Charlie's Angels

by Cheryl St. John

“What are you doing here?”

  “Well…” His face warmed. He glanced at her companion in embarrassment. “I was in town…”

  Starla’s friend spoke up then. “I forgot something I have to do this evening. I’ll call you later.”

  Starla gave her a grateful smile and a hug. “Thanks, Geri.”

  After watching the young woman walk away, she turned her full attention on Charlie. “You weren’t in Beachtree, Maine. What are you up to? Is Meredith all right?”

  “She’s fine.” He jammed his hands into his pockets and admitted, “No, I wasn’t in town. I came to see you.”

  Starla seemed to collect herself. She found her keys and let Charlie take the grocery bag while she unlocked the door and led the way into the building.

  He followed her up a flight of stairs and waited for her to unlock another door. In her apartment, she turned on lights. She wore a sleeveless top and a soft flowing skirt with sandals, revealing golden tanned limbs, an ankle bracelet and a toe ring. Her silver blond hair was fastened back on both sides in a girlish style.

  Charlie glanced around, realizing how little he knew about this near-stranger. Her furniture was typical cottage style, with floral prints and a mixture of white wicker and old painted wood. He could see her living in a beach house one day.

  She had the life she wanted. Whenever she’d spoken of Maine and her restaurant, he had envied her the excitement in her voice. He was a country boy with a child to raise and a penchant for cheeseburgers and fries. What had he hoped she’d ever see in him?

  “I’m surprised to see you,” she said.

  “I’m surprised to be here.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “I saw your dad. He stopped at the Waggin’ Tongue when he was picking up a load of soybeans.”

  “He didn’t say anything.”

  “I asked him not to.”

  “Oh.” She gestured to her plump floral sofa. “Have a seat. I’ll make us something to drink. What would you like?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Well, I need a minute in the kitchen alone.” She left the room and he heard water run. A minute later, the microwave dinged. She appeared with two mugs and sat one in front of him on the low wicker table. “It’s tea.”

  He remembered she didn’t drink coffee at night. But they’d shared a bottle of wine more than once…. His heart hitched into overdrive. He raised the mug to his lips and looked at her over the top of it.

  She perched on a nearby chair. “So Meredith’s fine, you said?”

  “She’s with Sean and Robyn. They went to Adventureland today.”

  “I get an e-mail from your mom occasionally.”

  His mom had never said anything.

  A clocked ticked nearby, and Charlie glanced over to see a mock fireplace in distressed white wood. Inside the opening was a candelabra designed from driftwood. Shiny rocks and shells were scattered around it. “You have a nice place.”

  Starla had picked up her mug, but she set it down without taking a drink. Her heart felt as though she had run all the way home from work. Twice. Seeing Charlie had been such a surprise, a wonderful surprise, but this awkwardness that buffered them made her uncomfortable.

  He’d come to see her! She placed a hand to her breast.

  He wasn’t saying anything. Her eyes stung and she blinked.

  He looked so good. Tan and strong and his dark hair was clipped shorter than when she’d been at his home. He wore an ivory button-down shirt that emphasized his dark coloring and broad shoulders, and a pair of tan trousers. She’d never seen him in anything but jeans…and, well, nothing.

  Her heart flip-flopped at that racy thought and the vivid memory. Charlie naked. Yes, that was impossible to forget.

  “We could discuss the weather,” she said. “I assume you flew in, so I could ask about your flight. I don’t have to be anywhere until tomorrow morning.”

  It was meant to be a teasing remark, but Charlie got the point because the next thing he said was, “Do you have someone?”

  She blinked, uncertain of his meaning.

  “A boyfriend? A lover?”

  Well, that was certainly direct. “No,” she answered softly.

  “Is there any chance,” he began, “that you could feel something for me?”

  There it was, that rush of hope she’d tamped down for safety’s sake. She couldn’t take having her hopes raised, not when the chances of having what she really wanted were so slim. It took all her courage to say, “I feel something for you, Charlie, that was never in question.”

  His dark eyes brimmed with passion and uncertainty. He moved from the sofa to where she sat and knelt before her. Quite naturally, she reached out and laid her hand against his face, loving the well-remembered feel of his warm skin against her palm.

  He turned his face and pressed his lips against the skin, and that easily lit the fire inside her.

  “I felt something for you from the very first,” she admitted.

  “More than desire?”

  It was a risky question. One that deserved a risky answer. “You had the love of your life, Charlie,” she admitted. “I could never have hoped to compare to that.”

  Those dark lashes came down over his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, she could see the regret. She was right not to hope, because he couldn’t love her the way she needed. He still loved his wife.

  “And I’m a selfish woman. I don’t want to play second fiddle to a memory.”

  Charlie made a sound then, something he turned into an uncomfortable clearing of his throat. When he reached up and took her hand away from his face and reached for her other hand, his strong fingers were trembling.

  “I want to tell you something. I’m afraid of what you’ll think of me, but it can’t be worse than what I’ve thought of myself for all these years.”

  “I’m listening, Charlie.”

  And she was…with her whole heart.

  And so he poured out his feelings about his wife, purged himself of the guilt and regret, all the while exposing his vulnerabilities and admitting his weaknesses.

  Starla listened, her heart aching for the misery he’d lived with. And as he talked, hope took root and blossomed inside her. She understood now, understood why he’d been so reluctant to talk about Kendra, why he’d clammed up and refused to share with her. All this had been festering on the inside of him.

  He wasn’t pining for his dead wife.

  And he’d felt guilty because of it.

  “You’re not a bad person,” she assured him.

  “I know that now. I just couldn’t get past it all or learn to deal with it until I met you. What I felt for you right away was so different, I was scared. It made everything else glaringly wrong. And I couldn’t admit that.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” she told him. “You did the best you knew how.”

  “I want to promise that I can make things work out for us, but I still don’t know how.”

  “Nothing in life is guaranteed.”

  “We’re so different, you and I.”

  “Not all that different.”

  “I live on a country road in the middle of alfalfa and cornfields. You live near a beach and hear the foghorns at night.”

  “That’s just where we’re living, not who we are.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  She pulled her hands from his and framed his face. “It’s not. This is who we are.”

  And with that, she leaned forward and kissed him as she’d been dreaming of for the past six months.

  Charlie wrapped his arms around her and pulled her forward so that she slid from her chair to the floor, and they clung to each other, Charlie’s hand pulling her against him and sculpting her bottom through her skirt.

  She kissed him until she was dizzy with wanting him and deliriously happy at having him close. She pulled away enough to say, “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too, Starla.
I love you.”

  She cried against his lips, earnestly trying to control her emotions enough to get out the words to express her own feelings. “Cha-arlie,” she managed.

  “Say it again.”

  “Charlie. I love you, Charlie.” And remembering what she’d heard him say to his daughter so many times, added, “With my whole heart.”

  He buried his face in her hair and hugged her so tightly she could barely breathe.

  She couldn’t get close enough to express what she needed. After pulling his head down for another breathtaking kiss, she used his shoulders as a balance to push herself to her feet. She took his hand and urged him up.

  He followed her to her bedroom, where she didn’t turn on any lights. The light spilling through the blinds was enough to illuminate Charlie’s face and hair.

  In record time, she had peeled off her clothing and started on his, a difficult task, because he touched everywhere she bared and pressed kisses to her skin. He pushed her back onto the bed and lowered himself over her.

  “I didn’t bring anything with me, I didn’t plan—”

  “It’s okay, it’s a safe time.” She urged him with her hands and body and he groaned when he entered her.

  It was like the first time. It was like starting over. Their coupling was tender and urgent, sweet and yet daring—sweet because it had been so long, daring because they could give everything this time.

  Afterward they lay wrapped in each other’s arms, her head on his shoulder. “How is this going to work?” he asked, a dilemma on his heart still.

  “You and me? I thought we had it down pretty good.”

  “I mean how can we be together? I’ve thought about it, and nothing I have is as important as you—except Meredith, of course. I can leave it behind and not look back, but I don’t know how to take her away from my folks.”

  She propped her chin on the back of her hands on his chest and looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Aw, damn,” he said and sat up quickly. “I’m such an ass.” He took her hand and kissed it. “Starla, will you marry me?”

  She got up on her knees and leaned forward to kiss him. “Yes.”

  They smiled into each other’s eyes in the semidarkness.

  “But I would never let you take Meredith away from your family. They’re important to her—and to you.”

  “Then how—”

  “That’s a no-brainer, Charlie. I’ll move to Elmwood. I love your home.”

  “But your restaurant. That’s your dream, and you’d have to leave it behind. You worked hard for it.”

  “You’re right, I did, and I love the place. But nothing about it has given me as much satisfaction as being your wife will. Ever since the opening, there’s been a hole inside me, a place where you belong.

  “I can sell it or I can keep ownership and let Geri and the staff run it. It wasn’t just the Hidden Treasure that was my goal. It was a place of my own, a place to call home and feel like I belonged. I felt like I belonged at your place, with you and among your family. That’s what I really dream of.”

  “You’ll miss the work. The cooking.”

  She thought a minute. “I can always open a place in Elmwood.”

  “But the seafood is here.”

  “True. But there are refrigerated trucks.” She smiled. “And I can always experiment with corn.”

  He laughed then. “You’d be happy as an Iowa girl?”

  “I’ll be happy as your wife. And Meredith’s stepmother.”

  He hugged her. “She will be ecstatic.”

  “Let’s call her.”

  He pushed her down onto the bed and nuzzled her cheek, kissed her lips. “Let’s wait till morning.”

  Epilogue

  Meredith overturned a box of toys and scrambled through the dollhouse furniture and Little People in search of her Christmas book. It would be Christmas in a few more weeks and she hadn’t read it for a long time.

  It wasn’t on her shelf with her other books, and it wasn’t under her bed. It had to be here.

  She sat down on the floor, and a cardboard box in the corner caught her eye. Some of her things were packed up, ready to move. As soon as her new room upstairs was finished being painted pink, she would move up there and have a bigger room with a big-girl bed. Her old room would be for the new baby.

  She opened the box and there on top was the Christmas angel book. She opened it and looked at the familiar pictures. Daddy and her new mommy, Starla, still said Starla wasn’t a real angel. But Meredith knew better. Ever since Daddy had married her and Starla had come to live with them, Daddy was happy. So happy he smiled and laughed and sometimes he even told her about her first mommy when she didn’t even ask.

  Daddy said it was okay to miss her, and that they would always love her. But he said it was okay to start to forget her sometimes, too. It didn’t mean they didn’t love her so much, it just meant she had been gone a long time and real people were easier to think about than gone people.

  Starla said Daddy’s smiles were special because they came from way inside and it had taken a long time for them to find a way out.

  Daddy said Starla’s smiles lit up the sky better than the moon or fireworks or anything.

  They were funny sometimes.

  And they both said Meredith was the smartest, prettiest girl ever. But they also said that they had loved her first and that even when the new baby came, she would still be their special girl. They would just have two girls to love then, ’cause the baby in Starla’s tummy was a girl, too.

  Meredith closed the book and carried it with her to find Daddy and her new mommy. They were in the kitchen, tasting something Starla was cooking, and Daddy was licking it from her fingers.

  “What are you making?”

  Starla wiped her hands on a towel and smiled. “A cake.”

  “The one with the chocolate chips?”

  “The very one you love.”

  “I might have to eat some ice cream with that.”

  Daddy picked her up and set her on a stool at the counter. “What’ve you got there?”

  “My angel book. Will you read it to me?”

  Daddy sat beside her and read the book. He took his time and used the voices he used when he pretended he was the people in the stories. She loved to hear her daddy read. Almost as much as she loved to hear him laugh.

  He got to the last page and looked at the picture of the family. “Look, Star.”

  Starla looked at the picture, too. Then they looked at each other.

  There was a daddy and a mommy and two little girls, just like always. Why did they look at it funny all of a sudden?

  Starla came around the counter and stood where she could wrap her arms around them both. Daddy hugged her and Meredith.

  “It’s going to be a very special Christmas this year,” Daddy said.

  “Meredith,” Starla said, “I think we’re going to find an angel for the top of the tree.”

  Meredith squealed with delight.

  “Are you sure we need to do that?” Daddy asked.

  “Why not?” Meredith and Starla chorused together.

  “Well, because I’ve already got my two angels right here.”

  The three of them laughed.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-8753-6

  CHARLIE’S ANGELS

  Copyright © 2004 by Cheryl Ludwigs

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known o
r unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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