He held up his shirt. “This has cum all over it.”
“Most of it’s yours.”
“Charlotte—”
“Fine! Stay here, let me check the hallway.” She peeked out her door. “Coast is clear. Get to the bathroom.”
With a huge grin on his face, he grabbed the rest of his clothes and hurried out her bedroom door. It occurred to her, as she watched his naked butt walk down the hallway, that his fantasy had played out in real life.
Chapter Five
Alastair, Holly, and Nash did not return until the evening. Charlotte sat the table drinking her no sugar, no milk, no fun coffee and eyeballing her mother’s cup. Annie might not be her biological mother but the woman’s sweet tooth had definitely rubbed off. Mentally, Charlotte counted the days till Saturday, the one day she allowed herself a little indulgence.
Alas, a whole friggin’ week away!
Delia puttered around the kitchen, baking something that smelled like Charlotte was about to break her diet again. The biscotti had been so good! Delia should have been a baker with her own television show. She seriously could give Paula Dean a run for her money.
Her father was upstairs and Jonas sat next to her, giving her sly little glances that heated her blood. His shirt was wrinkled and water stained on one side where he must have cleaned it earlier, serving to remind her of the delicious interlude that happened in her bedroom, minus the whole threesome conversation.
Yet as soon as Charlotte saw Alastair’s face, all sexy memories faded. It had been a nice reprieve, forgetting the real reason she had come home. Now, however, it all came rushing back.
“Is everyone here?” Holly asked as she hung her purse on the back of a chair.
Charlotte shook her head. “Kira’s on her way.”
“Okay,” she replied as she sat down next their mother, leaning over to kiss Annie’s cheek.
“Where did you go today?” she asked.
Alastair sat across from Charlotte while Nash took the chair to her left.
“Nash and I had to go to HS Headquarters,” Alastair answered.
“What did you find?” Charlotte asked him.
“I thought about the twelve year gap,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I did some checking into arrest records, parole dates, even searching convicted murderers with the same M.O.”
“And?” Jonas questioned.
Alastair shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Which makes us believe that he’s connected to the swim club,” Nash added.
“Who is?” James asked as he sat down. Delia walked over and put a cup of coffee in front of him and he smiled his thanks.
No one said a thing but everyone looked at each other. It would have been one of those funny moments in a movie if Charlotte’s heart hadn’t stuttered in her chest. Was it now time to tell her family?
Holly caught her gaze and shook her head no. Charlotte relaxed and began to breathe again. Operation Come Clean averted once more. But just then the front door opened and Kira walked in and Charlotte’s reprieve abruptly ended.
Holly stood. “Glad you’re here, Kira. Why don’t we all move to the living room so we can talk.”
“About what?” their father asked suspiciously.
Charlotte felt her head frantically shaking no but Holly ignored her. Typical.
“Charlotte needs to talk to us,” Holly told him. “Come.”
She waved her hand and with a couple of grumbles everyone moved toward the more comfortable living room that gave Charlotte a grandstand to pour everything out. How the hell was she supposed to start? Well, folks, you see I died…
Yeah, that’d go over well.
She followed behind Holly, her heart pounding as if she went to face her execution instead of her family. Her mother and father sat on the sofa next to Alastair. Kira, in dramatic fashion, flopped into the recliner and pulled out her Blackberry, gluing her attention onto the screen. Delia sat on the floor, her back propped against the couch leg as she munched on the cookies she’d just baked. Nash and Jonas had grabbed chairs from the table and sat inconspicuously in the corner, although they sure as hell didn’t blend into the background.
Charlotte came to stand in front of them all and eyed them, her family. The two people who had taken her as a baby from an orphanage where she’d lain ravaged with sickness, or so she’d been told. They’d nursed her back to health and they’d been given permission to adopt her. Words could never express how grateful she was that they’d loved her, given her a home and a wonderful life. Now she had to stand in front of them and tell them why she’d walked away from this perfect, idyllic world.
Holly stood next to her and Charlotte appreciated the support.
“What’s going on, sweetheart?” her mom asked.
“I’m not a property consultant,” she said, deciding to just get it out there and start easy. She saw her father frown and her mother blink in confusion. “In fact, I don’t know the first thing about property consulting.”
“I don’t understand,” her father said. “Then what do you do?”
“I…I have a gift.”
“Is this like a sugar daddy type of gift?” Kira smirked.
“Shut up, Kira,” Holly ordered. “Go on, Lottie.”
“You know about this, Holly?” James questioned, eyeballing his oldest daughter.
“I do, Dad. But let Lottie tell it how she wants.”
“All right.”
“Charlotte?” her mom prompted.
“I…am clairvoyant.”
Silence followed that statement. She could see the confusion on their faces.
“That’s not a euphemism for I won the lotto, is it?” Kira finally asked, putting her phone away.
Charlotte shook her head and took a deep breath. “This is going to sound really clichéd, but I see dead people.”
Kira began laughing. In fact, she began laughing so hard she held her stomach as she slid out of her chair and landed on her ass. Everyone just stared at her, no one else saying or doing anything. Charlotte waited until her sister’s laughter faded into giggles.
“My god, that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard,” she managed to say.
But Charlotte only watched her, waiting, and slowly Kira’s amusement faded.
“Wait, that was a joke, right?”
“No. No joke. I see ghosts.”
Kira frowned and pushed herself back into the chair. “There’s no such things as ghosts.”
“I don’t know,” Delia said, speaking up. “I’ve seen some weird stuff happen at the hospital that science can’t explain.”
Kira stared at her, aghast.
“How did you know you had this…ability?” Annie asked. It was clear she was struggling to comprehend what Charlotte meant.
“I was out for a walk, thinking, and came across a garage sale. I felt something drawing me closer, to a jewelry box,” she explained. “I found a necklace and when I touched it, it drew me into this…otherworld. It was like I was inside a movie. I saw the man who was selling all the stuff strangling this woman.”
“That must have been terrifying,” Delia said.
Charlotte nodded. “The vision ended when the woman died. I didn’t know what the hell just happened, but I knew that the man was a murderer. I left quickly, but I didn’t know what to do or even if I should believe what I just saw. So I investigated.”
“What?” her mother gasped.
“From the library, Mom,” Charlotte assured. “I looked up the house and found out a woman had disappeared a year ago, the man’s wife. He was selling off her belongings.”
“What did you do?” Delia asked, totally enthralled with the story.
“I called Al,” Charlotte answered. Everyone gave him a quick glance but he kept his passive gaze trained on her. “I didn’t know what else to do. Al did some checking, got an interview with the woman’s parents and got them to hire him. Then he brought me in and as soon as I walked into their house I felt that pull again.
The next vision I had showed me where her body was.”
“You found the woman?” her father asked Alastair.
Alastair nodded. “The local police had always suspected the husband but they needed physical proof. He had buried her with the cord sill around her neck. His DNA was all over it.”
“Was the necklace the one you’re wearing now?” Jonas asked.
She glanced over at him, smiled, and touched the butterfly at her throat. “Her parents gave it to me, as a thank you.”
“So the property consulting business is…” her father prompted.
“A cover,” she admitted in a low tone. “Four months after I found the woman, her parents contacted Al. Friends of theirs needed my help.”
“And you helped them?” her mother asked.
Charlotte nodded. “I found their son. It was at that point when I realized, I could only…see…people who were murdered.”
“How long has this been going on?” her mother inquired with a sad voice.
“Twelve years.”
She saw the wheels spinning in her father’s head and waited for the inevitable question.
“Why?” he asked, although she could tell he had reached some type of conclusion and just wanted verification. It was one of those I know but I don’t want to know tones. “Why twelve years? Why only murdered people?”
Charlotte took a deep breath and looked at each member of her family. Holly nodded. Yes, it was time to tell them. Just as she opened her mouth, Nash nodded at her, giving her support. She flashed him a grateful smile.
“First I need to tell you that I’m connected to Brandy,” she finally said. “She’s the real reason why I came home.”
“Brandy,” Annie said. “Brandy Hamlet? The girl that…she was murdered?”
“Wait a minute!” Kira all but yelled. “What the hell are you trying to tell us? You didn’t grow up seeing shit and now you say you see murdered ghosts, that you’ve come home for a murdered girl who—”
She abruptly shut up and her eyes widened. Charlotte knew Kira had figured it out, and as she looked at each of her other family members she knew there was no more hiding.
“The night of my accident there was no accident. I didn’t have a cramp while swimming. Someone held me under. They held me under until I stopped breathing.”
She waited for a second for her words to sink in and as she expected, they all erupted, talking at once, demanding answers. The Perth family had always been a bit boisterous, especially when one of the girls had done something wrong. No punishment had ever been dealt with silently or secretively.
“Shut up!” Holly yelled and the room fell silent as each person turned to stare at her with surprised eyes. “There are reasons why she never told anyone.”
“You knew all of this?” Kira demanded.
Holly arched her brow. “She called my husband for help.”
“Wait a minute,” Annie said, holding up her hands. “Charlotte, are you saying that…someone hurt you?”
“Yes. But unlike Brandy Hamlet, I had a guardian angel watching over me because, as you know, Tucker Martell jumped into the pool and brought me back with CPR.”
“You came back and had this…thing.”
“I like to call it a gift, but yes, Mom.”
“You…you….”
“Died,” Charlotte supplied.
“Stop saying that,” her mother demanded. “Someone hurt you and you never told us? Is this why you stopped swimming?”
“I stopped swimming because every time I thought of water I broke out in hives. I can’t even be in a hotel room with a bathtub, so thank god there’s only a shower here. My gift of swimming was taken away but I got a replacement, a way to help people and that’s what I do now. I’ve found people who have been wronged, who have been murdered, because I was once murdered.”
Her mother flinched at those words, but she held her daughter’s gaze. She pointed a finger. “Don’t you ever think you can’t come to me and your father, again, do you understand? You hid this from us for twelve years! Did you think so little of us that you couldn’t be honest?”
Charlotte winced at the accusation. “It wasn’t like that, Mom.”
“Then tell me, what was it like?”
“I thought…I thought I was losing my mind. I thought oxygen deprivation had destroyed my brain, or my reasoning, because the other alternative was that I was crazy. It’s crazy, right? Having visions of dead people, seeing their last breath on this earth, finding their bodies, solving their murders—”
“What do you mean, solving their murders?” her father interjected and Charlotte silently cursed her loose tongue. “You came home to solve Brandy’s murder? How many other’s have you helped solve?”
Great, now she was going to have to tell them about Zach and the girls in Missouri.
“I came home to—”
“She’s assisted in helping authorities bring to justice the people responsible for several unsolved cases,” Alastair interjected.
“Yes, thus the reason why I hired Nash,” Holly added. “To protect her.”
“So that’s why you have two boyfriends?” Kira asked and Charlotte threw her a dark glare.
“It’s not what you’re thinking—”
“Yes, it is,” Nash replied speaking up. He stood and walked over to stand next to Charlotte, who promptly elbowed him in the gut. Other than a soft grunt, he ignored her. “Mr. Perth, Mrs. Perth, Jonas and I love your daughter. He and I have come to this agreement—”
“No, we haven’t,” Jonas interrupted, frowning. “And this is not the time to bring it up.”
“I thought we had this settled,” Nash said to him with a frown.
“You’re assuming again. How many times have I warned you about this?”
“Excuse me,” Kira said loudly. “Let’s get back to the ‘Jonas and I love your daughter’ part.”
“Kira,” their father said sternly. “Enough. Charlotte’s love life is her own affair.”
Any other time, Charlotte would have wished for the ground to open her up and swallow her to escape the mortification, but the whole We love Charlotte helped divert her parents from the real reason they were all sitting around talking together, namely the So I died and never told you portion of the evening. She saw Nash give her a sly wink and knew she owed him big time.
Just then the doorbell rang and Kira’s face drained completely of color. Suddenly, Charlotte remembered the conversation from the airport and perked up.
“Oh, would that happen to be Alex?” Charlotte asked her.
“Alex?” Annie inquired, looking from Charlotte to Kira.
“Kira’s new man,” Charlotte supplied. Kira opened her mouth to say something but Charlotte rushed forward with, “He’s coming for dinner tonight to meet the parents.”
“Oh no!” Annie said as she jumped up and rushed into the kitchen. “I haven’t even started dinner! What can I cook up quickly?”
Delia followed their mother. “Spaghetti? That’s quick to make and we even have a French loaf so we can make garlic bread.”
The doorbell rang again.
“Do you think garlic bread is okay for a first-date meeting?” Holly questioned.
“If Alex doesn’t want bad breath he doesn’t have to eat it,” Delia said. “Come to think of it, perhaps we should smell his breath first, see if he has halitosis. Several medical conditions can be detected by—”
“I don’t want to know what that disease is!” Charlotte called out.
Once again, the doorbell rang.
“Should I answer the door?” their father asked as he half rose from the sofa.
“Oh God, no!” Kira said. She lunged and grabbed his arm, holding him still.
“Why can’t Dad answer the door?” Holly demanded.
“And have him scare Alex away?”
“Am I that bad?” James asked drolly. “I promise not to bite.”
“I think the question is how bad can this Alex be if Ki
ra doesn’t want Dad to answer the door,” Charlotte replied.
This time, the door bell sounded impatient. Jonas couldn’t seem to hold back his amusement as a chuckle broke through. When Kira glared at him he covered it behind a cough.
“I’ll get the door,” Nash muttered and stomped to the front door. He jerked it open. “Um, Alex?”
A voice murmured something and then Nash stepped back to reveal a tall, beautiful woman, with short black hair and dark-brown eyes. She wore a nicely tailored pant suit and high heeled boots.
“Hey everyone, Alex is here,” Nash called out.
Charlotte’s eyes widened and then she snorted. “This trumps my love life, hands down.”
Chapter Six
For several minutes no one said a word, except for Kira, who meticulously and slowly introduced everyone in the family. And that included Nash and Jonas who tried, once again, to disappear into the background. More than a little thrilled to meet Alex, Charlotte enthusiastically hugged the woman when Kira finally got around to her.
“Okay, enough,” Kira ground out as she flicked Charlotte on the ear. “Alex is my friend.”
“Ow,” Charlotte said as she pulled back from her effervescent hug. She rubbed her ear. “I’m just so happy to meet Alex, you have no idea.”
Kira wrinkled her nose at her before grabbing Alex’s arm and turning to the corner. “And let me introduce Charlotte’s two boyfriends, Nash McKnight and Jonas Daire. Did I mention they were both her boyfriends?”
“Kira,” her father warned, his tone clearly showing signs he stood near the breaking point.
Annie came forward, rubbing her forehead. “Alex, so nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m afraid Delia and I just put the spaghetti on, so it’ll be about twenty minutes or so.”
“Perfectly fine,” Alex replied with a shy smile. “You have a lovely home.”
“We finally got it all patched up once the girls moved out,” Annie commented as she looked around the house. “I can’t tell you how many times Holly broke that window. Kira managed to put a hole in the wall right over there with a hammer. And Charlotte half burned down the kitchen once. She tried telling me Delia did it, but that girl can’t lie to save her ass.”
Breathless [McKnight, Perth & Daire 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 5