You're Gone (Finding Solid Ground) (9 page)

Stopping just outside the room, he saw that the glow was from more than a dozen lily-white candles placed here and there. His briefcase, the files and papers he
’d strewn across the table were picked up and neatly stacked on the desk in the corner.

Now that the space was clean, there were two place settings on the far end. The expensive dinnerware; dishes, silverware, crystal stemware Charleigh
’d said she’d bought when the house was being built, but never used. The silver serving dishes that she’d complained were just collecting dust.

Looking beyond all that, Jamie saw her standing at the other end of the room. The golden light of the candles played with the coppery strands of Charleigh
’s hair that spilled over her shoulders and down her back, the coloring of her skin. The bright twinkle in her eyes.

Or was that caused by something else?

His eyes drifted lower away from Charleigh’s beautiful face, down the long line of her neck and lower. The only thing she wore was a slight smile on her lips. It brought on one of his own.

He had to clear his throat to speak.
“Miss Randall, are you trying to seduce me?” Jamie had gotten that line from
The Graduate
when they watched it earlier in the week.

“
Absolutely not, Mister Matthews. For one, Anne Bancroft was older than Dustin Hoffman. For two… Well, let’s just say that I decided to cash in on that favor you owe me. Not to mention the reward for winning the race that day.”

Jamie
’s eyes slid along the line of Charleigh’s shoulder and across her collarbone. He knew by the heart, way it felt under the warmth of his lips. The sweet taste of her. He remembered the way Charleigh dipped her head back, hair flowing, to provide him with more room to work with, to consume.

Still his gaze went even lower, over the lithe mounds of Charleigh breasts. Her pink nipples were firm with the anticipation of being touched, caressed. The deep, shadowed valley in between. Jamie could see the vibrations of her heart underneath.

His fingers itched to reach out and touch the silky, smooth flesh of Charleigh’s flat tummy. He ached to trace the contours that ran down her torso, along her waist, beyond her hips.

He had touched this woman before, more times than any other. Still, he wanted more, because every experience with Charleigh was a new one. This was the woman he wanted to, was going to, spend the rest of his life with. For better or worse, and all the rest of that stuff too, this was what he was going to be stuck with. And Jamie couldn
’t help thinking that it wasn’t half-bad. More like incredible.

“
If I recall correctly, you cheated.” He was barely able to get the words out.

“
Tsk, tsk,” Charleigh clicked her tongue as she came closer. “All’s fair in love and war, darlin’.”

Jamie
’s eyes made one more trip along the long lines of her body, all the way down to the pink polish on her toes.

“
Huh-uh.” He shook his head, unable to do much else. “What you’re doing to me is completely unfair.”

“
How so?” Charleigh’s eyes twinkled when she came to a stop, with just a breath’s distance between them.

“
Um…” His brain couldn’t function properly when she looked the way she did. “You see, the doctor said no strenuous activity until I’m completely healed. And as you already know, my condition is, um…
delicate
.”

Jamie reached out, ran his hand along the long column of her neck. It fed the blaze in her eyes.

“Oh yeah, that’s right. I forgot. Sorry,” she sighed. Charleigh looked over Jamie’s shoulder before her gaze came back to meet with his. “Well, you could at least pull up a chair and sit. There’s nothing strenuous about that.”

“
I’m not sure my doctor would approve.” He smiled, tracing his fingers along the even plane of her tummy. “It might send me into a relapse.”

“
I would definitely handle your delicate body with care. Who knows, it might be beneficial to your healing process.”

Charleigh ran her hands up Jamie
’s arms until she reached the soft terry cloth of the towel. She tugged it slowly down, an indication for him to lower his face to hers. When he complied, she whispered, “Sit.” and guided him backward to the nearest chair.

When he was seated, Charleigh slowly lowered her own body into Jamie
’s lap until she straddled him. She brought her arms around his neck, ran her fingers through the hairs there that were standing on end. There was a light in Jamie’s eyes, as he held his hands on her hips tracing tiny circles on her posterior with his thumbs, that Charleigh had seen so many times before.

It inaudibly told her how much he loved her. How much she meant to him. It was a promise, a silent understanding, that he would never leave her. No other person, nothing that could ever be said or seen would ever come between them. There was a bond that linked the heart, mind, body, and soul of one to the other, and it could never be broken.

“Do you know how much I love you?” Charleigh asked with a smile. She tilted her head to one side.

“
I have a pretty good idea.” Jamie smiled back. He leaned forward slightly to press a kiss to her lips. His hands came up from her waist. One cupped one of Charleigh’s cheeks; the other rested at the back of her head. “Do you know how much I love you?”

“
I have a pretty good idea.”

She lay her head down on Jamie
’s shoulder, breathing in the fresh scents of soap and aftershave. Her eyes slowly slid closed. A sensation of ecstasy filled her lungs, making her head spin from the warmth of Jamie’s on breath on her skin as he ran kisses down her neck and shoulder. When Jamie reached the end, the edge of his tongue traced the pathway all the way back to the beginning.

With a sigh, Charleigh dug her fingernails into his sides, feeling him tense under her touch.

“Are you okay?”

He nodded.

“I hurt you,” She whispered in his ear. “I’m sorry.”

“
No, I’m fine. I just wasn’t expecting that.” Jamie brought his mouth to Charleigh’s. He squeezed the taut flesh of her thigh as his tongue slipped inside her mouth, deepening the kiss.

What she did next was even more unexpected
for Jamie. With her fingers spread apart, Charleigh gently pressed her open palm to his side and dragged it along the width of Jamie’s body.

This time, Charleigh watched as he jerked back, though it wasn’t very far since he was seated. Jamie’s face contorted with pain. He opened his eyes, filled with a perturbed question.

“What was that for?” Jamie groaned.

             
“You’re in pain, and you’re lying.” Charleigh sat back on his lap, feeling a little agitated herself.
And
self-conscious. She was, after all,
naked
.

“It’s not bad.”

“But are you still in pain?”

“Yeah, but… but.” He shook his head, unable to come up with a legitimate explanation. “You wanted me to make love with you, and I just felt… I wanted to make you happy.”

She sighed, shook her head. “What makes me happy, Jamie, is knowing that you’re okay. There’s no reason to jeopardize your well-being just to satisfy me.”

“Don’t you want a macho man for a husband?”

“There’s macho and then there’s moronic, hon.”

“So, you’d rather have some dope with a feminine side?” Jamie asked. His fingertips tickled the skin of Charleigh’s arms. She shivered in reaction.

“I don’t want a guy who knows the name of my fingernail polish just by looking at it, no.” She brought her lips to Jamie’s for a soft peck. “No matter if you’re sick or hurt, scared or sad, or as mad, I want you to tell me. I’ll understand. You just have to be truthful with me— that’s all I ask.”

Scooting from Jamie’s lap, Charleigh stood up. She ruffled her hair before going over to retrieve her robe that was draped on the back of a chair. With her hands on her hips, she turned back to Jamie and smiled. The twinkle that had been in her eyes earlier was still present.

“The food’s going to get cold,” she said, reaching for the lid of one of the silver serving dishes. “I hope you’re hungry.”

             
Jamie came over to stand beside her. Charleigh was dishing some of the stir-fry onto a plate.               “I’m sorry,” Jamie whispered, putting a hand on her shoulder.

             
“Hey,” she said. “Unh-uh. One night without you making love to me is not the end of my world. We have a lifetime together, and as long as you’re there lying in bed beside me, I’ll be fine.”

This woman
, he thought taking the plate from her,
is my answer from heaven
. It was the only explanation Jamie could think of. Why else would Gavin act so foolishly and let someone like Charleigh get away? If it wasn’t for a little help from somewhere up above, he would’ve been completely lost. And maybe even a little in love with his cousin’s wife, had things not turned out the way they had.

But
he
was the lucky one in love with Charleigh.
He
was going to spend the rest of his life with Charleigh. The relationship Jamie shared with her was solid, without a doubt. For Jamie, finding Charleigh was like coming home. It was like finding solid ground.

The first day of school had always been the toughest for Charleigh. She could remember the sweaty palms. The queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach when she walked into the gymnasium every year for the assembly. The hope of getting the teacher she wanted, without the bullies being in the same class as her.

It never ended up that way. Charleigh
always
wound up with the more dreadful teacher of the two for the grade she was entering right along with the biggest toads in the puddle to torment her for yet another year. There was never any kind of reprieve.

Now, as she sat close by watching as Chris goofed around with Trevor Parker, his best friend, in a crowd of fellow Second Graders, Charleigh couldn’t help feeling envious.

Caroline had called late the night before to ask a favor for Charleigh to take her youngest cousin to school on his first day. As owner and editor-in-chief of Magnolia’s local newspaper, she had an early morning assignment meeting that prevented her from doing it herself. Charleigh didn’t mind at all.
It might even be fun
, she had thought.

She was wrong. It brought back the memories of being smashed among the multitude of students, yet feeling completely alone. Of wanting to be anywhere but there. Andrea had been there, and Gavin too, but they ignored her as they always had when they were around their
other
friends. Their
cool
friends.

Why it hurt so much— why that old, familiar pang in her gut was present— Charleigh had no idea. It wasn’t like it made much difference now. Luckily, it had been more than fifteen years since she sat, nervously waiting to find out if Missus Kramer or the dreaded Miss Richardson was going to be her second grade teacher.

One was now retired, after twenty-seven years of teaching. The other
awful
teacher was long gone to make some other poor child’s life as much a living hell as she’d done to Charleigh’s for the entire school year of 1986-87.

Looking down at her watch—
8:45
— Charleigh wondered what Jamie was doing at his office in Dallas. Correction: it wasn’t as much an office as the plush one he’d had in New York City as it was a small cubicle. A
very
small cubicle, he’d griped. She yawned, fidgeting on the hard plastic bleachers, and took another glance at her watch.

8:53
, Granddad was probably just coming in to the feed store with his thermos of hot coffee tucked underneath his arm and a fifty-cent package of sunflower seeds sticking out of a back pants pocket.

Could this be any more boring?

“Thank you all for coming. You can collect your orientation packets from your child’s teacher.” The elementary principal’s voice over the loud speaker shocked Charleigh out of her stupor of complete and utter boredom. She climbed down from her seat in the bleachers and went to find the group of students where Chris stood.

“Oh, Charleigh. Hi,” Missus McCallum, her teacher from fourth grade, said. She taught second grade now. The woman breathed a loud puff of air that tousled her bangs.

The closest thing Charleigh had ever had to a favorite teacher, Elise McCallum had doted on her. It was discovered years later that she had had a thing for the
very
single Mike Randall after her divorce was finalized and hoped the extra-special attention she paid to his daughter would spark his interest in her. Unfortunately, it never did.

“Hi.” It was all Charleigh could think to say as she came to stand behind Chris. She put a hand on the boy’s forehead, dragged it
back across his crown to ruffle his hair. Groaning, he grabbed her hand away but held on tightly.

“Are you nervous, pal?” She asked, and her seven-year-old cousin simply nodded in response. Charleigh squeezed his little hand. “It’s alright. First days were always a little unsettling for me too. It all came out in the wash, though.”

Chris nodded again. It wasn’t a confident nod. He turned halfway to look up at her. “Uncle Mike used to say that too.”

“I guess I must have picked that up from him then,” Charleigh replied just as Chris’s name was called to join Missus McCallum’s class. She sent the boy off with a supportive push.

As soon as Charleigh collected the packet, she left and headed toward the paper offices. The building where
The Magnolia Messenger
was located was an old stucco on the corner of Main and Lockhart, in the heart of the small town. It was the same place it could have been found— and looked much as it had— when Caroline Randall’s father had started the paper more than four decades ago.

The large open space was alive with activity when she came through the front door. The sounds of keyboards under mad attack, people talking louder than normal and riotously ringing phones were present as always.

There were still a few reporters left in the conference room with Caroline, but the door was open, meaning the meeting was over. Charleigh stepped up to the doorway just as one of the younger journalists was leaving.

Hill Baird, a sports reporter, greeted her with a broad smile around the pencil in his mouth. A steno pad was tucked under his armpit. Without a word, he winked and kept walking.

Hot.
Hot
!
Very
hot!
And Hill knew it, too.

Stepping up toward the table, Charleigh remained silent. It sounded as if her aunt was in a heated ‘discussion’— because Caroline Randall
never
raised her voice— with Conrad Morgan, one of her veteran writers, over the length of his story. She was not going to budge, which sent the man storming out of the room. 

Conrad flew by Charleigh, knocking her backward into the nearby water-cooler. He didn’t bother to help her pick up the leaking bottle or—
in the very least! —
apologize.

Oh, for crying out loud!
Charleigh wanted to scream as she struggled to put the large plastic bottle, which felt as if it weighed a ton, back on its base. Water sloshed from the spout, pouring all over the floor and the wall. It got all over Charleigh. Everywhere except where it should have gone— into the water cooler.

“Here.” Hill came up from behind to take the blue bottle from her arms and put everything back together with ease. It occurred to Charleigh that he’d had to refil
l the contraption before.

“Thanks,” Charleigh said, looking down at her jeans in dismay. The whole fronts of her legs were drenched with half the drinking water.
Just lovely!

“Anytime.” He shot her his sexiest smile, she was sure, and returned to his desk.

Turning around, Charleigh found her Aunt Caroline standing in the conference room doorway. A smile pulled at the other woman’s lips, one she was trying unsuccessfully to hide. Most of the people in the newsroom had seen Charleigh make an idiot out of herself with the comedy skit.

“Don’t say a word, please,” she begged.

Caroline choked back a laugh. “I wasn’t going to. How did the first day stuff go?” She turned and headed toward her office.

Grabbing the orientation packet, with several water stains on the outside, from the floor, Charleigh fell in step with her aunt. “It went.”

As those two little words spoke volumes, Caroline nodded with understanding.

They walked up a few steps and into her office, a small but comfortable room in the very back. It was a familiar place for Charleigh. Numerous journalism awards—many of which belonged to Nicholas McIntire, including a Pulitzer for an article he’d done on Vietnam; a Peabody— hung on the wall and sat on top of the small writing table behind her aunt’s desk. A dry-erase board with everyone’s daily assignments hung from the wall next to the door. Family photographs covered every other available space. Two windows provided a vantage point for Caroline to look out over the main floor at her staff.

              Charleigh held a paperweight cupped in both hands as she took a moment to review the chaos of the newsroom. Of the some-odd people she knew the paper employed, six were full-time staff writers and twelve were freelance reporters and correspondents from around the county. Three were photographers. There was an art director, two copywriters, and two people who worked in the mail room. There were also many other people— though Charleigh wasn’t exactly sure what they did— who were caught in the hysterics of reporting the daily news from around the world to Magnolia.

“…jitters?” The voice of her aunt broke through Charleigh’s thoughts. She turned to Caroline with a blank expression. The other woman repeated her question,
“Was Chris nervous?”

Charleigh nodded. “Yeah. I was a little nervous for him. He got stuck with Missus McCallum.”

“He didn’t
get stuck
,” Caroline chuckled. “Elise is a good teacher.”

“Could’ve fooled me. That woman hated me. She only acted like she liked me because she had a thing for Dad.” Charleigh sat the paperweight filled with little metallic hearts back down on top of a pile of neatly stacked papers on her aunt’s desk. “None of my teachers particularly liked me, come to think of it.”

The other woman perched her reading glasses on the edge of her nose. She rolled her eyes and began to tap on her keyboard. It made Charleigh wondered if she’d picked that habit up from Caroline.

“Sweetie, it’s not that
they
hated you, either.” She cleared her throat, keeping her eyes on the computer screen in front of her. “You just weren’t the easiest child to get along with. Do you remember what it was like between us when I started dating your uncle?”

“
You
hated me, too,” Charleigh joked, laughing.

“You didn’t want to share Josh with me for anything. You had that man wrapped around your little finger, which he didn’t mind at all.”

“I wasn’t a brat per se. Just a complicated child,” Charleigh scoffed in mock offense.

“Oh, yes, you were
complicated
.”

It was true. And she had tried bribing Charle
igh with everything from candy to toys. Nothing had worked until the little girl finally realized that Caroline would never be going away. She was little more than two years old at the time but determined as any other that nothing and nobody would be coming between the unassailable bond with her ‘Unky J
ah,
’ as Charleigh had called Josh. With her entrance into the Randall family, Caroline had also become a part of that bond. And this was
before
Amanda was diagnosed with the terminal disease.

After her mother’s death, Mike had raised Charleigh to the best of his ability, with a little help here and there from her Granny Eliza and her Aunt Denise— who Caroline knew she’d never really been fond of; despite Charleigh’s friendship with An
die —and occasionally by Amanda’s parents. 

Then, Eliza had passed away, leaving Charleigh to be raised by a pack of troglodyte
males, herself and a self-righteous whore, in the opinion shared by both Caroline and Charleigh in secret.

Charleigh had always been involved with horses. Rodeos and gymkhanas. When Grant and Mell realized their only grandchild had the same talent with horses as her mother, Charleigh began spending more time with the animals, which was
also around the same time when she’d started working at the Matthews’ ranch as a horse trainer.

She could achieve the impossible with the most untamed, the most violent
beast, and turn them into the gentlest of all animals. Gentler than a kitten sleeping in a warm sunbeam. It was because, Charleigh had explained many times, she could understand them on another level. Because, like a horse, she had a fire inside of her that needed to be fed instead of extinguished. She needed to feel safe and secure, but at the same time, she needed to run unbridled and wild every now and then.

It was why Charleigh, Caroline knew as she looked across the desk at the young woman, had run away after the mishap with Gavin. She had wanted to be perfect and good and everything else that everybody had wanted her to be. Charleigh had bottled that fire away to accomplish what she’d always wanted. To be just like everybody else, in any way, shape or form.

But in doing so, Charleigh had become swept away in a tidal wave of emotions. Unhappiness had overwhelmed the young woman beyond the point when any normal person would have shattered. But Charleigh
wasn’t
normal.

Caroline had known how miserable Charleigh was even before she knew it for herself. That had eventually trumped the desire to be accepted.

Although Charleigh had gone through with the nuptials, the revelation of Gavin’s infidelity and Brea’s paternity had given her the perfect exit strategy. Had her niece never learned that information, Caroline wondered how long Charleigh would have been able to go on living the lie. How long could she have held herself hostage in a loveless marriage just so she wouldn’t feel so alone and out of place?

Everything changed when Jamie entered her life. It had hit more than a few bumps along the way, but they’d overcome and turned out even stronger.

“Are you happy?” Caroline asked the girl she’d raised as her own. It was a loaded question, and, at the same time, fairly simple. One she already knew the answer to but needed to ask, just to be certain.