CHAPTER TEN
CRÈME BRÛLÉE À LA Charlotte was one of four special desserts that Remy Marchand had created in honor of his daughters. The traditional elegant dish reflected the personality of his eldest. Made with eggs and rich, heavy cream, the custard needed skillful handling and slow cooking in order to achieve its full potential. The praline topping that completed it lent an air of polished grace, and at times it resisted being pierced, but once the shell was broken it quickly fell apart to reveal a lush, sensual center.
Normally the dessert was only available at Chez Remy, the hotel’s four-star restaurant.
But Charlotte couldn’t remember it ever tasting as good as it did here in her living room.
She parted her lips to let Jackson feed her another spoonful. The custard melted on her tongue instantly, sending a spurt of pleasure through the roof of her mouth. She curled her bare feet beneath her and leaned into the corner of the sofa. She was wearing nothing except Jackson’s shirt, but it easily covered her thighs.
Jackson steadied the plate on the cushion between them and dipped his spoon back into the custard. “Your face is so expressive,” he said, leaning forward to feed her another spoonful. “Just watching you eat that makes me feel as if I can taste it.”
She licked a morsel from the corner of her mouth. “You probably can. You had most of it already.”
“It was only the outside.” He snatched a piece of the praline shell from the plate and popped it into his mouth. “And as everyone knows, sugar’s energy food. I have to keep up my strength.”
“Well, since you put it like that…” She took the spoon from his hand and scooped another piece for him. “Open up.”
His eyes gleamed as he caught her hand. He let her feed him, then turned her hand so that he could lick the spoon. “Mmm.”
Charlotte was amazed to feel a tiny aftershock of pleasure follow his hum of enjoyment. He’d made a similar sound a few minutes ago when they’d been in her bed. And as far as amazement went, it continued to astound her how readily she felt that pleasure at all. “I’ll have to remember to thank Melanie.”
Still holding her hand, he kissed each of her knuckles in turn. “Did she make the dessert?”
“No, desserts aren’t her forte, but it was her idea to package it to go.”
“I do like your sisters.” He guided her hand back to the plate. “They come up with some excellent ideas.”
“Oh?”
“Although next time ask Renee to give you a bigger box of condoms. At the rate we’ve been going through them, two dozen aren’t going to be anywhere near—”
She stopped his words with another mouthful of custard.
He swallowed and lifted one eyebrow. “What?”
“You’re getting a swelled head.”
His lips twitched. “Charlotte, I’m not going to touch that one. It would be too easy.”
She laughed and tossed the spoon onto the plate. “Oh, Jackson. This is all too easy.”
“What is?”
“This.” She waved her hand at herself and then at him. Although he’d put on his boxers when they’d gotten out of bed, he was completely comfortable with his near nudity. So was she. Sharing banter and a snack was comfortable, too. “I thought it would be harder,” she said.
He winked. “Give me a few minutes and it will be.”
“Oh, you’re incorrigible.”
“Incorrigible,” he repeated. “I’ve been called worse.” He moved the plate to the side table and patted his lap in invitation.
She slid across the sofa and snuggled into his embrace with a sigh. Although he couldn’t grip her with his right hand, his arms held her as securely as she could have wanted. “This is nice.”
He stroked a lock of hair from her cheek. “Does that mean I’ve redeemed myself?”
“Redeemed? What are you talking about?”
“I realize you haven’t forgotten how bad I used to be at this.”
Her brow furrowed. “If you’re referring to those times when we were kids, they really don’t matter.”
“Don’t they? I thought that’s what you meant when you said this was easier than you’d expected.”
“Jackson, I—”
“It’s okay, Charlotte. My bumbling would have put anyone off. It’s probably why you keep looking surprised.”
“Surprised?”
He smoothed his index finger over her forehead, then rested his hand on her hip. “Each time you climax, you get this look of shock. I guess you didn’t believe I was capable of—”
“Jackson, you’ve got it wrong. I’m shocked at myself, not you.”
“Why?”
She hesitated. Putting this into words made her seem almost pathetic, yet she didn’t want Jackson to think she was judging him on his past performance. He’d been such a generous and considerate lover, she had to be honest. She placed her palm against his cheek. “Until yesterday, I’d never had an orgasm.”
“You…” He blinked. “Never?”
She traced the line beside his mouth with her thumb. “I don’t know why. I’m not a prude. I just never managed to achieve that particular goal.”
His fingers tightened against her hip as he regarded her. Disbelief gradually gave way to a look of comprehension…followed by more than a hint of male smugness.
She didn’t take issue with the smugness—he was entitled to it. “This isn’t that big a deal, Jackson. I haven’t dwelled on my lack and I’ve accepted who I am. My life has been full and very rewarding. Sex has never been important to me.”
“You were married for eight years.”
“Yes.”
“And you never…?”
“No.”
He moved his hand to her thigh and fingered the hem of the shirt she wore. “I had no idea.”
“No one except my ex-husband does. For one thing, I was too embarrassed to discuss it. And for another, it wasn’t relevant. I’ve been too busy with my work to think about romance, so I don’t date. And now that I’m forty I’m quite settled with my life.”
“But you’re enjoying it now.”
“Obviously. As you said, it has to be because of the circumstances.” She tapped his chest. “And the chemistry between us.”
“We’ve got lots of that.” He leaned back against the arm of the sofa and stretched out one leg across the cushions, shifting her so that she was half lying on top of him. He stroked her hair for a while before he spoke again. “Is that why you divorced Adrian, Charlotte? Because you didn’t have… chemistry?”
She should have known the topic wouldn’t stay off-limits. She’d introduced it herself by talking about her sex life. “Not directly, but it was a contributing factor.”
“How?”
“Adrian wasn’t faithful, Jackson. I’m not sure when he started having affairs, but I didn’t discover it until we’d been married almost five years.”
“But you hung in for another three.”
“I thought the fault was mine. I was so indifferent about our sex life, I couldn’t really blame him for looking elsewhere, so I wanted to give him another chance. And on top of that, there was our business partnership.”
Jackson’s hand stilled. “Right. Your parents gave him a job.”
“He was very valuable to the hotel.”
“And the hotel’s bottom line was more important to you than fidelity.”
She heard the note of distance in his voice, yet she couldn’t deny that what he’d said was true. What did it say about her if she’d willingly put up with a humiliating and unsatisfying marriage rather than risk hurting the family business?
But it hadn’t only been the business she’d cared about, it had been her dream of a marriage like that of her parents, of sharing her life as well as her love.
“Yes,” she said. “You could put it like that.” She pushed herself off his chest and rose to her feet. “In the end, the hotel was more important to me than Adrian.”
Jackson stayed where he
was, sprawled across the sofa, but he no longer looked relaxed. This was a touchy subject for both of them. “Adrian Grant might have had blue blood and a pedigree, but he was a bastard anyway.”
“Oh, more than you know.” She rubbed her arms as she moved across the room. Jackson’s scent rose from his shirt, making her feel as if he still held her. “Adrian knew how much I wanted children, Jackson. He claimed he wanted them, too, and that we would give them the same kind of unconditional love and deep roots that my parents had given my sisters and me. He insisted we take a house with a big yard and enough room for plenty of children, close to Grand-mère so they could visit every day. He spun a beautiful tale of the life I’d always wanted.”
Jackson remained silent. She was grateful he did. It was the first time she’d spoken about this to anyone, and now that she’d started, she felt a need to finish. She paused beside the bookcase, her gaze falling on a photo of Daisy Rose. A lump formed in her throat as she thought of her niece’s love for fairy tales. Maybe it would be kinder if Charlotte stopped reading them to her—believing in them only led to disappointment.
“When I failed to get pregnant,” she said, “I thought it was because there was something wrong with me. Not medically—I went through all the tests—but I started to believe I wasn’t enough of a woman so I wasn’t meant to be a wife and mother. It wasn’t until our eighth anniversary that I learned the truth. Adrian had had a vasectomy before we were married, only he had never bothered to tell me.”
The sofa creaked. Jackson’s bare feet made no noise on the carpet, but she could feel his approach. He spoke from over her shoulder. “Charlotte, I’m sorry.”
“You said you never liked him. You always were a good judge of character.”
“I didn’t like him then because he was a snob. And because he married you.” He rested his hand on her back. “I detest him even more now for the way he betrayed you.”
“I should have seen it, Jackson, but I was so wrapped up in getting this make-believe future that I wanted, I couldn’t see reality. Apparently Adrian had decided not to run the risk of fathering any illegitimate children during one of his affairs. That’s why he’d had the vasectomy. He married me for prestige and for the chance to run the hotel, so he made an effort to be discreet. He didn’t want to scandalize his family or hurt his image. He was always very conscious of his image. He spent more time in front of the mirror than I did, but that wasn’t surprising since Adrian’s first and only love was Adrian—” Her voice broke. She put her face in her hands. “Mon Dieu, how could I have been such a fool?”
Jackson took her by the shoulders and turned her toward him. “You weren’t a fool, Charlotte. You were just going after your dream.”
She dropped her hands and looked at Jackson.
It had been a mistake from the start to marry Adrian. She’d thought that she’d loved him, but how could she have? Their courtship had been a whirlwind. He’d been handsome and sophisticated, a veritable Prince Charming who happened to have a degree in hotel management. On the surface he had seemed like the perfect match for her. She hadn’t taken the time to look deeper because she hadn’t wanted to. She’d been on the rebound, desperate to fill the void in her heart that had formed when Jackson left.
With the type of unspoken understanding they used to share, Jackson widened his stance to slide his feet outside hers and drew her into his embrace.
Charlotte accepted his comfort gratefully, even as she strove to remind herself that this wouldn’t last. Any feelings that she allowed to grow now would be as hopeless as they had been before.
So it was a very good thing she was being practical and realistic this time, and that they had both agreed that what was going on between them was only temporary and physical, right?
Right?
It had all seemed so clear when she’d woken up this morning, yet now…
She dropped her forehead into the hollow of his shoulder, just as she’d done countless times in the past. “I don’t know if it’s possible to love a thing the way you can love a person,” she said. “But after my divorce, the hotel was all I had left of the life I had wanted. It’s been my one constant. It’s become more to me than just a business or a building, it’s my framework and my anchor.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as she slipped her arms around his waist. “Jackson, I honestly don’t know what I would do without it.”
JACKSON YANKED OPEN the front door with far more force than was necessary, causing it to smack into the stop that had been built into its frame. Wood creaked and hinges rattled, transferring the vibrations all the way up his arm. Charlotte gave him a quizzical look as she walked past him into the hotel.
He shrugged. “It slipped,” he said, moving his hand to the small of her back.
She continued to regard him as they started across the lobby. “You’ve been in a strange mood this morning. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He forced a smile. “Where to first?”
“My office. I should catch up on my messages.” She glanced past him. “That’s odd. I wonder where Luc is.”
Jackson turned his head and saw that the spot behind the concierge’s desk where Luc usually stood was empty. “He’s probably nursing a hangover,” he commented.
“Luc? I didn’t know he drank.”
“He did yesterday. I saw him in the bar. He seemed upset about some problems he’s having with his family.”
“I know very little about Luc’s family. He’s been very private about his personal life—”
“Charlotte?”
At the sound of her name, Charlotte paused. Julie Sullivan, her assistant, was hurrying toward them from the front desk. She barely glanced at Jackson before she started into a list of problems. Charlotte went into what Jackson was beginning to think of as her manager’s mode. This was how it had been every morning so far. The moment they walked through the door she became swallowed by the hotel.
And why not? As she’d told him the night before, it was her anchor. The one constant in her life. She loved it like a person.
The two women continued to discuss business as they headed for the grand staircase. Jackson shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and followed, making sure to stay close to Charlotte in spite of the milling guests. The place was more crowded today than he’d seen it yet. That was good. With Mardi Gras concluding in a little more than thirty-six hours, they needed this business if they wanted to stay solvent. He didn’t want her to lose the hotel, did he?
No, of course not. She loved it. What kind of friend would he be if he wanted her business to fail? That was the whole idea behind staying with her—to make sure she wouldn’t lose the one thing she loved.
I honestly don’t know what I would do without it.
He waited as Charlotte unlocked her office door, then pushed it open and checked the room. There was no sign of disturbance. Everything was as it had appeared the previous evening. That was good, too. Right, everything was working out as well as either of them could have expected.
But somehow the door slipped from Jackson’s grasp as he was closing it, slamming into the frame with enough force to shake the antique glass fanlight that was set into the wall above it.
Charlotte paused behind her desk, her suit jacket in her hand. She took her silver cell phone from the pocket and put it on the desk, draped the jacket neatly over the back of her chair and returned to where he stood. “Okay, what’s going on?”
He flexed his fingers and looked at his hand. “I can’t grip things that well. Sometimes it’s hard to judge how much strength to apply.”
She took his hand between both of hers and shook her head. “Don’t try to snow me, Jackson. You’ve been on edge since we got up today. Waiting for Yves to rerun the nerve test tomorrow is getting to you, isn’t it?”
She was right about that. The closer the test drew, the bigger it loomed. He clenched his jaw at the compassion in her voice. “I don’t want your pity, Charlotte.”
“I don’t pity
you. I thought you knew me better than that. My financial problems aren’t the same as your physical one, but I do understand what you’re going through.” She lifted his hand to her face and pressed her cheek to his scarred palm. “Tomorrow’s going to be a big day for both of us.”
Once again he was struck by the irony of the situation. How had it happened that both of them were simultaneously facing the possibility of losing the very things they’d chosen to devote their lives to?
Yet he felt like a fraud for accepting her sympathy. Because as ugly as the thought was, deep inside he did want her to lose the hotel.
He’d claimed that he didn’t hate this place, that he hadn’t meant it when he’d told her he did, yet that wasn’t the whole truth. There was a part of him that always would hate this hotel. Sure, it had been the backdrop for a large chunk of his growing-up years and there had been plenty of good memories for him in these walls, but the affection he felt for it had been tinged with envy. Charlotte had belonged here, but he never had.
And ultimately it had become his rival. That’s why he hated it. Charlotte had chosen the hotel over him even before she’d married Adrian.
It still was his rival. In fact, she had moved into Jackson’s arms, their bodies warm and pulsing from some of the best sex he’d ever had—and the best sex she’d ever had—and she’d stated flat out that she didn’t know what she would do without the hotel.
You could come with me, he’d wanted to shout. If she lost the hotel, she would be free to leave with him.
But that wouldn’t have occurred to her. Charlotte hadn’t seen the alternative that was standing right in front of her nose.
Damn, he was surprised how that had hurt.
Yet it shouldn’t have hurt. They’d both agreed that there were no strings to this affair, so he had no right to want more. They’d grown up, they knew the score, they didn’t expect each other to change.
He eased away from her touch. “Sorry. You’re right. I’m just stressed.”
She chewed her lip briefly, then sighed. “I should apologize, Jackson.”
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