“You’re all wrong,” a deep voice cut over the hurly-burly.
She glanced over her shoulder to where Rhys was standing, an amused, knowing light in his eyes.
“If any of you cared to befoul your pure minds by reading the Financial Review or following the market, you’d understand why the dollar is so high at the moment and why it’s likely to stay that way.” He proceeded to outline in crisp, decisive detail all the pertinent factors, talking over Tim when he tried to interrupt.
“So you can flap your gums all you like and stand on your soapboxes, but it’s not going to change reality, my hand-knit-wearing, crunchy-granola-loving, ecowarrior friends,” he concluded.
His delivery was so dry and droll and so obviously designed to insult and condescend that a bubble of appalled/admiring laughter burst from her mouth. Becky and Kim gave her matching reproving looks, their foreheads furrowed into identical frowns, even though Charlie had already worked out that, despite their similarity, they were fraternal and not identical twins.
“Don’t encourage him, Charlie. He already thinks he’s the smartest person in the room. Our job is to keep him humble,” Kim said.
“I think it might be too late for that,” Charlie said, which earned her a round of laughter.
“She’s got your number, Rhys,” Tim crowed.
“Ever heard of loyalty?” a low voice said near her ear, and she turned her head so quickly she felt the brush of Rhys’s five o’clock shadow against her cheek. She jerked away slightly and was aware of him doing the same.
“I’m very loyal,” she said once she’d recovered her composure. “But I’m not delusional.”
“Ouch,” he said, but his eyes were laughing at her.
“Stop pretending you ever aspired to be humble. As if,” she said, her own mouth curving into a smile.
He was about to say something in response when his mother spoke up.
“For heaven’s sake, Rhys, go find a chair. You’re right in the way where you are,” Holly said.
“Since you asked so nicely…” Rhys said, straightening and taking a step away from the table to clear the path for his mother.
She flicked the tea towel she was holding at him threateningly and he rounded the table to where there was an empty seat diagonally opposite Charlie. She couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he wouldn’t be sitting next to her throughout the meal. On the one hand, there was no denying that she found him distracting at the best of times. But he was also the only familiar face in what was shaping up to be one of the most challenging meals she’d ever endured.
“Please, everyone, eat while it’s hot,” Holly said as she ferried three plates of steaming lasagna to the table.
Ken followed her, a huge salad bowl in his hands.
The rich, almost overripe smell of tomatoes, onion and garlic hit Charlie as Holly slid one of the plates in front of her before heading back to the counter for more. Charlie looked at the stack of pasta sheets and oozing sauce and swallowed convulsively as a completely unexpected wave of nausea turned her stomach. Heat rushed up her neck and down into her body as bile burned the back of her throat.
Oh, God, please, not now.
How on earth could she have had absolutely no morning sickness whatsoever, only for it to strike now, of all possible moments? Surely fate could not be that cruel.
She swallowed again, reaching for her water glass. She took a small, careful sip. The burning eased in her throat. She kept her gaze glued to the glass, concentrating on the beads of moisture on the outside of the thick tumbler to avoid looking at the plate. Maybe if she waited a moment her stomach would settle. A few minutes ago she’d actually been feeling peckish, so maybe she was simply a little too hungry....
“Bread?” Tim’s wife, Amber, asked, thrusting the basket of garlic bread beneath Charlie’s nose.
Garlic and butter assaulted her olfactory senses and she took a gasping, panicky breath as her stomach rolled ominously.
“Are you okay?”
It was Rhys, rising from his seat. Charlie opened her mouth to assure him that she was fine, only to make the mistake of glancing at the red mess on the white plate.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, shoving her chair back with a screech of metal legs on linoleum and clapping a hand to her mouth.
She turned toward the door, intending to race to the bathroom, but the distance she had to travel seemed like a long, long way and her belly was already tensing in rebellion. The thought of throwing up in front of Rhys’s entire family only made her nausea more intense.
“Here.”
Rhys urged her toward the closed door next to the kitchen sink. He twisted the handle and cool air hit her face as she stumbled down the steps and into the yard. She barely made it to the side fence before she bent and retched into the garden bed, the remains of her lunch burning up her throat.
CHAPTER NINE
A WARM WEIGHT landed on the small of her back.
“Are you okay?”
As stupid questions went, it was right up there. She didn’t bother responding, simply remained hunched over, waiting to see if there would be a round two. Rhys seemed to get the message.
“Sorry,” he said. “Ignore me.”
Her stomach was still roiling, trying to decide if it was going to do another impersonation of Mount Vesuvius.
“Here. Give Charlie this.”
She recognized Holly’s voice, and the next thing she knew, a glass of cold water was pressed into her hand. She took it gratefully, rinsing her mouth out several times. Finally she felt able to straighten.
“I’m so sorry,” she said as her gaze found Rhys’s in the darkened yard. “That was…bad.”
His expression was inscrutable in the shadows. “Are you feeling better now?”
“A bit.” She didn’t sound very convincing, probably because she wasn’t one hundred percent certain that her stomach had finished torturing her for the evening.
“Maybe try some more water.”
She followed his suggestion, taking sips from the glass and actually swallowing them this time. Her stomach didn’t seem in immediate danger of exploding and she gave a small, relieved sigh.
“Better?”
“Yes.” Except for the bit where she’d humiliated herself by almost hurling in front of his entire family. Other than that, everything was just dandy.
“Sit down for a second,” Rhys said.
His gesture drew her attention to a low-lying lounger that was angled across the patio. She sank onto it cautiously, not wanting to excite the nausea again. Rhys sat beside her, his long legs bent awkwardly to accommodate the lounger’s low height.
“I thought you said you hadn’t been sick,” he said after a few seconds.
“Until two minutes ago, I hadn’t.”
“So that’s the first time?” He sounded incredulous. As well he might be.
“I was fine right up until I looked at that lasagna.”
He made a small, muffled sound. She glanced at him, and even though his face was poker straight she knew he’d swallowed a laugh.
“It’s not funny.”
“You feeling sick isn’t. But you’ve got to admit, the timing is awesome.”
Maybe tomorrow, or next week, she’d think it was funny. Right now she was too busy feeling queasy and embarrassed and miserable.
“God knows what your mother thinks of me.” And the rest of them. She could still see their shocked faces as she pushed away from the table.
“Kim and Becky both practically lived with their heads in the toilet bowl during their pregnancies. And Mum will tell anyone who sits still long enough that I gave her hell for the first four months of her pregnancy. Apparently they even tho
ught about calling me Ralph at one stage.”
Charlie smiled slightly, despite her still-churning stomach. “No wonder your business is doing so well.”
“Sorry?”
“You’re too charming for your own good.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible.”
She gave him a wry look. He reached out and encouraged the glass toward her mouth again.
“Drink some more water, and stop worrying about my family. You weaseled your way into their good books with that crack about me not being humble. You’re home free from here.”
“If only it was that easy,” she said ruefully.
“Trust me, it is. They’re a cheap crowd.”
She smiled again, very aware that he was working overtime to put her at ease—the way he had last week at the restaurant. Now that she was getting to know him, she suspected it was a purely instinctive reaction for him, as natural as breathing.
“I bet people don’t say no to you much, huh?”
There was a small giveaway pause before he responded. “Not often, no.”
“So I really didn’t have much of a chance that night, did I?” she said. “Once you’d engaged your tractor beam.” She’d been joking, but she could feel him tense beside her.
“You make it sound as though it wasn’t something you wanted,” he said. There was a question in his voice and she realized she’d thrown him off balance.
“I was joking,” she said. “Not very well, apparently.”
“So you don’t regret it, then?”
She turned to look at him. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, but he faced her. For a long moment their eyes met and held.
Suddenly her head was full of images from that night.
His hands on her breasts.
His weight pressing her into the bed.
The hard planes of his chest and back, smooth and warm beneath her hands.
Sitting in the dark with him with the faint, sour taste of bile in her mouth, it all seemed like a lifetime ago. As though it had happened to another person. But it hadn’t, it had happened to her. To them. For one night she’d thrown all her inhibitions, self-doubt and beliefs about herself and the world out the window and simply allowed herself to feel.
And it had been good. It had been wonderful.
“No. I don’t regret it. Not the going-home bit, anyway.” Maybe she was crazy, but despite everything, she didn’t have it in her to regret the hours she’d spent in his bed.
She swept her hand in front of her in an all-encompassing gesture. “This bit—the bit where we’ve been forced into a relationship with each other for the rest of our lives because of a faulty piece of latex—I could do without.”
“It could have been worse, you know.”
She gave a small snort of disbelief.
“It’s true,” he insisted. “You could have been a psychotic bunny boiler without a single sensible thought in your head, and I could have been a slacker, stoner loser on unemployment with a killer marijuana habit.”
She shook her head. “No. There’s no way I would have gone home with that guy. Even if I was a bunny-boiling head case.”
“You wouldn’t have had a choice. I would have trapped you in my tractor beam, remember?”
“I don’t think slacker, stoner Rhys has a tractor beam.”
“No?”
“No. I think the tractor beam is all yours.”
“I wasn’t sure I liked the tractor-beam idea at first, but it’s growing on me. I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
She huffed out a little laugh.
“How’s the nausea?”
She did a swift body check. “Better.”
“Good.”
She glanced over her shoulder toward the house. “We should probably head inside.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ll be wondering what’s going on.”
“It’ll give them something to talk about. Besides, it’s nicer out here. Quieter.”
She peered at him in the darkness. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”
“Not. But we can go inside if you really want to.”
She gauged her own wants and needs against what she knew was the polite thing to do.
Rhys sighed theatrically and pushed to his feet. “Come on, then, if you insist on doing the right thing.” He offered her his hand. His fingers were firm around hers as he helped her to her feet.
“I hope I haven’t ruined your sisters’ birthday party,” she said.
Now that she was standing she could see through the kitchen window to where the Walkers were still gathered around the table.
“Are you kidding me? You made it a red-letter event. This will go down in the annals of Walker family history as the night Charlie nearly tossed her cookies on the table. You’re officially a legend, immortalized forever.”
She smiled, mostly because she knew she was meant to. Rhys wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“It’s not a big deal. Honestly.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” He looked at her, a warm light in his eyes.
Something tightened in her chest as she gazed into his handsome face. Not because he was good looking, but because he was so nice.
Nice—and funny and quick and smart. He smelled good, too, and the arm around her shoulder was hard with muscle. The rest of him was, too, she knew. His thighs and his belly and his chest…
She shrugged out from under his arm. “Better not keep them waiting.”
She didn’t look at him again as she headed for the back door.
IT WAS ONLY WHEN Charlie slipped out from under his arm that it hit Rhys that he had no right to touch her so familiarly. That they didn’t have that kind of relationship.
Yet all night he’d been fighting the need to touch her, to protect her, to literally shield her with his body.
Clearly, there was more than a little caveman blood running in his veins.
He was half a second behind Charlie as she reentered the kitchen, in time to witness his smart-ass family offering her a rousing round of applause.
For a long beat Charlie’s face was a study in shock then her mouth curved into a slow, appreciative smile. She glanced at him, checking to see what he made of his family’s antics, and he rolled his eyes.
“They think they’re funny,” he said.
His mother ushered Charlie to her spot at the table, minus the plate of lasagna. He resumed his own seat, watching with satisfaction as his parents refused to accept Charlie’s apology for something that was clearly beyond her control. If anyone was to blame, they said, it was the person who’d created this situation in the first place. At which point all eyes turned his way for the second time that night. He was about to defend himself, when Charlie beat him to it.
“It wasn’t Rhys’s fault,” she blurted.
All eyes swiveled to her. Rhys watched, fascinated, as color climbed into her pale cheeks.
“I mean, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Or maybe it was both our faults. But really it was an accident. It’s the twenty-first century. Condoms are supposed to work, right?”
The moment the word condoms slipped out of her mouth her eyes widened and her gaze shot to the children’s end of the table. Meg snorted wine out her nose while Rod choked on a piece of garlic bread. The rest of the table erupted into laughter—which was almost loud enough to drown out Garth’s youthful, carrying tenor.
“What’s a condom, Mum?”
Charlie dropped her head into her hands as the laughter cranked louder. Rhys waited until he spotted the smile hidden behind her hands before allowing himself to grin.
“Let
me get you some salad, sweetheart,” his mother said as she wiped the tears from her eyes. She patted Charlie comfortingly on the back as she went to fetch a clean plate.
The rest of the evening went smoothly—or as smoothly as any Walker family gathering ever did. Charlie managed to eat a little salad and a handful of crackers, then they cleared the table and dimmed the lights before bringing out Kim and Becky’s birthday cake. Gifts were offered and accepted, and soon the table was covered in torn wrapping paper and discarded envelopes.
Rhys kept checking in with Charlie, catching her eye across the table to gauge how she was doing. Her color remained good and she seemed to be enjoying herself—although he had to admit that sometimes it was hard to tell with Charlie. She was adept at keeping up appearances. But her laughter and smiles seemed genuine to him, and there was no doubting her sincerity when she pulled two small, beautifully wrapped boxes from her handbag and offered one each to the twins.
“Just a little something,” she said as she handed them over.
“You shouldn’t have—but that doesn’t mean I’m giving this back,” Kim said, her fingers already untying the colorful ribbons.
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Becky agreed.
Almost in unison they unwrapped their boxes and each extracted a bracelet, silver with intricate beading, Kim’s in dusky-blue tones and Becky’s in sea green. Rhys could tell by the way the other women of his family oohed appreciatively that Charlie had made good choices.
“The woman in the shop said the artist lives in the Blue Mountains,” Charlie said. “There were other colors, so if these don’t suit I’d be happy to swap them—”
More Than One Night Page 14