by Mika Jolie
“But what about all the good parts of a relationship?” he asks, not meeting my gaze. “You have to admit that there are good times, with the right person, anyway.”
I shrug. “Maybe. But they aren’t worth the weakness and vulnerability.” The next thought strikes me before I even have a chance to fend it off.
Not even for someone like you.
10
Jagger
I’ll be damned, I think as I listen to Charlotte speak from across the office table. I’m actually enjoying this.
I don’t usually lose track of time like this, even when I’m engrossed in a project. I don’t mind that we’re whiling away the night talking over takeout. I enjoy listening to her, watching the way she absently brushes her hair out of her face, the way she sits with her feet up on the desk. I’ve thought about that night at my apartment more than I care to admit over the past few days, but the satisfaction of the fantasy wasn’t enough to quell the fire that Charlotte seems to stoke within me.
It helps that she’s…well, interesting. Some part of me knew that already, but it feels like every time she opens her mouth, she catches me by surprise. Her life isn’t at all like I thought it was, and it takes a lot for me to admit that I’m wrong.
There’s a vulnerability in her that I never knew existed. I can’t help but ache for her a little—the princess who seems to have everything but is still empty on the inside. It can’t be easy to spend your life in your father’s shadow, never good enough for the expectations heaped on you by everyone around you. For the longest time, I resented that I never knew my parents, but I’ve come to accept my fate and cultivate my own path. Now I find myself wondering if that wasn’t a blessing in disguise. At least I’ve been able to make my own decisions, live my life the way I want without needing to worry about what the people around me think.
But the bigger question is why I care so much about her personal life. Is it because she’s gone from a hedonistic party girl to a broken young woman in the space of a few minutes? Or does it have more to do with the fact that every time I look into her eyes—like pools of liquid emerald—my chest tightens and the place below my stomach heats up. Come on, Jagger. She’s not looking for love. You know that. And who says you are, either?
Still, there’s a pang of sympathetic regret when she tells me her reasons for never settling down. I’m so lost in thought that I nearly miss the next thing she says.
“Your turn.”
I clear my throat. “Sorry?”
“Turnabout is fair play,” Charlotte replies. “I’ve spilled all my deep, dark secrets. It’s your turn.”
“I already told you about myself.” I know what she’s doing. She wants me to open up, reveal something about myself. Experience has taught me to always be guarded. “I’m from Philly, went to B.U.” I give a one-shoulder shrug and glance at the time at the bottom of my laptop screen. “Should we get back to work?”
“I haven’t even finished my chow mein yet,” she says with a wicked grin. “Entertain me. Boyfriend? Girlfriend?”
“Single.”
“Sleeping with anyone?”
“Not at the moment.” I lift a brow. My gut tells me she’s not ready to back down from this conversation, so I might as well have a little fun. “Interested in my sex life?”
“Merely curious,” she says, coy and flirty.
I pull myself closer to the desk, rest my elbows on the table, and meet her gaze. Sexual tension pulses in the room. “What do you want to know?”
She puts on a show of narrowing her eyes and stroking her chin like a villain in a movie. Pursing her lips, she says, “You said you moved around a lot when you were a kid. Were your parents in the military or something? Is that it?”
I hesitate for a moment and bite my lip, unsure how to respond.
“Or…” Her expression turns serious. “Is that not a question I should ask?”
“No, no.” I wave my hand dismissively. That’s not the question I was expecting but experience has taught me Charlotte isn’t one to back down when she sets her mind on something. “I don’t talk about my childhood.”
“Hmm.” She taps her bottom lip thoughtfully then roams her gaze over my black attire. “Sounds like we’re more alike than I thought, Jagger.”
My lips twitch in amusement. “We’re polar opposites.”
“So I take it your relationship with your parents wasn’t…ideal?” she persists.
“You’re not going to drop it, are you?”
She lifts a shoulder. “Stubborn is my middle name.”
I exhale a breath, click the save icon on the screen, and admit my biggest shame. “I never knew them. According to legend, my mother was a prostitute. One of her clients got her pregnant.” Her eyes widen in part shock, part horror. The pain I’ve packaged into a box and shoved down deep in my memory bank stirs. “After she gave birth she turned me over to the City of Brotherly Love. From there I went from home to home.”
Charlotte blinks, clearing her throat, and I see her face flush a little. “Jagger, I’m sorry.”
I shrug. “It is what it is. I got over it a long time ago.”
Life is a roller coaster, ups and downs, ins and outs, twists and turns. My first memory is getting taken from one of my foster homes when I was about four years old. I spent my whole life bouncing from place to place. Growing up in the system wasn’t easy, but I survived.
“I…” She blushes again. “If I’m being honest, you’re the first person I’ve met who has that background.”
I give her a half-smile. “Well, it’s nice to meet you.”
“Thank you for telling me a little more about who you are.” Her expression is thoughtful. “It can’t be easy to talk about.”
“I guess tonight’s just a night of baring our souls, yeah?”
She chuckles, looking away from me, and I’m reminded again how different our lives are. She’s the pampered socialite who’s trying to prove herself in spite of the privilege she grew up in, while I’m the example of someone who can successfully make it out of the system. We’re two sides of the same coin, battling one another for a job we want for our own reasons.
She sucks in a long breath, then glances at her computer and says, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t know if I have that much work left in me tonight.”
“That’s fair,” I say, looking at my watch. “It’s getting late. Want to call it a night?”
She grins at me. “Are you sure you’re not just trying to get me out of here so you can pull an all-nighter and get ahead of me?”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were turning into me.”
“Ew,” she exclaims, putting her hand to her chest and staring at me aghast. “Never!”
I laugh and watch as she begins to clear the desk off. Returning to the last of my dinner, I take a moment to appreciate the way she seems so focused on the details of her task. I find myself lost in the curves of her body and the features of her face, practically forgetting where I am or what I’m supposed to be doing. God, she’s fucking beautiful.
“Well, as far as dinner dates go,” she says abruptly as she closes up an empty container and tosses it into the garbage can, “this isn’t the worst I’ve ever had.”
“Did you just call this a date?”
“Did I?” She smirks at me. “My mistake. It won’t happen again.”
“Okay, okay,” I say, chuckling as I get to my feet. “I get it. Look, I know you’re probably head over heels for me by now, but—”
“Easy there, Don Juan,” she fires back. “You’re going to give yourself a big head.”
We continue to banter as we finish cleaning up, put away our papers and close the office before the long elevator ride down to the ground floor. I’m aware of how close she is to me as the elevator descends—close enough that I can see the freckles on her left temple and the creases in her suit jacket. My nails are digging into the palms of my hands, and I have to force myself to relax, not even su
re why the tension I’m feeling has become nearly unbearable.
Our footsteps echo in the nearly empty lobby as we make our way past the bored-looking security guard and out onto the busy Manhattan street. Many of the office buildings in the Financial District are still lit up, full of investment bankers and stockbrokers who are pulling their usual late hours, but the sidewalks themselves are surprisingly empty.
“Where are you headed?” Charlotte asks, pulling her coat tightly around her shoulders against the wind tunnel that exists between the tall buildings.
“Wall Street Station,” I reply. “You?”
“Right,” she says teasingly as she flags down a cab. “I forgot you were one of those plebeians who take the train.”
“Hey,” I shoot back, “maybe if you didn’t take cabs everywhere, you wouldn’t be late to work so often.”
“I’ll take that under consideration.” A yellow cab pulls along the sidewalk. She opens the door, then turns to look at me once more. “Until then, though…I guess this is goodnight.”
“I guess so,” I agree, putting my hands in my jacket pockets. We lapse into a comfortable silence, listening to sirens in the distance and honking horns over on the Brooklyn Bridge. The wind ruffles her red curls, makes her cheeks flush against the cold, and our eyes meet then, the air between us practically crackling with electricity.
I’m overwhelmed by her presence and find myself glancing down at her shapely red lips. I want to taste them. God, how I want to taste them. I want to wind my fingers in her hair and breathe in her smell and pull her into my bed back in Brooklyn and never let her go.
But I don’t. Instead, I take a shallow breath and cross my arms. “Get home safe and see you around the office.” Her lips curve into a soft smile, then she slips inside the cab and closes the door behind her. From the sidewalk I watch her say something to the cab driver before he pulls away. My gaze follows her, but she doesn’t look back.
11
Charlotte
Jagger’s face is that of a classic Hollywood movie star. The sound of his voice—defiant, heady, and strong, revealing nothing of the disillusionment of his past. His eyes are like oceans in the New York night, reflecting the cityscape behind me and asking silent questions—dangerous questions—that neither of us dares to speak out loud. Looking at him is no longer enough. I want to feel him, reach out and touch him, tell him things I’m too afraid to tell myself. I want to say fuck the promotion, fuck the pussyfooting, fuck everything we thought we knew about each other. I want to feel his arms around me as he takes me places I’ve promised myself I’ll never let myself go. I want…
“Charlotte?” The sound of my name breaks through my trance like an alarm clock interrupting the most tantalizing dream. “Charlotte? Earth to Charlotte!”
I start, straightening in my chair like I’ve been struck by lightning. My face heats as I look around the room. The other higher-ups on the digital strategy team are all watching me expectantly, waiting for my opinion on something. Although what that something might be, I haven’t the foggiest.
“Sorry.” I clear my throat. “I, ah, got lost in thought. This McGowan account has been taking up a lot of my attention lately.” Not a total lie, although the problem is less the account than the person I’m working on it with. But none of these guys need to know that.
Mike shuffles some papers in front of him, frowning a little and not making eye contact with me. During my time working for my father, I’ve determined that there are three types of people at Sloan Marketing. There are the ones like Jagger, who voice their disdain for my position loud and clear, even if they manage to maintain a basic level of professionalism when talking to my face. Those are the ones I can deal with, even though it’s obvious that they don’t think I deserve to be here. All it usually takes to shut them up is to prove them wrong.
Then there are the people like Mike, who seem practically afraid of me, like I’m a time bomb about to go off. As if at any moment, I could just decide on a whim to go running to Daddy and have them fired because they looked at me the wrong way. I can’t exactly blame them. If the positions were reversed, I would probably have the same fears, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying to see them walking on eggshells whenever we have work to get done.
“It’s all right,” Mike says. “I was just wondering if you’d had a chance to look over the service level agreement from Techlytical, yet.”
“Not yet,” I reply, “although if Greta thinks it’s solid, then I’ll defer to her judgment.”
Mike bites his lip. “Greta actually said the same thing about you, when I asked her.”
Which means she hasn’t looked at the SLA or she’s too terrified to make a decision. Ah, my life with a digital strategy team full of yes men. “Okay, forward it to me and I’ll give it a once-over before we approve it.”
“Thanks.” Mike continues to parse through his stack of papers. I’m supposed to be the one running this meeting, and I realize that, but my project with Jagger has been taking up the majority of my time, and the other people on the team know it as much as I do. I’m fine with letting them think my distraction is just because I have a lot on my plate right now. Better that than having them figure out it’s because I’ve really just been replaying the events of last night over and over again in my head.
It’s not just those last few moments after we left the building that have me wrapped around the axle. Although I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit thinking about what would have happened if Jagger had leaned in instead of pulling away. The truth is, I haven’t opened up to anyone like that in years. The only person I’m regularly honest with about my relationship with my father and my status is Katharine, and this was…different, somehow. More raw. Maybe it was because we spent so long hating each other before. Now, as we do this tentative dance of getting to know each other without assumptions, I’m exposing myself in a way I’ve avoided for a long time. It’s like tearing down a wall that’s been up for so long I’ve forgotten how to stand without it.
And then there’s Jagger’s past. He seemed nearly as awkward talking to me about his youth as I had felt talking to him about mine. It’s not like it surprised me all that much—I’ve always known he’s a hard worker. That’s an indisputable fact. What did surprise me were his motivations for acting the way he does. I guess some part of me had wanted to believe that he was just a stick in the mud through and through, one of those uptight assholes who got off on making other people’s lives harder. At least, that would have made it easier before I got to know him. But to find out that he had such a rough childhood, that he managed to bootstrap himself into success at one of the best marketing firms in the country not because of his situation, but in spite of it…that struck a chord with me. And no matter what happens next with this account or this promotion, I can’t shake the sense that we’ve rung a bell that can’t be unrung.
My heart skips a beat when the door to the meeting room opens and Jagger walks in. He pauses when he sees me, our eyes connecting briefly before he begins to speak. “I hope I’m not interrupting you guys.”
“No.” I cross my legs. “We were just having our digital strategy meeting. We’re almost finished.”
“You sure you’re not just saying that to get away from me?” he asks, his eyes gleaming a little.
I smirk and can’t help but take the bait. “That doesn’t sound very professional, Jagger.”
He grins, that same knowing smile that tells me he sees right through my bullshit. And likes it. “Maybe not,” is all he says, and for a moment it’s like we’re the only two people in the room…
Until Mike clears his throat, making my ears burn as I realize everyone at the meeting has been watching our exchange. “Ah…right.” He looks from Jagger back to me, and there’s a flicker of recognition on his face, but he hides it well.
Slipping back into professionalism, Jagger closes the door behind him, revealing a folder tucked under his arm. “I wanted to get these o
ver to you. They’re from the design department—the new set of graphics Alexandra wanted.”
“Perfect.” One of the other strategy team members speaks up, reaching out to take the folder from Jagger as he slides into the chair next to me, his knee brushing against mine under the table and sending a ripple of goosebumps up my arm. “We can look over them now. Which project did you say these were for again?”
Jagger leans forward to respond, his proximity to me nearly overwhelming. His sleeves are rolled up to just past his elbows—a sign that he’s spent the morning hunched over a tablet—revealing the perfectly toned muscles of his lean arms. I’m rigid as a board as the subject of the meeting shifts, and as much as I try to stay focused on what they’re saying, I just can’t seem to pry my eyes away from Jagger.
God, he’s even more handsome in person.
My eyes go wide at that, my heart racing. It’s a simple enough realization, but one that hits me like a ton of bricks nonetheless.
I’m interested in Jagger Crane.
Jagger. Fucking. Crane.
More than interested. He makes me want to knock down all the walls I’ve put up and let him inside.
I’m in so much trouble.
I damn near give up on listening to the rest of the meeting altogether, and the next few minutes are agony as Jagger’s presence continues to stir up clouds of butterflies in the pit of my stomach. Just when I’m starting to think I can’t take it any longer, the others begin to stand up, gathering up their things and putting their coats on. I made it.
“If you wouldn’t mind sending me that document from Techlytical,” I tell Mike as I get to my feet, “I’ll have it back to you by the end of the day.”
“That would be great, Charlotte.” Mike glances over at Jagger, the only other person left in the meeting room, and I realize that he’s waiting for him to make a snarky comment. Instead, he gives me that melting half-smile and remains quiet, the air between us crackling with electricity.