by Lori Wilde
“I understand all right. I understand you never cared about anything except yourself and money.” Uttering the words had a liberating effect on Charlee.
For years she’d made excuses for her father, unable to believe he simply was incapable of loving her the way she loved him. She’d hoped and prayed and wished for things to be different but they weren’t. Once she let go of her childish expectations, she understood he no longer held the power to break her heart. Elwood was Elwood and she could never change him. So be it.
“Get up.” Mason snatched Elwood by his lapels and lifted him to his feet.
“And next,” the dulcet voice of a famous actress resonated throughout the theater, “the award for best supporting actor.”
The announcement jolted Charlee’s focus off her father. They were about to give away the award for best supporting actor. To hell with Elwood, they had to stop the award presentation before it was too late.
She jerked her head toward the stage and that’s when she realized they were surrounded by cops.
“And the Oscar goes to…Blade Bradford.”
Mason grimaced. The minute the words left the presenter’s mouth, his life changed forever.
Music swelled. The audience applauded. Stunned, Mason watched as Blade Bradford got to his feet and made his way toward the stage.
“You are under arrest,” said the cop who was snapping handcuffs around his wrists. “You have the right to remain silent.”
Mason tuned out the rest of his Miranda rights, every bit of his attention concentrated on Blade Bradford at the podium waving his statue over his head in victory.
He’d been unable to stop Bradford from accepting his bogus Oscar. Mason had lost. He’d failed.
And now he faced the greatest moral dilemma of his life.
Save his family from scandal by covering up the accounting discrepancies and thereby compromising all his deeply held values, beliefs, and principles, or go public with the knowledge the Oscars had been falsified and accept the fact his family would be financially ruined.
As the cops hauled him from the theater along with Elwood, his gaze met Charlee’s. The tears glistening in her eyes sucker-punched him square in the gut.
He realized then that if he took the easy way out, kept quiet and allowed Cahill and Bradford and their henchmen to get away with their crimes simply to salvage his money and reputation, he would be just like all the other men who had betrayed her. From her shiftless father to that creep of a senator who groped her in the pantry to Gregory Blankensonship who’d taken her virginity, treated her like she didn’t matter and made her question her own worth.
He could not let her down.
In that moment Mason knew what he must do, the consequences be damned.
CHAPTER 21
The next morning Charlee paced the hallway outside the meeting room of the Beverly Hills Grand Piazza where Mason had scheduled a press conference.
After the fiasco at the Academy Awards, Nolan had booked her and Maybelline a room at the hotel while he’d gone to retrieve Mason from the county holding cell. For the time being, she and Maybelline had decided against posting Elwood’s bond. Let him stew in jail.
Charlee hadn’t seen Mason since he’d been arrested and she was nervous. Going before the press, admitting his family’s company had been involved in an accounting scandal so huge it threatened to rock Hollywood to the core, could not be easy. She also felt at loose ends with herself, not knowing what to say to him, uncertain of her role in the outcome of the unfolding events.
They’d left so many things unsaid. So many important issues not discussed.
What did he need from her?
What did she want from him?
Where did they go from here?
The place buzzed with news media speculating on the details of why they’d been assembled. Camera crews strung wires and cords throughout the conference rooms. A soundman checked the podium mike. Charlee forced herself not to chew her fingernails.
At five minutes before nine, a well-dressed middle-aged couple hurried down the corridor looking harried and concerned; beside them walked Mason’s ex-fiancée-to-be, Daphne Maxwell. The man bore a striking resemblance to both Nolan and Mason.
And then she realized the couple must be Mason’s parents.
Panic clutched her. Not wanting to be seen, Charlee glanced around for a place to hide, and spied the reprieve of a bronze metal modern art sculpture just a few feet from the open door of the conference room.
She flung herself on the other side of it and crouched down just in the nick of time. Her heart stabbed her chest. She heard the sound of footsteps on the terrazzo floor. Daphne and the Gentrys came to stand beside the sculpture. Daphne had her back to Charlee but she stood so close, Charlee could have reached out and wrapped her wrists around the woman’s slender panty hose-clad ankle.
Oh, crap.
“Mason said he’d meet us here before he started the conference,” Daphne murmured.
“I just hope we’re not too late to talk some sense into our son,” Mason’s father said.
“I’m sure he’ll listen to reason,” his mother soothed. “If Mason absolutely insists on going public with this Oscar mess, then the least he can do is mend fences with Daphne. After all, she’s willing to forgive and forget, which is very generous of her, and he owes the family that much consideration.”
“You’re absolutely right,” his father said. “Our stocks are going to take a terrible hit in the fallout. We can’t lose Daphne as both our publicist and future daughter-in-law too. Our son has got to listen to reason.”
“Mason just went a little crazy, dear, but I’m sure once we speak with him, he’ll see the error of his ways,” his mother went on.
“It’s that woman,” Daphne said darkly. “She’s corrupted his values. Once he’s back home in Houston, surrounded by friends and family, he’ll forget all about his little road fling.”
Charlee’s throat constricted. Road fling. That’s all she was and she knew it. She could never be good enough for Mason and his family. She was no sleek, chic, high-society woman.
More footsteps echoed and when she heard Mason’s voice she came completely unraveled. Her knees shook and her hands turned cold and clammy.
“Mother, Father.” A long pause ensued. “And Daphne. I want to thank you for staying on as our publicist and agreeing to represent Gentry Enterprises in this matter.”
“Daphne isn’t here just as our publicist, son.”
“She’s willing to give you a second chance and for the good of the family business your father and I feel you should listen to what she has to say.”
Charlee wished she could see Mason’s face. What was he thinking? How did he feel about the pressure his parents were putting on him? Would he eagerly embrace a return to his old life and leave her in his rearview mirror?
Before Mason could respond, she heard someone else approach.
“Mr. Gentry, Paul Stillson with KEMR news. Is the rumor true? Has your accounting firm been rigging the Oscar votes for almost fifty years?”
“Please,” Mason said. “Have a seat in the conference room with the other reporters. I’m on my way in. Mother, Father. Daphne.”
Everyone moved away.
Charlee let out her breath without even realizing she’d been holding it. She waited a couple of minutes, then crept from behind the sculpture and slipped into the conference room.
It was standing room only. She waited just inside the door, spotted Maybelline and Nolan sitting beside each other up front.
Mason and Daphne stood at the podium together. Mason was sharply put together in an elegant navy blue suit, white shirt, and red silk power tie. He looked as if he’d stepped straight from the pages of Fortune magazine. Daphne was equally snazzy in a dove gray suit with pearl buttons and a pink lace blouse. His dark hair contrasted with her pale blondness. They looked tailor-made for each other.
Charlee swallowed hard and glanced down at Violet’
s short skirt and the Hellraiser T-shirt she’d washed out by hand the night before. She hadn’t had the chance to buy anything new this morning and last night all the stores had been closed.
’Nuff said.
No matter what secret romantic thoughts to the contrary had been swirling around in the back of her mind, she and Mason were never going to get together. They were too different. Their worlds diametrically opposed.
The rich boy and the girl from the wrong side of the tracks.
Mason cleared his throat and began to talk. A murmur of shock undulated around the room as he told the reporters what he had discovered about the Oscar ballot discrepancies.
Pride filled her chest. She was so damned impressed with him. He wasn’t like the other rich, powerful men who’d disappointed her. He sacrificed his family’s reputation for what was right.
Mason looked up from the paper in his hands and his eyes met hers across the room. Charlee gasped as his gaze branded her. She felt the heat straight to her bone.
She blinked, trying to break eye contact to regain her equilibrium, but it didn’t work. They were connected, seared, linked by something much more powerful than mere chemistry.
A blast of air from the open window cut through her cotton T-shirt and in that awful moment Charlee realized how much she was going to miss him.
And then she knew.
She’d lost her cool. She’d fallen and she was never ever going to be able to get up.
No matter how hard she’d tried to avoid it, no matter how she’d fought against her feelings, no matter how she’d struggled not to let him under her skin and into her heart, she was in love with a man she could never claim as her own.
The second his eyes met Charlee’s Mason’s brain shut down. He forgot about the reporters in the audience, he forgot about his parents, he forgot about Daphne pressing her palm against his lower back.
He stopped speaking in midsentence, his stare focused on the lone woman standing at the back of the room. The reporters turned their heads to see what he was staring at. Daphne took the press release from his hand, stepped up to the microphone, and took over reading what he’d written last night while he’d been in jail.
At one time, Daphne was what he had thought he’d wanted. A woman to stand by his side as his business partner. A woman his family approved of. A woman with the right breeding, the right looks, the right contacts.
Mason realized that until he’d met Charlee, he’d had no idea what he really wanted.
To make amends for coming clean about the Oscar scandal and thereby causing deep financial losses to Gentry Enterprises, his parents were pressuring him to get back together with Daphne. But the old guilt trip no longer worked. For twenty-seven years he’d done what the Gentry name demanded, putting what was best for the family ahead of his own wants, needs, and desires.
What he wanted was Charlee Champagne.
But what did he have to offer her? Scandal. Shame. Dishonor. She deserved so much more than he could give.
These thoughts raced through his head in a matter of seconds. Daphne had finished reading the press report and the reporters were yelling questions at him but Mason didn’t hear a thing they said. All he heard was the strumming of his pulse in his ears.
Charlee. Charlee. Charlee.
She was the woman he loved with all his heart. He’d known it the night he’d made love to her and looked deeply into her emerald eyes. She had given him his freedom and she had taught him to let go and just live. She was the toughest, strongest, most independent woman he’d ever met and he loved her for it.
Because of her, he’d taken chances he would never have taken. He’d faced his fears and come out the victor. Because of Charlee he had learned to stop trying to live up to everyone’s expectations and make the choices that were right for him. She’d taught him that a name didn’t make the man but that the man made the name.
The realization sent his mind reeling. The liberty that a new belief in himself could bring opened up so many possibilities. He could be anything he wanted to be.
“Mr. Gentry,” a reporter demanded. “Just how deep does this scandal go?”
Daphne nudged him in the ribs and Mason broke eye contact with Charlee to answer the man’s questions. First he had to finish the press conference, but after this was over, he and Charlee were going to have a long, serious talk. He had to tell her how he felt. Question was, did she feel the same way?
He glanced at the back of the room again, hoping to find an answer in her eyes, but panic, much stronger even than what he’d felt the night before at the Oscars, knocked his world out from under his feet.
Charlee was gone.
Charlee’s Band-Aid-covered blisters rubbed against the heels of her boots as she raced through the Grand Piazza, tears misting her eyes. Violet Hammersmitz’s flouncy little skirt tail slapped the back of her thighs.
In the lobby, she stumbled through a crowd of curiosity seekers who’d gathered to hear the outcome of the press conference. People peered at her with prying eyes, escalating her sense of desperation. She had to get out of here. She saw Pam Harrington from Twilight Studios and Edith Beth McCreath among the milling throng. The women called out to her but Charlee ducked her head and just kept going.
Despair consumed her.
She lifted her thumb to her mouth to gnaw her fingernail but stopped with her hand halfway to her lips when she saw the flash of shiny red polish.
Be Still My Heart.
What on earth had compelled her to get emotionally close enough to a man that she would allow him to paint her fingernails?
Her crimson nails taunted her. She yearned to soak her hands in fingernail polish remover and eradicate all evidence that she had foolishly let down her guard when she’d known better.
From the minute she’d seen Mason Gentry in the parking lot outside her detective agency she’d known he carried the potential to break her heart. She hated this feeling. She wanted her cynicism back, her detached aloofness, her sharp-tongued defenses.
“Charlee!” It was Mason’s voice and he was coming after her.
No. No. She couldn’t bear to look into his eyes again. Couldn’t stand knowing she must send him away.
“Charlee!” He was running to catch up with her.
She shouldered her way through the mob that was growing thicker by the moment and hit the revolving glass door that led to the sidewalk and freedom.
But she knew it was far too late for regrets. She’d already fallen in love with Mason and he was out of her league and out of her reach.
Let go.
A dissenting whisper started in the back of her brain, low and seductive, rousing a rabble of contradictory thoughts. Let go of what? The limitations of the past? Her love for Mason? Her regrets? What?
Let go.
But she didn’t want to let go. Holding on kept her sane. Clinging to her beliefs about rich men provided a safety net. But Mason was different and she knew it. He didn’t fit the mold. He wasn’t a stereotype. He hadn’t hurt her on purpose.
Let go of…
Her boots slapped against the cement as she hit the sidewalk. She cupped her hands over her ears to drown out the noise in her head but it was no use.
Let go of your…
She did not want to hear this. Could not deal with the consequences of the statement. If she let go, then wouldn’t she fly apart into a million vulnerable pieces? She didn’t want to let go. She just wanted to be free. Free of the dread now strangling her heart.
Let go of your fears, Charlee Champagne. Let go and accept the inevitable.
But she could not.
“Charlee, wait.”
She ran but he ran faster. She chugged a good four blocks from the hotel before he caught her.
Mason grabbed her elbow and spun her around to face him. He was breathing as heavily as she. Charlee studied his broad chest and refused to look him in the eyes.
“Let go of me.” She tried to pull away.
“I won’t. We’ve got to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I don’t belong.”
“You do belong. You belong with me.”
“Daphne belongs with you. You’re two of a kind. You’re perfect for each other. Your parents want you to be with her.”
“I don’t give a damn what my parents want.”
“Since when?”
“Since I fell in love with you.”
She sucked in her breath. Had she heard him right? Mason was in love with her?
He crooked a finger under her chin and forced her head up. “Look at me, Charlee.”
Reluctantly, she looked into his eyes. Every emotion she’d struggled to deny knotted her stomach. Love and hope and longing and desire snarled together and grew bigger by the moment.
She caught her breath at what she saw swimming in the warm brown depths of Mason’s eyes.
“I know we’re night and day,” he said. “I know we come from completely different worlds. I know we’ve been acquainted less than a week. I know at times we irritate the hell out of each other, but I also know I’ve never felt this way about anyone in my entire life.”
“Not even Matilda?”
“Not even Matilda.”
“Really?”
“Trust me, I never expected to feel this way but from the minute I walked into your office you turned my life upside down.”
“Ha. You turned mine into a roller coaster.”
“You made me hunger for a life I’d always shied away from. You made me feel wild and free. You made me stop and consider who I really was and what I really wanted. Always being in control can get old and you showed me how to let go and live in the moment.”
“I did all that?”
“You know you did. But I don’t have much to offer you now except chaos. My family’s fortune is in jeopardy, my reputation is shot, I just quit my job as Gentry Enterprises’ investment banker. For the first time in my life, I don’t know what’s going to happen next and I feel freer than I’ve ever felt before. There, I’ve laid it all out for you. So now I’ve got to know, Charlee, how do you feel about me?”