Charlotte choked on a laugh. “Of course she does.”
“But you, us, this thing we’re doing? It’s working.” I reached up, brushing her cheekbone with my thumb without thinking about it too hard. “People finally stopped whispering about Savannah. Especially here in Texas. Dad’s good-ole-boy friends? They suddenly want to know everything I’m doing at the ranch. Their deep pockets are a hell of a lot more open when they think I’m not a train wreck.”
Her eyes warmed, but she tried to hide it as her chin tipped up. “So I’m, what, a business asset?”
“Charlotte,” I said, leaning in just enough that she stilled. “You’re a damn miracle.”
Color swept up her neck, but for once, she didn’t argue. It seemed like as good a time as ever to push my luck. My lips curved into a smile as I cupped her cheek. “And you cry real pretty. I thought you should know.”
She smacked my chest again, scrunching my shirt between her fingers after, right over my sternum like she needed something to hold on to. I probably should’ve been thinking about how sweaty and dusty I was, how I smelled like horse, work, and effort, but I wasn’t.
A smarter man would’ve stepped back. I even started to. Muscle memory, self-preservation, and all those well-worn instincts telling me to create space before I did something we couldn’t walk back, but then I looked down at her.
At her flushed cheeks and the tear tracks, the way her eyes were still a little shiny. At her mouth, her lips soft, parted, and looking like they were waiting for mine. Something snapped deep within my soul, loudly and irrevocably, and the rational part of me that had been trying to keep her at arm’s length so we’d never get to this point shifted gears.
Instead of pulling away, I crowded her, guiding her backward one step at a time until her back hit the stable wall with a quiet thud. I braced my hands on either side of her hips, not trapping her, but close enough that I felt the heat rolling off her skin.
She sucked in a quiet breath, her eyes flicking between mine with so many questions in them. I didn’t know the answers, but before I could think better of it, I dipped my head and kissed her, slow, and sweet, and careful, like she was breakable.
I knew she wasn’t, but this moment was fragile and it would shatter in an instant. I knew that, too.
The world stilled when her lips touched mine. I leaned into her, unable to resist feeling the soft warmth of her body against my own any longer, but I didn’t deepen the kiss. I didn’t want torush, or claim, or demand, but it still felt like I’d fallen through a door I didn’t know I’d been bracing against.
A soft sound came out of her, a sigh or a whimper. I didn’t know which, but hearing it nearly undid me. It was at that point that my body finally caught up to the fact that she was pressed so tight against me, and instantly, the sweetness threatened to spill into something ravenous.
I pulled back, my heart pounding and my cock threatening to punch a hole through my zipper. Charlotte was panting too, but her eyes fluttered open slowly, like she was waking up from a dream she wasn’t ready to let go of.
Before I could assure her that I wasn’t ready either, my phone buzzed, the vibrations loud, violent, and jarring in the aftermath of what we’d just shared. Alex’s name lit up the screen like the universe wanted to slap me across the face.
“Of course,” I muttered, pressing my forehead to hers for a beat as I exhaled hard. “He probably has a drone following us around.”
Charlotte gave me a wet little smile and it hit me square in the ribs, making me wonder what she’d look like if I’d deepened that kiss. Or worse, if I did the kind of unspeakable things to her I’d been dreaming about against my will.
The vibrations seemed to be getting louder though, so I finally sighed and answered before it went to voicemail. “Yeah.”
The tone on the other end of the line told me everything before Alex had even gotten it all out. My spine went rigid, my grip on the phone tightening as whatever warmth that kiss had sparked cooled fast.
Charlotte’s hand landed on my forearm as soon as I hung up, her gaze gentle but searching on mine. “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t tell her yet. I couldn’t. Instead, I fixed my eyes on the horizon like that would make it possible to see the trouble barreling toward us. With just that one phone call, the worldaround us had shifted again, but this time, for an entirely different reason.
“Trent?”
“It’s bad,” I said quietly, finally lowering my gaze back to hers. “It’s really, really not good news. Let’s go. I’ll explain as best I can once we’re on the way.”
CHAPTER 21
CHARLOTTE
“This wasn’t part of the plan,” I muttered as we landed, wheels thudding against the runway hard enough to jolt me forward in my seat.
Trent didn’t react. He hadn’t reacted to much of anything since Alex’s call, other than to go very still, tense in that controlled, unreadable way that made me suspect he was thinking so loudly that he couldn’t hear anything else.
The entire flight back to Chicago had been quiet, neither of us saying much. He wasn’t cold or shutting me out, but he was definitely distant, focused on whatever emergency Alex had dropped in his lap.
Meanwhile I’d been desperately trying not to think about the kiss.Spoiler alert, I’m failing. Spectacularly.
It kept replaying on a loop in my head, his hands braced on either side of me, the way he’d leaned in like he couldn’t stop himself, the warm, slow press of his mouth against mine that had turned my bones to soup. Every time the plane hit a pocket of turbulence, I’d jumped and he had looked over with that unreadable expression on his face, and I’d pretended like I wasn’t dying inside.
