She gave him a quick, fleeting smile. “I’m fine, Cam. I can handle this.”
Something stirred inside him. Was it admiration? Or regret? He was a bit too groggy to tell. But the Diana he’d left behind had seemed to need him in so many ways. This one, not so much. That was probably a good thing. Wasn’t it? If only he could think clearly, he might even be able to tell.
“Well, you know, if you need any help…” he began.
She turned on him, ready to be defensively self-reliant, and that was when she saw what looked like blood. It was trickling down out of his dark hair, making a rivulet in front of his ear. She gasped, then looked more closely, detecting a lot more that had started to dry against the collar of his shirt.
“Cam! What’s this?” She touched it and showed him.
“Oh, just a little blood.” He pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at it.
“Blood!”
He gave her a melancholy smile. “I had a little accident. Just a little one.”
She stared. “With your car?”
He nodded. “The car wouldn’t go where I tried to get it to go. I kept pulling on the wheel and saying, ‘Come on, car, we’ve got to get to the Van Kirk mansion,’ and the stupid car kept saying, ‘You know you’d rather go see Diana.’” He looked at her with mock earnestness. “So we crashed.” He waved toward the woods. “We smashed right into a tree.”
“Cam!”
“Just a little one. But I hit my head pretty hard. Didn’t you hear it?”
She stared at him, shaking her head. “Oh, Cam.”
“It wasn’t very far away.” He frowned. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear it.”
“I was asleep.”
“Oh.” He sighed and stretched out his arms, yawning. “Sleep, huh? I used to do that.”
She noticed the dark circles under his eyes. For all his handsome features, he did look tired. “Maybe you shouldn’t drink when you drive,” she pointed out sharply.
“I didn’t.” He shook his head. “The drinking came later.”
“Oh.”
He shrugged. “Just a bottle I found in the trunk after the crash. I brought it along to tide me over while I waited on your pier for the sun to come up.” He looked forlorn. “I was planning to invite myself for breakfast.”
How did he manage to look so darn lovable in this ridiculous state?
“It’s still a little early for breakfast.” She sighed, then reached out and took his hand. “Come on.”
“Okay,” he said, and started off with her. “Where are we going?”
“Where else would the prodigal son go? I’m going to take you home.”
The drive up to the Van Kirk mansion was steep and winding. Diana had made it often over the last few years in her little business van. Alice Van Kirk, Cam’s mother, had been one of the first people to hire her fledgling floral styling company to provide fresh arrangements for the house once a week back when she’d originally started it.
The sky had begun to lighten, but true dawn lurked at least a half hour away. Still, there was enough light to let her see the turrets and spirals of the Van Kirk mansion ahead, reaching up over the tops of the eucalyptus trees, shrouded in the wisps of morning fog. As a child, she’d thought of the house as an enchanted castle where royalty lived high above the mundane lives of the valley people, and it looked very much like that now.
“Are they expecting you today?” she asked.
When she didn’t get an answer, she glanced at Cam in the passenger’s seat. He was drifting off to sleep.
“Hey!” She poked at him with her elbow. “I don’t think you should let yourself sleep until you see a doctor. You might have a concussion or something.”
“Hmm?” he responded, looking at her through mere slits where alert eyes should be.
“Cam, don’t fall asleep,” she ordered.
“Okay,” he said, and his eyes immediately closed all the way.
“Oh!” she said, exasperated and poking him with her elbow again. “Here we are. Which door do you want?” She grimaced. “I don’t suppose you have a key, though, do you?”
He didn’t answer and his body looked as relaxed as a rag doll. With a sigh, she pulled into the back entrance, using the route she was used to. The servants’ entrance she supposed they probably called it. The tradesmen’s gate? Whatever, it was just off the kitchen and gave handy access to the parts of the house where she brought flower arrangements once a week. She rarely ran into any of the Van Kirks when she came. She usually dealt with Rosa Munez, the housekeeper. Rosa was a conscientious employee, but she doubted the woman would be up this early.
“How am I going to get you in there?” she asked, shaking her head as she gazed at the dark house. Turning, she reached out and pushed his dark hair back off his forehead. His face was so handsome, his features so classically perfect. For just a moment, she ached, longing to find a place in his arms. But she couldn’t do that. She had to be tough.
“Cam,” she said firmly, shaking his shoulder. “Come on, wake up.”
“Okay,” he murmured, but his eyes didn’t open.
This made things a bit awkward.
Slipping out of the car, she went to the door and looked at the brass handle, loath to try it. She knew it would be locked, and she assumed there was a security system on the house. Everyone was obviously still asleep. What the heck was she going to do?
Stepping back, she looked up at the windows, wondering if she could climb up and get in that way, then picturing the embarrassment as she hung from a drainpipe, nightgown billowing in the breeze, while alarm bells went off all through the house. Not a good bet.
Turning, she went back to the car and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Cam, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” she said.
He was sound asleep and didn’t even bother to twitch. She sighed with resignation. She was going to have to wake up the whole house, wasn’t she? Now she regretted having come without changing into day clothes. But she hadn’t been sure she could keep Cam in one place if she left him to go change, and she’d thought she would just drop him at his doorway and make a run for home. She should have known nothing was ever that easy.
“Okay. If I’ve got to do it, I might as well get it over with,” she said, leaving the car again and going back to the door. Her finger was hovering half an inch from the doorbell and she was bracing for the sound explosion she was about to unleash on the unsuspecting occupants, when the door suddenly opened and she found herself face-to-face with Cam’s sister, Janey.
“Diana? What in the world are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Janey!” Diana was immediately aware of how odd she must look standing on the Van Kirk doorstep in her filmy nightgown and fluffy white robe. The shabby slippers didn’t help, either.
Janey, on the other hand, looked trendy and stylish in high end jogging togs. A tall, pretty woman about a year younger than Diana, she was evidently up for an early morning run and determined to look chic about it. Diana couldn’t help but have a quick catty thought wondering which of the local squirrels and chipmunks she might be trying to impress. But she pushed that aside and felt nothing but relief to have a member of the family appear at the door.
She and Cam’s sister had known each other forever but had never been friends. Janey had been aware of the close ties between