Chapter Three
With a content smile on her face, Charlie stretched her body leisurely. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so peacefully. She opened her eyes, and surprisingly enough, she wasn’t suffering from a hangover. The shower was running. Charlie paused. Why was the shower running? And for that matter, where the hell was she?
Charlie looked around in a panic. What was going on here? She wasn’t in her house, nor in her own bed.
“Oh my God!”
Charlie then realized she was completely nude and there was something sticky between her legs. The events of last night came rushing back to her. She recalled going to the bar to forget about her wedding anniversary then getting a little tipsy. Most especially, she remembered Jake Fox.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” she chanted over and over again. She had sex with Jake last night. Not once but twice, and she had enjoyed it! To make matters worse, she had begged for it like a nymphomaniac. What had come over her? How could she have let this happen with some guy she’d known on so short an acquaintance?
Charlie had to get out of here before Jake finished showering. There was no way that she’d be able to face him, not after what happened. She couldn’t handle it if he walked out of the bathroom with a smug expression on his face.
He’d taken advantage of her!
No, that wasn’t exactly true. She was coherent enough to remember he had tried to dissuade her—at first. She had been the persistent one. What must Jake be thinking of her? He probably believed she was some good-time girl, letting just any guy have sex with her, and without protection.
Oh shit! Who was to say where the hell that man had been before she had let him screw her? She had read articles about men and women intentionally infecting their unsuspecting partners with STDs. She didn’t think Jake was that kind of person, but one could never tell.
Oh Lord. You’ve gone and done it this time, Charlie.
Scrambling out of bed, she rushed to don her discarded clothing. She heard the shower turn off just as she slid into her shoes. After grabbing her purse, she made a mad dash for the door.
Charlie had never been more horrified in her life. In the age of HIV and hepatitis, she let a stranger have unprotected sex with her. She would have to get herself tested immediately.
As she drove home, tears ran unheeded down her face. Last night she’d been so distraught over the anniversary of Paul’s death that she had slept with a man she knew for all of one hour. There was no telling herself it was simply the alcohol that made her so uninhibited, because on a subconscious level, she had needed that physical intimacy Jake had given. She hadn’t been with anyone since Paul. As a matter of fact, until last night Paul had been her only lover.
Unable to see through her haze of tears, Charlie pulled her car over to the side of the road and screamed her frustration. She couldn’t stop thinking about the things she had done with Jake. Charlie doubted she’d ever forget those ice blue eyes for as long as she lived.
She blamed the alcohol. She blamed her grief. She blamed the fact that she hadn’t had a man in so long. She couldn’t, however, admit to herself that what happened last night was because she had wanted Jake, pure and simple.
Jake kept the water as icy as he could stand it, to keep his rock hard dick under control. It was a pity Charlie was still asleep. He would have liked to shower with her. Images of her dark soapy body against him while he slowly worked his cock in and out of her meaty ass floated through his mind. Get a hold of yourself, Jake.
He stepped out of the shower whistling, feeling on top of the world. Jake thought of wrapping the towel around his waist but decided against it. Maybe he could convince Charlie to have a little workout before breakfast.
“Charlie,” Jake called, stepping out of the bathroom. “I changed my flight to a later time, so now we can…” To his surprise, he found her bed empty. He surveyed every inch of his room. There was no sign of Charlie Brown. Her clothing and purse was gone. He raced to the door and opened it to stare down the hall. She must have gotten good head start, so there was no point in hurrying to catch her.
“Fuck!” Jake cursed in frustration.
Frantically, he grabbed the phone to call the front desk attendant.
“Plaza Hotel, this is Kelly speaking. How may I help you?”
“Yes, I was wondering if there might have been a message left by a Miss Charlie Brown for Jake Fox?” he asked, trying to calm the erratic pounding of his heart.
“I would be happy to check for you, Mr. Fox. Please hold.”
The few minutes he waited for the receptionist to come back on the phone was pure torture. Please let there be a message. If there weren’t, he didn’t know what he’d do.
“Mr. Fox?”
“Yes. Was there anything?”
“I’m sorry sir, but there were no messages. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No, thank you.” He hung up, dejected.
His first reaction was dismay. She was gone, and with her so was the magic they had created together. Anger was his next reaction. What kind of woman would allow him to make love to her and then just disappear without a word or even a simple note? She had used him to assuage her loneliness and like a fool he had given in to her.
What kind of man was he to fall for a woman he barely knew? His father once told him, when you met that someone special Jake would know right away. For the first time in his life, he had begun to believe in that theory as well. Obviously he’d been terribly wrong.
There he was fantasizing in the shower about a future with her, even contemplating asking her to move to the D.C. area to live with him. He thought about how happy his parents would be that he was finally settling down, but it had all just been a fantasy. Jake cursed his naiveté.
Charlie obviously didn’t feel the same way. He would have to forget her. He tried to convince himself there were other fish in the sea, but his cock wasn’t convinced and neither was he.
Damn you, Charlie.
Three weeks later, Charlie found herself in a clinic waiting for her test results. She shifted nervously in her chair, taking a peek at her watch every minute or so. What was taking the doctor so long? How could she have been so stupid? For once in a very long time, she wasn’t obsessing over Paul, but the subject prevalent in her mind wasn’t very pleasant. Actually, she hadn’t really given her husband much thought in the past three weeks. A wave of guilt washed over her.
Charlie replayed that night in her head several times and wondered what had compelled her to do what she had done. Jake Fox’s image floated in her mind. She still couldn’t believe she had begged him to make love to her. No, she had begged him to fuck her. The most surprising part was how much she had actually enjoyed it. He had made her body sing. She could still feel the thrust of his cock as she remembered the taste of her juices on his lips. He had touched and licked her in all the right places.
She stood up to pace, unable to sit any longer. A young girl shot her an annoyed look, but Charlie wasn’t in the mood to be polite to prissy little girls. All she could think about was how a one-night stand could possibly change her life forever.
Charlie was slowly losing her mind due to thoughts of Jake Fox. She was better off forgetting Jake because she would never see him again. The last thing she needed was the complication of him in her life especially when she didn’t know what it was about him that consumed her thoughts. Yes, Jake was fine as hell, but it wasn’t his looks that had drawn her to him. Whatever it was, it simply would not do to dwell on it.
In the past few weeks, two huge bombshells had been dropped on her. The largest of those was her parent’s decision to retire, sell their home and travel the country in an RV. Neither of them had ever ventured outside the state of North Carolina and this sudden wanderlust they had developed puzzled Charlie. They offered to take her with them, but she declined. They had been such a huge support to her for the past year that she often felt like a burden. As dearly as she loved her parents, she couldn’t imagine being cooped up in a traveling house on wheels for such a long period of time.
On top of her parents deciding to pack up, her best friend Laura Tombaga met some man on a dating app and decided to move to Washington, D.C., to be with him. Charlie had warned her friend about the danger of leaving everything she knew for someone she’d only known for such a short time, but Laura claimed she was following her heart. Charlie would not have been so worried if Laura wasn’t the type to “follow her heart” so often. Charlie thought her friend was nuts, but Laura was a grown woman. The only thing Charlie could do was wish Laura luck and hope for the best.
With Laura’s decision to leave Raleigh and her parents deciding to sell, Charlie wondered if maybe she too should move. Her support system had splintered. The house she and Paul had picked out so lovingly no longer gave her pleasure. Her job was going nowhere. Charlie’s boss was a card-carrying member of the old boy’s club. He promoted very few minorities and even fewer women. She’d been with her firm for five years and knew she wasn’t going to get any further unless she found another job.
Charlie had lost contact with a lot of friends because she hadn’t socialized much in the past year. Now, there was really nothing stopping her from moving to some other place. While she was deep in thought her name was called.
“Mrs. Brown, Dr. Greene will see you now.” Charlie nearly jumped when the nurse spoke to her.
She took a deep breath and followed the nurse down the long hallway of the doctor’s office. This was it. She would finally find out what price, if any, she would have to pay for her stupidity.
“Hello, Charlie, how are you feeling today?” Dr. Greene asked as she entered his office.
“I’m okay, considering why I’m here.”
“It’s understandable, my dear. Please, have a seat.”
“No. I couldn’t possibly sit down. I’m too full of nervous energy.”
Dr. Greene frowned, but didn’t argue. He must have realized he would be fighting a losing battle if he did.
“Okay, suit yourself. The test results just came up from the lab it took me a minute to figure out how to pull them up on my computer. We’ve moved to a new system recently. That’s what took me so long.”
“Please tell me everything is okay, Dr. Greene.”
“You are in tip-top shape and all the STD tests came back negative. You will, of course, need to come back in six months for another HIV test, but I don’t foresee a problem. The tests performed today are pretty accurate so the chance of it coming back positive a second time is slim.”
Charlie breathed a huge sigh of relief at the announcement of her clean bill of health. That was that then. She could write this episode off as bad judgment and move on with her life. Something struck her as odd, however. The way Dr. Greene had delivered his news made her hesitate. “Dr. Greene, there’s something you’re not telling me. You said all my tests came back negative, so I’m fine, right? You said I was healthy,” she probed.
“Yes, I said that all of your tests for STDs came back negative.”
“I understand. That’s what I was tested for, but you’re leaving something out,” Charlie insisted.
“Well, I actually wanted to leave this for last but you do remember when you came in here I told you a pregnancy test would also be taken as standard procedure.”
The alarm in Charlie’s head went off. For some stupid reason pregnancy had been the last thing that had occurred to her. “Please don’t tell me what I think you’re about to say,” Charlie pleaded.
Dr. Greene sighed sympathetically. “I’m sorry to tell you this if this comes as bad news, but your pregnancy test came back positive.”
“Oh my God.” Charlie fainted.