by L. B. Dunbar
“You ain’t ever been married,” James retorts.
“Ain’t ever been in love enough, and as if you’re an expert,” Justice retorts, tweaking up a brow, and I’m sensing we are way off topic here.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not marrying him,” I interject.
“Why not?” both men say at once.
“Because I don’t want anyone thinking he crawled between my thighs, and that’s how I got what I wanted,” I state, glaring at James.
“I shouldn’t’ve—”
I hold up a hand to stop him. “And I don’t want anyone else mistaking that proposal as genuine. I’m not marrying him. I’m getting the walking trail started, the community center built, and the park established, and then…I guess I’ll move on.” My stomach turns at the thought of walking away after all that hard work, but I’ve made a promise to this town, and I don’t want to lose more face by walking away too soon. Plus, Mami’s here, and Zander plans to stay. Not to mention, I’ve made my first genuine female friends in Cora and Roxanne.
“Cora will be disappointed,” Justice snorts. “Charlie put Cora up to this, but she really got into it.” His lips clamp shut, rolling inward as if he realized too late that he’d said too much.
“What?” The interrogative on my lips squeaks within the large empty room.
“Charlie went to Cora and told her about the committee as a possible way to get around the town council. Think Cora came up with that on her own?”
“Sonofabitch,” I mutter, slapping my hand on the bar. He manipulated things. Everything. He’d foiled me again, and again, and again. Despite my irritation at this information, my desire to complete the task I set for this town doubles down.
Screw Charlie.
“You sure know a lot about Corabelle Conrad,” James mutters.
“Yeah, how is that?” I question, finding Cora a bit tight-lipped as well how the president of a motorcycle club and the town socialite have a friendship.
“It’s called none of y’all’s business,” he huffs, picking up all three of our mugs between his thick fingers. “Teatime is over.” He turns for the kitchen, disappearing behind the swing door, and James turns to me.
“Think I should tell him it was coffee?” he asks, and I laugh again, this time keeping the tears at bay.
31
Don’t Put a Ring on It
[Janessa]
Near ten o’clock that night, a soft knock comes on the front door of the coach house. I’ve been ignoring my phone all day, too upset with Charlie and Cora to make sense of anything.
Why didn’t she tell me?
Why did he do it?
Before I open the door, I see him out the window. His head dipped forward, a ball cap on backward. He stands with his hands shoved in his jean pockets. He already looks defeated.
When I open the door, what I don’t expect is how young he looks while older at the same time. Youth comes in the form of his attire. The jeans, which I haven’t seen him wear. He’s either been in a suit or sweats or shorts. The backward ball cap and the light gray tee with Atlanta on it give him the appearance of a teenage boy come to pick up a date or break up with her.
“Can we talk?” he questions, his voice without hope but still determined to ask me.
I should tell him no. I should tell him to go to hell. I should tell him where to shove his talk, but I break.
“Sure.” I step out to him and pull the door behind me. “What do you want, Charlie?” I softly question, wrapping my arms around myself, tugging at the sweater I have on because of the air-conditioning in the house. The August night is still hot as blazes, but I shiver against a chill rippling up my spine.
“I just want fifteen minutes.”
“Fine,” I huff, turning back for the house to let Zander know I’m going for a walk. My brother was sitting in the living room with me, watching the ball game and listening to me explain what happened with Charlie. He gives me a wave, and I return to Charlie.
“Before you begin, I want you to know that Zander contacted Jordan and pulled those images from the web and erased them from the internet. He has a friend who can go deeper, removing screenshots that might appear. He’ll tag the images so if they pop up anywhere, they’ll disappear.”
Charlie’s brows lift as we stand on the front step. “That’s amazing. I’ll thank him for doing that. I’ve spent the day sending out cease and desist letters, and applying for a lawsuit against the publication, the social media journalist, and I use the term loosely, and Angela, as she’s the unnamed source. I don’t care who says otherwise.”
I nod, glad he’s able to resolve this invasion of privacy and violation of his person.
“My mother saw those images. She hates Angela.”
“Well, I don’t know Angela, and I hate her as well.”
Charlie weakly smiles and tips his head for me to follow him, keeping his hands in his pockets. He leads us down the drive a bit and around the large bushes that block the view of the tennis court slash batting cage. My chest aches as we pass the fencing, and I remember it’s the place he took me the first time and the last.
One last time. No truer words had been spoken.
We walk the path around the court and then cut across the grass, heading for the river that runs along the edge of the properties on Mountain Spring Lane. There’s a dock behind Charlie’s yard, and we walk in that direction.
Pausing at the end of the decking, Charlie stares into the dark, shallow water. The soft ripple should be calming, but I don’t like how Charlie focuses on the river’s movement.
“When I married Angela, I loved her ambition, as I told you. But I also loved how attracted I thought she was to me, pushing us to this limit I thought would carry into our marriage.”
He exhales, hands still in his pockets.
“When she became pregnant, we moved here so I could run for mayor. The stepping-stone she wanted for us. Us, collectively. When I decided to run again, she had an affair, publicly hoping to destroy me, and I never understood how she thought that would force me to follow her. I later learned she thought I was weak and that I’d beg her to take me back—not the other way around—when she should have been begging me to keep her.”
He sighs.
“The affair was embarrassing and plastered all over town; thus, the doubt I told you about when I ran for my second term. And then the images were leaked. Another ploy in hopes to discredit me. Not for her gain but because I didn’t come crawling after her. Then her new game with Lucy and these current images.” He exhales.
“You don’t know how many times I’ve felt like a failure in such a spectacular way.” He turns to look at me, his face shadowed by the darkness of the night. “But no failure compares to how I’ve reacted to you.”
My breath catches, knowing he’s about to tell me it’s all been a mistake. Why bother even bringing me out here if he’s only going to tell me we should have never been together in the first place? We both know we shouldn’t have started anything, but it’s hard to deny chemistry, and even now, I want to reach over and pull him to me. I want to assure him I’d never hurt him like her. I’d never be so cruel or devious, and I don’t think he’s a failure at all. He’s successful, smart, and sexy as hell even if I’m mad at him.
“I panicked,” he says.
I continue to stare up at him, still not certain where he’s leading.
“I didn’t want to lose you, so I thought I’d ask you to marry me. You didn’t want to pretend to be engaged and move in with me, so I’d be able to kill two birds with one stone. I’d make it real. I’d save face with the community by having you as a fiancée, and I would sabotage Angela’s ploy to ambush me. Only, you got hurt in the crossfire of both. I didn’t prove anything to the town other than I’m an idiot, and I look good naked.”
I bark out a nervous laugh, but he isn’t smiling. I’m reminded his mother saw those pictures.
“How are you an idiot, Charlie?” I can think of a few way
s, but I want to hear his thoughts as he hasn’t been thinking about the decisions he’s made lately.
“I didn’t support the woman I love the way I should have, by simply holding her hand and letting her have her moment.”
I ignore he said woman he loves and address another issue.
“I heard what you did with Cora, putting her up to asking me to form a committee.”
Charlie releases a long breath of air, and his chest deflates. His head lowers. “Look, you’re new to city government, and I didn’t think you’d know that forming a private committee and presenting your case again could get you what you might want. I figured it would go one of two ways. You’d either tell Cora to go to hell for offering help or listen to someone other than me for advice.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me about committee work yourself?”
“Again, you’d either tell me to go to hell or not listen to my advice. I felt sick about turning down your passion project, and I wanted to help how I could. Mostly, I didn’t tell you directly so I could save face. I didn’t want anyone to know I supplied you with a way to get what you wanted. Then I wouldn’t have to lie if anyone ever asked. The answer was an equivocal no…I had not instructed you that a private committee could potentially get the job done.”
“You didn’t trust me, Charlie. Trust that I could do this on my own.”
“Did you know about private committees?” he asks, reaching behind his neck and holding his hand there as he looks over at me.
“Well, no…”
“I was trying to help.”
He could have just approved the damn thing in the first place, but as time passed, I learned he couldn’t just hand over the money. Cora and I investigated the town’s financials, and Charlie wasn’t wrong. I was overly ambitious.
“Were you attracted to my ambition? Is that why we did what we did?”
He turns completely to face me.
“I was attracted to you because you seemed attracted to me, and not because I’m the mayor, or for some other agenda, or even because I’m a Harrington. Raw chemistry. Just us.” He turns his attention for the river almost embarrassed by his admission, but almost immediately twists back to me. “Let me love you. Let me show you I can be good to you. I can be good for you. I won’t make any more schemes or plans or panic without talking to you about everything first.”
He stills and takes a step closer to me. I step back, but he reaches out for me. “Careful.”
Looking over my shoulder, I see I’m precariously close to the edge of the dock and at risk of falling in. My position feels prophetic.
“I don’t really know what to say, Charlie. A lot has happened for both of us today, and I still have Richard to deal with.”
“What happened with Richard?”
“I’m just waiting for the call that says I’m in breach of contract. Not that it reverses the divorce or retracts full custody of Vega, but I’m certain Richard’s little friend Ruthie has more in store for me. If I’m not allowed to mention the divorce, a marriage proposal certainly puts a wrench in things.”
“Fuck that. Fuck him. He can’t have you,” Charlie says, tugging me closer to him, and my hands come to his chest. “I’m sorry I messed up. I’m sorry for all of it. Thinking…well, not thinking…and then acting without more thought. I’ve just…” His voice drifts as my body remains stiff in his arms. Releasing me, he faces the water once again and takes a deep breath.
“I just want to love you, Janessa,” he softly states over his shoulder. “I haven’t ever felt this way, and I don’t want to give it up.”
Conflicting emotions swirl through me. I want to love him, too, but I’m hurt. He didn’t believe in me, and I’m not certain I can trust him.
“I need time to process everything, Charlie.” There’s been so much. My father’s death. Zander’s arrival. The committee. The betrayal. The proposal.
“I’d like you to—” Charlie’s voice cuts off as I hold out the engagement ring, the ridiculous large diamond that just isn’t me.
“I think you should take this back.”
His eyes leap up to mine. “You don’t like the ring, hock it. But I’m not retracting the proposal. I messed up, but I meant it. I want to be with you. I want you to marry me.”
I tug the sweater closer to my middle, body trembling with the desire to say yes, and the struggle with how things are happening. I shove the ring closer to him.
“I can’t marry you, Charlie. Not like this.”
Still trying to hold my eyes, he searches my face, but I look away. Without reaching for the ring, he huffs a final time and turns away. The thud of his footsteps over the planks does nothing to settle the pit in my stomach that I might be making a mistake in letting him go.
+ + +
“I thought you were my friend,” I say to Cora the next day when she arrives at my office ready to organize. As I glance up, the chagrin on her face tells me she knew this was coming. Justice.
“It shouldn’t matter how it started. The work began, and we accomplished it together,” Cora states, holding my glare.
“It happened under false pretense,” I remind her.
“Want to give it back? Turn away the money and give up what you fought for?” Cora gives as good as she gets with her stare. It sounds as if she means more than just the walk.
Without a word, I shake my head. I’m still upset about everything, but the fact is, we did find a way to raise the money, and we have a plan in place to complete the walkway. We want to host both the ride and the community walk this fall when the temperature is a little less extreme, and the colors begin to change on the trees.
We worked well together, even if I feel like she didn’t want to participate.
“How did he do it?” I question, implying Charlie.
“He simply asked. His sister is my best friend. Charlie was my divorce attorney. We grew up next to one another on the Lane. We go way back.”
That simple. He asked, and she gave in. I don’t know how to ask for help, which is one reason I don’t accept it when offered. I also don’t want to feel beholden to anyone, especially not after my marriage to Richard, where his proposal was presented as if he was doing me a favor. The woman who became his wife, who bore his child, was obligated to him because he married me when I was pregnant.
“I don’t really know what to think of our friendship,” I say, glancing down at my desk.
“I’m still your friend, and we still have this committee to run together.” Admittedly, I haven’t had many girlfriends. Not like the ones I had way back when I was on a softball team, working toward a common goal of winning. That was over twenty years ago. Since then, it’s been one catfight after another, working my way through a male-populated industry and coming out at the bottom. As the wife of a professional ballplayer, there was even less comradery when we should have been sticking together.
Jealousy, one of the older wives once warned me. Her husband had been on the team for years, nearing his retirement. Fresh meat gets eaten alive by the young wives as each of them wants to believe she’s better than the others, her man is better than the others, and his sins are less.
It was a lesson I didn’t understand until too late.
“Dishonesty is not a trait of friendship,” I tell Cora, holding my head higher.
“I didn’t lie. I omitted. There’s a difference.” We stare at one another, and on the tip of my tongue is a slew of questions. Is omitting what she called it when her husband took his secretary with him on a trip and did not tell her? How about when he bought that home in another state, and he didn’t mention it? Was that omission? Cora and I have an understanding about cheating husbands, so I can’t believe she’s slinging the word omission at me when we both know a lie is a lie.
My chest heaves, the aggravation building until Cora looks away.
“This isn’t the same thing,” she whispers as if she can read my thoughts. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Taking a deep breath, she tu
rns back to me. “I only wanted to feel useful.”
Cora runs a thriving resort. How could she possibly not feel useful?
Then I consider myself. Didn’t I want the same thing? Didn’t I hope I could start fresh and make an immediate impact on this new-to-me place?
“I understand that,” I admit.
“So, you forgive me?” Cora’s sheepish expression surprises me. She’s normally a bit more tyrannical, and she’s acquiescing too easily.
“You really want to work on this committee?” I question, and she steps forward, my desk still between us.
“More than anything.” She’s breathless, and I don’t understand why she’s so committed.
“Tell me about you and Justice, and I’ll consider your apology.”
Cora’s mouth pops open, and then her lip curls. “Girl, you know how to bargain,” she teases. “But we’re going to need some coffee and a donut for this tale.”
She isn’t off the hook with me, but she’s smiling as though she got her way. She tips her head for me to follow her, and I sigh, giving in because I actually do consider her a friend, and I don’t want to lose her. Plus, I really want to know her story with Justice.
+ + +
Just as I predicted, Richard is ready to retaliate, and I find him sitting on the coach house stoop three days later.
“I flew here as early as I could.” He’d had a three-game series up in St. Louis.
“What do you want?” I ask, hiking my bag over my shoulder as he blocks my way from entering the house. His body takes up the entire front stoop.
“I wanted to know if you were okay.”
My head flinches to the right, brows creasing to the point a headache begins. “Why?” I don’t trust Richard on a good day, so this is really surprising.
“I heard about the photos, although thankfully didn’t see them. I thought he was your boss.” Richard swipes through his longish curls, tipping back his head. “Then again, I saw how he looked at you. I figured he just wanted in your pants, and that’s why he was all protective.” His large hands come back together, folding between his spread thighs and bent knees.
