“We’re the cool aunts! That’s what cool aunts do!” Regan narrowed her eyes, bringing her face closer to the screen. “Are you still wearing your work clothes? After six? While you’re cooking? This goes against Sutton Spencer Chapter Fourteen, Subsection C.”
Sutton shook her head as she pulled the roast out to let it rest. “Ha. Ha.”
“For real, though. You’re all about the comfy clothes when you get home. Unless…” She wiggled her eyebrows. “You’re expecting some company?”
“Yes, I’m expecting to sweep someone of their feet tonight with Lucy at the table singing a song about how her green beans are keen on being mean.”
“Oh, that’s a classic.” Regan cleared her throat: “Maybe I’ll be nice when I’m a teen!”
“And I can wear fancy jeans,” Sutton finished her daughter’s nonsensical vegetable ballad, laughing as she stirred the gravy.
“All right, but then why are you still inyourfancy jeans?”
Sutton hesitated. She had never been a masterful liar, especially not to Regan, and so she said, “I’m just expecting someone to drop off some papers any minute now, and I don’t want to look like a slob.”
She went about getting the utensils, knowing that Regan was watching her. She would not let herself blush.
Of course, it only took Regan about twenty seconds to suss out the truth. “Charlotte Thompson is coming to your house?! I thought you weren’t having company.”
“I’m not,” she shot back vehemently. “And, no, Charlotte is not coming to my house. We have a deadline on the first draft for the first half of the manuscript to the editor at the end of the week, and I needed some clarification on a few things, so I sent her an email yesterday. She informed me that she would make her notes and send the physical notes to me via courier.”
All right, Charlotte hadn’t specifically said via courier, but she’d said, “I’ll make sure they get to you by Monday evening.”
Either Maya or Autumn, her personal assistants, whom Sutton had met a few times but always briefly, would likely be the messenger. Unless Charlotte would be paying a real courier? In which case, Sutton definitely did not want to face a senatorial courier in her sweats.
Charlotte, back when they’d been… friends, always looked fashionable and put together. Charlotte as a senator was even more put together, more chic, more everything. She was unfairly beautiful.
Devastatingly so.
Or, you know, she could be. If Sutton really paid attention to it. But she didn’t.
Obviously she noticed Charlotte’s stylishness, but she didn’t let herself linger. Or stare. Or think. Or—no. None of that.
Not even when Charlotte tried to get them to go there. She was never overt or pushy, but somehow, nearly every single time the two of them were together, they wound up on the topic of Sutton.
She was usually able to cut it off when she realized what was going on, but Charlotte was always able to get something out of her. Some fact or short story. She was so good like that.
She had been good a decade ago, so it only made sense that she would be even better at… talking now.
Regan shook her head on the screen. “You know you can’t hide anything from me, Sutton Spencer. You always come back from your Tuesday meetings with Charlotte so tight-lipped and all, ‘Nooo, nothing happened! We are professionals, I?—’”
“I’m there, thanks,” Sutton cut in dryly. “And there has been absolutely nothing that’s been unprofessional.”
Truly!
Sutton made sure of it.
Even when Charlotte sat with her legs impeccably crossed and leaned to the side so that her skirt rode up just enough to truly see her thighs. Or when she slid her hand through that light brown hair and made it cascade over her shoulders just so. A little messy, but not really. Or when?—
Sutton thankfully was taken out of her thoughts by the knock on her door. Tossing the dishtowel she’d used to clean her hands through cooking over her shoulder after one final quick wash and dry, she took the phone and hurried to the door for the courier.
“Sorry it took me a minute, I’m just in the middle of—” She cut herself off when she noted that the person at her door wasn’t a courier at all. Surprise slammed through her as she faintly finished, “Making dinner.”
A grin slid over Charlotte’s face. It was her sly one, though it was also sincere in a way that made her look charming, knowing, and guileless all at once. “It’s not a problem.”
Sutton could only blink. It really was Charlotte, standing on her doorstep at six o’clock at night, as the chilly night air and evening rain surrounded her. Those rain droplets were in her hair, her breath visible in light puffs as she exhaled, and Sutton’s heart skipped a beat.
Before she put a stop to it. No.
