“Oh, my God,” Charleigh laughed, wiping the little bit that got on her arm off with a cup towel. She’d jumped out of the way just in time. “You look…” She held on to her side; she was laughing so hard.
Jamie wiped the mess away from his eyes and turned to Charleigh. She continued to laugh hysterically as he stood, planted in place. Poor thing. He was horrified, without any idea as what to do. And still, Charleigh laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Jamie asked, helplessly. She could only point at him. “Please, Char, a little help?”
Charleigh shook her head, wiped the tears away from her eyes. There had never been a funnier sight in the world.
“Please, help,” he repeated.
This time she nodded, coming closer to stand in front of him. “Strip.” Charleigh continued to laugh.
“What?”
“Strip down. All your clothes. You’re covered with that stuff.”
Handing Jamie a towel to wipe his hands and face, she reached for the top button of his pants, unzipped them, and let them fall to the floor. He stepped out of the pants and started on the top buttons of his white dress shirt while Charleigh worked from the bottom. Afterward, in only his boxers, he followed Charleigh to the laundry room.
Jamie watched in silence while she measured out a capful of Tide. Usually, he knew, she took all of their more expensive clothes— and, to his way of thinking, a pair of silk Ralph Lauren pants did apply— to the dry cleaners. She sprayed some kind of clear liquid from a plastic bottle onto his shirt, Jamie couldn’t imagine what she was doing. Or why, because…
Of course, now he saw that Charleigh was trying to get the stain out before it set in.
“Can you get it out?” he asked, watching as Charleigh filled the sink with water, poured in the liquid detergent.
“We’ll see,” she replied simply.
She dunked the shirt in the water, rubbing the fabric together. Occasionally, Charleigh lifted the garment to do a close inspection. When she was satisfied, she wrung out all the water, hung the shirt up on a hanger and left it on the back of the door and went to work on the pants.
“I’ll drop these off at the cleaners tomorrow, on my way to the store in Durant.” Jamie nodded. He turned to go and Charleigh grabbed the waistband of his shorts, let it go, making it pop him. “You need to go and get in the shower while I finish supper.”
He gave her a seductive smile as he looked back over his shoulder. “You could go with me and finish dinner later.”
“Um… that is a good idea,” Charleigh answered, slipping under his arm to stand in front of him. There was some of the smoothie still on the side of Jamie’s neck, and she stuck a finger up to it. “I mean, you do look good enough to eat.” She stuck the finger in her mouth before making a face. “But ya taste like crap. Go get in the shower while I finish supper and clean up your mess.”
“I can… I mean—” Jamie stopped midsentence.
Charleigh arched an eyebrow and flashed a seductive smile of her own. “ You do that and I’ll do this, and you can repay the favor later, in any way you want.”
He nodded. “Sounds like an idea to me.”
When Jamie came back downstairs after his shower, his hair was still damp. A towel was draped around his neck. As soon as he reached the bottom step, he knew something was off. All of the lights were off, except for the glow of candles that were placed sporadically throughout the living room.
He took a look in the kitchen, but the lights were off in there, as well. The mess he’d made with the blender was also all cleaned up. The pots and pans Charleigh had used to cook were in the dishwasher, clean and waiting to be put up. Okay, now he knew something was wrong, because Charleigh was like a madwoman when it came to spots on her clean dishes. She liked to take them out, dry them, and put them in the proper places in the cabinets.
When Jamie looked for Charleigh in her office, he found she wasn’t there. He peeked out the front door to see if she was sitting on the swing. She wasn’t. He went back to the kitchen, to sneak a quick look out on the back deck.
Where was she? He looked out into the garage to make sure the Tahoe and the Camaro were still there. They were. So, where was Charleigh? He went back out into the living room. Where was she? Just to be sure, Jamie called out her name.
“I’m in here,” he heard her call out from behind.
Jamie turned and saw the soft, golden glow coming from the dining room. Okay, he thought moving closer to the doorway, we’ve never used that room before. That was why he’d been using it as a work area. Sometimes, he wondered if Charleigh even remembered she had a dining room. So, what was going on?
Stopping just outside the room, he saw that the glow was from more than a dozen lily-white candles placed here and there. His briefcase, the files and papers he’d strewn across the table were picked up and neatly stacked on the desk in the corner.
Now that the space was clean, there were two place settings on the far end. The expensive dinnerware; dishes, silverware, crystal stemware Charleigh’d said she’d bought when the house was being built, but never used. The silver serving dishes that she’d complained were just collecting dust.
Looking beyond all that, Jamie saw her standing at the other end of the room. The golden light of the candles played with the coppery strands of Charleigh’s hair that spilled over her shoulders and down her back, the coloring of her skin. The bright twinkle in her eyes.
Or was that caused by something else?
His eyes drifted lower away from Charleigh’s beautiful face, down the long line of her neck and lower. The only thing she wore was a slight smile on her lips. It brought on one of his own.
He had to clear his throat to speak. “Miss Randall, are you trying to seduce me?” Jamie had gotten that line from The Graduate when they watched it earlier in the week.
“Absolutely not, Mister Matthews. For one, Anne Bancroft was older than Dustin Hoffman. For two… Well, let’s just say that I decided to cash in on that favor you owe me. Not to mention the reward for winning the race that day.”
Jamie’s eyes slid along the line of Charleigh’s shoulder and across her collarbone. He knew by the heart, way it felt under the warmth of his lips. The sweet taste of her. He remembered the way Charleigh dipped her head back, hair flowing, to provide him with more room to work with, to consume.
Still his gaze went even lower, over the lithe mounds of Charleigh breasts. Her pink nipples were firm with the anticipation of being touched, caressed. The deep, shadowed valley in between. Jamie could see the vibrations of her heart underneath.
His fingers itched to reach out and touch the silky, smooth flesh of Charleigh’s flat tummy. He ached to trace the contours that ran down her torso, along her waist, beyond her hips.
He had touched this woman before, more times than any other. Still, he wanted more, because every experience with Charleigh was a new one. This was the woman he wanted to, was going to, spend the rest of his life with. For better or worse, and all the rest of that stuff too, this was what he was going to be stuck with. And Jamie couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t half-bad. More like incredible.
“If I recall correctly, you cheated.” He was barely able to get the words out.
“Tsk, tsk,” Charleigh clicked her tongue as she came closer. “All’s fair in love and war, darlin’.”
Jamie’s eyes made one more trip along the long lines of her body, all the way down to the pink polish on her toes.
“Huh-uh.” He shook his head, unable to do much else. “What you’re doing to me is completely unfair.”
“How so?” Charleigh’s eyes twinkled when she came to a stop, with just a breath’s distance between them.
“Um…” His brain couldn’t function properly when she looked the way she did. “You see, the doctor said no strenuous activity until I’m completely healed. And as you already know, my condition is, um… delicate.”
Jamie reached out, ran his hand along the long column of her neck. It
fed the blaze in her eyes.
“Oh yeah, that’s right. I forgot. Sorry,” she sighed. Charleigh looked over Jamie’s shoulder before her gaze came back to meet with his. “Well, you could at least pull up a chair and sit. There’s nothing strenuous about that.”
“I’m not sure my doctor would approve.” He smiled, tracing his fingers along the even plane of her tummy. “It might send me into a relapse.”
“I would definitely handle your delicate body with care. Who knows, it might be beneficial to your healing process.”
Charleigh ran her hands up Jamie’s arms until she reached the soft terry cloth of the towel. She tugged it slowly down, an indication for him to lower his face to hers. When he complied, she whispered, “Sit.” and guided him backward to the nearest chair.
When he was seated, Charleigh slowly lowered her own body into Jamie’s lap until she straddled him. She brought her arms around his neck, ran her fingers through the hairs there that were standing on end. There was a light in Jamie’s eyes, as he held his hands on her hips tracing tiny circles on her posterior with his thumbs, that Charleigh had seen so many times before.
It inaudibly told her how much he loved her. How much she meant to him. It was a promise, a silent understanding, that he would never leave her. No other person, nothing that could ever be said or seen would ever come between them. There was a bond that linked the heart, mind, body, and soul of one to the other, and it could never be broken.
“Do you know how much I love you?” Charleigh asked with a smile. She tilted her head to one side.
“I have a pretty good idea.” Jamie smiled back. He leaned forward slightly to press a kiss to her lips. His hands came up from her waist. One cupped one of Charleigh’s cheeks; the other rested at the back of her head. “Do you know how much I love you?”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
She lay her head down on Jamie’s shoulder, breathing in the fresh scents of soap and aftershave. Her eyes slowly slid closed. A sensation of ecstasy filled her lungs, making her head spin from the warmth of Jamie’s on breath on her skin as he ran kisses down her neck and shoulder. When Jamie reached the end, the edge of his tongue traced the pathway all the way back to the beginning.
With a sigh, Charleigh dug her fingernails into his sides, feeling him tense under her touch.
“Are you okay?”
He nodded.
“I hurt you,” She whispered in his ear. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m fine. I just wasn’t expecting that.” Jamie brought his mouth to Charleigh’s. He squeezed the taut flesh of her thigh as his tongue slipped inside her mouth, deepening the kiss.
What she did next was even more unexpected for Jamie. With her fingers spread apart, Charleigh gently pressed her open palm to his side and dragged it along the width of Jamie’s body.
This time, Charleigh watched as he jerked back, though it wasn’t very far since he was seated. Jamie’s face contorted with pain. He opened his eyes, filled with a perturbed question.
“What was that for?” Jamie groaned.
“You’re in pain, and you’re lying.” Charleigh sat back on his lap, feeling a little agitated herself. And self-conscious. She was, after all, naked.
“It’s not bad.”
“But are you still in pain?”
“Yeah, but… but.” He shook his head, unable to come up with a legitimate explanation. “You wanted me to make love with you, and I just felt… I wanted to make you happy.”
She sighed, shook her head. “What makes me happy, Jamie, is knowing that you’re okay. There’s no reason to jeopardize your well-being just to satisfy me.”
“Don’t you want a macho man for a husband?”
“There’s macho and then there’s moronic, hon.”
“So, you’d rather have some dope with a feminine side?” Jamie asked. His fingertips tickled the skin of Charleigh’s arms. She shivered in reaction.
“I don’t want a guy who knows the name of my fingernail polish just by looking at it, no.” She brought her lips to Jamie’s for a soft peck. “No matter if you’re sick or hurt, scared or sad, or as mad, I want you to tell me. I’ll understand. You just have to be truthful with me— that’s all I ask.”
Scooting from Jamie’s lap, Charleigh stood up. She ruffled her hair before going over to retrieve her robe that was draped on the back of a chair. With her hands on her hips, she turned back to Jamie and smiled. The twinkle that had been in her eyes earlier was still present.
“The food’s going to get cold,” she said, reaching for the lid of one of the silver serving dishes. “I hope you’re hungry.”
Jamie came over to stand beside her. Charleigh was dishing some of the stir-fry onto a plate. “I’m sorry,” Jamie whispered, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey,” she said. “Unh-uh. One night without you making love to me is not the end of my world. We have a lifetime together, and as long as you’re there lying in bed beside me, I’ll be fine.”
This woman, he thought taking the plate from her, is my answer from heaven. It was the only explanation Jamie could think of. Why else would Gavin act so foolishly and let someone like Charleigh get away? If it wasn’t for a little help from somewhere up above, he would’ve been completely lost. And maybe even a little in love with his cousin’s wife, had things not turned out the way they had.
But he was the lucky one in love with Charleigh. He was going to spend the rest of his life with Charleigh. The relationship Jamie shared with her was solid, without a doubt. For Jamie, finding Charleigh was like coming home. It was like finding solid ground.
Chapter Ten
The first day of school had always been the toughest for Charleigh. She could remember the sweaty palms. The queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach when she walked into the gymnasium every year for the assembly. The hope of getting the teacher she wanted, without the bullies being in the same class as her.
It never ended up that way. Charleigh always wound up with the more dreadful teacher of the two for the grade she was entering right along with the biggest toads in the puddle to torment her for yet another year. There was never any kind of reprieve.
Now, as she sat close by watching as Chris goofed around with Trevor Parker, his best friend, in a crowd of fellow Second Graders, Charleigh couldn’t help feeling envious.
Caroline had called late the night before to ask a favor for Charleigh to take her youngest cousin to school on his first day. As owner and editor-in-chief of Magnolia’s local newspaper, she had an early morning assignment meeting that prevented her from doing it herself. Charleigh didn’t mind at all. It might even be fun, she had thought.
She was wrong. It brought back the memories of being smashed among the multitude of students, yet feeling completely alone. Of wanting to be anywhere but there. Andrea had been there, and Gavin too, but they ignored her as they always had when they were around their other friends. Their cool friends.
Why it hurt so much— why that old, familiar pang in her gut was present— Charleigh had no idea. It wasn’t like it made much difference now. Luckily, it had been more than fifteen years since she sat, nervously waiting to find out if Missus Kramer or the dreaded Miss Richardson was going to be her second grade teacher.
One was now retired, after twenty-seven years of teaching. The other awful teacher was long gone to make some other poor child’s life as much a living hell as she’d done to Charleigh’s for the entire school year of 1986-87.
Looking down at her watch— 8:45— Charleigh wondered what Jamie was doing at his office in Dallas. Correction: it wasn’t as much an office as the plush one he’d had in New York City as it was a small cubicle. A very small cubicle, he’d griped. She yawned, fidgeting on the hard plastic bleachers, and took another glance at her watch.
8:53, Granddad was probably just coming in to the feed store with his thermos of hot coffee tucked underneath his arm and a fifty-cent package of sunflower seeds sticking out of a back pants pocket.
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Could this be any more boring?
“Thank you all for coming. You can collect your orientation packets from your child’s teacher.” The elementary principal’s voice over the loud speaker shocked Charleigh out of her stupor of complete and utter boredom. She climbed down from her seat in the bleachers and went to find the group of students where Chris stood.
“Oh, Charleigh. Hi,” Missus McCallum, her teacher from fourth grade, said. She taught second grade now. The woman breathed a loud puff of air that tousled her bangs.
The closest thing Charleigh had ever had to a favorite teacher, Elise McCallum had doted on her. It was discovered years later that she had had a thing for the very single Mike Randall after her divorce was finalized and hoped the extra-special attention she paid to his daughter would spark his interest in her. Unfortunately, it never did.
“Hi.” It was all Charleigh could think to say as she came to stand behind Chris. She put a hand on the boy’s forehead, dragged it back across his crown to ruffle his hair. Groaning, he grabbed her hand away but held on tightly.
“Are you nervous, pal?” She asked, and her seven-year-old cousin simply nodded in response. Charleigh squeezed his little hand. “It’s alright. First days were always a little unsettling for me too. It all came out in the wash, though.”
Chris nodded again. It wasn’t a confident nod. He turned halfway to look up at her. “Uncle Mike used to say that too.”
“I guess I must have picked that up from him then,” Charleigh replied just as Chris’s name was called to join Missus McCallum’s class. She sent the boy off with a supportive push.
As soon as Charleigh collected the packet, she left and headed toward the paper offices. The building where The Magnolia Messenger was located was an old stucco on the corner of Main and Lockhart, in the heart of the small town. It was the same place it could have been found— and looked much as it had— when Caroline Randall’s father had started the paper more than four decades ago.
The large open space was alive with activity when she came through the front door. The sounds of keyboards under mad attack, people talking louder than normal and riotously ringing phones were present as always.
You're Gone (Finding Solid Ground) Page 8