A warm smile eased up the corners of his mouth. "You look nice without your makeup on."

"Oh please," she drawled, and rolled her eyes as she laid her blouse and skirt over a chair to send to the dry cleaners next week. "We're already having sex, so flattery at this point isn't necessary," she joked.

"I'm being serious." He took a drink of his soda, his expression earnest "You've got beautiful skin and a great complexion. Even without all that stuff you women wear on your face." Finished with his sandwich, he set his plate on the nightstand.

"Well, thank you." Accepting the compliment, she settled in beside him on the bed, crossed her legs, and picked up the bowl of fruit cocktail. "Judging by pictures I've seen of my mother, I definitely get my looks and complexion from her."

"Thank goodness, because I don't think you'd look very pretty as a female version of Joel."

She laughed as she fed him a slice of peach from her fork. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do." He reclined against the pillows and laced his hands over his now full stomach, content to let her feed him the fruit. "If you get your looks from your mother, she must have been gorgeous."

A warm blush swept across her cheeks, and she picked out a cherry half, her favorite part of fruit cocktail, and popped it into her mouth. "I don't remember much about her, just what I know from photos and from memories that are faded or even imagined at this point since I was only five when she passed away." She felt that familiar pang of sadness that always accompanied thoughts of her mother and the pain of losing her. "I miss her, yet I don't think I ever really knew her, if that makes sense."

"It does," he reassured her and accepted the chunk of pineapple she put to his lips. "What about you and Amelia? The two of you aren't very close, are you?"

His question startled her, and she stiffened defensively before she could catch herself. "What makes you say that?"

"You keep forgetting that my job is to study people, to gauge their actions," he said with a casual shrug. "I find I just do it automatically."

He'd obviously spent way too much time watching her at the party, and that thought made her bristle. "Well, you can stop analyzing me."

"I'm not analyzing you," he said, unfazed by her dismissive tone. "I'm just curious about your relationship with Amelia. Did you consider her the wicked stepmother?"

"Of course not!" Amelia had always been nothing but kind to her. If anything, it was Mia who'd been the wicked, difficult one. And that admission, even quietly to herself, evoked a wave of guilt that nearly smothered her.

"Then why do I sense tension between you two?" he asked in that gentle, coaxing way of his. "Not in a bad way, but it's clear the two of you don't have the kind of close relationship a mother and daughter normally would. I was just wondering why not."

Mia knew she had two choices: blow off the conversation and Cameron's personal questions, or tell him what he wanted to know. Her first instinct was to be stubborn and clam up, but she knew that would be the easy way out. She wondered if she shared that private part of her life with Cameron, a part that still caused her grief when she thought about it, that maybe it would help ease the many regrets she harbored about her relationship with Amelia.

The sweetened fruit no longer appealed to her, and she set the bowl aside and then exhaled a deep breath. "I don't even know where to begin," she said truthfully.

"Do you remember when your mother died?" he asked, helping her along.

The answer to that was very complicated, and she attempted to explain the best she could. "The last thing I remember about my mother was her leaving to visit her sister in Honda, and I never saw her again after that. It wasn't until at least a month after she passed away that my father finally told me she'd died in a car accident while visiting her sister."

A slight frown creased his brows. "You didn't go to the funeral?"

"I didn't know about the funeral," she said and saw shock register on his face. "I was so upset when she left for Florida, nearly hysterical because I didn't want her to go and we'd never been apart. I remembered kicking and screaming and throwing tantrums every night my mother was gone. I missed her so much."

"That's understandable," he said quietly. "You were just a little girl."

"I was a little heathen, even back then," she admitted with a small laugh. "The first night I threw a fit, my father should have put me over his knee and given me a good spanking, but being the only girl with three older brothers, I don't think he knew what to do with me, or how to handle my tantrums."

Cameron laughed, too, and she knew that was his way of silently agreeing.

"Anyway, my father told me that when my mother died, he didn't think I would be able to handle the news and he made the decision not to tell me about her death right then or take me to the funeral." She swallowed past the growing lump in her throat that always accompanied thoughts of missing her own mother's burial and service. "He said it was his way of protecting me from the pain of losing my mother, and I know he was so engulfed in his own grief that he probably wasn't thinking straight or logically."

Cameron rolled to his side, closer to her, and propped his head against his palm. "He had to tell you eventually."

"And he did, about a month after the fact." Her voice had grown raspy, and the back of her eyes stung. "And of course I didn't believe him, no matter what he or my brothers said. I was in complete denial."

"I'm sorry, Mia," Cameron said, placing his hand on her knee in a show of comfort.

"I know my father did what he thought was best for me at the time, but he made the wrong decision." She couldn't stop the sob that made her voice crack, or the tears that filled her eyes. "Because I never went to my own mother's funeral, there was never any closure for me with her death. I believed for years that she was coming back, that it was all just a bad dream and one day I was going to wake up and my mother was going to be there for me again."

The first drop of moisture trickled down her cheek before she could stop it, and it was Cameron who reached up and tenderly wiped the tear away with the pad of his thumb. She glanced down at him, so grateful for his silent understanding and the warmth of his soothing touch that was like a balm to the pain she'd carried in her heart for so long.

She gathered her composure and continued, because there was a whole lot more to the story to tell. "So now we fast forward three years, when my father has married Amelia and I'm eight years old. I've become this rebellious hellion who is always getting into trouble, mainly for attention, and now I'm feeling as though I've lost my father, too, because he has a new wife."

She drew a shuddering breath to ease the pressure in her chest, but it did no good. "Even worse, I'm this little girl who is afraid Amelia isn't going to love me the same way my mother did, so it just became safer for me to keep up those emotional walls between myself and Amelia. I didn't want to set myself up for the kind of hurt I went through when I lost my mother." Biting on her quivering bottom lip, she met Cameron's gaze. "How horrible is that?"

"It's not horrible at all, Mia. Being a little girl, it was a way of self-preservation for you."

She agreed, but she was also coming to recognize that her actions as a young girl had carried through to her adult years and had affected so many aspects of her life. Including the ability to let anyone get too close emotionally. That had cost her dearly with Amelia.

"It's my fault I never bonded with Amelia," she said, confessing the painful truth. "She tried in so many ways to be a mother to me, but I rebuffed every one of her attempts until she just stopped trying."

"It's never too late to make things right, Mia."

But Mia didn't know how to make it right, or how to bridge nearly twenty years of what had been a strained relationship between herself and Amelia. And there was always the possibility Amelia wouldn't forgive her for being the selfish, self-centered stepdaughter she'd been. That thought made her feel so empty deep inside, because she knew she'd missed out on a relationship that could have been priceless and precious.

The realization made her feel so ashamed, and having just poured her heart out to Cameron, she felt so exposed, so vulnerable, and she tried to cover it up with a light, airy laugh that lacked any real humor. "I bet you're sorry you asked about Amelia, huh?"

"Not at all," he said, his tone as sincere as the matching emotion she saw in his eyes. "It's a part of who you are, Mia, and it's something I wanted to know, or else I wouldn't have asked."

He reached over to the nightstand and turned off the light, so the only illumination came from the TV across the room. As if sensing exactly what she needed, right when she needed it the most, he patted the empty space next to him on the bed.

"Come here," he murmured.

His low, coaxing voice drew her, and the tenderness she witnessed in his gaze made her heart ache for things she'd denied herself for so long. But tonight, she didn't want to refuse the simple luxury of being held, to feel safe and secure in Cameron's embrace, and to know that she wasn't alone as she'd been for years. By choice.

She stretched out by his side, and he gathered her close so her head was resting on the solid warmth of his chest and their legs were entwined. She breathed in his scent and could hear the strong, steady beat of his heart beneath her ear. So rhythmic. So comforting. So real.

Closing her eyes, she relaxed and let the burden of her painful memories drift away as his fingers threaded through her hair and massaged her scalp and his other hand stroked along her side and over her hip. Their embrace was intimate but not sexual, and it was so nice just to be held, without expectations of anything more.