by Gwen Hayes
“Cleaver, I didn’t go looking for this any more than you did. I’m sure my fascination began from the challenge to begin with, but I think we both know it grew past that pretty quickly. Every Medusa feeding is a testament to that.” He rubbed her knuckles. “Why you? Because you’re smart and talented and beautiful. Because you make me laugh and think and hard.”
A small snort escaped her nose. Hard. She made him hard. Could she do this? Was she strong enough to just…believe him?
“I am scared,” she admitted. “I hate being scared more than anything else in the whole world. I came to Silver Pines so I would never be scared again.”
“Are you going to tell me about that?”
“I think I’m going to have to.”
Chapter Six
JEEVES BRACED HIMSELF. SUDDENLY, he felt foolish for wearing the 70s swinger getup. Whatever was coming next deserved a modicum of dignity.
“Let’s go into the kitchen,” he said. “You can talk while I plate you up the best pasta you’ve ever had.”
She nodded, a little more agreeable than he liked her.
Medusa followed them, settling on her dog bed by the window. Charlie sat in the chair he held out for her, and he dished her up a plate of food she would love, but knew by her expression she wouldn’t eat. Not now, maybe later. He’d reheat it, and they could eat it in bed.
“Tell me,” he said simply.
She shrugged her shoulders. Her soft, creamy shoulders.
Focus, Jeeves.
“I was mugged.”
His heart dropped to his knees. There was no moisture left in his mouth. “Your scar.”
She nodded. “I was mugged at knife point. The guy stabbed me anyway, after I gave him my purse. He left me to die in the alley.”
Jeeves knew he needed to shut up and let her talk. He wanted to throw something—a punch would be best. He wanted to yell and kick and smash things. Someone hurt her. Left her to die. If he felt powerless about it now, how awful that must have been for her.
“But you didn’t die.” Thank God.
“For a long time, I wished I had.”
What wasn’t she telling him?
“Why?”
“It happened a week before my wedding.”
Charlie looked so numb, and so damned far away. His heart was already in his knees, where was it falling to now? There wasn’t much further it could go. “Your wedding?”
“I spent my wedding day, what should have been my wedding day, in the hospital. There were complications. I had a hard time healing, mostly because I didn’t want to.”
Jeeves knew she’d never been married. The fiancé must have been a real piece of work to drop her after that. “Why didn’t you want to heal, sweetheart?”
He was ready to hear a story about how the man who was supposed to love her couldn’t deal with her scar. Maybe he wasn’t understanding about her trauma.
“They killed him first.”
Jeeves shot from his chair and knelt next to hers. Jesus.
Her hands shook, so he pulled one into his grip, and she began spilling like a soda from a shaken bottle. “There were two men. They pulled us into the alley. We gave them everything—my purse, his wallet, my engagement ring. I swear, we did everything they asked. They took it and then one of them slit my fiancé’s throat. I watched him go down.” Charlie closed her eyes. “He fell and for one terrible, wonderful moment there was no blood. And then, oh God.” Jeeves squeezed her hand and she drew a shaky breath. “The other one stabbed me, and they took off.”
She took a fortifying drink from her wine and handed the glass to Jeeves so he could do the same.
“I didn’t leave my apartment for two years. I couldn’t even go down to get my mail. I worked damn hard to get this far, Jeeves. Intensive therapy and a really aggressive desire to see the ocean. This town rebuilt me when I moved here.”
“You’re very brave.”
She snorted at that. “I’m still scared. Scared of you.” She met his gaze head on.
“I don’t think you are.”
Charlie wrinkled her brow as if he hadn’t been paying attention to a word she’d said.
“I think you are holding on to being scared because it’s what you know.” Jeeves twined a lock of her hair around his finger. “You’re not really afraid of me. Of us. You’re afraid of not being afraid anymore.”
“I like not being afraid,” she argued.
“I’m in love with you, Charlie.”
She inhaled sharply. He hadn’t meant to say it. Hell, he hadn’t even been sure he was until he said it. But it was out there now, and his world was suddenly ripe with possibility.
“Do you think telling me that is going to get me into your bed?”
“Yes.”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you honestly believe that telling me you love me is going to make me less scared?”
“No.”
She shrank into herself a little.
“Telling you I love you was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. Now I want you to be brave and love me back.”
He stood and reached out his hand to her. Charlie looked at it for what seemed like an eternity. Everything she was feeling was mirrored in her face. Slowly, as if she was wary of a trap, she put her hand into his and let him pull her up.
“Is this the part where you lure me into your bedroom?”
Jeeves brought the back of her hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly, and then he turned it over and kissed her palm. Her chest expanded with a lovely intake of breath. He couldn’t wait to make love to her. He was going to spend hours on her neck alone. She was going to be able to be poured into a Jell-O mold by the time he was done with her.
But not tonight.
“No,” he said. “This is the part where I make you feel better and then later walk you home and leave you there.”
She raised her pretty eyebrows at him. “Wait, what?”
“I know,” he answered. “I can’t believe I just said that either.” Jeeves shook his head. “You don’t need me pawing you tonight. You need me to take it slow. We need to take this slow. I get that now.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t understand.”
“We can’t make love until—” He paused. This was going to kill him. “We can’t make love until you can admit that you love me back.”
She looked like she was about to go into shock. “I don’t want to fall in love with you.”
“I know, sweetheart. It’s your own bad luck that you’re going to anyway. In the meantime, sex is off the menu.”
...
Charlie gleefully tore down the evergreen boughs in Myrtle’s bakery. “I can’t believe you left these up the month of January. I am so not sorry to say goodbye to the holidays,” she called out to Myrtle.
“I noticed,” Myrt responded. “Take it easy, will ya? I want to reuse those next year. What is your problem?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Maybe you need to get laid,” Myrtle offered.
“You’re supposed to be my friend.”
“I am your friend.”
“Then stop taking his side.”
Myrtle closed the box she’d been filling. “His side is your side, dummy.”
“His side is most certainly not my side. And he won’t have sex with me. I’ve tried three times. He wants me to be in love with him first, which I won’t ever be, so there you have it.” Myrtle didn’t say anything, so Charlie turned around. “What?”
“What would be so bad about falling in love with him?”
Charlie rolled her eyes. “Do you want the album version or the extended dance mix?”
Myrtle hiked up onto the counter, dangling her legs. “I’m serious. He’s stable.”
“Not.”
“Fun.”
“Not lately.” God knows. He was cranky because he wanted sex, but wouldn’t take it when she offered. Three times. The man had serious testosterone build up, and of course he blamed Charlie for it.
“I’m not interested in a relationship, stable or otherwise. Why am I the only one who understands this concept? Besides that, he changed the deal because I wouldn’t go with him to meet his mother in Virginia.” Charlie couldn’t get the lid on the rubber tote to close, so she sat on it. “Now, I have to admit I love him and go back into counseling.”
Myrtle’s eyes grew big as saucers as she slid off the counter. “What?”
“He says it’s not healthy that I won’t leave city limits. I tried to explain how bad it used to be, when I wouldn’t leave my apartment, but he just doesn’t get it.”
“Wait a minute,” Myrtle said, incredulous. “You told him about…everything?” She crossed the room and sat next to Charlie on the overstuffed tote. “You’ve never done that before.”
“And when I finally did, the man suggests I seek mental help. I’m not cut out for this, Myrt.”
So she hadn’t left town in ten years, so what? It wasn’t like it had been in the city. She went outside all the time now. She spent time with friends, went out at night—she was perfectly happy and normal. Jeeves was the unreasonable one.
She repeated that to herself all the way home. And then decided to repeat it to his face. She knocked on his door, determined to tell him exactly what she thought of his condescending attitude. Except when he opened the door, he looked so genuinely pleased to see her standing there. And then he invited her in. And then they were making out on his couch. She was sure something must have happened between walking in and making out, but she couldn’t be bothered to remember it.
When he pushed away, sat up, and ran his hands through his hair—a man on the brink—Charlie got fed up.
“You don’t want to sleep with me,” she said.
He sent her a look with daggers in it. “You know that is not true.” His voice was gravelly and dark. It made her shiver until she remembered she was mad.
“If you really wanted to, we’d have had sex by now. And you’d probably have dumped me by now, too. You’ve put us in this holding pattern when we could be getting on with our lives.”
The veins in his temple started bulging out. “What?”
Charlie hoped he didn’t have high blood pressure. “You heard me.”
“I don’t think I did. It sounded like you said I would dump you after we have sex.”
She didn’t say anything.
“And I know you wouldn’t say that because we’ve gotten past that argument already. I’m in love with you. I’ve told you that a thousand times. I’m not trying to get you into my bed—I’m trying to get you into my life.” Jeeves shot up off the couch. “What the hell is wrong with you? Did you come over here to pick a fight with me?”
Charlie bit her lip. He had her there. “Yes. Yes, I think I did.”
“Why?”
She threw her hands up. “Because you piss me off. I don’t want this. I never wanted this. And I’m mad because you’re probably going to make me want this and then if it doesn’t work, which it won’t, I’ll be devastated.”
Jeeves paced and Medusa was getting anxious. Too much drama. Charlie knew exactly how she felt.
“I love you, Charlie.”
She grimaced hard, every muscle in her face and neck hurting from the tension. “You haven’t seen me naked yet.”
She hadn’t meant to say it. It slipped out.
“Now I’m really confused.”
“You’re going to compare me to those other beautiful women and then you’ll be gone.” God, she hated saying the words. They made her seem so fragile and lost.
“Is that what this is really about? All this time?”
She met his gaze, surprised by the darkness in his eyes.
Jeeves started to pace again, but stopped immediately. “You think I don’t compare you to those other women now?”
Charlie managed to blink. That was about all she had left. She felt like one of those helium “get well” balloons about a week after you were healthy again. She was empty, wilted, useless.
“I compare you to my previous girlfriends all the time, Charlie. I feel like I’ve been glutting on Hershey bars my whole adult life without even knowing there was such a thing as Godiva.”
In another time and place, she would have been really impressed by a man who made a chocolate analogy so well. This time however, she was not. This time, she needed something not found in the voice of a charming actor.
“They were all so pretty.”
“We can’t keep having this conversation.” He crouched in front of her. “You are beautiful. You’re sexy. You’re smart and funny and so goddamned talented I want to put your art on billboards so the whole world can see it.”
She sniffled, wishing she had more than her sleeve to wipe her nose with.
“But I can’t make you believe it. I can’t make you trust me. Hell, I can’t even make you like me.” He rocked back on his heels, rubbing his palms over his cheeks. “What I need right now is a really good script writer because I have no idea how to go forward from here.”
Charlie finally sacrificed her sleeve. “I’m not usually like this. I’ve never been one of those women who hates her body. It’s just that…”
This conversation felt more intimate than anything they’d shared yet. Even talking about the stabbing hadn’t made her feel so vulnerable. Maybe because that was in the past, and this monster was here now. In her present. Screwing up her life.
“How can I trust this? Jeeves—be reasonable. I know I’m messed up. I accept that. But you decide one day you don’t want to be the guy you’ve been for twenty years, so you pack up and change everything about your life in what…two weeks?” His cheeks changed from slightly angry pink to stark white. “You bought a house, a dog, and a lawnmower. That doesn’t mean you’ve changed. It means you’re trying to fit in Silver Pines just like you were always trying to fit in Hollywood. You’re doing all the right things, but they are on the outside. Have you given any thought at all to who you are on the inside?”
“On the inside? On the inside, I really do love you, Cleaver.”
Charlie reached for his hand. “Maybe you really do. But maybe I’m another accessory to your small town persona. I have a lot of issues—but I don’t think you have any fewer. You left your old life because you were tired of pretending to fit in. What if that’s what you’re doing now? What if this isn’t the real you any more than the guy on TMZ was?”
Jeeves stared at their hands without speaking for a long time. Finally, he asked, “God, what if I really am that shallow?”
Wounding him was not what she was after. “You came here to find yourself—there’s nothing shallow about that. But I think…I think you’ve been an actor for so long that maybe you’re mistaking a set for a life, and Silver Pines is your new soundstage. The person you are on the inside shouldn’t be dependent on your props.”
His nostrils flared and his brows slammed down. “You,” he said firmly, “are not a prop, Charlie.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make you mad or tell you how you feel. I’m emotionally stunted, I get that now. I wasn’t willing to admit it before, but you’re right—I’m still holding on to a lot of fear. But—”
“But I tried to rush us into something neither one of us is ready for.”
The look on his face cracked Charlie’s heart in a million places. Of all the things Jeeves had made her feel—this longing to erase his distress was the one that shook her the most. She ached to pull him close and…and what?
Unbreak his heart?
Charlie stared at his face. He was suddenly the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. His eyes—none of the photographs or videos ever captured them the way they looked right now, while looking at her. They must have always airbrushed those smile lines before—she’d never understand Hollywood, erasing the best of a face away like that. Lines were the proof of a life well lived.
She wanted to draw him, capture him with her pencil so he w
ould always be hers. She’d leave the bump in his nose and the stubble on his cheeks and the lines around his eyes and mouth. Suddenly, all at once, in a crystal moment of unlikely clarity, Charlotte Jeeves fell hopelessly, irrevocably in love. Her heart stretched and grew, waking up from a twelve-year nap.
She had to tell him. It was bubbling inside her. It needed to come out. Charlie opened her mouth to say the words, but Jeeves interrupted her.
“I think we need to take a break.”
Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost needed to be stabbed in an alley, left for dead, struggle with severe post-traumatic stress for twelve years, and then have his still-beating heart torn directly from his chest. Because it was not better. Better was never knowing that you could have had something brilliant and wonderful, but waited too long. Better was protecting your heart so it never hurt. Better was never having loved.
Charlie swallowed hard around the tears. “A break? We aren’t dating, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”
She felt herself go on lockdown, heard every click as she bolted shut her emotions. If he would move, she could get up and away. Charlie would not fall apart. She was a strong woman. Jeeves had been in her life for four months—she survived before him and she’d be just fine without him.
Just fine.
“One month.”
“What?” she asked.
“And I think we should be pen pals,” he said amicably.
The words didn’t sink in. How could they? They were ridiculous. “Pen pals?”
“Yes.”
“We live next door to each other.”
He still held her hands as he got off the floor and back to the couch. “It will be great. We can get to know each other without me sneaking looks down your shirt every day.”
Charlie needed a Dramamine to keep up with the ups and downs of this day. “There is absolutely nothing sneaky about the way you look down my shirt.”
“Think about it, Cleaver. A long, friendly courtship through the mail. No pressure, no Marvin Gaye—just you and me tearing down walls.”