The Charlotte Chronicles (23 page)

“
T
his is the perfect house
. Thank you for helping,” Charlotte’s client says. Her name is Peyton, like the legendary Bears running back, although that’s probably not who she’s named after.

“My pleasure,” Charlotte says, but her voice is muffled because her face is stuck in the belly of Peyton’s baby. I suppress the urge to pick her up and take her back to the hotel so we can start baby making again. I stick my fists in my pockets to keep from sweeping her up and carrying her away.

“So, man, I have to admit I don’t know your team,” Peyton’s husband says apologetically.

“No team. I’m in the Navy.”

Having assumed I’m neither famous nor rich, he dismisses me and turns to run his eyes over Charlotte. My pockets are doing double duty now. Keeping me from hauling Charlotte away from here and preventing me from decking her client. It’s a wild guess, but I bet she wouldn’t approve of that. Although . . . if he keeps staring at her legs he’s going to have a hard time seeing the batters after I gouge both of his eyes out.

“Ohh, a military man,” Peyton stage whispers. Her husband shoots her an annoyed glance. I wink at them just to piss off the husband even more. “How does he look in uniform?”

“I don’t know. How do you look, Nate?” Charlotte gives me a hungry look that causes my shorts to get a bit tight and the baseball player next to me to swallow his tongue. After that long, appreciative perusal, I’m not irritated with the guy next to me because I’m the one who’s going to be in Charlotte’s bed tonight. Not him.

“I look like a man in uniform.”

“Nate’s actually a Navy SEAL.” The words pop out unexpectedly of Charlotte’s mouth. I raise an eyebrow at her. I don’t care what these random civilians think of me. The wife’s expression says that she’d like to see me out of uniform, and the player is recalibrating his quick dismissal.

Then, because he’s an asshole, he asks the stupid question, “So how many ways do you know how to kill a man?”

“Too many and not enough,” I answer tersely.

Charlotte recognizes that I need to get out of here and quickly finishes her business. Watching Charlotte smooth ruffled feathers and close her deals shows me a different side of her, one unfamiliar but no less attractive. Various family members have told me that she’s begun to build an exciting and successful business. She’s come a long way from Cancergirl—the one that I was afraid couldn’t walk down the hall by herself, the one who I hid in the boy’s locker room at high school.

Mom told me that demand for Charlotte’s business has been so high she can’t keep up with all the requests. I get it. If I was a young athlete with no family going to a new territory, I’d want some bright young thing smoothing out all my details. It’s like having a hot wife without any of the responsibilities. But the women like her too, or at least Peyton does. And she doesn’t look at Christian with anything other than the fond regard you have for someone paying you five figures to help you move.

I’m anxious to get her alone.

A beep of my cell phone signals an incoming text message. I tip my head toward Charlotte, but she waves me off. I smile to myself. We’ve already started our nonverbal communicating, as if there wasn’t years of separation.

The message is from Cabby.

Next there’s an incoming picture. Sure enough, Cabby is standing next to LT in front of a large, fake windmill. Fraternizing with officers is usually frowned upon but LT is a bit of a rule breaker and besides, Cabby does not like being alone.

“What’s making you smile?” Charlotte taps me on the arm. Beyond her Peyton and Christian have moved toward the house.

“We done here?”

“Yes.”

I take her hand, and we walk toward my Jeep. “The guys want to meet you.” I tilt the phone her way so she can read my messages.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“I’m afraid their version of welcoming might cause you to run away.”

She scoffs. “I work with athletes. I’ve been in locker rooms before. It can’t be worse than that.”

“But you’ve never seen another naked man, right?” The thought of her around a bunch of unclothed athletes bothers me.

Her face turns away, but not before I see a smile she tries to hide. “Of course not, Nate. Yours is the only body I’ve ever seen without clothes.”

I can’t tell if she’s serious, but I’m accepting it as true, or I’ll have to do something like give her a ring of hickeys so that everyone knows she’s off limits.

“Before I throw you to the wolves, want to come and see my digs? Maybe check out of the hotel and save a few dollars?”

The reference to saving is a joke, and she grins saucily. We both know that even if she didn’t have her job, she would have her trust fund—just like I have mine. Freedom Funds, our parents’ co-owned hedge fund, has made both her family and mine very rich. Charlotte’s dad has made a mint in construction too, so she probably never has to work a day if she doesn’t want to but from what Nick has told me, she’s worked her ass off to run her own business.

“Yes, I’d like that very much.”

“According to my government-issued timepiece, it’s been about four hours since I last kissed you.”

She reaches up and runs her fingers lightly across my forehead. “Is that right?”

Drawing her into my arms, I lean back against the Jeep. “That’s right.”

In the middle of this posh San Diego suburb, I pull her tight against me and kiss her. My jaw isn’t freshly shaven, but she rubs against me as if the burn feels good. Our tongues clash against each other, and soon I want to strip her clothes off and lay her down on the soft grass, uncaring what the residents might think. I break it off before I lose all control.

Panting roughly in her ear, I tell her, “We need to get going before I’m arrested for lewd and indecent conduct. Navy frowns upon that.”

A smug satisfaction fills me at her glazed expression, and I help her into the Jeep. As we drive toward her hotel, I hold her hand against my thigh, not wanting to have any break in our connection. “I didn’t know you were proud of me,” I comment, recalling how she quickly corrected Christian’s impression of me as a no-name sailor.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought you might be resentful because it took me away from you.”

“It wasn’t your job that took you away from me,” she says quietly.

And she’s right. The mood is less passionate and more somber when we arrive at the hotel. I try to lighten it up by describing my ratty bachelor pad. “It’s in an apartment building with a bunch of other sailors and Marines. Cabby doesn’t understand why I haven’t moved away.”

“Why haven’t you?” she asks as she carefully stows away all of her clothes and sundry items. She’s as neat as a sailor.

“It’s not like I spend a lot of time there.”

“Still, it’s not like you couldn’t afford something better.”

“I don’t like to flaunt the family money. It’s not really mine. I didn’t earn it other than by being born, and a lot of the other guys don’t come from money.”

“No matter. Take me to your lonely bachelor apartment and make love to me in your virgin bed,” she declares, zipping her suitcase shut.

I grab it from her. “Is it still virginal if I’ve beat off to pictures of you?”

“It’s pure as the driven snow until you take me there and pleasure me in all the ways that you have fantasized about.”

I break a lot of laws getting to my apartment. Halfway there, though, she kills my erection.

“I live in Dallas now, near Nick.”

Nick. God, the poor bastard. I’ll need to call him, and so will Charlotte. “That’s right. Weren’t you living with him for a while?”

She nods. “For a few months after he first moved there. We didn’t know how long he’d need me and then, after a while, I became a really easy excuse for why he couldn’t bring women home.”

“He said you were his girlfriend?”

“No. His sister.” She grins. “But after the third woman showed up in a trench coat and heels, I moved out.”

We share a laugh, but when I pull into the parking lot of my building, Charlotte grabs my arm before I can jump out.

“I can stay a couple of days, but then I have to go back and take care of another client. My life is in Dallas, Nate.” The turmoil of our uncertain future is clear in her eyes.

“I’ll fly to Dallas for the rest of my leave. We can head up to Chicago and see the parents too.”

“What are we going to tell everyone?”

“Stay there,” I order. I can’t do this sitting in the Jeep. I need to be able to see her straight on.

“This whole situation is emotionally confusing for me,” she says.

I round the front of the Jeep and then haul her out. I hadn’t planned on doing this right now. There were better, more romantic ways, but I can’t wait another minute. The box in my pocket might burn a hole through the cotton. I picked it up right after Charlotte dropped the stationary in my arms and indicated there was a way she’d hear me out.

Ignoring the increasing number of male eyes pinned on the spectacle I am making, I grip her shoulders. “I love you, Charlotte. I want us to be together. I’ll do anything it takes to keep us together. I want you to come to see where I live. I want to see where you live. I want to meet your friends. I want you to meet my friends. I want our families to know we are together. I don’t want Nick to feel that he is in the middle of a bad divorce.”

“So you know it has been a strain on him.” She’s wide-eyed, wondering where I’m going with my crazy rambling.

“Of course I knew.  Half the reason he can’t settle down is because I’ve screwed him up so bad. All he sees is his big brother turning his back on something wonderful and how much pain it has cost both of us. He’ll take the hits on the field but doesn’t want to suffer them off of it.” I hadn’t just pushed Charlotte away; I’d placed a wedge between our families, harmed my brother, and made my own life miserable.

I bend down on one knee, in the middle of the parking lot, next to my dirty Jeep, surrounded by salty military men and women.

I take her hand in mine. “Charlotte Randolph, since the moment I held you when you were an infant and I was two, I knew that we were destined to be together. I fought that destiny but no longer. Living without you is merely existing. And it’s impossible. I’ve tried it for so long. I’m only half a person. You are so courageous having fought for your life and then for me. I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve another chance. But you’ve told me you love me, that you always have, that you always will, so I can’t turn away even if I should.

I am here before you, on my knees, to not only beg you to forgive me but to allow me to show you how much I love you for the rest of my life. Will you please marry me?”

Her shocking blue eyes, the blue the color of the pure ocean, of the clearest sky, fill with water that spills silently down her cheeks.

I don’t so much hear her response as feel it inside me. My entire body vibrates with her choked and shaking, “Yes!”

I sweep her up and crush her mouth to mine. Around us are laughter and cheers and people taking pictures that will be the source of mocking for years to come. But I don’t care.

I run up the stairs, still holding her, still kissing her. I somehow manage to fall into my apartment and into the bedroom. We rip at each other’s clothes, our mouths feverishly attacking one another until we are skin to skin. She takes me in her hand and guides me to the hot, wet center that I’ve come to identify as home.

Her eyes are wide, and her body is welcoming. I take a moment to appreciate the vision. Strands of her wheat-colored hair are spread across the navy blue of my sheets. She’s an angel spread for my enjoyment.

I bracelet her two wrists in one hand and pin them above her head, stretching her body to accommodate me in every aspect.

Her head thrashes as she moans my name, “Nathan, please.” She strains against me. Her legs widen and the heels of her feet press hard against my ass. “I never imagined we would be together again.”

“I know, baby. Push your hands here,” I whisper into her skin. I press her palms against the headboard so I free my own hands. One I use to brace myself, and the other I reach under her bowed back. “I can’t go slow, and I can’t go easy.”

She nods. “I want you. Take me hard.”

Digging my knee into the mattress, I thrust between her legs with as much finesses as a juvenile. I have barely any rhythm and almost no conscious thought. I am only blood and nerves. My focus is narrowed down to the pinpoints of sensation that are electrified by each slam into her body.

Forward and retreat.

Forward and retreat.

We are animals, recklessly straining for pleasure. Beneath me, her body jerks with each deep thrust. I’m abusing her, but I can’t stop. The way she’s locked around my body, I don’t believe she’d let me stop.

I kiss the valley between her tits, up the delicate column neck and along her jaw. Her head turns into the wall of my arm. She kisses the muscle, traces a tongue along the tendons and veins that jut out as I brace myself above her trembling body.

“Fucking come with me now,” I roar as the familiar tension starts to coil inside me. Licking my thumb, I press the dampened tip on her sensitive clit. She screams in response, and her cunt grips me like a vise. We wind tighter and tighter together until I feel her release shake her body.

I power forward, hips jerking, and then I’m coming. My hot seed jets inside her, coating her walls because in the heat of the moment I forgot to wrap up and so did she. That’s right,
 
I think, that’s my seed marking my territory inside your sweet body.