by Shelly Ellis
“You’re the one who told her you’d be willing to be her sex teacher,” the voice in his head chided. “You jackass!”
But how was he supposed to know that it would involve so much selflessness and restraint? Every time C. J. left his home with a smile on her face and a hop in her step after one of their lessons, Terrence would shut the door behind her and start muttering to himself. The afterglow of stolen kisses and pillow talk would wear off, and he would be more bitter and sullen than Ebenezer Scrooge.
Sure, C. J. got foreplay and orgasms. Meanwhile, all Terrence got was hand lotion, a scroll through X-rated pics on his iPhone, and five fingers—and frankly, he was starting to get tired of the whole routine. But he didn’t want to push her past her limits. He wasn’t a total asshole, after all. She was fragile, and she had told him she needed to go slow and be eased into this stuff, but he was starting to wonder just how slow she planned to go.
Just how long was this “easing” supposed to last? And couldn’t she please him just a little once in a while?
I’m not asking for the world, he would think angrily as he lay alone in bed at night. Just some reciprocation! How hard would it be to do a five-minute hand job or suck a guy’s dick once in a while?
And the moment those angry thoughts crossed his mind, Terrence felt like an asshole all over again.
He had contemplated calling up one of his old girlfriends to see if maybe she could help him with his current “predicament.” He hadn’t spoken to any of them in months—not since the accident—but they might forgive him for that transgression if he gave them a sob story. Maybe Georgette was back in town, or maybe Asia at that Cuban restaurant downtown was looking for company.
But for some reason, the idea of having sex with another woman felt like a betrayal or like he was cheating. Terrence had never told C. J. they were exclusive, and in the past he never would have agreed to such a thing, but this time it felt like he and C. J. had an implicit agreement not to see other people. He knew he certainly would be pissed off to find out she was taking “lessons” from some other guy.
No, he wouldn’t go to another woman to put him out of his misery. He’d stick it out with C. J. because this was about more than just sex. He really liked her—more than he cared to admit.
“I can’t stay long,” C. J. announced, tugging her satchel strap over her head and setting the canvas satchel on the cobblestones beneath her feet. She grabbed one of the menus on the bistro table. “I have an assignment across town at one thirty.”
Terrence’s heart sank a little. He had looked forward to seeing her today and she was already rushing off? “If you had stuff going on and you needed to cancel lunch, you could have just told me,” he muttered, trying his best to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
She looked up from her menu and frowned at him. “Of course I wouldn’t cancel! I wanted to see you. I missed you!”
His sinking heart started to take flight again, but he had to keep his emotions in check. There was no way he would let C. J. know how happy he was to hear her say that. “Missed me?” he muttered casually. “Woman, you saw me on Tuesday!”
“Irrelevant.” She grabbed her water glass and took a sip. “I can only go a couple of days before I need my Terry fix.”
He smirked and proudly leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, well . . . my loving has a tendency to do that.”
She snorted. “You can try to play Rico Suave if you want to, but I know the truth, Terry.” She reached across the table, catching him off guard. She rested a hand on his cheek. “You’re an amazing guy and even though your loving is all that and then some, it’s you that I missed.”
At those words, the old Terrence would have laughed in her face, but the new Terrence instead turned his mouth toward her palm and kissed it.
“Terry?”
Terrence jumped in surprise at the sound of his brother’s voice, making C. J. yank her hand away like someone had rapped her on the knuckles with a ruler.
Terrence turned to find Evan striding along the sidewalk toward them. “Ev! Hey! What are you doing here?” He waved his brother forward.
“I was just picking up something for Lee at the jewelry store,” Evan called back, holding up a gold gift bag with the emblem from one of the jewelers in Chesterton.
Terrence turned back to C. J. “I want you to meet my brother.”
“We’ve met,” she said softly, dropping her gaze to her lap.
“Ev, this is C. J. My . . . uh . . . my friend that I told you about.” He winked at his brother, hoping Evan caught onto his meaning.
Evan whipped off his Ray-Bans and narrowed his eyes at her. His smile faded. “This is your friend?”
Terrence nodded, confused by his brother’s tone. “Yeah, uh . . . I guess you guys have run into each other before?”
C. J. refused to look up and Evan seemed angry for some reason. Terrence’s gaze shifted between the two. Why were they both acting so peculiar?
“So you finally managed to talk to my brother, huh?” Evan asked, glowering at C. J.’s lowered head. “Well, if I can say anything about you . . . C. J., is it? If I could say anything about you, C. J., it’s that you’re tenacious, though your ethics are highly questionable.”
C. J. didn’t respond. Instead the same look of mortification passed across her face that had appeared when she’d shouted out Terrence’s name in bed.
“Is something wrong?” Terrence asked, still looking uneasily between the two.
“I’m not the right person to answer that question,” Evan said coolly. “You should ask your friend here.”
C. J. finally looked up. She took a deep breath and gazed at Evan. “Look, Mr. Murdoch . . . I mean, Evan . . . I think my work as a reporter has given you the wrong impression about me. You see, I don’t—”
“No, I think I have exactly the right impression about you!” Evan took another step toward the table. “You’re a harasser and a liar and if you think you can—”
“Whoa!” Terrence said, holding up his hands. “Whoa, Ev! What the hell, man . . . why are you talking to her like that? You don’t even know her!”
“I know enough! Trust me. You don’t want to have anything to do with this . . . this woman!”
He said the word woman with a curl in his lip and a look of sheer disgust, like C. J. didn’t deserve to be called that. Terrence stared at his brother in disbelief and then that disbelief quickly morphed into fury. How dare Evan treat C. J. that way?
“I’m a grown-ass man, Ev! I’ll be the judge of who I should and shouldn’t talk to, all right?” Terrence barked, glaring up at his big brother.
C. J. snatched her satchel from the ground, pushed back her chair noisily, and started to rise to her feet. “Look, I’m not trying to cause any friction between you,” she mumbled. “Terry, I’ll just go. I’ll see you—”
“No,” he said firmly while grabbing her hand, “you stay. You’re the one I invited to lunch today. To hell with him! He can go.”
Terrence barely glanced at his brother when he said it. He didn’t have to look at Evan; he already knew the expression that would be on Evan’s face, a look of shock and probably outrage. But at that moment, Terrence didn’t give a damn. Evan was out of line. He had to be put in his place.
C. J. slowly sat down in her chair.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Evan muttered before walking off.
Chapter 18
Evan
“Good meeting, Joe,” Evan said as he escorted his COO to his office door. “Come up with a game plan and present it to me the next time we meet, all right?”
The older man smiled and nodded before stepping out of Evan’s office into the adjoining area, where Evan’s new secretary sat at her desk, clicking away on her computer. Evan shut the door behind Joe and walked back toward his desk—glancing at the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Potomac River, eager to fire off an e-mail to one of the other company executives to inform them of the new change
s—but he paused when he heard a buzz. It was a call on his iPhone. He picked up his pace and jogged across the office, frowning as he did.
Few people called him on this phone. He had only given out the number to family members, to Leila, and to his secretary with express instructions to call it only when all other numbers failed to reach him. When he finally stood in front of his desk, he grabbed the phone and stared down at the screen. Terrence’s name appeared in white letters. Evan was surprised to see it.
He and Terrence hadn’t talked in days, not since he had seen Terrence with that reporter at the bistro in Chesterton. In retrospect, Evan could have handled the encounter better, but he had been so shocked to find out that she was the one who had gotten Terrence back into the dating game, that she was the one whom Terrence had been asking to use Bill’s services to escort her to dinner dates and picnics—that Evan hadn’t been able to keep up a polite façade. How had this woman managed to weasel her way into Terrence’s circle? She certainly wasn’t much to look at—about average level of attractiveness, at best. But more importantly, what had she done to make Terrence take sides with her over his own brother?
Evan and Terrence had always been close. During their childhood, they knew they couldn’t turn to their dad for guidance or affection. That man had all the warmth of the Snow Miser, and his advice had been so harsh and emotionless, it bordered on sociopathic. Their mother, Angela, had been a kind, gentle woman, but she was so browbeaten and wary of their father that she wouldn’t even sneeze without George’s approval. The Murdoch kids could turn to her for a warm hug and a kiss, but that was about it. No, if they really needed advice, if they really needed someone in their corner, they knew they had to look no further than each other. It had always been that way since he and Terrence were little boys.
So, to hear Terrence say, “No, you stay . . . To hell with him! He can go,” had been like a punch to the gut to Evan. He had never felt so betrayed by Terrence in his life and they had certainly had some knock-out, drag-out fights in the past thirty years. Evan had been too hurt to call his brother to try to talk to him and make things right, and Terrence probably had been too stubborn to call Evan to do the same. So for three days, the two brothers had been at a stalemate. It looked like Terrence had caved first—to Evan’s great relief.
Evan pressed the green button on the glass screen and raised his phone to his ear. “Hello?”
“So what the fuck was that about?” Terrence snarled.
At the sound of Terrence’s voice, Evan smiled despite his brother’s less than conciliatory tone.
“Hi, Terry, how are you?” he deadpanned before pulling his chair from his desk and sitting down.
“Why’d you go off on C. J. like that? What was that shit about me having nothing to do with her?”
Evan leaned back in his chair and loosened his necktie. “You are aware that she’s a reporter for the Chesterton Times, right?”
“Yeah, and? So what?”
“She’s written stories about Murdoch Conglomerated before. Less-than-flattering ones, in fact,” Evan continued. “She hounded me for almost a year trying to get an interview. She even followed me to a lunch meeting. I had to threaten her with a restraining order to get her to leave me the hell alone!”
“Look, Ev, that’s her job! Maybe C. J. gets . . . I don’t know . . . a little overzealous sometimes, but that doesn’t mean she—”
“She showed up at the hospital the day after your accident. She lied and told the desk nurse that she was your fiancée so that she could get in your room and interview you. Did she tell you that?”
Terrence fell silent.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so. I can only imagine what story she planned to write about you that day . . . or what story she still plans to write. You need to be careful with her, Terry, with what you say to her. She might be gunning for you or our family.”
“C. J. . . . C. J. wouldn’t do that,” Terrence argued, but Evan could already hear the hint of doubt in his brother’s voice. “She’s not like that.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s obvious to me that you don’t know enough about this woman to make that call. She hasn’t told you the full truth. I’m just saying, tread carefully . . . or better yet, whatever you have going on with her, cut it off now.”
Terrence paused. Evan heard him anxiously clear his throat on the other end of the line, making Evan roll his eyes heavenward.
“Jesus, Terry, there are other woman in the world! Don’t risk your reputation and public embarrassment for a piece of ass! Is she really that good in bed?” he asked sarcastically.
“I . . . I wouldn’t know,” Terrence mumbled.
Evan furrowed his brows in confusion. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean, we . . . she and I . . . we haven’t had sex yet. We’ve come close . . . real close, but we haven’t . . . done it.”
“But you’ve been seeing her for more than a month. Since when do you take that long to have sex with someone?”
“Since now, goddamn it!” Terrence growled, making Evan pull his phone away from his ear. “Since now! You think I don’t want to have sex with her? You think I haven’t tried? I have! But she wants to take things slow and ‘ease into it,’ whatever the fuck that means! I didn’t want to push her too hard, so I’ve been holding back and now every time she leaves I feel like I’m going to punch my fist through a brick wall. I haven’t been this sexually frustrated since I was thirteen years old, beatin’ off to Black Tail magazine!”
Evan laughed despite himself. “Well, that’s even more of a reason to cut her off. Don’t let her play these head games with you anymore. End it now!”
“I . . . I can’t, Ev.”
“What do you mean, you can’t? Why the hell not?”
Terrence didn’t answer him. He fell silent again, leaving Evan totally perplexed. Suddenly, a thought dawned in Evan’s head. He slowly sat forward in his chair. His mouth fell open in shock.
“Are you in love with her?”
“No!” Terrence cried a little too quickly and too keenly. “Of . . . of course not!”
“Terry, be honest with me. Are you in love with her?” Evan repeated again more slowly.
“No! Well, I don’t think . . . I am. B-but, you know . . . I haven’t . . . well, I haven’t—”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me, Terry! Are you serious? You don’t fall for anyone after all these years and then this is the woman you fall in love with—a reporter who could possibly bring down our entire family by putting all our shit in the newspaper?”
“I never said I was in love with her!” Terrence argued. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to C. J. and ask her about all this stuff. I’m sure there’s a good explanation for it.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Evan muttered, still dumbfounded.
Terrence was in love. This was the same man who had once compared being in love to getting lobotomized, or who had said he could never envision himself being with one woman longer than a month, let alone for the rest of his life. This man was now in love with someone and he couldn’t have picked a worse candidate to bestow those affections upon.
“I’ll talk to you later,” Terrence mumbled before hanging up, leaving Evan to hang up, too—in disgust. His desk phone rang and he quickly picked it up.
“Mr. Murdoch,” his secretary said, “are you busy, sir?”
He blew out a slow gust of air before scrubbing his hand over his face tiredly. “No, Adrienne, I’m not busy. What is it?”
“Well, uh . . . you have a woman out here waiting for you, sir,” she whispered. “She isn’t on the schedule, but she . . . she insists that she must speak with you now.”
Evan frowned. “What woman?”
“She says . . . she says she’s your wife, sir.”
Oh shit, Evan thought, closing his eyes.
If he hadn’t spoken to Terrence in days, he hadn’t spoken to his wife, Charisse, in weeks. Evan hadn’t known how to respond
to her tearful outburst or her revelation about her father. Even though the matter of their divorce still wasn’t resolved, Evan hadn’t called her to rectify it. It seemed callous, maybe even cruel, to bring up something like that in light of everything she had told him. He wanted to give her some time before he broached the topic of her finally signing their divorce papers.
“You can send her in,” he said.
“Uh, y-yes, r-right away, sir,” Adrienne replied, and he heard her murmur something just before he hung up.
Evan sat upright in his chair and adjusted his tie. He felt like he was meeting the CEO from another company, preparing for an arduous round of contract negotiations, but the truth was, this was actually a lot worse. His relationship with Leila and his own emotional well-being could be on the line if this continued to drag out with Charisse. He hoped she was here to finally say she was ready to move on and let him go.
The door opened and Adrienne gestured into his office, smiling politely. Charisse strode in behind her. She wasn’t wearing the haphazard ponytail, flip-flops, and oversized shirt today. She looked a lot more like the Charisse he remembered from the old days: the one who bought racks’ worth of dresses and suits from Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, who got weekly mani-pedis. She was wearing a frilly blouse and teal skirt today along with kitten heels. Her hair was down and her blond, glossy curls undulated in waves down her back and around her shoulders.
“Hello, Charisse,” he said.
“Hello, Evan.” She removed her Chanel purse from her shoulder and walked toward him. “Your secretary seemed surprised to discover you had a wife,” she said with raised brows before sitting in one of the Bauhaus chairs facing his desk.
“She’s new, and frankly, it’s been a while since you’ve been around here. It was an honest mistake.”
Charisse pursed her lips and crossed her legs. “Yeah, well, I hope to rectify that problem so a ‘mistake’ like that doesn’t happen again.”
Evan narrowed his eyes at her. “What does that mean?”
