Stray for You (Rainbow Rescue Cat Café #3)

Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Julian

I WAKE WITH A START. The previous night hangs around me like fog bound to dissipate the moment the sunlight strikes it. But when I sit up in bed in my hotel room, someone groans beside me.

I sit frozen, my chest bare, the sheets covering the lower half of my body. A lump disturbs the blankets beside me, a Cameron-sized lump crowned by his messy, dark hair sprawled across a pillow.

He’s still here. Last night wasn’t a dream. It actually happened.

My body stirs as the memory hits me. It isn’t fog. The more alert I become, the more clearly it returns to me. Cameron throwing me against the wall with surprising aggression, his mouth on mine, his hand grabbing my cock, my fingers in his mouth, his teeth seizing my lip. I was still in a daze when he announced he was going to sleep here in my bed. I stripped out of my suit, leaving it in a heap on the floor, then crawled into bed next to him, careful not to touch him even accidentally.

And here he is. Somehow. Miraculously. The guy I’ve chased since high school is in my bed, and I have no idea how or why things changed. Is it the distance? The time? I wish I knew what I did during that dinner to make him say yes because I already want to repeat it.

Cameron groans and rolls onto his back, rubbing at his eyes. His blinks, his gaze unfocused. Warmth lingers in his cheeks. His hair juts out in all directions. For a heartbeat, he’s soft and unguarded and completely relaxed as he lies beside me.

His gaze sharpens. He sits up, unfortunately combing his fingers through his hair to tame it.

“Why are you staring at me?” he grumbles.

It’s stupid, but I say the first thing that comes to mind, and it’s the truth. “You look cute in the morning.”

One dark eyebrow rises, and I brace for anger. It seems I can’t do anything but screw up in his eyes. But then his mouth twists and he looks down, and I realize that against all odds, Cameron is trying not to smile . My heart lurches like he just pushed it off a cliff. If he keeps feeding me these little glimpses this is going to be so much worse than an ill-advised hookup. How am I supposed to walk away and forget about early-morning Cameron holding back a smile because I called him cute? I thought I liked messing with him. I thought I could survive off of sips of banter. But last night and this morning has me questioning everything I thought I felt about Cameron.

Oh no.

Now I’m the one looking away and trying to collect myself. I steady myself as much as I can, but when I turn back to Cameron, he’s watching me with something strange in his face. I’d expected him to bolt the moment he woke up. I’d expected to wake up and find the bed empty, in all honesty. It would not have come as a shock if he’d crept away in the middle of the night. But what I find beside me is a dark, steady gaze and slightly parted lips.

I can’t resist. I lean toward him, not caring what our breath might be like first thing in the morning. All that matters is pressing my mouth to his, feeling him real and solid against me. And he is. He greets my lips with his own, and they’re as warm and wonderful as I remember. Softened by sleep, they cushion me when I fall against him.

Cameron takes me by the shoulders before I can topple us into the bed.

“I need to drive home,” he says. “They’ll ticket my car for being parked too long.”

Reality crashes back in, but this isn’t the rejection I might have expected. It doesn’t feel like a rejection at all. I climb out of bed with him and throw on pants while he dresses in what he wore last night. When he heads to the door, I follow, and he pauses before he leaves. This time, it’s him initiating the kiss, but I’m not sure if it’s a promise of more or a goodbye.

“Stay,” I say impulsively. “I’ll pay for your parking. Use the hotel’s garage. Whatever it costs, I don’t care.”

He smirks even as he shakes his head. “I need to get home. I have work later, and I assume you do too.”

“It’s Saturday.”

“As though that’s going to stop any of you from doing your creepy sales things.”

I can’t argue with him, so I don’t. I’m supposed to go to some kind of lunch thing today. Supposedly it’s casual, but we all know that’s where deals happen, that’s where palms are greased, that’s where the real work goes down. If anything, today is even more important than the official conference days.

“Can I see you again?” I try instead.

Cameron’s face tenses. His throat bobs as he swallows. “I don’t know,” he says.

I want to ask why. What’s the problem here? Clearly we can have fun together. Was I really so awful to him when we were kids that he won’t see me now?

I hold all that back. Whatever bothers him about me, I’ll only make it worse by pushing. I’m trying to be a different me for him, a better me. I’m trying to show him that I can be something other than that guy he remembers. It worked last night. Maybe, if I’m patient, it can work again before I leave.

Suddenly, the flight home on Wednesday feels horribly close. A week sounded like a lot when I landed, but now it seems like no time at all. Do I have time to convince Cameron to give me a second chance?

“Can I text you?” I ask. It’s my lowest bid, the kind of deal you make when everything else is off the table and you’re scrambling for any win at all.

Cameron nods, and even that sends my heart soaring. I let him go with one final kiss, but linger at my door until his footsteps fade away down the hall. Then I turn around, throwing my back against the door and sighing out every emotion I held back during that exchange. I don’t know what’s happening between us, what this back and forth means. It’s not like when we were in high school or college. I’m not messing with him because I’m desperate for his attention. Adulthood has changed something between us, but my roadmap for Cameron has always been “poke until you get a reaction.” What do I do with this? Act sweet instead?

I drag myself through a shower, but the hot water doesn’t help as much as I wish it would. I can’t wear last night’s suit for the rest of the trip, but fortunately I brought plenty with me and today is allegedly casual. Even the slacks and button-down I choose are part of the performance, however. This isn’t truly casual, and I’m not dressed like it is. It’s simply casual enough for plausible deniability.

Normally, this would be where I thrive. These blurry, in between spaces are where I’ve made my biggest deals, and Garret knows it. It’s why he sends me to stuff like this. But today I pace my room like a man waiting for the gallows, restless and anxious. Even when I go downstairs, the unofficial conference doesn’t feel like my home turf the way it should. The smiles are strained, the laughter forced, the handshakes awkward. It’s all so different from interacting with Cameron. He’s never anyone but himself. He couldn’t fake a smile with a gun to his head, which makes the ones he shares all the more precious. Like that smile he tried to hide this morning in bed. That was real, I know it was real, because Cameron doesn’t fake a single thing about himself.

Someone elbows me. I blink, and find myself sitting around a table in a restaurant. The lunch thing. Of course. I went through my day in such a daze that I don’t even really remember getting here. I must have made all the appropriate noises, however, because I’m sitting here with the people I should be eating lunch with and they’re all laughing and drinking like they’re supposed to.

I have a mimosa before me, and I sip from it to hide how far away my thoughts strayed from this table.

“I was just saying that Julian had some really interesting proposals he shared earlier in the week,” a woman, I think her name is Jessica, says.

She smiles at me from across the table, her painted nails clicking against her glass. She’s stunning, with chestnut hair that spills in artful curls past her shoulders and onto a chest with just the right amount of cleavage exposed. She would never wear something inappropriate, but she clearly took advantage of the “casual” day to design a look that’s every bit as calculated as my smiles and hair and slightly unbuttoned shirt. She’s an expert at this dance, as I am, and we both know how much even a single button can count.

Which means she expects me to play along.

I smile. At least I’m still good at that, even with my mind elsewhere. “Well, this is early days yet,” I say, “but there are definitely partnership opportunities on the horizon.”

I watch the smiles around me shifting, watch the eyes around me gleam with greed. This is what Garret sent me here to do. He wants a partner for the company, a big tech partner who can take our pharmaceuticals and rebrand them. They’ll get fresh life in the market, allowing the company to double down on profits.

I should go in for the kill. The others at the table lean toward me. Only Jessica sits back, but the satisfied smile on her red lips tells me everything I need to know. All I have to do is nudge, and I’ll get what Garret and the company wants before the conference is even over.

“I know this bar downtown,” a guy next to me says. “Have you ever been, Julian?”

“No, this is my first time in the city, actually.”

“Fantastic.” He slaps me on the shoulder. “I could show you around tonight.”

“And miss the outing?” Jessica speaks up. “I thought everyone was going out tonight since we don’t need to be up tomorrow. Julian, you can’t possibly miss it.”

And there it is, an offer within an offer. She lobbed this softball win to me, and she wants something in return. She wants me in return. Maybe she’s actually attracted to me; maybe I can do something for her bosses. Either way, the result will be the same, and normally I’d be enjoying that result as soon as this lunch ended, as well as later tonight.

Strangely, today I struggle not to grimace. Everything I should want is dropping into my lap, yet I yearn to tell them all no. No. Get away. Stop smiling at me. Stop expecting things from me. Stop assuming you’ll be in my bed tonight. It should feel like a golden opportunity, but instead I could swear I’m being circled by sharks. They all want a piece of me, and I can’t swim fast enough to escape.

The truth is, I’m not thinking about any of these people. I’m not thinking about the conference, about deals, about potential tech partnerships.

From the moment I woke up today, I’ve thought of nothing but Cameron.