Bedeviled

by Madison Michael

  “I need to walk off this tight hamstring, so I’ll have to pass this time,” she had replied reluctantly. “Meet you there in five.” Of course, Charlotte had been Charlotte, and that included being unpredictable.

  Charlotte, leaving Alex standing there, had taken off across the park without a backward glance. Alex stood dumbfounded a moment, watching her slow jog-walk toward the trail across the grassy lawns of Lincoln Park. She was heading directly toward their usual post-run Starbucks and if he didn’t get moving, she would be there first.

  Still he stood, willing her to look back and flash him that smile that changed her whole face. She didn’t, of course, and Alex was left standing there, admiring her lithe figure and the smooth bunch and release of her muscles in those tiny running shorts as she moved into the distance. Reminding himself to close his gaping mouth, Alex jogged to the parking lot, trading an extra moment of admiring a beautiful woman for a few short moments admiring his beautiful new car.

  Arriving at the coffee shop several minutes before Charlotte, Alex was forced to cool his heels. He spent the time piecing together anything he could think of to uncover Charlotte’s deep, dark, secret. Admittedly, he needed the ten-minute head start away from her to give his overheated blood a little cooling time too. He kept envisioning the two of them in that sweet ride, sitting close with their sweat-slicked bodies. The image had intensified the jolts of electricity already coursing through his veins from running beside her scantily clothed body.

  Too bad she turned me down. One of these days we will be in tight quarters, all alone, and I will make my move. I have resisted too long already.

  Since the mention of her tight hamstring, all Alex could think about was massaging her leg, and moving up from there. Did the woman not understand what she was doing to him? After all, he was a healthy red-blooded man. How long was he supposed to watch her round little ass wiggle in front of him, or the glide of muscles in those incredible legs - or OMG - her breasts bob up and down in those little running tops. The woman was killing him. He wanted her so badly he could taste it.

  He chided himself to stop thinking of her that way, as he always did when he lusted after her. He would catch himself wanting her and repress the overwhelming sexual response that had plagued him since the beginning. She was so much more than just beautiful and sexy. She was a brilliant woman, funny, witty, complex and delightful. She considered him a running partner, and a friend…

  …but that body, oh, that body. Stop it!

  Alex determined to stay focused on what she might be trying to cover up and got his desire under control. He reviewed the signs - when she changed topics or failed to make eye contact. He carefully dissected her words while he waited for her to arrive. He knew she was being intentionally elusive. Alex resolved again that today would be the day he found out what she was concealing, beginning as soon as she arrived.

  Speaking of arriving, Charlotte should have shown up long before now. She would have, unless something had happened. How long had he been sitting, pondering? How much time had passed?

  Heart racing like a freight train, Alex ran into the park. Unsure why, he was terrified of what he might find.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The ambulance arrived within minutes. To Alex, it felt like hours. He paced like a caged animal and cursed like a sailor until the EMTs jumped from the vehicle, did a quick check of Charlotte’s bloodied body and pronounced that she would be fine. She had told him the same thing while they waited for the professionals, trying to convince him that she could lean on him to get home rather than go to a hospital.

  “What were you doing so far off the path?” he barked at her, once he was sure she was not seriously injured. His frustration and fear were getting the better of him.

  “Was I? I hadn’t realized,” she responded vaguely, her voice quiet, as if she had to work hard to find the breath. She must have really hit her head. She seemed shook up and distracted, asking more than once, “Are you sure we are alone. Is anyone around?”

  Alex was not sure she understood what she was saying, but when she repeated the questions again, he became concerned. “Like whom, Charlotte? Was someone here? Was someone bothering you? Is that why you are way over here? Did someone drag you here?”

  “Of course not,” she had retorted quickly, suddenly more alert. “I just was embarrassed at the idea of someone seeing me fall on my face.” Was she trying to laugh it off? Was she lying?

  Running through the park it took Alex a few minutes to spot Charlotte, flat on her face in the grass, well off the path she should have taken. She was lying near a copse of trees that was not in a direct line to the Starbucks - not even close. She was face down in a more isolated area, almost completely hidden by bushes and trees. If the grass had been longer, if her running clothes had not been a vibrant magenta, he would have missed her. She wasn’t moving, not making a sound. His first thought was that she had been accosted, dragged to this spot and left for dead. Alex’s heart had stopped cold.

  “Oh God, please, please, please let her be alive,” he prayed repeatedly, rapidly approaching her still form despite his trepidation. As soon as she sensed him beside her, she mumbled his name and he leaned close to hear her soft voice, relief flooding him. When he helped her roll over, he saw her battered face.

  Alex wanted to kill someone with his bare hands.

  “I was afraid to move too much without help in case I broke something. My ankle is killing me,” she had told him calmly in a raspy voice. She looked shaken up, trembling slightly but it was only moments before they switched roles and she was reassuring him. He feared internal injuries, a concussion, the worst. He insisted that that they call for aid and transport her to the nearest hospital.

  “Just help me up so I can go home and clean up. I don’t want to make a scene, Alex. I will be fine.” Ignoring her, he called 9-1-1. One look at her and he knew she needed professional assistance while he needed an outlet for his anger and adrenaline.

  As they waited for the first responders, Alex went through the motions of checking Charlotte for obvious broken bones, although he had no formal training and little idea of what he was actually doing. Wrapping his hands around her small ankles and wrists, lightly moving them over her cool skin, reminded him that Charlotte was not physically the larger-than-life persona she projected.

  Her personality always filled any room. Since the moment they had met at a party, he had noticed no other woman but her, despite his continued dates on the West Coast. He would have described Charlotte as taller than most women, but now he recognized that she was only of average height with a slim, small-boned build and the long lean muscles of a runner.

  Charlotte had aristocratic, fine features and a pixie-like heart-shaped face where two large bruises were forming on her cheek and forehead. She had a long scrape as if she had been dragged across the concrete sidewalks and there was pain and fear reflected in her enormous golden-brown eyes. The tears she was trying to hold back were clinging to the fringe of exceptionally long, straight lashes.

  Her hair was swept away from her high forehead in a sleek, short bob. Even now, with grass stuck to the strands, it was styled perfectly. It always was, despite her habit of sweeping one side behind her delicate shell ear when she was animated or nervous, only to have it fall forward again, thick, dark and lustrous.

  Charlotte’s mouth was a grim line of pain, but usually the small bow was widened by her bright smile, showing her small white teeth and that one ‘snaggletooth’ on the bottom that she hated so much. It was a lovely, patrician face, appropriate for a descendent of the original New England settlers. Right now, disturbingly, it was the scraped and bruised face of someone who had been savagely attacked.

  Where are those damn EMTs?

  While they waited, Charlotte answered questions reluctantly and in a reedy voice. “Tell me again what happened,” he asked her gently. He was determined to keep asking until he was able to piece together a coherent story.

  “I wa
s just jogging over to meet you when I caught my foot and took that stupid, klutzy spill.”

  “Charlotte, that is not like you at all. Are you sure it wasn’t something else?” Alex asked gently. The lines did not ring true to him. “I have never seen you be anything but graceful, even when you are exhausted.”

  A fall was inconsistent with her known behavior and the bruises developing on her face didn’t look like they came from a fall either, at least not to him. She was in an odd location In the park, too. The whole thing made absolutely no sense. It had to be a fabrication, but he could not imagine she would cover anything up, especially not if there was an attacker in the park who might hurt someone else. Charlotte would be cognizant of doing anything she could to protect others.

  Yet, that was her story. She just fell. She lost her footing and went down hard. Alex knew better. Although he had no understanding of her motives, he sensed she was lying. After all, he had run with Charlotte several days a week for many months now and he knew her to be graceful and surefooted. Something else was going on, something that made no sense.

  She was behaving strangely too. Even under these unusual circumstances, she was being uncharacteristically fretful. It could have been the injuries, but it felt like something menacing to Alex. It seemed to him that she was frightened and specifically fearful of something of someone being nearby. Add the questions earlier about being alone and Alex became convinced that someone had done this to her.

  “Are you sure, Charlotte? You can tell me if there was someone here. In fact, you should tell the police if you were attacked,” he encouraged her.

  He sensed that she wanted to engage the police but she refused. “The police are completely unnecessary, Alex.”

  “Someone might hurt another woman,” he pointed out.

  “That would be true if I had been attacked,” she told him, tired of talking but repeating her assertions. “No one else was here though. I just fell, so no one else is at risk.” Despite her repeated assertions to the contrary, she was definitely hiding something. The more Alex reviewed the situation, the more he feared it was something sinister.

  She looked like hell, battered and bruised. She had two skinned knees trailing blood down her shins and into her shoes, the cuts and bruises on her face and a scraped elbow and wrist that seemed to be causing her a lot of pain. He wondered it she had broken something. Her hand was a mess where she had put it out in front of her, trying to break her fall.

  She had that ugly bright red gash bleeding on her right cheek like someone had cut her and he could also see bruises forming near her shoulders and on her neck.

  While these marks were inconsistent for a fall, they made perfect sense if someone had grabbed her and tried to choke her. Her thin voice supported that theory too. She was definitely struggling to speak and eventually she stopped answering any questions from him.

  Once he had reassured her they were alone, she grew quiet, although she repeatedly complained about a pain in her ankle. It didn’t look broken to him, and although he was no expert, he wouldn’t allow her to stand up without help. He was frightened by the scope of her injuries, but in order to keep her calm, he strove hard to calm himself.

  “How bad does it look?” she asked when he finally heard sirens growing louder.

  “Not so bad, really. Just a few minor cuts and scrapes.”

  “You’re a bad liar, Alex.”

  If you only knew, Charlotte. If you only knew.

  Laying there, she looked heart-stoppingly beautiful, vulnerable and fragile. She stood toe to toe with him when they were running together, matching wits and physical endurance and while he never forgot for a moment that she was a woman, Alex had never seen her as he did now – defenseless. Alex felt an overwhelming need sweep over him. He wanted to be this injured woman’s defender, her knight in shining armor. It was a completely chivalrous emotion, one that he had never experienced before.

  Rein this in, Alex. You cannot fit a woman into your life right now. Especially not a brilliant and deductive woman who is harboring potentially dangerous secrets of her own.

  Alex moved back as the EMTs carefully lifted Charlotte onto a stretcher and skillfully assessed her. He stepped away slowly and allowed them to take complete control. They wheeled her into the ambulance. She was already hooked to an IV, the needle protruding from the fragile hand he had held only moments earlier. Reminding himself that she was in capable hands, he released her to the experts with reluctance, standing alone as the doors closed behind them.

  This is a sign, Alex. Just let her go. Now is not the time to take on Charlotte. Not a chance. No matter what.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Charlotte was aware of the muted sirens as the ambulance inched through morning rush hour traffic toward Northwestern University Hospital, just blocks away. The EMTs were giving her something through that tube in her arm but still she lay in a haze of pain. She assured herself that she was being well cared for by the professionals, but she was unable to stop the trembling that had begun as soon as she left Alex and she allowed herself to let the paralyzing fear overcome her.

  How had everything gone so wrong, so fast? How could she have been stupid enough to let her guard down, even after so much time?

  You know better.

  It had been such a glorious morning and she had been so happy. She had started the day too early, true, but she had watched the sun rise over Lake Michigan briefly turning the grey-blue water to fire and it was almost as dazzling as the smile of the man beside her.

  Alexander Gaines. She met him at a rooftop celebration back in June and still she remained in awe of him. She had been saying her goodbyes, leaving the party where she had known only a work colleague or two, when he made his entrance. Popular with everyone, Alex was sinfully handsome and so confident. He was a cross between California surfer-boy - tanned and blonde with white, white teeth - and rugged pitchman for an expensive foreign beer, tall, built, with deeply chiseled features and the hint of a bump in his aristocratic nose. His dishwater blonde hair was even lighter now, bleached by a summer in the sunshine, setting off his eyes of deep, piercing blue. He had the body of a Greek god, tight butt, long legs, broad shoulders. He was a devastating combination of lean runner and muscular swimmer. He had all that and a brain.

  A phenomenal brain. A dangerously astute brain.

  They had hit it off immediately, finding finance in common and quickly discovering their shared passion for running. “Marathons? You do marathons?” she had asked him, incredulous. “But I am a marathon runner too.”

  “Well, isn’t that a lovely coincidence?” He was flirting shamelessly. “Perhaps we can egg each other on a bit?”

  Were they still discussing running?

  “Where do you train? What is your training routine?” she asked and they were heads together comparing workouts for a solid ten minutes until the conversation moved from training through a competitive debate comparing their financial knowledge, all the way to favorite movies.

  “Is there anything you don’t know? You’re incredible,” she had finally conceded.

  “You should only know,” he laughed, flashing a sexy grin that took her breath away.

  “Wait until you discover all the great things there are to do in this city,” he had told her when the conversation turned more general but no less flirtatious. “If you like museums, we have some the finest in the world. Sports? We have the best fans you will find anywhere. I dare you to pit Red Sox fans against our Cub fans,” he had laughed. “We have beautiful beaches, unbelievable parkland, clubs, fantastic restaurants. Seriously, Boston cannot hold a candle to Chicago.”

  Alex had bragged like a true native, describing all the places to see, all the things to do in Chicago and she believed he was hinting that he would show her those places - that he had been working up to asking her for a date. Disappointed when he kept it strictly platonic, she never let it show. They had been meeting almost every morning they were both in town since to train fo
r the Chicago Marathon and she still had hopes their relationship might shift into something more romantic.

  During these last months, Charlotte had come to know and admire Alex. He had opened up to her and she had come to know a man who worked hard his whole life, first in school where he won both an academic and a track scholarship to Stanford, then in college. He now headed the private bank he had joined almost a decade ago, after completing his MBA at Northwestern’s Kellogg school. She admired his work ethic, his logical approach to setting and achieving his goals. She saw her own determination mirrored in his.

  She also saw a man who loved his family unconditionally and who was unfailingly loyal to his friends. He was serious and logical in his approach to everything, never letting his emotions get the best of him. He was passionate about national and local politics about which he could debate her to death, and an aficionado of Chicago restaurants and cuisine. He loved running, swimming and hockey, and excelled at all three. He was warm and funny and sexy as hell.