Chapter Two
Cam watcheda plane flying past the window, red tail-lights flashing in the darkening sky as it circled a spot above the airport. Perhaps the biggest perk of being in the sixty-fourth-floor ballroom of the opulent Cabot Hotel on a night like tonight was the uninterrupted view of Boston in all its hazy August twilight glory. From up here, his perspective was skewed just enough to make the brightly lit freighters in the Harbor look like wind-up toys. Even the plane in the distance seemed like something he could grab out of the sky, superhero-style, and set safely on the ground where itbelonged.
Sadly, Cam’s reflection in the glass mocked the very idea of him achieving superhero status. With dark brown hair that constantly flopped on his forehead and freckles all over his cheeks, he looked more like Clark Kent’s thinner, geekier twelve-year-old brother, playing dress-up in a thousand-dollar suit. Besides which, logging a thousand hours a year playing League of Legends online didn’t exactly qualify him to join the Avengers.He wondered how long he’d have to make polite conversation before he could make hisgetaway.
He wished, not for the first time, there were evenoneperson at this party who was here forhim.
Cam stared at the reflection of the party in the window, the bright lights and the languid, unhurried movements of Boston’s ultra-rich, interspersed with the quicker and more deliberate steps of the servers who roamed the party serving champagne and canapes. There were hundreds of men here tonight. No doubt dozens of them would be thrilled to leave here on his arm. The trick was finding a guy who wasn’t interested in Camden Seaver, President of Seaver Tech, but in plain, nerdy Cam. If such a unicorn existed, Cam hadn’t found him onGrindr.
The plane was edging lower, beginning its descent. Superhero or not, Cam’s eyes fixed firmly on those flashing red lights, and he guarded it with the force of his stare until it dipped behind another building and out ofsight.
“Cam?”
With a guilty start, he turned away from the window to find several pairs of eyes watching him intently. He stifled a sigh. “Sorry.Yes?”
The biggestdownsideto spending this evening in this sixty-fourth-floor ballroom was being here as the host of the annual SafeWater gala - the party of the season for Boston’s elite, all to benefit the clean-water charity Cam’s mother had started decades before. Cam had somehow been coerced into giving a speech and glad-handing all the donors, probably because it hadn’t even occurred to him to fight this stuff anymore. Just a typical Friday night when you’d inherited the top position at one of Boston’s biggestcorporations.
The small group clustered in a semicircle around him, all high-ranking members of Seaver Tech, watched him expectantly, waiting in vain for brilliance to fall from his lips. His chest felt tight, and he resisted the urge to tug at hiscollar.
Though not everyone had such highexpectations.
“Daydreaming again?” Drew McMannsnorted.
Cam ignored him, pushing down the instinctive flare of temper in his gut. To acknowledge Drew’s months-long post-breakup temper tantrum would only encourage him to be an even bigger and more controlling asshole. If the idiot weren’t so freakishly good at his job as the head of Seaver Tech’s legal department, Cam would have fired him a long time ago. Still, he was pleased when Drew rolled his eyes a moment later and walked away to share his sunshiny personality with some other luckyguests.
Mrs. Yates, the head of Seaver’s charitable foundation, sighed and gave Cam an encouraging pat on the arm along with a watery smile, like she assumed grief, rather than annoyance, was distracting him. The woman constantly surprised him with her ability to read tragedy into every situation.Hewasn’t the Seaver brother who was stuck wallowing in grief after their parents’ deaths in a plane crash thirteen months ago. Cam had been done withhisgrieving for nearly ayear.
He gave her a bright smile and grabbed a flute of champagne from a passing waiter, needing the quick buzz. “Your team outdid themselves tonight, Mrs. Yates. I’m sure we’ll be raising plenty of money forSafeWater.”
“So thoughtful of you to say,” she began, but Cam didn’t hear anything else. A stranger walked through the door, and Cam’s thoughts stuttered to ahalt.
Holy, holyshit.
Who the hell wasthat?
The guy standing in the doorway was huge - easily over six feet tall, with improbably wide shoulders tapering to a trim waist like an animated Disney hero. His golden-brown hair was messy - not in the accidental way of Cam’s cowlicks, but like he’dearnedthat messiness from frantic hands running through it in some dark closet or shadowy hallway. The very idea sent a bolt of electricity to Cam’s groin. He’d never felt an instant attraction like this beforein hislife.
The man strode into the ballroom the way a Viking might have walked through a sleepy village he intended to pillage, lips turned up in a confident smirk, and all Cam could think was, “Yes. Finally, yes.”Thiswas a man who wouldn’t be careful. He would take what he wanted, and Cam would yield, and all the thoughts that buzzed in his head like angry bees would be silenced. It would all be as easy as breathing. He squinted just a little bit to see what color the man’s eyeswere.
Then the stranger paused a few paces inside the room and threw a flirtatious smile at Misty Sturmacher, his eyes straying to her barely-contained breasts, and Cam felt his face gohot.
Typical, Seaver. Lusting after the hot, straightguy.
He snapped back to reality, where Mrs. Yates was still speaking in mournful tones. Cam slugged down his champagne like medicine, an inoculation against contagiousmisery.
“… just wonderful, and your speech tonight was the cherry on top! But I can understand how distracted you must be, on a night like tonight. I only wish your brother were here to seeit.”
Cam shut his mouth so quickly his teeth clacked together. Trust Mrs. Yates to bring up the one thing everyone else in the room was wondering about but not daring tomention.
“I’m sure Bas is every bit as proud as I am,” he deflected smoothly, even though most days Cam wasn’t sure Bas remembered his own name, let alone the existence of the SafeWaterfundraiser.
“And whereisSebastian?”
Cam turned to face the man on his right. If Mrs. Yates could be trusted to stumble onto minefields where angels feared to tread, Emmett Shaw, the junior U.S. Senator from Tennessee and Cam’s honorary uncle, could be trusted to follow right behind her, leading a big brassband.
Cam gave him what he hoped was a patient smile. “Working.”Obsessing, drinking, grieving. Always grieving.“You know how he is when he’s working on aproject.”
Uncle Shaw shook his sandy-blond head. “Utterly consumed, no doubt. Just like your father. But we’ll be seeing you in St. Brigitte! Next week, isn’tit?”
