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In Sheep's Clothing	By : ParisWriter Category: +G through L > Harvest Moon Views: 2169 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Fourteen

Avery carefully observed Raeger as she ate her lunch. His blue-green eyes were fixed solely upon Lillie, who in turn was gazing dreamily at the man seated alone at one of the tables near the far end of the counter. Avery glanced over her shoulder at the other woman's apparent object of infatuation. He'd only been living in Oak Tree Town for about a week, having come from some town far away to study the cultivation of flowers under Giorgio's tutelage. Avery didn't know much about him aside from what Veronica had told her upon briefly introducing him to her at the trade depot. His name was Cam, and he was a florist and novice perfumer. He also seemed to share her favorite color since he always wore a purple jacket and matching checkered hat every day.

"Why don't you go sit with him?" Avery suggested to Lillie, earning herself a glare from Raeger. She knew her best friend had a bit of a thing for the innkeeper's eldest daughter, but she also knew the girl was even less his type than she was when it came to wanting the sort of relationship he was used to having with women.

"What?" Lillie blinked a few times, her attention focusing on the woman sitting next to her at the counter.

"I said, you should go sit with Cam and keep him company," Avery repeated her suggestion.

"I couldn't possibly," Lillie insisted, shaking her head. "I mean... look at him! He's so dreamy..."

Avery bit her lip to keep from laughing at the grumble of disapproval that came from Raeger, and instead looked over at Cam once more. She hadn't really noticed it before, but he bore a slight resemblance to Raeger. They both had the same dark blonde hair, though Cam's appeared to be a bit longer, and it fell into his eyes much like the chef's had a habit of doing. His eyes were a pure green, however, while Raeger's had a good amount of blue in them – but despite those difference the two of them could have easily passed for brothers. They even had very similar smiles, Avery noted as she saw Cam smiling over something he was reading. She wondered if Lillie even noticed the similarities between them.

"I'm sure he's probably feeling pretty lonely, being so far away from home," she told the younger woman, turning back to her again. "Who knows? If you play your cards right, he might even give you something for White Day."

Raeger scoffed and Avery looked up at him. "Something wrong?"

"Oh, nothing," he replied with a smirk, then called out to the other man. "Hey, Cam! What are you up to for White Day this year?"

Cam looked up from the page in his hand and blinked a few times, his brain slowly registering the question.

"I was planning on heading back to Bluebell for a few days to spend the holiday with my wife," he finally answered. "Why?"

"You're married?" Lillie asked him, trying her best to mask the disappointment in her voice. Cam nodded and stood from his chair, folding the page he'd been reading and tucking it away inside his jacket. He then pulled out a photograph and walked over to the counter, standing between her and Lillie and showing it to them.

"Five years. This is my wife, Lily, and our little girl, Lucy," he told them.

"Your wife's name is Lily?" Lillie mused, taking the picture from him and looking more closely at it, her shoulders slumping a bit.

"Lilian, actually," Cam corrected, smiling. "Everyone calls her Lily, though."

"She's pretty." Lillie could no longer hide her melancholy as she handed the photograph over to Avery, who couldn't help smiling as she looked at it. The picture was of them three of them, Cam holding his wife back against his chest as their daughter sat perched upon his shoulders. Lily had light brown hair which was pulled into a loose ponytail that hung over the front of her shoulder and dark blue eyes. Lucy, their little girl, had hair the same color as her mother's styled in pigtails and her father's green eyes.

"You have a lovely family, Cam," she told him, handing the picture back to him. "I'm sure you must miss them."

"Every day," Cam said with a wistful sigh as he looked at the picture for a moment longer before tucking it away once more in his jacket. "But we're dealing with the distance as best we can. I meet them in the city a couple of days a week. Mondays we have a family outing, and then Friday is just for me and Lily."

"Why didn't they just come here with you?" Lillie wondered, her voice taking on a slight edge. "I mean, if they mean so much to you, shouldn't you be with them every day?"

"My wife and I actually had an argument about that very thing before I left," he explained, taking a seat on the opposite side of Avery.

"She didn't want you to go?" Avery asked.

"No, she wanted me to go. I was going to stay, since I knew she and Lucy couldn't come with me because she needed to take care of her animals at the farm. But she said to me, 'You don't get opportunities like this every day. It's just for a year. We'll make arrangements to see each other a couple of times a week and write to each other and it'll be just like when we were dating.' And she's right. It's pretty much like the way things were before we got married."

"Well, it's wonderful that things worked out well for you two," Lillie said, casting her eyes downward as she stood from her seat, no longer able to conceal her disappointment. She began looking through her purse for some money to pay her bill, but Raeger reached out over the counter and placed a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

"It's on the house today, Lillie," he informed her, guilt written all over his face. She regarded him silently for a moment, then gave him the barest of smiles and nodded.

"Thanks, Raeger," she told him, then turned to the others. "I'll see you later, Avery. Cam."

Avery watched her leave the restaurant, letting out a sigh as the door closed behind her, then turned to Raeger.

"You knew Cam was married," she accused him.

"You did?" Cam wondered, blinking in surprise as he also looked to the chef. "How? I didn't tell anyone in town before just now."

"I think the better question here is why Cam felt it was necessary to lead poor Lillie on," Raeger said, turning his own accusatory gaze toward the other man.

Cam blinked in confusion once more. "I was leading her on?"

"She obviously had a thing for you," Raeger angrily informed him. "Yet instead of telling her outright you're a married man, you thought it would be fun to just let her moon over you and get her hopes up. Then, as an extra bit of cruelty, it turns out your wife has the same name as her."

"Raeger, calm down," Avery told him firmly, noticing that his hands were starting to ball into fists at his sides. "I'm sure Cam didn't intentionally lead her on."

"I didn't!" Cam confirmed, his eyes wide. "I... I know she was being nice to me, but I never suspected it was more than the usual hospitality she'd show any guest at her father's inn." He pulled off his hat and ran a hand back through his hair, wincing a bit. "I guess I'm still just as bad at sensing a woman's true feelings as I was back before I started dating my Lily."

"You should apologize to her," Raeger insisted, his tone stern. "Let her know you didn't mean to lead her on – intentionally or not – and that you're sorry her feelings got hurt."

Cam nodded in agreement. "I will. I'm still curious how you knew I'm married, though."

"I didn't," Raeger said with a shake of his head. "Not the being married part, anyway. I just knew you were involved with someone else."

"How?" Cam repeated the question once more.

"That letter you've been fawning over," Raeger replied, nodding toward where Cam had tucked it away within his jacket. "I caught a glimpse of it earlier when I was bringing over your meal. It's written in some pretty girly-looking handwriting and started off with 'My Dearest Kamil,' so – assuming that Cam is actually sort for Kamil – it wasn't too much of a stretch to think that it's a love letter from a woman you're romantically involved with."

"You're a lot smarter than your reputation would lead one to believe," Cam complimented Raeger with an awkward half-smile. Raeger bristled at the backhanded compliment, and Avery wondered who had told Cam about Raeger's reputation. The most likely candidate, in her mind, was Lillie.

"You're correct, on both assumptions," Cam continued. "Though I'd appreciate it if you both kept the Kamil thing to yourselves."

"Why don't you want people to know your name is Kamil?" Avery wondered.

"I never really cared if people knew it or not, before. Everyone in Bluebell knows that's what it is, but they've always just called me Cam. But, now... it's... sort of a special case. Like... I don't really know how to explain it," he added, a light blush coloring his cheeks.

"I think I can," Raeger said with a smirk, turning to Avery. "He likes the way his wife moans his name during sex."

"It's not that!" Cam argued, then shrugged slightly. "Okay, so... Maybe partly it is. But it's also just the fact that she's really the only one who ever calls me Kamil at all. She's made my given name into a sort of affectionate pet name and I don't want to ruin the special feeling I get when I hear her say it – in any context," he added, leveling a look at Raeger to silence any additional smart remarks he might have been considering making.

"I'm sure she wouldn't be too happy about it if other people started calling you that, too," Avery told him. "Especially if those others were women. I know I wouldn't like it if Kalus started using the same pet name he does for me with other women."

"What is it? Cutie? Sweetie? Babydoll?" Raeger rattled off his guesses, chuckling at how the redness of her cheeks increased with each one.

"He doesn't seem the type to use such titles that are commonly thrown around by a playboy like you," Cam commented.

"You don't know Klaus," Raeger pointed out.

"You're right," Cam conceded with a nod. "I've only met him briefly. But he spoke very fondly of Avery and I'm guessing he probably calls her 'love.' Am I right?"

The two men turned their gazes toward her and Avery nodded. Raeger whipped a dish towel at her before tossing it back over his shoulder, grinning wickedly.

"You liar! You said the two of you didn't have sex."

"We haven't!" Avery insisted. "He calls me 'love,' not 'lover.'"

"I still find it hard to believe you two haven't done it. I figured once you had your little talk last week you two would be all over each other."

"Maybe they decided to wait," Cam remarked, finally putting his hat back on. "That's what Lily and I did, and let me tell you... it was worth it."

"Really?" Raeger scoffed in disbelief. Cam nodded, pulling the letter out of his jacket and waving the folded page in front of the other man's face.

"There are other ways to be sexual in a relationship without actually having sex, you know," he stated, smirking a little. "Though I'm guessing someone like you doesn't really know how to appreciate anything but instant gratification."

"Like writing love letters?" Raeger asked.

"For example," Cam said, nodding and tucking his letter away. "Then there's other things like dirty talk or even a simple look or touch which says more than words are sometimes able to express. Things like that will just create so much anticipation."

"Klaus did say some rather... racy things to me, that night," Avery admitted, blushing. "And he's looked at me plenty of times in a... certain way."

"Yeah?" Raeger asked, leaning onto the counter and propping his chin in his hand at he looked at her, his smirk growing. "And what did he say to you? Something about wanting to devour you whole?"

Avery blinked, surprised at how close he'd been to reciting the very words Klaus had used in his warning about him. Had Klaus actually been talking about himself all along?

"It's not just about the physical, lusty side of things, though," Cam continued, and they both turned to look at him. He blushed and licked his lips, casting his gaze down at the counter in front of him.

"When my wife and I made love for the first time," he said, his voice quiet, a shy smile pulling at his lips at the memory, "it was beyond anything I had ever experienced before. I'd been with other girls, and it was good, but with her... the connection was more than just physical. It was a deeply emotional experience for both of us, and I know this is going to sound horrible and corny, but... it was also the most spiritual thing I had ever experienced in my life. It was as close to heaven as one can get while still being alive. And it's always been that way, every time. Whether I'm taking her slowly or we're going at it like a couple of horny teenagers, there's always this feeling in my heart that she's the one I'd been waiting for, the one I'm meant to spend the rest of my life with."

"And you think waiting to have sex is why you feel that way?" Raeger asked incredulously.

"I do," Cam stated as his eyes met Raeger's, his voice sure. "Because I waited until I knew the time was right."

"How do you know when that is?" Avery wondered, and Cam smiled as his green eyes turned to her.

"There will come a moment when it's not about lust any more," he told her. "You'll probably still feel lust, but it won't be the driving force behind your need."

"That's why Klaus wants to wait," Avery thought out loud. "It's always been based on lust before, for him. This time, he wants it to be about love."

Cam's smile grew even larger. "Sounds like you've got yourself a good man who truly cares about you, Avery."

"I do," Avery said as she put some money by her empty plate and stood from her seat. "Speaking of Klaus, though, I'm supposed to be meeting him so we can go for a walk in the mountains."

"Just a walk?" Raeger asked, giving her a wink.

"Yes, Raeger, just a walk," she assured him. "Klaus is hoping to get some inspiration for a couple of fragrances he was asked to make for private clients. I offered to keep him company."

"Tell him to stop by the inn later if he's still having trouble. Maybe I can help," Cam offered. "Bluebell has different species of native flora so I might be able to come up with some ideas."

"It'll be sure to let him know," Avery told him with a nod and a smile.

Cam watched her leave the restaurant, returning her wave as she left, then turned his attention to Raeger as he stood and paid his own bill.

"I know I'm new in town, and this probably isn't any of my business," he said, carefully broaching the subject. "But I think you should give Lillie something for White Day."

"What?" Raeger asked, refusing to look at Cam as he cleaned up the dishes Lillie and Avery had left upon the counter.

"You don't get upset about someone 'leading on' another person and then demand that the person who supposedly did the leading on apologize to the person they hurt unless you like the person who got hurt."

"She's a friend," Raeger said. "I don't like when my friends get hurt."

"You also got me to admit I'm married in a rather tricky way, now that I think about it," Cam countered. "And you admitted to already having figured out I probably wasn't single. So why not just ask me when you saw the letter if I was involved with someone? You wanted Lillie to be here when I said it, because she liked me and you were feeling jealous. So you figured you'd make me out to be a bad guy and then play the sympathetic hero when her feelings got hurt. That's why you told her not to bother paying for her lunch."

"You really have no clue what you're talking about," Raeger insisted, avoiding looking at him by heading over to the table where he'd been sitting to collect the dishes there.

"I might be horrible at reading women, but I'm usually pretty good and figuring out what other men are up to," Cam told him, heading for the door as he spoke. "Maybe I'm wrong, though. But if I'm not, I think you should just tell her how you feel before some other guy comes along to that inn and sweeps her off her feet."

He called a final good day to Raeger and gave a tip of his hat as he left, and Raeger slumped down into one of the chairs at the table with a heavy sigh. He was losing his touch if even people who were practically strangers were able to see through him.
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In Sheep's Clothing