Chapter 35
Kate cast an eye over the table for two she’d laid on the balcony.
A simple white cloth and a creamy pillar candle, silverware and stem glasses, plus some napkins and fine white crockery she’d found in the sideboard.
She was quite pleased with the overall effect.
The spectacular view helped, of course, a living work of art with the slow appearance of pink and orange streaks across the golden evening sky.
Charlie emerged fresh from the shower, his hair still damp, casual in jeans and a faded band T-shirt that highlighted his tan.
“I feel as if I should have checked the dress code, this place looks fancier than I remember,” he said, casting his eye over the table, and then over Kate.
She’d changed into a strapless black sundress with a simple gold locket Alice had given her a couple of birthdays ago, although she was barefoot with her hair tied back in a ponytail.
“Have you made a reservation, sir? It’s terribly exclusive here,” she said. She was relieved to have been able to flip into cooking mode. Taking care of Charlie had pulled her out of wallowing and given her something different to focus on, for a few hours at least.
“I think my friend made the booking,” he said.
She nodded. “Can I take her name?”
“It’s Kate,” he said. “No surname.”
She smiled. “Ah yes, I think she’s here already. She ordered a glass of champagne a little while ago, but I don’t think anyone remembered to deliver it.”
“Can’t get the staff.” He shook his head as he headed for the fridge.
He twisted the cork out with a practiced hand and poured the first glass. “For you.”
“To Jojo,” she said, touching her flute to Charlie’s.
He nodded, looking as if he’d like to say something but didn’t trust himself to speak.
“Right,” she said. “You grab a seat so no one else snags the best table and I’ll go chase up the chef.”
Champagne in hand, she plated the steaks with the salad and green beans.
During the course of her marriage she’d hosted countless parties and business dinners, and in that moment she was grateful to all of those nights in the kitchen for making her secure in the knowledge that the steak she was serving Charlie was exactly as he’d asked for.
She wanted to impress him tonight, for the food to take his mind someplace other than down melancholy avenues.
Sudden, unexpected nerves shivered through her veins as she straightened her dress and smoothed her hands over her hair.
Along with the rest of the nation, she’d caught the sun in recent weeks, a fresh smattering of freckles across her nose, a hint of gold on her shoulders.
She looked date-ready. It wasn’t a date, but the fact was she’d just cooked dinner for a crazy-handsome guy, and now she was planning to sit down and enjoy an evening by the river with him.
For one night only, they were just going to be Kate and Charlie, eat steak and drink champagne, and try to give each other something to smile about.
“This looks amazing,” he said as she placed the food down and took her seat.
“I know it does,” she said, then laughed and accepted a refill of champagne.
“Even my father would have been hard pushed to find fault,” he said.
“Definitely not with the view,” she said.
“Definitely not.” His gaze lingered on Kate.
The steak was perfectly rare, the champagne chilled and delicious, and they spoke mostly of Jojo. Charlie shared memories of him as an over-competitive father; Kate told him how Jojo had changed her life overnight as a teenager.
“I’d only gone to the audition to keep my friend Sophie company, she was mad into acting,” Kate said.
“She wasn’t suitable for the part, too short, and we were both too scared to say I hadn’t come to audition when he put me on the spot.
Things went from there really, and everything just clicked into place. ”
“I can easily imagine it,” Charlie said. “He always found a way to get what he wanted.”
“I wasn’t even eighteen at the time, I’d never met anyone like him before. He was a real dynamo, wasn’t he? I had to work myself up to every meeting with him.”
“My friends used to say the same thing,” he said. “Mine was never the house we hung out at, let’s put it that way.”
“You sound as if you were close, though?”
He nodded. “He was around the age I am now when he found himself widowed with an eight-year-old son and the agency to run. I don’t know how he kept everything together-looking back, but he did his best.”
“A case of having to, for you, I suppose,” she said. “Kids make you strong, even when you feel anything but.”
“Credit where it’s due, Fiona helped us a great deal over the years,” he said. “I know she seems tough, but her heart is in the right place. It was hard for her when she lost Bob, and I know she’s struggled without my father.”
The snippet of behind-the-scenes insight into Fiona added yet another facet she hadn’t seen before. No less scary, but multifaceted. Like everyone, really.
“She seems career-driven, similar to your father?”
“I honestly don’t think she knows who she’d be without it,” he said.
“Does that make you feel as if you have to stay around to fill Jojo’s shoes?”
“As if I could,” Charlie said, refilling their glasses as they decamped inside to the sofa. “It was just so sudden, losing him like that. My big, busy life had already shrunk down to just the two of us, and now it’s just me.”
His voice thickened with loss, and Kate placed an instinctive hand on his shoulder.
“It’s okay to be emotional,” she said. “You lost someone you love. And today is his birthday.”
Charlie didn’t reply, his gaze fixed on the river beyond.
She studied the way his dark hair fell forward over his brow, the setting sun scattering rose-gold glitter in his whiskey-cola eyes.
He was the kind of guy who stood out in a crowd, and the effect he was having on her champagne-honest mood was intoxicating.
“How old would he have been today?”
“Seventy.”
“Wow, a big birthday.”
“I miss him so much, Kate. I don’t know what to do with the life he left behind. It’s his house, his business…his captain’s chair.”
Charlie was fortunate in many ways to have been left such a legacy, but it was a lot to ask of one man, of an only child, to carry the weight of Jojo’s world along with his own.
“It’s blown a hole straight through the middle of my life again. Isn’t it just so damn typical of him to die in the Ivy?”
She’d read a couple of articles online, enough to know Jojo had died at his favorite table while eating his favorite shepherd’s pie.
“A legendary place for a legendary man,” she said.
“I’m glad you knew him,” he said.
“I’m glad I know you,” she said, unable to keep the words in.
Charlie turned toward her, their knees almost touching. He looked into the depths of his champagne, his arm along the back of the sofa, his fingers resting lightly on her hair.
“He never once asked me if the rumors about my marriage were true.” Charlie glanced up at her. “I know you’ll have heard them. People love to talk, as Fiona was quick to point out recently.”
Kate nodded.
“I didn’t cheat or lie. I just fell out of love and I couldn’t pretend otherwise, but that’s not sensational enough for a place like that.
Hollywood thrives on stories and scandal.
Tara’s family has been established there almost as long as the hills themselves, and they know how to spin the narrative to make sure they stay there. ” He sighed. “You’re in or you’re out.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” she said.
He twisted the end of her ponytail around his fingers. “I don’t want you to wonder if I’m a decent man.”
The vulnerable truth of his words struck a nerve. “You’ve shown me who you are countless times over the last few months.”
“I meant what I said that night outside the hotel,” he said, leaning forward to put his glass down.
“I’ve never met anyone quite like you before.
You have this…this translucency, you wear your soul close to your skin and it scares me stupid.
It’s probably what makes you such a good actor.
You look into the lens and show the world exactly who you are, unfiltered. ”
It was such an unexpected thing to say, she just stared at him. “Why does it scare you?”
“Because I put you in this precarious position in the first place. You walked into the office and I could see all of those things. I knew right away that you were perfect for the job because no one would doubt anything you told them.”
“You’re not responsible for everything, Charlie,” she said. “I wrote the letter, if you want to play the ‘who started it’ game.”
“Do you regret it?”
She swallowed. “I hate that Liv and Alice have been pulled in, and it breaks my heart that readers feel deceived. But do I regret being here, right now, with you?” She shook her head and slid her champagne glass onto the table, then moved closer to Charlie.
“No one knows we’re here. It feels like a pause, a place for an intentionally blank page. ”
She’d known coming here that there was potential for something to happen between them, and she appreciated that even though he must have thought the same thing, still he didn’t make the first move.
“If you could write something on it, what would it be?” he said.
“I’d write that she wondered what it would feel like to be kissed by him,” she said, watching the subtle shift in his eyes in response to her directness.
He nodded, his hand on the back of her neck now, stroking. “And then what does it say?”
She bit her lip. “I think you should write the next line.”
He thought about it before he spoke again.
“I’d write that in the ordinary run of things he’d like to take her dancing and see a movie and buy her flowers, but that isn’t how their story goes.
They only have this one deleted scene, so they pretend they’ve already done all of those things and skip to the part where he kisses her breathless and asks her to spend the night in his bed. ”
“You’re too good at this,” she said. Quiet music still played through the sound system, stripped-back, late-night stuff designed for lovers, and Charlie slid the silk band from her hair and let it fall around her shoulders.
He frowned at the pale-blue band momentarily, then dropped it behind the sofa.
She placed her hand flat on his chest, his heart banging beneath her palm. “I’d write that he took her hair down, and it was the single most sexy thing that anyone had ever done to her in her entire life,” she said. “Ask me and I’ll say yes.”
Charlie held her face between his hands. “Come to bed with me?”
“Yes,” she said, his breath warm on her lips. “I think this is the bit where you kiss me breathless.”
He slid his hands into her hair and lowered his mouth onto hers, achingly slow and sexy.
He said her name, and he let his tongue slide over hers, and he tipped her head back and pressed her body into the sofa with the weight of his own.
She closed her eyes when his mouth moved over her neck, her hair bunched in his hands.
And then he straightened and stroked his thumb over her lower lip, watching her eyes.
“Or we could just stay here,” he said.
She reached for the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up, and he finished the job and dragged it over his head. “Let’s do that,” she said, swallowing hard because he was a lot without his top on.
He sucked in a breath when she stroked a hand down his chest, the smoothness of his stomach, and she gasped when he reached for her and pulled her on top of him as he lay down.
He dragged her dress down to her waist, exposing her breasts, making her gasp again and cover her face with her hands. He reached up and moved her hands away, holding on to them as he looked at her body and then slowly back up to her eyes.
“Don’t hide from me,” he said.
She shifted against him and enjoyed the way his body responded, the lift of his hips, the groan in his throat. It was heady to be wanted with such blatant need.
He let go of her hands to hold her breasts, the intimacy of his thumbs on her nipples making her squeeze her eyes shut. She opened them wide again when he reached down and rucked her dress up her thighs.
She bent close to him, searching for the press of his skin against hers, sucking in a breath of almost panic-desire when his hand slid between her legs, because she’d never felt such out-of-control intensity before.
His mouth found hers, urgent now as he rolled her underneath him and looked down at her with undisguised lust, dragging his mouth over her skin in a way that melted her bones.
He moaned ragged in his throat when she reached between them to unbutton his jeans, her eyes staring into his soulful ones, his hands pulling her underwear down her hips until they were both naked and breathless.
He pushed her knee outward with his own, and she made space for him between her thighs and wrapped her arms around his back.
He stopped to give them both time to be in the moment, then held her jaw and kissed her with sudden gentleness as he pushed his hips down.
“Oh my God, Charlie,” she whispered, overwhelmed by the shock and pleasure and relief of him inside her. “I’m so glad I didn’t die without having sex with you.”
He half laughed, half moaned, thrusting deeper, harder. “Don’t tell me you’re going to start one of your speeches,” he said, and she wrapped her legs around his thighs and sank her teeth into his shoulder.
“I can’t remember any words,” she whispered as he smoothed her damp hair from her face, his other hand between her legs. He watched her eyes, knowing when it was too much, sliding his fingers into her mouth when she stroked her hand down over his ass and pulled him over the edge with her.
They stilled afterward, hearts banging, his head on her chest. She held him to her, her fingers smoothing his hair.
“She wrote that it felt as if they’d danced, and been to the movies, and he’d given her all of the flowers,” she whispered.
He moved so she was in the crook of his shoulder and wrapped his arms around her, and she closed her eyes and slept.