to making you…”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I interrupt, not wanting to picture it again. I don’t want to think too hard about everything she could’ve seen.
“So are there cameras in here?”
“No.”
He whistles, watching as I take another drink of my wine. At this point, I’ve almost sucked down the entire glass in under a minute. “What a shame.”
I almost spit my wine out at his words. “What?” I wipe at the corner of my mouth from where the wine drips from my lips from the shock.
“I look at that little photo of you often, the one of you in the hot-as-fuck lingerie—which you’ll have to wear for me soon, by the way.” He says it so nonchalantly as he grabs both our dinner plates and walks them over to the small table in the corner of the kitchen. “I was kind of hoping we caught all of that on tape. I wouldn’t mind fucking you while us fucking played in the background.”
My jaw hangs open. There’s too much to process at once. “You look at that photo of me?” I question, needing that answered first.
He pulls out one of the chairs, standing behind it and gesturing for me to take a seat. I untie my apron, pulling the top loop over my head and placing it on the counter. I’m still waiting for him to answer, even as I take a seat and let him push my chair in.
His eyes are pinned on mine as he takes the seat across from me, pouring more wine into my glass but a little less this time. He doesn’t look embarrassed by what he’s told me. “Why else do you think I sent it to myself?”
“I don’t know. To blackmail me?”
He sighs loudly, clearly not amused by my answer. “No. That was never my intention. It was because I felt pure, jealous rage at the idea of anyone else seeing you like that. And I fought it, but I think even then, I wanted you more than I’d cared to admit.”
“I would’ve let you kiss me that day. On the mountain at my family’s ranch. I thought it was going to happen.”
His dark eyebrows are pulled in on his forehead. He stares at me silently for so long I wonder if he’s not going to acknowledge what I said. His finger traces over his top lip as he thinks his words through.
“I wanted to, but I thought I’d hate myself if I did.”
His words sting a little, but it doesn’t mean I don’t understand them. It would’ve been the same for me. There was still so much uncertainty between us—there still kind of is, but in a different way—it’s best we didn’t kiss that day.
“It hurt. To have you leave like that.”
I don’t know how I once thought that Camden was a cold, emotionless man. Sitting across from me right now, he wears so much emotion on his face. It’s clear how well he’s trained himself to hide it. He’s hurt me before, and there’s a good chance he’ll hurt me again, but I’ll always remember that for some amount of time—however long that may be—he let his guard down for me. That I got to see the real Camden Hunter and not the one he wants the world to see. Not the son of two of the most famous artists of our time. Not one of the wealthiest art dealers in the world. Just Camden. The man who takes care of me when I’m sick and brings me flowers on our first date. The one who complains about how cold my feet are against his in the middle of the night but still presses his against mine to keep them warm. The one who woke up and let Kitty out early in the morning because she was whining, and he wanted me to get more rest.
I like this version of him. A lot. And all I can do is keep letting myself feel these emotions and hope I don’t get burned in the end. Or if I do, that it’ll be worth it.