“And your mum?”

“She was a runway model. They met on a shoot in Paris, actually. Now she mostly gets colonics and obsesses over finding the perfect macrobiotic lettuce on her daily trips to the farmers market.”

Cam is quiet for a moment. “And your sister’s a beauty queen.”

“Yup, Jacqueline made it all the way to the Miss America pageant. Got beat out by a farm girl from Kansas. I don’t think she’s ever recovered. Her and my mom are practically identical twins—your classic leggy California blonde type. My dad, too. He looks like a surfer—very tan and fit.” I chuckle. “My sister used to tease me when we were kids that I was adopted, because I look nothing like anyone in the family.”

Cam looks up from his plate. His eyes are dark, and his face is serious. “That explains a lot.”

I pause with my fork halfway to my mouth. “What are you talking about?”

“Your negative body image, damaged self-esteem, and conflicted relationship with food.”

I slowly lower my fork to my plate, my face burning hot and my stomach twisting. “Excuse me?”

Cam says, “You’ve got a model mother, a beauty queen sister, and a father surrounded by perfect-lookin’ people his entire career—”

“You’re in no position to criticize my family or psychoanalyze me,” I interrupt stiffly, my heart pounding hard inside my chest. “And let’s not forget, you’re pretty taken by your own looks, too, McGregor.”

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. But I’d never make someone else feel bad about themselves because they didn’t conform to my idea of perfection.”

“And that’s what you’re suggesting my family did to me?”

“Didn’t they?”

I’m so mad my whole body shakes. Making things worse is that he’s right. “I think your forty-five minutes are up.”

I stand, take my plate to the sink, and dump the rest of my food into it. I throw the plate on top of the uneaten food and blink hard, trying to clear my eyes of the water pooling in them.

“Joellen—”

“Stop. Not another word. You can let yourself out.”

There’s a long, heavy silence behind me. Then Cam sighs. I hear his chair scrape back from the table as he rises. “Are we still on for the mornin’?”

I count to ten before I answer so my voice doesn’t shake. “Yes.”

“Okay,” he says, his voice softer. “Good.” He takes a few steps away but pauses before he gets to the door. “For what it’s worth, lass . . . they’re wrong.”

I close my eyes. A lone tear squeezes out beneath an eyelid and tracks down my cheek. Then my front door opens and closes, and I’m alone with Mr. Bingley twining around my ankles and the realization that I’m not the only one who’s peeked behind a curtain.

If I’ve seen the real Cameron McGregor, he’s seen right through Joellen Bixby, too.

That night I don’t sleep. Cam’s words swirl around in my head like a tornado, kicking up all kinds of nasty, ancient dirt. I hate myself for getting so affected by his simple observation and worry that if he can see me so clearly, everyone else must, too.

But when I think about it, I realize he’s the only one who’s looking.

In the morning, it’s awkward.

“Hi,” he says in a subdued voice, dwarfing my doorway when I open to his knock. He’s got his hands shoved into the front pockets of a black hoodie, the hood drawn down over his forehead, a pair of black sweats and black athletic shoes completing the look.

“Hi. This is the least skin I’ve ever seen of yours. Are you feeling okay?”

His lips twitch, but he smiles using only his eyes. “If you want, I can take off my shirt. It’ll cut at least five minutes off your warm-up time.”

“There he is. Good morning, prancer.”

“Mornin’, dragon lady.” He reaches around his waist and produces a plastic bottle of the green goo he fed me yesterday morning. When I take it, he looks relieved, like he was expecting a fight.

“Wait.” I stare at the bottle in my hand, then look up at Cam with furrowed brows. “Where did this come from?”

“My blender.”

“You have a blender in the back of your pants?”

“It was in my waistband.”

That gives me pause. “You thought it was a good idea to carry a bottle of liquid in your waistband for a five-foot walk across a hall? Are both your hands broken?”

He makes jazz hands at me, breaking into the smile he’s been trying to hold back. “The hands are fully operational, lass. In case you’ve a mind to give a lad a tactile tour of your majestic lady parts, as you’d put it.”

“Please tell me you’re wearing underwear and that this bottle wasn’t, like, resting on your butt crack.”

With a straight face, he says, “Aye, lass, you caught me. It’s a bottle of butt crack juice. Drink up, it’s full o’ vitamins.”

“Vitamins?”

My imagination starts to run wild. I once read a cookbook titled Natural Harvest written by a man who thought every dish could be improved by adding a certain “natural” ingredient produced only by a pair of male testicles. The photo accompanying the recipe for Slightly Saltier Caviar haunts me to this day.

“Just drink the bloody thing, lass. It’s juiced veggies and protein powder!”

I close the apartment door behind me and shove my keys into the little zippered pocket on my fleece vest. “Fine. But if this tastes suspiciously salty, I’m kicking your ass.” I open the bottle and sniff the contents, listening to the Mountain chuckle.

“The only salty thing in this hallway is you, darlin’.”

His voice is as warm as his gaze when I meet it over the bottle. He shaved today, but somehow his usual scruff suits him better. He’s not the kind of guy who should be buffed to a shine, manscaped and manicured, pretty. All his rough edges combine to make something more interesting. More . . .

Masculine.

I guzzle the green goo and wipe my hand across my mouth when I’m finished, looking away because my face is suddenly flaming.

Cam cocks his head. “Uh-oh. You must’ve had a dirty thought about pretty boy Michael. Your face just turned to beet.”

When I answer with only a smile and a stiff nod, Cam chuckles again. “A little early in the mornin’ to be feelin’ frisky, innit, sweetheart?”

Hearing him call me sweetheart makes my face go even hotter, and now I’d like to kick my own ass for being a dope.

“Let’s get started,” I tell him, a little too sharply.

He’s amused by my sudden shift in manner. “Okay, okay, no need to get testy.”

I leave the empty bottle on the floor next to the door and we do warm-up stretches in the hallway while I listen to him ramble about target heart rates and runner’s euphoria and all kinds of other healthy things I can’t focus on because I’m too busy trying to avoid noticing his rugged good looks again.

It must be the lack of sleep that has me so flustered.

Either that or I just realized that in his own annoying, arrogant way, the Mountain is actually pretty hot.

THIRTEEN

By Friday I’ve lost five pounds—five!—and Cam and I have settled into our routine of morning runs and nightly dinners. True to his word, he’s kept his music off so my ears haven’t bled all week. He also designed an eating plan for me focused on lean protein and veggies and ransacked my pantry and fridge in search of food he deemed inappropriate for my new diet. He took what he found to the local homeless shelter in a cardboard box.