“No.” She shook her head.
“Why not?” His gaze laser-focused on her face. She felt burned by its intensity.
“Because you smell like hidden motives. The kind of hidden motives that are going to make me mad. And like I said, I’m mad enough at myself. I really don’t need you piling on.”
He sighed like he had the patience of Job, but she was testing it. Then he pulled her car door wide and made a grandiose gesture for her to slide inside. “Get in the car, Camilla.”
Two seconds earlier, all she’d wanted was to climb into the driver’s seat and speed away. But she’d wanted to do it on her own terms.
“Don’t tell me what to do, Dalton.” She bristled.
“Lord, help me.” He shook his head. “Cami, would you please get in the car?” He lifted his hand and once again gestured toward the car’s waiting interior.
That’s when she saw his new tattoo. Or…it wasn’t a new tattoo. It was the purple ink left behind when a tattoo artist used transfer paper to place their design onto a person’s skin.
“What’s that?” She pointed to his forearm. The purple outline was of a big, round flower that looked sort of like a rose. It was stamped above his lily tattoo.
“It’s a camellia,” he said. “From what I’ve been told, Camilla is an alternative form of camellia in Latin.”
She blinked behind her sunglasses. “Wh-why are you thinking of having a camellia tattooed on the inside of your wrist?”
“I’ll tell you if you get in the car. I’m melting out here. And we’re starting to draw a crowd.”
She glanced around and discovered he was right. Two of her associates had stopped to stare in her direction.
“Is everything okay, Cami?” Marcus Cole, a nice man who’d recently gone through a terrible divorce, called out.
‘I’m okay, Marc,” she assured him, lifting a hand to show that she truly was fine. She hoped the distance between them was enough so Marc didn’t notice her fingers were shaking.
And not just her fingers. Her knees and her chin and her heart too.
Why would Doc be thinking of having a camellia tattooed onto his arm?
She wanted to jump to conclusions but didn’t dare.
“We’re headed across the street for a drink,” Arron Rodriguez hollered above the street noise. He’d suffered a bad breakup with his longtime girlfriend, and he and Marc had taken to consoling each other with after work libations. “You want to join us?”
“No thanks!” She shook her head, hoping her smile didn’t look as wobbly as it felt. “But I appreciate the invite!”
Only after both men nodded and crossed the street did she turn back to Doc.
“Now,” he said patiently, “will youpleaseget in the car and turn on the air conditioner?”
She nodded absently and slid into the driver’s seat. She didn’t realize she’d sat there numbly, her mind completely blank but also going in a million different directions, until Doc knocked on the passenger-side window.
Shaking her head, she hit the unlock button and started the car. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” blasted from her speakers as Doc slipped smoothly into the passenger seat and closed the door behind him.
She quickly switched off the radio, but not before he’d heard her song choice. He lifted a questioning eyebrow.
“I needed to feel empowered before heading into work today,” she said. “Don’t judge me.”
“Me?” He raised a hand to his chest. “Judge you? Never.”
She snorted so hard she nearly swallowed her gum. “Oh, that’s rich.”
He made a face of regret and he nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. I’ve been judging you from the beginning, haven’t I? Which is one of the reasons I came here today. To tell you I’m sorry. Sorry for assuming your moral compass must be skewed because you’re a lawyer. Sorry for thinking that just because your father is crooked, that must mean you’re crooked too. Because Cami? You’re one of the straightest arrows I’ve ever met, and I respect the hell out of you for that. But most of all I’m sorry for placing the blame for what happened on Wayfarer Island solely at your feet when the truth is, those men were the only ones in the wrong.”
Her head was spinning so fast she couldn’t think straight. Or maybe her problem was that her heart was racing and sending too much blood to her head. “I—” she started and stopped, her eyes sliding once again to that purple ink stain on the inside of his forearm. “What’s the other reason?” she asked desperately. Still afraid to speculate. Still afraid to hope.
