And he’d been right. I freaking loved my job.
“The Curio Color mockups just came in and there is a message from Hunter on your desk. He’ll be in around eleven.”
My assistant Stacy hands me a folder of graphics to approve, and I nod my hello and thank you. I have too many things in my hands to stay and chat.
I walk into my office, a pretty glass box filled with things that keep me happy and motivated all day, and flick on the lights. I earned this office just three months ago, when Hunter promoted me to an account executive after more than a year and a half of working my ass off. Stacy come with the office, and although I have to get on her sometimes about keeping up, she’s pretty good at her job.
“So do you love them?”
I look up to see Jackie at my door, her navy wrap dress hugging her curvy body perfectly. Jackie is everything bombshell to my quiet attractiveness. She’s got the blonde hair, the big boobs, the killer smile and the fire-engine red lips. She’s bold and brilliant…and fantastic graphic designer.
I point to the unopened folder. “Well…I haven’t had a chance to look them over seeing as I haven’t even taken off my coat yet.”
“Ohhhh! Are we late due to some hanky panky with your hot felon husband?”
She gives me a smirk and I notice that her cat-eye is extra catty today. But even Jackie can’t pull me out of my Tucker-funk.
“No, just…running late.” I hang my blazer on the back of my door.
“Still? Oh, sweetie…” Her face falls and I she plops down in one of the beige chairs on the other side of my desk. “And he hasn’t said anything to you?”
I hate to bitch about my personal life to Jackie, and especially at work. But she’s been here through a lot of it, and she’s like the sister I never had. She gets it, she helps. And right now, I could really use someone to talk to.
“It’s like he would rather be back in prison. Like he doesn’t even want to be living with me. He’s still sleeping on the couch, and when I tried to get excited about him job searching today, he almost bit my head off with sarcasm.”
She shrugs, her blonde curls fluttering. “Char, you knew he was going to need some time. You can’t possibly understand what he’s going through. You just have to…be there for him until he wants to talk.”
For someone who eschews relationships like they’re virus-covered STDs or something, Jackie knows an awful lot about them. But I know why she’s pledging the “single for life” thing. Four years ago, her boyfriend died in an Air Force accident overseas. She’s never been the same, or so she’s said one night when we had one too many tequila shots.
“I know I do.” I sigh, giving myself one more second of moping. “Okay, let’s get into these Curio mockups.”
My day goes by like a blur, one client call or crisis after another. I had no idea, for almost my entire life, that I liked and communicated so well with people. But I am really good at my job, which is dealing with different people all day.
But no matter how much I buried myself in my work and my clients, all I could think about was how Tucker’s meeting was going.
Chapter 9
Tucker
Jane Joval looks like she could be an extra on Sons of Anarchy. A weathered smokers face, the hard glint in her eyes, the over-processed dyed hair, and leather everything. She’s the typical biker’s wife.
She’s also exactly the type of person I picture when I think parole officer.
And she takes absolutely no shit.
“I don’t take any shit.” See…I told you.
“And I don’t plan to give you any. Listen, I don’t plan on going back to prison. Ever. I want to get my life on track. I want a job.”
She looks me over, her wise blue eyes seemingly seeing into my soul.
Then she picks up my file from her overloaded, sagging wood desk. “First thing first, you’ll need to find a local NA chapter.”
I scoff. “I’m clean. Have been for three years.”
She counters. “You’re a drug addict. Doesn’t matter if reformed is on the beginning of that phrase or not. The number of convicts that come out of the joint, find the real world is too hard and go running right back to the alley are far too many. I don’t want to see that from you. So, you find a chapter. Find a sponsor.”
I nod, not wanting to piss her off in our first meeting. And she’s right. There were times in prison that I wanted to shoot up so badly, I almost went to the people I knew I could get it from. But I’d strapped myself to my cell, picturing Char’s face each and every time I wanted to get high.
“I see you’re a college graduate, not that it’ll get you much with a record nowadays.”
Jane isn’t looking at me, but at my papers. I finished the myriad of credits I had left while I was locked up. It’s not a degree from the University of Connecticut, just some online prison school, but I’m still proud of it. I accomplished something in there.
“So, you’ll need a job. I have a janitorial position open right now, and…”
Jane skims through a few papers on her desk. “I also have a gut job that I could assign you to.”
“A gut job?” I perk up. I was hoping for something in construction.
“Yeah, a buddy of mine who has a construction company. He needs extra men, but you wouldn’t be full time crew. If this project goes well, he might offer you a job. Or, you could take the full time janitorial job.”
I don’t even weigh the options. “The gut job, I’ll take it.”
She writes something down. “Okay, that’s settled then. Next…I see here you were seeing shrink in the joint, talking to someone. Now, you don’t have to tell me about what, but are you planning to continue talking to someone?”
“I don’t need it.” I stare out the grungy window of her office.
Jane snorts. “Listen, I get it tough guy. You think you’ll be able to sort out the feelings of coming back into the real world? Of dealing with your wife who just wants to be loved? Oh yeah buddy, I know all about you. It’s going to be really fucking difficult. Talk to someone. You need it.”
Jane slams my file closed and gives me a pointed stare. I don’t respond, but try to look like I’m pretending to mull it over.
“Okay, tough guy. I’m going to call my friend, you’ll probably start Monday. For the time being, get yourself to a meeting. Stay out of bars and clubs. Do yourself a favor, no alcohol. Be in the house by eight thirty at the latest. Don’t give anyone any excuse to get you into trouble. You got it?”
“Got it.”
I don’t plan on giving anyone any trouble. Because I don’t plan on leaving the house aside from work.
* * *
Char doesn’t get home until my Jane-mandated curfew.
“Sorry, sorry! I didn’t expect to work this late and then I realized we need to get you a cellphone because I couldn’t call! I disconnected the house line a while back. And I didn’t know if you would have started dinner or not…”
She drops her two huge bags on the floor and shuffles out of her pink blazer. Then she stops, staring at me sitting on the couch with the remote in one hand and my other down my pants.
“Did you get hungry?”
I know she’s needling me about not doing anything, or not having dinner ready or something. It’s annoying and I found out how peaceful it was today to have some quiet alone time. My blood starts to boil with her incessant rambling.
“I had some snacks. Yeah…I didn’t make dinner. I don’t really know what you like.”
I know I’m be an asshole, but I just can’t stop. Char’s face crumbles in the bright light of the TV screen.
“That’s okay. I can whip something up. Let me just go change.”
She crosses the room to go up the stairs, but pauses before she ascends them. She turns on her heel, those heels that her perky, round ass look incredibly delicious in that tight professional skirt.
“I hope you had a good day.” Char bends down and forces my chin towards hers
before she kisses me.
It’s not a long kiss, but it’s not short either. And there is heat there. It’s a bold move by the woman who used to be shy about just asking me to take her shirt off.
She makes me kiss her back, and suddenly I’m hungry for her. The dormant urges that I’ve pushed aside for a week rear their lustful heads, and I want to tackle her to the carpet.
I want to strip her naked and just look at her, all of that creamy skin and petite curves. I want to bury my face between her thighs and bring her to a screaming orgasm. All of those times when we sat across the table from each other in the visitation room, unable to touch. God, the need to touch her is like an addiction, and breaking it broke something in me. Something that now very much wants to thrust my cock inside of her tight heat and never pull out.
But then Char breaks it off with a sly smile. She clacks across the floor and up the stairs, until I hear the bedroom door shut.
I think she’s trying to play me. That tease. And it might be fucking working. Because here I am, sitting on the couch with a hard on stiffer and larger than I’ve had in three years, and she won’t make the next move.
That’s what this is. She wants me to make a move.
Chapter 10
Charlotte
Two and a Half Years Ago
I wish Tucker would just make a move.
Decide to do something, pick a lawyer, come up with a strategy.
But he hasn’t, and now is the time. His trial is two weeks away, he has yet to mount any sort of defense, and so now it’s time for me to fix this.
No one knows that the bank gave me an undisclosed severance package. After the hoopla of returning home and recovering, my mother talked to so many news outlets without my permission that I finally had to detach myself from her.
But what her tirade did was spook my employer. Because technically, I still worked there. I had never given resignation, and they had never fired me. It was a sticky situation, and one they didn’t want to be in.
It was technically their fault that I was kidnapped for as long as I was. After the police investigation, it was found that it took the bank 16 hours to realize that I’d been taken within the bank’s four walls. They didn’t employ someone to check the security footage on a full-time basis, and so when they finally did, it had cut a chunk of time from the police’s window of finding a missing or abducted person.
So, when I decided to press the issue, they shut me up with money. A lot of it. Half a million dollars to be exact.
Up until now, I’ve felt dirty with that money sitting in my account. I know it wasn’t the bank’s fault what happened to me, and it felt even worse accepting it because of my now-relationship, and marriage, to Tucker. Nothing bad happened to me in the end, so I shouldn’t even have been given this money.
Except now … it was going to come in very handy.
With me hiring one of the best defense attorneys in Lancaster, I bet the media will know now. It’s bound to come out, how much the bank gave me to keep me quiet. And how I’m using it to bankroll Tucker’s “get out of jail” card.
But I don’t care. If this helps Tucker, if it gets him off or reduces his sentence, it was all worth it.
I’ve already been contacted by the prosecution to testify against him. And thank God, being married to a felon has some perks. Because I can keep my mouth shut where everything Tucker is concerned.
“You’ll sit on the other side of the table from the inmate. No touching, no passing anything back and forth. We’ll be watching through the glass.”
The guard instructs myself and Tucker’s shiny new lawyer, Bailey Nickels.
Bailey is a wisp of a man, tall and skinny with graying black hair. But his suit is designer and his loafers are shined, and I know he’s worth all of the money I’m shelling out. Just three months ago he helped free a wife convicted of shooting her husband under an insanity defense after she found out he was sleeping with her sister. Bailey might be the devil, but Tucker and I pretty much already sold our souls so we have nothing to lose.
The door opens with the same buzzer as the visitation room, and Bailey waves me in before following.
“Hi baby.” Tucker smiles at me, sitting at the table in his orange jumpsuit, and my insides melt.
It hasn’t been an easy road. After the miscarriage, I couldn’t bare to see him in person for a few weeks. I felt like a failure. I was mad at him. And then I was mad at myself for being mad at him. But he sat on the phone with me everyday, listening to my incoherent sobbing and just whispered soothing words through the receiver.
And one day, I was able to get up out of bed, and felt like making the drive. It’s taken us a month or two to get back to us, to get to a place where we feel comfortable with each other. But we’re there now.
“Hi my love. How do you feel today?”
I wish I could lean across the table and kiss him, but then this meeting would be over way too soon, and I need Bailey to help him. So I restrain myself and sit across from him, careful to check my movements and not graze a single part of his body.
“Better now that you’re here.”
“Can we get down to business or are you lovebirds going to gawk at each other the whole time? I wouldn’t have brought the wife if I knew I was going to have to watch this.”
Bailey rolls his eyes as he pulls out a folder.
“Sorry, who are you?” Tucker glances at me with a suspicious look in his eye before glaring at Bailey.
The slick attorney holds out his hand, then retracts it, remembering the no-touching rule. “Bailey Nickels, your new attorney.”
Tucker must have heard of him, because his expression is one of utter surprise. “Wha … how? I can’t afford you, buddy.”
“You can now.” Bailey jerks a thumb in my direction as he pulls out Tucker’s case file.
Tucker looks at me for an answer.
“The bank settlement. I used it for his retainer.”
Tucker slams a fist on the table, and I hear a knock on the glass. The guards are watching him.
“Dammit, Char. That money was for you. In case I don’t get out of here, it was for you to be stable.”
So stubborn, my husband. “Yeah, well, I’m using it for you. To make sure you do get out of here, and can have a future with me.”
“Let’s not be so hasty …” Bailey interrupts us. “Let’s talk about your options here, Tucker.”
We both turn to him.
“So, they have you on one charge of bank robbery, one charge of kidnapping, one charge of breaking and entering and one charge of destruction of property for the mess on Camp Marsh. Now, I think I could get the kidnapping charge dropped, since Charlotte isn’t acknowledging it as that and will never testify to it. Mr. Marsh has already said he wants all charges having to do with the camp dropped, so that won’t be a problem.”
Hope sparks in my chest and I focus on Tucker’s listening expression.
Bailey goes on. “The breaking and entering will stick, since you did and they have you on tape. But the bank robbery, I might be able to argue that since all of the money you took was returned, it wasn’t necessarily a robbery.”
“Good, that all sounds good …” Tucker turns to me and nods his head.
“But, let me advise you on something else.”
I start to panic. Bailey and I had discussed all of the things he’d laid out for Tucker so far, but he’d never told me about some other option.
“I am going to tell you that it might be best to take a deal.”
The words are out of my mouth before I can think. “He’s not going to take a deal!”
“Let him finish, Char.” Tucker’s face is drawn in resignation.
No. He can’t lose hope on me now.
“Going to trial, it can go either way. Sure, they don’t have a copious amount of evidence against you, but the story is a crazy one with lots of factors. You have no idea what information jurors are going to latch onto. Plus, this a high-profile cas
e. The media knows you, people around here know you. You have no idea what their perception will be. Based on the information I’ve just laid out for you, I think I can go to the prosecutor and work out a very, very good deal. One with minimum jail time.”
And now, I was losing hope. For a trial. That he’d be set free. Because what Bailey was saying made a lot of sense.
Tucker directed his attention to me. “What do you think?”
I mulled it over in my head for a minute. “I think it could be less risky, going for a deal. But I am behind you no matter what.”
Tucker nods and stares up at the ceiling. “Alright. Let’s try for a deal.”
Chapter 11
Tucker
Char makes a mean chicken parmigiana.
I’m a selfish asshole for not even throwing a frozen pizza in the oven when I knew she wasn’t yet home from work, but whatever. She’s survived without me for this long, she can do it now.
And support me.
God, I’m a fucking loser.
So many thoughts were running through my head all day. About my parole, the new job. Our baby. Her advice to take the deal.
That one has been needling me for two and a half years, and yet I never let it out. I never told her that secretly, I blame her.
But it seems that, right now, over this lovely meal she’s cooked us, I’m going to.
“Why did you tell me to take the deal?”
I stare at her across the table as she pauses, a forkful of spaghetti halfway to her lips. She sets it down and looks at me.
“I never told you to take the deal.”
The fury in my veins won’t subside. “I could have walked free, been a free man, if you’d left the chances to trial. But no, you wanted to go the safe route, always the safe route.”
Char’s eyes and mouth turn down in sadness. “I never told you to take the deal, Tucker. I told you that I thought it was less risky, yes, but that I’d stand behind you no matter what you chose.”
The Complete Captive Heart Duet: Lost and Found Page 20
