Twenty minutes after leaving the office, Greg could still feel the painful knots in his shoulders and upper back. He reached a hand behind his back and tried to rub out the tension, but it was no use. He was wound up, his mind still at work as he drove back to Misty Point on autopilot. Gripping the steering wheel with both hands, he maneuvered the car over a hill and down around a bend, noticing the ice that had gathered on the guardrail. He preferred the scenic route, even if the highway was sometimes faster. It usually calmed his nerves, grounded him. But not today.
It was already Wednesday, and Burke’s would be making their decision Monday. Saturday night’s event was the last chance Greg had to impress them, and the tension was especially high today. The proposal was in their hands, and the meetings were behind them, but the party could sway them in one direction or the other if they were on the fence. And Greg was starting to suspect they were.
His mind trailed to Charlotte as he neared the last few turns into the town of Misty Point. He’d been so focused on the job today, he hadn’t allowed himself to even think about last night, but now as he pulled up to the house, he realized he couldn’t wait to kiss her again.
Charlotte was disarming, with that magnetic smile and those bright green eyes. She was easy to talk to in a way that Rebecca and the host of women before her hadn’t been. She wasn’t about pretense or show.
She’d charm the pants off the Burke’s team, he decided with a grin. She’d managed to win him over, hadn’t she?
By the time Greg pulled up the long drive, under the arched glow of twinkling lights wrapped with precision around every branch and tree trunk, he was already feeling more relaxed. Hurrying to the door, he turned the key and let himself in. But as his eyes scanned the foyer and fell to the heap of Charlotte’s things at the base of the stairs, his grin faded.
“What’s this?” he asked Charlotte as she appeared in the doorway of the living room. That giant car seat was dangling from her arm. Audrey was already strapped in, sound asleep and tucked under a pale pink blanket.
“I’m leaving.” She looked at him flatly, but the words were a punch to the gut.
He stepped toward her, but she held up a hand.
“Rebecca stopped by today.”
Rebecca. Greg opened his mouth and closed it shut. He should have known she might stop by. Rebecca was used to having her way, and she hadn’t reacted well when he told her their breakup was for the best. They weren’t right for each other. He knew that now.
“If she upset you, I’m sorry. But you don’t have to leave,” Greg said. He pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ll call her. She shouldn’t have come here. It’s over with us. I told you that.”
Charlotte folded her arms across her chest, and Greg realized with an uneasy stir that she was wearing her coat. Had he caught her just before she’d slipped out? Or had she been waiting for him to get home?
“This was a mistake, Greg,” Charlotte said.
Now wait a minute. “Are you talking about our arrangement?”
Her look turned withering, and…wonderful. He’d messed up again.
“I should have known that’s all you care about.”
“It’s not all I care about,” he said firmly. He took a step toward her, but she took one back. He stopped. “I care…I care about you.”
And he did. More than he wanted to. More than he cared to admit. She was a single mother with a baby. She loved Christmas. She was everything he wasn’t, and God help him, he loved that about her.
Charlotte looked away. “We agreed to play a part, and we should have kept it that way. I don’t know you at all, Greg. And you don’t know me, either.”
Now here Greg disagreed. “This isn’t a fake relationship to me anymore, Charlotte. My feelings for you are real. You’re the first person I’ve ever been myself around. The first person who cared to know the real me. You saw me as more than the heir to Frost Greeting Cards.”
She pinched her lips, shaking her head. But there was hesitation in her eyes. He clung to it.
“No,” she said. “No. You’re passing through town, looking for a little fun, and I was convenient. Once this ruse is over, you and I will be over.”
He hadn’t wanted to think that far ahead. Now he did. And he didn’t like the empty future he saw. “I’m not like the men who hurt you before.”
Charlotte was shaking her head. “You belong with a woman in your circle. A woman who doesn’t need too much. A woman who is fine with a surface-level relationship and doesn’t need anything more. You obviously saw something in Rebecca, and she and I couldn’t be more different.”
“Don’t I know it!” he nearly shouted. He stepped toward her, but she stiffened. “I broke up with her for a reason. I’m with you now because—”
“With me?” Charlotte’s eyes were wide. “We’re pretending, Greg. We got caught up in…playing house.”
“You’re overthinking this,” he countered. “We’re two people who spent time together and who realized we had a true connection.” He tipped his head, locking his gaze with hers, searching for understanding. “Didn’t you feel something?”
She lifted her chin at that. “I liked who I was in your eyes. But I’m not that person any more than you’re the person I thought you were. Don’t you see? We fell for our own sham.”
“You’re exactly the person I think you are, Charlotte,” he said softly.
She snorted and slid her eyes to his. “You think I’m someone you’re not. You think I’m this great mother? I can’t even buy my kid a Christmas gift. You think I’m some great cook? I usually eat crackers or toast for dinner,” she added. “You wonder why I’m staying here and not with my sister? Because I stole her fiancé from her. I got pregnant, and the guy bailed on me. I broke my sister’s heart. That’s the person I am. And you know why I did it? Because I wanted to feel important. Just once, I wanted to feel special.”
“I don’t believe that,” he said. There was more to it; he could sense the hesitation in her eyes.
“Look,” she said. “You needed me to help you get this business deal. I needed you so I could make things up to my sister. That’s all this was.”
“There’s more to it now.”
She was shaking her head. “All of this…it wasn’t supposed to go this far.” A single tear rolled down her cheek and she pushed it away. “This became about me, and it was never supposed to. This was about my sister. Helping her out. About proving to her that I’m not the screwup she thinks I am.”
“You’re not a screwup,” he said softly. He didn’t care about her past or where she had been, what she had done. The woman standing before him was honest, real, and loyal. “You’re special to me. You are exactly the person I think you are, Charlotte,” he repeated, more certain this time. “You’re passionate, and kind, and caring.”
She was shaking her head now, a bitter smile playing at her lips. “I’m selfish, cold, and careless. And oh, of course…foolish. The family screwup, and here I go again…”
“No,” he insisted. “No.” He knew many cold and selfish people, but he refused to believe Charlotte was that way. He saw the light in her eyes, the sincerity in her smile many times. He knew the way he felt when he heard her welcoming him home, bringing a sense of comfort to him he had never known was possible.
“Oh yes, Greg.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “I am very careless.” She tossed her hands into the air. “Why else would I have gotten myself into this mess? Agreeing to pose as your fiancée was foolish enough. But falling for a man who could never accept my daughter…A man who…how did Rebecca put it? Hates kids.” She shook her head. “I have to go.”
His mind was spinning as he watched her gather up a few bags and march toward the door. He wanted to shout something out, something that would stop her, but he knew there was nothing he could say. And he knew the only person he was angry with was himself.
She had a point, after all. A baby…a baby had never been in the cards. He didn’t know how to be a father or a parent. And watching Charlotte with Audrey, the natural ease of her love, made him doubt any inkling he had.
Charlotte deserved better than the life she’d been living. And Audrey deserved a father.
They both deserved all those things and more. He just wasn’t sure he was the man to give them what they needed.
* * *
The light above Bree’s door was on, and through the glass windowpanes, Charlotte thought she could make out a light from the kitchen. With a shaking hand, she turned off the engine, released her seat belt, and plucked Audrey’s carrier from its base. The crib was still at Greg’s house—she’d realized this only once she’d pulled out of the driveway, but then, she hardly had time to dismantle it, and she didn’t know where Greg kept his toolbox anyway. Besides, she wasn’t going back to that house tonight. Maybe not even Saturday night.
Saturday night. So much for her grand plan.
Charlotte hurried across the front path and rang the doorbell. She pressed her nose to the glass, only relaxing when she saw Bree coming around the corner. Her cousin looked almost as bad as Charlotte felt. When she turned the lock and opened the door, Charlotte could see that her eyes were rimmed with red, and she was clutching a glass of wine as if it were a life vest.
Either Bree had seen another documentary on the meatpacking industry or something had happened with Simon.
Charlotte was placing her bets on Simon.
“I’m afraid I’m not the best company,” Bree said, closing the door behind them.
“That makes two of us.” Charlotte gestured to the wineglass. “Have any more of that?”
“If you don’t mind that it came from a box,” Bree said with a grin.
Charlotte set Audrey down in the living room and followed her cousin back to the kitchen, which looked a bit worse than the last time she’d been there, though she didn’t see how this was possible.
“How’s the renovating coming along?” She noticed that the light fixture had been removed since her last visit. That was it. It had been an old Tiffany-style affair, with stained glass. Pretty but hardly contemporary. Now the room was lit by a lamp that was perched on a chair seat, since the countertop was covered in paint cans and cabinet fronts.
“I’m going with a warm gray in here,” Bree said as she filled a glass and handed it to her. She topped herself off. “I first need to figure out how to get all that wallpaper off.”
She gestured to the far wall where strips of rooster-printed wallpaper had been torn off in jagged strips. Charlotte barely noticed anything but the enormous hole in the center of the wall.
“Oh. I thought I might open the floor space up, but then I realized I sort of need an engineer to tell me if that’s a supporting wall.” Bree’s face crumbled before Charlotte realized what was happening. “It was just a really bad day and I…I needed to smash something.”
Charlotte set her hand on her cousin’s wrist. “Do you have something I might be able to smash?”
Five minutes later, they were in one of the spare bedrooms. A room that Bree tearfully explained she planned to turn into a reading nook, once she had successfully ripped out all the paneling that had been added when her grandmother redid the room in the seventies as a boys’ hangout for all the grandsons.
Gripping the crowbar, Charlotte pried off the top corner of the wood and with all her might pulled. A moment later, a strip of wood had dislodged from the wall. Charlotte grinned. “This is addictive!”
She tried another piece, and another. “I could do this all night!”
“Be my guest,” Bree said wearily, dropping onto an olive-green armchair that would no doubt be banished to the attic soon. She sank her head into her hands. “I’m just so tired.”
“Well. I can have this room done in ten minutes at the rate I’m going!” Charlotte pried off another piece, wrangling it free.
“I thought this would be a fun project, that I could make this house my own, that it would be…enough. But it’s not enough. And I don’t think it ever will be. And now…” Bree sniffed loudly and then wailed, “Now it’s all ripped up and ugly and I don’t know how to put it all back together again!”
Charlotte stopped prying the paneling from the wall and stared at Bree. “I thought…I thought you were enjoying this home remodeling stuff.”
“Are you kidding me?” Bree cried. “Look at my house! Gran…Gran would just die if she saw this. No pun intended.” Bree sniffed again, wiped her nose on her sleeve. Charlotte noticed she had a chunk of plaster in her hair. There was no telling what project she’d been working on before Charlotte arrived.
“You’ll get everything in place. It will be beautiful, I’m sure of it.”
Bree looked at Charlotte doubtfully, but she stopped crying. “I thought it would make me feel better. Instead it just makes me feel worse.”
“Is this about Simon?” Charlotte asked. She really hoped so. She didn’t want another recap of Fast Food Nation. She’d never even seen the movie but had nearly stopped eating for three weeks after Bree had summarized it for her.
“Of course this is about Simon. The bastard,” Bree added under her breath.
Charlotte tipped her head in sympathy. “Want to talk about it?”
“Nothing to talk about,” Bree said. She set down her wineglass and pushed herself into a standing position. “The guy’s a jerk. I don’t know why it took me so long to see it.”
“It’s easy to see what you want to see. I’m guilty of that,” Charlotte said bitterly.
Bree began peeling the orange plaid wallpaper from the top half of the wall. It came off in thin, random strips, but she didn’t seem to care. “I’m not going to lie, I cried today, but not over Simon. Not really. I cried over the time I wasted on him, on someone who wasn’t honest with me, who didn’t deserve me. Guess you could say I’m mad at myself.”
“I understand that feeling all too well,” Charlotte said. “Time to stop giving people too much credit and start seeing them for what they really are.”
Bree turned to her. “What has you so fired up tonight?” Before Charlotte could say anything, her eyes turned knowing. “Don’t tell me. Your client.”
Now it was Charlotte’s turn to drop onto an armchair. It smelled like sweat and teenage boy. “Is it that obvious?”
“I thought he was just a friend?” Bree asked pertly, but Charlotte saw the compassion in her eyes. “Go on,” she said, lifting her wineglass from the table and taking a long sip. “Tell me everything.”
And so Charlotte did. How she was broke. How Jake hadn’t so much as looked at his daughter, much less taken any responsibility for her. How she was staying with Greg. How he’d kissed her. How he’d broken her heart.
“Oh, Charlotte.” Bree stared at her, almost as if she didn’t even know what to say.
“I’m a screwup. I make bad choices.” Charlotte shrugged and took a long sip of wine.
“No, Charlotte. You are many things, but you are not a screwup. Jake—that snake—is the screwup. When I think that he had the opportunity to see that sweet baby…in my shop.” She shook her head. “I’m so angry.”
Uh-oh. Charlotte knew that look. It was the look Bree got when she was about to do something. Quickly, Charlotte reached down and grabbed the crowbar. “Here,” she said, proffering it.
“Ripping out a wall won’t help with this,” Bree said, shaking her head. “What are you going to do, Charlotte?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte replied. It didn’t matter how much her heart ached. What mattered right now was that she didn’t know what would happen tomorrow anymore. Where she would live. If she’d even have a job. What Kate would say…She groaned. Kate. “I suppose I have to go to the Frost party. Smile like the happy fiancée.”
“No, you don’t!”
“Yes,” Charlotte said sheepishly. “I do. I need the money, Bree. And I don’t want to make things worse with my sister.”
“And how exactly would you be making things worse with your sister by being honest with her?” Bree asked pertly, and this time, she was sticking with that look.
Charlotte opened her mouth to speak, to explain, but no sound came out. She didn’t know the answer to that anymore.
“Trust your sister, Charlotte. She loves you and that baby.” Bree’s eyes were pleading, and Charlotte’s began to blur with tears.
She nodded silently. Bree was right. She’d spent so much time waiting for her sister to trust her again, she hadn’t stopped to think that she needed to trust again, too.