Page 22 of Best Laid Plans (Rock Harbor #1)

Sandy shook her head, like she was remembering something.

“Yes. One of our sponsors is the Rock Harbor Country Club. I think it’s their attempt at making sure the little people know they haven’t been forgotten about.

” When Sandy saw Elle’s raised eyebrows, she waved her hand like it was waving her words off.

“Anyway. They’re having a big event next weekend at the club, a charity fundraiser.

All-day event with a golf tournament and then dinner in the evening. ”

Elle was well aware of the Rock Harbor Country Club. Even though her ex-boyfriend and his family were lifelong members, she’d been there exactly once. For this event, in fact.

“I’m still a little lost here…” Cam’s confusion was surprisingly charming, and she internally batted away the flurry of butterflies in her stomach.

“I know it’s short notice, but the head of the club’s event planning committee made it absolutely certain that you needed to be asked. ”

“Asked what?” Cam clarified, his voice teetering into annoyance. Which Elle also found hot.

God, she was so fucked. She needed to get out of here.

“They want you to be the featured chef for the event. Put the menu together and oversee the kitchen for the night. Do a couple of photo ops. Do you play golf?” Sandy asked, sizing him up, like she was trying to picture him with a club in his hand.

“No.” A single word, but it spoke volumes. Elle resisted cracking a smile.

Cam seemed so in his element with a knife in his hand or in front of a flat top grill, but it was hard to imagine him schmoozing and working a room. But then again, he had just won a major televised cooking competition and worked at an insanely popular restaurant, so what did Elle know?

Sandy nodded. “I know it’s a huge ask and very short notice. Vanessa was hoping you could come by the club tomorrow to check out the space and get into the finer details.”

Cam’s posture was tight, and Elle could see how his jaw was clenched. He didn’t like this idea one bit. “I’ll think about it.”

But even just hearing that Cam was open to the idea, Sandy’s whole body relaxed, and she heaved a sigh of relief. “Wonderful. This is Vanessa’s business card,” she said, handing it over to Cam, who took it silently.

Elle knew the way this world worked. In passing, she’d even caught glimmers when she’d been dating Grant and friends with Chelsea. People for whom money was no object and the optics were everything.

Two years ago, at Grant’s side, she’d thought that she was on track to be one of them. And a month ago, standing on her own two feet with her MBA and employment at one of the best consulting firms in the country, that path had come back into sight.

Money bought freedom, as far as Elle was concerned.

She’d seen how much her parents had struggled over the years.

How hard they worked to just make life work .

And look at them now, on the verge of losing what they’d built over the last thirty years, all because a new business swooped into town and unexpected health issues had cropped up.

She didn’t want to suffer the same fate.

It was a good reminder about what she should be focusing on, given the way she’d been letting her libido drag her around for the last week.

Whatever had been happening with Cam was nothing more than a distraction.

From getting her life back on track and finding solid footing again.

It felt good in the moment, but it wasn’t going to get her where she wanted to go.

Now that Sandy had done her duty to relay the information about the charity event, she was peppering Cam with questions about the festival and how he’d liked it, if he had any feedback on what could be improved.

Elle glanced at Cam, who looked like he wished he could be anywhere else. Served him right.

Elle tuned out their voices and looked at her phone. She’d gotten a text fifteen minutes ago.

Becca : Zoe and I are at the festival! We tried to come by your stand but it was closed.

Becca: Are you still around? Want to meet up?

Elle texted Becca back and put her phone in her pocket.

She wasn’t going to wait to see whatever half-assed excuse that Cam would come up with once they were alone again.

“I’m going to find Becca. You two have fun,” she said with a backwards glance.

She caught the dark look that flashed across Cam’s face, but she was already weaving around the parked cars and toward the main event area.

Cam, and whatever games he was playing, were behind her. And that’s where they–and he–needed to stay.

The first thing that Elle did when she got home from the festival on Sunday night was take a shower.

Twelve hours in the heat. It felt like it had taken her at least that long to scrub the briny, salt-infused air off her skin under the hot showerhead.

She’d eaten an ungodly amount of fried food–not that Heads & Tails held a candle to anything Pierce’s Seafood Co.

had been selling–but Zoe had insisted on ‘sampling’ from multiple vendors.

Elle had laughed at the shrug of acceptance Becca had given her when Zoe had made her intentions clear, grabbing each of them with a small hand and leading the way. Elle appreciated a woman with a vision.

Back in her room, she towel dried her hair and put on her favorite sleep t-shirt. Which belonged to Cam, coincidentally. That wasn’t her fault, and she refused to let him disrupt one more thing in her life.

She was sitting on the bed, brushing through her hair when there was a knock on the door.

“What do you want?” If she could get this over quickly, she’d still have time to do her full skincare routine before she fell asleep. And that process, honed over a decade, was far preferable to whatever excuses Cam was going to level in her direction now that they’d had time apart.

Cam opened the door but didn’t come into the room. Instead, he leaned on the doorframe, taking up most of the space. He was wearing a pair of basketball shorts and a hoodie, and even from where she sat, she could smell the clean scent of his body wash.

Elle continued brushing her hair. “If you’re looking for styling tips, I’m sure there are YouTube tutorials you could watch.”

“Elle…” It was just her name, but she felt it in her bones. The way he said it, so wanting. His eyes were focused on her, watching as she methodically pulled the brush through her ta ngles, the sharp, quick pain whenever one of the bristles snagged keeping her centered.

“Your tortured hero act has run its course, Cam. Congratulations. I no longer think that sleeping with you is a good idea.” Even if her body rebelled at her traitorous words, it was the right call. There was no way she was going to keep letting him have this power over her.

She’d discussed it with Becca earlier, at least in the words she could find that were kid-friendly enough for a five-year-old to possibly overhear.

And where she’d settled was that she wasn’t going to let Cam keep jerking her around.

He could keep his masochistic cup filled jerking himself around, in every sense of the word.

“I’m trying to be–”

She cut him off. “What, Cam? You’re trying to be annoying? Or frustrating? Or to send mixed signals?”

He scratched at his stubble, clearly not liking the way this conversation was going.

Well, he could deal with her mood swings for once instead of the other way around.

“You’re acting like it’s my fault that Sandy showed up.

It’s not like I texted her to run interference.

And you’re the one who ran off, not me,” he glowered, finally matching her own frustrated look.

Elle’s whole body was electrified. She wanted, no–needed–them to get this out of their systems. To finally put Cam in his sanctimonious place and give him the dressing down of his life.

“Because I didn’t need to hear some version of the speech I’ve already gotten numerous times.

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice… ”

She could see the storm in Cam’s eyes brewing from her seat at the edge of the bed.

It felt so good to turn the tables and put him in as much tumult as he’d put her body through this last week.

As far as she was concerned, he deserved every barb.

Every cutting word. Every dose of reality that she could level at him .

He took a step closer, a sanctimonious look on his face that Elle wanted to smack right off. “I won’t apologize for doing the right thing.”

“Right thing! What does that even mean, Cam?” Elle stood too, and she started pacing back and forth in front of her bed.

He was infuriating. “You tell me no, but then you look at me, and I know you want it, too. You act like us sleeping together is going to break the fabric of reality or something. I’m sick of it.

People have been fucking for thousands of years.

We’re living proof of that.” Cam didn’t interrupt, which was good because she was only getting started.

She turned at the corner of her bed and started walking back, shooting him a look that she hoped burned a hole in him.

“You’re just so…” Her hands were waving around like she was a mad woman, now.

She sure as hell felt like one. And then she stopped, her toes digging into the carpet to keep her from losing her balance. “Scared.”

He was already moving forward, imposing and solid and in her space, his chest heaving. She’d hit a nerve, that much was clear. “You’re not the one left holding the bag when this goes sideways, Elle.”

Elle scoffed and put her hand up to his chest to push him away, only she couldn’t bring herself to do it, her hand lingering against his hoodie. “You have a pretty high opinion of yourself for someone who’s never actually crossed the finish line.”

He stared down at her with an inscrutable look on his face. “I don’t need to jump out of a plane without a parachute to know that it’s a bad idea.”