Chapter 8
Sneaking into her own home the night after a one-night stand was not something Laura had ever envisioned herself doing. She hadn’t done it as a teenager. And, as an adult, she’d never had the need.
She turned the lock in the door quietly, opened the door slowly so it wouldn’t creak. Held her shoes in her hand so they wouldn’t clack all over the hardwoods.
But she needn’t have bothered. By the time she got to the credenza where she stored her bag, she realized that her grandmother, the person she was trying to sneak in to avoid, was on the couch.
And she wasn’t alone.
Mortification gummed up the blood in Laura’s veins and she stood stock still as she took in what was happening. Grandma Lola was making out with someone who looked very much like Laura’s grandfather. Laura had never seen her grandparents kiss; she hadn’t seen them together until Carla’s wedding. And they hadn’t spoken at that event, much less groped each other.
She wasn’t a preteen, and she knew older people got frisky, but this was a shock on so many levels. Her grandparents had been divorced for almost thirty-five years. As soon as her grandfather decided to flee Cuba, he’d become a stranger to her grandmother. According to the family lore, she’d chased him out of her family home with a knife, screaming that he was a traitor. She would have gotten him killed by the government if anyone had been of the mind to snitch.
Even when he’d bribed enough people to take her with him and their nearly grown children, she’d refused to leave. Refused to give up her home. No one in the family understood that decision to this day. Her mother barely spoke to Lola when she came to the house. Laura’s aunt refused to see her.
Lola had remained close with her nephew, Hector, through letters. Laura had never gotten the full story on why that happened. Why her grandmother had refused to leave and given up her children.
And now, she was watching her grandparents make out. If she’d had any breakfast, it would have come up. Had Lola been sneaking around with her ex-husband? Is that why she wouldn’t say where she’d been the other night?
Ew. Gross. Gag. They all came to mind. Watching her grandparents roll around on her sectional was like watching a flamingo try to mate with a shark. Someone was going to get dead and bloody if she didn’t put a stop to this.
Laura cleared her throat, and her abuelo’s head popped up.
“You weren’t supposed to be home.” With more grace than she should have at her age, Lola extricated herself from the clinch and wiped errant lipstick from the side of her mouth, looking none too guilty.
“What’s—what’s going on here?”
Lola tilted her head as if to convey, “Oh dear, am I going to have to give her ‘the talk’?”
In order to avoid that, Laura started towards the hall leading to the bedrooms. Before she got three steps, her grandfather said, “This is not what it looks like.”
Laura turned slowly, and took in her grandfather’s half-buttoned shirt and her grandmother’s mussed up hair. She pursed her lips and nodded. “So, I didn’t walk in on my long-divorced grandparents sucking each other’s faces off?”
Neither of them had anything to say to that. They just sat on the couch, looking like teenagers who were caught necking.
“I need to shower and get to rehearsal.” Laura looked to her grandmother. “I think we should have dinner together tonight. Get some wine. I’m going to need it to hear you explain this.”
Laura waved her shoes between the two of them, and they had the courtesy to look sheepish. They, of course, had the right to do whatever they wanted. They were adults, both in full command of their faculties. But she felt like she had the right to maybe not see it?
When she got to her room and stripped off her clothes, she was reminded of places on her body raw and tender from what she and Charlie had consented to as adults the night before. When she got in the shower, she couldn’t help but run her fingers over the places where his beard had scraped her skin, places she wouldn’t expect like all over her thighs, her lower back. He’d been so different last night—not at all what she’d expected.
Before they’d fucked she’d thought he was this laid-back guy sort of floating by on his dad’s money and connections. The show he produced for Jonah and Carla was good, but the stuff he’d done before in Chicago had been reality dating shows that pitted women with low self-esteem against each other to compete for a douchey, vacant dude bro. Those kinds of shows made Laura a little sick inside.
But last night, his touch had revealed a different side of him. There’d been nothing laid back about the way he took her, talked to her, commanded her body with his. Before he’d done dirty, filthy things to her, she’d enjoyed looking at him. Now, she couldn’t get the sound of his voice out of her head. She’d agreed to spend one night with him, but she wouldn’t be able to keep her fingers from creeping into her panties when she was alone. Wouldn’t be able to stop the slow burn of the fire he’d lit inside her the night before from taking over. For the next long while, whenever she made herself come, she’d only be able to think about him and how well he’d learned her body in a few short hours.
She almost wished that she hadn’t limited their affair to one night. Although she’d never admit that she wanted more, her curiosity about Charlie had been piqued. It was the same curiosity that had gotten her to take her first ballet class at three after seeing a poster for the Miami City Ballet. Standing in her bathroom now, facing the likelihood that she’d never get to be with Charlie again, she wasn’t sure that she was living her life right. Something in her gut burned with regret—the idea of those papers she had to file so she could get where she wanted to be in life.
She shook her head, wincing when a drop of shampoo got in her eye. She didn’t have time to think about what might have been if she hadn’t lost all control for one night with Charlie Laughlin. What was done was done, and other than opening night, she’d probably never have to see him again.
* * * *
Charlie sat in the darkened theater, not wanting her to see him watching them block portions of the ballet. He felt like a creeper, and he should be at work. But after spending a long night in bed with the star of the show and waking up just in time for her to leave him hard and wanting this morning, his dick was fully in charge of his schedule. That was the only explanation for the fit of madness that brought him here.
At first, he’d only sponsored the ballet so he could see her again. It was an extremely expensive way to make sure she got that second date, but totally worth it. He would have paid more because he was a sucker for the way Laura moved. But watching her sweat-covered and straining today was markedly different than feeling her come apart in his arms the night before. Gone was the passionate, wanton woman from last night. Even from a hundred feet away, he could see the lines of strain on her face and the difficulty she was having performing each step. She was still almost perfect, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed the looks on her face unless he’d seen her the way she was last night. But now that he’d seen her face lax with bliss, he knew—knew—that she was not blissful while dancing. At least not anymore.
He wondered if it was just being tired of dancing in Miami. Although this was a very different production of Carmen—performed with opera singers doing vocals live on the edge of the stage and brand new choreography—she’d performed this piece in different incarnations ten times. Or so he’d memorized from what he could find online. Because he’d done research on his erstwhile wife. Like a creeper.
When the choreographer cued the dancers to begin the opening sequence again, someone slid into the seat behind him. Assuming that it was another dancer or someone associated with the company, Charlie didn’t look over his shoulder until the person tapped his shoulder.
“Charlie Laughlin, right?”
Then he turned and saw a guy who didn’t seem to be associated with the ballet. He was, however, holding a pad and pen. Having grown up around a lot of his father’s subordinates, there were several signs that this was a reporter.
“And you are?”
“Phil Oliveras, Ocean Drive.”
Charlie raised his brow. “And my identity matters to you, how?”
“I’m doing a story on your wife, so I’d think my identity matters to you plenty.”
The bottom dropped out of Charlie’s stomach. He hadn’t told anyone anything about his sham marriage. And the way Laura had threatened to gut him if he told anyone told him that she had kept her mouth shut, too. His mind ran through the possibilities—her family or the waiter.
He imagined that her grandparents would have kept the confidence. The waiter, however, had no reason not to talk. The murderous looks Charlie had dealt him during dinner might have provided motivation.
Still, he schooled his features and didn’t respond to the reporter. If he had anything solid, there would have been a blind item out on their marriage at the very least. Since he was still at the goading and making annoying innuendo phase, he didn’t have anything to go on. Although a trip to the clerk’s office might remedy that if the annulment papers hadn’t gone through yet.
Fuck.
“Wife?”
“You’re married to Laura Delgado.”
Charlie shrugged. “That’s really breaking news when the groom doesn’t even know.”
The reporter rolled his eyes behind his trendy horn-rimmed glasses. “Drop the shit, Laughlin. You know how this game is played. Hell, you’ve staged multiple versions of the game, televised all over the world. Just give me a quote.”
Anger balled Charlie’s fists. Only the fact that he didn’t want to disrupt Laura’s rehearsal or get arrested for turning this guy’s facial features into something that resembled ground beef kept him from clocking him, repeatedly. And the reporter was just doing his job. The fact that he’d gone out with his wife, kissed her in public before the annulment went through put them at risk for publicity.
He hated the fact that he’d ever signed on to produce that dating show after his first marriage had ended in a hail of gossip gunfire. But he’d been young and it had been fun. He’d reveled in the attention he got for it. Every news story about how the show was in poor taste—especially the ones that had embarrassed his father—had delighted him. But now? At this moment, he was wondering if he could take on a new identity because his current one had been an unredeemable asshole—totally erase the reason Laura didn’t see him as a real possibility for herself.
“What would it take for you to just cover the ballet and not mention any relationship between me and Ms. Delgado?”
“Are you trying to bribe me?”
“No. I never mentioned money.” Charlie had chosen his gambit carefully. But he had something else that might be of interest to his new buddy, Phil. Access.
“But you implied—”
Charlie turned away from the reporter, and said, “Fuck what I implied. What do you want?”
“Besides photos of the happy couple?” The sarcasm in this motherfucker’s voice coated the air and made Charlie sick to his stomach. “I want the whole story—how you two met, the engagement story, and the wedding night.”
If he’d looked back at Phil in that moment, he was pretty sure his looks would kill the guy dead. As tempting as that was, it was more important that he extricate himself—and more importantly Laura—from this situation without bloodshed.
“You’re not getting any of that because none of it exists.”
“Why don’t you look me in the face and tell me that?”
“Do you like your job?”
Phil barked out a laugh that got the dancers’ and choreographer’s attention. Just fucking great.
“This is a closed rehearsal.” The choreographer’s voice was faint but emphatic.
Not wanting to be found out for creeping on Laura, Charlie got up wordlessly and walked out of the theater. Reluctantly, he motioned for the scumbag reporter to follow him. Once they were out in the lobby, Charlie faced the guy, folding his arms so he wouldn’t clock him.
“Again, Phil, do you like your job?”
“I went to Columbia J school, and I write puff pieces for a local magazine. Does that seem like a job that someone like me would like?”
Charlie looked the guy up and down. From the lack of care towards his appearance, he subscribed to the school of thought that real journalists looked like schlubs at all times. “So, what do you want to let this go?”
“Listen, buddy—”
“I’m not your fucking buddy.” Charlie leaned down and got in Phil’s face. He softened his voice. “I’m not going to be your buddy or help you get out of a job you hate if you don’t play ball.”
“I have integrity.” When Charlie didn’t respond, just tilted his head, he continued. “I do—and the way you’re trying not to hit me right now tells me I’m right.”
“What would it matter if you were?” Sure, Laura was a local celebrity, and her extended family was a regular item on local gossip blogs, but that didn’t mean that her getting married warranted whatever kind of serious investigative journalism that this guy thought he was doing. “Neither of us are famous.” And Charlie had worked hard to stop being infamous for the past few years. “Why are you wasting your time?”
“You think it’s not big news that the original producer of the The Single Guy, the guy who said all those things about his ex-wife and the women on your show, got married to a classy, fine-assed prima ballerina.” Charlie fingers twitched with the need to twist Phil’s outer ear right off his head. Laura was his fine-assed ballerina. At least for the time being. “That’s news in this little corner of the world.”
“And not even a byline on a national newspaper would talk you out of it?”
“If I break this story, I can get the same thing on any arts page I want.”
“Not on any of the papers my father owns.”
“Really? Last I heard, the two of you weren’t speaking. He’d really carry out a vendetta for you?”
“It’s not a vendetta. I just don’t think that a gutter-dwelling loser belongs on any of my dad’s papers.” He was vastly exaggerating his influence with dear-old-dad, but one of his brothers would do him a solid for sure. “I’ve got to protect the family name.”
Really, the only name he wanted to protect was Laura’s. She didn’t deserve to be linked with him in perpetuity. She deserved to get everything she wanted—even if what she wanted was in New York and thousands of miles away from him. But telling fuckhead Phil that wasn’t going to help his case.
“I don’t think you have that much influence anymore.”
Charlie got so far in Phil’s face that the other guy had to back up. “Watch me.” Phil turned white as a sheet. “Get out of here before she sees you. You breathe wrong in her direction a decade from now, and I will end you. Not just your career. You. You are full of shit, and your story means nothing. But I like Laura and her family. You cause her one iota of pain and you’ll be shitting from a tube.”
As soon as he said the words, he knew it was too much. When the door to the theater slammed and Phil looked over his shoulder with pancake-sized eyes, Charlie knew someone had heard his declaration of war in favor of Laura. Anyone hearing that would know that Laura meant something to him, exactly the opposite of what he should have conveyed to the jackass in front of him.
And it was even worse because it was her.
Charlie didn’t look back to see if Laura was standing there. He didn’t have to. Her smell was unmistakable, and it wafted all the way over to where he was standing. Her standing in a room wasn’t something he could ignore. She was undeniable. Denying that they were married to the press was one thing. Denying that he was starting to have very real feelings for the gorgeous, intoxicating woman he was married to was very much another.
Sleeping with—claiming—Laura had been a huge mistake. Now, he would never get her out of his system. He’d never be able to forget the things that she’d given only to him. He didn’t want to think about her career ending because of salacious gossip and fallout within the company. But he couldn’t be distant or impartial with her. He had this insane need to protect her, even if it killed him to deny their connection to anyone.
He was afraid all of that hung in the vestibule, and that what he’d said to Phil would blow up for him—but mostly for Laura. All he wanted was to be alone with her so he could explain.
“Are you going to get the fuck out? Or do I have to call security?”