obviously had a dozen angels sitting on her shoulder.
He desperately wanted to find out why she’d run out on him that night, why she’d insinuated herself back into his life now. She’d known him as a greasy rigger, solidly blue collar. He’d been good for a night, a roll in the sheets, and he hadn’t really been surprised when he’d turned over and she wasn’t there.
He was a ship in the night, here today and gone tomorrow, He only ever indulged in fun that lasted a few hours, max. He was not a guy someone like her—classy and warm—wanted to face over coffee in the morning.
Was she back only because his bank accounts were fat and his social standing solid? Because he was now apparently acceptable?
Cam felt the sharp burn beneath his rib cage and cursed. He cursed himself for caring what she thought and he cursed her for dropping back into his comfortable, and predictable, life. He’d never forgotten her and he hated her for that. He didn’t like connections, ties, memories.
Cam walked over to the window and stared out into the hospital parking lot. There, close to the entrance, was his luxury SUV, top of the line, ridiculously expensive. He lived in a big-ass house, had numerous, hefty bank accounts. He had, he reluctantly admitted, everything he’d ever wanted, yet this brown-eyed woman made him feel like his world was shifting, that something was changing.
Vivi’s reappearance in his life was going to rock him to the soles of his feet.
Cam sighed before turning around. “Why am I your emergency contact person, Vivianne?”
This time Vivi gripped the sheets with both hands, and whatever color was left in her face drained away. She stared at him, licking her lips, and he could see the turmoil in those eyes, the trembling of her bottom lip. “I have a daughter, Clementine. I call her Clem. She’s two years old and you are her father.”
Telling a guy he had a child was a hell of a way to clear a room.
Vivi looked at the door Camden had slammed closed, half expecting him to reappear and start yelling. When twenty seconds passed, then thirty, then a minute, she finally released the breath she was holding. While she was better at confrontation now than she’d been years ago, she still didn’t like to argue. The same, so she’d heard, couldn’t be said for Camden McNeal. All her research—and she’d researched him to death—pointed to the fact that Cam McNeal, oil rigger turned venture capitalist, treated business like a boxing ring and went in swinging. He was tough, demanding and controlling, and he didn’t take any prisoners, ever.
Neither, it was reported, did he suffer fools. The business press called him a blizzard, cool and deadly, but Vivi thought they’d mischaracterized him. He wasn’t cold. Beneath that icy facade resided a passionate man. A man fully in control of his volatile emotions. But cold and unfeeling? Oh, hell, no.
Vivi pulled her knees up and groaned as every muscle in her body protested. She was exhausted both mentally and physically, but she was sure there was no chance of sleep anytime soon, since she knew she hadn’t seen the last of Cam this morning. Instinctively she understood that Cam had only left the room so that she wouldn’t witness his anger, disappointment or shock. Or all three. He obviously needed some time to regain his famous control. That was okay; she needed to regain hers, too.
Three years and he was still earth-shatteringly sexy.
Vivi heard the ding of an incoming message and looked at Cam’s smartphone, which she still held in her hand. Swiping her thumb across the screen, she saw the dial pad and impulsively dialed Joe’s number, needing to connect with the only person she considered family.
After a brief explanation to Joe about the accident, Vivi told him that she was fine and that he didn’t need to rush across town.
“But how are you going to get home? Pick up Clem?” Joe demanded.
“I have someone here,” Vivi admitted. When she’d made Camden Clem’s guardian and her emergency contact she’d never considered that he might actually need to be called. “Camden McNeal.”
Joe waited a beat before snapping out his question. “And why is Cam McNeal with you, Vivianne?”
Here came the hard part.
He’d been the first man she’d noticed on entering that hole-in-the-wall bar three blocks down from her mom’s house in Tarrin, a small town west of Houston. He was lounging on a bar stool, watching her with bright blue eyes. His light brown hair had been longer then, touching the collar, though now it was expensively cut. His tall, muscular body seemed harder now, as was his attitude.
“So, I’ve told you a little of my history with my parents,” she began.
“A little, mostly that you were fed a steady diet of anti-government and end-of-the-world BS from your father and you’re-going-to-fry-if-you-don’t-listen propaganda from your mother,” Joe said, always impatient with intolerance.
“I was an only child with ridiculously overprotective parents, so college was out of the question. Dating—unless it was arranged through my mother—was frowned upon, and socializing outside of their tight social circle was not acceptable. Drinking and dancing and sex? Hell, no.”
“And hell, as you were frequently told, was where you’d end up if you flirted with those vices.”
“I told you that my dad died and that the family money was placed into a trust, controlled by lawyers who were my dad’s friends, and every decision we made had to go through the lawyers. I was so angry.”
“I’m still not seeing the connection to Camden McNeal.”
“After leaving the lawyers and my mother after the funeral, I ended up in a bar, and later, in Cam McNeal’s bed. And with his baby in my belly.
“My mother was angry with me for embarrassing her on the day they buried my father, but she was incandescently furious when I told her I was pregnant. Basically, she disowned me,” Vivi explained.
“Can I track her down and give her a piece of my mind?”
Vivi smiled at Joe’s outrage. God, she loved this man.
“You must’ve been so scared, Viv.”
“I was, but I also felt empowered. And free.”
She’d faced a tough, uncertain future, but it was her future, one she’d created. “I thought about contacting Clem’s father but I didn’t know his surname and had no idea where he worked.”
But more than that, she hadn’t wanted to put herself under anyone’s control again. This was her life and she was responsible for herself and her baby. She’d made this bed and she was determined to show herself that she could sleep in it.
“I relied on public assistance and bounced from job to job, first juggling pregnancy and then a tiny baby as I tried to earn enough to support us both. Then I found work with you.”
Those first few months after Clem’s birth had been super tough, but life had improved when she found steady work as a dishwasher at The Rollin’ Smoke. She’d met Charlie, the widowed mother of one of the
