Wilde Magic (Wilde Women Book 3) (8 page)

“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s dick, cock, shlong, wood, Mr. Stiffy. Anything but penis. Penis is a doctor’s word. Or the one your mom uses.” He shuddered at the thought.

JP grinned at him with an evil smirk. “What word do you have for a dick that’s been retired from lack of use?”

“Fuck you.” Cal gave him the finger and muttered under his breath as he chalked up his cue. “Not retired. Just taking a well-earned break, is all.”

“Ty,” JP said with such seriousness that Cal stopped what he was doing and met his friend’s gaze. “You have been a good friend, and I appreciate your influence when it comes to keeping me on the team.” The other man shrugged self-consciously. “I see the printing on the wall.”

Cal nodded but said nothing. He was uncomfortable talking about this subject, and he didn’t want the man’s gratitude.

“I worry about you,” he continued. “Ever since the accident you’ve been … different. And now this girl comes along, and she’s all you can think about. She’s different, my friend. The one’s that matter always are. Forcing her to come to you may be a stupid-ass move.”

Yeah. He knew that, but it felt like he had no choice. Her dancing away from him with a smile and a wave rattled his cage more than he wanted to admit. He’d been ready to move heaven and earth to find out who she was, so he’d used what he had to sway things his way.

Getting the team’s doctor to sign off on some therapeutic relaxation was the easy part. After that, all he had to do was wait for Crepuscolo’s management team to do his dirty work and bring her to him. In actuality, his fingerprints weren’t anywhere on the situation. And he’d been patting himself on the back over what a ballsy plan it was.

Oh shit. Laying it out like that, even if just in his mind, made him sound like a huge dick.

Shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, he met JP’s worried frown and muttered, “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Well, you fucked up.”

“Really?”

“Si. Fucked up the pooch on this one.”

Should he correct his choice of words? Nah. He knew what screwing the pooch meant, and JP was right no matter how he phrased it.

Cal ran a hand through his hair and looked around the room. Ever since the accident, when healing meant slowing down and taking stock, he’d been twitchy and pissed off. All of this was fake. Every last inch. Just because he occasionally lived in this ridiculously, ostentatious symbol of his celebrity, didn’t mean it’d ever been a home.

Acting like an infatuated teenager with a non-stop hard-on wasn’t his style even when he’d been one. But the girl was different. He didn’t just want her. He wanted … well fuck, he wanted so much it was hard to wrap his mind around what it all meant.

Massaging the back of his neck, he met JP’s intense gaze. “What did Thalia think I should do?”

Booming laughter filled the room, and his good friend gave him a hearty smack on the back. “Spoken like a man who’s just seen the light!”

“Suck my penis,” Cal drawled satirically to JP’s nodding delight.

“Maybe later,” the other man jested as he hung up their pool cues. “Let’s get a drink and enjoy a beautiful Tuscan sunset while I tell you what my wise and wonderful wife suggested you do.”

C
HARLIE WAS ROLLING WITH LAUGHTER
as her sister Rhiann went on and on, sharing a hilarious story about her and their older sister Brynn on a drunken night out in New York City.

“What were you drinking? Goblets of Fire? Oh my God, Rhi! What’s Dad done to us? We even drink literary references.”

“I know, right?” Rhiann’s distinctive laugh shot from the speaker on Charlie’s phone. “Mom sent me a cocktail recipe for something called a Book Boyfriend. Two shots and your panties come off.”

“Bwahahaaahhaaa.”

“Hey,” Rhi blurted out. “Wanna see something even more hilarious?”

“Of course,” Charlie giggled.

“Okay, hold on. Let me figure out how to do this.”

Ten seconds later her phone pinged, and a message box with a picture appeared. “You sent a picture?” she asked.

“Yeah. Go ahead and click on it but don’t disconnect our call. I know how tech-challenged you are little sis.”

Rhiann was certainly right about that. Charlie wasn’t a big fan of messaging and Instagramming. All that stuff seemed cool as shit at first but in her opinion, it was all too impersonal. Far as she was concerned, the ability to be always connected just ended up being a way for people to isolate themselves. Instead of communicating, most only interacted with a mobile screen. Face to face exchanges and relationships outside social media suffered as a result.

Careful not to hit the wrong set of prompts, she gasped when the picture Rhi sent filled the screen.

“Holy shit! Brynnie’s butt?” She was laughing harder now and then she saw something that made her stop and take a closer look. “Is that a handprint?”

“Yes!” Rhiann screeched with delight. “Big sis has herself a boyfriend. And a bad-boy type at that!”

“Uh, hold on.” Charlie’s laugh suddenly quieted. “He hits her?”

“What? No! Good grief Charlie. You can’t possibly be that naïve.”

“Ohhh,” she replied. “Does he wear a gray tie, too?”

“Nope. But apparently Mr. Buttwhacker has a penchant for wearing black leather and making our Brynnie swoon like a romance heroine.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Nana’s crazy scheme to marry her off, does it?”

“Oh. So you heard about that, have you? A Bryanna Charles special. Poor Brynn went apeshit. This guy though, he came out of nowhere, and she hasn’t been the same since.”

“Aw, that’s nice. And what about you, hmm? You find your Mr. Big yet?”

Silence. That’s never good, she thought. Not with Rhiann. She always had a quick quip at the ready or a pithy comment to share.

“Rhi?”

The sound of throat clearing hit Charlie like an electric current. Something was up and it probably wasn’t good.

“Yeah. About that,” her sister muttered. “I’ve got a new boss.”

Charlie gasped. A new boss? What the hell did that mean? Oh no! She thought with real dismay. Rhiann would never be that stupid.

“Oh my God, Rhi. Please tell me you aren’t sleeping with the boss.”

More silence. Charlie’s heart sank.

“Sleeping with? No.” There was a slight pause and then she muttered, “No,” again.

“Buuut?”

“Do you remember Liam? Liam Ashforth? Dad’s grad school assistant?”

Whoa. Liam Ashforth? Charlie could barely comprehend how or why the uptight asshole who secretly broke her sister’s heart was suddenly back in the picture.

“What’s that asshole got to do with you, Rhi? Please tell me you’re just joking.”

“Ah,” Rhiann sighed. “I take it then that you do remember him?”

Oh hell yeah, she remembered. After all, she was only a couple years younger than Rhiann. She’d been a precocious teenager with a head full of romantic fantasies when the middle daughter of Professor Robert Baron-Wilde started sneaking around with the handsome but weirdly aloof grad student. Charlie remembered all too well thinking their clandestine love affair was the stuff of fairy tales. Until whatever happened that drove a wedge of silence between them. From that time on, she’d wondered on more than a handful of times just what Ashforth had done to devastate Rhiann so completely.

“Are you saying he’s your employer? The dude signing the checks?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. His company bought the magazine. I now answer to Liam Ashforth.”

A thousand images and concerns swirled in Charlie’s thoughts but the only thing worth saying was to ask, “Are you all right?”

They were close, the three of them. Her oldest sister Brynn, who was characterized as being the smart and pragmatic of the Baron-Wilde daughters, was Charlie’s hero in every way that mattered. When life kicked her in the mouth, the irrepressible Brynn simply spit out some teeth, fluffed her hair for good measure and then went out and shook up her life. Nothing and nobody would ever get her down.

And Rhiann—the outspoken middle sister who Charlie worshiped and followed around like an adoring puppy when they were kids. It was Rhi who threw caution to the wind and stepped into the unknown by moving to the Big Apple and making a name in the fashion industry. Charlie loved Rhi’s balls because the girl had big ones.

They could tell each other anything. Charlie winced slightly because her flit to Italy really upset the sisterly status quo. So if she were missing the closeness they’d always shared, it was her own damn fault for hauling ass to another continent.

“To be honest, sis … I’ve um. Well, I’ve taken the coward’s way out so far. When the acquisition was announced, at first I didn’t realize that the huge corporation swallowing the magazine whole was Liam’s. Basically, I’ve been avoiding anything that remotely brings the possibility of seeing him.”

“You can’t keep that up forever. Do you think he knows, Rhi? That you work there?”

“Sweetie, I’m afraid of what the answer to that question is. If he doesn’t know, then my pathetic avoidance moves make me look like an idiot. If he does know, well I can’t go there. Y’know what I mean?”

She blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Stay away from him, Rhi. He’ll wreck your dream. I just know it.”

“Ah, my sweet little Charlize. Dreams change. Life in the big city isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And I miss you, you little shit.”

“I miss you too. And Brynnie. Nana tried to bribe me to come home. Did you know? Better watch out, Rhi. She’s already gone gunning for Brynn. Can’t imagine what she could entice you with but I’d sleep with both eyes open.”

Rhiann snickered. “If the old bat would crack open the vault and agree to let me write her autobiography, I’d pack my bags tomorrow.”

“Oh jeez. Is she still holding that one over your head?”

“Yeah. But you know what? Enough about big sis and me. You don’t come out of the woodwork all that often sweetie so tell me how fabulous Italy is and about all the men on their knees begging for your favors.”

“I met a boy,” she drawled. No use in beating around the bush. Waste of time and energy. Besides, she called Rhi just for this reason. She wanted her opinion on what to do.

“A boy? An actual flesh and blood male and not one of those book boyfriends you love so much?”

Charlie laughed. “No Mr. Darcys on this trip. But there is this one guy.”

“Oh,” Rhi laughed. “So … not a boy? A grown up with facial hair and everything?”

“He’s a race car driver.” She said it matter-of-factly, as though the simple explanation made the revelation perfectly understandable.

“For real?”

“Yep.”

“Where’d you meet a racer? Despite your drag racing past, I didn’t think watching guys tearing around a track at a hundred miles an hour was your thing.”

“Well, it’s not. I think it’s insane actually. We met at a party. I’ve been working with a rugby exhibition and the guys wanted to go, so we did. End of story.”

“So, wait a minute. You met this guy at a party? What does that mean? You shook his hand and had a photo op?”

Charlie giggled. “Actually, he found me raiding his pantry for some Skippy. Next thing I knew we were having a peanut butter picnic.”

“A peanut butter picnic?”

“Yeah,” she answered. “That and some other things.”

“What other things?” Rhi instantly barked. “Please tell me you didn’t have sex with this, this … driver.”

She chortled. “Fuck you, Rhi. I’m almost twenty-four. Don’t you think it’s time I cashed in my V-card? I mean, come on. That shit’s getting old.”

“You will do no such thing,” Rhiann screeched. “Remember that summer we went to the Poconos? Mom and Dad rented a beautiful lake house. I still have the twig man and the little scrap of paper bag we used to make our list of the perfect man. We might’ve just been kids, but that was some powerful mojo we put out there in the universe. No random bed hopping for you young lady. Hear me? You’re destined for the charming prince and white knight scenario and don’t you forget it. And if this is about all those Italian hotties making you horny, just remember. A hand in the bush is better than a worthless dick.”

She started laughing with real gusto. Rhiann had such a way with words. “Okay, okay. I hear you, and that’s kind of why I called. I need some advice.”