Charlie stirred again, and this time he gave in to need and ran a hand over her, cupping a breast. He was painfully aroused, craving connection with her, and he waited only until she’d blinked open her eyes and smiled before kissing her and rolling on top of her. They made slow, intense love in the morning sunlight. He told her with his body all the things he knew she wasn’t ready to hear yet and told himself that there would come a day—soon, he hoped—when he would say it all out loud.
They showered together, and then he took Charlie out for breakfast before taking her to the comic-book exhibition. They walked hand in hand from one display to the next and he watched her face light up as she found old favorites or discovered a much-longed-for rarity.
“Tell me if I’m talking too much,” she said as they moved from one superhero section to the next.
“I will. You’re not even close.”
She smiled her slow, shy smile and he used their joined hands to pull her close and kiss her. She tasted like the cinnamon-ginger pikelets she’d eaten for breakfast and he made an approving sound and deepened the kiss.
Charlie drew back, her cheeks red. “Rhys,” she said, her eyes darting first left, then right.
“This is the modern-art gallery. Kissing is not only acceptable, it’s encouraged.”
She laughed, even as she shook her head at him and told him he was incorrigible. When she started to fade midafternoon he insisted on taking her home so she could catch up on the sleep they’d lost last night. They lay on top of the quilt fully clothed and dutifully closed their eyes, but after twenty minutes Charlie asked if he was still awake and when he confirmed he was, they wound up peeling each other’s clothes off and fooling around until they both drifted into exhausted, sated sleep.
It was eight at night when they woke again. Charlie made them a quick dinner and they sat on the sofa, arms and legs entwined while they watched an old James Bond movie. He stirred when the credits started to roll, checking his watch.
“I should probably go. I have an early start tomorrow,” he said apologetically.
He waited for Charlie to suggest he stay the night and go home to change in the morning, but she simply nodded and disentangled herself. He watched as she collected their glasses and carried them to the kitchen, frustrated with her and annoyed with himself for being such a sulky little kid. She’d spent the day with him. She’d laughed at his jokes, responded to his kisses, returned his affection. It was day two. He needed to cultivate some patience.
She returned from the kitchen, stopping in the doorway. She was wearing a pair of stripy pajama pants and a T-shirt with no bra, her hair mussed around her face. Her mouth was pink from his kisses. She crossed an arm across her stomach and gripped the opposite hip and attempted to look casual, even though he could see the tension in her body.
“I was thinking, we could catch up one night during the week. Maybe grab a movie or something?” she suggested.
He smiled, all his frustration evaporating. He joined her in the doorway, sliding his arms around her waist. He loved that he was allowed to touch her now. Loved the feel of her strong, slender body against his own.
“I was thinking more than one night,” he said.
Her mouth tilted up at the corners. “That’s a little presumptuous, isn’t it?”
“Presumptuous is my middle name. As well as Andrew.”
“How many nights were you thinking?”
“How many have you got?” he asked.
“I’m having dinner with Gina on Tuesday night.”
“Then I’m thinking four nights. Unless Gina doesn’t mind me tagging along, then I’m thinking five.”
She looked a little uncertain. As though she wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. He kissed her.
“This is real, Charlie,” he said seriously.
She stared at him then kissed him back, a fierce, passionate kiss that had him hard in seconds.
When she stopped they were both breathing heavily.
“I’ll ask Gina if she minds sharing me with you.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You do that.” He turned reluctantly toward the door. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? We can work out what we want to do tomorrow night. See a movie.”
“Or stay in.”
He glanced at her. She raised her eyebrows, innocent as a newborn lamb. He smiled.
“Or stay in,” he agreed.
They lingered on the doorstep, each kiss extending into another, then another. Finally Charlie slipped free and laughingly pushed him away.
“At this rate you’ll never go,” she said. “And you need to get up early.”
“Okay.” He walked down the hall. “I’ll see you.”
“Yes.”
He glanced at her as he reached the stair landing. She watched him, an unreadable expression on her face. She waved, and he followed suit. Then she slipped inside her apartment and shut the door.
He paused for a moment, fighting the urge to go to her.
You are not fifteen, she is not your first girlfriend, and you will see her tomorrow. Man up, buddy, and get your ass home.
He kept walking to his car then he drove to his place.
He would see Charlie tomorrow—and the day after that, and the day after that. He’d keep seeing her for as long as she’d have him, and he would win her trust and wipe the uncertainty from her eyes.
He would make it his mission because he loved her, and he wanted her to be happy.
CHARLIE BRUSHED her teeth then slipped between sheets that smelled of him and turned off the light. She buried her face in his pillow and inhaled the scent of his aftershave and shampoo and allowed herself to be warmed by the memories of their weekend.
It had been perfect. Better than perfect. He’d been funny, tender, teasing, sexy, generous… He’d been her fairy-tale prince, and he hadn’t put a foot wrong.
Her smile faded as she contemplated the week ahead. He wanted to see her every night. She’d psyched herself up in the kitchen before asking him if he wanted to catch a movie one night and he’d come right out with a request to see her every night. Every night.
She gave in to instinct and pulled Rhys’s pillow closer, wrapping her arms around it. It didn’t come even close to substituting for him, but it was something.
This is real, Charlie.
She wanted to believe him very badly. She would try very hard to do so. And she would pray to all the gods and fates and the universe that he was right, that this was real, that this was going to work for her and him and The Bean.
Her arm wrapped around the pillow, she fell asleep. She woke to the ring of the telephone. She blinked blearily at her alarm clock before staggering from the bed in search of the phone.
“Morning,” Rhys said, his voice deep and low.
“Hi.” Stupid, but she felt a little breathless, simply because he’d called. “Is everything all right?”
“Just making sure everything is okay at your end.”
“It is.”
“You slept okay?”
“Yes. How about you?”
“I slept.”
She waited for him to tell her why he’d really called, but as they kept talking it slowly occurred to her that he’d missed her. The notion was heady, almost intoxicating.
Don’t get ahead of yourself.
She repeated the same mantra to herself hundreds of times over the following weeks, determined to give happiness a chance but also to maintain some sense of perspective.
Just in case things didn’t work out.
AFTER THE FIRST COUPLE of weeks Charlie and Rhys settled into a routine of sorts. Most nights were spent at her place, since Rhys claimed she had a lot more style than him and that his place was really
a glorified walk-in closet. They double-dated with Gina and Spencer on Tuesday nights, but most of the time it was only the two of them, the way Charlie liked it. Maybe she was greedy, but she loved having Rhys all to herself, and he seemed to feel the same way about her.
The sex got better and better, even though the baby was definitely making her presence felt. Charlie quickly grew out of all her old clothes and moved beyond the point where an elastic stretched between button and hole, and a long T-shirt could help her skate by. She was in her sixteenth week and contemplating a shopping trip for maternity clothes when her breasts seemed to grow a cup size overnight—much to Rhys’s unashamed delight.
“Who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?” he said when she commented on his near obsession.
Her enlarged breasts were exquisitely sensitive, too, but he was gentle and tender with her and their lovemaking took on yet another dimension. That same week, Rhys’s mother celebrated her birthday and they attended their first Walker family gathering as a couple.
Charlie had thought that she’d been nervous the first time she met Rhys’s family, but she was almost beside herself at the notion of showing up as his girlfriend. She’d spoken to Holly twice since she and Rhys had started seeing each other, but both times she’d been unable to find a way to reveal their new relationship to his mother. She suspected that Holly would be thrilled, but Charlie wasn’t sure and she didn’t want to lose the sense of connection that had been growing between them.
“Relax, Charlie. They already love you. Make a few cracks about what a money-grubbing capitalist pig I am and you’ll have them eating out of both hands,” Rhys said as they walked up the front path.
“This is so stupid. Why am I so nervous?” she asked herself out loud.
Rhys hooked an arm around her neck and drew her close. “Because you have no idea how lovable you are,” he said easily, pressing a kiss to her mouth. “That’s why.”
She was still blinking in confusion when the door opened and his father ushered them inside to join “the rest of the horde.”
“No lasagna tonight, Charlie,” Holly announced as they entered the kitchen. “Oh, my, haven’t you popped!” Her gaze went from Charlie’s belly to the arm Rhys had draped around her shoulders.
Charlie was very aware of Rhys’s siblings doing the same, but no one said anything, and pretty soon she was being pressed into a chair and handed a drink and a handful of crackers.
“Actually, the nausea stopped a couple of weeks ago,” Charlie explained when Meg made a big deal about moving the dip platter out from under Charlie’s nose in case it upset her stomach.
“Oh, good. I had a salad for you, just in case, but this is much better,” Holly said. She rested her hand on Charlie’s shoulder for a few seconds and her eyes were warm as they met Charlie’s.
The tension inside Charlie unraveled as she saw the unquestioning acceptance in the other woman’s eyes. As she’d hoped, Holly was pleased. One less thing to worry about.
Later, after a dinner of roast beef and vegetables and lemon meringue pie for dessert, Kim, Becky and Amber took Charlie aside and offered her bags of maternity clothes they no longer needed, before taking turns touching her belly.
“You’ll feel her move soon,” Becky said. “The strangest feeling in the world. Like an eyelash brushing against your skin—only on the inside.”
Charlie frowned and Kim gave her sister a shove in the arm. “Don’t freak her out. It’s nothing like that. It’s more like a goldfish swimming around.”
“Oh, that’s much better,” Becky scoffed.
“It’s fine. I don’t freak easily,” Charlie said.
“Of course you don’t. You’re with a Walker—if you freaked easily, you’d have run a long time ago,” Amber said.
Charlie laughed and thanked them all for their thoughtfulness. Glancing across the room, she caught Rhys’s eye. He was watching her, unashamed lust and admiration in his gaze. Even though it had been nearly a month, she still had the urge to pinch herself and glance over her shoulder to make sure it was really her he was looking at with so much heat and possessiveness.
As he kept telling her, this was real, this thing between them.
She caught herself yawning as Holly handed out coffee and Rhys immediately stood. “Charlie’s tired, I’m taking her home.”
His oldest brother gave him a disgusted look. “Have a little bit of dignity, mate. We all know you can’t wait to get her alone, but there’s no need to be that obvious.”
Charlie felt her face go up in flames as the rest of the Walkers started to rib Rhys. He laughed, fended them off and stuck to his guns, encouraging her to her feet.
“Think what you like. Charlie and I are going home.”
In the car five minutes later, the maternity clothes stowed in the trunk, she pressed her hands to her cheeks in an attempt to cool them. “That was embarrassing. If I could, I would have disappeared down an escape hatch, no questions asked.”
“Mark’s an idiot. And way too observant for his own good. Come here.”
He kissed her across the console, his hands soon wandering to her breasts. When the windows started to steam up, she broke their kiss and gave a small laugh.
“In case you’re wondering, I’m way too big to do it in the car.”
“Really?” He sounded genuinely disappointed.
“Plus, we’re in front of your parents’ place, and your brothers and sisters will be walking past any second now.”
“A far better point,” Rhys said. “Let’s go home.”
She sat back in her seat and tried not to reveal how much his choice of words had affected her. Home, he’d said. Let’s go home. She was past pretending those three words didn’t mean an enormous amount to her, that the notion of sharing a home—a life—with Rhys hadn’t become bigger and more real and more possible in her mind with each passing day.
True, he hadn’t said he loved her yet, but this very night he had said that she was lovable, and that was close enough to almost make no difference....
She studied his profile in the reflected light of the dashboard as he turned onto the freeway. She found him just as handsome today as she had all those months ago when she’d spilled his wine at Café Sydney. More so, really, because she knew that there was enormous character and intelligence and drive behind his gorgeous face, which only made him more appealing.
She glanced out the window and saw that they were driving past the turn off for McMahons Point.
“Take this exit,” she said impulsively. “Let’s go sit at the Point and watch the ferries.”
He glanced at her curiously but didn’t say anything as he signaled and took the exit ramp. When they pulled into the small parking bay at the Point, the shadow of the Harbour Bridge high overhead, they were the only car in the small gravel parking lot.
“Park over there,” Charlie said, pointing to the darkest corner.
Again Rhys glanced at her, but this time there was a knowing glint in his eye. She waited until he’d cut the engine before tugging off her stretchy leggings.
“I changed my mind about being too big.”
Rhys pushed his seat back and she clambered awkwardly over the console and straddled him. He grinned at her, his eyes very dark in the dim interior.
“I’ve been wanting to do this to you all night,” he said, his hand between her legs.
She closed her eyes as he caressed her, moving her hips in rhythm with his stroking fingers. She heard the clink of his belt buckle, then the hiss of his zip. She opened her eyes and reached between them to grasp his erection, freeing it from his boxers. He was big and hard and velvety smooth in her hand. She watched his face as she stroked him and he stroked her, then she positioned him and slid down to the hilt. They sighed simultaneously, his hands
finding her hips. She started to rise and fall and it didn’t take long for them to both find their peak, their gasps and moans and murmured imprecations filling the small space. When she finally collapsed on top of him she was limp, her thighs quivering with exertion.
“God, I love you, Charlie,” Rhys panted against her neck.
She tried not to react, tried not to take it for anything other than what it was—a throwaway comment at the height of passion—but something must have given her away because Rhys’s hand found her chin and tilted her head so that she was looking him in the eye.
“I do, you know. I love you. I love you with everything I have.”
His eyes were steady on hers, his body still inside her, his hands on her skin. She wanted to believe him. So badly. She wanted to tell him that she loved him, too. That he had made her happier than she thought she could ever be. That she loved how he made her feel, how he made her laugh, how he’d made her braver and bolder and smarter and funnier.
She couldn’t, though, the old fear still holding her in its grip. If she didn’t want it quite so much, if she didn’t hold on to happiness so tightly, maybe it might last this time—that was what the voice in the back of her head said.
Maybe she wouldn’t screw it up.
Rhys was waiting for her response, and because she couldn’t give him words, she gave him actions, kissing him with all the pent-up fervor and love and passion and adoration in her. He kissed her back, but she could feel the disappointment in him and she couldn’t quite look him in the eye when she broke the kiss and scrambled to her own side of the car.
The windows were fogged up and Rhys wound them all down and blasted the windshield with the heater. She struggled into her leggings, aware of the loaded silence in the car. Waiting for Rhys to say something. He steered toward the parking lot exit. After he’d found his way back to the highway, he reached for her hand and brought it to rest on his thigh, his own hand on top of it. She dared a glance at him, and he offered her a small smile.
“It’s hard for me. But I’m trying,” she said, the words bursting out of her.
More Than One Night Page 23