by Amy Andrews
“A man’s gotta eat, darlin’.”
CC rolled her eyes, ignoring the way her nipples perked up at the very Southern and deliberate way he’d said darlin’. Just like his momma.
Only sexy.
“For a man who saw a professional sports nutritionist for years, you have a terrible diet.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t change the fact that you, Cecilia Morgan, are just a tiny bit obsessive.”
CC faltered at him calling her Cecilia. The only other time he’d done that had been in the dream, and that was the last thing she needed to be reminded of right now. Her cheeks grew warm, and she busied herself some more.
“Am not.”
Jesus. How old was she? She might as well just stamp her foot and get it over with.
“You floss your teeth three times a day.”
“Flossing is important.” She’d learned that from Pretty Woman.
“Okay you two, quit bellyaching at each other.” Ronnie placed a plate loaded with hoagies in front of them. “You sound like an old married couple.”
CC blinked at Ronnie, who was staring at the two of them, a speculative gleam in her eyes CC didn’t like at all. She snuck a look at Wade, who was staring at his mother as if she’d lost her mind.
The sad thing to admit was they’d probably spent more time together in the last almost-six years than most married couples did. There were few things she didn’t know about Wade.
Although she doubted the same could be said for him.
Wyatt laughed into the sudden silence in the room and reached for a sandwich. “Yep, that did it.”
Chapter Ten
CC glanced at Wade as they drove back to the house. Neither of them spoke. It hadn’t been what his mother had said, as far as she was concerned, rather that calculating expression of Ronnie’s that had been the most worrying. Between that and the way Wade had called her Cecilia, she had a lot on her mind.
So maybe now was the perfect time to think about something else entirely. To broach the subject of Jasmine? Ronnie had, after all, indicated that she thought it would be a good idea for Wade to at least get it all down on paper, even if it did end up on the cutting room floor.
“I have a suggestion,” she said into the silence. “About the book.”
He glanced at her briefly, frowning slightly as if he’d been deep in thought as well and she’d dragged him right out. “Okay.”
“You might not like it.”
He sighed. “I’m not getting someone else to write it, CC.”
CC. Phew. Yes, that was better. Back to normal. No Cecilia. Back to employer and employee. Back to him being a bossy, demanding jerk.
It gave her the courage to plow on.
“You wrote half a page about the Jasmine thing,” she said, her gaze glued to his profile, his strong jaw, the blade of his cheekbone.
A stillness came over his frame. Others might have missed it, but CC had been reading Wade’s body language for a lot of years now. Even doing something as passive as driving, Wade always vibrated with energy, so yeah, she noticed. The angle of his jaw tightened, and in her peripheral vision his knuckles whitened around the steering wheel.
“The Jasmine thing is private.”
He was using his haughty don’t-you-know-who-I-am voice she’d heard him use to good effect on several occasions over the years. But it didn’t scare CC. And the more he objected, the more certain she was that it should go in the book.
“I think that’s a mistake.”
“Your objection is noted.”
His voice had gone from haughty to frigid. But, again, CC wasn’t perturbed. “It’s your memoir, Wade, people will be reading it for the private stuff. That’s what a memoir is.”
“Not this one.”
“People want to read about you. They want to know stuff they can’t already find out by Googling you, and I know for damn sure the publisher, who, by the way, paid you a shitload of money to write it, is expecting the Jasmine thing to be in there, too.”
He unwrapped and wrapped his fingers around the steering wheel several times before he answered. “She’s in there.”
“She’s practically a footnote, Wade.” He didn’t reply, just stared resolutely forward. “Your mother said—”
“What?” His head turned with raptor-like precision as he speared her with thunderous eyes. “You talked to my mother about it?”
“It came up.”
His gaze flicked back to the road. “I didn’t realize you two had time to gossip while plotting a mass street orgy for Credence.”
CC ignored his sarcasm. “She worries about you. About how the whole incident affected you. She feels it might be therapeutic to at least write about it. In full. You don’t have to use it in the final edit. And, I gotta say, I agree with her.”
“Goddamn it, CC. My mother doesn’t know the half of it.”
CC blinked. There was more? More than taking nude pictures and selling them to a tabloid? CC wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But backing off wasn’t her role here. She was supposed to be pushing him to dig deeper. “So tell me, then.”
“No.”
CC had lost count of the number of times she’d wanted to brain Wade Carter over the years. The urge hadn’t diminished in these penultimate months. “Look…Wade… You asked me to stay and help you with this book, you wanted my editing skills and my advice. So let me advise you, damn it. Otherwise I’m not really sure why I’m here. I might as well just pack my bags and leave now.”
He didn’t say anything for the longest time, his knuckles whitening again. The sound of the car wheels against the road the only noise in the cab. CC sighed and returned her attention to the fields of drying yellowed grass.
“She came back. A couple of months after the tabloid stuff. Said she was pregnant.”
CC shut her eyes briefly at the devastation in his voice. Ronnie had been right, he really had loved her.
“My lawyer demanded a paternity test. She came back two days later, said she’d miscarried… She looked awful. It was…awful. I mean, a baby would have been…” He shook his head. “I didn’t want a baby, but…”
But he’d have done the honorable thing.
“It was still my baby.” His knuckles looked like they were about to burst through his skin now. “My mother would have been over the moon.”
CC smiled. “I imagine she would have been.”
“Anyway, I found out a couple of months later, from one of her friends, she hadn’t been pregnant at all. She’d…faked it. I’d spent two months wondering what that baby would have looked like and feeling shitty and like I’d let her down even though she’d violated my right to privacy, and…it hadn’t ever existed.”
“Oh, Wade.” CC reached out and slid a hand onto his forearm without even thinking about it. She’d have done the same for anyone, but this felt a lot more personal. More intimate. She hadn’t known, until just now, that this man, who could exasperate her beyond distraction, could also tug on her heart strings. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. Well.” He shrugged, and her hand slipped from his arm. “I don’t think it all needs to be dragged up again, okay?”
“You’re still in love with her?”
The realization cut deeper than CC would have thought possible. Maybe that was why Wade treated women so casually, because he was still in love with a woman who had destroyed his trust and broken his heart and he was never going there again.
“Hell no.” He shook his head vehemently, his voice laced heavily with conviction. “But she was twenty-three years old. She’s thirty-eight now and very sorry for what she did.”
CC shrugged. “So say that.”
“No. She’s married with two teenage daughters. She’s a public school teacher. None of the people in her life need the kind of shit storm that me revealing
all will bring down on them.”
CC had to admit that was a real possibility, and his generosity of spirit was humbling. A lot of people might not have been so forgiving. “Fine…” She sighed. “No Jasmine.”
He shot her a triumphant grin, and just like that she wanted to brain him again.
…
“Hey, what you watching?”
Wade stood in the doorway of the red sitting room—yup, he owned a red sitting room—eyeing CC, who was lounging in one of the old-fashioned wingback chairs, her legs tucked up under her, deeply engrossed in the television as she absently wound something in her hands.
It was close to midnight, and he’d assumed she’d gone to bed when she’d left her desk a few hours ago.
She glanced up as if his presence had startled her, that little v drawing her brows together, her hands stilling in their task. “Escape to the Country.” She returned her eyes to the screen. “My favorite show.”
He’d never heard of it. “Looks English,” Wade remarked as he moved into the room, coming to a halt behind the elegant vintage Chesterfield sofa, placing his hands on the rolled leather top.
“It is. BBC. Netflix streams older seasons.”
“What’s it about?”
Her hands resumed what they’d been doing as she continued to watch the screen. Bandages, she was rolling bandages. Obviously his mother had enlisted CC’s help in her latest project, which was rolling up strips of old bedsheets into bandages for shipment to third-world countries for struggling health clinics.
There was already a neat stack of rolled bandages lined up on the chair beside her.
“It’s a property show that helps prospective buyers find their dream homes.”
Wade laughed. Of course that would be her television choice. No The Real Housewives of New York City or Game of Thrones for CC. “Sounds like your kind of crack?”
A small smile brushed her lips, but she didn’t bother to respond as Wade traversed the sofa and sat his ass down on the end seat closest to CC’s chair, which wasn’t far from the Chesterfield. If he wanted, he could reach across the small gap and lay his hand on the arm of her chair.
He wouldn’t. But he was surprised by how much he wanted to.
Telling her about Jasmine today had been cathartic. Difficult, but cathartic. She wasn’t a subject he usually discussed with anyone, and nobody but he and Jasmine knew the full story.
And now CC…
He didn’t know how he felt about that. About exposing his underbelly to her view. He wasn’t used to being…vulnerable…to anyone. But her soft empathy had been comforting. They didn’t really have that kind of relationship. Not before Credence, anyway. Not before cohabiting so closely and having the town welcome CC so warmly.
His heart kicked in his chest. Their relationship was shifting. It was subtle but undeniable. Right now it felt…cozy. And domestic. And he liked it. Liked sitting next to CC watching TV late at night.
Made it even harder to contemplate her leaving, though…
Her question about whether he still loved his ex had taken him by surprise. His vehement response maybe even more so. Prior to her asking, he’d have thought it would be a question he’d grapple with. But the answer had been clear and unequivocal. He’d been clinging to this idea that because he’d loved her once, he was destined to love her always—he was a Carter, and they loved for life—and that’s what kept him from committing to anyone else. But when forced to look closer, he’d realized he’d fallen out of love with Jasmine a very long time ago.
He watched the show for a minute or two before saying, “You know there’ll be sports on ESPN, right?”
Without looking at him, CC said, “You know there are two other TVs in this house, right?”
Wade laughed. “Okay then.” He held out his hand. “Pass over some of those damn bandages.”
CC passed him a large unopened bag of clean, laundered strips and a wooden tongue depressor to wrap them around.
Wade opened them and plucked the first one out and started winding. “So who’s the presenter chick?”
Her hands stoped mid-wind, and she shot him an impatient glare. “Are you going to talk the whole way through?”
He laughed again. “No, ma’am.”
They settled in, watching as they companionably wound bandages. They did talk, commenting on bits and pieces throughout the episode. The things they did and didn’t like about each house. The price. The unrealistic expectations. They even hotly debated which house was better. But mostly Wade just watched CC’s face, the mix of emotions as she went on the journey with Reg and Shelagh. Her smile when the couple fell in love with the mystery house was big and dazzling only to fall, her teeth digging into her bottom lip, when it was just a titch above what they could pay.
She really went on the roller coaster ride with the couple, and it was so damn cute. She was so damn cute.
“You reckon they’ll work out a way to get the mystery house?” Wade asked, the chipper orchestral music playing as the credits rolled.
“I hope so. They obviously fell in love with it.”
“But they can’t afford it.” Wade kept his tone matter-of-fact, hoping to rile her a little.
She turned a frustrated gaze on him. “But it’s obviously their dream home.”
Wade laughed at her adamant response, and she rolled her eyes at him, realizing he’d been hoping she’d react. “So…do you have a dream house?”
CC glanced down at the bandage she was rolling. “Just anywhere I can see the ocean will do.”
Wade shook his head. “Nope.” No way did someone who’d been saving for almost six years to buy her own place and claimed Escape to the Country as her favorite television show not have a house she aspired to. Especially not CC. She was methodical and organized and obsessively stalked real estate websites. “Don’t believe you.”
For a moment, she looked like she was going to blow him off again, but then she sighed. “There’s this place… It’s not for sale anymore, I saw it online years ago. It’s a quaint little beach cottage just out of San Clemente. It’s more Cape Cod than California, but it’s cute and kitschy with this little white picket fence that goes all the way around and flower beds lining the front path, and it’s perched on a headland, and the views…ocean for miles.”
Her expression had turned dreamy and her gaze distant, and Wade sucked in a breath, his lungs suddenly tight. Man, she really loved that house.
“I have a picture.” She grabbed her phone and did some swiping. “I can’t afford it, not even with the money I earned recently from that investment, but yeah, it’s a definite dream home.” She handed her phone over. “There are three different pics, keep swiping.”
Wade took it and looked at the images. He vaguely recognized the area, and she was right, the views were incredible. But it was teeth-achingly cute, not something he’d pictured CC in at all.
“I didn’t take you as the white-picket-fence type.”
She made a little noise in the back of her throat, which was either emotion or dismissal. “It’s all I wanted as a little girl. There were a lot of white picket fenced houses in my town, with flowers peeking through the slats and children who laughed and families who smiled. Our fence was all ramshackle, and my mother used it as some kind of weapon between her and my father, constantly calling him about fixing it because he was the man and it was his job to take care of her, and why wasn’t he taking care of her, they’d made vows and how was she supposed to do this stuff without a man around.”
Wade was surprised at the admission. It seemed like today was the day for opening up to each other. In five and a half years, it was the most they’d ever talked about their pasts. Their wounds. “Could your brothers not have fixed the fence?”
“Of course.” CC laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “But it wasn’t about the fence. It was about
Mom being so old-school she didn’t even know how to access their bank account when Dad left. I was little when he walked out, but Mom laments about it often enough to know the whole sorry story. They had a very traditional marriage, where he was the breadwinner and she was the homemaker. He dished her out an allowance at the beginning of the week for groceries and the like, and he dealt with everything else. If she needed something outside the household budget, he bought it for her. She’d relied on him for everything, had been happy to be the little woman and to be taken care of. It did not equip her to be alone.”
CC’s bangs had fallen forward on one side, and she tucked them behind her ear as she took a breath. Wade followed the motion, one he’d seen her do thousands of times, wondering when it had gotten this distracting.
“Look… I know my mom wouldn’t have been the first woman of her generation to be like that, but she made no effort to change either, to learn. She almost…thrived on her helplessness, she definitely played on it, instead of doing something about it.”
Wade would have described his parents’ marriage as reasonably traditional, but he couldn’t imagine what his mother would do to his father if he even suggested he give her an allowance. He’d have needed more than a pacemaker, that was for sure.
And Veronica Carter would have had that fence fixed lickety-split.
“That must have been difficult,” he said tentatively, not wanting to pry, afraid she might realize she was giving away too much and pull back if he pushed too hard, too soon.
Getting to know this CC was fascinating.
“Yeah.” Her shoulders sagged. “It could be, but…it also made me really determined. To never make myself so reliant on a man that I couldn’t do a damn thing for myself. Determined to have a job and my own money and my own dreams and ambitions. To buy my own stuff, to fix my own stuff, to be independent.”
Wade nodded at the truth in her words. CC was fiercely independent. “I guess that’s the silver lining in all those dark clouds?”
