She turned back. “Right.”
“How’s it going?”
“Not bad.”
“Holler if I can help.”
She brightened. “Really?”
“Of course. I need to put my high-priced legal education to some sort of use, don’t I?”
“Okay, but I’ll probably drive you crazy with stupid questions.”
“Feel free. And no questions are stupid.”
“You haven’t heard mine yet, though, have you?”
He grinned. He’d been doing a lot of that since he met (well, noticed) Charlotte the other day. Enjoying himself. Laughing. And he knew he shouldn’t, but he wanted more.
Where Charlotte was concerned?
More, more, MORE.
Which probably explained what he said next.
“I’ll take a rain check on the pizza. Okay?”
She hesitated, turmoil darkening her eyes.
Which told him that he wasn’t the only one struggling here, and that was a tiny comfort even if it wasn’t enough to ease the ache of longing inside him.
“Okay.”
* * *
“Mommy?”
At the sound of her son’s voice Charlotte groaned. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her textbook, study guide, flash cards, notes and computer stacked in front of her in an overwhelming, yet oddly comforting, display. She’d had her head in her hands, resting her tired eyes for one quick second before she began tonight’s reading, but now she looked up, knowing what she’d see.
Her son, who should have been asleep an hour and a half ago, stood in the doorway, regarding her with eyes that were wide and bleary.
Oh, for God’s sake.
It was now—she checked her watch—nine-thirty. After leaving the office at the end of her extraordinary first day as Jake Hamilton’s new paralegal, she’d picked up Harry, made a quick stop at the grocery store for some milk and endured Harry’s embarrassing temper tantrum in the checkout line when she refused to buy him a bag of M&M’s and let him eat it for dinner.
Once they had arrived home, she had made a quick supper of spaghetti and meatballs before giving Harry his bath and taking her own shower. This was followed by quiet snuggling on the sofa while watching the latest Elmo video for what had to be the billionth time, and then reading Click, Clack, Moo for, yes, the billionth time, too.
At that point, it was eight o’clock. Time for all two-and-a-half-year-olds to go to bed, right?
Not so much, apparently.
Harry, the love of her life, had climbed out of the crib to ask her to turn on his night-light, then to ask for water, despite the conspicuous presence of the full sippy cup on the table in his room and then for the inevitable trip to the bathroom for a follow-up pee, which was the only time all day he’d voluntarily tried to use the toilet. Now he’d reappeared for God-knew-what.
She, meanwhile, had sat there at the freaking kitchen table, fighting both sleep and her rising frustration, and tried, over and over again, to read the thirty pages of case law that they’d be discussing in class tomorrow night. The professor, who was making his way through the roster, hadn’t called on her yet. Given her luck, this surely meant that, if she didn’t get the reading finished tonight, he’d call on her tomorrow.
And she’d look like a dunce in front of everyone.
She loved her precious son. She really did.
But, honest to God, she was giving serious thought to trying to sell him on eBay. The keys, she figured, were a cute picture and a reasonable Buy-It-Now price.
It could work, right?
She stared at him, straining for patience.
“Did I, or did I not, ask you several times to stay in the crib?”
Harry nodded.
“You did hear that, right?”
Harry nodded.
“So your hearing is fine, then. Your listening ears are turned on and working.”
Harry nodded.
“What is the issue, then? Because Mommy needs to study, and you keep interrupting. And that’s making me upset.”
“There’s a monster under my bed.”
Not that again. “I thought he was in the closet.”
“That’s the other monster. This is a new monster.”
Great. Just what she needed on top of everything else. “A new monster?”
“Yeah. And he was behind the chair. But when I closed my eyes, he snuck under the bed.”
“What does he look like?”
“Mean. He’s got mean eyes and lots of sharp teeth.”
Wonderful. Here was her reward for letting Harry watch an Animal Planet special about sharks the other day. “Well, what should we do?”
Harry pursed his lips and thought this over. “If he promises not to growl and stays under the bed, he can sleep in my bedroom. Because maybe he doesn’t have a place to live.”
Wow.
Just like that, the kid melted her tired and fed-up heart. And that was why she hadn’t sold him online. Yet.
Plus, he was adorable.
He wore his footed blue flannel pajamas with, you guessed it, monsters on them. His green fleece blankie was hugged up close to his cheek for safekeeping, because, he’d previously explained, you couldn’t leave a blankie on the bed and vulnerable to theft when there were monsters roaming about, and his little thumb was crinkled and wet from sucking. Plus, his curly hair was mussed, his cheeks were fat and he had that delicious clean-kid smell courtesy of his Johnson’s Baby Lotion.
Yeah. Adorable.
“Come here, baby,” she said, extending her hand to him. With a grateful smile, he scurried over to her, his feet scuffing on the tile, and scrambled into her lap for a quick hug. “Let’s go talk to that monster and make sure he understands the rules.”
“’Kay,” Harry said sleepily, his head already drooping onto her shoulder.
Charlotte stood, cradling his solid weight against her chest, and was halfway down the hall when there was a quiet knock on her front door. She hesitated, her heart sinking, because she knew that knock, and there was only one person it could be. Maybe if she didn’t answer and snuck down the hall to the bedroom, he’d get the message and go away.
More knocking, louder.
Harry’s head came up, and he nailed her with eyes that were now wide awake and shining with excitement. “Daddy! It’s Daddy!”
Shit, shit, SHIT.
She felt cornered, because, while she may be the kind of mom who wanted to kick her baby daddy’s butt on occasion, she wasn’t the kind of mom who’d disappoint her son by keeping him from his loving father. So she surrendered to the inevitable.
“Shh,” she told Harry as she changed course for the front door. Maybe if she kept him calm and quiet, it wouldn’t be too much trouble to get him settled in after this unannounced visit. “Let’s check the peephole and see who it is.”
She checked. Yeah. Roger. The jackass.
Suppressing her huff of irritation for Harry’s sake, she slid the chain and opened the door.
Roger, who now had a black leather jacket on over his scrubs and eyes sporting hollowed-out rings of exhaustion, came inside. “Hey.”
“Daddy!”
Harry’s glad cry saved Charlotte from having to answer. Which was a good thing because she wasn’t feeling very civil at the moment.
Roger read it all in her face, though. His gaze skittered away to Harry and, clapping his hands, he pulled the boy out of her arms and settled him on his hip.
“How’s my boy? What’re you doing still awake, man? It’s bedtime.”
“Monsters,” Harry said solemnly.
“I have an idea, Harry.” Charlotte kept her eyes on the boy, but her firm message was entirely for Roger. “Daddy can on
ly stay for a minute, so why don’t you let him talk to the monster and tuck you into bed. Okay?”
Harry beamed with approval. “Okay. Come on, Daddy.”
With a last wary look over his shoulder at Charlotte, Roger headed for Harry’s room at the end of the hallway. Charlotte, on the other hand, went into the living room, where she took out her seething anger on her decorative pillows, pounding them into submission on the chairs and sofa.
Roger came back a couple minutes later wearing that hangdog expression Charlotte couldn’t believe she’d ever fallen for. “The kid couldn’t keep his eyes open.”
Charlotte saw no need for preliminaries or delays. “What are you doing here?”
Roger shrugged. “I didn’t get my full time with Harry today. I wanted to say good-night on my way home.”
Wow. Such paternal devotion. It really choked her up.
Not.
The issue, she thought for the thousandth time, was that they lived two minutes from each other, a calculated decision they’d made as Harry’s parents. They were close enough to make easy transfers of Harry back and forth, which was great. On the other hand, they were close enough that Roger thought he could drop in whenever he felt like it, which was both infuriating and, much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, harmful to her tender sensibilities.
Roger had been her first and only love. It was an immature and shaky college love, true, but she’d felt it, along with the heartbreak that came when it ended. It had taken her a long time to pick up the emotional pieces after their breakup, probably because Roger sent her signals that were so mixed, they might as well have been frapéed in a blender.
They were over. No, wait, they were on a break and needed to reevaluate. Good news! The evaluation led to a renewed period of recommitted bliss. Oh, but wait. On second thought—or fifth or sixth—they were over. For real.
She’d wanted things to work out with her first love. Wanted to make a family with Harry’s father. Wanted not to be a failure at something so important to her son’s future.
Now she just wanted everyone to stay in their own lane so she wouldn’t have to go through that kind of heartache ever again. And she certainly couldn’t do that when Roger showed up for these sort of unexpected visits.
The less she saw of Roger, the better.
“First of all,” she said, keeping her voice low, because Harry was likely to turn up again at any time, and she never wanted him to see his parents arguing over him, “thanks for calling before you just showed up on my doorstep. I’m so thrilled that you respect my wishes when I ask you to give me the courtesy of a call so I can tell you if it’s a good time or not.”
Roger dropped his gaze and had the decency to look guilty, which helped smooth her ruffled feathers a little.
“Sorry. I just decided on the spur of the moment when I was driving past.”
Of course he did, she thought, rolling her eyes. “Second, Harry’s bedtime is eight o’clock, and you know it. When you show up like this, you run the risk of waking him up and getting him all hyped again.”
A hint of satisfaction crossed over Roger’s features, although he had sense enough not to let his face slide into an open smirk. “I didn’t get him all hyped again tonight, did I? Looks like I helped get him settled in.”
Unfortunately, she’d noticed. “Yeah, well, don’t expect a round of applause from me. I need to study. The next time you show up unannounced, I’m going to ignore you. Whether Harry hears you at the door or not. We clear? Great. Buh-bye.”
If he had some response to that, she didn’t wait to hear it. Wheeling around, she hurried to the door and opened it, the better to speed his departure so she could focus on her studying.
Roger didn’t move.
She gave him a pointed look over her shoulder and made a sweeping gesture toward the exit that he chose not to acknowledge. Still, she did her best to get rid of him.
“Buh-bye,” she said again.
“I need to talk to you, Char.”
His renewed use of the nickname he’d once spoken with such affection caused a sweet ache of nostalgia to ripple through her. But she was not going down that road with him. Not ever again.
“Don’t call me Char. And I’ve already told you I need to study.”
“It’s important. Charlotte, please.”
She paused, cursing herself for a fool. Then she closed the front door and went back into the living room, where they sat on the sofa.
“Thanks,” he said.
She nodded.
The brief silence gave her time to notice a few troublesome details she’d been ignoring. Like the undercurrent of husky emotion running through his voice, and the thrumming tension between them, which didn’t feel entirely hostile. Like how she wished she’d had time to throw on a robe, because all she wore was a cami and a pair of knit shorts, neither of which felt like much protection from Roger’s sharp gaze as it flickered over her in a discreet inventory. Like how long it’d been since she’d had sex, and how the only partner she’d had since Roger had never been able to light her up the way Roger could.
Like how really long it’d been since she’d had sex.
Like how her body seemed increasingly dissatisfied with her self-imposed celibacy.
She cleared her throat, determined to keep this conversation on track. “What’s up?”
“I’ve been thinking,” he began.
“Yeah? I knew I smelled something burning.”
He grinned; she grinned back; the air prickled with electricity.
But then a vivid flush of color ran over his cheeks, and she knew what was coming.
“Don’t,” she said quickly.
Too late. “I miss you, Char.”
Her keen woman’s brain understood the dangers of wading into these waters with him, but her girlish heart still had a corner reserved for the first and only man she’d loved.
If only she could cut out that corner and stomp it into oblivion.
“You don’t miss me. You’re just too busy to date right now, and you’re probably a little lonely, and the booty calls I’m sure you have with your classmates and the nurses at the hospital aren’t as thrilling as they once were—”
“I miss you, Charlotte.”
“—and so you’re thinking, Hmm, I wonder what good old Charlotte is up to? Maybe she’d be up for round forty-seven of our dysfunctional relationship. And so you came over here, and now you expect me to—”
Without warning, he cut her off by cupping her face in his hands and kissing her.
For a weak second or two, she responded. There was no way she couldn’t. The sweet nostalgia of her long history with Roger, combined with her extended sexual drought and mixed in with her reawakening body, courtesy of her sizzling chemistry with Jake, added up to a match touched to the corner of an ancient piece of parchment.
There was a flame, yeah.
Their lips came together, sliding into familiar positions, and she felt the flickers of wanting. But when Roger groaned and angled her head to deepen the kiss, it was as if a brisk wind blew through her body and snuffed out that tiny flame.
She wanted, true, but she didn’t want this.
She didn’t want him.
She wanted a man she couldn’t have.
And this poor substitute only sharpened her frustrated desire for Jake.
Breaking the kiss, she pulled back, put her hand to her mouth and worked hard not to make the situation worse by wiping Roger’s taste away.
“I can’t.”
Roger’s half-closed eyes were bright with lust and hope. He smoothed away the hair from her temples with gentle fingers and leaned in again, trying to resume the kiss. “You were, baby. You were.”
“Stop.”
Lunging to her feet, she
paced away and then wheeled around, facing him. He, meanwhile, heaved one of those you’re-killing-me sighs and flopped against the back of the sofa, covering his eyes with his arm.
Eventually, the tension level dipped enough for him to lower his arm and look at her again, his expression doleful. “I miss you,” he said again. “I still want you.”
There was that tug, again—the lure of the familiar and the thrill of knowing she could still affect him after all this time. Underlying all of it was her bottomless and ongoing guilt over being unable to raise her son in a functioning two-parent family.
Didn’t Harry deserve every advantage and blessing that she could give him?
Wait. What was she doing? Going back down that same stupid road again?
No way, José.
“It’s over,” she said, putting a lot more steel in her voice. “We can’t go back again. And we’ve been getting along pretty well, except for when you bail out on taking Harry when you’re supposed to. Why rock the boat?”
A crinkle worked its way down Roger’s forehead as she spoke. By the end of her sentence, it was a full-fledged frown.
“Does this have to do with your new boss?”
The question came out of nowhere, swooping in and hitting her hard when she least expected it. “My new boss?” she spluttered. “What? No! Why would you ask such a ridiculous question?”
Roger wasn’t buying it. “I saw the way he looked at you.”
“Yeah, okay.” Something inside her slammed into a brick wall, bringing her up against her limits. Maybe she couldn’t control her attraction to Jake, but she sure as hell could control this deteriorating scene. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied, “but it’s late and I still need to study. And you and I are over. We had umpteen chances, and we never made it work, did we? So now it’s time for both of us to move on.”
“You can’t move on with your boss, Charlotte. You’re smarter than that.”
She’d thought she was. But that was before Jake looked twice at her.
“It’s none of your business.” Marching to the door, she opened it for him. “Good night. Like I said, call first the next time. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.”
Case for Seduction (Kimani Romance) Page 9
