“For impugning your pristine character. Happy now?”
“Not really.” Jake’s impenetrable gaze flickered to Charlotte, who had a tough time meeting it. A swoop of something that felt suspiciously like relief had lightened her insides, making her happy when she had no right to feel anything whatsoever when it came to Jake’s love life. And she never would have any right, she added silently, because she seemed to need the reminder. “Maybe you should get your facts straight before you go around accusing people of—”
“Can we kindly focus on the matter at hand here?” Mrs. Hamilton’s stern look touched all of her children before landing on Jake. “You need to get your makeup done so we can—”
“Excuse me?” Jake asked with open horror.
Mrs. Hamilton’s eyes were chips of ice. “Your. Make. Up.”
“Not in this lifetime,” Jake said, striding away from the makeup table as though he feared a random blush would leap up and smear itself all over his face.
“But the lighting—”
“I’m not trying to make the cover of GQ.” Jake checked his watch and pulled out his phone. “Can we get this show on the road? I’ve got work to do back at the office.”
“Fine.” Mrs. Hamilton, apparently deciding to choose her battles, waved a manicured hand at the clothes rack. “Just choose a suit and get changed.”
Jake glanced up from scrolling through his emails. “I’m wearing a suit. See how my jacket and slacks match? Suit.”
The other siblings snickered, but Mrs. Hamilton had apparently drawn her line in the sand and wouldn’t budge. She pointed to the rack. “The selection includes Valentino and Tom Ford. Pick one.”
Exasperation bled out of Jake’s pores like sweat from a marathon runner. “This suit set me back two large, okay? I think it’ll be fine.”
Mrs. Hamilton didn’t look impressed. “Who made it?”
Jake snorted. “How the hell would I know that?”
Quivering with indignation, Mrs. Hamilton turned her back on Jake and focused on her husband. “Will you please tell your stubborn and foulmouthed son,” she began, barely getting the words past her locked jaw, “that he needs to change.”
But she was fighting a losing battle. Mr. Hamilton was also now checking his email messages, and didn’t want any part of the fracas. “The boy looks fine. Leave him alone.”
Mrs. Hamilton and Jake squared off in identical fight-to-the-death postures, with their feet planted wide and their arms crossed over their chests. Charlotte watched and waited, giving them both even odds.
“No suit,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “And an additional hundred for my charity jar.”
“No suit and I’ll give you fifty,” Jake countered.
“Fifty and an hour of free legal service,” Mrs. Hamilton said.
“An hour of my legal services for free? Are you insane? I don’t even turn on my computer for less than five hundred an hour,” Jake said, aghast.
Mrs. Hamilton, perhaps sensing victory, stood firm. “Take it or leave it.”
Jake rolled his eyes. “Done. Shake.”
Grim-faced, they shook.
Charlotte was trying to decide who had won and whether to laugh or not, when Mr. Hamilton caught her eye. One corner of his mouth was curled in a wry smile, so she figured it was safe to ask.
“Is this kind of thing normal around here?” she wondered aloud.
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Hamilton assured her cheerfully. “You should see those two go at it when it’s time to decide who gets to carve the turkey at Thanksgiving.”
Charlotte was still laughing when a new group of Hamiltons—Philly was overflowing with Hamiltons—came into the room from the foyer.
First came Frank, Mr. Hamilton’s brother and the other senior partner at Hamilton, Hamilton and Clark. There was no sign of his wife, Vanessa, though. Strange. But three of Frank’s four adult children were there—Harper, Shawn and Benjamin. The three of them were lawyers at the firm. Charlotte had met them all in passing and liked what little she knew.
One thing was certain, though: those Hamiltons sure were a breathtaking group of folks. Had there ever been any unattractive children born into the Hamilton family? If so, what had happened to them? Had they been given up for adoption at birth?
The new batch of Hamiltons worked their way into the room. Greetings were called; hands were shaken; backs were slapped; Charlotte’s presence was explained anew. She greeted everyone when it was her turn, but tried to fade into the background and stay out of the way while everyone got situated.
Her gaze was drawn, inexorably, to Jake. The strength of her curiosity mystified her, but she couldn’t control it any more than she could control her hair on a rainy day. No detail about him was too small to escape her notice. Not the bright bursts of his laughter, the baritone of his voice or the boyish charm of his smile. Ten feet away, she watched him, hungry for every tiny bit of information that she could scoop up and swallow whole.
Which was why she saw what happened when the jostling crowd brought him face-to-face with his cousin Harper.
Jake’s expression cooled into the below-zero range. His posture stiffened. His brows flattened. Harper, meanwhile, mirrored this response. They stared at each other with thin lips for a long and awkward moment that no one except Charlotte noticed.
Hugging each other the way they’d hugged everyone else was, apparently, out of the question. Hell, at the rate they were going, they’d be drawing swords and appointing seconds in a minute. Maybe the rest of the family should all run for cover before someone drew first blood.
Jake extended his hand and spoke first. Charlotte awarded him silent points for being the better man, especially when Harper gave him the kind of dubious look he’d probably use if Jake asked him to run his fingers over a spinning table saw.
“’S up, man?”
Harper shrugged, dropping his grip at the earliest possible opportunity. “Nothing. You?”
Jake met Harper’s shrug with a shrug of his own, and raised him by crossing his arms over his chest in a hard-assed move. “Nothing. Where’s Nelson? He couldn’t make it?”
Yep, thought Charlotte. There went Harper, also crossing his hands over his chest. What was with those two? They were like two circling silverback gorillas.
“Nah. He’s filming a commercial,” Harper said. Nelson, Charlotte knew, was his brother, and the lone nonlawyer in the bunch.
“How long have you been with the firm, Charlotte?”
With an unpleasant start, Charlotte reconnected with the rest of the room and discovered Mrs. Hamilton standing next to her, following her line of sight with a speculative gleam in her eyes. This, of course, meant that she’d seen Charlotte staring at Jake. Assuming she had the normal amount of mother’s intuition, this in turn meant that she now knew that Charlotte had a thing for Jake.
Not good.
“A couple of years,” Charlotte replied.
“And do you enjoy working for the family?”
Uh-oh. They were wandering onto shaky ground.
“I do.” Charlotte smiled. “Everyone’s been very kind to me.”
“Including Jake?”
Wow. Mrs. Hamilton wasn’t one for subtle, was she? Jake came by that trait honestly, didn’t he?
Nodding, Charlotte kept her face bland and willed herself not to flush. “Including Jake, yes. Although I just started working with him today. Before that, I was in the typing pool.”
That disquieting gleam in Mrs. Hamilton’s eyes intensified. Meeting her piercing gaze was like trying to discuss the weather with a hawk. “Is that right? And your typing was so exemplary that Jake promoted you to paralegal?”
Charlotte hesitated, trying to decide whether she was being insulted or not. “Actually, no. When he realized that I’m a law student, he decid
ed I was qualified for more responsibilities.”
“Interesting,” Mrs. Hamilton murmured cryptically.
Interesting? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Oh, but the interview didn’t end there. There was more.
“I hope that you and Jake make a great legal team,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “Don’t let him get under your skin. He can be...a handful.”
That was a thinly veiled warning, Charlotte decided. The help wasn’t supposed to mingle too much with the aristocracy. Plus, Mrs. Hamilton was probably more than shrewd enough to know that personal relationships between bosses and paralegals led, more often than not, to sexual harassment lawsuits when things went bad, as they inevitably did.
Charlotte got it.
Even so, her face burned with quiet humiliation, because this was nothing new.
Mrs. Hamilton didn’t want someone like Charlotte involved with her son.
And Charlotte was sick and tired of being unwanted.
“Don’t you worry about me, Mrs. Hamilton,” Charlotte said, forcing a cool smile. “I’m a professional. I don’t let anyone get under my skin.”
Mrs. Hamilton’s delicate brows rose. “Jake has a habit of getting under everyone’s skin, dear— Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
This time, it was Charlotte’s turn to follow Mrs. Hamilton’s line of sight, and it didn’t take long to figure out the problem. Jake and Harper were now in each other’s faces, gesticulating, wild-eyed and pretty much breathing fire. In another moment or two, swords would be drawn, just as Charlotte had predicted. The only good things about the situation were that Charlotte couldn’t see Azure at the moment—although how could the reporter fail to get wind of this little family feud?—and the men were keeping their voices low enough that it was impossible to hear what they were arguing about.
But they were both royally pissed off about something.
“Excuse me, Charlotte.”
Mrs. Hamilton hurried over to the men and whispered a few stern words. Whereupon they wheeled apart, steam still trailing from their ears.
Jake, brows flattened in a heavy line, stalked straight over to Charlotte.
“Don’t kill me,” she cried.
That got him. His hard face eased a little, and dimples bracketed the corner of his mouth and quickly disappeared. “I can control my temper.”
Since he was still glaring daggers at his cousin, Charlotte was not reassured. “You sure? I can hide the knives if you want.”
His expression lightened a little bit more, and this time he treated her to the whole smile, which was a thing of beauty. “Duly noted. How’re you doing? This is a lot of Hamiltons for a civilian to deal with. I probably need to put a letter of commendation in your personnel file or something.”
“Works for me. You have a nice family. Except for Harper,” she added quickly when she noticed Jake’s frown deepening again. “Clearly he’s a bad seed.”
“Clearly.”
“What a place to grow up. I’ve never seen anything like Integrity before. You’re very fortunate to live such a charmed life.”
“I’ve had blessings, yeah, but—” Jake’s smile dimmed.
“What?” she asked, bemused. What could be wrong with growing up in paradise?
Shrugging, he ducked his head and ran a hand over his nape. “I guess it’s ironic. You want to know what I was thinking earlier?”
“Yeah.”
Jake looked up again, and their gazes connected. Somehow, in the course of this conversation, they’d drifted closer together again, as though they had secrets that could only be shared with each other. She told herself that it was because the room was noisy and crowded, but that was a lie, and she knew it.
The truth? Jake exerted a pull over her, and it felt primitive and overwhelming, like the tide’s reaction to the moon.
“Tell me,” she murmured, and the low note in her voice sounded way too intimate, not that she could control that, either.
“I was thinking that you grew up in a great house.”
Charlotte stilled, staring at him.
The surprise must have been written all over her face, because he continued in a rush. “I know your mother’s house is smaller than Integrity, and you probably didn’t have the advantages growing up that I did.”
“There’s no probably about it. And I didn’t have siblings, either.”
“But you have a great mother. You have a warm mother. She lights up when you show up. She probably has time for you. Am I right? She probably can’t love you hard enough, can she?”
“No,” Charlotte agreed.
“Do you think I have that?”
Charlotte couldn’t give a yes or no, although she’d seen enough of Mrs. Hamilton today to know the answer to that question.
“And you have a beautiful son,” Jake went on.
Yeah, she did, but it was strange to hear Jake talking like this. The last thing she’d expected from this high-powered attorney and reputed player was a wistful tone when talking about Harry.
“Do you like kids?” she asked.
“You want me to be honest? I never thought much about kids one way or the other. But who wouldn’t like Harry?”
Something tightened inside her chest. The unexpected emotion, naturally, sent her into defensive mode, which meant a joke. “Easy for you to say. You haven’t seen him in the middle of a temper tantrum when you try to put his shoes on the correct feet.”
Jake didn’t say anything for a couple beats, which gave her a good long time to be blinded by the intensity of his brown eyes, which were speckled with black and streaked with gold.
“Just take the compliment, Charlotte,” he said finally, low.
One syllable was all she could manage with her dry mouth. “Thanks.”
“There was a lot of love in your mother’s house this morning. I’m glad I got to see it.”
Wow. Was there a sentimental core deep inside all that unyielding masculinity?
“Thanks,” she said again.
“Okay, everyone.” Breaking the spell between them with this harsh reminder that there were other people in the room with them, Azure marched in, clapping her hands. “Thanks for your patience. The light’s good and we’re all set, so let’s saddle up. We’ll take the first round of shots in the garden, okay?”
“You’d better go,” Charlotte said.
The truth was, she was grateful for the interruption. The tension was growing between her and Jake, and she could see Harper out of the corner of her eye, watching their conversation with interest. That probably wasn’t a good thing. She needed to get away from Jake for a little while and clear her head; she’d have had a tough time breathing if they’d talked for much longer.
“Don’t ruin the shots,” she warned Jake. “No inappropriate blinking. Make sure you don’t have hot dog bits between your teeth. I’ll stay out of the way and read the transcripts—”
But Jake, who seemed to have something more important on his mind, cut her off.
“I’m glad you’re here, Charlotte,” he said, unsmiling. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
Chapter 6
Jake was sitting at his desk and staring at his office wall, awash in thoughts of Charlotte, when she tapped on his door and poked her head in at around five-thirty that night. She had her purse slung over her shoulder, which led him to the conclusion that she was leaving for the day. Which meant that it would be tomorrow morning before he saw her again. Which meant that he was in for a long freaking night.
This whole lusting-after-his-employee thing was truly bad news. Because how could he stop lusting after her when he worked with her every day? And, conversely, how the hell could he stop working with her by, say, assigning her somewhere else in the firm, when his lust demanded that h
e see her whenever he could?
And here were the biggest questions of all: Why didn’t this lust feel like the lust he’d felt for dozens of women before her? Why did it feel like...more? And why did more feel so terrifying? How was he supposed to extricate himself from this growing mess?
Can you say screwed?
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
After the photo shoot, they’d driven back to the office in a silence that had felt awkward, if not downright painful, after the unexpected intimacy of their conversation. Then he’d retired to his office, she’d retired to hers, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, they’d spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding each other. And there was another bit of irony for him: he could avoid her physically, but she was embedded deep in his head, tunneling through all of his thoughts like a mental mole working its way through his yard.
Too bad he couldn’t eradicate her with some sort of pest control.
“If you don’t need anything else,” she said, “I’ll just head out.”
Head out. Yes. Good. Great. The sooner she left the better. Bye.
“I was just about to order some pizza,” he announced, a total lie, because how could he eat when his gut was tied up in these boulder-sized knots? “Why don’t you have some before you go? Least I can do for dragging you to Casa Hamilton.”
“Oh.” She blinked. Something crossed over her features, and he told himself it was regret. “I’d love to. But I need to rescue my mother from Harry. And I’ve got some reading to do tonight yet, so I’d better—”
“That’s fine,” he said quickly. Of course she needed to go home to her son and her studies. She wasn’t the usual airhead he dated, whose most pressing concern after work was when to schedule her mani-pedi, and therefore had plenty of time to burn waiting for him to call. Charlotte was his employee. And she had responsibilities. Bottom line? She’d never be his, and he just needed to deal with it. “See you tomorrow, then.”
“See you tomorrow.”
But he could only let her turn and take one step away from his office before he found himself calling after her. “You’ve got Civ Pro this semester, right?”
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