Chapter 21 #2
“I’ll pick you up at six. Wear something elegant.” He turned away before she did and got in his car. Clenching her jaw against the overwhelming need to cry, she won the battle. It was funny, but winning felt a lot like losing.
Skeptical was the look that stared back at Charlie in the hallway mirror as she put on her coat. Suzette stood behind her.
“You look like Cinderella going off to a ball.”
“You have a very dark idea about what Cinderella is all about then, because I look far more like a bedraggled prisoner ready to walk the plank.”
Suzette’s eyes widened and she knew she’d spoken too honestly.
“I dread the inevitable paparazzi and reporters. Trent warned me there would be photographers, but that we have to be polite to the media and allow photographs because he’s a public figure. According to the team.”
She turned to face her sister. Suzette calmed some.
Charlie couldn’t tell her that she dreaded everything about the evening, except the food.
She dreaded making small talk with the football player and his wife on so many levels.
That they had nothing in common was level one.
Level two was that they were friends of Trent and she and Trent were deceiving these decent people.
It was too much to stomach, but she’d have to stomach that and more. She’d have to enjoy their company in spite of it all and do it publicly, for show. That made the deception even more of a sting. More difficult to unweave the web when it was all over.
When it was all over.
She turned away from Suzette to hide the assaulting stab of that thought. Even a good ending would be painful now. And she knew she was miles from that good result still. Trent’s health was the increasing concern that she hadn’t expected.
“You’ll be fine—more than fine. You’ll charm them all and what’s a few pictures in the paper?
It won’t hurt a bit.” Suzette helped her on with her coat.
Charline let her though she knew it was more and more of a struggle for Suzette to lift her arms higher than her shoulders.
She noted it was worse on Suzette’s left side and resolved to get her a shot on that side.
A cortisone shot, not a serum injection.
She couldn’t risk stealing any more of those for Suzette. And Suzette hadn’t asked.
Charlie sighed. Forced a smile. “Of course you’re right.”
She didn’t bother to point out that Hogarth might find a way to use any notoriety against her, but then he was a perennial problem no matter what. Charline heard the car and saw the headlights coming up the drive from the kitchen window.
“He’s here now.” Suzette sounded excited but she didn’t ask Charlie to have him come in.
It was understood that they didn’t invite people into their home. It seemed Charlie had been keeping secrets all her life. Instead of being used to it, all the secrecy wore on her, making her feel old. Not the right state of mind to be going out on the town.
“Try and have some fun. For me and Mother.” Suzette leaned in and kissed her.
“I will.” With that resolve, Charlie went out the back door and down the steps in a hurry. Trent was out of the car and she reached him before he got to the back steps.
“You didn’t have to come out,” he said.
“Just as well.” She brushed past him to his car. “I half expected a limo.”
“Gave the chauffeur the night off,” he said as he opened her door.
She looked up to see his big smile. It made her heart stutter.
She didn’t feel like she deserved his gracious good humor, more like she was an evil Dr. Frankenstein using him as a guinea pig.
If she had any heart, any conscience, any iota left of professional ethics, she’d pull the plug on his participation.
But apparently, she was a single-minded research zealot—like she’d been accused of by some of her peers.
But damn it, she wanted to enjoy herself, needed to enjoy herself. She wasn’t evil. And she was pretty damn sure that Trent had enjoyed the sex, so she hadn’t been using him completely.
“You look great in a suit and tie. Did I ever mention that? But then I’m sure you already know. I’m sure all kinds of women have told you the same thing.” She was so bad at this. She’d never been a flirt. She’d always been too forthright for it.
He smiled at her.
“You’re kind of making me wish we had a chauffeur.”
“Why is that?”
He did a double take and then chuckled. Likely at her expense.
She felt herself go pink in the cheeks, felt the melting, the quick spread of scintillation trilling along her nerve endings, making her feel like a live wire.
There was nothing wrong with Charline’s sex drive, never had been, but Trent seemed to have unlocked a special overdrive in her, sending her to a new level of appreciation, to the precipice of addictive neediness.
But it wasn’t in her to hold back, not now, not anymore.
“I get it. I might even be on the same page with you.” The admission caused an extra pop of juice to her nerves, making her feel like she was so charged she could shoot sparks.
“Damn, Charlie. I wish you hadn’t told me that. This could be one long uncomfortable dinner if I start out wanting to ravish you and not the meal.”
“There’s always dessert,” she said, hearing the tremor in her voice.
He gave her a simmering look and reached a hand out and under her coat, to caress her thigh through the silky material of her cocktail dress.
“Darlin’, I guarantee you will be my dessert.” He lowered his voice until it almost sounded like a growl. “The most delectable dessert I ever ate.”
Thoughts flew around her head like sparks in an overloaded circuit board, dangerously close to exploding. Unable to speak, she kept her eyes on him and leaned into him. His hand singed her thigh as his fingers stroked ever closer to the apex between her legs.
“This is crazy, you know.” He sighed and took his hand from her thigh after one last squeeze. Then he pushed his fingers through his hair. She’d like to be pushing her fingers through his hair.
Though her natural reserve was strong, the self-acknowledged desire for him, the naturalness of it, the intimacy of the quiet car all conspired to embolden her.
She moved close to him, heart thrumming, seeming to rise in her throat and lodge there, making it hard to speak.
So she acted instead. She put one hand on his thigh and leaned close, caressing his strong, smooth jaw.
He flashed a surprised look at her. She held her breath until she saw the slight curve in one side of his mouth.
Wishing she was taller, she stretched forward as far as she could to put her lips close to his ear, to whisper the words she had to say.
“I have this unholy need for you, Trent. You . . . do things to me. You make me forget who I am.” She paused feeling breathless, heard and felt him take a deep breath, watched his eyelids lower halfway as if they grew heavy.
But he didn’t take his eyes from the road, didn’t say a word.
His silent acceptance of her words made her bolder.
She finished her thought, voicing the desire in her.
“You make me feel like a wild, wanton woman every time I’m around you, until I can’t think about anything but having you, until I want to do nothing else but have you, feel your skin on mine, until I want to eat you whole. ”
She felt the tremor in him. He swore under his breath.
“Damnation. What the hell, Charlie? We’re driving through the streets of Boston and there’s nothing I can do short of pulling over and dragging you inside somewhere and ripping your clothes off like a crazed caveman.
” He turned to her then. “That’s what you do to me.
” He let out a groan. “In the middle of the f—cking football season. No, worse, at the most crucial strangle-point of the season, when we have to win to make the playoffs. When I need to be concentrating on nothing else but football, studying game tapes, coming up with plays, working on creating and perfecting new tricks. When I should be leading and setting an example for the rest of my damn team.” His words washed over her like a drugging balm, heady, exciting, and soothing.
But before she could respond, he swung the car to the right and stopped abruptly at the curb.
Turning she looked out the window to see that they’d arrived. The sight of the valet and the restaurant front were as shocking to her system as an ice bath.
“Trent—”
“Don’t say another word. I don’t think I could stand it. I might do something foolish, something we’d both regret.”
Mind racing, she tried to think what he meant.
“What could you possibly regret doing now that we haven’t done already?”
He stared at her, his eyes drilling her with heat, regret, and something more edgy. Defiance? Did he resent her now? She didn’t have a chance to ask. The valet appeared at his window. He turned away from her and opened his door.
To add to his guilt over not prioritizing football the way he should be, he could count hurting Charlie to his sins.
He got out of the car and clenched his muscles as if that could fix his piss-poor handling of his adolescent desire for her.
There were so many things wrong with his behavior he didn’t know where to begin.
One thing was certain, Charlie didn’t deserve to be spun around like a top by his lack of control, his failing self-discipline.
He’d make it right. He had no choice. Squaring his shoulders, feeling only the slightest pinch, he went around the car to her.
He knew how to act like a gentleman and that was what he needed to do tonight.
Desperately. He needed to put aside the lust, forget the unforgettable words she’d whispered in that siren-call voice of hers, forget everything but football.
And the undeniable fact that she deserved better than the likes of him.