Page 46 of Deny Me
The sour note in Wes’s voice didn’t stop them; it couldn’t—there was work to do. They left Wes in the ballroom and made their way onto a back veranda. The lawn spread out before them, with lit tiers marching down toward a Romanesque wall at the end of the gardens. Curved arches and columns separated the tiers from the back woods, and the tinkling of water in the fountains filled the air. Trees and bushes dotted the landscape, providing shadows and giving couples places to disappear—or the enemy places to hide. King led Charlotte down the lawn, walking slowly in deference to her heels and anyone keeping pace with them through the landscape.
Charlotte stayed silent for a few minutes, but he could feel her gathering her words. “I’m sorry.”
Not what he’d been expecting. “For what?”
“Your parents.”
“Don’t be.” He hadn’t expected anything more than what they’d given him. “I learned to stand on my own long before I left.”
Charlotte stopped, gripping his hand to halt him next to her. “You shouldn’t have had to be.” She glanced down at their hands, intertwined in the dim light. “I wasn’t there for you when I should have been, King. I’m sorry. I could say I was young, but the truth is, I was afraid. I wasn’t ready to leave my family behind.”
He shifted his gaze to the shadows surrounding them. “I would never have asked you to do that.”
“I understand that now. I’m sorry I didn’t understand it then.”
She hadn’t been the only one wrapped up in her own decisions. What had he missed while his fiancée had needed him? “I need you to tell me, Charlotte…what happened after I left?”
She was quiet so long he thought she’d refuse to answer. Her fingers twitched in his grip, and he tightened his hold, unable to release her without an answer.
“Just tell me.”
“I had a miscarriage.”
The words knocked the air from his lungs. “What?”A baby.She’d been carrying his baby? His eyes strained in the darkness, searching for answers in the face he’d always loved. A baby? “Charlotte?”
A small, sad smile touched her lips. “I didn’t know until after you left. Not until—”
The lights spilling from the ballroom cut out, leaving the gardens around them black. Charlotte’s words turned into a cry just as a massive weight hit him from behind, slamming him into the gravel beneath their feet.
Chapter Twenty-One
Until I almost died.That’s what she’d been about to say. And then the lights were out and King was gone and hard hands were bruising her arms as they dragged her away from him.
“No! No!” She pulled away, twisted and turned, but nothing seemed to break the grip her attacker had on her. “King!”
A vague sense of fighting, of rough curses and the impact of flesh on flesh, registered, but it was all a jumble of the chaos that had become her world. She tried to remember the plan—we planned for this, for something to happen in the garden—but everything she was supposed to do became lost in the flood of adrenaline set off by those hands.
“Get. Off. Me!”
A muffled sound came from her attacker when the spike of her heel broke on him—his foot, his leg, his something. The loss of both feet on the ground cost her balance. Despite any pain he might feel, her attacker continued to drag her away from King and whatever was happening to him. And then Saint’s voice called out in the darkness, “Charlotte, drop!”
If she’d have had a hand free, she’d have smacked her own forehead. Of course. That’s what she was supposed to do if anyone tried to drag her away, drop. Deadweight was harder to carry than a person on their feet.
Charlotte dropped.
The man lurched forward, then seemed to realize she wasn’t following, because a growl rumbled from his throat. He reached back for her. “Come on, bitch.”
She kicked out at the legs somewhere in front of her. “Make me, asshole.”
The hands that had been on her arms grabbed the hair on her head, gripped tight, and pulled her to her feet. Hot breath poured over her face. “If we don’t get that brat, my boss will do a lot more than make you walk, trust me.”
Some semblance of sanity told her to pull away, but the threat to Becky and her baby proved stronger. Charlotte leaned closer. “You might as well kiss the money you’re hoping for goodbye, because you’re never getting that baby. Never.”
The slap came out of nowhere, lighting her face on fire and scattering what little thought she was able to grasp. A cry escaped, high and pain-filled, and it took a moment for her to realize that sound was hers.
Oh God, what’s happening here?
Glancing around frantically, she realized the lights in the mansion had come back on, but now she and her attacker were beyond the wall and into the woods, casting shadows everywhere. Shouts and scuffling came from the other side, and then she saw a dark-haired man leap through one of the arches. “Charlotte!”
