Mistletoe Between Friends Page 8

  “Nonsense,” Jack added. “We were all young once too.” He winked at them before standing and getting himself a drink, and Lily thought she was never going to want to have sex again after this conversation.

  Brought back to the present, Lily noticed their exit on the freeway and listened to the GPS instructions. “I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I don’t have to go into work until after New Year’s,” Cam said blandly, clearly not excited by the prospect at all.

  “Oh,” she said just as dejectedly. “That’s good.”

  Before she knew what was happening, Cam pulled into the first parking lot they came to and turned the car off. “Okay, spill. What’s going on?”

  Lily looked at him with pure confusion. “Spill what?”

  “Clearly you’re not happy, and if I can tell, then they’re all going to be able to. So what’s going on? Let’s clear the air before we get to the house and have to get into happy-fun mode.”

  “That!” she cried, pointing a finger at him. “That is the problem. I’m sick and tired of happy-fun mode! It’s exhausting! I can’t walk around like I’m freaking ecstatic over everything when I’m not!” She banged her head back against the seat and sighed with frustration. “This wasn’t supposed to be this much work!”

  Cam mirrored her position. “I know, I know,” he said wearily. “Who knew we would be the biggest news of the season? Why isn’t anyone getting married or divorced or having an affair?” That was the normal gossip around the holidays, and it really stunk that there was none this year to take the spotlight off of them.

  Lily turned her head and looked at him sadly. “Ten days. We have ten solid days to be the picture of a happy and in-love couple, and you know what? I don’t know if I can do it.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and this time she did her best to wipe them away.

  Reaching over, Cam did his best to pull her into his embrace with a console between them. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”

  Lily pulled back and looked at him with surprise. “Your fault? How is this your fault? If anything, our crazy parents are to blame! If they had just left us alone, we wouldn’t have had to concoct this stupid act that has everyone we know throwing mistletoe at us at every turn!” She growled with frustration. “Or, even if we did have to go with this farce, if they had just reacted like normal people and not carried on like ‘Oh, thank goodness our two misfit children finally found people to love them’ and turned it into a spectator sport, it wouldn’t be so bad. But it’s exhausting. And that whole private-time conversation? What was that?”

  “Oh, I know. I had nightmares for a week after that. I feel like every time we leave a room while we’re there, they’re all going to be smirking.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “So what do we do?”

  “Well, I don’t see we have a choice.” Cam thought for a minute, and then a wicked glint in his eyes told Lily he had come up with the perfect solution. “What if we turned the tables on them and used all of their enthusiasm against them?”

  “Cam, you’re starting to scare me. You used to be so mild mannered, but lately you’ve been walking a little too close to the dark side.”

  “No, this will be perfect. Our original plan was to break up after New Year’s, right?” Lily nodded. “Well, our reason for the breakup is going to be because of all of the pressure they put on us. We couldn’t handle it. We had no privacy. They pushed too much…blah, blah, blah. You see where I’m going with this?”

  Lily gave him an equally wicked smile. “I do, and you know what? I like it. I like it a lot.”

  “We’re going to have to fight a bit in front of them. You know I hate that because in all of our lives, we’ve never had a fight.”

  “I know,” she said thoughtfully. “What’s wrong with us?”

  Reaching out, he traced his fingers on the side of her soft cheek. Cam loved just touching her and soon there would be no reason to because they’d go back to being just friends. Well, if he was honest, he’d acknowledge they didn’t have an audience now and there wasn’t a reason to touch her, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. “There’s nothing wrong with us,” he said softly. “There was just never a reason to fight.”

  Lily sighed and rested her cheek in his palm and simply enjoyed the feel of the skin-on-skin contact. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it, Cam,” she said honestly. “I’ll want to argue with them, not with you.”

  Cam leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. “Don’t worry. We’ll work something out.”

  * * *

  The house was magnificent. There was no other way to describe it. As they drove onto the property, Lily marveled at the scenery. “Dad said the property was big, but it just seems to go on and on and on,” she said.

  “I think it’s over one hundred acres,” Cam commented, equally in awe of their surroundings. “There’s supposed to be a private lake where we can go fishing, but it’s catch and release because it’s stocked by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources people.” Lily nodded, and Cam remembered that fishing was not something she was interested in.

  When the house finally came in to view, Lily gasped. “Oh my goodness! Look at that, Cam. I can’t believe that we’re staying here for Christmas!” It was designed to look like a log cabin, but to Lily it was like a luxury log cabin on steroids. There were tons of windows and decking that wrapped around the exterior, and no matter where you stood outside, you had a magnificent view. Even if she hadn’t gotten the week off work, she would have called in sick because the house was too amazing to leave. And she hadn’t even seen the inside yet!

  Both sets of parents were waiting on the front porch when Cam and Lily pulled up. With a quick look around, Lily guessed they were the first of the siblings to arrive. “Oh,” she sighed in awe as they got out of the car. “I’m just blown away.”

  When she turned and smiled at him, Cam knew exactly what she meant. While yes, the house and property were amazing, her and her smile and her enthusiasm were what never ceased to blow him away.

  “We can get the luggage later,” Lily said as she walked over and grabbed his hand. “Let’s go pick out our room!” She fairly dragged him up the front steps, and they stopped to hug their parents. “This place is amazing,” she gushed to them. “It’s so much bigger than I imagined.” Bouncing on her toes, her hand still firmly gripping Cam’s, she asked, “Can we go in? Can we go in?”

  Opening the front door of the house, Lily stopped and gaped. Their families had always been well-off, but nothing that she had ever seen compared to the natural beauty of this home. Log walls and stone fireplaces, exposed beams, and twenty-foot ceilings in spots… It was breathtaking.

  “There are three master suites, and since you were the first ones to arrive, you are more than welcome to the third one,” Angela said.

  Cam and Lily both looked at one another and grinned. As the youngest in each of their families, they always seemed to get the last pick of everything, so with one mind, they turned to their parents and said, “Done!”

  Mary Cavanaugh was the one to take them through the house, and by the time they got to their room, they had seen all six bedrooms, four stone fireplaces, a kitchen that was a chef’s dream with granite countertops and stainless-steel commercial-grade appliances, and views that were awe-inspiring.

  The main living area boasted floor-to-ceiling windows with vistas of three mountain ranges and had one of the biggest flat-screen televisions Lily had ever seen. On the lower level there was a family media room and a game room that rivaled an arcade. Outside there was a large private Jacuzzi spa, a fire pit overlooking the mountain sunsets, a badminton court, and a backyard big enough to host any sport they might want to play.

  By the time they were alone in their suite, Lily felt like she had walked a mile. Cam shut the door and smiled at the fact that all of their luggage was already there. He mentally reminded
himself to thank whichever father had done it because he was exhausted from the drive and then the tour. Both he and Lily collapsed on the bed side by side.

  Lily giggled and Cam turned to look at her. “What’s so funny?”

  “You know our sisters are going to be majorly upset that we snagged the last master suite, right?” Cam couldn’t help but nod and laugh. “And I mean, they totally should be, because look at this place! King-size bed, private bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub, and what is that? Like a fifty-inch TV mounted on the wall. Never mind going home. I may not leave this room all week.”

  Cam found he was completely on board with that idea, especially if it meant they could spend some of their time here like they had in New York. And then he got worried. He knew their parents had implied it and everyone had joked about it, but the reality was that for ten days he and Lily were sharing this room, and it was positioned far enough away from everyone to afford them more privacy than they would probably need.

  The problem was that he wanted to take advantage of that privacy and forget his rules and reasons for making those rules, and have what they’d had on their last trip. He would never, ever suggest that to Lily because he knew she was struggling with keeping up appearances, but he couldn’t help but wonder what was going to happen when just the two of them were under the blankets later that night.

  It took a moment for him to realize she was staring at him, and he quirked a brow at her. “What?”

  “Nothing. You just got really quiet over there. Don’t you think this room is amazing?”

  Cam nodded. “It certainly is. We are definitely going to be the envy of our sisters.”

  “We can’t cave, Cam,” Lily said seriously as she sat up and looked at him. “We can’t let them bully us into giving up this room. You know they’re going to try, so we have to mark our territory now.”

  Cam had his own ideas on how they could do that, but he waited to see what Lily was going to suggest.

  “We have to unpack right now, put all of our stuff away, and totally settle in.” She scrambled from the bed and began unpacking her toiletries in the bathroom. “It is like a spa in here,” she called out to him.

  Laughing once again at her enthusiasm, Cam forced himself to rise from the bed and join her. There was nothing any of their sisters could do or say that would make him leave this room. He had ten days left with Lily, and they were going to spend it in this luxurious room that was making her happy.

  By the time he joined her in the bathroom, Lily had pretty much commandeered the entire vanity area. Cam carefully placed his meager belongings in one corner and neatly arranged them before examining the space more closely. It was spa quality with tiled floors, a jetted tub, granite countertops, and a shower that could easily fit two people.

  An image came to mind that was so vivid he almost blushed.

  By now, Lily had moved on to the closet and was hanging her clothes. “It’s a shame we’re only here for ten days because this closet looks a bit ridiculous with just our few measly belongings in here. We’d have to stay a month or so to fully utilize it.”

  Cam followed suit and hung up his stuff and then placed the rest of his belongings in the dresser in the main bedroom. Even though he and Lily had shared a hotel room, this seemed more intimate. They had pretty much lived out of their suitcases in New York, but now they were sharing a dresser and a bathroom—and definitely a bed. There wasn’t even a sleeper sofa so he could offer to be a gentleman. They were in this room, pretending to be a couple, for ten days.

  Heaven help him.

  He was placing their suitcases in the large walk-in closet when he heard a weird sound coming from the bedroom. Walking out, he saw Lily jumping on the bed. He stopped dead in his tracks. “What are you doing?”

  She looked down and stopped, a guilty smile on her face. “The final step to staking our claim. I’m messing up the bed so they’ll think we’ve already done all kinds of things on it and no one will want to take the room from us!”

  All she had to do was ask, and he would have gladly done all kinds of things with her on the bed. He quirked a brow at her. “Are you done?”

  Carefully, she sat in the middle of the bed. “Spoilsport.”

  Cam joined her and gently pushed her so that she was flat on her back. Then, for no reason except that he couldn’t seem to help himself, he kissed her. Lily instantly wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, and Cam felt himself sigh with relief. It was wonderful to do this because they wanted to and not because someone had positioned them under some blasted mistletoe or they had an audience. He was kissing Lily because he wanted to, and she seemed more than willing to do the same. He didn’t want to read too much into it, so he simply let himself enjoy the moment.

  When he finally raised his head and looked at the peaceful expression on her face, he smiled. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” she said. “You know, I kind of like doing that when it’s not so forced.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing.” Cam saw her features relax even more, and when she reached up to touch his face, he turned and kissed her palm. “Lily, I—”

  They were interrupted by a knock on the door. “Hey, you two!” Angela said. “The others are starting to arrive, and we’ve got food out in the kitchen. Are you coming down?”

  Boy was he.

  Lily stared up at him with wide, green eyes, unsure of what they should do or say. When Cam didn’t say anything, Lily shouted, “We’ll be down in a few minutes!” and waited until she heard Angela walk away. Then she waited to see if Cam was going to finish his earlier thought. When he rolled off of her, she figured the moment was gone but held on to the hope that maybe he was feeling all of the things she was. Maybe he wasn’t as unaffected by their pretend relationship as he was letting on.

  And maybe, just maybe, by the end of the ten days, there would be no more pretending.

  * * *

  “But that’s not fair,” Beth was saying snappishly as she looked accusingly at Lily and then back to her parents with a pout. “Why do they get the master suite? Shouldn’t it be done in age order?”

  Lily rolled her eyes but held her ground. “Aren’t we a little bit old for that? I mean, honestly, what’s the big deal?”

  “If it’s no big deal, then take another room. I’m the oldest and I should get the master.” Beth looked imploringly at her parents. “It’s only fair.”

  Cam had heard enough and was just about to open his mouth when Jack Cavanaugh did something Cam had never witnessed before. “Stop being such a pain in the ass, Beth. I mean, really. Aren’t you a little old to throw temper tantrums?” When his oldest child nearly gaped in horror at him, Jack shrugged. “Too bad there isn’t a room with bunk beds. It seems to me you would have done well in there.”

  Beth stood in pure, infuriated glory and stared at her mother for help. Mary simply picked up her glass of wine and followed her husband out to the deck. Then Beth turned to Cam and Lily. “I bet you’re feeling pretty smug right now, aren’t you?”

  Lily walked by and picked up her own glass of wine and then handed one to Cam. “I don’t need to feel smug, Beth. The house is huge, and each room is magnificent. I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal out of this.”

  “Then like I said, take another room.”

  Cam pulled Lily in close and kissed the top of her head. “That’s not really an option. You see, we’ve already unpacked and settled in and…used the bed.” He gave Beth a wink and then led Lily from the room before either of them could burst into hysterical laughter at the horrified look on Beth’s face.

  “Cameron Greene,” Lily said as she pulled him into a tiny alcove on the deck. “I do believe I have corrupted you.”

  He gave his best evil laugh, and when he heard someone approaching, he pressed his body against Lily’s, pinning her against the wall and kissing her. Cam heard
her soft whimper as he touched his tongue to hers and sank into the kiss. If he could have, he’d have taken them right back up to their room and said to hell with all of this family bonding. So far, they weren’t off to a great start with that. He heard a disgusted snort behind him and slowly lifted his head to see Beth glaring at them. “For crying out loud, if the two of you are going to carry on like that, at least have the decency to use the room you stole from me.”

  This time there was no hiding the hysterical laughter as they joined hands and went to join everyone out on the deck.

  * * *

  Cam had put it off as long as he possibly could.

  It was time to go to bed.

  The day had gotten way better after their little confrontation with Beth. Once Cam’s sisters arrived and neither of them even commented on not having a master suite, Beth calmed considerably. They’d all worked together to do some makeshift decorating with supplies both the Greenes and the Cavanaughs had brought with them, and the men had gone out and purchased a live tree.

  All in all, it was a festive afternoon and evening. Dinner was lively, and thankfully Beth had been the only one to draw any attention to Cam and Lily, so they had been able to enjoy themselves for the first time in weeks.

  Looking over to where Lily was sitting beside the fire pit with her parents, Cam was hesitant to go over and interrupt them. They seemed to be deep in conversation, and from where he was standing, Lily definitely looked relaxed. That was out of the ordinary for whenever Lily talked one-on-one with her parents. Cam looked at his watch and saw it was nearly midnight. His whole family had gone up to bed. Should he interrupt their discussion to say good night or just go up to their room?