Chapter 16
MY PHONE VIbrATED WITH AN incoming message.
I glanced at the screen and smiled when I saw Charlotte’s name.
She’d been sending me messages with pictures of food.
Gorgeous images of oysters, deconstructed gumbo, creamy pimento cheese grits, and the like.
It felt deliciously frivolous and out of character for Charlotte.
I loved it, especially if it meant she was considering the possibility of spending more time together.
I opened her text and saw a picture of an alligator with a message.
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MAYBE WE SHOULD STEP UP OUR GAME.
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“Who is she?” Erik Jensen’s question intruded into my thoughts.
I snapped back to attention. I’d known the attorney casually for years.
Despite outward appearances, New Orleans was a small city at heart.
It was impossible to do business in the city and not cross paths with the same people over again.
The familiarity added to the charm of the place, but I hadn’t really gotten to know Erik until he helped me with the acquisition of the Masterfeld property.
He’d been invaluable on the deal—smart, wicked funny with a strong sense of decency that made me glad we’d moved from acquaintance to something closer to friends.
That didn’t mean I was ready to talk to him—or anyone else—about Charlotte.
“Don’t bother denying it. I know the look. She must be something.”
“It’s early days, but I think so.”
“I’m happy for you, but it makes my life more difficult.” Erik shook his head as he slipped the contracts we’d been going over into his folio.
“How can that be?” I waited, curious as hell, to see what my dating life had to do with him.
“My fiancée.” It was his turn to smile.
I’d never seen that expression on his face before. The less cynical part of me found it kind of heartwarming.
“She’s got a girlfriend she wants to set up. She’s been pushing me to find a suitable date. You were at the top of my possibles list.”
“You’re kidding.” I choked back a laugh. The idea of Erik playing matchmaker was too much to take seriously.
“I wish I was. I feel like a pimp.”
“If the shoe fits.”
“Fuck you.” Erik shook his head again. “Seriously, though. Alex is so happy. She wants everyone else to be happy too. I love her. Hell, more than I ever thought possible. I’d do anything to make her happy, including pimping out friends.”
“When you put it that way, it’s actually kind of sweet.
” It was. He was so up front about his feelings for the woman he was marrying.
He was all the way in love and not holding anything back.
That kind of commitment might actually stand a chance.
I had an unexpected twinge of something that could be mistaken for envy.
I hadn’t thought I was interested in the one partner, settle down, build a life together kind of love yet.
Apparently, I was. “Sorry I can’t help you out this time. ”
“It’s okay. Charlotte is fantastic. Smart, gorgeous, and one of the best attorneys in the city. If she wanted someone for more than a casual date, she wouldn’t have trouble finding a man—men—willing to step up to fill the role.”
My chest constricted. I didn’t have to ask the next question to know the answer, but I did anyway.
“This Charlotte?” I showed him my screen saver—the picture of Charlotte I’d taken the night we met.
“Why do you have a picture of Charlotte on your phone?” Erik turned his attention to me.
I felt the full weight of the focus I imagined he used in the courtroom.
I figured I had about three seconds to figure out how I wanted to play this before he got suspicious, and I lost any chance I had at evasion.
Fuck it. Maybe I wanted to tell him. It wouldn’t hurt to have someone else’s advice on how to deal with Charlotte.
Regardless of how counter it went to my natural inclinations.
I was in uncharted waters. I’d never cared enough before for things like longevity to matter.
“She’s the one who just texted.” I motioned to my phone, feeling a little sick to my stomach.
Or a lot, actually. If Charlotte hadn’t told her friend who was determined to fix her up about me, it meant one of two things.
Either she didn’t consider our arrangement worth mentioning, even to get her friend off her back, or she wanted Erik’s fiancée to succeed at her matchmaking.
Either of which meant we weren’t in the place I thought we’d been the last time we made love. Fuck me.
“The reason you were smiling?” Erik’s expression went from interested to concerned, as I imagined his thoughts followed a similar path to mine. “How did you meet her?”
Neutral territory, at least, and something I could actually answer.
“She came into my place on Rue de Compte with some friends. Your Alex must have been one of them.” I thought back over the women Charlotte had been sitting with before she made her way to the bar.
Specifically, the dark-haired woman who looked like she was trying to talk her into something. “I was working behind the bar.”
“What were you doing bartending? Don’t you have enough to do with the merger?” He looked concerned, but I was pretty sure this time it was for my business prospects and not my personal life.
“It helps me stay in touch with what’s going on.
I can try out new recipes and get real-time data on how people react to them before I add them to the cocktail menu.
” That part was all true, although I had bartenders who were as good or better mixologists than me.
The more important reason but less commercially acceptable was that time behind the bar relaxed me.
Which help me think creatively, which helped me make the kind of decisions that let me build the restaurant empire I’d been working to create.
“Fair enough,” said Erik, looking like he didn’t really understand but was willing to accept—for now, at least—what I said. “But you’re going to have to walk me through the rest. You and Charlotte are dating. Like dating dating?”
I cut my eyes at him for no other reason than it bought me some time.
“You know what I mean. It was more than just a hookup, right?”
I did know what he meant, and for me, it had been much more than just a hookup. I’d thought it had been for Charlotte too. Now I had no choice but to rethink everything.
“Yes.” I left the rest of it unsaid. Fuck if I wanted to lay my heart that bare in front of Erik.
“I don’t understand. If Charlotte is dating the hottest young restaurateur in the state, why is Alex all over me to fix her up? If anything, I’d think she’d be pushing to help close the deal. You weren’t a dick to Charlotte, were you?”
“No.” The denial was automatic, followed by the realization that I might actually have been. Although she didn’t know that, so it didn’t change Erik’s original question. “Except...”
“What the fuck did you do?” He pinned me with a look that threatened pain if I’d hurt his fiancée’s friend. I wasn’t clear if it was just because of Alex or if he were close to Charlotte too. The women looked tight. As much like sisters as friends. Both possibilities seemed plausible.
“Charlotte thinks I’m a bartender. She doesn’t know about the hottest young restauranteur thing.” I echoed his words back, feeling like a pompous ass the whole time.
“Why not? It would seem to be a draw. And an important thing to share with someone you’re really interested in.”
Why hadn’t I told Charlotte about my business?
I turned the question around in my head, hoping for a better answer than I was a manipulative chickenshit bastard.
In the beginning, it hadn’t exactly come up.
We were just going to fuck. She’d been the one to insist on first names only.
And then there was her hesitancy with telling men what she did.
..not perfectly relevant, but I was grasping.
Somewhere along the way, I’d gotten the impression—right or wrong—that she was more comfortable with me as a bartender and not someone with my own career.
Which, now that I was really looking at it, was all kinds of fucked up.
“She seemed to like that I was a bartender. I got the idea it made things easier for her.” God, saying it out loud didn’t make it sound any less lame.
“But it’s not true.” Erik was looking at me like I’d lost my mind. I wasn’t about to dispute it. “She didn’t Google you? She’s a lawyer. We’re kind of crazy thorough.”
“We never shared last names.”
The look of disgust Erik gave me matched the feeling I had in my gut.
No matter how phenomenal the sex was or how much we enjoyed each other’s company—I didn’t doubt that part at least was real—Charlotte would push for more information before she trusted me with something like her heart.
The thought just reinforced the fact that regardless of what I’d been feeling, she didn’t think what we had was serious.
Or the negotiated shelf life meant she figured it wasn’t worth it to try to dig into my past.
“We were just supposed to be a short-term thing. Her idea, not mine.” I hurried to add the last bit. I didn’t need to reinforce the part where I was the asshole.
“But you want more?”
I hated the way Erik watched me. Like he already knew the answer to his question. I hated my answer more.
“Yes. I did. I do.” I didn’t see a viable way to get from where we were to something more with Charlotte, but that didn’t stop me from wanting it.
“Okay. I’m going to help you.”
“Why?” I had other questions, but that one was the most obvious.
“It gets me points with Alex, and you get what you want. Or at least a chance at it. It’s a double win for me.”
“When did Alex ask you to find a date for Charlotte?” Asking the question made my teeth grind, but there was a third option I hadn’t considered. One I liked better than all the others.
“At least a couple weeks ago. Why?”