Return to Glebe Point

by Patricia Paris

  He looked at her and raised his brows, questions lingering.

  “We’ll talk about it later.” She laid a hand against his shoulder. “Don’t forget the pizza.”

  His deep, ebony eyes searched her face, came back to capture hers. She read concern there and worried things had already gotten much more complicated than either of them had planned.

  “Does six-thirty work for you?”

  She nodded, and then pasted on a smile when she saw one of her customers had gotten up from her table and was approaching the counter.

  “Can I get you something else?” Charlie asked the woman, seizing on the diversion to end the conversation with Cooper until later.

  “I’d like to get half of a dozen cupcakes to go. Could I get six different flavors? I just had the key-lime crunch and it was wonderful. I’m anxious to try some of the others. Of course, I’ll have to share these with my husband.”

  “I’m glad you liked it. Do you know what other flavors you want to try?”

  “You pick. It’ll be too hard for me to decide.”

  Charlie got out one of the small take away boxes from under the display case and started to fill it, taking care to select a diverse sampling of flavors.

  Cooper caught her eye long enough to nod a goodbye and she returned the gesture. Her customer turned and looked at him as he walked away.

  “Now there’s a handsome man.” She blew on her fingers and gave Charlie a conspiratorial wink.

  Cooper must have heard the comment, and glanced back over his shoulder at Charlie. He grinned, all sexy, tempting as sin. But in his case, she was beginning to think heaven might not be all it was cracked up to be.

  She gave him a quick once-over and then turned her attention back to the woman. “He’s not bad.”

  She heard him chuckling as he walked out of the store, and despite Phillip’s note having upset her, she had to smile.

  Finger Cakes hummed with a steady stream of customers the rest of the day. Every time the front door swung open Charlie worried if it could be Phillip. When she’d received the flowers that morning, she’d expected another visit, but he never came in. He was up to something. She didn’t know what, or more importantly why, but whatever it was she hadn’t seen the last of him.

  She stopped into Speckles to pick up a few odds and ends before going home and ran into Justin at the deli counter.

  She’d told Gab and Delaney a little bit about Phillip the day the three of them had gone to St. Michaels, just not the worst of it. She planned on telling Blake and Justin as well, but just hadn’t found the right time.

  In truth, there would never be a right time, a time she felt comfortable sharing what had happened to her.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t have the luxury of telling them in her own time. Phillip’s arrival had taken that away from her. She needed to tell them as soon as possible before they found out the wrong way.

  “Hey, Jus,” she said, rearranging the two packages of lunchmeat she’d just put into the top tray of her cart. “There’s something I want to talk to you and Blake about. If you’re free, can you meet me at Mosey’s for lunch tomorrow around noon?”

  He cocked his head, amber eyes meeting amber eyes, his clouding with concern as they connected. “Sure, sweetheart. Everything okay?”

  “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

  He slid a hand around her shoulder. “Do you want to talk now? I can give Gabriella a call and tell her I’ll be a little late.”

  “No, tomorrow’s good. Go home and enjoy the fam. I’ll call Blake on my way home and ask him to join us.”

  Concern filled his expression and she leaned her head against his arm. “Stop worrying, Justin. I’m fine. It’s just time I sat down with the two of you and had a chat.”

  No, she wouldn’t feel any more comfortable telling them tomorrow about her life the last few years than she had three months ago, but her past had caught up with her. And, if Phillip refused to leave her alone, got nasty, or threatened her in any way, it would be comforting to know she had a little muscle at her back.

  COOPER KNOCKED on her door at six thirty sharp—the man was punctual!

  Charlie pulled the door open to see him gazing up at the moon. The silver light of it reflected off his coal-black hair, his face in profile, so handsome it might bring tears to her eyes if she looked at it too long.

  He wore a pair of faded jeans and a brown leather bomber jacket, and looked marvelous in the wearing.

  “The moon has always fascinated me—clear and bright one night, no secrets to guard, mysterious and haunting the next—but always beautiful.” He angled his head toward her, caught her gaze. “Not unlike a woman.”

  It felt as if he wasn’t looking at her but into her; his eyes, so deep, so dark, seduced her. And she felt it again, the pull to touch, taste, to be more wild and free with this man than she’d ever wanted or could imagine being with any other, a desire that made her dizzy with need. She reached out and held on to the door frame.

  Cooper hoisted a bottle of wine in one hand and a box of pizza in the other. The mouth she craved to lean into and kiss curled sensually, eliciting another slither of desire that rippled through her.

  “Your dinner, la mia bellezza.”

  “A man of your word, even if I don’t understand everything you just said.” She stepped aside so he could enter. “You could be talking dirty to me, and I wouldn’t even know it.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows. “Do you want me to talk dirty to you?”

  “An entertaining proposition, but right now I want some of that pizza. I’m starving.” She gave the door a push shut and then went straight to the little kitchenette in the corner of the room and got out two plates and two wineglasses.

  Cooper followed her, setting the pizza and wine on the island and popping open the box. “I thought food was supposed to be the way to a man’s heart.”

  “And what? Women don’t need to eat? Give me a break.” She uncorked the wine and poured them each a glass. “I don’t know who started that rumor, but they obviously understood nothing about physiology. Besides, everyone knows food isn’t what really makes a man’s heart race.”

  His eyes glowed with wicked amusement. “Oh yeah, then what does?”

  Charlie lifted her glass to his, tapped it, and took a sip of wine. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and sent him a look that made the glow in his eyes flare even brighter. “Fourth quarter, fifteen seconds left in the game, Ravens are down three with the ball on their own five yard line.”

  Cooper slapped a hand over his chest. “Be still my foolish heart.”

  She tucked a wayward curl behind her ear and laughed. “Told you so.”

  He helped her clean up when they were done eating, the close quarters making it impossible not to brush up against each other at almost every turn. She didn’t mind, rather enjoyed it, that little layer of excitement it stirred up, coating the ordinary with a film of anticipation…and promise.

  Afterward, they sat on the couch together. When Cooper leaned back and stretched his arm across the back cushions, studying her as if he were trying to figure out how to get honey from a bees’ nest without getting stung, she set her wine on the table and faced him.

  They had an agreement, yes, but he deserved some answers—it was a matter of respect. And, no matter what she might have told herself, told him, she cared about him. She cared what he thought, how he felt, more than she ever thought she could when they’d started their little romance a couple of months ago. She cared.

  Caring made things messy, something she’d hoped to avoid but had landed right in the middle of. To tell him about Phillip was to showcase her shame, expose her vulnerabilities, and lay open her mistakes for him to judge.

  Cooper liked her, and as in her own case, a lot more than he’d planned or wanted to. Now she’d discover if he liked her enough to stick around after she told him who had sent the flowers and why.

  “WHY DID you stay with him so long?�
�� Cooper asked after she’d bared her story.

  Charlie dipped her head. “That’s always the question, isn’t it?” She looked over at him, holding herself steady. As far as she’d come, she still had trouble accepting that she’d ever been so malleable, so…weak. It made it that much more difficult to explain it to someone else.

  “It’s not a judgment. I’m just…I don’t know…just trying to understand.” He slid towards her, taking her hands in his and began rubbing his thumbs over her skin. “You’re so independent, sometimes I think too independent. You never ask anyone for help, even when you need it.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes it is. Like when you were getting ready to open up and you had all those boxes you’d brought to the store. Something as simple as that, trying to do it all on your own when they were so heavy some of them almost gave me a hernia.”

  “I could have managed.”

  He shook his head. “That’s just what I’m talking about. It’s always, I can do it myself. Maybe you’re just stubborn, whatever.” He sighed. “It’s just that I think you’re a very strong woman. As frustrating as your independence can be sometimes, I also admire you for it. You just do what you have to do, no complaining, no excuses.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Wait for imaginary worker fairies to magically appear and do everything for me?”

  “You could ask for help. Me…your cousins.” He frowned. “This is turning into a different discussion. I’m sorry, I’m just trying to understand if you stayed because you were afraid to leave or if you were—” He stared at their hands for what seemed forever before lifting his gaze to rest on hers. She saw the question there and it scorched her heart.

  “In love with him?” Charlie smiled lightly at the confirmation she read in his eyes. “I thought I did, in the beginning anyway. The first year we dated I believed he loved me, too. It wasn’t until I’d given up my job working for his uncle, moved to New York with him, and lived with him for several months that his true nature started to emerge, and I began to have the first slivers of doubt.”

  Phillip had taken advantage of her naivety, she knew that, and could dissect the anatomy of his seduction now in retrospect. But, she’d gotten clues, things she dismissed, or didn’t question when she might have, warning lights she’d chosen to disregard that if she’d paid a little more attention to could have saved her a lot of heartache.

  “Looking back, I realize the mistakes I made, the signs I missed, that for whatever reason I failed to see.” She caught her upper lip beneath her teeth, looked up at him, and then continued.

  “One night, when we’d only been living together for a couple of months, we went to a charity ball that was being held in one of New York’s most opulent hotels. I felt like Cinderella at the ball, all dressed up in a gorgeous gown. It was all…I don’t know…small-town girl lives the fairytale dream. As it turned out, Phillip’s old girlfriend was there as well. I’d met her once before at another event but never really talked to her. Anyway, I’d gone to the ladies’ room at one point and ran into her. We were the only two in there at the time, and she approached me and told me she didn’t think I knew what I was getting myself into with Phillip. She said if I stayed with him, I’d be spending a lot of nights crying myself to sleep.”

  Cooper rubbed his thumb over her hand. “Speaking from experience.”

  “Yeah, I realize now she was probably trying to warn me before I could get too entrenched in the relationship, but at the time I just thought her words were sour grapes…that she was bitter, or jealous. She’d been trying to do me a favor and I chose to ignore it.”

  “Your reaction was understandable. I think a lot of women would have thought the same thing under the circumstances.”

  “I guess, but I let my assumptions blind me and that turned out to be a mistake. I thought I knew the score, but in truth I couldn’t have been more naive. I didn’t have any experience with men like him. I mistook the things he said and did as caring rather than controlling. If I’d been more receptive, she might have said more, something about her own experiences that I wouldn’t have been able to ignore as easily.”

  Charlie stretched her neck from side to side. “I think I was afraid to consider the possibility that I’d made a mistake about him. By the time I started having serious misgivings, I had no income, no home, and no friends. I’d become totally dependent on Phillip for everything—food, clothes, whatever connections I had to the outside world. He’d wrapped me in a chain of dependency, and I never realized it had happened until I felt too trapped to do anything about it.”

  “But you did.” Cooper squeezed her hands. “You left him.”

  Charlie nodded. “Yes. I did. When he told me it was time we got married, my internal alarms went haywire. He didn’t ask me, he told me. It was kind of like a slap to the face…a wake-up call. I knew then I had to get away from him. I was terrified if he knew I’d decided to leave he’d try to stop me, so I played along. I pretended I was excited about getting married and then secretly made the plans that enabled me to leave.”

  She brushed the curls back from her face. They bounced back into place, soft black spirals that had a mind of their own. “I don’t know how to explain to you what happened. It’s hard to reconcile who I had become with who I really was, except to say that Phillip is very good at manipulation. He’s also very skilled at appearing to be something, someone he’s not. He totally fooled me. Maybe if I’d been older, more worldly, had more experience with men like him…I don’t know. I always thought I was pretty solid, the proverbial rock.”

  Charlie glanced up at him and managed a smile. “I was the one all my friends used to rely on when they were falling apart. Then Phillip came along, and for whatever reason the rock turned into nothing but a pile of rubble.”

  Cooper slid his hands up her arms and pulled her against his chest, resting his chin on top of her head. “I don’t agree. He might have tried to make you crumble, but there was a part of you he couldn’t reach, a part that was stronger than him, that would always be stronger than him. If not, you probably never would have been able to leave on your own.”

  He loosened his hold slightly but didn’t let go. “And I’m beginning to think if you’d had someone to talk to, someone you could trust, a friend, anyone, you would have left him sooner. I don’t doubt he kept you as isolated as possible so that didn’t happen, so you would have to depend on him more and more.”

  “I think you’re right about that. If I’d reached out to Blake or Justin, they would have come for me. I know they would have, but part of me was just so…”

  “Ashamed?”

  She nodded against his chest. “Yes. It was stupid that I let that hold me back from leaving sooner.”

  “Yeah, it was, and shame on you for being human. I’m sure he used that against you too. The less confident you felt about yourself the easier it would have been for him to manipulate you.”

  He reached under her chin with his finger and lifted her face toward his. “I hope he hasn’t left town yet, and I hope I have the opportunity to meet him.”

  She stared at him, surprised he’d want Phillip to have remained anywhere near Glebe Point. “Why would you want that? He’s nobody you’d ever want to get to know.”

  “Really? Well, I’d like his face to get to know my fist. I’d also like to introduce it to his gut and a few other choice places.”

  Charlie frowned. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? That you want to beat him up because of what he did to me?”

  “No. It’s supposed to make me feel better.”

  She placed her hands on his cheeks and kissed him lightly.

  “It wasn’t easy telling you about my relationship with Phillip. He was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life, and although I got out of the situation, the fact remains that I allowed someone to take that kind of control over my life. Now that you know, I’m glad it’s out in the open. I don’t want you feeling sorry for me, though,
or thinking I’m fragile. I’m not, Cooper. I just thought you deserved to know the truth.”

  “Thank you.” He kissed her back, longer and deeper before looking at her again. “I don’t think you’re fragile, but I can’t help feeling angry about what he did to you. And if he shows up and starts harassing you and I’m around, don’t expect me to stand back and let him get away with it.”

  “I’m strong enough to deal with Phillip now; he has no power to manipulate me anymore. But, it’s nice to know I’m not alone if he does. And I’ll be having lunch with Justin and Blake tomorrow, to tell them everything I told you tonight, so they’ll be on board, too.”

  She blew out a long, harsh breath, feeling as if she’d shed fifty pounds of skin and had another fifty to slough off tomorrow when she met with her cousins. “That’s not a conversation I’m looking forward to, but like you, I want them to know.”

  Cooper shook his head. “You haven’t told them anything about this guy?”

  “No. Delaney and Gabriella know about him, not as much as I’ve told you, though. They kind of cajoled it out of me, and they couldn’t have been more supportive, but I swore them to secrecy.”

  “But, why?”

  Charlene shrugged. “I told myself it was over and didn’t matter, that I just wanted to forget it ever happened, and it was nobody’s business but mine. But really, I was afraid they’d think less of me…or think I was broken somehow. Blake and Jus have always been protective of family. It’s just the way they are, the way we all are. I didn’t want them worrying about me, and I didn’t want them treating me like I might fall apart if they looked at me the wrong way.”

  He sighed, leaned forward and kissed her again, soft and slow. His mouth was warm, the kiss comforting. He still cared about her…she hadn’t disgusted him. She closed her eyes and kissed him back.

  “I wish I’d known sooner,” he said against her lips. “I wish I could have been there when you needed someone most.”

  “You’re here right now, and I’m grateful for it, but if you don’t mind, I don’t want to talk about it anymore tonight.”