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“Oh,” I said, feeling like an ass. “I’m sorry.”
“Mom died about seven years ago.”
Oh God. Leave it to me to drag up painful memories. “I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head, pushing away my pointless apologies with his eyes closed and his lips pressed into a thin line.
“So you’ve always worked construction?” I tried again.
His eyes met mine for a brief second, and it almost felt like a probe—like that one focused glance had been engineered to glean my objective, to find out if it was advisable to tell me more. His eyes were sharp and penetrating, and when he looked away, my heart was racing and my skin had cooled, leaving me to shiver. Cam was intense—when he stared me down it felt like challenging an oncoming train, but there was something heady about it, exciting. “No,” he finally answered. “I worked in film production first. Got married. Moved up here when she died.”
My heart froze inside my chest and then melted into a disastrous puddle. “Oh Cam,” I said, sorrow for him and for my own impossibly awkward conversational skills swamping me.
“You’re going to say you’re sorry again.”
“I am.”
“Please don’t. You had nothing to do with it, neither of us can change it, and you being sorry doesn’t help things.” He paused a minute. “I am actually surprised you didn’t know already. In town, I’m the grumpy widower.”
A tiny smile came to me at that. “No one mentioned it to me.” I raised an eyebrow. “Are you grumpy? You just seem...calm,” I tried.
“Better calm than angry,” he said, a low chuckle rolling through the cooling air and erasing some of the tension that had floated between us.
“So, movies, huh? Did you work on anything I’d know?”
He smiled and tilted his head to one side, then reached down and took a sip of his drink before speaking. “Mostly art films, some kind of dark stuff. But I did work on one blockbuster.”
“Oh yeah?” My mind raced through the darker movies I could think of—the Batman films, some of the recent thriller hits. “What was it?”
He pressed his lips together and looked at me, his eyes sparkling in the flickering light. “Did you ever seeMarry Me Ted?”
“The romcom?” My voice flew from my mouth, surprising us both with its volume and high pitch. I covered my lips with my hands.
“You sound so surprised.” Cam pretended to be serious, but I could see the humor still flushing his skin, making his eyes dance.
“That’s not exactly dark or serious,” I pointed out. “That movie was hilarious.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He grinned at me. “Sometimes you sacrifice your art for a paycheck.”
“I hear that,” I said. “Not that I’ve got any art, exactly, but I was pretty good at finance. And now I’m going to be a glorified event planner.”
“At the inn, huh?”
I nodded.
“Working on my sister’s wedding then?” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“Yeah, actually.”
He seemed to consider this for a moment, then fixed me with a serious look. “Harper?”
“Yeah?”
“If you screw that up, I’ll kill you.” He looked like he was only halfway kidding.
“Noted,” I said. “But I’m not planning to screw it up, don’t worry.”
“Good.”
