“Meh.” I took an unenthusiastic bite. The sour cream and chocolate baked combo should have been delish but my appetite had been quashed.
“I’ll gladly take him off your hands.” She rubbed her hands together gleefully. Too gleefully. “Joe Delacroix is even hotter now than when he was Hot Waiter. How are you going to match-make for a guy you’re crushing on?”
“I am not crushing on him.” I slammed the donut on my desk so hard it pancaked.
“Right.” Hailey flinched. “And no one from nowhere believes that ever. Gotta run.” She swiveled and left.
I was not crushing on Joseph Delacroix.
Okay, fine. Perhaps I was crushing on his witty repartee, his six-pack that my hands had slid across, feeling every cut and ripple as tingles raced from my fingertips up my neck and down my spine. Maybe I was crushing on his perfectly hard, muscular ass that I’d gripped tightly, my legs clenched vise-like around him as he thrust inside deep inside me, delivering the perfect, mind-bending orgasm.
It had been three days since Marte had exacted my promise to find her beloved grandson the perfect woman to marry. A messenger had dropped off a retainer the next morning for $30,000 the next morning. Now I was stuck with this stupid two-thirds filled intake form. I swallowed my pride and picked up the phone. Joe’s number rang and rang until his voicemail picked up.
Ian popped his head into my cubicle. “Hey, Char—”
“Hang on.” I lifted my index finger. I heard the sexy, dark tones of Joe’s voice as I silently rehearsed my message in my head. I didn’t want to say something stupid. ‘It’s Charlotte,’ I said to myself in my best ‘business casual with a hint of sexy’ voice. ‘I need to talk with you—’
But I was harshly interrupted. “The mailbox belonging to this subscriber is full,” a lady robot voice said. “Please call back later. Message 5208. Goodbye.”
“Fucking asshat.” I glared at the phone and clicked off. “Ian, what kind of fucking asshat doesn’t empty their voicemails?”
“Uh…”
“Me.” Joe Delacroix poked his head around the corner of my cubicle. “I’m the fucking asshat who didn’t empty the voicemails. You busy?”
“Oh.” I stared up at him, tongue tied.
“I’ll take that as a ‘No.’” Put your coat on. Game of Wives is on and winter’s officially here. Let’s go.”
“I can’t just leave here in the middle of the day for whatever you have in mind.” “Nefarious things, Charlotte.” He smiled. “Horribly, dirty, filthy things like—”
“Shut up, pervert.”
“—shopping.”
“Shopping?” I glared at him. “Do I look like a ‘Real Housewife’? I have work to do.”
He snagged the intake form on my desk. “You are working. We’re going wife shopping. Chop chop. I’m your client and Grandma’s not getting any younger.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Joe
“I thought you said we were wife shopping. Why are we at Whole Foods? Are they carrying organic wives now?” Charlotte asked.
We walked through the well-lit, immaculate, well-stocked store. “Because, Cupcake, I always see attractive women when I’m grocery shopping. What better place to show you the kind of woman I might be interested in? Case in point. Check out the chick rooting through the prepared salads in the grocery case.”
“Aha. I get your reasoning,” she said. “Sensible, actually. Which one?”
“The redhead.”
“The redhead with the short hair, the perfect complexion, and glasses? Cute. And she looks smart.”
“No. The redhead wearing yoga pants with the long hair and perfect ass. I don’t care about perfect complexions.” I pointed to her purse. “You should note that on your form.”
“The redhead with the glasses looks to be about twenty-seven and she just picked up the three bean salad with kale. She also has a bottle of Pro-biotics in her basket. I won’t complain if you go chat her up, talk about digestive health, and then ask for her number.”
“The redhead with the perfect ass just picked up the taco salad, has organic blue corn chips, guacamole, salsa, and a six-pack of beer in her basket. She’s more up my alley.”
“The redhead with the glasses is shopping for herself because she’s single,” Charlotte said. “Which means we could add her to your potential wife list. Unless you’d rather take up with the redhead with the perfect ass who is clearly stocking up for her boyfriend, Bruno, who is coming over after work tonight.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because no woman with that kind of figure keeps it with chips, guac, and beer, unless she’s having a party, or has just been through a break-up and is embarking on a cleansing bender. Her make up is immaculate, she’s not crying, or disheveled. So— I’m going with my first guess which is—her boyfriend’s coming over to watch the game tonight.”
“Blackhawks?”
“No. They’re on the road. The Bulls.”
“Oh.” Charlotte was not only gorgeous and hot in the sack, she was up on sports. “Hungry?”
“It’s almost lunchtime. I could eat.”
“My place is just a few blocks away.”
“Tempting, but we don’t do that kind of stuff.”
“Thank God we got all the distracting sex out of our systems. I had something else in mind. Come with me.”
“I think I already did that,” she said.
“Tease.”
“Pervert.”
“Stubborn.”
“Asshole.”
I smiled. “You know me too well.”
We sat at a picnic table at a park. Whole Foods to-go containers were spread like a fine buffet in front of us. The mercurial Chicago winds gusted and then died just as quickly. The sun broke through the clouds warming us up a bit. A chain link fence enclosed Lake Shore Bark Park situated a few yards away. Lunchtime was when the dog walkers and those who worked from home took their fur babies out for exercise and fresh air. It was fun to watch the pooches stretching their legs and rough housing.
“I’d love to get a dog someday,” Charlotte said between spoonfuls of steamy soup.
“What’s stopping you?”
“Benedict.” She pinched off a piece of her carrot muffin and ate the icing first.
She had a British boyfriend?
“Right,” I said nonchalantly while I tried to pick my stomach up from the ground. “He doesn’t like dogs?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had him around dogs. He was a rescue and didn’t come with an instruction manual.”
My heart bounced back into my chest. “You’re talking about your cat.”
“Yes. What—did you think I had a dog-hating boyfriend?”
“Not really. You know an awful lot about me. I’m glad you’re telling me about your family. Your mom and sister sound sweet. Tell me more. What happened after your dad left?”
“We figured it out,” she said. “Mom went back to work—part time gigs, some waitressing. My sister and I went to daycare and hung out with babysitters.”
“What about family? Did anyone step up to the plate?”
“Dad moved back to where his family lived in the South. We saw him a few times a year. Mom had a brother who had gone his own way ten years prior. I vaguely remember meeting him.”
“It sounds kind of lonely.”
“Strangely it wasn’t.” She opened a bag of chips, took a few, then pushed the bag toward me. “Mom shut off the electronics at 8 every night. We played board games, read books, put together puzzles. Well, that was until she got sick and her energy was sapped. Then they became another ‘babysitter,’” she made air quotes.
“What happened?” I reached for a few chips.
“Mystery illness. Misdiagnosed as the flu, chronic fatigue, rheumatoid arthritis. Eventually it turned out to be Lyme disease. A tick bite after we went camping years ago.”
“How’s she doing now?”
“Up and down. Mostly up.”
“That’s good. You see her?”
“Yeah. She visited recently. We went to the Museum of Science and Something.”
“Industry.” I thought about the question I really wanted to ask Charlotte, and finally decided just to spit it out. “So—do you have a boyfriend?”
She stopped mid bite, and threw the rest of the chip at me. “Do you think I would have done what we did the other night if I had a boyfriend? What kind of person do you think I am?”
And there went that pouty lower lip again, and the defiant thrust of her jaw. Aw shit, I’d gone and riled Charlotte up again. My dick started to throb in my pants. Get a grip, Delacroix. Think of her forty years from now when her tits are riding lower and she’s got some more fat in that gorgeous ass I spanked just a few days prior.
She’d still be sexy as fuck.
My hard-on grew stronger, pushing insistently against my very cold jeans. We’d been outside in winter’s grip for too long. Why did I bring her here again? Why didn’t I just take her to lunch at a normal restaurant? A cute little French café? A trendy sushi place? Right. I wanted to catch her with her guard down. I wanted answers. We’d had sex a few days ago but I still didn’t know all that much about Charlotte Bauer and I really wanted to. Watching dogs play calmed people and calm people spilled the beans. I pointed at the Bark Park. “Hey—what kind of puppy is that?”
She turned and stared. “The cutest puppy in the world.” She sprang up from her seat, gathered the remains of her lunch in a bag, and in basketball move, tossed it in a nearby trash can. She walked over to the dog park and beckoned to me. “Don’t just sit there. Move it!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Charlotte
I knelt down and the Bernese Mountain dog-esque puppy licked my ear. “Cuteness overload. How old?”
“Four months,” the middle-aged man said.
“Breeder?” Joe asked.
“Rescue,” he said. “Mixed breed Berner. Mother got out during that time—if you know what I mean.”
“Love is love,” Joe said.
I giggled and glanced up at him imploringly. “I’m a sucker for Berners. Tear me away, I beg you, or my feet will grow roots that will penetrate this frozen earth and I’ll be stuck here forever.”
He smiled and pointed in the opposite direction. “Oh, look at that Labrador Retriever.”
“Too freaking adorable,” I said. “He can’t decide which tennis ball to chase.” Dog parks were a slice of heaven.
“I think he should go after the green one,” Joe said.
“They’re all green.” Hmm. I could turn this trip to the dog park into information gathering. I might even be able to fill in a few more spaces on Joe’s intake form. “If you had to pick your top three dogs, Joe, which would you pick and why?”
“Tough question.” He picked up a Frisbee that had landed in the corner and tossed it to a Boxer who had been looking for it. My heart melted a little. “I’d pick a loyal dog.”
“It’s hard to pick a non-loyal dog.”
“I’d pick a hairy dog.”
“Most dogs have hair. Not all. Most,” I said.
“I’d pick a warm dog,” he said and pulled his coat up higher against his neck. “What kind of dog would you pick, Charlotte Louise Bauer?”
“I’d pick a dog that made me laugh. Liked to snuggle. And loved me to pieces.”
“Breeding doesn’t matter?”
“Depends,” I said, realizing the conversation was turning again. “Does breeding matter to you?”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we should try that again and find out.”
“We’ve already had this discussion.”
He looked disappointed. Like I’d taken his ice cream cone away. The winter winds picked up again. Goosebumps dotted my arms. Joe shivered. I wanted to put my arms around him, hug him tightly, look up into his dreamy eyes, and say, ‘Yes. Let’s go do that again. Let’s egg each other on, hurl insults, and flirt outrageously. You command me to strip, play with my nipples, draw your fingers across my sex and make me come. Then I’ll get on my knees, take you in my mouth, circle my tongue around your beautiful cock and suck you until your eyes roll back in your head, and you climax hard, your jaw muscles twitching as you shudder with pleasure. The third time around we could try and come together. That sounds like a sensible plan.’
My phone buzzed in my purse, snapping me from my spell. I pulled it out.
Ian: “Tyler Gentry’s having a melt-down. Check in, please.”
I responded.
Charlotte: “On my way.”
“I need to go.” I messaged for a taxi and headed out of the dog park.
Joe followed me. “Why?”
“Client emergency.”
“Shit, you’re cheating on me already?” he asked as we hustled toward the street.
“We’re not dating. We had one spectacular roll in the hay. You know that you’re not my only client.” Another text popped in.
Hailey: Vincent Accardi is here in office looking for you. Advise.
I texted back.
Charlotte: You mean Violet Accardi.
Hailey: No – Vincent Accardi – Violet’s uncle.
“Joe, trust me. If I dated you, I’d never cheat on you.”
Charlotte: Got it. En route.
“Then maybe you should date me,” he said. “Why not? We obviously get along. We already know we’re good in the sack. What’s stopping us?”
My cabbie pulled up to the curb as another text buzzed on my phone. Geez. I was gone for a few hours and all hell was breaking loose.
Wait. Wait. Wait just a minute. Did he say what I thought he said?
I looked up into his gorgeous eyes—and maybe I was reading into this—he appeared hopeful. “Hot Waiter, you know we can’t date. Marte cut White Glove Agency a thirty thousand dollar down payment, you signed a contract, and you’re my client. It is strictly forbidden to date clients.”
“Maybe I’m not ready to get married right away,” he said. “But maybe I’m finally ready to date. I already have my eye on someone. I’d like to take my time and do things slowly, and the old-fashioned way. Get to know her better. Go to the movies. Put my arm around her when the lights dim. Take it from there.”
I looked up at him and he reminded me of that Bernese Mountain puppy—big and earnest, good hearted and sweet. But unlike the puppy, sexy as sin. What did he mean by being ready to date again? Note to self: find out about his last girlfriend.
A new text came in and this one had photos.
Mr. Black: See attached regarding your new client.
Maybe Mr. Black had tracked down some information that I could add to Joe’s profile. I glanced down at my phone and nearly fell over. It was a picture of a diamond ring that had to be worth a small fortune. I quickly pulled myself together and turned back to Joe. “In a perfect world that could happen. But I learned the hard way it’s not a perfect world, and then of course, there’s this.” I handed him my phone as I stepped into the back seat of the car.
He leaned in and eyed the photo. “Ah, my grandmother sent you a picture of the ring she’s giving me to gift my future wife?”
“Yes. It’s spectacular. She also posted it on Instagram.”
“She’s hard core, man. She always gets what she wants.”
“Figured as much. Look at the second picture.”
He tapped the screen and his face paled. “Oh, crap she did not.”
“Oh, crap she did.”
Our heads bumped together as we both leaned in to stare at the image on my phone.
Marte Delacroix sat in a wheelchair in the lobby of the Delacroix Hotel, her injured ankle encased in an orthopedic boot and elevated on a foot rest. Her hair was coiffed, and she wore a festive Santa hat. Uniformed employees surrounded her: Beverly from Housekeeping, Luisa from the Beauty Shop, Tony Serrano the nighttime concierge, Chef Mikey, and others. They were all grinning mischievously. A large banner behind their
heads read:.
“Dear Santa: We haven’t been naughty. We’ve been extra nice. All we want for Christmas — is Joseph’s perfect wife.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Joe
Three years ago
I was twenty-five years old, had been accepted to Harvard Law, and I was going to ask Zoey Clark to be my wife.
My grandmother Marte had allowed me to pick one of her diamond rings that grandpapa had given her. The first had a smaller diamond. The setting was simpler but I chose it because it felt pure.
I had the stone polished, the ring fitted to Zoey’s size, and drove down to Chicago to pick it up. It was tucked in a black velvet box in my jean jacket. I drove the two plus hours back to her place that was now basically my place as well. I stuck the box with the ring in the back of a dresser drawer and waited for the right time. The weeks rolled by. In the meantime, I also had to get a lot of shit done.
It was a chilly, drizzly autumn Saturday afternoon in November. Thanksgiving holidays were fast approaching but there was no rest for the wicked. I lay on Zoey’s living room couch, laptop propped up on my knees, as I vomited words onto my my French Lit paper due the following week. The flat screen resting on her antique sideboard was turned to the football game: University of Wisconsin Badgers against Penn State.
Assholes beat us last year in the Big 10 Championship and this was a no-holds barred grudge match. It was the third quarter and second down. Penn State was six points ahead with five minutes remaining in regulation time. It was that time in the game where anything could happen. My attention flipped between the TV and my paper when Zoey popped up in front of me in her running gear.
She bounced up and down on her heels. “Pull your ass off that couch, Tall Guy, and let’s hit the trail. We need to get some blood in our brains. Move it or lose it.”
“Not feeling it, baby.” I craned my neck to stare around her at the game. “Third quarter. If the Badgers don’t complete this drive we’re screwed.”
The Client: A Playing Dirty Novel Page 11
