Kelly hesitated, then asked carefully, “Did you really think that? Did you really believe you and Cameron would be married and settle down for the rest of your lives together?”
Amber opened her mouth to answer, and then she, too, paused, biting her lip. “Maybe not,” she admitted after a moment. “Even when Cameron and I were together, I knew deep inside that it couldn’t last. He’s just...he’s not...”
Kelly understood what her friend was trying to say. Cameron wasn’t exactly the home-and-hearth type. Kelly couldn’t really imagine him getting married and mowing a lawn or attending a PTA meeting. The footloose reporter was a confirmed bachelor, and Kelly had never really believed his feelings for Amber—whatever they had been—were strong enough to change him.
“You knew it wasn’t going to work out, didn’t you?” Amber asked, studying Kelly’s face.
She chose her words with care. “I wanted it to work. For your sake.”
“But you didn’t think it would.”
“I just didn’t know.”
Amber wrapped her arms around herself and rocked miserably on the couch. “The holidays are going to be so awful. I told everyone Cameron would be there for our family Thanksgiving dinner. You know he isn’t close to his own parents, so I just assumed...”
Kelly wondered if it was dread of the upcoming holidays that had prompted Cameron to end
the relationship that afternoon. He probably thought it would be entirely too awkward to go through the season as a couple when he knew all along that it couldn’t lead where Amber wanted it to go.
Amber shuddered. “It’s going to be so uncomfortable seeing him again when we all get together. How am I supposed to play games with him and socialize with him as if nothing happened between us? What will I do if I go to a party and Cameron’s there with a...with a date?”
“I don’t know.”
“I hate him for doing this to me.” Amber’s mood shifted mercurially from grief to fury. “How could he lead me on the way he did when he knew how I felt about him? He let me hope—and then he just ended it. ‘We can still be friends,’ he said. I don’t want to be his friend. I’m friends with Shane and Scott and Michael. Cameron is different.”
To be fair, Kelly thought Cameron hadn’t really known how Amber felt about him. Amber had simply decided several months ago to go after him, to take a chance at pursuing her longtime infatuation. She’d somehow convinced him to give them a chance, and maybe for a while he’d really wanted it to work out, but Kelly suspected that Cameron had broken it off as soon as he was certain it wasn’t going to last. “I hope you and Cameron will find a way to be friends again. You’ve known each other so long.”
“I’ve wasted most of that time being in love with him. And he just let me go on loving him, until he finally decided to temporarily take what I was offering. Then when he got tired of me, he just expected to pat me on the head and have everything go back to the way it was. Now I’m just supposed to smile and say nothing while he goes back to chasing one bimbo after another.”
That tirade, of course, was quite unfair, since Amber had been the one to initiate the affair—but Kelly bit back her automatic impulse to defend Cameron. “What else can you do?” she asked logically.
Amber promptly burst into tears again.
This, Kelly thought, patting her friend’s heaving shoulder, was exactly why she had panicked when Shane kissed her. There was nothing sadder than a couple who ruined a wonderful friendship with romance. She’d seen it happen too many times, and it was almost impossible for everything to go back to the way it had been before. In her experience, it almost always ended in disaster. Just look at how unhappy Amber was now, she thought. And imagine how awkward it would be when they all got together again—if they all ever got together again.
Nothing, she thought glumly, could ruin a wonderful relationship faster than an ill-advised romance. She had no intention of getting involved in anything that foolish herself.
“So then I told her there’s no way I’m spending all day Thanksgiving being stared at and cross-examined by her parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbors. There really wasn’t any point to it, I said, because I couldn’t see me ever spending more time with her family anyway. That’s when she gave me this sort of wounded look and said something about when we were married...and I guess I lost it. I told her marriage wasn’t an option for us—for me, really—and I was sorry if she had gotten another idea. Then she started crying and calling me names, and before I knew it, doors were slamming and the whole thing was over.”
Sitting in a chair watching Cameron pace the living room, Shane listened to the tale without an outward reaction, though he cringed on the inside as he pictured how unpleasant the scene must have been. “Sorry, Cam, I know it must have been hard for you.”
“That’s an understatement,” Cameron growled. “It was sheer hell. I tried, Shane, I really did. But when she started talking about marriage...”
Shane nodded. This has been inevitable, he thought. He couldn’t imagine Cameron marrying anyone, certainly not Amber. But he hated that it had to go down this way, for both their sakes.
“Is there anything I can do?”
Cameron turned to look at him. “You’re doing it,” he answered quietly. “Thanks for listening.”
Somewhat awkwardly Shane shrugged. “You would do the same for me.”
Cameron snorted and ran a hand through his heavy gold hair. “Like you’d ever end up in a mess like this. You’ve never made a stupid mistake with a woman. Probably never will.”
Shane swallowed, thinking uncomfortably of a certain unplanned kiss. “I’ve made my share of blunders.”
“Maybe. But not like the ones I’ve gotten myself into,” Cameron countered glumly. “You’ve always been too careful and too firmly rooted here with your family and your ranch to waste time in self-destructive relationships.”
Shane wondered what Cameron would think if he confided that his caution was due more to fear than discretion. Shane had always worried about getting involved in a relationship as disastrous as his parents’ marriage, or his mother’s second marriage. He had seen firsthand how miserable people could make each other. How others could suffer from mistakes made in the name of love.