by Leigh Duncan
“That’s funny. There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you, too.”
Josh’s finger at her chin tipped her face to his. When she took a single glimpse of the emotion that darkened his eyes, the world tilted beneath her. Was that what she thought it was? She relinquished the tight grip her teeth had on her bottom lip only long enough to whisper, “You first.”
Josh slipped his hand over hers. At his touch, her fingers stilled. He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles in a motion that turned up the heat beneath a simmering desire.
“Charlie…Charlotte.” Emotion spilled from the brown eyes he locked on her. “I know it’s too soon, but I can’t keep my feelings for you bottled up inside anymore. I love you. I have from the moment I first saw you. I want you—you and me—forever.”
Her heart, which had been hammering in her chest, picked up its pace. “I want that, too, Josh. More than anything.” She drew in an unsteady breath. “I love you, too.”
Sheer joy danced in Josh’s eyes. Taking advantage of their secluded booth, he leaned in for a tender kiss that sent her heart into overdrive. Aware that they were still in a public restaurant, she broke the embrace before things got too heated and much sooner than she wanted. When the warm weight of his arm once more rested on her shoulders, she confessed, “I never thought I could fall in love this fast. I tried so very hard not to. But I couldn’t help myself. You…you overwhelmed all my defenses. I feel more protected in your arms than I’ve ever felt before.”
Josh hugged her close. “It won’t always be this easy. No matter how much we might want to, we can’t spend our lives here in Casa Blanca.”
“I don’t need fancy villas or five-star restaurants as long as I have you,” she said, making sure he knew she understood what he was saying. “We’ll figure things out. We already know we make a good team. I mean, who knew you’d be such a genius with spreadsheets?” She finger-combed the hair she’d worn loose around her shoulders to please him. While they worked on the W&B presentation, Josh’s ability to manipulate numbers and financial data had been nothing short of uncanny. She tapped a finger to her chin, pensive. “You should think about doing something with that talent someday.”
A frown, however fleeting, crossed his face. “You don’t like the way I make my living?” he asked.
She rushed to clarify. “I wouldn’t change a thing. Leastways, not about you. No, I’m the one who needed to look at the world a little differently. I’ve been so focused on making the next rung on the corporate ladder, I nearly forgot the importance of love, home and family. My parents never lost sight of that. For a long time, I didn’t understand how they could be so happy with so little, but I do now. I want that kind of life, too. With you.”
She expected her reassurance to erase the troubled look on Josh’s face. Instead, the lines around his eyes only deepened. “Yeah, about that. There’s something else I need to tell you. There are some things you don’t know about me.”
“You’re not a serial killer or anything, are you?” She let a hopeful smile play about her lips. Whatever Josh’s secret, be it frivilous hobby or an ex-wife they’d deal with it together.
When he didn’t answer, she searched his face. Warning signs flashed in his dark eyes, and she stiffened. A split second later, their waiter put in an appearance.
“Can I show you the dessert menu?” he asked with what had to be the world’s worst timing. “Our special tonight is a blood orange key lime pie in a bittersweet chocolate cracker crust. Unless you’d like to see the menu.” Two leather-bound booklets thudded onto the table.
Hoping Josh’s sudden caginess was due to their server’s arrival and not bad news about his past, she mustered a lightheartedness she didn’t feel. She grasped one of the slim volumes as if it were a life preserver and asked, “Should we splurge on something decadent?”
Tonight, there’d be no quibbling over the cost. When Josh had suggested meeting his aunt at Junonia’s, she’d agreed, but only on the condition he let her expense the meal.
“That works for me. You pick.”
“The chocolate buttermilk cake,” she said with a single glance at the menu. When the waiter departed, she eased out the breath she’d been holding. Then, expecting him to pick up the threads of their conversation where they’d left off, she turned to Josh.
But his focus had shifted to the center of the restaurant where square-shouldered Nate Ivory had risen to his feet. Before the wait staff could rush forward, he pulled out his wife’s chair and cupped her elbow. Charlie blinked in disbelief when America’s favorite couple headed directly for their table.
“Joshua.” Nate hailed the man beside her with an easy grin. “Sorry for the interruption, but we couldn’t leave without at least saying hello.”
“Nate. Liza. Good to see you. This is my friend Charlotte Oak.” Angling his head away from the new arrivals, Josh mouthed a quick I’m sorry.
The apology made as much sense as learning her boyfriend was on a first-name basis with one of the wealthiest men in America, and Charlie managed a tense nod.
What is going on? Every fiber of her being went on high alert.
“Nice to meet you, Charlotte.” A calculating pair of topaz eyes passed over her, while the stunning brunette on Nate’s arm murmured a similar greeting. Nate turned to Josh. “I didn’t know you were on Mimosa Key this week.”
“Oh, you know how it is. Family calls. You show up.”
Show up? Where else did Josh spend his time? Charlie felt her brow pucker. Now that she thought of it, he’d never said where he actually lived. Did he commute from nearby Naples? That had to be the answer. Still, it didn’t explain his unexpected friendship with the man who insisted on using Josh’s full name.
“Listen, Joshua, we’re a man short for a softball game next Saturday night. Care to fill in and take a turn at bat?”
Charlie stilled. Nate’s softball team was the stuff legends were made of. As well it should be, considering the fact that the net worth of every man on the team rose into the billions.
“I’m honored.” Josh answered far more casually than she’d expect of a man who’d just been asked to hobnob with the rich and famous. “I’m not sure I can afford your entry fees, though. I hear you guys play for some serious money.”
“Nah, it’s all for charity. Why don’t you bring some wine, and we’ll call it even?”
Josh nodded thoughtfully. “I got my hands on a few cases of Peter Michael Au Paradis not too long ago. I’ll bring a few bottles.”
A tsunami of disbelief washed over Charlie as she listened to a conversation that grew weirder by the moment. She’d tried the cabernet in her wine appreciation class, but at nearly two hundred dollars a pop, it was too rich for her blood by far. And Josh had cases of it? Her image of the man she loved broke into jagged pieces that wouldn’t fit back together again, no matter how she twisted and turned them.
At his side, Nate’s wife glanced down at an iWatch on an elegant rose gold band. She pressed a finger to the device. “We need to go,” she said softly before aiming an apologetic look at Charlie. “Our son, Dylan, refuses to go to sleep until Nate here”—she tapped the arm of the man who beamed with paternal pride—“tucks him in for the night. You should come to the softball game. It’ll be fun.”
Nate nodded agreeably. “Pleasure meeting you, Ms. Oak. I’ll look forward to seeing you both Saturday. And drinking all your wine, Joshua.”
Rather than rise as she’d expected him to, Josh merely touched his hand to his forehead in a two-fingered salute that seemed oddly familiar. Charlie stared after the departing couple while she struggled to reconstruct her impression of Josh. Her eyes blurred when she couldn’t reconcile his easygoing attitude toward Nate with everything else she knew about him. She pressed her fingers to her lids as she recalled details that had troubled her over the past four days. Lacey Walker’s insistence on comping their meal that first night and the two-hundred-dollar tip he’d left their waitress. The deference s
hown him by practically everyone they met, including just now by one of the richest men in the world. She squeezed her eyes tighter, recalling his cocky salute. She’d seen that move somewhere before. She knew it. She swung toward Josh, her lips parting, all the air hissing from her lungs. Unable to look away, she saw his face superimposed on the cover of a recent issue of Forbes.
“I’m sorry,” Josh said. “I didn’t mean for you to find out like this. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”
Her mouth dropped open, but no words came out. She stared, unable to move, unable to make a sound, unable to stop the tears that welled in her eyes.
Their waiter chose that moment to reappear. With a flourish, he produced a dark dessert and slid it onto the table. Blinking, Charlie averted her eyes by staring down at an immense slab of chocolate layer cake that floated in a lake of vanilla cream sauce.
“Josh?” She laughed at the ridiculousness of what she was thinking. There had to be a better explanation, a logical justification. A bit of icing slid off the cake and landed in the sauce. She had to ask, “Josh, why are you working at the Super Min?”
He stared at her so hard she thought perhaps her face would melt beneath the intensity of his gaze. “This isn’t the way I wanted you to find out, Charlie.” His hand closed over hers.
“You’re, you’re the Joshua McLean?” Any hope that he’d tell her it was all a silly case of mistaken identity faded at his quick nod. There’d been a mistake all right, but she’d been the one who made it. Her trust in him shattered as she gazed at a man she didn’t know at all. Pain lanced through her chest.
“How could you, Josh? Or is it Joshua?” she corrected, because everyone in the world knew him by his full name. “How could you lie to me like that?”
“I never lied.” Josh’s jaw flexed. The hand that had cupped hers withdrew, and the air around him took on a crystalline quality, as if the temperature had plummeted. “Not once.”
“Maybe not in so many words, but you pretended to be someone you aren’t. You let me think you needed my help when you don’t.” She had to make him understand what he’d done. She’d given him her heart and put her career on the line for him. She had trusted him. The owners of other mini-marts had done the same. And for what? Josh could buy and sell their stores ten times over and never even notice a dip in his financial statements. “Was this all some kind of game to you?”
“Never,” he said firmly. “You know I’d never do that.”
Laughter bordering on tears slipped out as she retreated to her side of the booth. “The truth is, I don’t know whether you would or you wouldn’t. I don’t know you at all. Not the real you.” Josh, or Joshua, or whatever he called himself, was the latest in a long line of men who had lied to her, beginning with her dad. He’d insisted he could make a go of farming right up to the very minute the sheriff evicted them from their land. “I want you to leave now.”
She thought her tone conveyed that the matter was not open for discussion, but Josh only leaned closer. “You don’t mean that. We love each other. We can work this out.”
“No, Josh. I don’t think we can,” she insisted. She forced herself to say what had to be said. “You lied to me. I can’t trust you. It’s over between us.”
For one brief instant, pain flashed across Josh’s face as the impact of what she was saying hit home. Before she could take another breath, before she could retract her words, his expression shuttered. Casually, he swiped his napkin across his lips and let the cloth drop to the table.
“And the meeting tomorrow?” he asked, a hurt that didn’t show on his face filling his voice. “You’ll still go, won’t you? You won’t let all the work we’ve done be for nothing.”
She took a deep breath and clamped her teeth down on her lower lip. No matter what had happened between her and Josh, Favor Oil’s plan to take over the mini-marts was still wrong. “I’ll think about it,” she said finally. “Now please leave before I make a scene.”
Heaven help her, a part of her wanted him to stay. To sweep her into his arms and swear that as long as they loved each other, everything would be okay. But she guessed he had too much pride. Either that, or he didn’t really love her. Because, other than a slight rounding of his shoulders, he edged out of the booth.
“I’ll pick you up in the morning, then,” he said and walked away as if he didn’t care. She held her breath, wishing he’d come back, until his footsteps faded into the distance. When she was sure he was really gone, she caught the attention of the waiter lingering in the shadows. One fat tear slid down her cheek and splashed onto the cake as she signaled for the bill. She stared down at the puddle of melting ice cream and wished she’d never come to Mimosa Key.
Chapter Six
Dammit. The truth had literally been on the tip of his tongue before Nate interrupted him. All he’d needed was five more minutes. Five more lousy minutes, and he’d have come clean about himself. But did he get them? That would be a big fat no.
Dammit. Dammit. Damn. It.
Stalking out of Junonia, Josh muttered enough curses that the valet eyed him from a safe distance. Not that he blamed the kid. Or anyone else, for that matter. Even on Mimosa Key, something like this was bound to happen. So, yeah, he’d known his good ol’ boy charade wouldn’t hold up much longer. But it had felt so right to go on pretending he and Charlie were simply a normal couple out on a nice, normal date that he’d waited just a little bit too long to be completely honest with her.
Now he’d made a mess of things and hurt the one person in the world he’d never meant to harm. The pain he’d seen on Charlie’s face as the truth sank in had cut him like a pair of pruning shears. But he refused to believe it was over between them. Yeah, he’d walked way, a move he’d regretted before his feet hit the pavers outside Junonia. And he’d do anything, spend the rest of his life trying to make up for his mistake…if she’d give him a chance.
Which brought him around to those pesky five minutes again. That was all he needed. Five minutes to apologize. Five minutes to shower Charlie with roses, to ply her with champagne and caviar, to explain why he’d needed her to fall in love with the man who worked behind the counter at his aunt’s convenience store before she discovered the side of him that drew women like magnets and rattled nerves in boardrooms.
She’d give him that much time, wouldn’t she?
He nodded. She had to. He ran a hand through his hair for the umpteenth time since Charlie had kicked him out of the restaurant. Once they were on their way to Orlando, they’d be trapped in the car together for two hours. Surely, in that amount of time, he could convince her to give him a second chance.
Now that the blinders were off, though, there wasn’t much point in continuing to fly under the radar. Steering his aunt’s old sedan onto the main road, he speed-dialed his assistant in Atlanta. In seconds, he’d arranged for a car and driver to pick him up at Charity’s in the morning. By the time he disconnected, he’d been assured that a selection of suits and the necessary accoutrements along with a very special item from his safe-deposit box would be delivered well before his scheduled departure. As for tonight, he’d spend it rehearsing the most important, five-minute speech of his life.
But at Casa Blanca the next morning, a thin young woman bustled out of the Rockrose carrying an armload of linens just as his foot hit the first step leading to the deck surrounding the villa. Josh crossed quickly to the door and held it for her.
“Could you let Ms. Oak know her ride’s here?” he asked as she stuffed towels and sheets into a laundry bag hanging from her cart.
“There’s no one inside.” The girl, Robyn, according to her name tag, consulted a slip of paper on a sturdy clipboard. “Says here the Rockrose is vacant till next week.”
“You’re sure?” He peered through the open doorway. Not a trace remained of the presentation he and Charlie had slaved over. The blankets and pillows were missing from the couch. Her laptop had disappeared. His heart sank.
“Mayb
e she’ll meet you in the lobby?” Robyn’s eyes were hopeful.
“Yeah. That must be it.” He stopped himself before he gave the woman his signature salute. “Thanks,” he said, turning away before she saw his heart break. He’d stop by the registration desk and check with Lacey, but he knew he was too late. He’d missed his chance to make amends. Charlie was gone.
“Where to, Mr. McLean?” the driver asked when Josh slid onto the backseat a short while later.
“Orlando. The W&B offices.” His heart might be broken in two, but he had no choice. To save his aunt’s business and those of the other mini-mart owners, he had to attend the meeting.
Would Charlie be there?
Realizing their breakup might have prompted a complete change of heart, he gulped. If she didn’t show, he’d have to present their case on his own even though, without Charlie at his side, without her notes and facts and figures, his chance of success was less than that of a California red in a French wine tasting.
Clearly, he needed a backup plan.
Putting his emotions on hold for the moment, he slipped his phone from a coat pocket and scrolled through his contacts to select a number. “Steve,” he said when an old friend picked up the call on the first ring.
“Josh, you son of a gun. It’s been too long. What’s up?”
He didn’t bother shooting the breeze but got straight to the point. All those late nights he’d spent helping his college roommate understand the fine points of econometrics were about to pay dividends. Following graduation, Steve had blazed a trail through the corporate ranks of Shell Oil, making him the right man to resolve at least one of Josh’s problems. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh, yeah? What can I do for you?”
“Remember a couple of years ago, when gas prices went through the roof?” On the other side of tinted windows, a doting father pushed a baby stroller along the sidewalk in downtown Mimosa Key. Josh’s stomach clenched. Yesterday, he’d dared to dream of children and a future with Charlie. A mere twenty-four hours later, the years ahead stretched bleak and lonely. He swallowed and turned his attention to the conversation.
