The ball gets overthrown and almost hits Charlie, but I reach out and grab it. I work it in my hands for a bit. It feels good there. I used to play for my high school team. I go to throw the ball back to them when I notice that one of the men is staring at Charlie. And Charlie is staring at him.
I look back at the guy and realization flows over me like hot lava, burning through me and eating me alive. I’ve seen that face. I’ve stared at it more than I’d like to admit over the past twenty-four hours.
Zach Thompson.
I look at Charlie. She has fair skin, but in this moment, she is utterly pale, all the blood having drained from her face.
Zach walks over to us, sizing me up along the way. “Hey, um . . . Charlie Brown was it?” he asks her with a devious grin. His eyes rake over Charlie in a way that makes me want to tackle the guy to the ground and pound in his skull. His eyes bug out when they reach her belly. “Holy shit, you’ve been busy.”
I put my arm around her, pulling her close. Then, instead of putting my fist through his face, I offer him my hand. “Hi, I’m Ethan. Charlie’s fiancé.”
He looks at my hand like it’s a joke, but he shakes it anyway. “Zach,” he says. He motions to Charlie’s belly. “Dude, bummer for you. Kids—wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole. But hey, to each his own, right?”
By now, some of his friends are walking up behind us. “Zach,” one of them says. “You plan on playing or what, man? We’re down by one and we need you.”
“I’m coming,” he says, turning to me. “Do you mind?” He holds his hand out and I realize I’m still holding the football.
I toss it to him, relieved he’s about to turn away and walk out of our lives as quickly as he walked in.
Then one of his friends has to open his big mouth. “Hey,” he says to Charlie. “You look just like that lady who played Queen something-or-other in that movie.” He turns to another one of their friends. “Trent, doesn’t she look like her?”
The guy who must be Trent stares at Charlie. “Shit. She sure as hell does. It was Queen Dragonia, from that Enchanted Dragon series. When we were kids, my mom watched those videotapes so many times, it wore the damn things out and she had to buy them all on Blu-ray. What was her name?” he asks the other guy.
I can feel Charlie tensing up next to me. Then I see her eyes glaze over. It’s almost hard for me not to smile, because I know she’s thinking of me and the song I played for Cat.
“Catherine? Charlotte? Caroline?” he says.
“Oh, yeah,” Trent says. “Caroline. Caroline Anthony.” He turns to Charlie. “You look just like Caroline Anthony. She must be your mom. Is she your mom? Hey, I heard she died. Sorry about that.” He says something under his breath, but not quietly enough that we don’t all hear it. “Girl must be rich as shit.”
Charlie must have been listening a little, because she looks up at me with that deer-in-headlights look.
“We’d best be going,” I say to them before I pull on her elbow and lead her away.
“Wait,” I hear from behind. And then Zach walks around us, staring at Charlie’s stomach. “Exactly how pregnant are you?”
All of the oxygen is sucked out of the air surrounding me. I feel as if my world is about to crumble and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it. Helpless. That’s what I feel.
“That’s a very personal question,” I tell him.
“Maybe,” he says. “But considering our history, I think I have the right to ask.” He puffs himself out and stands tall, expecting a fight from me after those words.
“Let’s go, Charlie,” I say, keeping her behind me.
“How pregnant are you, Charlie?” he yells.
“Dude,” one of his friends says. “What the fuck is it to you?”
Another one, I think it’s Trent, says, “My sister is knocked up. She’s about as big as her. She just found out she’s having a girl with one of those X-ray things. I think she’s like four months or something like that.”
I see Zach try to do the calculation in his head. There is no way he could know when he and Charlie were together. Based on what Melissa told me, he’s with a different girl every night.
Fuck. Based on what Melissa told me, the guy is a scam artist. And all of a sudden it becomes clear to me why he’s so interested.
“We’re leaving,” I tell him. I pull Charlie along quickly, glancing back often to make sure we’re not being followed. We aren’t. But my heart is beating so fast I feel like I just ran a marathon. I also feel like I’ve just been kicked in the gut.
When we’re out of their sight and far enough away, I find a bench and sit my panicked fiancée down on it. “It’s going to be okay, Charlie.”
She shakes her head over and over. “It’s not. He knows. That was never supposed to happen. What if he—”
“No, Charlie. You heard the guy. He doesn’t want kids. What was it he said? He won’t touch them with a ten-foot pole? The guy was just freaked out. He’s probably back there with his buddies saying how he dodged that bullet. I promise you. It’ll be fine.”
Her breaths come so quickly, I fear she’s going to hyperventilate. “Charlie, look at me. Breathe slowly. This is okay. We’re okay. It’s just you and me. Don’t worry about him. He goes through women like toilet paper. He’s a liar. A nobody. He can’t even hold down a decent job.”
She lets out a deep breath, looking at me curiously. “How do you know he’s a liar and can’t hold down a job?”
I don’t answer right away and she gets up off the bench, pacing the sidewalk in front of me. “Of course. You’re a private investigator. It’s what you do. How did you even find him? And why did you keep this from me, Ethan?”
I can see it in her eyes. I can see the trust she’d placed in me weakening. I stand up and stop her from pacing. I put my hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look at me. “The night you told me you were pregnant you gave me enough information to go on. His first name, his friend’s. The name of the club. The fact he had black hair. It took almost two months, but Melissa finally met him and found out his last name. I only know what she told me and what I found on social media. I’m still waiting for the background check to come through.”
“Two months?” she raises her voice at me. “You’ve been trying to find him for two months? When were you planning on telling me?”
“When there was something to tell, Charlie. Christ, I just found out the guy’s name yesterday. Until then, I didn’t know any more than what you told me.”
“But you could have told me you were looking into it.”
I nod. “Maybe I should have, but I didn’t want to worry you for no reason. Once I had all of the information on him, I was going to come to you and tell you what I found. I promise, I wasn’t trying to keep this from you.”
“If you want me to trust you. I mean, really trust you, Ethan; you can’t keep things like this from me. You have to treat me as an equal, okay?” Her eyes soften a bit and I feel myself take a deep sigh of relief.
“Okay. I will. I swear. But you have to understand something about me, Charlie. I will protect you and this baby at all costs. And I don’t care how mad you get at me over it. There is nothing more important to me. I’ve failed in the past. I’ve failed to protect those I love. It’s not going to happen this time.”
“Oh, Ethan.” She wraps her arms around me. “You didn’t fail anyone. There is nothing you could have done. It’s not your fault.”
I nod into her hair, letting her scent distract me from the past. “I know that,” I tell her. “Deep down, I know there isn’t anything I could have done. But I’m telling you right now, I’m not going to apologize for trying to protect you.” I put my hand on her belly. “Or him.”
“Or her,” she says, making me laugh.
“You’re just going to have to put up with it.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “I understand now. I’m not mad at you. I actually think it’s one of the qualities I love about yo
u. I grew up in a world where men didn’t protect women, they only hurt them. So go ahead, protect me all you want. I’ll take it. I’ll take you.”
I pull her as close to me as her growing belly will allow. “Well, you’ve got me, babe.”
She laughs into my shirt.
“No?” I ask.
“No,” she says, shaking her head and smiling. “Babe just sounds too cheesy.”
“And another one bites the dust.” I take her hand and start walking. “Come on, let’s go feed the two of you.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
“I really don’t mind taking your shifts until Skylar finds someone new,” Piper says to Charlie.
I’m glad Charlie decided to accept my job offer, but I really think it has more to do with her getting off her feet than anything else. I don’t care about the reason, however, I’m just glad I will be able to keep her close. Her not having to flirt with men for tips is just an added bonus.
“I know, but you shouldn’t have to do that,” Charlie says. “You’re volunteering at the theater and you have Hailey. I’m sure it won’t be more than a few weeks until she finds someone as good as us.”
I come up behind Charlie and place a kiss on her head. “She’ll never find someone as good as you. I’m done in the living room. You need any help here?”
We’re packing up Charlie’s apartment. After a week of badgering, I finally talked her into moving in with me. She thought it was too soon. I thought nothing was soon enough. So today, we’re loading up the stuff her friends gave her so we can return everything to its rightful owner.
Charlie is a minimalist. I guess it comes from living abroad all those years. She doesn’t have any personal belongings other than her clothes to move to my apartment. And she doesn’t even have many of those. I cleared out half my closet for her, but I doubt she’ll use even a quarter of that.
“Can you hand me another box, please?” she asks, rolling up glasses in packing paper to return them safely to Jan and Bruce Mitchell.
I reach over to get the box and notice something conspicuously missing from the front of her refrigerator. “Uh, Charlie,” I say, looking on the floor and in the opened boxes. “Did you pack that big fat check or did you rip it into shreds?”
She shrugs. “I deposited it,” she says, not stopping what she’s doing.
“You did?”
She nods.
“That’s fantastic. I’m so glad you took the first step.”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” she says, putting down a glass and looking over at me. “I haven’t done anything with it yet, but I figure whatever or whoever I give it to should at least get the benefit of interest.”
I hand her the box. “It’s still fantastic.”
“You can thank me for that,” Piper says. “I dragged her ass all the way to the bank yesterday. It made me nervous to see that many zeroes just pinned right there on her fridge.” She looks at me and rolls her eyes. “Well, it might not seem like a lot to you, Richie Rich, but to normal people like us, it’s a lot of fucking zeroes.”
I look at Charlie and raise my eyebrows.
“Best friends,” she says, as if that explains everything.
“When will the guys be here?” I ask Piper.
She checks her watch. “They should be here soon. Mason said they were on their way over.”
Good. I’m eager to get this stuff out of here and take her home with me so we can start our life together. So we can christen every damn room of the penthouse.
Charlie is worried about us living together and working together. Maybe it’ll be too much togetherness, she said. I think she’s wrong. My grandparents did it. My parents do it. We can handle it. She thinks we will run out of things to talk about and get bored with each other. I think we could be marooned on a desert island and that still wouldn’t happen. We’ve spent hours together every day for months now. And even then, I could swear most nights when we part, one of us calls the other because we simply had more to say.
No, this is going to be great. I can feel it.
There is a knock on the door.
“It’s open!” Charlie shouts.
Another knock follows.
Charlie gets up and opens the door. “You guys don’t need to kno—”
“Charlie Tate?” the stranger at the door asks.
“Yes,” she says.
He hands her an envelope. “You’ve been served,” he says, before turning to walk away.
“Served?” She looks at what he deposited in her hand. She closes the door and walks over to the couch. “I wonder if this is more estate stuff or something.”
She opens the envelope and pulls out the papers, but then she drops them on the floor when her hand comes up to cover her scream. “Oh, God, no!”
Piper and I immediately join her on the couch. “What is it?” Piper asks.
Charlie grabs her belly protectively and my heart lunges into the pit of my stomach. I pick up the papers, hoping I’m not going to see what I think I’m going to see. Only when I do see it, it’s even worse than what I was imagining.
“That mother fucker,” I say, not even bothering to read it all before I pull out my phone and make a call. “John, this is Ethan. I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but I’ve got a real problem here.” I walk into the bedroom and shut the door so Charlie doesn’t have to hear me. “The short of it is, there is a very small chance that my fiancée is pregnant with another man’s child. I’m not going to get into specifics, but the asshole just served her papers demanding a paternity test. It says he’ll be suing for full custody if he’s the father. There is a bunch of other legal crap I haven’t read through yet. Can you help me?”
“Of course, Ethan. Jesus, I can’t imagine what you guys must be going through. If you can snap pictures of the pages and email them to me, I’ll take a quick look and call you back with my initial thoughts. Tomorrow I can get some of my people on it to help us fill in any blanks.”
“Thanks, John. I owe you one.”
“No, you don’t. Your office has helped me out on several occasions. This is just payback. I’ll call you back as soon as I’ve read through everything.”
I take careful pictures of the six-page document and send them to John. Then I head back into the living room to find two teary-eyed women being consoled by Mason and Griffin.
From the looks on their faces, they already know the gist of it. “I was just on the phone with my attorney. I sent him a copy of the documents. He will call me back within the hour.” I get on my knees in front of Charlie. “This is not happening. Do you understand me? I don’t care what that asshole says, he is not getting custody of this baby.”
The entire time I was on the phone with John, I was wondering why a jerk like Thompson would even bother. But I remember what Melissa told me and it all makes sense. “He’s after money, that’s all. He’s a scam artist, Charlie. I saw it in his eyes last week at the park when he found out who your mother was and when his friend made a comment about how rich you must be. That’s all he wants. Either he’s looking for a payoff or he’s going after the baby so he can get child support. Either way, he’s looking at this as a meal ticket.”
“You saw this guy in the park?” Griffin asks.
“Yeah. Last Monday,” I say. “He was playing football and the ball almost hit Charlie. It was so random I can’t even believe it. Over eight fucking million people in the city and we have to run into him.”
“You guys have enough to deal with, Ethan,” Mason says. “Why don’t you pack up whatever clothes Charlie needs and head to your place. We can take care of this.”
I look around at all the furniture and then I look at Charlie. I know she needs me more than the guys do. “Yeah. Thanks.”
~ ~ ~
An hour later, when we’re unpacking her suitcase in our bedroom, my phone rings. I look at the screen and answer it. “Hey, John, do you have anything for me?”
“Yeah, but you might not like i
t.”
I’m thankful Charlie is busy hanging her clothes in the closet. I’m not even sure she heard my phone ring. “Tell me,” I say, sitting on the bed.
“The papers are all legit. But the attorney he used to prepare them is an ambulance chaser. It looks to me like this guy is after money, Ethan. Everything points to it. It even states that if he’s awarded full custody, he intends to sue not only for the maximum child support allowed by law, but punitive damages as well.”
“Punitive damages?”
“He claims Charlie fraudulently withheld information about the pregnancy from him and that he has suffered emotional trauma as a result.”
“That’s bullshit, John,” I whisper into the phone so I don’t alarm Charlie. “They hooked up one time, in the storeroom of a bar. They were drunk. All she knew was his first name. There would have been no way to contact him even if she wanted to.” I realize how that makes Charlie sound, so I add, “Uh . . . Charlie and I were on a break at the time.”
“Hey, no explanation necessary,” he says. “But Thompson claims she knew who he was and how to contact him. He claims she deliberately withheld this from him.”
“He’s lying, John. But I guess we’ve no way to prove that, do we?”
“Exactly. And I was able to contact a buddy of mine who is an expert on family law.” He pauses. “This is the part you might not want to hear.”
“Oh? Because everything else you’ve told me is all peaches and fucking cream?”
“I’m sorry, man. But someone has to break the news,” he says, sympathetically.
“I know, just lay it all out on the table.”
“Well, I guess his lawyer is smart enough to know they can’t force Charlie to take a paternity test if she refuses. So they’ve given her up to one week after the birth to have the baby tested. But, Ethan, honestly, the best way to get this guy off your back if you really think he’s not the father, is to go ahead and have her take the test now.”
Stone Rules (A Mitchell Sisters/Stone Brothers Novel) Page 24