by Amber Bardan
But what happened if or when Charlie wanted more?
Or something else?
Charlie strode back into the room, a hand clinched at her waist. “Dad, where’s the milk, teabags? Hasn’t Lynette done your shopping?”
William appeared to grow three inches. “I damn well fired her.”
“Why this time?” Charlie’s chest rose.
“She messed with my stuff.”
“Lynette was the best caregiver we’ve had in three years. How was she messing with your stuff?”
“My damn socks. She was sneaking in and taking all my left socks.” William’s eyes grew round, all the whites visible around his irises.
Connor shifted. He knew that look. Seen it time after time as a cop—the look of someone who experienced their own reality.
Charlie walked to her father and knelt. “Daddy, why would anyone do that? I don’t think socks have a right and a left.”
“Of course they do. She was trying to get to me, trying to make me think I’m crazy. She’d move my spectacles around the house, drink half my tea when I wasn’t looking—she even changed the programming on the damn TV so I’d never get to see my shows.”
Charlie patted his knee. “That wouldn’t be possible. Shows change, things change. We can’t control a television station’s programming. You need her, we need her.”
“I do not need her. I need to get back to work.” William slapped the arm of the chair, his face brightening. “Sit down and tell me how our business is faring.”
Charlie uncurled from her crouch and sat. “The economy is tough but we’re doing our best.”
“What about your Uncle?”
She rocked back. “Frank is still CEO, but our lawyers say his lawsuit for control of your shares is bogus and there will be a decision soon.”
“What are you doing in the meantime? I didn’t raise you to be a quitter.”
Charlie glanced at Connor, then back at her dad. “I haven’t given up.”
“You can’t let him win.”
“He hasn’t.” She leaned closer to her father. “I won’t let him drive me out.”
“He was always jealous.”
Charlie sighed. “You eaten tonight, Dad?”
“I’m not helpless. I can still use a microwave.” William reclined in his chair. “Now, be off with you because I know you haven’t.”
Charlie laughed softly. “I’m going to call in the morning and see if Lynette will come back. So behave yourself.” She gave her father a kiss. “Or next time I come back I’ll bring Janine.”
“You wouldn’t.” William grabbed the arm of his chair. “Not Janine with the incessant conversation.”
“I will and I’ll tell her you asked about her grandkids.” Charlie grinned and stood.
William adjusted his jacket. “I hope you’re this ruthless at work.”
She whispered, “they don’t give me this much trouble.”
Connor stared at Charlie. He pitied anyone who dared.
***
Sound burst through her bedroom, shaking her out of inky black nightmares. Charlie jerked upright. Another bang shook the room and she rolled out of bed, knocking her side table. A glass lamp fell and shattered on the floor. She froze. Her heart pummeled the inside of her chest, fast and painful.
The door slammed inwards and crashed against the wall. A large figure filled the doorway, streaking terror into her limbs.
Her chest clenched—she couldn’t catch her breath. The room pitched.
“Charlie, are you okay?”
The words barely penetrated her ringing ears. She couldn’t breathe, her chest squeezed tighter.
“Shit. There’s glass everywhere.”
Silence then a sound, and hands were on her just in time to stop her from hitting the ground. She clutched her hands to her chest but couldn’t speak—couldn’t draw breath. A rumble rippled over the room, this time softer. She had no choice but to let herself sink into his arms.
“It’s just a tiny earthquake. It’s over, just try to breathe.” He scooped her up, and laid her on her mattress and sank down beside her. He smoothed the long, loose hair out of her face, ran fingers down her spine, drew her out of her own head and back up to reality.
The squeezing in her chest became a more manageable pressure. She opened her eyes to look at him and realized something she hadn’t noticed before. Connor had faint but gorgeous laugh lines around his eyes. Now they were furrowed but not with laughter. She struggled to absorb the expression on his face, the look of someone who cared.
She wanted to freeze the image in time, hold onto and cherish it.
“What’s going on here, Charlie?”
She fell out of the trance she’d been caught in. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I saw you after two guys tried to abduct you in a parking lot. You don’t scare easy. So what’s going on?”
She looked at him, only now registering that he wore only t-shirt and boxers, and the fact that she was in her whimsical unicorn pajamas.
And he was on her goddamned bed.
How could she respond to that question anyway?
How could she admit the pressure she’d been under? The quiet fear she kept that she wasn’t good enough—even as she fought for her position. If he spied for Frank, she couldn’t tell him how she was haunted by the faces of the people she’d given the courtesy of advising their jobs were gone—to their face. She couldn’t say how as much as she loved the people she worked with, she loathed the industry. That it wasn’t at all unusual for her to wake up with her heart punching fistfuls of dread into her throat.
Frank would only have more ammunition, and she was so freaking tired of having to defend herself.
“I was having a bad dream when I was woken up.” Close enough to the truth without giving too much away.
His big hand blazed heat against her back. “Would you like a drink or something?”
“You’re not my servant, Connor.” She scooted back on the bed and leant against the head board. “But, thank you.”
He lingered at the foot of the bed. She’d never get back to sleep now. He ran a hand over the top of his head and watched her. From the looks of him, neither would he.
Since he’s already here…
“If you want to keep me company for a while that’s fine.” She bit the inside of her cheek.
Connor crawled up her bed to the other side and leaned on the pillows next to her. Her whole body went warm. What had she been thinking?
Company?
The bed dipped towards him. It wasn’t company she wanted from him.
“Do you have bad dreams often?”
This was a terrible idea.
She shifted her legs and drew up the covers so she was under them and he was on top. It didn’t seem less intimate. “Sometimes.”
“What happens when you do?”
“I’m a grown up, so I survive them. But if I can’t get back to sleep I watch T.V. or read.”
She turned to look at him. “What about you?”
“What about me?” He squinted slightly.
“Do you have bad dreams?”
“I don’t dream.” He propped up on his elbow and even though she sat and he didn’t, he still seemed too close. “I’m far more preoccupied with what goes on when I’m awake.”
Her skin rippled with awareness. Yeah, there’d been a lot to be preoccupied with while they’d been awake together. What happened in her office…
Images flashed, hot and pulsing, and filled her with need. She still couldn’t believe she’d not only allowed that but virtually begged for it.
In her office.
At her work.
“You mentioned your Mom was a single mother?” The question blurted out, but then there’s nothing like talking about a dude’s mother to keep thoughts platonic.
He rocked back on his elbow, his lashes lowering, getting a little guarded. She’d seen his reaction at her office when they’d talked about this. A wick
ed little part of her wanted to see him like that again. Vulnerable and exposed. Less a caricature of the man he obviously thought he had to be.
“Yes?”
“She still around?”
He scooted a little higher, no longer so lounging on her bed. “She is.”
“You see her much?”
His jaw worked. Would he stop talking now? Like that first night when they’d met, and he’d been so silent and sullen. Except she’d allowed him to stay in here to keep her company.
“When I’m not on assignment.”
Of course…He’d already been assigned to her for a month. A wash of guilt ran through her. She’d thought of her own lack of privacy when visiting her dad, but not of there being family of his that may be missing him. “Being on assignment must make it difficult to see family?”
“I don’t usually take assignments myself anymore.” He stared at her harder, almost expectantly.
Her skin prickled. He didn’t? Then why the freaking hell had he now? Her lungs grew tight. Her room didn’t seem big enough.
Tension poured thick between them.
She couldn’t take a breath that wasn’t filled with the scent of his cologne. Couldn’t think above the sound of his breathing. Couldn’t see anything outside of his expression.
Why was he here?
“I wouldn’t stop you from seeing your family, if you need to take some time off for a visit.”
He blinked, and the tension thinned. “As I told you before—you won’t be getting rid of me easily, or at all.”
Her heart rushed. He didn’t say that as he had the last time, this time there was a thread of something else—warm and almost like this was where he wanted to be.
“I could go with you.” She sucked in her breath.
His eyes went heavy lidded again, and something about the way his lashes lowered over his eyes made the rushing of her heart more of a flutter.
What was it about him that made her blurt things out before she’d finished thinking them through?
“If you wanted to visit your mother, I could go with you, like you came with me to my Dad’s today.” She broke away from his gaze and looked at hem of her pajama top.
“You want to come with me to see my mother?” His voice dropped low, and so rich it was like the vibration reached into her belly and hummed there.
“I mean this is just your job, but you’re a person with a life.” She picked up the edge of her top examining it at though it had come unstitched. “It’s not like I do much on weekends.”
Other than work.
“But, Charlie.” The rumbling texture of his words sucked her gaze back to his. “My mother lives in Leavenworth, I always stay at her house for the entire weekend.” His lips pressed together, hinting at more of a sense of humor than she’d given him credit for. “But if you want to come stay with me, I can make it happen. It’s quiet—secluded—intimate.” His lips twitched higher. “And since she spends most of her time in her button shop, it’s also private.”
Her lungs went tight and itchy, her pelvic region heavy. She had a moment of seeing just that—the two of them cloistered away in a picturesque retreat.
But this was reality, and a kind suggestion didn’t mean she’d gift wrap herself for someone who could very well be the enemy.
“What is a button shop?” She focused on the question. She’d never heard of one.
“A shop that sells buttons.” His attention fell to her pajama top. “Like these.” His index finger flicked over a button below her bust. “Unicorns…well she’d appreciate these. The two of you would get on fine.”
Her face flushed hot. She didn’t admit she’d bought the pink, pale blue, and purple pajama set she wore now, when she’d seen them online. Didn’t admit that is was the unicorn buttons that made them so irresistible.
She never expected for someone to see her in these.
“How does someone end up owning a button store in Leavenworth?”
He took a breath and held it for a while. “The only vacation we ever took was the Christmas we stayed in Leavenworth, and she was more excited about that than we were. She said in another life she’d have lived there.” He stared at the button on her ribs, brushing it again. “So when my sister moved out, I gave her a nudge and put a deposit on an empty store for the Button Shop she’d joked about.”
His hand slid from her button, and splayed on her ribs, but his expression had gone far away.
“She’s lucky, you know.”
He glanced up at her. “Who?”
“Your Mom, she’s lucky to have you for her son.”
His brow wrinkled, strangely defensive for a recipient of a compliment. “Just looking out for my mother.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Charlie rolled to her side, almost losing her nerve when they came eye-to-eye. “I don’t mean because you look out for her, or protect her physically, or financially, or however you think you’re supposed to.” She reached out and rest her hand on his chest. If she pressed her hand flat she’d probably feel his heartbeat. “I meant she’s lucky to have family who value her dreams.”
He frowned harder, staying silent. Seeming to think far too long about something so simple.
She fought not to look away. What was going through his head?
“What about your dreams. What are they?”
She took a quick breath. “I only have the sleeping kind of dreams.”
“Huh.” His attention focused deeper on her. “I’d have sworn you’d have said something to do with Halifax.”
It was her turn to frown. Why didn’t she say something like that? She swallowed. Maybe because it hadn’t been a dream, just the thing she’d always known she had to do. The path paved from the time her father first sat her beside him at his desk, like his mini-me.
“Pretend for a minute there’s no Halifax, what do you do, Charlie?”
Her mind flashed back to the last time she’d been free enough to play and pretend—and dream. “There’s nothing. Just silly things.”
“Like what?”
She stared at him, and wiggled her legs under the blanket. “It’s not even a thing, not really.”
“Then there’s no harm saying—if it’s not a thing.” He leveled her with a look that reminded her he’d once been a detective, that maybe he was far more crafty than she’d let herself believe.
“Fine.” She took a deep breath. “When I was a kid before my mom left, she’d sometimes take me to this French Café nearby called Mon Petit Patisserie, where they served miniature everything, and tea in actual china cups.” Her hands made the shape of teacup and for a moment she felt one hot in her palm. “When she left, Dad would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I’d say ‘CEO of Halifax like you, Dad’, and he’d pat my head. Then I’d hide in my room and pretend to work at Mon Petit Patisserie. I loved that place so hard, something strange still happens to me when I see tiny food.”
He smiled. Didn’t laugh but smiled.
“Told you it was silly.” She could practically see how red she must be in the back of her mind. Her cheeks might burst into flame.
“Not as silly, as these silly, silly, pajamas.” He touched her unicorn button again, his gaze running over her chest in a way that made silly sound a crap-load more like sexy.
His gaze flicked up to hers. She gasped and then his mouth was on hers, his tongue stroking inside her lips. She grabbed his skull, drawing him closer. The nearness wasn’t enough; she wanted him to crush her, make her feel everything. He ran his hands over her body, over her back. His touch burned skin.
He coaxed her to open her mouth wider, to give him full access and showed her he knew how to use his tongue—made her long to really have him use it on her. Her chest squeezed but this time the ache was sweet. He threw the covers aside and rolled on top of her, then drew her knee to his waist and gave her a glimpse of the restrained hunger lying under his sweet kiss. She fidgeted, impatient, wanting the harder bite of his desire.
>
Wanted his fist in her hair, and that threadbare control that made her feel like the sexiest women alive no matter what anyone said.
She pushed his shoulders, used enough strength to break the kiss. He gazed at her, hesitation palpable in the way he held himself still. She fought the urge to bite him. To provoke him to lose control. The appeal of polite sex disintegrated at about the same time Conner showed her exactly what else there was on offer. She wanted what she’d tasted in her office. But when he looked at her like this, as if he feared he might crush her in his hands—she felt as if she were made of glass.
Words jammed in her throat. “I thought you said you were going to prove you want to do a lot more than kiss me?”
His eyes flashed, his jaw clenched and his body turned to steel above her. Her core responded, flooding with need.
He grasped her thighs, jerked her hips higher then grabbed her pajama pants at the hips, and tugged. Her breath hitched but her pussy throbbed in anticipation. He dragged the pants down and off her legs.
Her hips arched. Yes this was it, this was the Connor she needed. The Connor who would shake her out and let her come apart.
The faint tinkle of music cut through the room. Connor paused. The bad-boys ringtone stripped the focus from his features.
Not going to happen. She needed him now and nothing was going to distract him. Charlie raised her hand and slammed her palm into the side of his cheek. His head didn’t turn but his eyes shut briefly. When they opened she questioned her impulsiveness.
His eyes raged lust. In an explosion of movement he grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head. His erection grazed her pussy through his shorts. The ringtone grew louder and he panted above her, his temples ticking.
Connor squeezed her wrists. “You stay right here and get ready. You’re in serious trouble.” He released her wrists, drew his phone out of his back pocket and stared at the screen. “I won’t be long.”
He climbed out of her bed and pressed the phone to his ear, strolling to the door. The door shut behind him and all she could do was stare a hole through it.
“You’re in serious trouble.”
She grinned. Hopefully he’d hold her down.
