by Holly Jacobs
She had a degree in art history. But that and a buck would get her a cup of coffee. She might know the difference between a Manet and a Monet, but other than the art museum, where would that get her?
There was a soft rap on the door, and then it opened. “Breakfast.”
“Dan?”
A man who obviously hated to waste words, he nodded.
“Good morning.” The huskiness in her voice surprised her.
Charlie studied the quiet man who sat on the edge of her bed and handed her a coffee.
A man who brought her breakfast in bed? He was a prince among men—an Imperial trucker. She smiled at her private joke but didn’t share it. She had a feeling Dan wouldn’t think it was all that humorous.
“Did you have any more bad dreams?”
“More . . .” The word trailed off. Charlie remembered dreaming about her almost-wedding—actually, it was as close to a nightmare as she wanted to go. She remembered someone brushing her hair and holding her while she fell back to sleep. Dan.
The thought warmed her. “Thank you. How long did you hold me?”
When he didn’t answer, she prompted, “Dan?”
“Just a little while,” Dan admitted.
The word while was vague, so he wasn’t lying.
He might be glossing over the truth, but there was no way he was going to tell Charlie he’d held her until the sun rose. He wasn’t going to tell her that he’d watched her as the dark room gradually turned a rosy pink. No. He wasn’t going to tell her anything more than that he’d held her for a while.
She was eyeing him in a way that made Dan decidedly nervous. Gone was the runaway bride he’d picked up yesterday.
Gone was the confused, tired girl from yesterday evening.
Gone was the nightmare-ridden woman who had slept in his arms.
In her place was a woman who was eying Dan like he was some prize toy she’d like to play with. The thought made Dan’s entire body stiffen.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Eat.” He handed her a plate of toast. Well darkened toast with butter. Maybe it wasn’t the breakfast of champions, but it was better than trying something more elaborate. Toast he could handle. Anything more than that was iffy at best.
“So, when you’re not driving a truck and rescuing brides, you feed the hungry?”
“Something like that.” He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. Coffee making wasn’t one of his specialties.
“Thank you for thinking of it.” She paused a moment. “I seem to be thanking you a lot.”
“So stop.”
Charlie grinned. “No, I doubt that will happen. You’re too good a knight to ever leave a lady in distress, and I’m too good a distressed maiden not to need your services. So, I guess you’ll just have to get used to my thanks.”
They finished the meal in silence. Dan studied her. He seemed to spend a lot of time looking at her, and he wasn’t quite sure why. Her and those darned grass-green eyes. He might look, but no way was he going to go all poetic and start calling them emerald green or some other wimpy description.
“I left some clothes in the bathroom. I raided Doug’s closet. I think he’s closer to your size than I am.”
“You think of everything. Thanks. I’m going to take a shower and change.”
Images of Charlie showering bombarded him. He savagely beat them back.
“Okay.” Dan was surprised at how normal his voice sounded. He didn’t feel normal at all.
She hesitated at the door, as if she was searching for something to say. Finally she simply said, “Thank you,” and shut the door.
Dan was left with only a picture in his mind.
A picture that shouldn’t be there.
Charlie washed her hair, grateful to finally rid herself of the styling goop her mother had insisted she use. She fluffed the strands, allowing them to air dry. Her hair was thin enough that it didn’t take much longer to air dry than if she’d used a hair dryer.
She slipped on Doug’s hand-me-downs.
Dan was right, they were a better fit. Doug must be about her height, and though the waist did gap, her hips were wide enough to keep them in place. She put on a Mercyhurst T-shirt and used the brush Dan had laid out on the counter to style her short hair.
Efficient, quiet, kind, and sexy. Dan Martin was the Prince Charming every little girl dreamed of.
Her hair was close to dry and it was time to go. Just where she was going, what she was going to do, was still up in the air. Right now, she was going to start by leaving this bathroom and facing Dan.
“Da-dum.” She walked back into the room. “What do you think?” She pirouetted.
“Nice fit.”
Winslow would have waxed poetic over her look, but the words would have been just that, words. Dan’s two words, accompanied with the look of appreciation in his eyes, meant a great deal more.
“Come on,” he said, unwilling to sit through a fashion show. Watching Charlie was easy . . . too easy. And it was something he’d do well to avoid. “I’ll show you Doug’s place.”
He led her out the kitchen door and toward the garage. “You’re welcome for as long as you need to stay.” And because the thought of Charlie’s staying seemed too tempting, Dan added, “At Doug’s apartment.”
“I bet Doug would appreciate it if I’m out before he comes back to start school.” She smiled.
Dan’s eyes darted in her direction. “I don’t know about that.”
“Why, Dan, that was either a compliment or you were teasing. Which was it?”
She was the one teasing and Dan ignored it.
“There are stairs outside in addition to these,” he said as he led her up a flight of stairs inside the garage. “When we find you a car, you can park in here. Doug always does.”
He pulled his keys out of his pocket. “I’ll give you this one, but I’d like to have another one made in case you lose it.”
“Okay. Do you think you can drop me off in town tomorrow so I can start looking for things like a car and clothes and—”
“I’ll take you shopping,” he offered.
“You can just drop me off, so you can get to work.”
“Work will wait.” He was the boss, though Charlie didn’t know that. He’d take off as much time as needed. “We’ll get you situated here today and—”
“Dan, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“Oh? Is that why you almost married a man you didn’t love in order to keep your mother happy?” The words spilled out before Dan could stop them. The pain that flashed across Charlie’s face was quickly masked by anger. It made him wish he could just suck the stupid words back in.
Quietly, too quietly, she said, “Just because you helped me doesn’t give you the right to judge me. And I might have almost married Winslow, but I didn’t actually go through with it. I rescued myself.”
“And I did what?”
“You just helped. I could have handled it.”
“Could have, but didn’t.”
Why was he fighting with her, hurting her? She needed to be independent. He wasn’t the type of person who wanted someone depending on him.
Not Charlie. If she depended on him, she was bound to eventually be disappointed.
“What’s wrong with you? You were quiet all morning. And because you’re a man of few words, quiet for you is stone silent. Do you regret offering me a place to stay? Never mind, maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but I think it would be better if I arranged for a hotel room. I don’t need your—”
Dan remembered why he was normally quiet—words got him in trouble.
Before he really registered what he was doing, he pulled Charlie in his arms and his lips were moving in her direction.
Charlie silenced immediately.
“Tell me no and I’ll stop, otherwise, I’m going to see just what it is about your lips that has made me want to do this since the moment you climbed into my truck.”
“Yes,” she simply whispered and melted into his embrace.
It was wrong, he worried. But the feeling of wrongness disappeared as his lips touched hers. Soft but urgent, he tasted her for the first time and knew with utter certainty he could stay like this forever.
The fact that they weren’t right for each other, or more specifically, he was wrong for her, disappeared in that one touch. And an utter conviction that he needed this woman was born. Needed, but wouldn’t have.
Couldn’t have.
Dan let her go. Charlotte Eaton deserved more than he could ever give her. Oh, he could probably give her as much monetarily as good old Winslow had planned to. But Dan had known for some time that all the money in the world couldn’t turn him into the man he wanted to be.
Money couldn’t give him true confidence or make him happy. Money couldn’t make him someone like Con, someone who knew how to love and laugh—someone who could be part of a couple.
Dan was destined to be alone. He’d spent his whole life that way, and he was used to it. He’d bungle a relationship, which was why he avoided them.
“Well,” Charlie said. Her one word accompanied a surprised expression on her face.
“That won’t happen again,” he said by way of an apology.
“Oh? Was it so bad you don’t want to risk repeating it?” she asked. She sounded as if she was teasing, but Dan could see that he’d hurt her.
“No, it wasn’t bad, Charlie,” he said gently. “It’s just not going to happen again. Nothing could develop between us.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re too different.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Charlie, I live my life on my own terms. Those terms don’t include a girl who can’t make up her mind about what she wants.”
“I made up my mind when I left the church.”
“But you could very easily unmake it. You’re . . . how old did you say?” He didn’t really need to ask. He remembered everything Charlie had told him, but he wasn’t about to let her know that he knew.
“Twenty-seven.”
“Twenty-seven,” he repeated. “And you still are trying to buy your mother’s approval by marrying a man you didn’t love. Your birth certificate might say one thing, but in actuality, you’re still very much a girl. When I get involved, it will be with a woman.”
“I see,” was her flat response.
“Good. That kiss was a . . .” He paused.
“An aberration,” she supplied.
“Right. And it won’t happen again.”
“Fine.”
The words you’re still very much a little girl burned like acid in the pit of Charlie’s stomach. They’d haunted her through the rest of the day and through the night, making sleep hard to come by.
For twenty-seven years she’d accepted the roles people cast her into. She tried to bend, tried not to be herself, to be too different. For twenty-seven very long years she’d tried not to make waves. All that had changed at her wedding that wasn’t. She hadn’t just made a wave—she’d made a tsunami, a tidal wave of gigantic proportion.
And what Charlie Eaton had discovered was that she liked the feel of waves. She only had one life, and from this day on she was going to live it to the fullest.
Maybe Dan was right, maybe she’d been a little girl trying to win her mother’s approval, but she’d grown up. Her wedding-that-wasn’t day ended up being her graduation from childhood to adulthood. Charlie had come to realize that she didn’t want to fit in anyone’s mold.
Not her mother’s.
Not Winslow’s.
And certainly not Dan’s.
Before her wedding, she might have simply accepted Dan’s words and believed that he didn’t want her. But she’d felt his need in his kiss. A need that was echoed by her own. Maybe Dan had been right about her, but he was wrong about who she was now. And he was also a liar. He wasn’t pushing her away because he didn’t like her, didn’t want her. No, he was pushing her away because he was scared.
Well, Charlie was scared too, but she wasn’t just going to walk away from this man who made her feel . . . who simply made her feel.
Charlotte Damaris Eaton, the little girl who tried to live up to everyone’s expectations, was dead, and Charlie Eaton planned to dance at her wake starting today.
Suddenly invigorated despite her lack of sleep, Charlie jumped out of Doug’s borrowed bed and into the shower. It was going to be a glorious day.
It was going to be a day from hell, Dan thought miserably.
“No, Molly. Nothing’s wrong. Just put Con on.”
Rather than using hold, Molly slammed the receiver onto her desk. Judging from the volume of the bang, it was going to be at least a month before she brought him coffee.
Dan sighed.
“Dan?” Con said over the line.
Molly’s receiver slammed down on its holder.
Con repeated, “Dan? You there?”
“Here.”
“But not at the office.”
“Yeah. I’ve got some personal business. Can you hold down the fort?”
“The same business that kept you out on that Columbus run?”
“Yeah.”
“And from your monosyllabic response, I don’t suppose I’m going to get any more information than that, am I?”
“I’ll be in tomorrow . . . I think.” He hoped.
If he’d realized just how much trouble rescuing damsels in distress could be, he might have driven right by Charlie.
“Take as long as you need. But I will get this story out of you when you come in.” Con hung up.
Dan was left listening to a dial tone.
Yeah, it was going to be a long day. He blamed Charlie. The tortures he’d have to endure were her fault. She’d swept into his life and turned everything upside down. It would have served her right if he had left her standing at the side of the road in her wedding finery.
As tempting as the idea sounded, Dan knew he could never have done it. Just like he couldn’t cut her loose, no matter how much he’d like to. She needed him, at least until she got her life back together.
Thinking of her sleeping in his arms, and how she’d felt in his arms when he’d kissed her . . . no, he wouldn’t have missed any of it. But things between them couldn’t go any further than that one kiss.
Dan liked his life exactly the way it was. He didn’t have time for this complication. He wasn’t going to be able to play Prince Charming to her sneaker-clad Cinderella.
And Charlie had just left a groom at the altar, she was on the rebound. When she stopped rebounding, she was going to need someone who had more to offer than he did. So, no, there would be no more kissing.
There was a knock on the kitchen door. “Dan?”
He took a fortifying gulp of the black sludge that was the closest he could get to producing coffee and spared another thought to the fact Molly’s coffee was a thing of the past, at least until he could sweeten her up again. “Come in.”
Charlie burst into the room. “You’re still here. I was afraid you’d left because you were annoyed with me. But I do need that ride into town.”
“Coffee?” he asked, hoping to slow the running stream of consciousness that Charlie called a conversation.
“Oh, thanks.” He handed her a mug and she helped herself from the pot. “I’ve got to have a car. I shouldn’t have sold mine. It was reliable, if not very new. But Winslow said we’d pick out a new car after the honeymoon. My bank account’s not exactly overflowing, but I should be able to afford something drivable. And I’ve got to find a place to live—”
“Charlie.”
“Then there are clothes.”
“You could get your clothes from Winslow.”
“Yeah, and I could schedule a root canal for fun too, but I think I’ll pass.” She paused long enough to take a sip of her coffee. “Yuck.”
She slammed the mug down and Dan watched in amazement as she blushed. “I mean, I’m not much of a coffee drinker. Tea. Yes, I like tea better.”
“It’s okay, Charlie. I know how bad my coffee is. No matter what I do, what brand I buy, I just can’t make a decent cup.”
“Do you mind if I give it a try?”
Dan just shrugged and took another sip. It really was terrible.
She must have taken that for his consent, because she dumped out the pot of coffee he’d made and rinsed it before refilling it with fresh water.
“About Winslow. You’ll have to face him sometime.”
“Not if I can help it. He’ll just start telling me what an embarrassment I am and how I owe him gratitude for all he’s done for me.”
She paused mid–coffee scoop. “You know, the more I think about it, that was always Winslow’s attitude. I owed him for wanting to marry me.” She slid the coffee basket in place and started the machine. “Maybe too many women wanted him for his money, and he just assumed I did too. He never knew me well enough to realize that wealth and social position don’t mean anything to me. Maybe they did to my mother, but not me. I just want to be loved. Yeah, I know that sounds as little girlish as you accused me of being. But I think everyone wants to find someone who will love them—someone they can love in return. And for a while, I thought Winslow did love me, and I did love him, but—”
“About today,” Dan said in a blatant bid to change the direction of the conversation.
“If you’ll just give me a ride into town, maybe up by the mall, I can do some car shopping on Peach Street, then go get some clothes.”
“I took the day off,” he said.
“That’s not necessary.”
He didn’t want to say the wrong thing again, so he simply shrugged. “It’s done.”
“You know, Dan, despite the tough, silent-guy routine, I’m beginning to suspect you’re just a softy at heart.”
