In Charlotte’s case, however, he was willing to keep his butt plastered to this chair and listen for as long as she had things to tell him. And he knew her well enough by now to know she didn’t whine.
“Roger and I have different, uh, ideas about the, uh, direction of our relationship. He wants to try again. I’m all tried out. The end. And that’s probably way more than you ever wanted to hear about your paralegal’s personal life, so I won’t bore you any—”
“Why are you all tried out?”
Jake congratulated himself on the nonchalance of his tone. Listening to him, you’d never know that his whole body felt like it was crammed inside his tight throat, making it impossible for him to breathe.
Charlotte hesitated, her gray eyes stormy and troubled. “I have no idea why I’m discussing this with you.”
Jake was smart enough to keep his mouth shut and wait.
“I guess,” Charlotte continued softly, running a hand through her hair, “it’s because I never felt like Roger met me halfway. I was more invested than he was. I gave more of myself than he did. His wishes were always more important than mine were. His education and career. His life. I felt...” A frown grooved down her forehead as she searched for the right word.
“Marginalized?”
Her expression cleared. “Marginalized. Yes. Exactly. And then, after a while, I just stopped caring.”
“I see.”
One edge of her mouth curled with cynical amusement, and she gave him a look. “Well? Don’t you have a defense to make on behalf of the International Brotherhood of Career Men? Don’t tell me you’re not a card-carrying member?”
He loved her sense of humor. “I am a card-carrying member, yeah, but I’m not going to defend...Roger.” He forced out the name, as though he were ejecting a mouthful of dirt.
“Why not?”
“Any man who wouldn’t move heaven and earth to make things work with you,” he quietly told her, “is too stupid to live.”
Ah, shit.
Where had that come from?
He’d meant to say something generic, like, Love shouldn’t hurt, or, A man should put his woman first, or, I’m sure there’s someone better out there for you.
He certainly hadn’t meant to sound like he would move heaven and earth to make things work with her.
But the damage was done. Apparently she’d heard the note of longing in his voice or seen something in the way he was looking at her, because she stilled and watched him, her eyes bright and her color high. After a couple of exquisitely pregnant beats, she opened her mouth, seemed to think better of it, and closed it again.
“What?” he asked.
“Maybe Roger and I both needed to do some more growing up. What about that possibility?”
Did she think that would make him back away from his pronouncement about Roger?
“You look pretty grown to me.” He hesitated before making a quick decision. At this late point in the conversation he figured, what the hell, he may as well go for it. “He’s not the right man for you, and you’re smart enough to know it.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
This, for some reason, seemed to irritate her. Her jaw firmed and her brows lowered, giving her a flinty expression. “What makes you an expert on all this, pray tell? Have you ever moved heaven and earth for a woman?”
“No,” he admitted.
A gleam of grim triumph appeared in her eyes.
“But when the woman and the time are right,” he continued, unsmiling, in another bewildering burst of where-the-hell-did-that-come-from?, “you better believe that I will.”
Silence fell, and it was vibrating and tense, full of the chemistry between them.
The moment’s intensity was too much for her, apparently.
She abruptly turned away from him, looking at her computer screen and breathing hard with some emotion he would have cashed in his retirement fund to discover.
Suddenly her phone beeped and the receptionist’s voice came over the line. “Charlotte? Jake’s not still in there with you, is he?”
Charlotte brightened. She was probably grateful for the interruption. He wasn’t.
“I’m here,” he said.
“Line eight’s for you.”
He didn’t care about any freaking phone call, but, on the other hand, he was at work and should probably at least pretend he was working.
“Put it through. Can you put it on speaker for me, Charlotte? Thanks.”
“Jake Hamilton,” he said when the call came through.
“Hey, stranger,” answered a woman’s voice in a seductive coo that scraped over his nerves like glass chards. “Why haven’t I seen you lately? Are you punishing me?”
Shit. Shit, shit, SHIT.
Jake lunged up and across Charlotte’s desk for the receiver so he could get this call off speaker, painfully aware of her thinning lips and the patches of angry red on her cheeks as she spun her chair around to her cabinet. She jerked it open and rummaged through some files, her face averted.
“Hey,” he said in the same professional voice he used when clients called. “I’m in a meeting, so this really isn’t a good time for me.”
Since he didn’t recognize the voice and couldn’t see the phone’s display from where he was standing, he had no idea who he was talking to. A woman he’d done the nasty with, clearly, but which one?
And wasn’t that a pathetic and painful commentary on the state of his personal life?
“Oh, okay,” the woman said in his ear. “Well, call me back later, okay? I was really hoping we could hook up for dinner at my apartment one day this week. I have a new recipe I want to try out on you.”
Jake floundered.
He still had no clue who he was talking to.
Selita? Trish? It definitely wasn’t Janay...
“That’s not going to work for me,” he said, holding on tightly to his professional voice. “Sorry.”
“Oh,” the woman said, sounding disappointed. “Well, call me anyway, and we can set something up for next week.”
“Well—”
Eyeballing the top of Charlotte’s head, he decided there was no hope for it. He couldn’t see the phone’s display, so he’d have to ask the woman’s name. He could hang up and never call the woman back, but since his orange-juice bath at Starbucks, he’d become aware that his previous behavior with women may have been somewhat callous. Better to just call the woman back, have the awkward conversation and tell her he that wouldn’t be seeing her again rather than leave her wondering.
So he would, for once, do the right thing, even if it made him look bad—well, terrible—in front of Charlotte.
But before he did the right thing, he had to figure out who the hell he was talking to.
“I’m so sorry,” he said gently, wishing he could be doing something less painful, like, say, passing kidney stones, “but I didn’t catch your voice.”
Charlotte, who was making a real project out of looking for God-knew-what in her file drawer, made a soft and indistinct sound of disbelief.
In his ear, meanwhile, he could almost hear the blood as it dropped from the stab wound he’d given the poor caller.
“It’s Ella.”
Ella! The woman he’d met at a Sixers game last winter!
They’d hooked up for a while. In fact, she’d made him a truly delicious mushroom risotto a while ago, a meal that was coming back to him with more clarity than either her face or, frankly, the sex afterward.
But still, her voice should have rung a bell.
“And don’t bother calling me back,” Ella snapped.
Click.
Yeah, okay. He’d deserved that.
Without a word, he passed the phone a
cross to Charlotte, who, using two fingers, dropped it back onto the base as though it had been contaminated with a nasty hybrid of Ebola and tuberculosis.
“Well,” she said, still not looking at him, “I’d better let you get back to work.”
“We were talking,” he reminded her.
“I think we were finished, don’t you?”
Something about her sudden crisp authority galled him. Who was the boss around here, anyway? “No. I don’t think.”
That got her. Her head came up and she used her sharp voice with surgical precision, slicing off a nice strip of his flesh. “Let me rephrase. I’m finished listening to interpersonal advice from a man who probably needs a color-coded Excel spreadsheet to keep track of the women in his life.”
This well-earned dig nonetheless made him fume with irritation, but then it hit him. There was something about the haughty angle of her chin and the steely flash in her eyes....
“You’re jealous,” he said, incredulous.
“Please,” she snapped. “Your head really should double as one of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade floats. It’s overinflated enough.”
“You are.”
Charlotte swelled with indignation. “Even if I were stupid enough to be attracted to my boss—which I’m not,” she added quickly, probably because she saw the wild glimmer of hope in his eyes, “I’d never be stupid enough to get involved with someone who thinks women are interchangeable—”
“I’m jealous, too.”
She snapped her mouth shut and froze. He couldn’t blame her. The three words scared him, proving that he was further gone over Charlotte than he’d feared. In his entire rich and varied dating life, he’d never been jealous over a woman, much less admitted it to her.
“At the thought of some other man sending you candy?” he continued with an embarrassingly husky note in his voice. “You’d better believe I’m jealous.”
Across the width of the desk, they stared at each other while the silence seethed around them. After several long beats, she tried to joke away his confession.
“You’re not jealous. It’s just a shock to your system to stumble across a woman who tells you no.”
If only that were it.
“If my system is shocked,” he said, holding her gaze and doling out his words slowly, probably because he was only just discovering, right this second, how much truth was in them, “it’s because I’m discovering that women aren’t fungible after all.”
A flare of unmistakable panic widened her eyes.
And then, without a word, she got up and hurried out, leaving her own office to escape him.
Chapter 8
Wow, thought Charlotte.
“Wow,” breathed Mama.
“Is this a house?” asked Harry, who was holding both their hands and walking between them as they edged around all the parked cars lining the driveway.
“This is, in fact, a house,” Charlotte assured him. “Mr. Hamilton’s house.”
“It looks like a glass box!” Harry said.
It did indeed. A very expensive glass box. Wedged into a leafy green hillside and surrounded by mature trees, Jake’s house was a marvel of modern architecture that consisted, as far as Charlotte could tell, entirely of windows. It was so sparse and masculine that just looking at it was like mainlining testosterone. Even the landscaping was strong and masculine, with bold profusions of grasses and shrubs in different colors and textures.
The consummate bachelor pad, Charlotte thought, irritated.
It figured.
They reached the massive front door, where Charlotte hesitated. She and Mama, both wide-eyed with awed appreciation, exchanged a glance across the top of Harry’s head.
“Should we go around to the pool?” Charlotte asked. “I hear voices back there.”
The door swung open, and there stood Jake.
His gaze swept the three of them before landing on Charlotte and lingering in a discreet once-over that touched on her filmy peach cotton dress, bare arms and legs, and strappy sandals.
“Hey,” he said, beaming as though he’d discovered a four-foot-high stack of shrink-wrapped hundred-dollar bills on his porch. “Welcome.”
Charlotte made a token attempt to ignore the kick of adrenaline that pumped through her at such a warm greeting, but it was impossible. Quiet pleasure flushed through her veins, adding to the sun’s warmth on her skin.
Idiotic, right?
Part of her issue was that, by some unspoken agreement, they’d avoided each other as much as possible at the office for the past couple days. Ever since their sexually charged moment that ended with her humiliating and hurried exit from her own damn office in order to get her raging hormones in order.
All this time later, and said hormones were still rampaging out of control.
But she was working on it. She needed her job way too much to risk screwing it up by sleeping with her boss. No matter how much she wanted to.
And she wanted to—a lot.
Not that this was the time to think about her growing and unhealthy obsession with him.
Did he have to look so freaking good all the time? Today he was the casual host in his white T-shirt and baggy blue board shorts for the pool. This ensemble, of course, highlighted the width of his shoulders, emphasized the muscular cut of his arms and legs, and showcased his gleaming brown skin.
Truly, it wasn’t fair.
The man didn’t even give women a fighting chance not to fall all over him.
Suddenly Charlotte realized the silence had gone on too long. Giving herself a swift mental kick, she got her head back in the game.
“Thanks for having us,” she told him, acutely aware of Mama’s pleased smile and sharpened gaze, which was swinging between the two of them. Really, the woman should have just infused Jake’s cookies with a love potion and been done with it. Maybe that would satisfy her overactive matchmaking gene. “You have an incredible house.”
“Thanks.”
More staring between her and Jake ensued.
Mama coughed.
Jake snapped out of it and stepped back, opening the door wider. “Come on in. Hey, buddy. Remember me?”
Harry grinned up at him. “You have fish!”
“That’s me. I have fish here, too.”
“No way! That’s too many fish!”
“You may be right.” Jake pointed, though there was no chance of anyone missing the fish tank. “Right over there. Check them out if you want.”
To no one’s surprise, Harry wanted. Racing through the foyer—what there was of it, since all of the rooms seemed to bleed together—he reached the tank and, true to form, plastered his hands and face up against it.
“Oh, man!” he cried.
Yeah, Charlotte thought. Oh, man. That about covered it.
On the far wall, behind the tufted black leather furniture, was a stunning saltwater aquarium. Actually, no. The aquarium, which had its own interior lights and glowed a brilliant blue, wasn’t on the wall. It was built into the wall. All kinds of seaweed undulated lazily back and forth, and there was a stunning array of coral and fish, including one with black and tan stripes that looked suspiciously like—
“A shark! Mommy! It’s a shark! With teeth!”
Smiling indulgently, clearly thrilled to entertain such a rapt fan of his fish, Jake walked over to stand behind Harry. “It’s a bamboo shark, man. He comes from the Pacific Ocean.”
“What’s his name?”
“His name?” Jake’s brow quirked. “You know...I never named him.”
“Jake’s good with kids,” Mama murmured in Charlotte’s ear.
Charlotte gave her a sideways glare. “Anyone can be good with kids for thirty seconds once a week, Mama. And why are you commenti
ng?”
“No reason,” Mama sang happily.
“You have to name him!” Harry was now informing Jake.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Jake agreed. “What sounds good?”
“Harry’s a good name.” Harry tilted his head, tugged on his ear and thought hard. “Harry Sharkley!”
Jake’s mouth twitched. “Harry Sharkley. Great name. Done.”
“Yay!” With that important business out of the way, Harry raced back over to Charlotte and his grandmother. “Grammy! Can we go swimming now? Huh, Grammy? I have my floaty on already! And my trunks!”
The boy had insisted on wearing his Batman trunks and swim vest all morning and while in the car, which had made buckling him into his car seat a challenge, to say the least.
Charlotte’s mother, who had the patience of most of the saints when it came to her grandson, gave him an indulgent smile and took his hand to stop him from bouncing like a drunken kangaroo.
“In a minute. Can I say hello to Mr. Hamilton first? Would that be okay with you?”
“No,” Harry said, pouting.
She rolled her eyes. “Hello, Jake.”
Jake, who’d followed Harry back over, leaned in to give her a peck on the cheek. “Hello, beautiful. Thanks for coming. And are those cookies I see in that container?”
Her mother passed over a giant storage container with approximately three thousand cookies in it. “You haven’t tried my sugar cookies yet.”
Jake took the container and held it with careful hands, the way he might handle an original of the Declaration of Independence. “God bless you,” he said gravely.
“Now wait a minute,” her mother said, laughing. “You’re supposed to share those with your guests.”
“You didn’t bring enough for sharing,” Jake cried, outraged.
“Mommy!” Harry, who was now at the far end of the living room, in the space between a set of chairs and the granite bar that bordered the gleaming kitchen, started jumping again, gesturing wildly. “Look, Mommy! Toys!”
Case for Seduction (Kimani Romance) Page 11
