Everyone moved away.
Charlee let out her breath without even realizing she’d been holding it. She waited a couple of minutes, then crept from behind the sculpture and slipped into the conference room.
It was standing room only. She waited just inside the door, spotted Maybelline and Nolan sitting beside each other up front.
Mason and Daphne stood at the podium together. Mason was sharply put together in an elegant navy blue suit, white shirt, and red silk power tie. He looked as if he’d stepped straight from the pages of
Fortune
magazine. Daphne was equally snazzy in a dove gray suit with pearl buttons and a pink lace blouse. His dark hair contrasted with her pale blondness. They looked tailor-made for each other.
Charlee swallowed hard and glanced down at Violet’s short skirt and the Hellraiser T-shirt she’d washed out by hand the night before. She hadn’t had the chance to buy anything new this morning and last night all the stores had been closed.
’Nuff said.
No matter what secret romantic thoughts to the contrary had been swirling around in the back of her mind, she and Mason were never going to get together. They were too different. Their worlds diametrically opposed.
The rich boy and the girl from the wrong side of the tracks.
Mason cleared his throat and began to talk. A murmur of shock undulated around the room as he told the reporters what he had discovered about the Oscar ballot discrepancies.
Pride filled her chest. She was so damned impressed with him. He wasn’t like the other rich, powerful men who’d disappointed her. He sacrificed his family’s reputation for what was right.
Mason looked up from the paper in his hands and his eyes met hers across the room. Charlee gasped as his gaze branded her. She felt the heat straight to her bone.
She blinked, trying to break eye contact to regain her equilibrium, but it didn’t work. They were connected, seared, linked by something much more powerful than mere chemistry.
A blast of air from the open window cut through her cotton T-shirt and in that awful moment Charlee realized how much she was going to miss him.
And then she knew.
She’d lost her cool. She’d fallen and she was never ever going to be able to get up.
No matter how hard she’d tried to avoid it, no matter how she’d fought against her feelings, no matter how she’d struggled not to let him under her skin and into her heart, she was in love with a man she could never claim as her own.
The second his eyes met Charlee’s Mason’s brain shut down. He forgot about the reporters in the audience, he forgot about his parents, he forgot about Daphne pressing her palm against his lower back.
He stopped speaking in midsentence, his stare focused on the lone woman standing at the back of the room. The reporters turned their heads to see what he was staring at. Daphne took the press release from his hand, stepped up to the microphone, and took over reading what he’d written last night while he’d been in jail.
At one time, Daphne was what he had thought he’d wanted. A woman to stand by his side as his business partner. A woman his family approved of. A woman with the right breeding, the right looks, the right contacts.
Mason realized that until he’d met Charlee, he’d had no idea what
he
really wanted.
To make amends for coming clean about the Oscar scandal and thereby causing deep financial losses to Gentry Enterprises, his parents were pressuring him to get back together with Daphne. But the old guilt trip no longer worked. For twenty-seven years he’d done what the Gentry name demanded, putting what was best for the family ahead of his own wants, needs, and desires.
What he wanted was Charlee Champagne.
But what did he have to offer her? Scandal. Shame. Dishonor. She deserved so much more than he could give.
These thoughts raced through his head in a matter of seconds. Daphne had finished reading the press report and the reporters were yelling questions at him but Mason didn’t hear a thing they said. All he heard was the strumming of his pulse in his ears.
Charlee. Charlee. Charlee.
She was the woman he loved with all his heart. He’d known it the night he’d made love to her and looked deeply into her emerald eyes. She had given him his freedom and she had taught him to let go and just live. She was the toughest, strongest, most independent woman he’d ever met and he loved her for it.
Because of her, he’d taken chances he would never have taken. He’d faced his fears and come out the victor. Because of Charlee he had learned to stop trying to live up to everyone’s expectations and make the choices that were right for
him.
She’d taught him that a name didn’t make the man but that the man made the name.
The realization sent his mind reeling. The liberty that a new belief in himself could bring opened up so many possibilities. He could be anything he wanted to be.
“Mr. Gentry,” a reporter demanded. “Just how deep does this scandal go?”
Daphne nudged him in the ribs and Mason broke eye contact with Charlee to answer the man’s questions. First he had to finish the press conference, but after this was over, he and Charlee were going to have a long, serious talk. He had to tell her how he felt. Question was, did she feel the same way?
He glanced at the back of the room again, hoping to find an answer in her eyes, but panic, much stronger even than what he’d felt the night before at the Oscars, knocked his world out from under his feet.
Charlee was gone.
Charlee’s Band-Aid-covered blisters rubbed against the heels of her boots as she raced through the Grand Piazza, tears misting her eyes. Violet Hammersmitz’s flouncy little skirt tail slapped the back of her thighs.
In the lobby, she stumbled through a crowd of curiosity seekers who’d gathered to hear the outcome of the press conference. People peered at her with prying eyes, escalating her sense of desperation. She had to get out of here. She saw Pam Harrington from Twilight Studios and Edith Beth McCreath among the milling throng. The women called out to her but Charlee ducked her head and just kept going.
Despair consumed her.
She lifted her thumb to her mouth to gnaw her fingernail but stopped with her hand halfway to her lips when she saw the flash of shiny red polish.
Be Still My Heart.
What on earth had compelled her to get emotionally close enough to a man that she would allow him to paint her fingernails?
Her crimson nails taunted her. She yearned to soak her hands in fingernail polish remover and eradicate all evidence that she had foolishly let down her guard when she’d known better.
From the minute she’d seen Mason Gentry in the parking lot outside her detective agency she’d known he carried the potential to break her heart. She hated this feeling. She wanted her cynicism back, her detached aloofness, her sharp-tongued defenses.
“Charlee!” It was Mason’s voice and he was coming after her.
No. No. She couldn’t bear to look into his eyes again. Couldn’t stand knowing she must send him away.
“Charlee!” He was running to catch up with her.
She shouldered her way through the mob that was growing thicker by the moment and hit the revolving glass door that led to the sidewalk and freedom.
But she knew it was far too late for regrets. She’d already fallen in love with Mason and he was out of her league and out of her reach.
Let go.
A dissenting whisper started in the back of her brain, low and seductive, rousing a rabble of contradictory thoughts. Let go of what? The limitations of the past? Her love for Mason? Her regrets? What?
Let go.
But she didn’t want to let go. Holding on kept her sane. Clinging to her beliefs about rich men provided a safety net. But Mason was different and she knew it. He didn’t fit the mold. He wasn’t a stereotype. He hadn’t hurt her on purpose.
Let go of…
Her boots slapped against the cement as she hit the sidewalk. She cupped her hands over her ears to drown out the noise in her head but it was no use.
Let go of your…
She did not want to hear this. Could not deal with the consequences of the statement. If she let go, then wouldn’t she fly apart into a million vulnerable pieces? She didn’t want to let go. She just wanted to be free. Free of the dread now strangling her heart.
Let go of your fears, Charlee Champagne. Let go and accept the inevitable.
But she could not.
“Charlee, wait.”
She ran but he ran faster. She chugged a good four blocks from the hotel before he caught her.
Mason grabbed her elbow and spun her around to face him. He was breathing as heavily as she. Charlee studied his broad chest and refused to look him in the eyes.
“Let go of me.” She tried to pull away.
“I won’t. We’ve got to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I don’t belong.”
“You do belong. You belong with me.”
“Daphne belongs with you. You’re two of a kind. You’re perfect for each other. Your parents want you to be with her.”
“I don’t give a damn what my parents want.”
“Since when?”
“Since I fell in love with you.”
She sucked in her breath. Had she heard him right? Mason was in love with her?
He crooked a finger under her chin and forced her head up. “Look at me, Charlee.”
Reluctantly, she looked into his eyes. Every emotion she’d struggled to deny knotted her stomach. Love and hope and longing and desire snarled together and grew bigger by the moment.
She caught her breath at what she saw swimming in the warm brown depths of Mason’s eyes.
“I know we’re night and day,” he said. “I know we come from completely different worlds. I know we’ve been acquainted less than a week. I know at times we irritate the hell out of each other, but I also know I’ve never felt this way about anyone in my entire life.”
“Not even Matilda?”
“Not even Matilda.”
“Really?”
“Trust me, I never expected to feel this way but from the minute I walked into your office you turned my life upside down.”
“Ha. You turned mine into a roller coaster.”
“You made me hunger for a life I’d always shied away from. You made me feel wild and free. You made me stop and consider who I really was and what I really wanted. Always being in control can get old and you showed me how to let go and live in the moment.”
“I did all that?”
“You know you did. But I don’t have much to offer you now except chaos. My family’s fortune is in jeopardy, my reputation is shot, I just quit my job as Gentry Enterprises’ investment banker. For the first time in my life, I don’t know what’s going to happen next and I feel freer than I’ve ever felt before. There, I’ve laid it all out for you. So now I’ve got to know, Charlee, how do you feel about me?”
Her heart thumped. He loved her. “How do I feel about you?”
“That’s the question.” He swallowed hard and she knew it was mean to leave him hanging but dang if she couldn’t help but savor the moment.
“Hmm. You’re pretty compulsive.” She frowned and stroked her chin with her thumb and index finger.
“Yeah.” A nervous expression hovered on his face.
“And you worry too much about what other people think of you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You have an irritating habit of always doing the right thing.”
“Is that so bad?”
“You’re overly cautious and a stickler for the rules and have this annoying tendency of looking ten times before you leap.”
“Yes, yes.” He tightened his grip on her arm.
Oh, she was a rat for keeping him on tenterhooks. Relenting, she cocked him a sideways grin and he rewarded her with his dimpled smile.
“You’re messing with me.”
“Lucky for you I’m none of those things.”
“What are you saying, Charlee?”
“I’m saying you balance me, Mason. We’re two halves of a whole. And I love chaos and I have never placed much importance on money so if you lose your entire fortune I could really care less and hey, you can always come work for me at the detective agency if you need a job.”
He pulled her against him, lowered his head until his mouth was almost touching hers. “Say it, Charlee. Tell me what I need to hear.”
Tears stung her eyes as the words leaped to her lips, words she feared she would never be able to say. “I love you, Mason Gentry, from the bottom of my heart, from the top of my soul, and everywhere in between.”
T
ell me your most confidential fantasy,” Mason whispered to Charlee in the darkness of her newly renovated office. He’d snuffed all the lights, locked the front door, and drawn the curtains. His disembodied voice floated disconnected, heightening the mystery of their true confessions and sending her senses reeling. “I want to know every intimate detail.”
“I am Princess Charming,” Charlee said, loving the fact she was sharing her most private daydreams with him. Six months ago she would have rather had her tongue plucked out than reveal herself so openly to a man. But six months ago, she hadn’t been married to Mason. She marveled at the changes in her, reveled in the thrill and closeness such sharing had brought into her life. “And you are Cinderfella. You must do everything I command.”
“Yes, Princess.”
“Take off your clothes.” She heard his belt slither through the loops of his pants, the rasp of his zipper going down, the whisper of denim. The sounds escalated her arousal.
“I’m naked.”
“Come to me.”
She heard his boots tread across the hardwood floor. The neon blue boots that matched her own. Her breathing quickened as she imagined his nakedness, except for those boots.
“I am here.” His breath was hot on her neck.
She reached out with one long fingernail painted Be Still My Heart red and slowly tracked her finger over his bare skin, running down his shoulder to his chest and beyond.
He hissed in his breath.
She chuckled.
“And now?” he asked. She could feel his heartbeat thumping in rhythm with her own.
“Sweep my fireplace.”