Never had a name suited a woman more.
“It has other meanings, other cultural origins.In Sanskrit it means innocent.”She lowered her gaze to her bare feet.
Sparkly pink polish winked in the mid-October sun.Distaste rippled across her face, but when she looked up at him, her gaze was clear, probing.
“Wildflower.”He tasted possibility.“It may be time for a different story for both of us.”
Curiosity.Desire.Amusement all played in her bourbon-colored eyes, and he wondered if the multitude of blonde in her hair was natural, and if she’d be around long enough for him to find out.
Something about her felt inevitable.
And temporary.
And a dichotomy.Irony was his weakness.
“You fancy yourself a storyteller.”
“No.But I want to be,” he said, slowly, testing the words.
Cam had driven so much, but now he needed to be the narrator of his life.
“What about Cam?”
He felt like his air was gone, but he forced himself to continue.“Cam can no longer be a part of any story.He… he was struck by an SUV.Died at the scene late last week.”
He sounded like the cops who’d converged.
She turned toward him.He liked that she was tallish, so he didn’t have to stoop.
She cupped his cheeks with her hands that were warm despite the afternoon leaning into autumn chilly.“Cam was so much more than your business partner and the man about to take a life leap you didn’t approve of.Your friend and business partner and perhaps a mentor?”
He barely nodded.Her hands were delicate.Elegant, but they held strength.He’d noticed them at lunch as she’d fussed a little with the champagne glass, the menu, one of her scarves, twirled a finger in her hair.Hands of an artist.Maybe a musician, he’d thought.
But now they anchored him to her.To now.To life when he’d been unraveling.
She said nothing.Just pressed against him on the sun-warmed rock with people paddling by in the river, walking or jogging by on the popular path.
She pressed her forehead against his, and he breathed her in, having a wild moment where he felt like she could read his thoughts.Read his heart.Soothe him.And his brain rebelled.Danger letting someone in.Cam had been the closest.And this woman was a stranger and not easily categorized.
“You asked what comes next.”Her breath feathered over his face.“Why not show me the Cam you knew and loved.We have the time.”
“I don’t understand.”Of course he didn’t.
He was literal.Cam did the interpretations, the social navigating.
“You don’t need to now,” she said softly.“But he lives on in here.”One hand rested on his chest through his suit jacket, and he wondered if they stood here long enough, would her warmth, her heat, her energy seep through to him where he felt so cold and dead?
“Your next steps, your adventures, your quest for your own legacy will carry him along any new path you strike.”
Chapter Five
They walked alongthe trail in Confluence Park.Finished the bottle of champagne and placed it in a recycle bin.He felt like a rebel—a new experience as an adult.
“Feels like high school.”He offered her the last swallow.“Though I never drank and preferred to work construction on our first business of flipping duplexes—sweaty labor—rather than attend classes, but Cam insisted.”
“Home-schooled.”She made a face.“Not that anyone remembered to do it.Pretty much self-taught everything.”She looked like she’d say more but didn’t.
A secret there.He too had much he was holding back.
