you’ve got someone else it will drive home the message.’ Violet picked up her almost empty latte and looked at him over the rim of the glass. ‘Is there someone else?’ Arrgh! Why did you ask that?
Cam’s gaze met hers and that warm sensation bloomed deep and low in her belly again. His dark blue eyes were fringed with thick ink-black lashes she would have killed for. There was something about his intelligent eyes that always made her feel he saw more than he let on. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You?’
Violet coughed out a self-effacing laugh. ‘Don’t you start. I get enough of that from my family, not to mention my friends and flatmates.’
Cam gave her a wry smile. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with the young men of London. You should’ve been snapped up long ago.’
A pin drop silence fell between them.
Violet looked at her coffee glass as if it were the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. The way her cheeks were going, the café’s chef would be coming out to cook the toast on her face to save on electricity. How had she got into this conversation? Awkward. Awkward. Awkward. How long was the canyon of silence going to last? Should she say something?
But what?
Her mind was blank.
She was hopeless at small talk. It was another reason she was terrible at parties. The idle conversation gene had skipped her. Her sisters and brother were the ones who could talk their way out of or into any situation. She was the wallflower of the family. All those years of being overshadowed by verbose older siblings and super articulate parents had made her conversationally challenged. She was used to standing back and letting others do the talking. Even her tendency to gabble like a fool around Cam had suddenly deserted her.
‘When’s your office party?’
Violet blinked and refocused her gaze on Cam’s. ‘Erm...tomorrow.’
‘Would you like me to come with you?’
Violet had trouble keeping her jaw off the table and her heart from skipping right out of her chest and landing in his lap. Best not think about his lap. ‘But why would you want to do that?’
He gave a casual shrug of one broad shoulder. ‘I’m free tomorrow night. Thought it might help you mingle if you had a wingman, so to speak.’
Violet gave him a measured look. ‘Is this a pity date?’
‘It’s not a date, period.’ Something about his adamant tone rankled. ‘Just a friend helping out a friend.’
Violet had enough friends. It was a date she wanted. A proper date. Not with a man on a mercy mission. Did he think she was completely useless? A romance tragic who couldn’t find a prince to take her to the ball? She didn’t even want to go to the ball, thank you very much. The ball wasn’t that special. All those people drinking and eating too much and dancing till the wee hours to music so loud you couldn’t hear yourself shout, let alone think. ‘Thanks for the offer but I’ll be fine.’
Violet pushed her coffee glass to one side and picked up her book. But, before she could leave the table, Cam’s hand came down on her forearm. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘I’m not upset.’ Violet knew her crisp tone belied her statement. Of course she was upset. Who wouldn’t be? He was rescuing her. What could be more insulting than a man asking you out because he felt sorry for you? Had Fraser said something to him? Had one of her sisters? Her parents? Her grandfather? Why couldn’t everyone mind their own business? All she got these days was pressure. Why aren’t you dating anyone? You’re too fussy. You’re almost thirty. It never ended.
The warmth of Cam’s broad hand seeped through the layers of her winter clothing, awakening her flesh like a heat pack on a frostbitten limb. ‘Hey.’
Violet hadn’t pouted since she was about five but she pouted now. She could find a date. Sure she could. She could sign up to one of any number of dating websites or apps and have a hundred dates. If she put her mind to it she could be engaged by Christmas. Well, maybe that was pushing it a bit. ‘I’m perfectly able to find my own date, okay?’
He gave her arm the tiniest squeeze before releasing it. ‘Of course.’ He sat back in his chair, his forehead creased in a slight frown. ‘I’m sorry. It was a bad idea. Seriously bad.’
Why was it? And why seriously bad? Violet cradled her book close to her chest where her heart was beating a little too fast. Not fast enough to call for a defibrillator but not far off. His touch had done something to her, like he had turned a setting on in her body she hadn’t known she’d had. Her senses were sitting up and alert instead of slumped and listless. Had he ever touched her before? She tried to think... Sometimes in the past he would kiss her on the cheek, a chaste brotherly sort of kiss. But lately...since Easter, in fact...there had been no physical contact from him. None at all. It was as if he had deliberately kept his distance. That last holiday weekend at home, she remembered him coming into one of the sitting rooms at Drummond Brae and going straight back out again with a muttered apology when he’d found her curled up on one of the sofas with her embroidery. Why had he done that? What was wrong with her that he couldn’t bear to be left alone with her?
Violet picked up her scarf and wound it around her neck. ‘I have to get back to work. I hope your father’s wedding goes well.’
‘It should do, he’s had enough practice.’ He drained his coffee and stood, snatching his jacket from the back of the chair and slinging it over his shoulder. ‘I’ll walk you back to your office. I’m heading that way.’
Violet knew the tussle over who paid for the coffee was inevitable so when he offered she let him take care of it for once. ‘Thanks,’ she said once he’d settled the bill.
‘No problem.’
He put a gentle hand in the small of her back to guide her out of the way of a young mother coming in with a pram and a squirming, red-faced toddler. The sizzling heat of his touch moved along the entire length of Violet’s spine, making her aware of her femininity as if he had stroked her intimately.
Get a grip already.
This was the problem with being desperate and dateless. The slightest brush of a male hand turned her into a wanton fool. Stirring up needs that she hadn’t even registered as needs until now.
But it wasn’t just any male hand.
It was Cam’s hand...connected to a body that made her think of smoking-hot sex. Not that she knew what smoking-hot sex actually felt like. The only sex she’d had was a surrealist blur with an occasional flashback of two or three male faces looming over her, talking about her, not to her. Definitely not the sort of romantic scene she had envisaged when she’d hit puberty. It was another thing she’d miserably failed at doing. Each of her siblings had successfully navigated their way through the dating minefield, all of them now partnered with their soul mate. Was she too fussy? Had that night at that party permanently damaged her self-esteem and sexual confidence? Why should it when she could barely remember it in any detail?
She had been surrounded by love and acceptance all her life. There should be no reason for her to feel inadequate or not quite up to the mark. But somehow love—even a vague liking for someone of the opposite sex—had so far escaped her.
Violet walked out to the footpath with Cam, where the rain had started to fall in icy droplets. She popped open her umbrella but Cam had to bend almost double to gain any benefit from it. He took the handle from her and held the umbrella over both of their heads. Her fingers tingled where his brushed hers, the sensation travelling all through her body as if running along an electric network.
Trying to keep dry, as well as out of the way of the bustling Christmas shopping crowd, put Violet so close to the tall frame of his body she could smell the clean sharp fragrance of his aftershave, the woodsy base notes reminding her of a cool, shaded pine forest. To anyone looking in from the outside they would look like a romantically involved couple, huddled under the same umbrella, Cam’s stride considerately