by Lacy, Shay
She nodded at his arm. “This could get infected.”
“Pour some alcohol or peroxide on it.”
“That isn’t funny, Charlie. This is serious. I have to report it.”
Charlie grabbed her hand with his uninjured one. “Do that and you sign my death warrant.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t think Montgomery’s men will be watching all the hospitals to see if anybody matching my general description comes in with a gunshot wound? How long after that do you think I’d live?”
Juliana had never seen him this serious. She frowned. The laughing man who’d barged in her apartment was a far cry from the man sitting in her kitchen now.
“This might need stitches. I’m no doctor.”
“Just clean and disinfect it and bandage it for now. And give me some aspirin. I need to function for another twenty-four hours. Can you do that for me?”
His brown eyes—brown?—pleaded with her. Why had he come to her instead of going to his family?
“You could call your brother. Rick’s a policeman. He can help. He can protect you.”
“I don’t want his protection. I take care of myself.”
“You didn’t do so well tonight. You want to tell me how this happened?”
He sighed. “Peroxide and aspirin first.”
Juliana collected what she’d need. When she returned to the kitchen, Charlie had removed his black T-shirt. Her heart sped up at the sight of his firm chest . . . until she saw the drop of blood sliding down his arm.
“Hold that over the sink.” She dropped her items on the counter.
Reaching into the cupboard above the stove, she located a bottle of Jose Cuervo. She poured a full shot and dumped two aspirins in her hand. She held them out to Charlie, who now stood at the sink.
“Cuervo. You don’t mess around.” His eyes were blue once more. He downed the pills and the contents of the shot glass in one gulp then coughed. “Damn good stuff.”
“Need more?”
“I’m good for the moment.”
“In the movies they pour booze onto the wound,” she said.
“They use whiskey in the movies.”
She held up the bottle to read the label. “This has got a pretty high alcohol content.”
“That’d be wasting good liquor. Use the cheap stuff.” He nodded toward the bottles of rubbing alcohol and peroxide.
“You want a bullet to bite down on?” she asked.
“No gun. And this one went all the way through.”
“I could call my dad. He could help you.”
Charlie shook his head. “He’d want to know why I came to you.”
Juliana cocked her head. “Why did you?”
“It was the only place I could think of.”
She thought he was only telling part of the truth. “It’s late. If you’re going to scream when I pour peroxide on your arm I’d prefer you bite on a towel or something.”
Charlie clutched his chest. “You wound me, and I’m already wounded. You call my manhood into question . . . ”
They both looked at his crotch. Juliana frowned. He didn’t have a hard-on.
“Well, that’s a disappointment,” Charlie said to his groin. Then he lifted his head and gave her a sheepish look. “Anyway, men don’t scream—”
“You might.”
“They yell,” he overrode her words.
“I think you need a gag.”
“I want to present the correct manly impression here.”
“Don’t worry about that. After the last few nights, I couldn’t possibly think you’re not a man.”
Charlie’s smile was downright smug. “In that case, I’ll take a towel.”
She held his arm over the sink and poured alcohol on the wounds. Charlie jerked and his yell was muffled in the towel. She hated hurting him. Then she pressed the peroxide into both wounds. When he set the towel aside, he was breathing hard, his head hanging. She poured him another shot of Cuervo and wrapped his shaking fingers around it. He tossed it back in one gulp.
“You’re trying to get me drunk so you can have your way with me,” he said.
“Charlie, you’re so easy all I have to do is look at you and you get a hard-on.”
“Only with you.”
She wished that were true. “I’ll do the best I can with these bandages, but I’ll have to go to the store and buy bigger ones.”
“Okay.”
“What, no argument?” She stuck big Band-Aids over the holes.
He winced. “No energy at the moment. I’m gonna need to lie down.”
“Almost done.” She grabbed an Ace bandage from the table. His brown contacts were in a little contact case. That reminded her he still hadn’t told her why he’d been at Montgomery’s house in disguise although she feared she knew. Later. Right now she had to finish this. She wrapped the Ace around his bicep. “That’ll have to do.”
Juliana led him to her bedroom, and he lay down on her bed. He was as docile as a lamb.
“Would you please strip me?” he asked.
Well, maybe a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She shrugged. She’d seen him naked before. She pulled off his black sneakers, unsnapped and unzipped his black jeans, and pulled them and his black Jockeys down his long legs. His cock lay flaccid against his abdomen.
“Still not up for any hijinks I see,” she joked.
His eyelids were heavy. “I won’t leave you wanting this time, I promise.”
Her heart turned over and her lower body tightened. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“I can’t stay.”
Hurt stabbed her.
“Will you come with me?”
Her heart seemed to flip in her chest. “To California?”
“To the Hilton.” His eyes closed.
“What?”
“I have to bring my wife back with me. Tonight.” His words slurred.
“Wife? What wife?”
But Charlie was dead to the world.
• • •
Charlie woke with a jerk when Juliana removed the Band-Aid from his arm. His blue eyes were wide with fear until he saw her. Then he released a breath and sagged into her mattress.
“Who did you think I was?” she asked.
“Montgomery’s men.”
“You want to tell me what happened? It might take your mind off what I’m doing.”
Charlie was a natural actor, but Juliana would swear in court he wasn’t acting when he described the pursuit after he’d been shot. He’d been in mortal terror.
“I don’t think about what I do now as being dangerous,” he told her. “I locate things and people, I do errands for people, and I learn things for people. I help people.”
“You mean being a private detective,” she said.
“Yeah. After Billy died I felt . . . well . . . lots of things. Empty, useless, wasted.”
Juliana stopped opening a sterile pad. “Wasted?”
Charlie’s eyes were full of pain when he looked at her. “I never did anything with my life. I didn’t become famous or a big star. Nobody recognizes my name or face out there. I’m one of thousands just like me—somebody who thought they could act and found out differently when they got to Hollywood.”
“You’re a wonderful actor. I watched you portray characters for years.”
He gave her a sad smile. “Here I’m wonderful. There . . . well, the best are a lot better than I am. Everybody’s beautiful out there. Everybody’s got a hot body, great hair, you name it. I’m nothing special.”
“But Charlie—” Juliana began to protest.
Charlie squeezed her arm. “I live there, you don’t. You don’t know what my life was like every day. I’m a little fish in a big pond. I’m wasted. Not like Billy. Billy was going to be somebody. He was going to cure cancer; he told me so. He had a great job in a research lab. He loved what he was doing. It was important work, work that was supposed to save lives. But somebody killed him.”
“I’m
sorry we didn’t attend the funeral. We were in Mexico visiting family when it happened. We didn’t hear until we returned. I hated that I missed you.” She knew about regrets. “I wish you’d stayed in Miami longer.”
“So I could feel more guilt? Listen to more comments about how terrible it was that Billy died? He asked me to go with him to New Orleans but I had to shoot some stupid commercial. I don’t even remember what it was for now. Selling some stupid product like air freshener or something. If I’d have gone with him, maybe he wouldn’t have died. Maybe he wouldn’t have been at that place at that time.”
“You don’t know that. Besides, Billy’s death wasn’t your fault.”
“He needed me, and I didn’t have time for him. My life was about pushing products people didn’t need while Billy’s was about making drugs people needed desperately.”
“Not everybody is good at science,” Juliana said.
“I’m good at nothing!” he snarled, then burst out, “It should have been me.”
She gripped his hand. “Charlie, no!”
“Yes. Billy was important. I’m not.”
Juliana was rocked to the core. “Everyone has value.”
“Not me. Not then. So I gave it up, all of it. I couldn’t bring Billy back, but I could do something of value. I knew a lady who’d lost her dog. It sounds stupid, but I started with that. She loved that dog. And I found it for her. She referred me to someone else who needed help. They referred me, too. I went to P.I. school and learned what I needed to help a lot more people. Sometimes it’s little stuff, but I don’t feel like I’m wasting my life now. I’ll never be what Billy would have been, but I’m better than I was.”
Juliana taped off the bandage. She didn’t look at him. There’d been pain in every word, pain that resonated inside her with her own unfulfilled dreams. She’d spent so much time grieving and angry that she couldn’t become a cop that she’d never considered any other way she might help people.
What he thought about himself was wrong, but he wouldn’t believe her if she told him so. Grief did strange things to people. Look at her father, protecting her like a child long after she’d grown up.
But in essence, Charlie had killed himself to arise from the ashes as someone else. She’d thought because he smiled the same that he was the same, but he was different inside. Hurting, though he’d never admit it, vulnerable, needy, lonely. How she knew that last, she couldn’t say, but she knew it intuitively.
Juliana lifted her gaze. “Is that why you won’t call Rick?”
Charlie nodded. “The wrong brother died. But they can’t see what I’ve done to atone.”
His words slammed into her like bullets. “They can’t know if you don’t tell them.”
“They won’t believe me. You didn’t.”
“I’m sorry. I thought I knew you so well.” But she didn’t know this Charlie at all.
“I’m not that man anymore. I use parts of him in my job, that’s all. When I’m successful, they’ll have to believe.”
She wanted—needed—to comfort him, but she didn’t think he’d accept it. Not overtly given, at least. She collected the tape and bandages and returned them to the shopping bag. “That bandage should be changed every few hours. Can you do it yourself or do you want to come back here so I can take care of it?”
Charlie sat up, holding his arm against his chest and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He looked like a sultan with his dark hair and tanned skin. Hunger stirred in her lower body.
“I need you to come with me,” he said.
“To take care of your wound?”
“No.” He shook his head. “To find the sculpture.”
“You can’t go back there!”
“I can if I attend the wedding. Me and my wife.”
“You said that before. What are you talking about?”
“I’m Joseph Castleton. You’re my wife, Camille. The Castletons are real people. We’re out-of-town guests of the Montgomerys staying at the Hilton.”
“You’re crazy. They’ll know we’re not the Castletons.”
“They won’t. They’ve invited five hundred people. They won’t know everybody by sight. We’ll be transported with the other guests and no one will be the wiser.”
“What if—”
Charlie stood and wavered for a moment. Juliana slipped an arm around him to steady him. He gave her a sheepish grin. “I have to return to the Hilton tonight, and you have to come with me. I’m probably a danger on the road and I’m unsteady on my feet. Besides, you want to get into that wedding as much as I do.”
Juliana bit her lip. It was true. She did want the sculpture. And she was worried about Charlie’s current state.
“I need you, Juliana.”
She stared into his blue eyes. Knowing what she did now, she thought he might not realize how much he needed her. And she admitted it; she needed to be needed by him.
“All right. Sit back down while I pack.”
He did, with alacrity. “What kind of fancy dresses do you have?” He was unselfconscious about his nudity.
She had to clear her throat and tear her gaze away. “I have a few.”
“Show me.”
She pulled out her “little black dress.” It had a flounce at the knees, for dancing. It plunged in a deep ruffled V-neck.
Charlie shook his head. “Next.”
She pulled out her red sheath dress with the red beaded bolero. “It has a hat.”
“That one has potential.”
He rejected a flowered dress, a two-piece beige suit, and her short, sexy red-and-black salsa dress. His eyes widened and he licked his lips at a fringed off-one-shoulder, off-one-hip, melon-colored dancing dress.
“It reminds me of the skirt you had on yesterday when we made love,” he said.
Her lower body heated with desire. Without her willing it, she looked at his lap, where his cock was showing signs of life. She tore her gaze away. His eyes glittered with sensual knowledge of what they’d shared together when they were naked.
Juliana shuddered and turned back to her closet. The final dress still had tags on it. She held it against her body as she stood before the full-length mirror. It was a knee-length sleeveless cream V-neck, the material shirred below her breasts into a diamond-shaped jewel. She gathered up her hair with her free hand, frowning.
“It’s perfect!” Charlie exclaimed with enthusiasm from behind her, adding, “Camille.”
“Are you sure? It wasn’t expensive.”
“It’s the small touches that make people think you paid more for it. Do you have diamond jewelry?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We’ll have to hope no one notices we don’t have wedding rings.”
“I’ve got my parents’ rings. My papá gave them to me before he married my Tía Dolores.” She rooted in her jewelry box.
“Your dad married your aunt?”
She lifted her head. “My mamá’s sister. I stayed with her after, you know, my dad caught us, until my papá moved near her. We were over there all the time. And one thing led to another. I’ve got two little half-brothers now.” She shrugged. “She’s a great stepmother, although I still think of her as my tía. Here,” she handed him her father’s thick gold band.
Juliana slipped on her mother’s rings, a more delicate pair of interlocking bands with a large round diamond. She held her hand out for him to see. “Not ostentatious. My father bought them in Europe on his way back from the Korean War.”
Charlie swallowed. “I think Camille has a practical streak.” He slipped her father’s ring on his hand. It was very loose.
“My dad’s a bigger man than you.”
Charlie looked up and smiled that sexy grin. “There you go demeaning my manhood again.”
“I’ve found your manhood to be absolutely perfect.”
His blue eyes heated. “I wish we had time to see how perfect, but we need to get to the Hilton while it’s still dark. The fewer people who see us arrive
the better.”
“Can I get a rain check?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
When they arrived at the Hilton with Juliana’s luggage in tow, Charlie insisted they enter through the front lobby.
“I thought the less people who saw us the better,” Juliana said.
“We had a little too much to drink at the party we attended. If I’m unsteady on my feet, the party will account for it. If you laugh out loud, it will help our cover story. And if I get a little amorous, all the more reason for us to hang the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door.”
“You’re really good at this.”
“Wait’ll we get to the room and I show you how good I am.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Ready?”
“Yes.” She slid her free arm around his waist. He pulled her suitcase. She carried her garment bag.
They staggered into the lobby. Juliana had changed into white capris, a peach off-the-shoulder top and white high-heeled sandals. With Charlie leaning into her, there was every reason to teeter.
“C’mon, only a little further and then you can lie down,” Juliana coaxed, in character.
Charlie leaned more of his weight against her and she had to shift to keep them both upright. Was he feeling light-headed or just playacting?
“I’m not drunk,” he slurred so perfectly that anyone within hearing distance would know he was. “I’m just feeling good.”
“C’mon, darling. Let’s go to bed.”
Charlie’s smile was so damn sexy it curled her toes. “I love it when you talk dirty.” Then he kissed her long and deep. This time her panties curled. Their room was too far away. Maybe she’d attack him in the elevator.
A man cleared his throat nearby. Juliana broke apart from Charlie trying to orient her mind. She had to remind herself they were playacting. Until they reached their room, at least.
A bellhop stood beside them. “Would you like help with your luggage?” The young Latino looked like he was fighting a smile.
“If you would.” Juliana handed him her garment bag and took her suitcase from Charlie’s lax grip, turning that over as well. She slid her arm around Charlie’s waist and headed him to the elevator.
He nuzzled her neck while they waited and caressed her back from her neck to her buttocks the whole ride up to their floor. Her nerve endings sent urgent messages to her lower body and made her panties wet. Her nipples pebbled in the air conditioning.
