Chapter 5 #3
“I came down for the holidays,” Ben responded.
“It’s nice to get out of New York.” Ben introduced Charlotte to him then, and John introduced Lillith.
She was watching them with interest, and Ben thought she looked even younger up close, maybe twenty-two at most. The two women started to talk then in soft voices, while the men talked about their boats, and some of the other owners who weren’t there.
“I’ve read all your interviews,” Lillith said softly. “I love them.”
“Thank you.” Charlotte smiled at her. “Do you work for a magazine?”
“I’m an interior designer.” She named the firm she worked for and Charlotte pretended to know it, but didn’t.
She wasn’t up on decorators and interior design.
It wasn’t her field of interest. She interviewed mostly captains of industry, politicians, and heads of corporations.
The occasional big fashion designer, or author, or First Lady.
Major CEOs in the world, like Ben, were her forte.
The women’s conversation ended just as Charlotte heard Ben invite John and his “friend” for a drink on the boat at seven.
John looked pleased and accepted, and a moment later they walked on, in opposite directions.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Ben said to her. “I don’t usually socialize with him, but I thought you might like to check him out, to see if you want to interview him. He’s a very big deal.”
“Not as big a deal as you are,” she said with a smile. “Lillith Jones seems like a sweet girl. And she’s definitely not his daughter,” Charlotte said. Lillith had had a good grip on John’s arm and never let him go.
“He lost his wife recently. He didn’t lose any time.”
“She seems nice, though,” Charlotte said again. “That’s a hell of an age difference, it must be forty years or more. I always think that must make men feel even older, but it doesn’t seem to work that way.”
“They think youth is contagious and it makes them feel younger, though not with a forty-year difference. I don’t date twelve-year-olds,” Ben said, and Charlotte laughed as they got back to the Karma.
“Should I go back to the hotel and change?” she asked him.
Ben looked at her and shook his head. “You look fine, and who cares? In fact, you look better than fine. Very fine.” He grinned at her. He loved her looks and the simple way she dressed. He loved that she wasn’t pretentious and didn’t show off. And she was a beautiful woman.
—
John and Lillith arrived at the boat exactly on time, and Ben orchestrated it so Charlotte wound up talking to John Williams. She found him cold and arrogant, and he had a hard look in his eyes.
She suspected that he was as mean as Ben said, and that he was proud of it.
But she noticed that he was very nice to Lillith.
She guessed that he liked being “the baddest guy in town,” and didn’t try to hide it.
She got the impression that Lillith was crazy about him.
She was wearing the same satin slip dress as when they met her that afternoon, with a denim jacket.
“Maybe they’re just friends,” Charlotte said later, but it didn’t look like it.
Lillith practically swooned when she looked at him.
John didn’t look as enamored with her, but he was warm and friendly to her and it was clear that they were some kind of couple, despite the age difference.
Charlotte was intrigued by them. “You’re the expert here, is she a gold digger? ” she asked Ben after they left.
“No. She’s not sparkly enough, or sexy enough. She looks like Heidi with her grandfather,” Ben said, and Charlotte laughed.
“He looks like what you said. He has the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen.”
“I hope she’s not in love with him,” Ben said. “He’ll eat her for lunch.”
“I hope not. She seems like a sweet person. And you’re probably right, by the way. I should interview him, but I wouldn’t enjoy it.”
“He just bought a shipping line and put them out of business. Everyone lost their jobs. The unions are striking because of it. It’s not a big news item yet, but it will be.”
“Not a nice guy,” Charlotte agreed, dismissing him. Nothing about him appealed to her, as a subject or a person.
Ben suggested that he take Charlotte back to her hotel and they have dinner there.
His chef had the night off. The interview was over, but they were enjoying each other.
“Do you want to go out on the boat tomorrow? We could check out some of the smaller islands. There are some beautiful deserted beaches. We could go swimming there.”
“I’d like that,” she said, smiling at him.
He took her back to her hotel a little while later, where they had dinner outside, and he left her regretfully in the lobby afterward.
He kissed her on the cheek, dangerously close to her mouth.
He had just found her, and he could already feel her slipping away from him.
They only had two days left, her days off she had said, before she went back to New York.
She was dreading it too, and trying not to show it.
Charlotte was exhausted when she got back to her room, from trying to appear nonchalant about Ben when she could feel the sheer magnetic force of him pulling her closer day by day.
After two full days with him, talking intensely for hours, she felt drunk on his charisma, and he was feeling the same way, having a drink on the deck and thinking about her.
She was so firm about her boundaries that it only made him want her more.
He was trying to figure out how to break down her walls.
And she was in her hotel room, trying to think about how to shore them up.
He had no idea how little it would have taken to make them come tumbling down.
She thought it was a good thing he didn’t know.
She felt as though she was on the brink of making another huge mistake, and she couldn’t let it happen again.
She had done that with her married lover, and bitterly regretted it.
And Ben had already said that he had never really loved the women in his life.
Even married, he only stayed for a year or two, paid his dues, and moved on.
He was just another heartbreak waiting to happen, and she’d rather be alone than go through that again.
He had given her all the clues she needed to steer clear of him and stand firm.
She only had to resist him for two more days, and then she’d be back in New York, write the article, and try to forget him.
But she knew she would never forget this Christmas with him, and the connection between them in the little white church with the gospel choir’s voices soaring to the skies.
It was one of the moments engraved forever on her heart.
But it could never be more than that. She wouldn’t let it.
—
While Charlotte was tormenting herself about Ben in her hotel room, desperate to resist his charms, John and Lillith were in the throes of passion in John’s cabin on Lady H.
Lillith had never felt that way about any man.
The floodgates of her heart had opened, and she welcomed him as totally into her heart as into her body.
He was a skilled and powerful lover, seemingly untouched by age, and she was an innocent compared to him, in every way.
Afterward, they lay in bed and talked, and he aroused her again, satisfied her orally, drove her to the edge of sanity, pulled her back repeatedly and did it once more, and then made love to her and roared like a lion when he came.
She lay in bed next to him afterward, too breathless to speak.
She had never experienced anything like it.
It made her dream of the future with him.
She was totally abandoned to him and his sexual prowess.
She could imagine having babies with him, something she had never wanted before.
She was dreaming of a future, a life with him.
He told her he loved her while he made love to her and she believed him.
She loved him too. She had no doubt that she had met the love of her life, and it was meant to be.
Her savior had come. And her defenses were gone. She was his, to do with as he wished.