Slow Summer Burn: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (33 page)

“And you, Val?”

“What do you think, Cam?” The look in his eyes told her everything she needed to know. He loved her. And nothing else mattered.

“I’m staying,” she announced again.

Clarissa looked disappointed. “Oh, dear. What will I tell Dr. Ishoo?”

Frederick put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Just tell him that our daughter is getting the best possible care on Cape Cod, and that she doesn’t wish to be moved.”

Clarissa looked up at him. “Oh, Frederick,” she sighed.

“It’s what she wishes, and we need to respect that,” he said. “She’s in good hands, and Dr. Kensington has promised the best care for our little girl. She’s a smart woman and a good doctor. I know she will deliver. And now I believe that Val and Cameron would like a few minutes to themselves, before the nurse comes back to put the oxygen mask on our daughter.” With that, he led Clarissa out of the room.

As soon as they were gone, she blinked at Val. “What did you do to my father?” she asked.

Val just shrugged. “While your mom was on the phone talking to everyone she believed could help you, Fred and I had a couple of man-to-man talks.”
Fred?!
“I think the better question is, what did you do to Cameron Stahl, socialite? Not going back to Boston for a while? What will the Symphony Board do without you?”

“Oh, they’ll manage, I suppose,” she said, stifling a cough. “Binky Button has been after my Fundraiser Chair position for years. Perhaps I’ll let her take it and focus my energies on other worthy causes. Like the Star Harbor Historical Society.”

“Or maybe we can figure out how to split our time so that you can do both.”

“You would really do that for me?”

“I’d do anything for you, Cam.”

She gazed up at him in wonder, her taciturn man with the fire in his eyes. Val loved and respected her. He’d charmed her father, managed her mother, and was willing to rearrange his life for her. He fit here, in her world, with her. Or maybe she fit in his. One thing was certain; they fit together. She almost started crying again, but checked herself.

“You’ve already done everything,” she whispered.

Chapter 31

Val drove down Beach Street toward the water, noting the still-crowded surf and turf. He smiled. Summer would soon be over and autumn would come, with its crisp winds and the scent of bonfire. He couldn’t wait.

It was the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend, summer’s last gasp in Star Harbor before the tourists left, the crowds thinned, and the locals had the town to themselves again. It was also the weekend the Grayson brothers got together to honor their dad on the anniversary of his death. Val could hardly believe it had been twenty-one years since their father was taken from them.

Last year at this time, Theo had flown in from San Francisco and Seb had joined them from New York. His brothers had been unsettled and adrift. This year, things were different.

They were all already in town, to start. And over the past year, each of them had found success at work and love with a good woman. There was no excuse for them not to be together, so the four men had spent Friday evening at the Schoolhouse having a drink, Saturday morning fishing and drinking beer on Mutterman’s Pier—illegal, but Cole had given them a pass—and Saturday afternoon hiking in the marsh. They’d reminisced about old times and talked about what was to come.

Val thought that would have made Dad the happiest of all.

What made
him
the happiest—aside from his brothers’ satisfaction—was his woman sitting beside him in his truck.

Cameron had made an almost full recovery from her near drowning and the resulting pneumonia. A week after Cameron was admitted to Cape Cod Hospital, Julie Kensington signed the release order. Val took her back to her cottage and under Julie’s orders, insisted she rest for the next week.

While laid up, Cameron had lost a few pounds from her already slim frame. Val had tried bringing her fried food from Babs’s Clam Shak to get some meat back on her bones, but her throat was too sore to do anything but sip hot tea and drink soup. Julie had counseled him to let her set the pace, and so he had, getting her some creamy clam chowder to speed matters along.

A day ago, Julie finally gave the go-ahead for Cameron to resume work, and tonight they
were all going to celebrate at the Schoolhouse, not just for Cameron’s recovery, but for the restaurant’s last hurrah before it closed for the summer. “You okay, Cam?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“You let me know if you get too tired, all right?”

She smiled at him. “I will.”

This was Cameron’s first night out since the attack, and Julie had given Val strict instructions not to let her get too taxed.
And Val
, Julie had said,
remember, I’ll be there and I’ll be watching you, so please don’t let her overdo herself
. It had taken all his effort not to smile at her polite firmness. The doctor was something else.

“Where are we going, by the way? This isn’t the way to the Schoolhouse.”

“I thought we’d take a detour before we head over for closing night,” he said. “Look at the sunset, maybe.”

“No swimming, okay?” she said, giving him a little smile.

Making jokes about her attack was a big improvement from not wanting to talk about it at all. He smiled back. “No swimming. I promise. But at some point, we’re going to sign you up for lessons. Just to get you back in the saddle so you can join me again at my secret spot.”

“All right,” she said, nodding. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

He was proud of her, taking everything in stride, managing the stress so well. She’d even taken Avery up on her offer to see a psychologist right away, telling him she wanted to get better so she could completely put it behind her and focus on her work and the
Lorelei
with Nigel and Bran.

It was funny. So many people were caught up in the fact that Junior had been arrested, as well as Ted Kirkland Senior, and he understood why. A congressman and the former front-runner for DA had been implicated in masterminding the largest drug operation on the Eastern Seaboard in half a decade. Big news, of course, as was the fact that Val and his team had discovered the mole inside the DEA—a director-level employee no one ever would have guessed who was on Junior’s payroll. Apparently, Junior had some dirt on that director from a previous job and had blackmailed him into helping. Jeff had
him
indicted, too, and the DEA began doing fresh background checks on everyone on staff. The fallout was widespread—careers ruined, marriages broken, political ambitions squashed.

But here in Star Harbor, the bigger news—the story on everyone’s lips—was the discovery of the
Siren Lorelei
.

The wreck had gone missing for three hundred years, and Cameron Stahl had uncovered it in the unlikeliest of circumstances. In the two weeks since the find, those who knew about it weren’t talking. When it was finally announced in the Star Harbor
Gazette
earlier in the week, people wouldn’t shut up. Fortunately, out of respect for Cameron, no one talked about the
how
but focused their attentions on the next steps.

Val parked by the beach and helped Cameron out of his truck. Hand in hand, they walked down to the shore. The sun was low in the sky, just above the horizon, and the sky around it was already pink and orange. She was gazing out on the water, her beautiful face alight with happiness. Now was the right time.

“Cam?” he said. “I have something to ask you.”

She turned to him and he sank to his knees. Her mouth opened in surprise.

“Cameron Endicott Stahl, will you marry me?”

Her gaze fixed squarely on his for one agonizingly long minute. “Yes.”

“That’s it? Not that I’m complaining,” he said quickly, still looking up at her. “It’s just that usually I’m the quiet one.”

She pulled him up. “Val, you’ve spent the last two weeks caring for me. You’ve been wonderful to my sister and you’ve won over my father. You even got my mother to back off for once. So yes, I’ll marry you. If it weren’t obvious already, I’m crazy in love with you. And there’s one other thing—I owe you my life.”

“I don’t want you to feel obligated to me.”

“Obligated?” She gave a raspy little laugh. “You have no idea how obligated I am to you. You saved me, Val. Not just from drowning, but from a lifetime of loneliness.” She cupped his face in her hands. “And I didn’t know how much I needed you until you found me. Opened my eyes to you. To myself. To everything.”

She’d done the same. Loved him. Taken care of him. Showed him that sacrifice was a two-way street. He touched his forehead to hers. “I swear I will make you the happiest woman on earth,” he vowed.

“You already have,” she whispered, right before she pressed her lips to his.

When he finally broke away—reluctantly—he pulled out a box from his pocket.

“Please,” he said, opening it up and taking the ring out. “Do me the honor.”

Gazing into her eyes, he slipped the ring on her finger. She looked down at it. It was a single two-carat solitaire diamond set in platinum. He thought she’d want something simple and elegant. Something she’d want to wear every day. Something that would match her diamond stud earrings. “Do you like it?” he asked.

She threw her arms around his neck. “I love it. So very much.”

“I have my mother’s wedding band for you. It’s plain, but it would mean a lot to me if you would wear it.”

“Then I want to wear it.”

He shook his head, barely trusting that this was real. That this was happening. “God, you’re amazing.”

“Val? I want to buy a house.” He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, she continued. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Even before you asked me to marry you. It’s not that I don’t love your boat. I do. Or my cottage. But I can’t stay at the Alcott estate forever, and going forward, I was thinking—”

“Yes.”

She paused and smiled. “That’s it? You
are
quiet.”

“That’s all I need to say. It’s a good idea.”

“You should still keep your boat. Maybe as a man cave or something.”

“Cam,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing. She really was the perfect woman.

Together, wrapped up in each other, they watched the sun setting over the water. As the last bit of sun dipped under the horizon, it flashed a fleeting green, so bright, so beautiful, that it took his breath away. Next to him, he heard Cameron gasp. It was a rare and beautiful thing to see a green flash.

“Amazing,” she breathed.

They’d have a lifetime of green flashes together, but all that really mattered was that Cameron was here, for real, with him in Star Harbor, in Boston, wherever she wanted. It didn’t matter, as long as he was with her.

“Val?”

“Yeah, Cam?” he said.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. Forever.”

Epilogue

Three months later
.

Cameron stood in front of a piece of history—the treasure chest from the
Siren Lorelei
. They were at the Star Harbor Historical Society, in a special room Bran had tricked out with light and humidity controls. Some of the most special pieces from his collection were here. They were about to add another—a mildewed chest that held, according to Nathaniel Jacobs’s verse, a treasure “worth more than gold.” Nigel and Bran had dated it to the late 1600s, and thanks to Boston College’s resources, had already done some cross-sectional analysis of the materials used to make it.

Though the exterior looked like it was about to fall apart, the trunk itself was surprisingly solid, holding up through the recovery and transfer to the Historical Society. According to her uncle, the trunk was a superior example of a barrel-stave Saratoga-grade trunk. Its interior was wood, likely oak, and had metal banding on each of the vertical wooden slats. Each edge was also covered in metal. Regardless of whether the protective covering had preserved any of the artifacts inside—if indeed there were any artifacts—the trunk itself was an incredible find.

Surrounded by friends and family, not to mention a bevy of archeologists, they were about to unlock a piece of history.

Val cleared his throat. “Are you ready?” he asked, his hand on her shoulder.

Cameron nodded. “Nigel? Bran?” she asked, and they nodded too. Once they’d gotten approval from the Massachusetts authorities and decided to proceed together with the exploration, they’d given themselves a name to set up the nonprofit corporation through which all the work would be done—ESW Consortium, after the first initials in each of their last names. They’d asked a famous explorer experienced in this type of salvage work, a man named George Findley, to lead the expedition. George had connected them with one of the cable history channels, which had purchased the rights to do a documentary. The cameraman and the producer had set up shop in the corner and were ready to go. Cameron gave them a nod, and they began filming.

From his pocket, Nigel pulled out a velvet bag and removed the keys. “Ladies,” he said,
addressing Julie, Lexie, and Avery, “without you, we wouldn’t have kept our hope alive that this trunk actually existed. Nor would we have been able to solve this mystery so elegantly.” Her uncle was right. Smashing open the trunk wouldn’t have been nearly as amazing as this. Cameron smiled at her friends, and they smiled back. She loved the fact that they were as much a part of this as she was.

Carefully, Nigel arranged the keys so that the bows were in order. He held them up to show everyone how they fit together perfectly to make one big key, the Roman numerals I, II, and III in alignment. Still holding them together, he slid the big key into the trunk’s keyhole and turned.

Though she was certain the trunk would open, since Nigel had done a test run of just the lock prior to the shoot, Cameron held her breath. Beside her, she felt Val do the same.

There was a click, and Nigel smiled. Slowly, he lifted the lid. A distinct aroma of decay filtered up to them. Nigel waved his hand in front of his face. “Whew!” he said. “Do you have ventilation in this place?”