Mabel took the bait, which made dinner itself survivable, but she did keep asking questions about us, too. Delighted with our story, she hung on every fabricated word about mistletoe and instant love.
Charlotte kept her composure, laughing when it was expected, finishing some of my sentences with embellished details of her own, and she smiled when required to, but the lovestruck facade vanished the second we were back in the truck.
She shoved me as hard as someone her size could manage, and even though it felt like getting beat on by a child, it was still enough to make me grunt. I spun to face her without turning over the engine.
“What the hell is your problem?” she demanded, her cheeks flushed and her eyes blazing in the ambient light streaming in from the street. “That can’t be our meet-cute!”
I blinked at her. “Meet-cute?”
“It’s that thing where you don’t make people want to punch you when you meet them,” she snapped. “You royally snubbed me at CC’s Christmas party. Everybody who was there talked about it for weeks. That story’s never going to hold up.”
I shook my head. “It’s too late now. Rob and Mabel are part of every social club in the greater Dallas area. They’re invested in that story, so it’s sticking. We’ll just make something up if anyone starts asking questions. Maybe I tracked you down later that night.”
Her nostrils flared, but she was clearly done talking about this. She turned up the music so loud that my eardrums ached, and I spun the volume knob down. She switched on the AC. I turned it off. The sudden tension between us would’ve been badenough even without the traffic, but we’d slowed to a crawl, our windows up, and only the hum of the engine filling the tense silence between us.
“You’re an asshole,” she said finally, throwing me a glare that could cut glass.
“I’ve been called much, much worse,” I replied evenly, gripping the steering wheel tighter as annoyance rolled through me.
I hadn’t meant tosnubher at the party, but it seemed to have become a bit of a tender spot. If I’d known then what I knew now, maybe I just would’ve done it, but I couldn’t change the fact that I’d walked away.
She huffed out a breath as she crossed her arms, obviously pissed off about it all over again. “Maybe I’d be better off with Gregory.”
I nearly swerved into the lane divider, but I forced my eyes onto the road and my hands to steady on the wheel. “Okay, slow down. What exactly do you want?”
She blinked at me, startled, as if the question had hit a nerve. “What do you mean,what do I want?”
“I get it, okay. I understand that the wealth needs to be protected and that your family does that by arranging marriages. I realize this is just how it works for you. Hell, my own sister married into the Westwoods after Jamie was given the ultimatum, but she did it for love.”
Charlotte wasn’t a child, but she wasn’t naive either. So I glanced at her and repeated my question, a little more gently this time. “What do you actually want, Charlotte? Because I can play this charade for Alex all day long, but I want to know whatyouwant. Do you want Gregory? Because if so, I can have you in the air in an hour.”
Her jaw tightened, but to my surprise, she didn’t answer right away. She just stared out the window at the passing lightsand chewed on her lip. An odd sensation crept up on me, a suspicion that it was possible this was the first time anyone had genuinely asked her that question.
At the realization, all I knew for sure was that whatever she said next, it was going to change the entire trip—and maybe even everything I’d thought I knew about her. She pouted for another moment, like she was weighing how much to tell me. Then she visibly steeled herself.
“I’d like to have kids,” she said and I blinked, half-expecting a punchline, but it didn’t come. “A big family. I want to know what it felt like for my mom. Being loved, and needed, and never forgotten.”
What the hell?
I didn’t understand what she meant, not fully, but there was a weight in her voice that told me she was stone cold serious. She didn’t give me a chance to ask any questions either, simply turning up the radio again as soon as the words were out.
That simple act said more than anything she could have said aloud. Instead of turning down the volume again, I let the music fill the space between us. Then I wondered why my first instinct had been to offer her the babies she so badly wanted, even knowing that having a family together had never been anywhere close to being part of the deal.
CHAPTER 15
CHARLOTTE
Iwoke up to silence. Complete, utter silence.
I didn’t think I’d ever heard anything like it. There was no traffic, no sirens, and no hum of the city. Just space, too much of it stretching in every direction, and it really made the point sink in that I was very much, smack dab, right in the middle of nowhere.
My heart started pounding as I sat up, but I wasn’t afraid. This was just so unfamiliar that it was disconcerting. Blinking a few times to adjust to the dim light of pre-dawn barely starting to filter in through my windows, I slid my legs off the bed and stood up, wrapping my robe around myself.
By the time I’d crossed my bedroom and opened the door, Trent was already gone. His room across the hall was empty, and when I glanced out the massive window at the front of his house, I saw the taillights of his truck disappearing down the long driveway.
Great. I’ve officially moved into a Bonnie-and-Clyde situation. Except Clyde ditched me at dawn.
More discomfort slithered through me. Uncertain what to do with myself alone in his house, I went back to my room and triedcalling Alex, but it only rang once before it went to voicemail. I hung up before the beep.
