CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I look sharp. I’m rocking a pair of charcoal gray pants, a navy blue button-down, and new shoes. And…wait for it…I’m freshly showered, too. Yup. Dad took me shopping and let me use the guest shower at his home. And damn, do I clean up well.

He wouldn’t let me call Charlotte though.

And yes, I do know her number. It’s one of maybe two I have committed to memory. Hers and the Chinese food delivery joint. Instead, he called her, and inquired politely if she was still available to see me tonight. Evidently, she said yes, so he told her I would be arriving at six.

As the town car I hired pulls up to her building, I feel a bit like a teenager arriving for prom. Except I don’t have a corsage, or teenage stamina. Grown past that one, thank you very much.

But the nerves are the same, and mine are sky-high. I step out of the car and head to the doorman. He buzzes her, and I wait, pacing in the entryway, checking my watch, counting the number of tiles on the floor. Three interminable minutes later, Charlotte crosses the lobby.

She wears a cranberry skirt and a black top. It’s the outfit I took her ring shopping in. The fact that she’s wearing it knocks the breath from my lungs. It feels like a sign. As she nears me, I take in every detail. Her hair hangs loose and beautiful down her shoulders. Her lips are red and glossy. Her legs are bare, and she wears black high heels. I’m not sure I’ve ever told her that those shoes are my favorite, and somehow it turns me on even more that the ones she likes wearing are the ones I like seeing her in.

I can’t believe it’s been only eight hours since I’ve seen her.

She stops in front of me. Narrows her eyes. Points. “I don’t know whether to kiss you or punch you. Because I’ve been sending text messages all day. To my purse,” she says, dropping her hand into her purse and hunting around.

She grabs my phone and thrusts it at me, and the first text I see makes me grin.

THAT WAS THE BIGGEST LIE I EVER TOLD. CALL ME.

Her jaw is set hard, and she glares at me. “Oh, and I called you several times, too, before I remembered I had your phone. I was basically messaging myself all day. You had the ringer on silent, you idiot.”

“Idiot seems to be the theme of the day when it comes to me,” I say, but I’m smiling because this is another reason why I love her madly. The fact that she marched up to me and called me out.

She parks her hands on her hips. “Do you even want to know what my messages said?”

“I do,” I say, taking her hand and lacing my fingers through hers. God, it feels good to touch her again. It feels out-of-this-world amazing when she squeezes back, her hand fitting mine so perfectly. “But right now, I want to take you out.”

“To the restaurant in Chelsea?” she asks, as we reach the door of the gleaming black town car.

“Yes, but not yet. First, I’m taking you on a themed tour of New York.” I gesture to her building. “This is stop one on the Lessons I Learned in the Last Week Tour.”

She arches an eyebrow, inviting me to say more.

“Right here is where I was really dense,” I say.

“How were you really dense?”

“Because the day I asked you to be my fake fiancée, I actually believed I could pull it off and it wouldn’t change a thing,” I say, as I lift the handle of the car and hold the door for her. I watch her slide into the cool, air-conditioned backseat. She looks edible.

“Did it change things?” she asks, her voice rising on the question.

I nod as I get into the car next to her and pull the door shut. “It did.”

She swallows. “What’s stop two then?”

I gesture north. “A restaurant called McCoy’s. Heard of it?” I ask, as the car zips uptown, weaving through Saturday evening traffic.

“I believe I’m familiar with it. I’m so curious what you learned there.”

When we reach the restaurant where we had our first dinner with the Offermans, I hold her hand and escort her out of the car. We don’t go inside, though. We stand under the green awning, and I touch her hair, stroking the strands that fall onto her shoulder. Her breath hitches as my fingers make contact with her skin.

“As you may recall, we were here only one week ago. We had practiced kissing on the street, and in your apartment,” I say, then lean in to brush a kiss to her cheek. She trembles. “But none of those practice sessions prepared me for the lesson I learned here when you kissed me at the table.”

“What lesson was that?”

“How much I liked fake kissing with you.”

A grin spreads across her face. “And real kissing?”

“Even better. In fact, let me just refresh your memory of how much we both like it.” I cup her cheeks and capture her delicious mouth with mine. I kiss her hard, like I’m reminding her of all that’s in store for us. Her arms loop around me, her breasts press to my chest, and she melts into the kiss, making those sexy sighs and murmurs that are like a current surging through me.

Other things will be surging soon, too, if we keep this up. And while that’s precisely what I want, I’m not done yet with the tour.

Twenty minutes later we roll up to Gin Joint, and I lead her into the sultry, sexy bar where she drove me wild. “This is where I was a complete idiot.”

Her hand slinks up my arm, and a shudder wracks through me. “How?”

“Because of that,” I say.

“Because of what?”

“Because when you touch me, it turns me on like nothing ever has in my life,” I say in a husky voice as I tug her close. “Yet for some crazy reason, I thought I could resist you.”

She laces her hands in my hair and whispers, “So silly.” She shakes her head in admonishment, now fully playing along with the tour.

“You think that’s silly, then wait ’til you hear what’s next. If I were to take you to the next spot, you’d realize the height of my ridiculousness.”

“I would?” she asks as I walk her to the car and the cool backseat.

“Yes. Because after I took you home that night, I returned to my house and took matters into my own hand. You rode me hard in my fantasies.”

Her eyes light up with the realization, and then her fingers tap dance across my leg. “That’s so hot. I want to watch someday.”

“Yeah, I want to watch you do that, too.” I curl a hand around her head, bring my lips to her ear, and whisper, “Three times that night. And somehow, I thought I could get you out of my system that way.”

“Oh, Spencer,” she whispers. “I thought the same thing, too.”

Our lips crash together as the driver pulls away. We kiss hungrily, erasing the hours apart, the lies, the pretending. We kiss until our lips are bruised. We kiss until we reach the next destination. The corner of Forty-third. It’s six-forty-five now, and theater traffic has begun, so we don’t stop the vehicle.

I point through the tinted windows. “Strangest thing happened on that corner.”

“What was so strange?” she asks, her happy tone telling me she wants the answers as much as I love giving them.

“I wasn’t a complete idiot that night. I made sure to tell you the full truth—that I was jealous of anyone else who’d ever had you. Which was really my way of saying I don’t want anyone else to have you,” I say, then brush my lips against the hollow of her throat. “Ever.”

“I feel the same,” she says, her smile like sunshine as she grabs her phone again, this time showing me the messages she sent right after she left this morning. “Look. Just look.”

About that horrid lie.

It hurt so much to say that.

I didn’t mean it.

It feels so real to me.

Do you feel it too?

I look up from the screen and press my hand to her chest, over her heart. It thunders under my hand. “Yes, Snuffalaffugus. I feel it everywhere.”

She giggles when I use our term of endearment. “Me, too. But before we fully explore everywhere, I really want you to read the rest of these,” she says, as she peels my hand off her chest and presses her phone into my palm.

Oh great. I just realized I’m sending all these text messages to myself. BECAUSE YOUR PHONE IS LIGHTING UP MY PURSE!

Okay. So yeah. This sucks.

You’ve got to know I only said that on the field to try to help. I was trying to stick to the plan. To make it all believable. I HAVE NO IDEA IF IT WORKED.

Ugh. I feel awful now. I messed things up even worse, didn’t I?

I’m talking to myself. But look what I found…

Seems I have your keys and wallet, too. Hmm. You have a lot of credit cards.

I’ve been meaning to get a new Kate Spade.

And some Louboutins.

WHERE ARE YOU? DON’T YOU KNOW WHERE I LIVE?

I’m not relinquishing this phone unless you feel the same way. I swear if I see you and it turns out this is a one-way street, you will never get this phone back. It will die a fast, painless death by the hammer of my embarrassment.

So if you’re reading these messages, it must mean only one thing.

You’re crazy for me, too.

“I’m so crazy for you, too,” I say, and our lips come together again.

Before the moment can turn heated, before she can climb on top of me like I want her to, we somehow make it to Central Park and the baseball field. The car idles on the path, waiting for us as I walk her to the grass.

Another game is underway—a pizzeria is batting against a shoe store chain. I pull Charlotte close to me. “But this,” I say, pointing to the ground, “this is where I was a huge dumbass.”

She grins. “Why’s that?”

“Because right here, earlier today…” I take a breath, letting it fuel me to finally share my whole heart. “This is where the woman I love went to bat for me.” She gasps when I use the L word. “I should have told you then that I love you. I should have said everything to you.” Inching closer, I press my forehead to hers. “I should have told you I’m madly in love with you, and I want you to be mine. When you told me it wasn’t real, I was devastated—”

“Spencer, I didn’t mean it. I said it to try to fix things.”

“I know that now. I was foolish then. But it was all for the best. Because feeling like I lost you made me realize I’d do whatever it takes to have you. Because you’re the one. You’ve been in front of me all along, and in some ways I feel like I fell in love with you quickly, in only one week. But in other ways, I know I’ve been falling in love with you over time, over the years. It just took faking it for me to realize that you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. But more than that—you’re the only woman I want to love.” I brush the backs of my fingers against her cheek. Her eyes are lit with joy. I recognize the emotion because I feel it with her. “And I know that, because I want to eat the green gummy bears for you so you never have to taste them, and I want to sit through the torture of Fiddler on the Roof with you, and drink virgin margaritas some nights, and non-bad beer other nights, and put you in bed if you’re tired and have a headache, and make love to you all night long if you don’t.”

Her lips part, and she sighs contentedly. She grabs at my collar, pulling me even closer. “I don’t have a headache tonight. And I want to do that all night long, too. I want to do that because I broke the same rule. I’m so in love with you that I’d kiss you with morning breath, and I’ll even scrape pesto mayo off your sandwiches for you if anyone serves it to you by mistake,” she says, locking her gaze to mine.

“I hope that never happens.” My tone is intensely serious. “Because I don’t want you to have to go anywhere near pesto mayo or bad breath. But if it does, I want us to deal with both horrors together.”

“Me, too,” she says, then kisses me—a deep, passionate kiss that seals all these lessons I learned.

When she breaks the kiss, she raises a suggestive eyebrow. “Leftover cold sesame noodles at your house instead of dinner out?”

“You’re on,” I say, since I know what she wants, and I want the same thing.

“Oh, wait. There’s one more thing I want you to know,” she says, running her hand down the buttons on my shirt, a prelude to what we’ll both be doing soon.

“What is it?”

“Remember when I thought I couldn’t pull this off?”

“I remember.”

“I was able to because being with you rarely felt lying. It was easy to pretend to be yours.”

“Why?” I ask, gripping her hips.

“It didn’t feel fake. It always felt like it was becoming real.”

“It is real,” I say, locking eyes with her. I am rooted to this moment—it is the new hub of Charlotte and me, and I want to see and feel and taste all of it. But I also want to taste her. Right about now. “Know what else is real?”

“What else?” she asks playfully, her tone telling me she knows where my thoughts are headed.

“How much I want you this second. It’s very real. It’s, like, ten inches of real,” I say, leaning into her so she can feel how much I crave her.

She arches an eyebrow. “Ten? I would have guessed twelve.”

“Starts at ten. Finishes at twelve,” I joke as I clasp her hand and return to the town car with her. Once inside, I ask the driver to close the partition. After the tinted window clicks into place, we are cocooned.

“I’ll take the ten now, please.”

“Ah, so you do want an appetizer before the Chinese dinner in,” I say, running my hand down her spine and over her rear, squeezing her ass.

“No, Spencer. I want dessert first.”

I lift her on top of me. “Appetizer. Dessert. The main course. Let’s have it all,” I say, raising the fabric of her skirt, and she works open my zipper.

In seconds, I tug her panties to the side, roll on a condom, and lower her onto my shaft. We moan at the same time, then we kiss and we fuck for the next few blocks. Then we kiss hard and fuck harder as the car whips downtown, my hands tugging on her hair, her fingernails clawing my shoulders, our lips smashing together as we consume each other hungrily.

We fuck as if it’s been weeks since we were together, when it’s only been hours. But I’ll take this…this need for another person, especially since tonight is as good as it’s always been. But it’s worlds better, too, because it’s not ending. There’s no expiration date in sight, no ground rules, and no pretending.

The night turns into a marathon of sex and sesame noodles, of food and orgasms, of laughter and more of the L-word than I ever expected to utter.

We test out the strength of my coffee table and it passes; though my knees get bruised, I don’t care. A little later, Charlotte suggests a shower just for fun, and since I’m a fan of fun showers, I say yes. When she kneels on the tiles, she treats me to the best shower I’ve ever had in my life, and does something so intense with her tongue that I’ve got to remember to ask her if she can tie a knot in a cherry with it, too.

Not that it matters. I have no use for knotted cherries. But I have lots and lots of uses for her tongue. Mine, too, as I indulge in another taste of her after midnight when we get into bed.

Then, we fool ourselves into thinking we’ll sleep, but instead I slide inside her as we spoon in the dark. Fido provides the harmony, purring loudly when she comes, and together they sound like a mini earthquake.

“Charlotte, I have a confession to make,” I tell her as I run my fingers through her hair while she comes down from her high.

“Spit it out.”

“My cat’s a pervert.”

She laughs. “Sounds like the three of us will get along fine then.”

I think so, too.