“Carlotta Rocha, you listen to me…”
“You really do know everything, don’t you?” Charlotte interrupted, surprised to hear her old name on Regan’s lips.
“Almost everything. You will have to tell me about your stalker. Seriously, I mean this with all my heart. You are exactly the woman you say you are. So your name is a little different. You come from Rhode Island and not Beacon Hill. You are still smart and talented, funny and kind. You are a hard worker and a good friend. None of that is a lie.”
“Regan, you are a better friend than I deserve. A way better boss, too. I am sincerely sorry for the deception.”
“There was really no deception, Charlotte. I made an assumption – a wrong assumption.”
“But I should have corrected you, then and there.”
“Maybe. But it is behind us now. Let’s just move forward. We have lots of work to do and you have a man to go home to. Go tell him the truth, Charlotte. Do it tonight. I imagine you will sleep a whole lot better after you do.”
“You’re right. I am exhausted from keeping this from him. It has caused so many damn arguments, too. But Regan, what if I tell him and it goes badly?”
“You can always call me if you need a place to sleep.”
Please, God, don’t let it come to that.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It was almost 10:00 at night when Charlotte walked in the door. She should have been exhausted but she looked calm and beautiful. Her winter white suit was still pristine despite the long day. Her hair was perfect.
Hell, she was perfect. How could he tell her the truth? It could cost him everything.
“Alex,” she said before she even had her coat off, “we need to talk.” Feeling his stomach drop to his feet, Alex could only nod yes while he tried to find his voice.
Is she breaking up with me? Moving out? This looks bad and I haven’t said a word yet.
“Where have you been?” he finally asked, sounding more accusatory than he intended.
“Having a drink with Regan,” she responded. I sent you a text hours ago telling you I would be late.”
Oh great. Now she is feeling defensive.
“I know. I was just wondering if you needed dinner or if you had been at dinner.” It was a lame answer, but it was the best he could think of with his heart beating in his chest this loudly.
“Actually, we had a few nibbles, but I wouldn’t mind some ice cream if we have any.”
“Ice cream? You never eat ice cream.”
Oh god. Is she pregnant?
“I’m a little stressed, so I want sugar.”
Oh god, she is pregnant.
“What are you stressed about, Char? Come sit down and tell me.” She came to the couch two minutes later, shoes and suit gone, dressed in sweat pants and a long-sleeved, bright red Henley and carrying a huge bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
“Sorry, did you want some?” she asked as an afterthought.
“Just give me a spoonful and I will be fine.”
Having shared far more than one spoonful, Charlotte ate in silence until the bowl was empty. Placing it on the table beside her she turned back to Alex, looked him straight in the eye and announced without preamble, “Alex. I am a liar.”
“Excuse me?”
“I am a liar and I have been lying to you since the day we met. I know you knew I was hiding information from you but actually I have been making up stories right and left.”
“Good stories?” he joked.
“This is serious. I got my job under false pretenses, and in order to keep it, I told small lies, big lies and boldfaced lies. I couldn’t find a way to keep my secrets at work unless I kept my secrets from you.”
“So, all of this,” Alex swept his hand to indicate the two of them, “is a lie?”
“Oh no, Alex. What we have is about the only real thing in my life. But my past, my family, they are not what you think. I am not a daughter of the American Revolution. My ancestors did not come over on the Mayflower. They came over with the clothes on their backs in the cheapest steerage passage they could book. They came from Portugal. My father owned a bakery until a couple years ago. My brother is turning it into a hot online specialty foods business now, but we grew up down the block from the bakery in Providence, Rhode Island. And we grew up poor.”
Alex sat there, letting everything soak in. Finally Charlotte was telling him what she had been hiding. It was nothing like what he expected, although he had imagined almost everything.
“But why pretend to be from Boston?”
“I told all this to Regan tonight. She was the reason I started this. It seemed innocent at first, but I just felt I could not tell you the truth until I told her. At first, I just wanted to keep my job. Then it just became easier to keep up the lie than to admit it. I didn’t want to disappoint Regan. But then I didn’t want to hurt you and it became a bigger issue. I knew it was wrong but I was all tangled up in it and couldn’t find my way back.”
“I understand,” Alex responded woodenly. “What else have you lied about Charlotte?”
Charlotte seemed surprised by his suddenly cold tone and took his hands in hers. “I am still me, Alex. I never did any of this to hurt you.” Charlotte explained that Regan had mistaken her for a wealthy Harvard donor and a member of an aristocratic family and she had allowed the mistake to continue.
“That’s all, Alex. That is all I did. But to keep it up I told you I was in Boston when I was in Rhode Island, things like that.”
“And the break-in? What about the break-in Charlotte? Or the ‘accident’ in the park that we both know was no accident?” Alex asked in a clipped voice. “If you are going to stop lying, then stop lying already. Tell me everything.”
“That is nothing, Alex. Just an old boyfriend who wanted me back and was angry that I have moved on. He is nothing.”
“He’s not nothing, Charlotte. He tried to hurt you and he trashed your apartment.”
“He lives in Rhode Island, Alex. I live here. With you.”
“Well, he seems to be in Chicago an awful lot,” Alex spit at her. He had been telling lies himself, for years, but for some reason he could not get past his anger with Charlotte.
“You made a fool of me, Charlotte. A total fool. You have not be completely truthful with me a single day that we have been together. Not one. You had a million opportunities to tell me the truth. I would have kept it from Regan if you had asked me to, but noooo,” he raised his voice, “you didn’t trust me.”
“I wanted to, Alex. I really wanted to. It has been killing me not to tell you. You need to believe me.”
“Believe you? How can I believe anything you say to me now? I have never seen a deception that permeated every aspect of a life like yours has. Even now, I had to ask for the complete truth. Even now, you tried to hold back some of the story. That is the same as a lie, Charlotte. Shit, I don’t even know you.”
Alex strode from the room, his anger a tangible thing that was choking his throat and cutting off the air to his brain. He threw open the patio door, indifferent to the cold, paced the patio several times and then came back in, passed Charlotte without a glance and went down the hall. Charlotte heard the door to his office slam with a thud.
Only after she was numb with crying did Charlotte pick herself up from the sofa. She walked past the silence behind the closed office door, hesitated there, then continued to the bedroom. She threw clothes for work and exercise in a bag along with toiletries and hastily scribbled a note to Alex. Sobbing uncontrollably, she grabbed the keys to her old apartment and her coat, and quietly closed the door behind her.
It was a full hour later when Alex emerged from the office, calm at last. What was the big deal about her story? She had not hurt him. She had just protected her job. He had completely over-reacted.
What had caused this awful outburst from him? Perhaps his own guilt? Alex had been completely unfair with her, overreacting and behaving like a brute. He owed her an apology.
And more. I owe her the truth in return.
Even after she told him everything, he had failed to tell Charlotte about his background. After four days of worrying about nothing else, of acting like a zombie for fear that she would leave him, he had stayed mute about his birth.
He couldn’t wait to tell her now. How she would laugh when he told her he was afraid her blueblood family would not accept him. It would be so great to have that weight off his shoulders.
He wandered to the living room, the media room, the kitchen. No Charlotte. He realized it was almost midnight and went to find her in bed. Instead, he found a post-it note on the bathroom mirror.
“I hope someday you will forgive me. I’ll send someone to get my stuff.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
He was there again. It was a fourth day in a row that the guy was hovering outside the building. Alex was pretty sure he had seen him when he went running. The man was no runner and it was mighty cold to take a stroll in the park. Had Charlotte hired a detective? Had his cousin? Alex thought that issue was resolved, but maybe he had assumed too much.
This fellow didn’t really look like a private investigator, although Alex admitted, his image of a PI came from watching too many movies. From the glimpses he had taken, he was being followed by someone young and pretty good looking; too good looking to just blend in with the background or get lost in a crowd. Actually, the guy didn’t even look like he was trying to blend in.
He just stood there, as if he was issuing a challenge. “Notice me,” his posture said. His clothes were non-descript enough, blue jeans and a leather bomber jacket that couldn’t be keeping out the brisk December wind, but his expression and features commanded attention.
He wore sneakers. Was that so he could make a quick getaway? Was he a thief? No, he was definitely trying to get in Alex’s face, even from a distance. His face and stance were a come-on to Alex to get involved. It was an invitation to something sordid or dangerous.
Alex was relieved that Charlotte was not around, if only so this guy couldn’t harm her.
He had been trying to reach Charlotte but in the two weeks since she had walked out, she had not answered his calls, his texts or his emails. He had not received a thank you or even an acknowledgement for the huge bouquet of flowers he had sent with the ‘I am so sorry. Please forgive me” note. Nothing.
Two days ago, he had come home to find her belongings gone and his keys returned. Not a trace of her remained in the apartment and yet she was everywhere. His memories of her filled every corner of the place. He could picture her chasing him around the house threatening with a twisted dishtowel, in the kitchen cooking, at the table chatting over a meal, snuggled into the corner of the sofa, cuddled with him. The bed was now a torture chamber of loneliness. He hated to be there. It felt so damn empty.
He had run out of ideas to win her back. Wyatt had suggested he buy her an expensive piece of Keeli’s jewelry. Wyatt told him that she had admired a piece at Aubrey’s wedding. He thought that was a great idea, but when he called Keeli she told him that the piece had been sold.
“It was a one of a kind, Alex,” she had explained. “I am so sorry.”
Randall suggested going through her parents to get her back. It had worked for him when he had burned his bridges with Sloane. Her mother had helped get him in front of the furious Sloane over dinner one night so that he could apologize in person.
“Her parents are in Rhode Island, idiot,” Alex had told Randall exasperated. “I don’t even know how to find them. Charlotte Roche may not even be her real name.”
Tyler had been cool and logical, very lawyer-like. “She is the guilty party here, Alex. She lied to you, not vice versa. She owes you the apology. You stand your ground and wait for her to recognize your value. She will come around.”
“How’s that working for you and Regan, Ty? You know you love her, asshole. Maybe you should get off your high horse and tell her. Waiting around is definitely not the answer here.”
“Well,” Tyler had responded in a huff, ”remind me never to give you advice again.”
The four men had laughed together over that reaction and there were no hard feelings, but Alex was no closer to a solution. “I am running out of ideas,” Alex had complained for the tenth time that night.
“What about Regan?” Randall had suggested innocently. “She sees Charlotte every day, man. Maybe she can help.”
Alex kicked himself. Why hadn’t he thought of that sooner? He called Regan at the office the very next morning.
“Meet me after work,” he pleaded. “I need your help.”
“I wondered how long it would take you to call me,” Regan had laughed. “Can you come to my office instead?”
“Do you think that is wise, Ree?”
“Don’t worry. I am confident you won’t run into Charlotte. Just come by any time after six.”
Alex was tired at the end of another long day, but he was alert enough to notice that same strange man across the street from Regan’s office building. In a city the size of Chicago, it was a wild coincidence that Alex would keep seeing him everywhere. Alex, always logical, did not believe in coincidence. The man was following him, plain and simple.
Changing direction sharply, Alex was across the street and in front the dark haired man before he could realize he had been spotted.
“Are you following me?” he demanded.
“Maybe yes. Maybe no,” the man answered in an mildly accented voice.
“What are you? A two-year-old? Give me a damn answer,” Alex barked.
“Yes. Happy now? Yes, I am following you.”
“No I am decidedly not happy. Why? Why are you following me?” Alex felt an awful suspicion building somewhere in the back of his brain. The man had an accent. Not a strong one, but it was distinctly there.
New England ‘a’s’ mixed with a hint of Portugal perhaps? Was this Charlotte’s brother?
“Why are you following me?” he shouted close in his face.
“Leave Carlotta alone, Alexander. Leave her alone or I will hurt her and I will hurt her family. I can do it. I can damage them forever.”
Not the brother, the boyfriend. The stalker.
Alex was still digesting the words that were spit in his face so he didn’t see the fist that followed. He was down on the ground with a bloody nose before he realized it. And the man was gone.
Passersby stopped to ask if he was alright. Someone offered to call 911, but Alex insisted it was just a friendly spat and grabbing a handkerchief from his pocket and holding it to his nose, he went to meet with Regan.
Her alarmed face when she saw him told Alex he looked worse then he felt.
“What the hell happened to you?” she asked. “Let me get some ice and then you can tell me.”
Five minutes later Alex was stretched flat on the deep blue leather sofa in Regan’s office with a dishtowel of ice on his face. He was still trying to assimilate what had happened. This man had threatened Carlotta’s – holy shit, he didn’t even know her that was her real name – life.
“Is she really in that much danger? If so, she needs to be back where I can protect her.”
“Alex, right now it looks like you can’t even protect yourself,” Regan chided kindly. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call a doctor, or the police?”
“I’ll be fine, Ree. But Charlotte needs help. She needs to be back in my apartment, in a secure building. That apartment of hers is a joke. That animal already trashed it once.”
“Gil.”
“Gil?”
“That animal has a name. It’s Gil. She has a restraining order to prevent him from coming near her, Alex. All he can do it threaten.”
“Are you sure? He implied to me that he could hurt her. ‘Damage her’ is what he said. And her family.”
“She isn’t even here, Alex.” I sent her out of town on business. She has been gone all week.”
“Okay, I feel better knowing that. The guy has been following
me everywhere.”
“I think he was after you this time, not Charlotte,” Regan reassured him. “And despite the current evidence to the contrary, I think you can take care of yourself.”
Alex smiled at the remark, then grimaced. “Ow, that hurts,” he whined.
“Keep the ice on it, and tell me what you are doing here,” Regan was all business now.
“How do I get her back?”
“Do you want her back, Alex? You told her you couldn’t forgive her, from what I heard.”
“I was hurt, Ree. She told me a lot of lies.”
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