I was goddamn rude to Charlotte, and it was eating me up inside.
She’d left my office like a dog with its tail between its legs. She normally bit back at least once. Not this time.
It was bad enough that Eve had been all over me when Charlotte walked in. Even though there was nothing going on between Charlotte and me, I could tell catching me with Eve made her uncomfortable. But I’d volunteered to usher Eve around to three properties for that very reason, hadn’t I? To show Charlotte that I had no interest in her and to try to steer my dick into a different direction. After my freak-out over her date with my brother, I’d felt a major diversion was necessary. That diversion was currently trying to rub her foot against my leg under the table at Le Coucou.
I wished I wanted Eve. Because she was exactly the type of woman I needed in my life—one I knew would want nothing more from me than sex and expensive things. One who didn’t want inside of my head and heart, one who didn’t want anything long-term.
Eve had two divorces under her belt and had no desire for marriage and kids. Perfect. But as I sat across from her at lunch, I was more than preoccupied.
“So which property are we going to see first?” she asked.
My eyes met hers, but her words hadn’t registered. “Hmm?”
She repeated, “Where are we going first?”
“Right. I was thinking the Tribeca loft since it’s the closest to here.”
She flashed her bright white teeth. “Great.”
When Eve got up to go to the ladies’ room, I decided to check my phone. Out of habit, I clicked on Instagram and pulled up Charlotte’s profile. There was nothing new from today, so I scrolled mindlessly through photos from the past week, coming across one from a week ago that showed a shot of her television while her feet were up on a coffee table. She was wearing fuzzy slippers. The photo was captioned, It’s 9:00 p.m. on a Wednesday night. You know what that means! Blind Date. Best show on TV.
Everything started to piece together in my brain. The nine p.m. entry of “Blind Date” in her schedule. The fact that Max hadn’t waltzed into my office the first chance he got to tell me that he’d snagged a date with Charlotte. I’d thought that was so unlike him, and I’d been too angry to even confront him long enough to feel him out.
Charlotte had lied.
She’d completely fabricated the date with Max to get me to agree to go to the tryout tonight. I didn’t know what was worse, the fact that she’d conned me into agreeing to go or that she’d known what kind of reaction threatening a date with Max would garner from me.
The rest of the afternoon was a blur as I ushered Eve to the three showings when all I could concentrate on was confronting Charlotte.
After dropping Eve back at her condo, I slogged through rush-hour traffic, hoping to catch Charlotte if she hadn’t left the office yet.
Her office was dark, the only light coming from a small desk lamp. Mostly everyone had left for the day, but Charlotte was sitting at her computer, looking like she was surfing the net rather than working.
When she noticed me standing in the doorway, she jumped a little. “Shouldn’t you be heading to Brooklyn? The tryouts are at seven. You need to head out there.”
“No,” I said as the door latched behind me. “I won’t be going to Brooklyn.”
Charlotte got up from her chair and crossed her arms. “I thought we had a deal.”
“What kind of a game are you playing with me, Charlotte?”
“What do you mean?”
“You lied to me . . . why? So you could see me lose my mind? You knew what kind of a reaction you were going to get. Is that how you get your kicks?”
The guilt on her face was apparent. “How did you know I lied? Did Max tell you?”
“He’s in on this, too? Great.”
“No . . . I just asked him to . . . um . . .” She lost her train of thought.
I took my phone out of my pocket, opened it to her Instagram post, and placed it in front of her face. “Figured it out. ‘Blind Date at nine.’ Plus, Max would never keep something like that quiet. He’d look for the first opportunity to rub it in my face. It all makes sense now.”
“I just didn’t want you to miss the opportunity to try out. That’s all.”
Charlotte’s expression was filled with regret. It wasn’t my intent to make her sad. I just wanted to call her out on her lie. But God, the look on her face was making me want to just forget everything and . . . kiss her.
I wanted to kiss her.
I wanted to taste her lips and suck away that sour look on her face, yet I knew that if there was one set of lips on this earth forbidden to me, it was Charlotte Darling’s. She wasn’t just a pretty face and a hot body. She was someone who wanted inside my soul, and that was never going to happen.
I should have just walked out. Instead, I was completely lost in this moment. The most spectacular skyline may have been visible from right behind her, but there was nothing more spectacular than Charlotte’s heaving chest, the sweat beading on her forehead, the reaction she was having toward me. Her attraction to me was palpable.
We were standing about a foot apart, and her damn scent was all I could smell anymore.
A long moment of silence passed.
“What are you doing to me?” I muttered, the words exiting me like a hiccup I had no control over.
“What are you doing to me?” she whispered.
I looked down for a moment, and that’s when I noticed the pink-striped Victoria’s Secret bag on the floor by her desk.
My voice was gruff. “What’s that?”
“Iris made me take a break in the middle of the day to clear my head. It was the last day of the sale, so I went shopping.”
“Why did you need to clear your head?”
“Because you pissed me off.”
God, she was sexy when she gritted her teeth in anger. I wondered what else those teeth could pull on.
Fuck. Stop.
Yet I moved in closer. “Show me what you bought yourself on company time.”
Charlotte swallowed, then walked over to the bag. She bent down and took out the contents, removing a sticker on the tissue paper. Returning to the spot in front of me, she opened it up to show me several pairs of lace underwear in a rainbow of colors.
A black lace thong with a tiny silk rose sewn on the top of the waistband caught my eye.
Picking it from the pile, I held it in my hand, relishing the feel of the soft lace and imagining the black against Charlotte’s creamy skin. Running my finger along the back string, I also imagined what it would look like inside the crack of her perfectly curved ass. Folding my fingers over the thong, I enveloped it, gripping it in my hand in the same way I wanted to swallow her up whole.
Charlotte was watching me, almost as if in a trance.
And I knew I’d taken this too far. I was her boss, and I’d just demanded to see her underwear. I was fondling it. And if she looked down, she’d also see I was hard. I’d officially lost my fucking mind when it came to her.
A voice of reason inside my head warned me. Leave!
I chose to listen to it.
“Good night,” I said as I handed her the panties and swiftly exited her office.
Taking the elevator down, I seriously considered heading to a bar and getting piss-ass drunk, even though I rarely drank anymore.
Instead, I drove around for a while and somehow ended up on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Auditions were already halfway over when I slipped inside. Same as last time, I took a seat in the back row by myself and looked around. Over the years, I’d done a lot of business in this part of Brooklyn, so I knew the area well. I’d been a teenager when the church moved to this particular building—the former Loew’s Metropolitan Theatre. I must’ve been about thirteen or fourteen when they started a big restoration on the place. Iris and I had passed by once during that time. She’d pulled over to tell me all about the building. My grandparents had come here on their first date, when it was still a theatre. The way she told the story, how impressed she’d been that he’d taken her to a theatre that had thirty-six hundred seats—the biggest in the country at one time—you’d think my grandfather had built the thing. I smiled at the memory.
Looking up, I could see why she’d been so impressed. Ornate, intricate designs were hand-restored on the multilayers of ceilings, and a mezzanine soared stories high above the orchestra. I sat in awe of the architecture and all the grandeur of the building, something I hadn’t stopped to do in a long time. Until my attention was diverted to the front of the stage. A woman with the most incredible, powerful voice sang onstage. Damn. She could hold her own against Aretha Franklin. It made me question my sanity for even considering trying out. I was nowhere near as good as these people. Yet I sat there, content to at least watch the show.
During a fifteen-minute break, I was sorting through work emails on my phone when a familiar voice interrupted. “You’ll need these.”
Looking up, I found Terrence, the older volunteer whom I’d met last time I’d come, holding out some papers to me. I took them. “What are these?”
“Application to the church ministry.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the pew I sat in. “Scoot over. Been here all day, and my old dogs need a break.”
I slid over to make room but held the papers he’d given me back out to him. “Thank you. But I’m not joining the church.”
He didn’t lift a hand to take the papers back. “You have to be a member in order to try out for the choir. You’ll need to do a membership class and the water baptism, but they’ll let you try out if the application is in process. Just fill out those papers, I’ll stamp you in, and you’re good to go.”
“I’m not trying out.”
Terrence squinted. “You’re not trying out, and you’re not joining the church, yet here you are for the second time in a week. What did you come for, then?”
I shook my head and laughed at myself. “I have no clue. Wait, actually, that’s not true. I’m here because Goldilocks has me turned inside out.”
“Ah.” A look of understanding crossed Terrence’s face. “A woman. And one that makes you question yourself.”
I scoffed. “She makes me question myself alright—mostly whether I’ve lost my mind.”
He smiled. “She sees you for who you are, and it makes you want to be a better man. Don’t let go of her.”
“It’s not like that.”
Terrence put his hand on my shoulder. “Would you be here, sitting in this church, if it were not for her?”
I thought about it. “No, probably not.”
“Has she made you question how you should treat others?”
Dorothy instantly popped into my head. A few months ago, I’m not so sure I wouldn’t have fired her. “She has a unique way of looking at things, which seems to have caused a lapse in my judgment on more than one occasion. But she’s an employee of mine, maybe a friend in a loose sense of the word. Nothing more.”
Terrence scratched his chin. “What if I told you your Goldilocks was out on a date tonight with a strapping young bachelor?”
My jaw clenched, and Terrence’s eyes zeroed right in on it. He chuckled. “That’s what I thought. You’re still fighting it. I bet you’ll come around. And my guess is, this isn’t the last time I’ll be seeing you in this pew, either.” He stood and held out his hand. “But until then, keep the application and take some advice from an old man who has learned from more mistakes than you even realize you’re capable of making yet. One man’s overlooked blessing is soon another man’s gain.”
