by Olivia Miles
She was shaking her head now, a bitter smile playing at her lips. “I’m selfish, cold, and careless. And oh, of course…foolish. The family screwup, and here I go again…”
“No,” he insisted. “No.” He knew many cold and selfish people, but he refused to believe Charlotte was that way. He saw the light in her eyes, the sincerity in her smile many times. He knew the way he felt when he heard her welcoming him home, bringing a sense of comfort to him he had never known was possible.
“Oh yes, Greg.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “I am very careless.” She tossed her hands into the air. “Why else would I have gotten myself into this mess? Agreeing to pose as your fiancée was foolish enough. But falling for a man who could never accept my daughter…A man who…how did Rebecca put it? Hates kids.” She shook her head. “I have to go.”
His mind was spinning as he watched her gather up a few bags and march toward the door. He wanted to shout something out, something that would stop her, but he knew there was nothing he could say. And he knew the only person he was angry with was himself.
She had a point, after all. A baby…a baby had never been in the cards. He didn’t know how to be a father or a parent. And watching Charlotte with Audrey, the natural ease of her love, made him doubt any inkling he had.
Charlotte deserved better than the life she’d been living. And Audrey deserved a father.
They both deserved all those things and more. He just wasn’t sure he was the man to give them what they needed.
* * *
The light above Bree’s door was on, and through the glass windowpanes, Charlotte thought she could make out a light from the kitchen. With a shaking hand, she turned off the engine, released her seat belt, and plucked Audrey’s carrier from its base. The crib was still at Greg’s house—she’d realized this only once she’d pulled out of the driveway, but then, she hardly had time to dismantle it, and she didn’t know where Greg kept his toolbox anyway. Besides, she wasn’t going back to that house tonight. Maybe not even Saturday night.
Saturday night. So much for her grand plan.
Charlotte hurried across the front path and rang the doorbell. She pressed her nose to the glass, only relaxing when she saw Bree coming around the corner. Her cousin looked almost as bad as Charlotte felt. When she turned the lock and opened the door, Charlotte could see that her eyes were rimmed with red, and she was clutching a glass of wine as if it were a life vest.
Either Bree had seen another documentary on the meatpacking industry or something had happened with Simon.
Charlotte was placing her bets on Simon.
“I’m afraid I’m not the best company,” Bree said, closing the door behind them.
“That makes two of us.” Charlotte gestured to the wineglass. “Have any more of that?”
“If you don’t mind that it came from a box,” Bree said with a grin.
Charlotte set Audrey down in the living room and followed her cousin back to the kitchen, which looked a bit worse than the last time she’d been there, though she didn’t see how this was possible.
“How’s the renovating coming along?” She noticed that the light fixture had been removed since her last visit. That was it. It had been an old Tiffany-style affair, with stained glass. Pretty but hardly contemporary. Now the room was lit by a lamp that was perched on a chair seat, since the countertop was covered in paint cans and cabinet fronts.
“I’m going with a warm gray in here,” Bree said as she filled a glass and handed it to her. She topped herself off. “I first need to figure out how to get all that wallpaper off.”
She gestured to the far wall where strips of rooster-printed wallpaper had been torn off in jagged strips. Charlotte barely noticed anything but the enormous hole in the center of the wall.
“Oh. I thought I might open the floor space up, but then I realized I sort of need an engineer to tell me if that’s a supporting wall.” Bree’s face crumbled before Charlotte realized what was happening. “It was just a really bad day and I…I needed to smash something.”
Charlotte set her hand on her cousin’s wrist. “Do you have something I might be able to smash?”
Five minutes later, they were in one of the spare bedrooms. A room that Bree tearfully explained she planned to turn into a reading nook, once she had successfully ripped out all the paneling that had been added when her grandmother redid the room in the seventies as a boys’ hangout for all the grandsons.
Gripping the crowbar, Charlotte pried off the top corner of the wood and with all her might pulled. A moment later, a strip of wood had dislodged from the wall. Charlotte grinned. “This is addictive!”
She tried another piece, and another. “I could do this all night!”
“Be my guest,” Bree said wearily, dropping onto an olive-green armchair that would no doubt be banished to the attic soon. She sank her head into her hands. “I’m just so tired.”
“Well. I can have this room done in ten minutes at the rate I’m going!” Charlotte pried off another piece, wrangling it free.
“I thought this would be a fun project, that I could make this house my own, that it would be…enough. But it’s not enough. And I don’t think it ever will be. And now…” Bree sniffed loudly and then wailed, “Now it’s all ripped up and ugly and I don’t know how to put it all back together again!”
Charlotte stopped prying the paneling from the wall and stared at Bree. “I thought…I thought you were enjoying this home remodeling stuff.”
“Are you kidding me?” Bree cried. “Look at my house! Gran…Gran would just die if she saw this. No pun intended.” Bree sniffed again, wiped her nose on her sleeve. Charlotte noticed she had a chunk of plaster in her hair. There was no telling what project she’d been working on before Charlotte arrived.
“You’ll get everything in place. It will be beautiful, I’m sure of it.”
Bree looked at Charlotte doubtfully, but she stopped crying. “I thought it would make me feel better. Instead it just makes me feel worse.”
“Is this about Simon?” Charlotte asked. She really hoped so. She didn’t want another recap of Fast Food Nation. She’d never even seen the movie but had nearly stopped eating for three weeks after Bree had summarized it for her.
“Of course this is about Simon. The bastard,” Bree added under her breath.
Charlotte tipped her head in sympathy. “Want to talk about it?”
“Nothing to talk about,” Bree said. She set down her wineglass and pushed herself into a standing position. “The guy’s a jerk. I don’t know why it took me so long to see it.”
“It’s easy to see what you want to see. I’m guilty of that,” Charlotte said bitterly.
Bree began peeling the orange plaid wallpaper from the top half of the wall. It came off in thin, random strips, but she didn’t seem to care. “I’m not going to lie, I cried today, but not over Simon. Not really. I cried over the time I wasted on him, on someone who wasn’t honest with me, who didn’t deserve me. Guess you could say I’m mad at myself.”
“I understand that feeling all too well,” Charlotte said. “Time to stop giving people too much credit and start seeing them for what they really are.”
Bree turned to her. “What has you so fired up tonight?” Before Charlotte could say anything, her eyes turned knowing. “Don’t tell me. Your client.”
Now it was Charlotte’s turn to drop onto an armchair. It smelled like sweat and teenage boy. “Is it that obvious?”
“I thought he was just a friend?” Bree asked pertly, but Charlotte saw the compassion in her eyes. “Go on,” she said, lifting her wineglass from the table and taking a long sip. “Tell me everything.”
And so Charlotte did. How she was broke. How Jake hadn’t so much as looked at his daughter, much less taken any responsibility for her. How she was staying with Greg. How he’d kissed her. How he’d broken her heart.
“Oh, Charlotte.” Bree stared at her, almost as if she didn’t even know what to say.
&nbs
p; “I’m a screwup. I make bad choices.” Charlotte shrugged and took a long sip of wine.
“No, Charlotte. You are many things, but you are not a screwup. Jake—that snake—is the screwup. When I think that he had the opportunity to see that sweet baby…in my shop.” She shook her head. “I’m so angry.”
Uh-oh. Charlotte knew that look. It was the look Bree got when she was about to do something. Quickly, Charlotte reached down and grabbed the crowbar. “Here,” she said, proffering it.
“Ripping out a wall won’t help with this,” Bree said, shaking her head. “What are you going to do, Charlotte?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte replied. It didn’t matter how much her heart ached. What mattered right now was that she didn’t know what would happen tomorrow anymore. Where she would live. If she’d even have a job. What Kate would say…She groaned. Kate. “I suppose I have to go to the Frost party. Smile like the happy fiancée.”
“No, you don’t!”
“Yes,” Charlotte said sheepishly. “I do. I need the money, Bree. And I don’t want to make things worse with my sister.”
“And how exactly would you be making things worse with your sister by being honest with her?” Bree asked pertly, and this time, she was sticking with that look.
Charlotte opened her mouth to speak, to explain, but no sound came out. She didn’t know the answer to that anymore.
“Trust your sister, Charlotte. She loves you and that baby.” Bree’s eyes were pleading, and Charlotte’s began to blur with tears.
She nodded silently. Bree was right. She’d spent so much time waiting for her sister to trust her again, she hadn’t stopped to think that she needed to trust again, too.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The morning light filtered through the curtains of Kate’s guest room long before Audrey’s cries filled the room. Normally, Charlotte would feel nothing short of gleeful at a rare, luxurious morning to sleep in, but not today. Today she longed to be busy, preoccupied with something other than dread and regret.
So much for this being a fresh start and a new and improved, put-together Charlotte. She still hadn’t learned her lesson, no matter how heavy the price.
Her chest felt heavy as she swung her legs over the bed. Kate and Alec were sitting at the kitchen table when she reached the last stair, her hand still lingering on the banister. They were sitting catty-corner, nestled in the bay window that overlooked the backyard, their voices low and hushed. They both looked up when they saw her in the entranceway, plastering almost identical smiles on their faces.
Charlotte pressed her lips together and forced a small smile as she walked to the coffee maker. “Audrey’s still sleeping,” she informed them as she filled her mug. She lifted the lid on the sugar bowl and helped herself to two heaping spoonfuls, knowing that if she kept this up she’d never get back into her prebaby clothes.
“We’re not used to having a baby in the house,” Alec said as Charlotte pulled out a chair at the table and dropped into it. He reached over and grinned at Kate. “Good practice.”
Charlotte frowned at this. She couldn’t help it. Of course Kate would find someone who wanted a family, someone who was committed to her and their future. While Charlotte…Well, she was still paying for her mistakes.
She stopped herself and took a sip of the coffee. It was wrong to be jealous of her sister’s happiness like this. It was this kind of thinking—this need to feel just as important and special—that had led to her sleeping with Jake. And after what Charlotte had done, Kate deserved to be happy. And Charlotte wanted that for her, more than anything.
It was just…She wanted to have that for herself, too.
“I’ll be out of here by January,” she promised, as she had last night. It had been too late when she’d arrived to explain the whole truth. All they knew was that she had to move out of her apartment and would be finding a new one. The pipes, the heat…She couldn’t even remember the excuse she’d given. But there would be no excuse today. Today she was telling Kate the truth.
“Don’t rush on our account,” Kate said. “Besides, Mom and Dad will be back soon and it will be fun to all be under the same roof for Christmas.”
Charlotte was skeptical. “What about the stress of the wedding?”
“When am I not stressed about something?” Kate said with a wink, and Charlotte’s guilt skyrocketed. Her sister was of course stressed about her wedding, and having houseguests was never easy, not when one cried for half the night. Unlike Greg’s, Kate and Alec’s home was of modest size, with three cozy bedrooms and a hallway bathroom.
“I’m here to help,” Charlotte said. She noticed she’d spilled some sugar on the countertop and hastily brushed it into the sink.
“Just focus on the Frost party,” Kate said. “That’s most important right now.”
Charlotte looked down into her mug, feeling the return of that hard knot in her stomach.
She had to face him sooner or later. She’d worked too hard to let another man stand in the way of a better life for her daughter or her relationship with her sister.
Charlotte sighed, not even caring that Alec and Kate were sitting in silence, observing her. All she wanted to do was bolt. From this town, from Kate, from Jake, and now from Greg. But she couldn’t. She owed Kate more than that. And she owed Audrey a stable life.
And until she got the second half of her payment from Greg, there was no chance of either.
“I should probably get to the office,” Alec said, pushing back from the table.
“Tell William I say hello.” Kate smiled and lifted for a kiss.
Charlotte averted her eyes and slid into a chair at the opposite end of the table. She glanced at the clock on the far wall. Audrey would be up any minute, hungry and in need of all sorts of things. When Kate and Alec started a family, they’d be able to share the responsibility. Just once Charlotte thought it might be nice to have someone pat her shoulder and tell her, You sit, I’ll handle this.
Kate waited until Alec had left before sliding into his chair, directly facing Charlotte. “I’m concerned about you.”
Of course. When wasn’t Kate concerned? When would she finally prove to Kate that she was fine, just fine? She didn’t warrant special attention. And she sure as hell didn’t deserve it, either.
“I told you. It’s just the old furnace.”
Kate frowned. “I thought you said the pipes froze.”
Charlotte stiffened. “That too. I’m going to find a better place for a January lease. Too many problems at that place.” Like being evicted. “The holidays are just slowing the work down. But honestly, you were right about that place, Kate. I think I’ll start looking for something better next week.” Her spirits rose a bit at the thought of that building in the center of town she’d been eyeing. If the party went well and Kate decided to give her more clients of her own, she could even stretch a bit, upgrade to a bigger apartment with in-unit laundry or a little balcony where she and Audrey could plant flowers…
Oh, who was she kidding? She could barely take care of herself or her kid. The plant wouldn’t last a week.
“It’s not the living situation I’m concerned about,” Kate said. “You know you and Audrey are welcome here as long as you need to stay.”
Charlotte felt hot tears spring to her eyes at that. She blinked and stared into her mug. “Then what has you so worried?” Unlike her, Kate was no fool. Even if Kate didn’t know how far Charlotte had taken her fake engagement, she could sense something was amiss. No matter how much Charlotte tried to hide her pain.
“I want to know what’s going on with Jake, Charlotte. I know you don’t bring his name up around me, but you don’t have to worry about that. Honestly.”
“What’s there to discuss?” Charlotte asked, feeling tense.
“Well, I personally feel like he should have stepped up last night. His child was living in an apartment with no heat. Why didn’t he help out?”
Charlotte hesitated. It was now o
r never. And she couldn’t flat-out lie to her sister. Evading the truth had been hard enough.
“Jake has never helped out,” Charlotte said quietly.
Kate frowned. “But…I thought we had that all straightened out. Over the summer, when you moved back. You said you were going to hire an attorney.”
“I said I would. I did say that,” Charlotte said wearily. “But then I started thinking about the things he’d done and the things he’d said. He doesn’t want to be Audrey’s father, Kate. And I don’t want to force him to be. Audrey deserves more than that.”
“But it’s still his child. His responsibility. He owes her something.”
“At what cost?” Charlotte said, shaking her head. She’d already thought this all through, a dozen times over. “So she can know this man and sense how much he doesn’t care about her? I can’t bear it. I can’t bear the thought of my child feeling unloved by her parent.” She drew a breath, energized by that terrible thought. “I won’t do that to her, Kate. Jake doesn’t want to be Audrey’s father. So she has me. I can’t provide everything for her, but…I’m trying.”
Kate reached over the table and gripped Charlotte’s hand. “Oh, Charlotte. I wish you’d told me sooner.”
“I didn’t know how. So much had happened, and…it’s important to me that we get back to the way things used to be.” She hesitated. “There’s something else you should know.”
Kate paused. “Something tells me I am not going to like this.”
Charlotte couldn’t agree more. She pulled her hands into her lap and started at the beginning, the very first time she rang Greg’s doorbell, and finished with last night, wincing.
Silence fell over the room.
Finally, Kate spoke. “Thank you for letting me know. As for the Frost account, I will be taking over.”
