by Holly Jacobs
“Except what?”
“Except for your pretty girlfriend. She seems to be immune to my attitude and my looks.” He shook his head. “Can’t say that finding an immune woman happens often.”
“What do you mean immune?”
“I flashed her my award-winning smile, batted my blue eyes at her, and asked her to lunch. Dan, my friend, that’s all it generally takes to get a woman in bed, much less a simple lunch. But your Charlie wasn’t biting.”
“She’s not my Charlie.” Dan was having a hard time remembering that one tiny point.
Charlie Eaton wasn’t his, and wasn’t going to become his.
“No?” Con’s skepticism was evident in his expression.
“No.”
“Then I can ask her out to dinner tonight?” Con kicked his feet onto the edge of Dan’s desk, apparently totally relaxed.
Dan wanted to wipe that knowing smirk off his friend’s face but settled for slamming the wall again. “No.”
Con nodded. “I thought as much. Molly’s often said that when you fell it would be hard and fast. Looks like she’s right.”
“I haven’t fallen anywhere except into an insane asylum.”
“Hard and fast,” Con said again. He stood and walked out of Dan’s office, leaving Dan standing alone behind his desk.
He stared at the dent in his wall, and then down the road where Charlie had fled.
No. He hadn’t fallen anywhere but into a slight case of lust. But he was done lusting after Charlie. He’d had that last kiss and now he was over it. Oh, he was so over it.
Charlie banged her knuckles against the floor for the umpteenth time, but she didn’t care. Scrubbing the floor was more therapeutic than she’d ever imagined.
After spending the rest of the day listening to Dan bark orders, banging the brush against the linoleum was quite satisfying. Charlie vented her frustration while keeping her little place clean. Both were strangely satisfying.
Scrubbing the floor wasn’t exactly how she’d like to satisfy herself over Dan Martin, but for the moment it looked like her only option.
She stood and surveyed the small kitchen area that joined the combination living room and bedroom. Everything was neat as a pin. Except that one little mark to her left. She knelt back down and attacked it with gusto.
Charlie wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead. She might not have a lot of practical knowledge, which was absurd considering it was the new millennium and she was twenty-seven years old.
“Oh, my God. This is what you’ve been reduced to? Scrubbing floors? You could be living in Winslow’s new house and have a maid to do this.”
Charlie was pulled from her fantasies back into the real world. She would know that shrieky voice anywhere. She turned and there stood Harriet Eaton, a shocked look on her plastic surgeon–sculpted face.
“Mother,” Charlie said as she stood.
“You should be on your honeymoon, not scrubbing a floor.” Harriet stepped daintily into the kitchen, taking in the small space.
Charlie wiped her hands against the back of her jeans. “It’s my house, at least for now, so I can hardly be a servant. Would you like a seat?”
Harriet wrinkled her nose, as if she was too good to sit on metal chairs. She remained standing. Her delicate sensibility might have appeared genuine to anyone else, but Charlie knew that Harriet Eaton had grown up Harriet Wisniewski, a girl who considered marrying Charlie’s decidedly middle-class father a step up in the world and was now determined to step even higher with Charlie’s marriage.
“Winslow hires someone to come in and clean,” she said with a sniff.
Charlie pulled out a chair and sat. “I don’t mind scrubbing a floor. You could spit across the room and hit the other wall. But I don’t imagine spitting across a kitchen is what you’re here to talk about.”
“No, I don’t suppose it is.” Disapproval etched on her face, Harriet took the seat opposite Charlie. “When are you going to stop this foolishness? Winslow said he came to bring you home and you told him some absurd story about working for that . . .”
“Ruffian was the word you used last time.”
The memory brought a smile to Charlie’s face. Her mother put on airs with the casual ease that anyone else might use put on their pants in the morning.
“Yes.” Harriet nodded. “Ruffian.”
“I’m sure Winslow told you more than that.” Charlie could almost imagine their conversation. “I’m working for Dan both in his office . . . and in his bedroom.”
The lie rolled easily off her lips. And Charlie hoped that soon, very soon, it wouldn’t be a lie at all. Her growing attraction to Dan was like an itch, just begging to be scratched. And if she didn’t take care of it soon, she’d be the one begging, begging Dan to . . .
Harriet’s angry sputtering shook Charlie from her sweet reverie.
“You’re—”
“Yes, Mother. I’m sleeping with him and working for him. My job at the museum’s gone, and I needed to make some money. And you might not have noticed, but my art degree doesn’t have employers flocking at my door. Dan got me a job at the trucking company he works for.” She didn’t mention he owned the company . . . or at least owned part of it.
“So, I work with him and sleep with him.”
“Winslow said that, but I don’t believe a word of it. You wouldn’t even sleep with Winslow, and you’ve been with him a year. Why would you sleep with a man you’ve only known for days?”
Maybe Charlie should be shocked that Winslow and her mother had discussed their sexual, or lack thereof, relationship, but she wasn’t. Nothing either of them did had the ability to shock her anymore.
“Dan is a real man who can spark the most delicious feelings in me. When he touches me it’s like a forest fire ignites in my body. The only light Winslow could ever light was a candle on the table.” She hoped Harriet ran back and tattled that to Winslow. Maybe it would put a dent in his canyon-size ego, but she doubted it.
“Your manners are severely lacking, young lady.”
“But I’ve learned from a master, Mother.” Suddenly her annoyance faded. All that was left was a deep sadness. “Please, go home. And understand this, there is no way I’m ever going to marry Winslow. There’s nothing you can do, or he can do, that will change my mind. I’m finally grown up, and having the time of my life. Good-bye, Mother.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m afraid you are.” Suddenly Dan shadowed the door of the small apartment.
“You,” Harriet Eaton hissed as she sprang from her chair to face Dan. “You’ve ruined her.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I came home early from work in hopes of ruining her a little more.” He winked at Charlie as Harriet turned a dozen brilliant shades of red. “Your place or mine, honey?”
“You, you . . .” Harriet didn’t seem to be able to squeeze any other insult out.
“Good-bye, Mother.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Eaton.”
Harriet stomped toward the door and Dan moved to one side to allow her to pass. She turned in the doorway. “Charlotte, get in the car.”
“Mother, I’m a big girl. And I’d like to think that your tone wouldn’t have intimidated me even if I weren’t. I tried to live your life, but it didn’t work. This time, I’m living mine.”
“And that new life includes scrubbing floors and sleeping with the likes of him?”
“The likes of him is definitely preferable to the type of man you’d saddle me with. Winslow didn’t love me, Mother. He was never the man of my dreams—he was the man of yours. Maybe you should see if he’d marry you.”
“You’re telling me this man loves you?”
The look of horror on Dan’s face would have been humorous if the subject weren’t so serious.
“Dan doesn’t love me
, but he’s honest about it. He rode like a knight in shining armor to my rescue more times than I can count.”
“So you’re going to be a trucker?”
“No, but I’m going to work at a trucking company.”
Harriet shook her head. “Well, I wipe my hands of you. When this man throws you out and you have nowhere to go, don’t come crawling to me and think I’ll comfort you.”
“I never would have imagined that you would, Mother.”
Harriet Eaton turned and made an exit with all the pomp and precision of a fairy-tale queen.
Charlie watched her go and felt regret. Not regret for the fact that she might have just passed an irreconcilable milestone in her relationship with her mother. No, she felt regret for what they might have had.
Once upon a time she’d wanted a mother who would love her.
Someone who would tell her everything would eventually be all right.
Someone who thought Charlie deserved her own happily-ever-after.
The regret came with the final realization that Harriet would never be any of those things, that she’d never think of Charlie’s happiness, only her own.
“You okay?”
She looked up at Dan. The distance that had existed between them all day suddenly seemed to lessen.
“Did you mean it?” she whispered.
“Mean what?”
“The part about coming home to take me to bed?”
She needed him. Charlie might know that nothing would last between them—she’d seen the horror in Dan’s eyes when Harriet had spoken of love—but it didn’t matter. Right now, at this moment in time, she needed Dan to hold her, to make her feel for just one moment in time that she was normal, that she mattered to someone. “I want you to take me to bed.”
Dan blushed. It was a sight she’d never get tired of watching, and even worse, at least for Dan, it was a fascinating sight that she didn’t mind instigating.
“Is that a yes?”
“Charlie, I simply followed your lead. It was all an act, just like yesterday with Winslow.”
“Oh.” Her beautiful idea of snatching just a moment in time with Dan faded. “I guess I should have known.”
“Known what?”
“That you wouldn’t want me either. Did I tell you that all the time I spent with Winslow, we never had sex . . . never? You might as well know. It seems that Winslow and my mother have discussed it in depth.”
“It’s not that I think sex equals love,” she added, in case he got the wrong idea. “But there wasn’t even the desire. I should have realized that meant something. There should be some passion. Our relationship was about as passionate as wet toast.”
She waited, hoping he’d say something. When he didn’t, she simply continued, “I thought he held back because he respected me, but I think maybe it was that he didn’t feel anything for me, except that I’d be malleable. I mean, look at how I let Harriet push me around. What man wouldn’t want a docile, obedient wife?”
“You’re not malleable,” he finally said.
“Gee, thanks. Turn me down, then insult me, or maybe compliment me?”
“It was neither, just a statement of fact. I’d call you many things, but malleable wouldn’t be one of them.”
“What kind of things would you call me?”
“Special, Charlie. You’re a special lady.”
She snorted.
“I mean it. Your mother just walked out of here, unable to see how very special you really are, and you? You’re just as blind. You can’t see how special you are either.”
“Ha.”
Dan ignored her retort and continued talking. “And you can’t see how very much I want you.”
“Then why won’t you take me? I’ve tried everything but stripping naked and throwing myself at you.”
“Charlie, I’m a boy who grew up in a series of homes, never knowing when family members would get tired of my brother Mark and me and pass us on to someone else.”
Images of two little boys being passed about like some unwanted burden sprang unbidden into Charlie’s mind’s eye. Sorrow for the boys swept through her, but she was sure Dan wouldn’t welcome her pity.
“Maybe we’re more alike than I thought,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Never mind,” Charlie said. “I’m sorry that you had a hard time as a child, but could you maybe spell out why we can’t sleep together again? I still don’t think I get it.”
“Don’t you see? I’m a bad risk. I don’t know anything about long-term relationships, about how they work. I’ve never had a woman in my life for more than a few weeks, and I’m okay with that. I don’t want a family.”
What he didn’t say, but Charlie heard beneath his words, was, I don’t want a family who will eventually leave me.
“I can never be the type of man you deserve,” he continued. “I know right now you think you want me. It’s just a game with you, but it will get old. Just like Winslow got old. And when you’re tired of playing, where will you be?”
“That’s not what you’re really asking. You want to know where will you be if I get tired of you? Right?”
“Maybe,” he admitted.
Softly, she asked, “What if I told you that I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of whatever this is that sparks between us?”
Dan didn’t have an answer.
Charlie thought that was the saddest part of all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Charlie tossed and turned that night. She had remade her life.
Okay, not quite remade it. She was rebuilding, but not quite rebuilt yet.
She was a work in progress.
And her relationship with Dan was going to progress as well.
Why? Why did it matter to her so much? Was she just using him, like he thought? Using him to recover from Winslow? Her rebound guy?
No. She discarded the idea.
Did she feel sorry for him, for the quiet man who hid a scared and lonely little boy inside? Maybe a little, but sorry though she was, his lonely past wasn’t why she wanted him.
Maybe it was his eyes. She’d originally thought Dan had kind eyes, but the more she stared at those fathomless gray eyes, the more she saw the sadness there. His quietness was just another wall he’d erected between the world and himself.
She wanted to rip down that wall. She wanted to hear him laugh, to see those dusty gray eyes sparkle with humor. He didn’t laugh nearly enough. Actually he didn’t laugh at all. Maybe she could teach him to laugh? Maybe, a little voice whispered, just maybe she could teach him to care for her?
She wasn’t quite sure where the thought came from, but it didn’t go away during the rest of Charlie’s long, restless night.
But restless nights aren’t always bad. This particular one wasn’t just not bad, it was good. It left Charlie Eaton with an idea. Yes, that was exactly how she thought of it, in all caps.
She wasn’t just going to wait for Dan to see how good things could be between them, she was going to show him. Oh, was she going to show him.
He wanted her, and sooner or later he was going to realize that. Charlie was betting on sooner.
“Mr. Estoban?” she said the next day at work.
“Charlie?”
“Remember that lunch you wanted to share with me yesterday?”
Con nodded, and a lock of his dark hair fell across his forehead. Charlie smiled as she reached across the desk and brushed it aside. “Well, I’m here to see if I can collect a rain check on it?”
“You want to go to lunch with me?” He looked as perplexed by the suggestion as he had yesterday when she’d refused to have lunch with him. “Is Dan busy?”
“I have no idea what Dan’s doing for lunch. I’ve spent my whole day in his office, rearranging files and doing busy work.”
It was evident that if Dan had his way, she’d never leave his office, never leave his side. And that’s what she wanted, but not at his side filing papers. She had other ideas entirely.
“So, is that a yes or a no?” she asked.
Con’s blue eyes, which seemed so out of place bordered by his dark hair and complexion, studied her. Charlie suddenly realized why Con had seemed so surprised when she’d turned him down yesterday. Most women would adore having that type of intensity focused on them. At least they would if they hadn’t met Dan.
“So?” she pressed.
“He’s not going to take this well.”
“Who?”
“Don’t play innocent with me. You know who, and he’s made it abundantly clear that you’re strictly off-limits. And I don’t think I was his only concern. I do believe my buddy Dan has staked his claim.”
“Which might not bother me if he bothered to do any prospecting on that claim. But, here I am, totally prospectless, other than a kiss yesterday.”
“So, why not ask for another kiss, rather than ask me to lunch?”
“I did more than ask for a kiss, I threw myself at him. But it seems your old buddy wasn’t in the mood to catch. I’m hoping that seeing some other man with me might make him feel a bit more inclined.”
“So, you want me to help you make him jealous?” Con asked.
“I’m sorry. You two are friends and partners. I should have thought of that. Never mind. I’ll find some other man to—”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I’d be happy to help you out.”
“But Dan . . .” She paused.
“Needs a nudge,” Con said firmly. “And I’m friend enough to do it.”
“But he’ll be mad.”
“He’ll get over it.” Con rose. “So where do you want to have lunch?”
“I was thinking maybe we could order pizza and eat it at the picnic table outside.”
“Where Dan can’t help but notice us?” Con’s smile telegraphed his approval. “You’re a devious woman, Charlie.”
