clean

”It sounds as though you had a challenging week,” Cam murmured, ignoring the faint vibration of his phone in the back pocket of his pants. He didn’t need to pull out to know that it was a message from Cat. She’d been trying to get hold of him since he’d asked for a rain check on the dinner she’d suggested for tonight. Work was going to run late, even when his last appointment was due out the door at four o’clock.

Shifting on the couch, he tried to ease the phone into a spot where he wouldn’t feel the pull of it like a line knotted tight enough around his conscience. Yank, yank, yank. Open your damn mouth and tell the woman you love that you let her sister piss you off enough that you tried shutting her up by banging her. Cam puffed out a breath and instantly had to lift a hand to reassure his client that he wasn’t scoffing at his continued story of a boss that didn’t understand him, coworkers that had sneered at him often enough that he was riddled with anxiety just walking into the office. In comparison to his issues, an assistant who’d stolen his lunch seemed like nothing more painful than a sneeze. He’d let a son of a bitch determined to rob him of the life he’d started to get back when he’d been allowed off the boat attack Cat and then he’d stomped all over her heart. And the worst fucking part? He didn’t have the balls to tell her.

Lucky was just a big a coward. If she’d opened her mouth like he’d expected she would, crowing from the damn roof tops about how he’d finally revealed just how little Cat meant to him, then Cat wouldn’t have been suggesting dinner. She’d have been packing her bags and running out of this cursed town instead. Maybe it would’ve been better for her, getting the hell away from both of them.

”She knew I’d been working on the poster for weeks, but I turned up at the meeting and she already had hers up on the stand. She wanted to make me look like a fool…”

”Had you shown her your work?” Cam asked, brows rising. As though he could advise anybody to communicate when the words burned a hole through his damn throat every time he heard Cat’s voice.

Graeme puffed up in his seat like an indignant hen, mouth opening and closing and opening wide enough that he likely could’ve fit his entire fists in it as the door was thrown open.

”The light’s on for a reason. When I’m in session you need to…” Wait. As though she’d ever learned how to spell the word, let alone the meaning of patience or privacy.

She had no qualms about walking in on a confidential session, stomping all over his life in those size 2 shoes. Graeme turned back to stare at him as though he’d snap his fingers and have her disappearing. ”But there’s still half an hour left of my time. I haven’t told you about the yoghurt incident yet…” Thank God he hadn’t. He wasn’t supposed to trivialise any client’s perceived problems, but it took a patient man to sit through the self-indulgent whining of people like Graeme.

”I’m sorry, Graeme,” Cam muttered, squaring his shoulders as though he could ward off what flew out of Lucky’s mouth. He flinched as she gave her 2 cents on the matter. ”I’ve a client obviously in more need of my help. If you speak to my receptionist she’ll book another session for you at no charge. Elaine, can you please see if you can squeeze a new appointment in for Graeme. I’ll deal with Ms Christmas.” Before she informed everybody in the building that they’d slept together.

Elaine hustled Graeme out of the door, shooting him a pointed and far too interested look. Meeting her eye as the door was closed, Cam shook his head. There’d be questions later, none of which he could answer honestly. He didn’t get up, didn’t give Lucky the satisfaction of snarling at her from an inch away again. ”I’d rather you aren’t anywhere I am, but what I want doesn’t seem to factor into whatever the fuck goes on in your head,” he said blandly, his lips pinching.

His gaze shot up to her at her ultimatum though, skittering away from where her hands settled on hips that had felt lusher than they looked. He frowned, shaking his head. ”Should’ve known you wouldn’t have the balls to go over and tell her right away. What were you storing it up for? Blackmail? Is this where you tell me that if I walk away from your big sister right now you won’t bother telling her what a lucky fucking escape she had.” Hadn’t he thought of doing the same? As he’d hunched over the damn toilet bowl after Lucky had left, purging himself of the taste of her and the liquor, he’d considered walking away to save breaking Cat's heart again, but he couldn’t do that, not when this time it would be willingly.

Tagged: LUCKY CHRISTMAS * Word Count: 861

Her fucking world? The bitter laugh was rolling out of him as Lucky’s smirk twitched. Had she died and come to trapped on a boat in the world’s worst witness protection program? Had she been forced to wait years to tell the woman he loved that he was still alive? For all of her complaining Lucky had got off pretty damn easily – not that anybody who listened to her shriek would ever have known it.

Clinging on to her butt hurt over being abandoned by the sister she was taking constant advantage of, it was like Lucky had just been biding her time until she could unleash all the blame on him. Most of the sympathy he’d had for her (centred around Lucille if he was being honest with himself) had crumbled as she’d used all that anger and indignation to seduce him. If Lucky had been aiming to destroy what was between him and Cat so she could get her sister back there were few better ways of doing it.

Just seeing her was enough to have the memories swimming up in his head. He would’ve squeezed his eyes shut like he could lock them away behind closed lids, but that was just like waving a red flag to a rabid bull. She wasn’t gonna get the fuck out until she’d said her piece, berating him until he dipped a hand in his pocket for his phone to confess to Catia that he’d betrayed her in the worst possible way, on the worst possible day. While she’d still been shaking from what that son of a bitch had done to her, he’d driven his anger out of himself and into her sister’s…

Cam swallowed hard, then froze, staring at Lucky as she opened her mouth and – surely that had to be French for something, not … If he had shut his eyes they would’ve flown open now as the words he had understood hit him below the belt in a one-two blow that had everything trying to crawl into the pit of his stomach so he could throw the entire lot up.

”You thought you were … and you thought it was mine?” he asked hoarsely. His gaze dropped to her stomach, like the evidence of what they’d done would already be bulging there, the one night stand version of a scarlet letter. Adulterer. He’d have fucking deserved it for not just kicking her out instead of shutting her up another way.

God, it was getting fucking worse. Cam lifted his hands, closing his eyes finally as the ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. Even the doctor had thought she was pregnant. He didn’t have a medical degree, but declaring she wasn’t pregnant after all of that didn’t seem like a sure fire thing. What if her and the doctor had been right first thing? There was always the possibility of false negatives when it came to tests, weren’t there? Plenty of women hadn’t thought they were pregnant and then nine months later what felt like the stomach flu turned into a bouncing baby emerging right there in the bathroom.

Thank fuck didn’t go far enough to cover any of this.

Opening his eyes, Cam grimaced at her, then let out another laugh he couldn’t restrain. ”You did a shitty job of proving that,” he muttered, stalking closer to her before he stopped. Letting her get too close had been part of the problem the last time. ”You stormed into my house, put your hands on me and somehow I’m the one getting fucked over by all of this because you just had to seduce me and fuck up my life.” Oh, there was some blame that fell on his shoulders too, but at the end of the day who was about to lose the most here?

”I’m not going to tear your sister’s heart and life apart because you couldn’t keep your legs closed. Cat’s not gonna find out until I’ve found some way to make this right with her.” And that wasn’t going to be with Lucky dragging him over to the hotel to explain in agonising detail how she’d pawed at him until he’d snapped and had banged her. ”Are they absolutely sure?” The words had a touch of a croak about them, his eyes going back to that possibly ticking time bomb of a womb.

Tagged: LUCKY CHRISTMAS * Word Count: 733

The relief that rolled through him at the confirmation that he hadn’t managed to knock up his fiancée’s sister in that moment of hurt and anger took the sting out of Lucky’s words. Not that there’d have been much in the first place. She’d never known a thing about him, had never cared to. She probably could’ve done with some sort of therapy, but it wasn’t about to come from him. Someone else would have to spend years picking apart every shitty thing that had ever happened in her life to turn her into this.

Cam huffed out a breath and dragged his eyes away from her. He had expected to pay some price for what had happened, but that would’ve been one far too high. No kid should have been brought into the world out of what had happened between them. It had been hatred pure and simple, spiling, sickeningly, over into an ugly exorcism of everything that had been tearing at him them. In truth all it had done was leave a bigger wound that now burned like Lucky had poured acid into it with her demands.

His stomach continued to twist now, the sick feeling only growing as started to smirk at him. That’d be wiped right off if that acid poured up the back of his throat and he threw up at her feet. Cam swallowed the feeling back, his scowl deepening. That was just like her, never taking responsibility for her shitty choices. ”It’s always someone else’s fault,” he snorted finally. ”You didn’t do a damn thing. It was me, it was whatever poor bastard you’ve got your claws into. He got laid, so you had to do the same. What would you do if he decided to walk off a cliff?” Knowing her she’d follow, then blame some other asshole for that too. Did he understand her sort of psychic abilities? No, but at some point Lucky had to stop acting as though she was an innocent party in everything that happened to her.

The bitterness continued to burn in him, venting only slightly in the laugh that rolled out of him. Cam covered his face with both hands, his fingertips grinding into his eyes as the laugh trailed off. ”You think I had a clear head after what happened? I was drunk and hurt and fucking stupid enough that I couldn’t control my anger.” It’d been hatred pure and simple that had driven him to throw her over the hood of the car. ”You’re blaming me and him and acting as though you didn’t do a damn thing. You’re cracked…” He was shaking his head as he dropped his hands. ”You would’ve been the one getting punished. What the fuck do you think is gonna happen to me when all of this comes out? It’s both of our lives, but you never seem to get that. It’s always Lucky first, nobody else fucking matters.”

If he’d been able to take a step back either then or now, all of this would’ve been a different story. The guilt lay on both of their shoulders. He’d possibly thrown away that sort of future with Catia – the marriage he’d desperately wanted since he’d fallen in love with her, the life they might’ve built here, their own kids one day. Lucky might’ve struck the match that had turned all of that into a pyre, but his fingers had been on it too.

Heat rose into his cheeks, shining bright like she’d slapped him instead of just grumbled at him. Only one of them had a history of not being able to control themselves in those situations. ”I had until that night. All those years separated from your sister and I never…” No, he wasn’t about to blame living like a monk either. She hadn’t been entirely wrong, he hadn’t stepped away, hadn’t stopped things when he should’ve done. He was guilty too, although nowhere near as much as her.

For fuck sake. Tunnelling his hands through his hair again, Cam gripped at the sides of his head like he could stop his temper from rising again. The heat of it already licked at the edges of his conscience. ”No!” he snapped. ”I’m not trying to buy your sister off. This is about finding a way to say I fucked up that isn’t going to mean me losing her forever. If you give a damn for your sister you’d be doing the same damn thing.” But Lucky didn’t care about that, as long as she got him out of her sister’s life. Maybe once that had happened Catia would be desperate enough to crawl back into the arms of her family.

At her order his gaze snapped away from her stomach. His mouth pinched, the fear over the test being wrong starting to bleed away. ”And they’d be so blessed with you as a mother,” he drawled, his tone saccharine. ”The last thing I’d want in this world is to be tethered to you by a kid. So you’re right, thank God for all of us.” Especially Catia.

Turning away as she started back in on the demands, Cam began to snatch up his notes from his last patient. He walked back to his desk, putting them in a drawer and slamming it closed like that would put a stop to all of this. ”We’re going to tell her?” he scoffed. ”You want to go over there now and sit all together to tell her that we fucked up and fucked…” He swallowed hard as the nausea hit hard, shaking his head as he looked down at his desk to avoid her eye. ”I’ll take my consequences, but my relationship with your sister isn’t ever gonna survive you tearing at her the way you just tried to tear at me. I’ll speak to her on my own. Are you gonna keep your damn mouth shut until I do?” Considering she’d never shut her mouth in her life, the answer was probably gonna be a big fat no. Anticipating all of this tumbling down around his ears tonight, Cam made a grab for his coat from the back of the door. The rest of his clients for today were gonna have to be shifted too.

Tagged: LUCKY CHRISTMAS * Word Count: 1046