“All of the mothers with unmarried socialite daughters have been stalking him.” Drew grinned. “Mrs. Mason has even decided that Cam might be a good alternative to Braden for Felicity’s hand in marriage.”

“Lucky you,” Braden teased.

“I talked to her before and she actually seems like a pretty nice person,” I said. “If you had those parents you would probably dress in black and look sullen too.”

“You’re so nice, Gabrielle,” Cam rambled with a slightly glassy look in his eyes. “You were always so nice to everybody. You knew all the homeless people’s names.”

“So, you guys planning to hook up anywhere else tonight?” Drew asked. “I think there’s some space on the dance floor.” Braden glared at him.

“Hey! If you were dating her you’d be hittin’ that shit every chance you had too and you know it. Gabrielle is very hot and she’s got an amazing…” Cameron said somewhat incoherently to Drew. Okay, time to get out of there!

“May I have this dance?” I interrupted quickly, turning to Braden. He smiled and stood up to escort me to the floor. Even though he had been feeling the need to claim his mate and mark his territory in the pool house he was being very sweet and gentle now. We laughed a little and smiled stupidly at each other a whole lot, dancing to Blue Moon and Dream a Little Dream of Me. Who knew that romance could be so great? Well, pretty much everybody but me until now I guess. Claire and Tyler looked completely in love, staring into one another’s eyes.

The evening had been a great success. (Luckily, Cam had ridden with relatives and so he wasn’t driving.) When things finally wound down we headed back up to the house. Braden’s family and I all had some tea in the kitchen and we traded stories about the evening for a while. Despite a rocky start, it had turned out to be one of the best Saturday nights I had spent in a very long time. Okay, it was one of the best ever, although there had been that trip to Disneyworld when I was six. It was nearly 3a.m. when we all finally headed up to bed and now that the adrenaline was gone I was starting to feel very tired. We wished everyone goodnight and went into Braden’s room.

“Now that I can finally get you out of that dress, I think I may be too tired to do anything about it,” he said, walking over to me and helping me with my zipper and my necklace.

“We already had a rendezvous, Iron Man. I’m tired too. How about if we just cuddle and see how we feel in the morning?”

“Sounds good.” We both set about getting undressed and ready for bed. It took me a while to wash off the make-up and brush out my hair and when I left the bathroom I saw that Braden was sitting in bed reading and waiting for me. I just stood there and stared for a minute.

“What?” he asked, looking up with a smile.

“I was just thinking what a nice sight it is to see you reading in bed.”

“It’s a nice sight to see you doing anything in bed.” He pulled back the covers invitingly and I came over and snuggled in. He put down his book and turned out the light, pulling me into his arms.

“I told your mom that I was quite smitten with you.”

“Well, I told my dad I was quite smitten with you. That’s what I was talking to him about after lunch.”

“I wondered what you were talking about.”

“I just had some relationship questions. I trust his judgment. My parents are very happy together.”

“My parents are too and they still flirt with each other even after all the years of marriage.”

“I’d really like to meet them.”

“How about next weekend?”

“You’re on.” I could tell even without being able to see him that he was smiling.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Everyone was late getting downstairs the next morning and we all met for brunch in the dining room. Afterward, we packed up our stuff and got ready to go. Even though we were only a half an hour away, everyone was hugging and promising to call and visit and e-mail. Beth and Claire made me promise to have lunch and go shopping with them too. I could see how happy that made Braden. In the car ride on the way home he had a contented smile on his face.

“Are you and Jessica just going to hang out tonight?”

“Yeah, she’ll be curious to hear about the weekend.” And personally, I wanted to gush about Braden and his family and talk to her about moronic Marla, creepy Cole and mean Mrs. Mason. As far as Cam went, I figured I would just mention the coincidence that an old college friend of mine was Braden’s cousin, and mention that he might be shadowing us sometime in the future.

“I’m going to do the usual Sunday night hang out thing with Mark and Adam.”

I wondered if he talked to Adam and Mark the way that I talked to Jess. Probably not. There would probably be a few suggestive jokes and then they would eat pizza, drink beer and watch sports. That seemed to be their pattern. Braden brought me back to my apartment and helped me with my bags, giving me a warm kiss goodbye and telling me he would call me later to say goodnight. As I walked in the front door Jess came hurtling at me like a human cannonball.

“Was it good?” she demanded in between bites of the Haagen-Dazs she was holding.

“The weekend? Yeah, it was fun,” I answered with a smile. She gave me a “don’t f**k around with me” look.

“And how was the sex?”

“That was amazing.” She followed me into my room and sat on my bed while I unpacked. She listened avidly while I gave her the basic run down as she made appreciative noises and comments. She actually blushed a little when I told her about the pool house. I don’t think she realized that Braden could be such a naughty boy. I also told her all about the rest of the weekend, from Drew’s funny comments to Cole’s obnoxious ones. We spent the better part of the evening giggling and laughing and between the two of us we polished off all of the Rocky Road.

Monday came and went without much fanfare. I visited clients at the jail and caught up on paperwork. Braden made a goodnight call and I was already looking forward to seeing him again. Tuesday morning Jess and I arrived at work as usual, coffee in hand, and we were just sitting down at our desks to start preparing cases for court the next day when Chief Deputy Public Defender, Chuck Collins stopped by our office with Cam in tow. His request had been granted. He would be shadowing Jess and I and sharing our office space for the next few weeks. Jess seemed perfectly happy with that and I suspected that the fact that Cam was a really cute and sexy guy made this assignment a little less burdensome.

Before long Cam and Jess were laughing together, which I took as a good sign. I had been so engrossed in my work I hadn’t even heard what they were talking about.

“Any interesting cases tomorrow?” I asked, wondering what was so funny.

“Nothing spectacular. How about on your list?”

“I’ve got a pretty good one. A guilty plea — Mr. Maximillian Davis. I’m not going to spoil it for you though.” I smiled. The hours went by quickly and we made plans to go out to lunch with Braden, who stopped by at noon. The four of us headed for Reading Terminal Market, chatting on the way.

“So Cameron, give investment advice to any felons yet?” Braden asked with a smirk.

“Not yet but I’ve got definite ideas for expanding their portfolios.”

“Well, I’m sure it will be an interesting experience for you. I hope you’ll get to be there when we do Mr. Davis’ guilty plea tomorrow.”

“We get all the good ones, don’t we?”

“Uh, hello? I get my share of good ones too,” Jess chimed in.

“I hope that you two will let Cameron share in the fun.” Braden smiled.

“Can’t wait,” Cam replied, grinning the grin of the blissfully unaware.

When we arrived, we browsed the various stalls for something good to eat and when we had all picked up our lunches we found a place to sit and dug in.

“So you and Gabrielle were friends in college?” Jess asked Cam.

“Yeah, we were in the same lit class and she obviously got it. I obviously didn’t, so I asked her to help me study.”

“And it had nothing to do with the fact that she was hot,” Braden said dryly.

“Braden!” I rolled my eyes.

“It had something to do with the fact that she was hot,” he said with a laugh and I almost choked on my curry. “But it had more to do with the fact that she was so smart.”

“So you thought she was hot and smart?” Jess asked.

“And funny and very nice,” Cam added, glancing at me and smiling but nevertheless looking a little uncomfortable. He turned his focus to his Pad Thai.

“So how come you never asked her out?” Jess asked. Oh my God! I was going to kill her.

Cam hesitated. “Well, I was kind of a serial dater, and besides, when we first met she was dating somebody. Jonathan Parker, right?” he asked me. “It’s weird but for some reason, I always thought he was gay.”

“He, uh, well,” I coughed. “He was. That is, he discovered that he was. Gay, I mean,” I said and Cam almost spit out the Coke he was drinking.

“Discovered that he was gay? He didn’t know that already?”

“People don’t always realize that right away. Do they?”

“I’m not sure, but I think that most people realize it on some level, although maybe they haven’t come to terms with it,” he answered tactfully.

“How long did you date a g*y man?” Jess cut in.

“Just a couple of months.”

“And it never occurred to you?” she asked incredulously.

“Well, I’ll admit that I thought it was odd that he was so shy, you know, about physical contact. I didn’t really bring it up though because I didn’t want to pressure him.”

“So you never had any physical side to your relationship?”

“We were affectionate. We held hands and hugged. He put his arm around me and we gave each other little cheek kisses. At the time I had hardly any sexual experience at all so I was pretty naïve.” I saw Cam look away uncomfortably. Braden wasn’t looking terribly comfortable either.

“And what did you do on your dates?” she wanted to know.

“Hung out and watched movies, went out dancing. Stuff like that.”

“Honey, are you sure you were dating? I mean it sounds to me like you were his hag,” Jess said sounding bewildered. I saw Cam and Braden glance at each other and struggle valiantly not to laugh. They were barely holding on there. At least they were kind of bonding.

“I think we were dating. I have to admit that I wasn’t really surprised when he told me he was gay, but I assumed it was something he had just figured out. I didn’t want to push him to discuss it, in case he wasn’t ready.” Suddenly it sunk in. “Oh my God. I had an imaginary boyfriend.”

That one was just too much. They lost it. Those two bastards totally cracked up! Cam turned his head and Braden covered his face with his hands but they couldn’t hide the way their shoulders silently shook. Finally, they pulled it together.

“Just for the record, we’re really dating,” Braden said, catching his breath, which almost started Cam off on another laughing fit.

“I’m glad that you two find this so amusing.” I calmly went on eating my lunch. I was actually thankful for their little laughing fit because it had allowed Cam to avoid answering Jess’s question. I really didn’t want to discuss it at the moment.

We finished up our lunch and Braden kissed me goodbye and whispered in my ear that we would have a private lunch soon. Then he returned to his office and we returned to ours. We worked on through the afternoon and finally at the end of the day, we said goodbye to Cam, and Jess and I headed home. When we got there I stopped at our box to pick up the mail and we went upstairs.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

We walked in and I was going to toss the mail on the entry table, but something caught my eye; peeking out of the pile was an envelope that was addressed to me in sloppy handwriting that I didn’t recognize. There was no return address. What the hell? I stood there and stared, starting to feel a little apprehensive for some reason.

“Jess,” I called.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, coming over to me.

“It’s nothing big. Just that there’s a letter addressed to me and it doesn’t have a return address. I don’t recognize the writing.”

I ripped it open carefully and removed a note from inside. Jess leaned over to read it along with me. There was a single sheet of plain white paper on which someone had written a short message in the same sloppy script. It said, “You should not be with him. End it now before you get hurt.”

“Who do you think wrote this?” she asked, sounding shocked.

“Well, Marla seems like she may not have both oars in the water and she’s certainly nasty enough. She’s also fixated on getting Braden back.”

“Okay, there’s a good possibility,” Jess agreed.

“Cole was creepy and he was definitely hitting on me. He kept saying that if it didn’t work with Braden I should consider dating him. This letter is so ambiguous. It’s hard to tell if the writer is warning me off for my own good or threatening me.”

“That’s a good point. He could be trying to get you away from Braden. I’d say that’s another good suspect.”

“Then there’s Mrs. Mason, who was giving me dirty looks all evening. She wants Braden for her daughter but I could also tell she just didn’t like me in general. I think she saw me as this interloper in her elite little Main Line WASP community.”