A Charm Like You

by Sharla Lovelace

“Thatcher,” Jackson said. “Can you hear me? I need to talk to you. I need to drive back tonight, not tomorrow so can you get a ride home?”

  I met his eyes, and his expression changed from sexy to pissed off in less than a second. Jackson couldn’t drive, he had no business getting in a car. Things just got real. Our misty, psychedelic super nova fantasy moment was over.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said under his breath.

  The same words were churning in my head. It was fate. It was an omen. It was the universe telling us to go to our separate corners and stop humping like dogs.

  The doorknob turned, and there was movement behind me as the door moved.

  “Thatch?”

  I gasped and Thatcher pushed back, slamming the door and dropping my legs. One of them stayed around his waist while my other foot hit the floor with a clunk.

  “What the hell?” Jackson said.

  “Can you wait a minute?” Thatcher hissed.

  He gently unwound my leg and went to hold my face, but I was already on disaster recovery. The second I had two functional feet, I was off, scooping up my bra and shirt and holding one side of my pants up as I sprinted to the bedroom. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see him tuck himself in with a grimace and zip up.

  So close.

  I shut the door behind me and leaned against it, my eyes burning with unexpected tears.

  So close. I’d been so close to making such an ominous mistake. A few well-placed touches and well-timed kisses, and I hadn’t cared one iota about my business or Micah or my own mental state. Because I could spout all damn day and night about sexual benefits and keeping it all physical, but that hadn’t been. That—that lostness back there—it was dangerous. It was everything I swore not to do. I covered my face with my hands and breathed in the smell of him still on me.

  Oh my God, I’d never get enough of that. I wanted to never wash my hands again. I was so screwed.

  I heard their muffled voices in the other room, Thatcher’s deeper one sounding angry. Something was going down, and it sounded serious. More serious than it was important to hide behind a door like a busted teenager.

  Yanking on my clothes in a rush, I ran my fingers through my hair, swiped under my eyes, and hoped for the best.

  Both men’s heads turned my way as I pushed open my door. Thatcher’s mouth was set in a grim line that almost made me look away from his still shirtless torso. Almost.

  “Oh, you dog,” Jackson said under his breath, backhanding Thatcher in the chest. “I knew it.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Thatcher said, leaving him with an irritated sigh as he stepped around him to snatch his shirt from the back of the couch. “Except how not to just walk in someone’s house.”

  “This isn’t your house.”

  “No, it’s about to be mine,” I said. “What’s going on? Problem with your room?”

  Detour and divert the drunk man—it could work.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I just have to go.”

  “You can’t drive back like this, Jackson,” he seethed. “It’s stupid and—”

  “I don’t have a choice,” Jackson fired back, my presence forgotten.

  “You always have a choice,” Thatcher countered.

  “Shit is going down at my place right now,” Jackson said, his tone heavy on the last words.

  “And a five-hour drive is not going to solve that,” Thatcher said.

  “What kind of shit?” I asked, wishing I’d shut up and stop drawing attention to myself. “At your house?”

  “My house, my office, they’re all over the damn place,” Jackson said, turning in a random circle, looking at surfaces. “What did you do with my keys?”

  “Who’s all over the place?” I asked, directing my question to the man not spinning while doing my damnedest not to look him in the eye for more than a second.

  “Pirates,” Jackson said.

  I blinked. “Come again?”

  “Jackson—”

  “I’m fine, Thatch!” Jackson said, wheeling on his brother with a show of surprising clarity. “Believe me, a phone call like that has sobering abilities. I’ll drink coffee and eat fast food all the way home, but I have to go, brother!” He held out his hand, a stern set to his own jaw. “Keys, please.”

  Thatcher’s expression looked murderous and weary at the same time. After a moment’s pause, he dug into his pocket and slapped the keys into Jackson’s open palm.

  “Call Micah when you get there,” he said through clenched teeth. “Let her know you aren’t dead. Call her from jail. Call her from a hospital. Don’t call me again looking for a father to fix your shit. I’m nobody’s parent, and I’m done.”

  Jackson grabbed the keys and ran out the door without another word, seemingly unfazed by his brother’s ominous declaration. They might have done this a time or two.

  Thatcher looked deflated, standing there in an unbuttoned shirt and jeans still partially unzipped. He ran a finger and thumb over his eyes and fisted both hands, looking around as if he needed something to punch or throw. I grabbed a pillow off the couch and held it up, and he blew out a frustrated breath.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice little more than a growl. “You shouldn’t have to witness our family drama.”

  “Pirates?” I asked again.

  Thatcher raked his fingers through his hair, making it poke up in little spikes. “Evidently.” Absently, he went to work on his buttons.

  “Like ahoy matey?”

  “No, like thieves on the sea,” he said, forcing his gaze to mine. He wasn’t there, anymore. Not with me. He was in the car with his brother like a worried-sick parent whether he admitted it or not. Part of me was glad of that, while another very annoying needy part of me was whining in my head. She needed to shut up. “His partner has gotten tangled up with them and he’s afraid for his business. Hell, his shop might be illegally trafficking shit by this point and he won’t know it for sure until the feds show up on his doorstep.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  “But damn it, it’s always something with him,” Thatcher said, pacing the floor. “Every time he gets rolling in a positive direction, something or someone will T-bone him and seven times out of ten that someone is his own damn self. Like going into business with someone he barely knows because they’re highly motivated and structured and he thinks that equals smart. Do you think it did?” Thatcher shook his head, grabbing the back of the couch to keep himself from continuing to walk. “No. It equaled getting his ass handed to him by a cocky manipulator who took over the business side of things and might have even stolen his woman. I’m not sure.”

  That didn’t sound like Micah’s version, but she was pretty biased when it came to her little brother. Then again, he might not have told her any of this.

  “And driving off wasted for a five-hour road trip—in the middle of the night.” Thatcher grabbed the throw pillow I’d discarded and chucked it right back down again. “God, he’s such an idiot sometimes.”

  Everything in me wanted to stay and comfort Thatcher. Feel his warmth and give him mine. Soothe his troubled mind. His entire body was a tightly coiled series of knots, and there was nothing I would have loved more than to work each one out muscle by muscle. My fingers itched to smooth the tension in his jaw. My eyes longed for the soft hunger his took on when he looked at me. My heart wanted to give him—

  I’m sorry. What?

  Who the hell invited my heart to any part of this party?

  I picked up my wristlet that had landed on my little kitchenette bar, and counted my steps to the door. I needed to air myself out, and fast. It was stress, right? I was losing my home and my ex was moving on with the child I couldn’t give him. I was about to be living over my parents’ shop. All that was making me stupid. I’d known this guy for a week,
and had been kissing him since all of yesterday. It was transference of some kind—I was weak, and needing something good to blanket the shit storm of my life. That was all. And that wasn’t fair to him.

  “I’m gonna head home,” I said, whipping out my phone. “My other home.” I pulled up the Uber app before I even reached the threshold.

  “Gabi.”

  “Long day tomorrow,” I said, turning around.

  Boom. There he was, right behind me, stealthy as a damn vampire. I sucked in a breath and tried to remember all the smart thoughts I’d just had. They were harder to find at that proximity.

  His eyes were still troubled, but he was trying to be a good guy. Trying not to be the guy who sexes up the girl without the after-cuddle. Because let’s face it. We were there. Inches were all that separated us from fucking like monkeys on that door. But I didn’t need cuddling, and I very much needed to not care so much.

  “Thatcher, it’s okay,” I said, backing up a step and stiffening my spine. “You have things to deal with, and I need to go anyway, so—”

  He closed the space between us and planted a soft, lingering kiss on my lips, his hands holding my face. Rooting me to that spot and causing my head to swim.

  “You don’t need to go,” he whispered against my mouth.

  “I—I really do,” I breathed.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I can’t make Jackson not be a fool.” He closed his eyes. “All I can do is pray that he makes it.”

  I shook my head and gently took his hands in mine, backing up a fraction. “It’s not just that,” I said. “I think we—I mean, we’ve had a plan for less than a day, and we’ve already broken it multiple times.”

  “That’s because it was a sucky plan,” Thatcher said.

  “It isn’t a sucky plan.”

  “You weren’t thinking that a few minutes ago when—”

  “I know I wasn’t,” I said, backing up again and squeezing his fingers. “Because I seem to go wonky every time you get too close. But how many times do we get interrupted before we get the message? Hey, dumbfucks! Bad idea! Keep your hands to yourself! Signed, The Universe.”

  “You think the universe has so little to worry about that it has time to jack with our love lives?” Thatcher asked.

  The very fact that he’d just called this a love life added new fuel to my twitchy feet. If I could have flipped a switch and blew out of there on rocket launchers, I would have already been halfway across town.

  “Gotta go,” I said, dropping his hands and turning for the door.

  “Is this really still about Micah and Wild Things?” he asked as I opened the door. I turned to lean against the frame. “Or are you just scared?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You were all about the just sex thing before today,” he said, sitting on the back of the couch and crossing his arms. “Now you’re acting like…”

  Like I’m falling for you?

  “Like we wouldn’t survive it,” he finished.

  I tilted my head and gave him a snarky smile that did not go with the turmoil churning around my chest.

  “Would we?” I asked.

  Thatcher just looked at me, several seconds passing before either of us spoke, and yet so much was said. Jesus, how could someone I barely knew make me feel like this?

  “Night, Gabi,” he said finally, not moving from his position.

  “Night,” I said softly, gripping the doorknob, holding his gaze up until the door clicked shut between us.

  I closed my eyes and laid my hand against the door for a beat, imagining I could feel him behind it. Yeah. Less than a day, and I was doing things like that.

  Survival was off the table.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. People were going to be in my house in a matter of hours, surveying, planning, working up an estimate and then getting started right away because I didn’t give a rat’s ass what the price was. Grabbing the few boxes I’d gotten on my own, I spent what was left of the evening packing up my bathroom, the personal drawers in my bedroom nightstand, and the junk drawers in the kitchen. Because the thought of strangers rummaging through hemorrhoid cream and douches, finding my dead gadget, and judging me on the quantity of old chargers, paper clips, and bite-sized Snickers in my junk drawer was just too much to bear.

  Yeah, that was it. That was all that was bothering me. Being shoved out of my home was enough. It had to be enough. I didn’t have room in my head for the utter clusterfuckery of swirling emotion and physical frustration that now had a name besides Hot Guy. A name that in all the millions of people in the world, just had to be that one.

  I sure could pick ’em.

  At seven o’clock, my stomach was rumbling and coffee was no longer cutting it. There was nothing left in the fridge—a fridge I was leaving behind because I hated it and somehow that felt like I was sticking it to someone—and the cheese dip was gone. I had no bread, and all my snack food was already at the apartment. The moving organizer would be there in an hour. I surveyed my current status of faded T-shirt, cutoff sweatpants, and slippers, and made a snap decision.

  Ten minutes and a bra and shoe change later, I was exiting the bakery drive-through with a dozen mixed donuts, justifying it as carb-loading. It was feasible.

  The morning was brisk but not freezing. The sky was bright. It was so deceiving. It didn’t look like the kind of day that destroys worlds. Taking a detour by the park, the water from the pond sparkled and called to me. Suddenly, taking a few minutes of me time for donuts by the water sounded like a fabulous idea.

  I parked, grabbed my hoodie from the back seat, hugged my breakfast box to my chest, and began my trek down to the water’s edge. Halfway there, the breeze picked up my hair and blew a draft up the open legs of my cutoffs. Okay, maybe it was a bit colder than I thought it was, and the wet grass that crunched under my sneakers didn’t appear to be a welcoming place to sit down. The gazebo that the town built over last summer and fall loomed to my right, and would probably be dry, so I veered off that direction.

  Fail. It was wet, too, as was the pavilion.

  I sighed, and my mouth watered as the warm doughy sweet smell wafted from the box I was hugging. The park wasn’t meant to be, I guess, but these babies certainly were. To heck with all this, I could eat them at home from the comfort of my soft, warm couch, if they even lasted the drive.

  Just as I turned to head back to my car, however, a movement caught my eye off to the left. I did a double take as an old man in an expensive suit and a fancy cane made the far corner of the gazebo and sat on one of the steps.

  “Oh, wait, it’s wet!” I called out, not wanting him to ruin his suit.

  It was too late, as the man struggled down and landed, but he waved a hand as if it were an insignificant detail.

  “Of no consequence,” he said, giving me a sideways look. “You aren’t cold in those pants?”

  Did my shivering give it away?

  “Yes, I didn’t think it through very well, I’m afraid,” I said on a laugh. “My need for something bad for me blinded me to everything else.” I turned to walk away, but my mom would have slapped me upside the head, so I held out the box. “Would you like one?”

  The old gentleman laughed and shook his head. “No thank you, Miss Graham. I’m afraid I can’t eat those things anymore.”

  I started to ask him why, when I realized he’d used my name.

  “I’m sorry, have we met?” I asked, immediately realizing in that moment who he had to be. “Oh my gosh, are you Mr. Bailey?”

  “Guilty as charged,” he said holding up two fingers in a Scout’s Honor pose. He changed it to a full hand to stop me when I moved forward to shake his hand. “That’s okay, I don’t shake hands if I can help it.”

  I stopped short. “Oh, okay. You’re afraid of catching so
mething?”

  He chuckled and ran a gnarled hand over the knob of his cane.

  “More of the other direction,” he said, then dismissing it by adding, “How is the field coming along?”

  “Well, it’s January,” I said. “So it’s hard to say what production will be like, but we’ve prepped and fed and fertilized the soil and planned out the grid, so we’ll start planting late next month and I’m hopeful we’ll have a bumper crop in the spring.”

  My mind was bouncing, I knew that. I was babbling, hoping to impress my benefactor, but how did he know who I was from just seeing paperwork? Maybe he had me investigated first. Maybe he had an office with photos of all his colleagues like a stalking serial killer. Or maybe I just needed to eat my box of sugar and chill the hell out.

  “I never got the chance to thank you, by the way,” I said. “You gave me more than you know, taking a chance like that on me. Funding Wild Things and giving it a chance. You could have gone ahead with your leveling and made a bunch of townhomes and a lot more money.”

  “Ah, I have enough money,” he said, giving a little finger flourish on the head of his cane. “And I know a good idea when I hear one.”

  “Well, still,” I said. “I appreciate it.” I glanced around. “So—why are you…”

  “Sitting in the park on a Saturday morning?” he finished, raising his look to me. Suddenly, there was nothing old about him. The drooping, wrinkled skin around his eyes was a farce in comparison to the razor sharpness of his gaze. He lifted a finger again in a sort of shrug gesture. “Why are you here?”

  “Because I’m putting off going home,” I said. I hadn’t realized that until I said it, but there it was.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Something bad there?”

  I gave a smile I didn’t feel. “About to be.”

  There was a little pause as he folded both hands on top of the cane. “Are you a spiritual person, Miss Graham?”

  That was an odd question.

  “I—think so,” I said. “I don’t really go to church, if that’s what you mean, but God and I kind of have a thing.”