Chapter Six #3
This time she wasn’t eating or drinking; otherwise she knew she would have choked again. As it was, the back of her throat cramped closed and her heart went into a tachycardic thrum.
“W-what?”
“Does your, what do you call it? Dojo?”
She nodded.
“Allow it? Anyone to come watch a class?”
She didn’t want to lie, but there was no way she wanted him there. Just the thought had swamp-sweat forming in her pits and drizzling down her back.
She swallowed, then shook her head. “It’s usually only family members of students, or potential ones who watch.”
Not a lie, but not the total truth.
“So,” he cocked his head, “if I wanted to try out a class? Think about joining? I’d be a potential student then, right?”
“But you’re not considering it.” She squinted across the table at him, her gaze narrowing. “So that would be a lie.”
That damn shrug was beginning to annoy her.
“Not really. I could use something new for a workout. The gym is getting old.”
There was no way in hell, earth, or anywhere in-between where she’d ever consider this a good idea.
Just...no way.
Before she could tell him that, Ruthie came back with a filled water pitcher.
“You kids doin’ okay?” she asked as she refilled their glasses. They both nodded, and she left them again.
Charity gathered her thoughts into some semblance of coherence while Kolby sipped from his water glass. “It’s pretty boring if you don’t know what’s going on,” she said, internally wincing at how lame that sounded.
Kolby cocked his head as he laid his glass back down on the table. “Boredom is a state of mind. What time is the class?”
Again, she couldn’t lie because it was so easy for him to find out if she was. “Two.”
He nodded. “Okay, well I guess I’m out. I’ve got plans around then.”
Relief surfed through her, then nosiness. She didn’t ask him, though, what his plans were because, a. she didn’t want to appear to care, and b. she figured his plans ( she mentally air-quoted the word) concerned a woman.
When he confirmed that thought, but not in the way she’d assumed, she was flabbergasted .
“My mom’s coming to town tomorrow,” he said, and sat back in the booth, his food done. “Her monthly checkup on me visit.”
Charity couldn’t help it. She said the first thing that popped into her mind.
“You have a mother?”
***
He squinted across the table, smiling silently when her face went sixteen different shades of pink.
“What?” he asked, brow grooving as he attempted to keep her from seeing the grin. “You thought I was hatched or something? Spontaneously appeared in town one day out of nowhere? Of course I have a mother.”
The pink morphed to crimson. When she tucked her bottom lip under her top teeth, he had trouble sitting still from the stirring going on in his jeans.
“I-I’m sorry. That was...I’m sorry. Of course you have a mother.” She rolled her eyes. “I – I don’t know why I said that.”
Another head cock and he said, “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”
The crimson deepened.
She fiddled with the wrapping paper from her straw, her fingers showing the nerves he knew she was trying to keep hidden. He took pity on her.
“Anyway,” he said, lifting his glass again. Before sipping, he added, “My mom comes to town about once a month for the day to have lunch and reconnect.”
Her smooth brow furrowed. “Reconnect? Don’t you talk on the phone?”
“Not a whole lot.” He lifted his shoulder again. “She’s not a big phone talker. You talk to your folks often?”
“As much as I can manage,” she said. “My mama and I are close. Daddy, too, but I’m closer to my mama.” When she shook her head, he had the mad notion to fly across the table and kiss her. “My brothers are another story. Pains in the butt, every single one of them.”
“You have five, right?”
She blew out a breath and crossed her arms over her chest, and nodded.
“Where are you in the food chain?”
“Last.”
“Ah, that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
She had no idea how damn cute she looked when she scrunched up her face like that.
Or how alluring.
“Your control issues.”
Shock forced her jaw to drop, her eyes to widen, the blue in them obliterating the inky black pupils.
His pants got even tighter.
“I don’t have control issues. At all,” she said, those cheeks so fiery now it was a seven-day wonder they didn’t burst into flames.
“Sure about that?” Before she could speak, he held up one hand, ticked the fingers off with the other.
“You have a daily calendar book on your desk, the same one on your phone and laptop, all three always open while you’re at work.
You triple annotate everything, then triple check it.
You have a paper filing system in your desk that’s alphabetized, the same system on your phone and laptop that’s listed according to dates.
You eat the same thing every single day, you always gas up your car the minute the tank gets to half-full, and you take a picture of every single receipt to log onto your phone.
And that’s just the work stuff. I haven’t spent enough time with you on a personal level to know the stuff you do when you’re not working. ”
All the beautiful hues of red on her cheeks disappeared, replaced by a pasty white that momentarily scared him. Was she going to pass out?
As soon as that thought hit, the color changed again to molten lava spewing down a mountainside during a volcanic eruption.
He figured he was in for a verbal eruption that rivaled that as soon as she could speak.
Surprised didn’t even come close to describing what shot through him when she sighed, then blew out a breath between her lips.
“You’re not wrong,” she said in a voice partly tinged with exasperation and mixed with a soupcon of acceptance. “But there’s a reason I’m so—"
“Controlling?”
"—organized," she finished, shooting him a pursed-lipped pout. “It has nothing to do with my birth order and everything to do with my, well, my fear of making a mistake.”
When she looked down at her now empty plate and tugged that bottom lip he wanted to trace his tongue across under her top teeth again, he knew, without a doubt, somewhere in her life she had made a mistake. And it was guiding her to this day.
He cleared his throat, then said, “You’re very good at your job, you know. Incredibly good.”
“Now.” She folded her hands on the top of the table.
“Not always?”
Still staring down at her plate, she shook her head. “I worked for another wedding planner before Colleen.”
When she didn’t continue, he rolled a hand in the air. “And?”
After a few beats, she told him, “Something...happened. Something with a wedding. And it resulted in my being...let go.”
“Was it your fault?” he asked, instinctively knowing there was more to the story than a simple mistake on her part.
She lifted her gaze to his. The sadness in her eyes tore through him and he finally gave into the need to stretch a hand across the table and take one of hers in his.
Charity’s lids flickered at the gesture, but she didn’t pull away.
“What happened wasn’t your fault, was it?”
She shook her head. “But I got blamed for it since it was my responsibility, as the planner’s assistant, to check on everything.” She inhaled and hid behind her lids again. Kolby pressed her hand.
“Tell me,” he commanded softly.
It took her another moment before she opened her eyes, then settled on his face.
“It was a big, important wedding. Big, like the bride was the daughter of a television star. I won’t tell you his name because you’d recognize it right away.
I’d been working for this woman for almost a year.
She was tough as nails with her employees, but brides adored her because she was a perfectionist and catered to their every whim.
Anyway.” She took a sip of water, and he wondered if she realized she hadn’t taken her hand from his yet.
“The big day came, and the wedding pamphlets were in the back of the church. It was one of the interns who picked them up the day before. He didn’t check them when he did, which was a mistake to begin with, but he was running late and didn’t think to. But he told me he had.”
“He lied.”
She nodded. “Since I was running around doing fifty other things, I told him to give them to the ushers to hand out to the arriving guests without giving them a final look.” She drew in a breath.
“That was my mistake. I trusted him, and because I was so busy, I never even considered there would be a problem.”
“What was it? Name misspelled?”
“Worse. The bride’s parents were divorced, but both their names were going to be on the brochure.”
“Was one missing?”
“If only.” She shook her head. “The line was supposed to read, Mr. and Mrs. so and so ( the second wife) and Mrs. so and so (the first one), request the honor... blah blah blah. The groom’s parents were on the next line. You get it?”
His turn to nod.
“Well, the first part was right. Mr. and Mrs. so and so. But the printer had listed the first wife as the groom’s parents, completely omitting them from the brochure.”
“Yikes.”
“Double yikes, because the groom’s father? He was the head of the television network.”
Kolby let that settle for a moment. Powerful people don’t take snubs or mistakes lightly.
“When guests started reading, it was brought to our attention, but the programs had already been given out. We couldn’t just go and ask for them back.
The woman I worked for was seething when the groom’s father cornered her in the back of the church and let her have it.
Naturally, that trickled down to me since one of my responsibilities had been the programs.”
“And she fi—, er, let you go because of it?”
“Right after the reception ended. She let me work the rest of the day, never giving me any indication of what was to come. The minute the reception ended, she told me. Didn’t even give me a chance to go back to the office and get my stuff. She had it all delivered to my apartment.”
“What happened to the intern?”