Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Hope
Charlie’s kisses had burned through me. Paris was the best time of my life.
He’d pursued me, and I’d given in because I'd assumed that intense passion would dissipate once I was safely home. And I probably had told him to take me home when I was drunk because I’d clearly lost the filter that kept me sane.
Waking up in that bed at his penthouse had sent a thrill through me, if I was honest with myself.
His entire place was gorgeous, with the foyer, grand room, a separate living room, separate dining room, office, a guest bedroom, master bedroom, and state-of-the-art kitchen that led to the butler’s quarters.
Now that I'd taken a shower in my own bathroom and washed my hair thoroughly, I was able to breathe. I walked around my house. My office had once been my bedroom. If I took a roommate, I would lose the peace of mind, but I would gain some financial cushion until I could afford my own place.
Grandpa had once told me other people came with problems, though, and it was best if we kept to ourselves as much as possible.
He would hate if I brought anyone home. My bedroom had been single most of my life, though I’d entirely redecorated last year so it would feel modern and more like it was completely my place.
I hoped I would find a job fast. I spent hours fixing my resume and calling around to people I knew. The third firm told me I was unemployable, and I cringed.
Charlie’s hands on my body burned through me as a pleasant memory. I ached for more, but I had to go into a war in my mind to stop thinking about him. We made no sense. I was destined for disaster. He was destined for success. Right now, the goal was to survive my current mess.
It might be nice to have his ring on my hand, though. Now that would be a fantasy.
I let out a sigh and decided to go check my mail on the first floor.
Answering texts from friends wanting to come over by saying no was getting old.
I wasn’t in the mood to replay everything over and over again.
I grabbed my cell phone and sneakers and headed downstairs in my sweatpants and T-shirt.
I called my best friend. “Britney, how could you leave me there?”
She said, “You’d obviously been sleeping with him. And I hope if I ever fall in bed with a trillionaire who wants to marry me, you put me back in there.”
Heat rose to my face. Britney was the one who talked the big talk, but she was honestly more reserved than she admitted. However, I rolled my eyes as I made it to the bottom level. “You make three times what I made.”
I unlocked my mailbox and slipped out the letters, separating the junk I never read. “I’d cash out if someone like Charlie showed up. We’ve talked about finding guys like him.”
One was from the building. I stopped and looked around. No one was here, so I ripped junk advertising to release my tensions. “I never really… We were just mostly joking.” I stopped and decided this wasn’t the place to answer Britney.
“I wasn’t," Britney said. "Did it end bad? Is that why you’re back at your place instead of that gorgeous bright modern condo of his?”
“No.” I walked back to the second level and unlocked my door. “He made an offer I almost couldn’t refuse.” Then I kicked off my sneakers and read the letter. My heart pounded as I tensed. “Oh no.”
“What’s going on?”
I closed my eyes. Now was not the time. The emergency fund had never been replaced once Grandpa needed all that help at the end.
Unshed tears formed in my eyes. I was about to lose the one thing I had. I let out a sigh. “A special assessment. I’m so fucked right now.”
“What?”
One hundred thousand dollars. No one was going to give me a mortgage right now to afford the infrastructure update and the three months of living somewhere else. I crumpled to the floor. “The building sent a notice. This place is all I have that’s really mine.”
“Okay. So you can go work on your resume or marry a sexy, hot trillionaire who's clearly into you.”
All roads led to the handsome man whose kisses were seared in my brain. I let my head rest on the wall next to the door. “Britney, you met him for sixty seconds. You can’t know what’s in his heart.”
“We all hated Brad.”
Patterson. I cringed. He’d cheated on me, laughed when I caught him, and broken what little faith I had left in men. I froze. “Never say his name.”
“We also hated Ryan, but I thought you had something with Charlie. For once, my cringe reflexes didn't go off after meeting a guy of yours.”
Windell. At my grandfather's funeral, he’d called me a side piece who'd grown too needy. I had no idea why my friends continued to call exes by their first names when discussing the past, but I refused.
Night was high in the sky, and I closed my blinds. “You like his bank account.”
“Brad had a decent bank account, but he was a bad guy. I kept hoping you’d see that before he hurt you.”
This was too much. I deserved the ice cream. I hugged myself. “I love you, Britney. Right now, I have to get off the phone.”
We hung up a few minutes later, but I dragged myself to bed instead of doing anything else.
If I had some sleep, maybe I would come up with an answer that didn’t include selling myself and fully becoming what Patterson, Windell, and countless others believed I already was… only good in the bed and nowhere else.
If I sold myself to Charlie, then I ruined every memory of Paris, forever. I rested my eyes as it was dark, but I flipped on the mattress over and over again.
Dawn broke sooner rather than later, and I jumped up. I would do anything to save my home. If I took Charlie’s offer, it was temporary and paid the entire bill.
And I wasn’t stupid. I just needed to keep my heart in check, and I would be fine. Pretending was one thing, and at the end of the day, I needed fast cash.
So I cleaned myself up and took my time with makeup. I needed to look my best to negotiate everything. As I finished with blending my face creams, my phone beeped.
Charlie’s text was there: Coffee where 5 th meets your street. I can send a car.
It was time to give my final answer. I texted back fast: Playboy … but his text was pretty bland and not flirty. I needed to lower my guard if we were to pull this off. So I deleted that. I tensed, unsure how to tell him. Finally, I just wrote, I’ll meet you in half an hour .
Done. I grabbed a white dress with yellow trim. This might be the last time I would be comfortable in white, so I decided to go out in style. The thought was hard, but if I wasn’t hard on myself, who else would be?
I grabbed a pair of heels, stuck the bill in my yellow pocketbook, and headed out. The streets were busy, as they always were, but as I neared Fifth Avenue, my stomach grumbled. I couldn’t let him hear me like this.
No man would want me if I ate too much in front of him.
Patterson would have said, " You’re getting a balloon belly again.
" If I was going to camp out with Charlie for more time, his opinions might start mattering. He hadn’t cared in Paris, but he was a man, even if my heart believed he was different.
I grabbed a muffin from a street vendor and opened the plastic. The chocolate chips were on my lips, and I sighed. The sugar might help, too, as I needed energy to tell him yes.
Then the crowd in front of me parted, and he stared back at me. I froze with crumbs on my face. As he approached, I tossed the rest of the muffin in the trash and tried to look like I hadn’t eaten anything.
He kissed my cheeks in greeting.
“Charlie, hi.”
He offered his arm. I shook my head—we weren’t there yet. I was sure if we agreed to the plan, there would be more touching, but not yet.
He stayed at my side. “You look rested.”
I laughed and glanced at his profile. “I look a wreck.”
We walked to the corner, and he held my door as he said, “I was on my way to meet you from a meeting, and here you are. Ready to get the coffee?”
I let him pay for the overpriced coffee. If we had no agreement, at least the meeting was a one-time thing. I grabbed my medium mocha and took a seat. When he joined me, I said, “Yeah, I had questions on being your fiancée.”
He sipped his coffee. “Shoot.”
A photographer snapped a picture of us. Charlie tensed and blocked me as the intruder asked, “Is Hope Williams your new girlfriend or just another fling you’ll toss aside like Gina?”
“Who's Gina?” he asked.
My job was to reform him.
I smiled. “This playboy is off the market for a while, at least until after our trip to Italy.”
“Italy?”
“I mean, it’s the next place to go after Paris, no?”
They took another photo of us, but we dashed to a table as management directed the man out the door.
Silence clung to our table for a moment.
Adrenaline rushed through me. I met his gaze and tried to focus on how sweet he’d been since the second I met him and not on how everything would end in disaster.
After another sip of my coffee, I took a deep breath. “Would I have to live with you?”
“It would be best.”
I rocked in my chair. I needed to just get the terms, but maybe agreeing meant I was as needy as I’d been labeled. Or it was just my lack of real employment that had rattled me. I kept my lips sealed on my thoughts, and I asked, “What’s your butler’s name?”
Charlie tilted his head. “I should have introduced you. He’s Mr. Michael Fuller and has been helping me out for years, but if you don’t want a butler, I can reassign him.”
Firing him wasn’t going to weigh on my conscience and keep me from ever sleeping for a second at night. And my friends were going to love coming to see me with someone else serving the drinks. I shook my head. “I’ve never had. He can stay.”
We both sipped coffees in silence. Charlie broke the spell as he asked, “Okay, so can I answer anything else?”
I needed to get down to agreeing and making an arrangement. I needed every dime now. I sucked on my bottom lip. I would survive this, but I asked, “Does the job come with food?”
“Yes, of course.”
My hands shook, but I took the bill out of my bag and shoved it toward Charlie. “Then instead of writing me a check, which will make me feel like a whore?—"
“You’re not. You’d never.”
My gaze misted. I would not let myself cry. I sat straighter. “Let me finish.”
“Okay.”
I waited until I could see him fully without being all glassy-eyed from tears. Once I was in charge of my emotions, I said, “Write the check out for my condo association directly, and I’ll move in and try to work on fixing you.”
He read the bill. “This is why you’re taking the job?”
I nodded. At the end, I would save my condo and figure out how to live and fix the rest of my credit in time. I stared at the white papers. “My grandfather gave me the condo so I’d have security. I can’t lose the one thing that matters.”
He folded it. “Did you grow up here?”
My eyes widened. “How did you know that?”
He put the bill in his pocket and folded his hands on the table. “Property is important, but your heart is clearly involved, so it’s more than finances.”
My heart fluttered. He was a sweet guy, which made being attracted to him harder to ignore. However, we were talking, and with him, I felt normal and myself, which was nice. I took a deep breath. “Well, my grandpa was the one that raised me.”
He smiled, and my heart melted a little like I believed it might all be okay. He asked, “What happened to your parents?”
Fair question. We were now in the sharing-each-other’s-lives phase. I finished my cup. “They died when I was an infant.”
“Mine too.”
I blinked. I usually got the "I’m so sorry," which was funny because I had no feelings when I talked about my parents. It was hard to miss what I'd never known. He finished his coffee, and I sat back. “I forgot for a minute you were adopted.”
Then he tossed his empty cup in the trash in one throw. “My biological parents were killed in a plane crash.”
My heart raced. I leaned forward. I didn't remember telling him, but if he knew all this about me, then I needed to guard my heart better. “Did you read that in a background check or something?”
His eyebrows went higher. “What?”
I crossed my arms. There was no way this was a coincidence. “That’s how mine died.”
“I didn’t know that.” He took out his phone and scrolled. “Let me show you the obituary of mine so you trust me.”
He then slid the latest version of iPhone in my hands, and I read the file. I shook as I read the flight number. Our parents had been together in the end. I met his gaze, but I wasn't ready to share. “Then you were adopted?”
“I had no one. Maman was on a board to help reunite families, and when she heard about me, she took me.”
Grandpa and Grandma already had me because they were babysitting for the week. Grandma died a year later from missing my mother and refusing cancer treatments. Deciding to trust him, I slipped him his phone back. “It was the same flight.”
His eyes widened, and for a moment, neither of us spoke. Then he brushed against me for a second. “So we have more in common than we thought.”
The past and thinking about it only caused more problems in the future. I closed my purse. “I’m in shock still.” Then I held out my hand to shake his. “Charlie, you have yourself a six-month fiancée.”
He jumped out his chair then slid into the seat next to me, staring into my eyes. “So we have a deal?”
“Yes, yes we do.”
Then he hugged me. He smelled nice, like cedarwood cologne, leather, and maybe a dash of home. It was probably all in his expensive cologne, but for right now, I hugged him back, ignoring the thought. It was nice to belong.