The Mischievous Mrs. Maxfield (48 page)

The hand that tightly clutched the phone turned clammy and shaky.

Breathe, Charlotte. Trust Brandon. Trust that despite the lies that brought you together, you know the truth.

“Brand?” Simone prompted. “We haven’t spoken in ages, and I know you’re busy playing house, but I’ve got to see you, Brand.”

“Back up, I missed the part you said after playing house,” I blurted out calmly—too calmly. “Is this going to be a long message because I might run out of paper here. If this is a confession of love, I might need a tape recorder. I don’t want to miss anything.”

A thick, heavy silence filled the line before Simone choked out, “Charlotte.”

“Yes, it’s me, the wife,” I replied flippantly. “I would call you the ‘other woman’ but then I know better. What’s up? Are you in trouble or something? Need someone to stand up for you? Because we don’t offer those services here, unfortunately.”

I bit the inside of my cheek at that last barb but I couldn’t help it.

I was cool with Simone being Brandon’s ex. I let pass that incident at the tea party where she sat back quietly while her best friend raked my character through the mud. 

I had to be a saint not to feel the irritation that was spreading through me like a rash right now, after hearing everything I just did.

Another long, awkward pause.

She was probably going to hang up on me now.

“I, uh... Um...”

I sighed loudly. “Eloquent, as always, Simone. Hang on one sec, okay? I’ll just go grab my husband. Don’t let it be said that I was so cruel to deprive you of his counsel in case this is a matter of life and death.”

“No!” she exclaimed. “It’s alright. Don’t get him, Charlotte.’

My eyes narrowed. “No? Do you only talk to him if I don’t know about it?”

“No... Of c-course, not,” she stammered. “I just...I, uh...”

I rose from my seat and headed for the exercise room which was just down the hall. “Listen, Simone. I don’t want to quarrel with you even though I know you hate my guts but I’d really, really, appreciate it if you would refrain from stalking my husband,” I said patiently. “I get that you’ll always be around but there’s no need to go too far, okay?”

“You have no idea what’s going on, Charlotte,” she shot back sharply. 

Finally, we’re getting somewhere. 

“You’re a nice girl and I’d offer you some advice,” she continued, her voice gathering strength. “Brandon may have warmed up to you more than I expected, given the circumstances of your marriage, but if I were you, I won’t forget that it’s all a business arrangement. If you do, you’re just setting yourself up for a lot of pain. Brandon’s a good man but he’s not a loving man. He can’t make you happy in a way that any girl would wish to be made happy by a man she loves. You’re young and you don’t want to scar yourself for life with that kind of heartache.”

I bristled at the reminder that Simone knew of the real reason Brandon and I got married. I reminded myself firmly of the fact that the last few days had indeed happened and I was Brandon’s wife in truth.

I chose to take the higher road because it was the right thing to do.

“Thank you, Simone, for your concern,” I said quietly as I pushed the door of the exercise room open and peeked at Brandon who was busy making strikes against a large punching bag hanging from the ceiling. “Unfortunately, it’s a bit late for that. But don’t worry about me. We’re happy. And Brandon is a loving man—he just needed to be loved first to realize what love was like and recognize it when it came his way.”

This was like a phone conversation with bad reception. 

I was either missing bits of what Simone was saying in response or she wasn’t saying anything at all.

“I loved him too, you know?” she finally bit out, her voice edgy with emotions. 

My eyes followed the virile strength and masculine grace of Brandon’s body as he moved and delivered blows to the punching bag, my heart skipping a beat. He was shirtless, light glinting off against the sheen of sweat on his rippling muscles.

Memories of how his body had moved on top of me, strong and possessive yet gentle and protective, sent a shiver of pleasure down my spine.

“Yeah, I know,” I murmured to Simone in sympathy. “I can hardly blame you.”

I heard her take a deep breath and clear her throat as if she was pulling herself together. “Just tell him to call me when he can. I do have something urgent to discuss with him. And no, I’m not trying to sleep with him.”

I sighed. “No, you’ve already done that. The risk is you trying to seduce him into falling in love with you so that he abandons his wife and runs away with you instead.”

“I’m not that desperate,” she practically hissed.

“I hope you’re right,” I replied, smiling softly at Brandon when he looked up and caught my eye, his face breaking into a lopsided grin. “I’ll tell him. Later, alligator.”

I ended the call and started walking toward my husband who threw his boxing gloves down and grabbed a towel to wipe his face with.

The exercise room was set up like a personalized gym. The only things I’ve really used in here were the treadmill and the rowing machine (on days when I didn't make excuses about working out) but there was a huge variety of fitness machines.

"I'm all sweaty now," he said, looking positively sinful with his damp, dark locks curling over his forehead, as we came up against each other. His arm slipped behind my waist as he pulled me close and nuzzled the skin behind my ear. "Wanna join me in the shower?"

"I might but you probably have to call your devoted ex first," I said, pulling back a little and handing him his phone. "I'd hate to have her waste away, pining for you."

Brandon's brows furrowed as he stared at his cellphone screen, scrolling through the call logs. "Simone called? What did she want?" 

I tapped my fingertips on my chin thoughtfully. "Hmm. Screening out the parts about how the two of you haven't seen each other in ages, and that she's free anytime you are to meet up at her place, and that she knows you're playing house with me, and the advice not to fall in love with you unless I wanted to get hurt—I think she wanted to see you. Yeah, that's about it."

Brandon arched a brow at me wryly. "Sounds like you two had quite a conversation."

I shrugged. "Yeah, some. She assured me she wasn't trying to sleep with you and I told her of, course not. I mean, why would you attempt something you've already done many times and in many different positions?"

Brandon choked out a half-laugh, half-groan, his cheeks flushing a deep shade of red. "Honey, please tell me you actually didn't say that to Simone."

"Nothing that specific," I assured him cheekily. "The last thing I want is for her to relive those memories. It might give her incentive to really come after you."

Brandon tipped my chin up and kissed me softly on the lips. "I don't care how many women come chasing after me—I mean, I do, because that would really be annoying trying to go anywhere or do anything—but I have no interest in anyone else but you."

I laughed and clung to his neck as he picked me up, wrapping my legs around his waist. "You'll need to amp up your security if you have a mob of girls following you everywhere. Either that or I tell them how awful you are in bed."

Brandon's eyes twinkled as he squeezed my bum. "I thought you didn't like lying."

"Who says I'll be lying?" I asked, lowering my lashes coyly.

"I believe you just dared me to prove my talents, love," Brandon said as he carried us into the bedroom. "Let's hope you don't regret it once you've been made love to so thoroughly you won't be able to keep your eyes open."

I grinned just before he threw me down on the bed. "I'm counting on it."

He crawled up over me, his heavy, sweat-damp body pressing against mine. In another time and place, and with another man, this would be kind of yucky, but Brandon smelled sexy—all man and all mine.

"You could've just not told me," he said softly, brushing the hair from my face. "Or insisted that I completely cut her out of my life. But you didn't."

I bit my lip and cupped his jaw. "No, I didn't."

He turned his face slightly to kiss the center of my palm. "I love you."

I smiled. "I love you too. Now, ravish me."

***

I needed three cups of coffee and a chocolate bar to manage for the rest of that day.

Brandon was certainly a man who took up a task with the intense determination to succeed in it, and applied himself wholeheartedly. 

I would say the three hours we spent in bed was quite an accomplishment—a sexual feat I was surely going to feel in the next little while in all the spots I ached.

Thank God, I had a day to rest and prepare before the Championettes’ annual brunch which was going to be held at Clifton House’s sprawling gardens. 

Back when I was a simple girl in a very simple world, I would expect some fancy scrambled eggs and maybe some waffles with real maple syrup for a nice brunch. Maybe something a little bit less casual so you’d come to the table in a nice shirt and clean jeans instead of your pajamas—at least in the world I came from.

But no, this brunch wasn’t like any other kind of brunch. 

It was done Championette-style, of course—grandiosely elaborate, impeccably elegant and guest-listed with the top names in society.

It was like the grand ball of brunches—meaning, no pajamas and no regular scrambled eggs.

I was told it was a lounge suit dress code (which Armina had to interpret for me) and the eggs weren’t merely scrambled ones—they were oeuf brouille—creamy, French-style scrambled eggs floating almost dreamily in some kind of sauce-like base and topped with thin smoked salmon pieces.

I would be the last person to find fault with the French when it came to food, and living in Paris for several months opened my eyes to a vast world of art and culture I only ever heard about before. 

Despite all that though, my tastes remained simple and basic.

Or maybe I really was just unsophisticated at heart because I personally couldn’t eat smoked salmon for breakfast, let alone, have it ruin a perfectly wonderful, although difficult-to-pronounce, kind of scrambled eggs. 

The fact that we had a chef specifically whipping up just the oeuf brouille right then and there was just cherry on top of an already pretty ostentatious meal.

To think, this was only one dish out of the entire twenty-four-item menu Melissa mentioned with wry amusement when we met up the day before the brunch to talk over an early afternoon coffee.

I asked her to meet up so I could give her an answer—as if there ever really was a doubt—and she’d been thrilled. I, personally, was a little nervous—not for myself but for the spectacle we would make of ourselves should a catfight ensue.

When we arrived at the brunch, there was a not-too-subtle change in the crowd’s mood.

It was mine and Brandon’s first official appearance as a married couple in a well-publicized high-society event—one swarming with the Society’s most important financial benefactors as crusty as rustic country bread.

While a surprising amount of people were earnestly pleased to meet me, I could tell there were a few others who were turning up their noses just a little bit, even though I actually looked pretty smashing in a bright red, one-shouldered cocktail dress with a large, silk rosette made from the same fabric attached to the shoulder strap. 

My hair was pulled up in a conventional bun, not a strand out of place. Clyde wouldn’t admit to it but I was certain he’d super-glued my hair to my head because it looked divinely tidy. 

I highly suspected that my faux-pas was the severe lack of pearls and pastels because I was, instead, wearing a diamond and sapphire set Brandon had given me, and I was sporting black leather cage-strap heels that looked seriously fierce.

In a sea of women in soft yellows, pinks and purples, I did stand out a bit, and if people had something to say about that—well, it was a free country. They could say whatever they’d like to say, really. If I happened to feel like saying something back to them, then they’d have to grant me the same courtesy.

Of course, it was unavoidable to run into the members of the board who were in that tea party with me. They pretty much refused to look me in the eye to avoid having to acknowledge me. They were with their husbands and friends, some who were eyeing me discreetly in the corner of their eye. 

Layla, splendid in a mint green dress, was with a very serious-looking man who must be her husband, and she acted like I wasn’t even there, only smiling at Brandon when she caught his eye from a distance.

My husband merely responded with an arch look and turned away in dismissal.

I knew just how capable he was of acting snobby, even though I hadn’t seen it in a good long while, and he didn’t spare Layla any bit of his intimidation.

He also promised to stay by my side, determined to ward off any unpleasant company, but he was a man who knew too many important other ones that he got steered away a few times.

He started getting annoyed at people but I assured him that it was a social event and he could go and be social. 

I loved him more for being protective but I wanted to be his cheerleader, not an injury that would drag him off court. 

He was quite reluctant to abandon his post but Jake, also a guest of honor, came up and promised to keep me company while Brandon was off ‘being important’. 

Brandon just gave him a narrowed look and a firm clap on the shoulder before heading out to talk a bunch of men who looked more serious than their sharp, black suits.

“It looks like the beach agreed with you,” Jake said as we strolled along the hors d'oeuvres table. “Have I told you yet how beautiful you look today?”

I smiled and patted his arm which was linked through mine. “Only about ten times, each with a different synonym. Is this how you keep track of your many lady loves? Do you know all of beautiful’s synonyms in the thesaurus?”

He gave me a rakish grin. “Of course. It’s handy to know them all. I wouldn’t be as skilled at stealing hearts without knowing something as basic as that.”

I snorted as I picked up what I recognized as a tartelette aux fraises, which was a practically a strawberry tart except that the strawberries were bigger than the flaky pastry crust itself, and it was oozing with luxurious, creamy and fruity goodness. “Good point. I mean, why remember their names when one can be ‘lovely’, another can be ‘gorgeous’, and another can be ‘stunning’. Even if you cycle through all those words, no one will ever know.”

Jake laughed good-naturedly. “I bet you would.”

“Of course,” I replied pertly. “Because every time you call me any of those adjectives, I’d know you’re just being nice. We all know none of them apply to me.”

“Are you fishing for compliments, Char?” he teased. “Because you already know that there aren’t enough words in that thesaurus entry to fully capture you.”

I actually blushed. 

Goodness, even after all that wickedness I embraced with Brandon, I was apparently still not that immune to bold compliments—even from a wonderful man who had also become a dear friend to me—and who might have been just a tad bit infatuated with me.

“Maybe there are just no words in there at all to fully capture me,” I quipped. “I’m sure I fall under a bunch of different other adjectives like ‘exasperating’, ‘impertinent’ and ‘mischievous’, to name a few.”

Jake nodded slowly in mock-agreement. “True. You’re definitely the mischievous Mrs. Maxfield. I know the family well and I can’t think of any other woman in the Maxfield history to earn that title so deservingly.”

I laughed and stuck my tongue out at him. “You’re impertinent.”

Jake wiggled his brows at me. “Makes sense. After all, birds of the same feather flock together.”

We were laughing hard when we heard the well-practiced clearing of someone’s throat—either someone had a constant phlegm issue or this was how she usually announced her rather untimely and unwelcome arrival. If you think about it, this really was how most people made their presence known when they were intruding. 

“Last I heard, it was still considered inappropriate to flirt with your husband’s best friend. I’m shocked that Brandon would put up with this kind of humiliation.”

I didn’t even have to turn around to zero in on the plague that had suddenly eclipsed my sunny sky.

I let out a long, dramatic sigh, brushing an imaginary lock of hair off my temple. “Last I heard, flirting was relatively harmless compared to getting right down and dirty with random college guys whose blood alcohol content was no less than a full beer keg. And when I say dirty, I mean down-on-your-knees-in-a-puke-splattered-bathroom-kind of dirty.”

“I didn’t!” Bessy sputtered.

I feigned surprise as I whipped around to face her.

Her face was beet-red, her nostrils flaring.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said in mock-astonishment. I glanced at Jake innocently. “Was I telling you about some of my incredible high school memories? Like that party Bo Brommer threw in junior high at his parents’ place? You know, a wing of the house nearly burned down because someone thought to douse a scented candle with some vodka. It was the height of teenage idiocy.”

Jake’s brows rose in surprise but he pressed his lips together to hold back the pained smile of someone caught in the middle of a nasty confrontation—or of someone watching you get a tattoo you would regret for the rest of your life because you couldn’t be talked out of it.

Okay. So I was being a bit of a female dog. 

It rarely happened—only around Bessy Mitchell, usually. The girl just had unparalleled talents in bringing out my worst.

She was currently growling at me—either that or she was regurgitating last night’s dinner. From the strain of her efforts, it must’ve been half a cow or something similar.

I took a deep breath, pressed my fingers between my brows and turned to Bessy.

“I’m sorry,” I said with a sigh. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I—”

“You’re a crass, little liar,” Bessy shot back. 

Could we simply conclude that I was extremely right in saying that she had unparalleled talents? Subtlety was never her prime characteristic which makes her all the more effective as a bully.

“You don’t even know what happened at Bo Brommer’s party!” she continued hissing. “You weren’t even there because you would’ve never been invited in a million years!”

I nodded. “You’re right, I was never invited. I came much later as part of the clean-up crew. Bo had one of his minions arrange for one because his parents were going to kill him if they came home to a trashed house after that weekend. I came in with a couple other people around two in the morning to start. We got paid eighty bucks each for three hours of work.”

Bessy’s expression turned haughty. “Oh, so you were the janitress? You cleaned up my puke?”

I raised a brow. “Actually, no. You couldn’t have possibly puked. Your mouth was quite stuffed with something else when I walked into the bathroom. Neither you nor that random guy even noticed me. I quietly left and decided to tackle a completely different part of the house—where there was a smaller chance I'd encounter a variety of bodily fluids. Forensics isn’t my strongest suit.”

Mottled red wasn’t Bessy’s best color but I doubted that she would appreciate my opinion. 

I wisely chose to keep my mouth shut. 

I already got pretty nasty and it made me uncomfortable.

I didn’t like to be a particularly hurtful person but when push came to shove, I shoved back really hard.

Today though was not the time or the place.

Bessy and I hadn’t been yelling at each other enough to really draw people’s attention but if she continued to push me down with her thumb and I kept pricking her for blood, the tension would be hard to miss.

I already had a fight—albeit, currently in an unspoken ceasefire—with the Championettes. I didn’t need one with Bessy as well.

“I think there’s been enough reminiscing of your high school days here,” Jake cut in gently, gliding his body between Bessy and me and giving me a pleading look. “Charlotte and I should probably continue on with our quest for the next pastry to try.”

“Why want a cake you can’t have, Jake?” Bessy said meaningfully.

Jake stepped aside as he turned toward her, giving me a full view again of the beautiful but hateful witch. “Excuse me?”

Bessy gave him what I would admit as a very seductive smile. “You’re far too good to waste your time and charm on someone some helplessly infatuated idiot already went and married. You could have a different cake and actually eat it.”

There wasn’t a lot that could make the bile rise up to my throat. 

That brazen, bald-faced play Bessy just made on Jake was going to get me reacquainted with my breakfast—or last night’s dinner, whichever came up first.

“It may serve you well to remember that the man you just referred to as a helplessly infatuated idiot is my best friend in the world,” Jake said calmly although his firm warning was impossible to miss in his tone. “And I happen to like this particular cake, even if I can only look at it.”

Bessy’s coy expression hardened into an offended scowl.

“Good day, Ms. Mitchell.” Jake gave her a stiff but polite nod before steering me away by my elbow.

We were quiet for a long moment as we moved away from the end of the very long dessert table where we left Bessy fuming enough steam to run a train.