“Said she needed to go to the bathroom. I’m her boss, not her keeper,” Adam said, his shoulders stiffening under his expensive suit. It was a nice suit. Charlie had one just like it at home.
Charlie had done what he needed to do. He’d given Forrester his best fuck-off vibe, let him know he knew where he lived by showing up at his wife’s party uninvited, and now he could go.
But he wasn’t leaving without Amelia. The need to see her hadn’t been so strong until he’d seen her.
That didn’t mean he’d managed to get her out of his head. Nope. She was always there, but like a curtain that shrouded everything. She was a filter to his life, once giving it color, but now that she was gone, the color was dampened.
It sucked.
He wanted her back, but he knew he didn’t deserve her. At any rate, when he’d told Adam to give her a job, this wasn’t what he’d meant. She was supposed to sign for shit, not attend parties.
He looked at Destiny. “Change of plans. You’re his date tonight.” Amelia being here made those pictures come into focus in his brain. Forrester already knew about her, and had probably recognized her when she’d waltzed in here on Adam’s arm.
Goddammit. He should have shown Adam the pictures, let him know the danger from Forrester. If he had, she wouldn’t be here now.
Then he went to find Amelia. Looking around the room, there was a hallway that looked like it might have a bathroom. He opened every door, seeing lots of people mingling, but no Amelia.
A man came up behind him, dressed in a tux. “Can I help you find something, sir?”
“Yes, a woman in a black dress, she was just here. I’m looking for her. Tiny thing, short dark hair.” Charlie decided this was the butler or whatever Forrester had at this party to make himself feel important.
“I believe she was feeling ill. I directed her to the garage bathroom.” Pointing, he spoke with an affected accent, and Charlie briefly wondered if he learned to speak that way in butler school or whatever. But he didn’t ask. He walked as quickly as he could through the kitchen and out to the garage.
When Charlie opened the door, he saw more than he’d anticipated, and the Amelia filter that dampened all the colors suddenly blinded him with a red haze of anger.
One of Forrester’s goons held her while Bascom and another man were palming her bare breast. Her skirt had been hiked up around her waist. Half a dozen men stood around palming erections behind pants, or stroking their dirty dicks as they looked on. But that wasn’t the worst part of it all.
No. The worst part were the tears that streaked down Amelia’s face as she was limp in the man’s arms.
Tears of humiliation. He’d seen them enough on others to recognize them. Helplessness, despair, fear.
Forrester made his girl feel those things, and she was too good to ever feel that way.
Feeling woefully underprepared, Charlie did what he could. He pulled his gun from the holster under his jacket and trained it on the man holding Amelia, cocking it.
The douchebag holding Amelia heard the metallic snick over the grunts and cries of encouragement and released her immediately. Smart man.
Amelia saw Charlie and ran over to him, stumbling and then kicking off her shoes. She reached him and he rested an arm on her shoulders, even as he swiveled his gun to aim at Forrester.
“I’m not going to shoot you now.” His voice was cold, and everyone was suddenly silent with his words. “I’m going to let you live so you can experience what I’ve got in store for you.” He wanted to shoot the motherfucker for making his girl cry, for hurting her, for scaring her, for even thinking about laying a hand on her. “You ever touch her again, and I will kill you. No choices. No games. You will die.”
With that, he uncocked his gun and put it back in his holster, flopping his jacket over it. Forrester simply watched, his arms crossed. The other men had put away their cocks and were standing behind Forrester, waiting for his order to rip Charlie to shreds. But it wouldn’t come. He had a houseful of people inside, the party his wife had planned, and appearances were too important for Bascom Forrester.
Wrapping an arm around Amelia’s shoulders, he led her outside, while texting Luther on his phone to bring the car.
Death was too fucking good. Was it really? If Forrester was dead, he would be done with this shit.
Amelia’s trembling body broke into his thoughts, and he stopped and wrapped his jacket around her, kissing her forehead.
“Was that the right thing?” He still wanted to kill him, but she didn’t like that, did she?
She looked up at him, her deep brown eyes swimming with emotion as she stared at him. With a glazed look on her face, she nodded, and he scooped her into his arms.
Yeah, he’d ignored her with Jackson, and he’d lost her then. If he ignored her again, there was no hope for getting her back.
Not that there was, anyway, but it would be gone like ash in the wind if he didn’t get a handle on things.
It didn’t take long for Luther to pull the car up, but in that few minutes, Charlie held her in his arms, his mouth on the top of her head, reminding himself of her scent, why he had to let her go.
“Miss Flores, so glad to see you again.” Luther’s voice was loud in the night, and Charlie welcomed the sense of normalcy in his suddenly topsy-turvy night. He’d expected to see Forrester, tell him there would be no blackmail, and make his way out with some threats. Adam was supposed to be there to do more of the same, but he’d brought fucking Amelia and things had changed.
Because that’s what she did. She changed everything.
They got in the car, and Amelia immediately crawled over to his side of the back seat, seeking out his comfort. Goddammit, that man had almost broken her.
He could see why all the other guys hated him so much. Charlie suddenly had a vested interest in Forrester’s downfall.
“I can’t change.” He heard the words in the silence of the car and felt her body as she shifted to look up at him. But he couldn’t look back at those eyes that saw so much. He continued looking at the back of Luther’s head, his eyes focused on the road completely, but he knew his friend was listening intently. No worries. He wasn’t going to tell her anything Luther didn’t already know.
“I never knew my dad, and Mom died when I was young, so the loving state system took me in. Foster parents are awful. Some of them mean well; they want to mold children and teach them and make an impact on them. I had eight or nine sets of foster parents, and the first ones were the only ones like that. The rest of them taught me everything I needed to know to be successful in the life I have now. They taught me that there are always ways to make money; there are always people who have less power than you, and there are bonds that tie people together, whether advertently, like Luther here, or inadvertently, like Forrester.” He jerked his chin toward the direction they’d just come from. “And that the past is just that. The past. A memory. You don’t have to hold on to it and make it change you. You can just make it something that happened to you and move on.”
The next words got stuck on his tongue, choking him. He needed to tell her that she was like Luther to him. A piece of his past he clung to like life. She was more than a memory; she was inside him. But he didn’t. Instead, he gripped her to his body, feeling her lush curves melt into him.
She was fucking perfect.
Her finger traced his chin, and her mouth moved against his chest. Luther, who was watching in the rearview mirror, widened his eyes.
He looked down at her. “What?”
She’d said something, and he’d missed it. Luther had it though, and the knowledge that Luther knew something about this woman that he didn’t peeved him. He needed her to repeat it.
“I’m pregnant.”
Charlie’s insides plummeted, leaving him breathless. Then they swelled, bigger than a fucking elephant. A humming started up in his ears, and Amelia’s scent invaded him. Suddenly, there was not
hing but the two of them, alone, together, in this car. The sounds of the tires over the highway made a rhythmic thumping noise, but he was aware of the two of them only.
His thoughts raced around in his head, but they would only settle on one thing: A picture of Amelia, fat with his child.
Minutes passed in silence, and Charlie struggled to find the right words. He couldn’t. Instead, he found her hand, clutching his sleeve tightly, and twined his fingers with hers, raising it to kiss the knuckles.
She was making him a father.
That should be fucking terrifying. But it wasn’t.
“I was on birth control.” He knew that. He’d seen her take the pills, seen the odd little package on the bathroom countertop in Cayman.
“I know.” This should change everything. She should be taking her in his lap and kissing her, letting her know he would be there for them.
But it didn’t. It couldn’t. He wasn’t father material, not any more than some guy who got a monthly check to care for disadvantaged kids that weren’t his.
But it was Amelia having his child.
“I don’t want anything from you. I just thought you would want to know.” Her voice was quiet in the interior of the car, and he wished Luther would fucking drive faster.
“I know.” He was a broken record, but he didn’t think she was a gold digger or anything. There was no way Amelia was trying to trap him into fatherhood for the child support. She wasn’t that kind of woman.
When Luther finally pulled up in front of Amelia’s house, Charlie got out with her. Leaning down, he told Luther to grab a hotel for the night, and then he followed Amelia up the steps.
She went inside and did her nightly ritual of checking on Gram, who was sleeping, and telling the nurse goodbye. Then she turned to Charlie.
“You want some water? I don’t really have anything else.” She shrugged, not having questioned his choice to spend the night with her. He shook his head.
She led the way onto the back porch, small, like everything else at this house, and sat in a rocking chair, waving him into the other one. She flipped a switch nearby, and the yard burst into dim lights around. He took in the sight and sighed.
She had created a flower garden out here. It was tiny, but in the light, he could see little bursts of flowers everywhere.
She had created this beauty. Like she would create a life.
They had created a life.
“It’s a lot to take in, I know. We weren’t together that long, and in that short amount of time, we made a new life. It’s crazy how that works.”
All of the emotion in her voice tugged at something inside him.
“I didn’t get to finish. In the car,” he started, determined to tell her everything about him. “Luther and Adam are pieces of my past, the pieces I can’t shake, but I don’t want to. They are a piece of me that’s important. The only ones that I kept in touch with, that remind me where I came from. The only piece of my past that still matters to me.” He swallowed thickly, his eyes boring into hers. “Until you. Now I can finally see a future.”
She was staring at him now. “You have done something to me, Amelia, something I can’t explain. And even before the baby, I knew I would never be able to forget you. I have no idea what sort of a person I can be for you, what sort of father to this baby I can be.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Part of me wants to hate you, because that would be so much easier, but like everything else about you, there is nothing easy about you. I can’t hate you. I can’t put you in my past. I can’t forget you. And I can’t excise you from my life completely. When you told me you loved me, I realized that I love you too.” She inhaled a sharp breath, but didn’t speak. “I never wanted to. Never wanted another person in my life I had to think about, certainly not before I considered myself.” She heard the formality of his words and knew it was a defense mechanism. “But loving you did something to me. Changed me a little. Or at least, made me want to change for you. But I can’t. All that with Jackson—” The bastard’s name still tasted sour. “All that made me realize I can’t change and be what you need me to be.”
Chapter Thirty
He was rejecting her again. He’d been fighting her from the beginning, in his own way. Scaring her with sex, beating her ex, trying to push her away. But the more he talked, the more she realized he wanted her just as badly as she wanted him.
He loved her too. She’d heard those words and discounted the rest.
“So just to clarify, you’re telling me what I want? What I need?” Her voice rose toward the end, and she swallowed to shush herself. She didn’t want to wake Gram.
He nodded, his eyes never leaving hers. “When I found you tonight, something snapped.”
“But you reined it in.” She’d seen his posture change as soon as she touched him.
He sighed, more of a groan, but didn’t contradict her. “Okay, what do you want? The ball’s in your court. Tell me what you want and need.”
She shook her head at this stupid man who had all the power and didn’t even realize it.
“I want you, Charlie. You’re not a bad man. You just do things that others wouldn’t, but you do it for a purpose that’s beyond you. I love that. You were protecting me with Jackson, and tonight, you were protecting me from that man. I know that you would do anything to protect your child.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means I love you. The good and the bad. I want to have this child with you. I want to live with you and raise a family.” She hadn’t thought out the logistics, because she hadn’t allowed herself to think that far ahead, but she knew that she wanted Charlie in her life, however he would be.
“You want a picket fence and a dog? I’m not that guy, Amelia.” His frustration was showing and she held up her hand.
“I didn’t say that. I don’t want a picket fence, although with a baby, I think some redecorating may be in order.”
“What about Gram?”
She shrugged. “I don’t have all the answers. But together, we can come up with them.” She bit her lip and waited for a response from him. He’d taken a long time to talk tonight, spending an eon thinking about what he said before he said it. It had made her crazy in the car, and she kept interrupting his thoughts with things she’d wanted to say. But now that she knew he wanted her too, loved her even, she was getting frustrated herself. “You don’t have to be with me, but I want you in this baby’s life, if you’ll have us. I don’t think you want to toss us to the side, no matter what you tell yourself I need.”
It was as if her words broke something inside him. His motionless figure suddenly sprang into action. He lifted her into his arms and cradled her against his chest as if she weighed nothing, walking her into the house, down the short hallway to her bedroom.
“Gram,” she reminded him, having no doubt where his mind was.
“Then be silent.”
As if she could. He laid her down on the bed, before standing straight and shucking his clothing. His ritual was the same, but faster. Jacket, cufflinks, cuff buttons, then the routine changed, until he was gloriously naked in front of her.
Amelia’s insides were on fire. He’d said all the right things, had all the right concerns, and was standing in front of her in her bedroom, looking sinfully … right.
Could she do this with him? She’d missed him so much during their time apart, and had forgiven him for the whole Jackson thing.
Was she ready to go back to the way they’d been?
Charlie looked at her with possession in his eyes, his cock rock-hard. For her. She knew all she had to do was say the word and he would call Luther and go home.
But then she would for sure never see him again. She definitely did not want to go back to the way things had been this past month.
Even thinking about that possibility made her heart beat with a despair and her stomach clench painfully.
N
o, she couldn’t live without him.
Charlie leaned on his arms and started crawling up her body, but she stopped him with a hand to his chest. The hurt and doubt that shadowed his eyes was immediate.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I want this. But I want you to promise me something first.”
He swallowed thickly, then a resolve filled his features and he lifted his chin. “I’ll try.”
She knew he would.
“I want experiences with you. Not stuff. I don’t want the big house in the suburbs. I want to die knowing that I’d done it all. I don’t want to have it all. I want to love hard, Charlie. Do that with me.”
His mouth claimed hers in a kiss that held so much passion and feeling she was breathless. His tongue claimed hers, and the kiss was so hard and sudden their teeth clanged together. But she didn’t care. The feel of his body, hot and hard, on top of hers was almost too much.
He took care in undressing her. Unzipping the side of her dress, and helping her shimmy out of it, without ever getting completely off her or breaking the kiss. His massive hands were everywhere, and the heated smoothness of his grip on her body was delicious and dragged her deeper into this experience.
When he broke the kiss, he buried his face in her neck, sucking hard before swiping his tongue over the mark he for sure left. Then he went lower, dragging her bra straps down as he did. He unclasped the front clasp of her bra, and her tits sprang free. He made an appreciative moan in the back of his throat, before taking one in his mouth.
“Oh God,” she cried out, and his eyes immediately got mischievous. He released her breast and moved lower, slowly and gently taking her panties off.
“You can’t be quiet, can you?”
“I can try.” She gasped, realizing she had been a little loud.
“That’s not good enough, I’m afraid. We don’t want to disturb Gram.” Then he stuffed her panties in her mouth and gave her a satisfied grin.
He hadn’t tied her hands or restrained her at all, but she didn’t want to remove the panties. He was right, she did need to be quiet, but it was something else.
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