15. Charlotte
— ? —
Charlotte
The text came through at six, just as I was clocking out.
I stared at Kiera’s name on my screen. After what she walked in on earlier, I needed to show up.
Me: I’ll be there.
I drove home, showered, changed into jeans and a top that didn’t try too hard. I put on lipstick and told myself it was just drinks with coworkers. Casual. Easy. The kind of thing people with normal lives did on Tuesday nights.
The Bellcliff was dark when I pulled up. Curtains drawn across the windows, only a faint glow from inside. I checked my phone. 8:04. Maybe everyone was already there.
I pushed through the door.
The room was empty. No cluster of coworkers around the bar. No Kiera waving from a booth. Just candles flickering on a single table in the center of the room, two place settings, and Sutton sitting there with a glass of wine like he’d been waiting all night.
I stopped three feet inside the door.
“You went to Kiera.” My voice came out flat.
“She was reluctant at first,” he said. “But I can be persuasive when I need to be.”
I laughed, but there was nothing funny about it. “Is that what you call it when you throw money at people until they betray their coworkers?”
“I call it doing what’s necessary to get what I want,” he said. “And what I wanted was dinner with you.”
“So you manipulated my colleague into lying to me.” I stepped closer to the table, my hands curling into fists at my sides.
“The one person at that hotel who knows exactly what’s happening between us, who has every reason to gossip about it, who I need to stay on good terms with if I want to keep my job. ”
“Kiera isn’t going to gossip,” he said. “She cares about you. That’s why she agreed to help.”
I could feel my pulse pounding in my throat. “You set up this whole elaborate scene with the candles and the empty restaurant like we’re in some kind of movie. And you’re sitting there acting like I should be flattered.”
“I never said you should be flattered,” he said. “I said sit down.”
“I’m not sitting down.” I was almost shouting now, my voice echoing off the empty walls.
“The door’s right there,” he said. “You can leave whenever you want. But you’re still standing here arguing with me instead of walking out.”
“Because I want you to understand how insane this is.” I stepped closer. “I’m not going to reward this behavior by playing along with your fantasy date.”
“It’s not a fantasy,” he said. “The food is real. The wine is real. I’m sitting right here.”
“You don’t get to buy access to me because you feel guilty about the past.”
“I’m not trying to buy anything,” he said. “I’m trying to get you to stop running long enough to have a conversation.”
“You don’t get to decide when and where I see you just because you have enough money to rent out every restaurant in Newport.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t get to decide. That’s why I’m asking you to sit down instead of forcing you into the chair.”
“Asking,” I repeated. “You call this asking? You tricked me into coming here. You used my coworker against me.”
“I created a situation where you’d actually show up,” he said. “Because every time I’ve asked directly, you’ve turned me down. Every time I’ve approached you at the hotel, you’ve hidden behind your job. I couldn’t get you to stand still long enough to hear me out, so yes, I got creative.”
“Creative is one word for it,” I said. “Manipulative is another. Controlling is a third.”
“I’ll accept all three,” he said. “If it means you’ll sit down and have dinner with me.”
I stood there, breathing hard, every muscle in my body tight with anger. The smart thing would be to turn around. Walk out. Drive home and never speak to him again.
I sat down.
He poured wine into my glass without asking, and I picked it up and drank half of it in one long swallow.
“I’m still furious with you,” I said.
“I’d be worried if you weren’t,” he said. “The wine is very good, though. The chef recommended it specifically for tonight.”
“The wine doesn’t make up for the manipulation.”
“It’s not supposed to,” he said. “It’s just wine. The making up part comes later, if you let it.”
The waiter appeared from somewhere in the back, and set down a plate of scallops that looked like art. He disappeared again without a word.
I looked at the food, then at Sutton. I thought about leaving again, about making a point, about not giving him the satisfaction.
“I’m surprised Vivienne isn’t here,” I said, spearing a scallop. “She seems very invested in your schedule. Your meals. Your romantic interests.”
“Vivienne works for me,” he said. “That’s the beginning and end of her involvement in my personal life.”
“That’s not the impression she gives.” I took a bite. The scallop was perfect, buttery and sweet, and I hated how good it was. “She looks at me like I’m a problem she’s been assigned to solve.”
“Vivienne’s opinions about my personal life are exactly that,” he said. “Her opinions. They don’t reflect anything that’s actually happening, and they don’t have any bearing on what I want.”
“And what do you want?” I asked.
“Right now?” He leaned back in his chair, watching me across the candlelight. “I want to talk about what happened in my hotel room. Since you’ve been pretending it didn’t happen for the past three days.”
I nearly choked on my wine.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” I set down my glass too hard, liquid sloshing against the sides. “It was a mistake. I was delivering a package, you answered the door half-naked, and things got out of hand.”
“Things got out of hand,” he repeated. “That’s a very sterile way to describe you coming on my fingers while I had you pinned against the door.”
“Can you not say things like that in the middle of a restaurant?” My face was burning. I could feel the heat spreading down my neck, across my chest.
“Why not?” He leaned forward, his eyes holding mine. “It’s the truth. I’ve been thinking about it constantly since you walked out. The way you sounded when I touched you. The way your body arched into my hand. How wet you were, how tight you felt when you clenched around my fingers.”
“I don’t want to relive the details over dinner,” I said, my voice coming out strangled. My thighs pressed together under the table without my permission.
“I replay it every night before I fall asleep,” he said. “Sometimes I think about it in the morning too. In the shower. And I get so hard thinking about the sounds you made that I have to take care of it before I can start my day.”
I couldn’t look at him. I stared at my plate, at the perfectly arranged scallops, at anything that wasn’t his face. My whole body was responding to his words, heat pooling low in my belly, my pulse pounding between my thighs.
“You can’t just say things like that to me and expect me to keep eating like nothing happened,” I said.
“I just did say it,” he said. “And you’re blushing down to your chest, which tells me you’re not as opposed to hearing it as you’re pretending to be.”
“I’m not pretending anything.” I picked up my wine glass and drained the rest of it. “I’m trying to have a civilized dinner without you turning everything into a discussion of what happened when I made a bad decision in a moment of weakness.”
“You could call it what it was instead of calling it a bad decision,” he said, refilling my wine glass.
“Two people who want each other giving in to what they’ve been fighting for weeks.
You could call it inevitable. You could call it the beginning of something instead of a mistake you’re trying to bury. ”
“It can’t be the beginning of anything,” I said. “We already had a beginning. We had a whole marriage, and it went nowhere.”
“Which is why I’m trying to do it differently this time,” he said.
“And you think one dinner proves that?” I asked.
“I think it proves I’m willing to go to ridiculous lengths to spend time with you,” he said. “Which is more than I ever did before. And I think you know that, which is why you’re still sitting here instead of walking out.”
The second course arrived. Some kind of fish with a sauce that smelled incredible. We ate in silence for a while, the tension between us was starting to melt.
The courses kept coming. We talked about nothing important.
After the plates were cleared and we were waiting for dessert, a woman approached the table. She was about my age, maybe a few years older.
She stopped beside our table and smiled at me first, then glanced at Sutton.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” she said. “I’m Greer. I’m a friend of Madison’s, and also of Spencer’s, which is how I knew this place was reserved tonight. I wasn’t going to say anything, but Madison made me promise that if I ever ran into you outside of work, I had to introduce myself.”
“You know Madison?” I said. “I didn’t realize she talked about the staff.”
“She talks about you,” Greer said. “All the time. She says you’re the sharpest person she’s ever hired, that Sean takes all the credit for work you do, and that if she didn’t need you at the front desk she’d have moved you into management months ago.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d barely exchanged more than a few words with Madison since I started working at The Cove. I had no idea she even knew my name, let alone thought anything of me.
“I didn’t realize she noticed anything I did,” I finally said.
“Madison notices everything,” Greer said. She pulled out her phone. “A few of us get together on Thursdays. Dinner, drinks, sometimes we do something cultural if we’re feeling ambitious. You should come. I think you’d like the group.”
“I don’t really do group things,” I started, and then stopped. I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. I don’t really make friends. I don’t really let people in. I’ve been so focused on surviving that I forgot to build a life.
“Thursday at seven,” Greer said. “I’ll text you the details. Madison already gave me your number, hope that’s okay.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I mean, yes, I’d like that. Thank you.”
Greer squeezed my shoulder and headed back toward the bar, where I could now see Spencer sitting with a drink, watching us with an amused expression.
Sutton was smiling when I turned back to him.
“Did you plan that too?” I asked. “Is Greer on your payroll along with Kiera?”
“I had no idea Greer Bancroft would be here,” he said. “That was pure luck. Or fate, if you believe in that kind of thing.”
“I don’t believe in fate,” I said. “I believe in coincidence and people with too much money manipulating situations to get what they want.”
The evening was winding down, and I didn’t want it to end. That realization terrified me more than anything else that had happened.
We walked out into the warm night. The street was quiet, the harbor glittering in the distance.
“I’m driving you home,” he said. “You’ve had too much wine to be behind a wheel, and I’m not letting you call a cab when I’m standing right here.”
“You’re not letting me,” I repeated. “You’ve made a lot of decisions for me tonight.”
“One more won’t hurt,” he said. “Come on. My car’s around the corner.”