by Ellen Lane
But it wouldn’t hurt to be on her guard, just in case.
Though, when she hung up with Vladimir, Charlotte thought a week was a fairly adequate amount of time to prepare herself for international travel, she was surprised at how quickly the time zipped by. Of course, a large portion of that time was taken up by work.
All at once, Charlotte couldn’t imagine how she might have once feared she wouldn’t have enough to live on. By that same token, she was very quickly learning why architects didn’t usually work on more than one project at a time.
Where she usually didn’t get more than a few hours of sleep on any given night, she now found herself all but run ragged. She woke every morning exhausted to hurry to the job site and make sure that Charlie was adequately preparing for her absence.
Since Vladimir had shut down his questionable comments about her, the man had been nothing but polite. Perhaps even stiffly so, but Charlotte preferred that to assuming that she was some spoiled little brat. However, he was putting her through her paces. He had reacted with genuine shock when it was revealed that both she and Vladimir were leaving the country, and now he scrambled to make sure he could manage the job site efficiently while they were gone. This, of course, meant that he wanted every detail, every single minute piece of paper she had on the framing, and Charlotte struggled to provide.
While she was in the process of organizing reams of notes on the LA building, she was also racing against the clock where her newest project was concerned. They had approved her sketches, but Charlotte knew she would be expected to present detail blueprints by the time they reached Russia. This meant that, whenever she wasn’t at the job site, she was pouring over her drawing table, churning out ideas as fast as they could pop into her head.
Lila popped her head in on her numerous times to make sure she didn’t forget to eat - but it was no use trying to get her to sleep. Charlotte slept so little that she considered it wasted time. There were short periods where she dozed, fitfully, against her desk. In her not quite dreams, Vladimir was there. Only instead of trying to analyze her every move, he was pulling her into his arms and kissing her like he had never needed anyone so badly. He was inside her, whispering her name roughly as he brought her more pleasure than she might have thought existed and doing a whole myriad of things that she shouldn’t have been dreaming about at all.
But when had Charlotte Gardner ever been able to control the depths of her dreams?
She worked feverishly as the window of time she had continued to shrink. There were four days, then two, then one...then less than twelve hours. When she fell asleep at her desk this time, even her insomnia didn’t keep her from rousing.
Charlotte fell into a slumber so deep it was mercifully dreamless as her body forced her to recharge. Lila looked in on her around eleven in the evening and paused for only long enough to drape a blanket over her friend. She was surprised Lottie had been able to keep going for as long as she had. With the workload on her shoulders, a crash was inevitable. Better now than when she couldn’t afford one.
She tiptoed from the room, leaving Charlotte as comfortable as she was going to get - and the redhead slept - long, deep and blissful.
**
Though Vlad knew that Charlotte wasn’t known for keeping in contact as well as she should, it worried him when she hadn’t called him the next morning. By the time ten o’clock rolled around -and their flight was set to take off in an hour and a half - he found himself slightly irked. He didn’t like to be late - even if the plane couldn’t really leave without them.
They had a schedule to keep in Russia - Vladimir was so wound up about it that he found none of the usual anticipation of a trip back to his mother country within him.
At first, he chalked it up to irritation - to stress, perhaps.
But after a moment of careful reflection, he realized that there was something else in the mix here. He excelled under stress, and he wasn’t the type of man who lost his temper quickly or easily.
Charlotte was the reason he was so bent out of shape.
He was worried about her.
That alone was unsettling enough - though Vladimir had slept with his fair share of women, even contemplated relationships with them, he couldn’t ever recall worrying about a woman so much that it affected his temperament.
But he would have to be blind to ignore how tired she seemed. She insisted to him - almost constantly, really - that she was a night owl. That she didn’t need more than a few hours of sleep every night to keep herself going. Vladimir didn’t know how much sleep she was getting as their trip to Russia loomed large before them, but he was willing to bet it was precious little. When he saw her on the job site, dark circles sagged beneath her eyes and she’d lost the usual pep in her step.
However, that didn’t mean that she had lost her drive. Charlotte still worked like a madman. When Charles called hourly meetings with her on the job site to look over blueprints, she indulged him. When she needed to explain things to the construction workers with his help, she did. She even went out of her way to continue to take him to new and innovating places for lunch, even if it seemed she sometimes forgot the food on her plate.
It was obvious that she was exhausted - and that thought weighed on him.
She was trying to build a firm -trying to make her way up in the world. This he knew. The question was: did she have to run herself half ragged to do it?
Ten thirty rolled around, and she still hadn’t called. By this time, he was almost fidgeting with impatience.
And Vladimir Kensley did not fidget.
He called her twice in the space of five minutes and she didn’t pick up. At this point, a little pinprick of anxiety began to work its way between her shoulder blades. God forbid she had passed out somewhere, overworked, and someone had taken advantage of her. Or she had gotten mugged the previous night on her way home.
Charlotte didn’t occur to him as the type of women to be a damsel in distress - at least, no distress that wasn’t her own making - but the scenarios weren’t impossible. And once they were planted in his head, his stomach twisted uncomfortably.
So he switched his tactics. From his hotel room, Vladimir called the office and spoke to the secretary, asking her for Charlotte’s address. Once he had it in hand, he called a car to take him to her apartment complex - a mere twenty minutes away.
It was absolutely no time at all - or, at least, it shouldn’t have been. Instead, Vladimir found every moment creeping along at a snail’s pace as he reminded himself how unlike her this was. She had only been late to work one morning, and she had answered the phone the moment he’d called her. This...he didn’t like this.
When he finally reached her apartment block, he all but yanked the door open, taking the steps two at a time. Vladimir rang the doorbell, hearing the tinny ding of the bell as it echoed through the apartment.
But no one came to answer it. He rang it again, giving it barely a moment before he knocked brusquely - loudly - on the door. “Charlotte!” He barked, anxiety adding an edge to his voice. “Open the door!”
Another ridiculously long moment passed before finally, finally he registered the sounds of someone moving around beyond the door. There came the dull snap of the lock being turned back a moment before an unfamiliar face appeared in the doorway.
An unfamiliar male face.
For the briefest moment, Vladimir was struck dumb. He thought he must have the wrong apartment, but a cursory glance at the number told him that he was, indeed, in the right place.
Which led him to draw other, worse conclusions.
The man stood a head shorter than him, and it was clear that he’d gotten up from bed to answer the door - though whose bed, Vlad didn’t want to think about. He ran a hand through his thick, dark brown waves before staring up at Vladimir blearily. “Looking for Lottie?”
In that instant, Vladimir was struck by a wild, completely unwelcome sensation: black, hot discomfort twisted up inside him as he imagined the man before him shari
ng a bed with Charlotte - whom he felt comfortable enough with to call by a nickname. It shouldn’t have mattered to him - it wasn’t supposed to - but he had just kissed her two short weeks ago.
There were times when he imagined he could still taste her on her lips; and despite the stoic exterior he struggled to keep in place, he certainly hadn’t forgotten it. Or stopped wanting a repeat performance any time she was within a ten-foot radius of him.
That was, perhaps, why the sight of this man sent something startlingly like rage coursing through him. It was the first time in his life Vlad had to fight to keep his temper under control. There was a large part of him - more than half, perhaps, that wanted to choke the life out of this skinny man. Who wanted to trod over his unconscious body and find where Charlotte lie beyond to claim her for his own.
Luckily, before that rash impulse could be betrayed in any fatal way, another head poked from the doorframe. A blonde, female head that looked first at the man, then up at Vladimir’s impeccable, suit-clad form in sleepy surprise. The only thing she wore was an oversized t-shirt, and it was clear that he’d woken her too. “Fuck.” She blinked, her eyes widening and her posture straightening somewhat as realization lit in her eyes. “Shit. Charlotte. Charlotte’s still asleep. Fuck.”
This, he pieced together quickly, could be none other than the roommate Charlotte had told him about - Lila. Her mouth was almost as foul as the redhead’s, and he wondered which of them had taught the other. “Babe,” Lila elbowed the man beside her in the ribs so he winced. “Make him some coffee or something. I have to get Charlotte up.”
Vlad heard every word she said, but his mind lingered gratefully - almost ecstatically - on the first.
Babe.
The stranger was her lover, not Charlotte’s - and the wave of warm relief that washed over him was almost enough to make him smile outright.
Almost.
After all, he’d come all this way - worried first about her, and then about who was sharing her bed, and now he came to find, after all that worrying, that she had just overslept? He opened his mouth to say something, only to have Lila beat him to the punch with a sheepish smile. “I am so sorry, Mr. Kensley. I was supposed to be waking her up...I know you guys have a flight to catch. But she hasn’t slept in days and she finally knocked out, so I-”
“Days?” Vladimir interrupted her sharply, taken aback. “Did you say days?”
Lila winced at the bite in his tone. “Well, she usually doesn’t sleep much, but she’s been trying to prepare for the trip and make sure everything on the site runs smoothly...don’t blame her. Really. I’ll have her up in a minute.”
But, by that point, all Vladimir’s irritation had bled away.
So he had been right to worry. She hadn’t really been sleeping at all. As exhausted as she looked, she must have felt even more tired...especially if she was still sleeping on a morning this important.
Lila, he noticed, was anxious to take all the blame onto herself. He had to wonder, for a moment, what stories Charlotte told her roommate to make her so skittish around him; but the thought passed quickly. He was much more concerned with the matter at hand: Charlotte, and how she’d so obviously overworked herself.
She needed rest. And its seemed almost petty, really, to wake her for something as trivial as a trip across town to the airport when they were going to be taking a private plane.
He exhaled a long breath, straightening his tie. “Lila, I presume?”
At his inquiry, the blonde girl flushed slightly. “Yeah, sorry.” She stuck her hand out and he shook it automatically. “We’re not usually early risers - not like Lottie, at least. This is my boyfriend, Benjamin.” Vlad shook Benjamin’s hand too, even though only moments before he had been on the cusp of disemboweling him. “Do you want to come in for some coffee or something while I wake her?”
Vlad took only a moment to consider. Though she might be sleeping now, Charlotte never neglected her work when it needed to be done. She was a character - a brash, impulsive, totally uncontainable force of nature who he still couldn’t even begin to understand, but he respected the hell out of her. At least, that was the only emotion he dared to put at the forefront of his mind at that particular moment. She deserved this little reprieve after a hard week. “Is she packed already?” He finally inquired contemplatively.
“Oh, she’s been packed for the whole week. She’s over the moon.” Lila provided, her expression fond. In that moment, Vlad found himself slightly envious of her. It was obvious that she understood the way Charlotte ticked - knew it intimately, even. What must it be like to be like her, or his brother Lucas, and understand people so damn effortlessly?
“Blueprints and everything she’ll need for the trip?”
“Yep,” Lila confirmed, jerking a thumb backwards towards the dim interior of the apartment. “Bags are in the living room.”
“Alright then. You bring those out. Leave Charlotte to me.”
It was a bold statement - and Vlad realized, the moment he said it, that he was about to cross several boundaries that he’d set for himself. He tried to argue for function over anything else: Charlotte needed rest, he didn’t want to wake her, and it didn’t look like Benjamin could lift half as much as he himself. He moved past the shorter man and into the surprisingly tidy living space. “Where is she?”
Lila appeared for a moment as if she might protest, but then she merely raised a hand to point down a single hallway. “Study. Last door on the left.”
Vladimir went, making his way quietly down the corridor until he found himself before the closed door. It opened smoothly - soundlessly; and though he had expected to find a sleeping Charlotte inside, the sight of her momentarily stole his breath.
She was slumped over a large drawing table in the far corner of the room, breathing softly, a thick blanket draped over her. It looked as if she had still been working when she’d fallen asleep, as a charcoal pencil was clutched loosely in her hands. Her bright auburn curls spilled over her shoulder in a single braid coming half undone.
The usually brash and outspoken woman looked surprisingly vulnerable like this, her full lips slightly parted, lashes vivid on her freckled cheeks. All the fanfare and frantic speed had fled from her and here, now, she was just a sleeping woman. An exhausted woman who had been doing her job right up until the moment her body had given out on her.
Vlad found himself loathe to move her, but there was nothing to be had for it. They were already late, and the most he could grant her was a few more hours of sleep.
Soundlessly - almost tentatively - he moved across the room. When he tugged Charlotte’s wheeled chair ever so slightly back from the desk, she didn’t stir. Lila was right - she was, for lack of better words, completely knocked out. Beneath the blanket, he noticed that, thankfully, she was fully dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. He had still yet to meet a woman that could make the casual garb look as good as she did. In a smooth movement, he bent slightly to haul her, bridal style, into his arms, blanket and all. He was surprised by how little she weighed - but then again, she hadn’t been eating much lately either.
When she woke, he was going to have to have a stern conversation with her about how she’d been pushing herself. It was all well and good to stay on a schedule, but she was going to make herself ill.
And he certainly couldn’t have that.
Vladimir told himself that it was out of pure necessity for her talents that he needed her healthy, but the way his body had begun to react to her nearness was quite contradictory to that line of thought. She smelled so damned good...and the moment he picked her up, she shifted slightly in his arms with a soft, sleepy sound that had him swallowing thickly as her body pressed up against his.
It was best he get her to the car quickly - before he did something he’d regret.
Shifting her higher against his chest, Vladimir carried her from the study. When he entered the living room, both Benjamin and Lila were clutching what he presumed to be Char
lotte’s bags. At the sight of him carrying her in his arms, Lila’s eyes widened slightly. She opened her mouth as if she might be about to say something, and then shut it just as quickly. “Um...where should we take her bags?” Those were the words she eventually settled on, but Vlad wasn’t idiotic enough to ignore there was something left unsaid.
And it probably had to do with the fact that he was carrying his sleeping colleague down to the car rather than waking her and marching her on her own two feet like any normal superior would do.
He was unmistakably soft in places he shouldn’t be where Charlotte Gardner was concerned, and if anyone would be able to tell, it would certainly be her best friend and roommate. But he wasn’t about to stop and have a discussion about it now. There was, he insisted firmly to himself, nothing to discuss. Charlotte needed sleep and he was making sure she got it. That was all.
“There’s a car outside - downstairs at the curb. Just load the bags in the trunk there.”
Lila led the way, Benjamin following in her wake with - to his merit - only a single glance back in Vladimir’s direction. The dark-haired man followed them outside to the gleaming Mercedes at the curb where they loaded the bags. With infinitely more care, Vladimir settled his cargo in the back seat of the car. It was strange - he had thought that maybe the jarring of the staircase - or even being moved - would be enough to wake her. But Charlotte slept on.
When Vlad straightened, it was to the sight of both Benjamin and Lila standing on the curb, peering over in his direction. When he caught them looking, Benjamin quickly transferred his gaze elsewhere, but Lila merely stared at him, uncowed.
“Take good care of her.” Those five words were all he needed to hear to know what would happen if he didn’t. They were, Vlad knew, words designed for a boyfriend. A lover that was spiriting her away to lands unknown. He was her boss, and they were merely working on a few projects together.
Nonetheless, he nodded solemnly. “Of course.”
With that, he slid into the car before things could get any more awkward between them. Inside a minute, the driver was off towards the airport, leaving the still drowsy and bewildered couple standing on the curb. Vlad wondered, absently, if Charlotte had told Lila about the incident between them in his office...or rather, how she had told her. If what Lucas told him about women was any indication, there was no chance she hadn’t told her.
