Page 43 of Some Like It Scandalous
She trailed after him, through the quiet penthouse to the opposite hall. They bypassed the kitchen, the dining room, the living room and even her bedroom. At the far end of the hall was a room she never went into—his bedroom.
He opened the door, and she hesitated. “Is that a good idea?”
“Trust me.” Two very simple words, but a harder emotion to dredge up from the swampy morass of their mutual mistakes. He waited, though, and he didn’t push. She licked her lips and nodded. She did trust him—if he wanted to sleep with her, well,hell, he could have had her on the table, in the foyer… Cutting off the lazy curl of desire that train of thought awoke, she stepped into his room.
Like hers, it had a large four-poster bed in the center of the nearly twice-the-size of her room, but it also had a little sitting area. Comfortable sofas arranged in an L shape with a pair of overstuffed chairs. Video game controllers sat on the coffee table, across from a wide-screen television with a game system hooked up to it. A couple of blankets were tossed over the chairs and she picked out his favorite right away from the depression in the seat and the back.
“Welcome to my home away from home—no one will interrupt us here unless it’s an emergency. The staff won’t even ring through about dinner,” Charlie explained, closing the door and turning the lock. “We have complete privacy. There are no cameras or surveillance in here either.”
“Is there surveillance out there?” She pointed to the door, and her stomach dropped.
He nodded, carrying the wine and glasses over to the coffee table. He kicked off his shoes and the black loafers landed near the foot of the bed. “All royal residences are monitored twenty-four seven. I can—and have stipulated that they must shut it off when we’re together. No one is watching when it is just the two of us.”
She thought about her walk through the living room in the T-shirt, even if it covered the panties. “God.” Sinking down on one of the sofas, she buried her face in her hands. “Okay, I’m more than a little humiliated at the moment.”
Charlie laughed. He poured the wine. “You have fantastic legs and security are highly trained experts interested in keeping you safe, not ogling you. I promise.”
Instead of sitting opposite her, he sat down on the corner of the second sofa closest to her. He held out a glass. “I accept your proposal.”
Of course, now that he agreed and they were settled in a room behind locked doors, she didn’t even know where to begin. They said nothing, the awkward silence stretching uncomfortably between them.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth about my title—or my family.” He didn’t wait for the question. The somber note in his voice arrested her heart. “I can make a thousand excuses—but I wanted you to like me for me and once you did, I worried that telling you the truth would change us. I didn’t trust what we had, because I hadn’t been honest from the beginning. Once I put it off, it became harder to tell you.”
“But you told Richard.” She bit the inside of her lip because it came out far more churlish than she intended. Yet she couldn’t shake that hint of resentment. Charlie gave a piece of himself to his best friend—a piece he’d kept hidden from her.
“I did.” He took a drink of the wine and stretched his legs out in front of him, but he didn’t lower his gaze or try to avoid hers. “I told him because I wanted to tell you and I didn’t know how. I needed his advice—but it’s hard to tell someone what you think they should do if you don’t have all the facts.”
She tried to wrap her mind around that fact. “But you decided against telling me?”
“It sounds simple, but it’s not.” Charlie leaned forward and caught her hand. Stroking his thumb against her forefinger, he blew out a long breath. “I wanted to tell you—but I was torn. Did I want to tell you because you deserved to know? Or did I want to tell you because I wanted to shout to the world, look what I have with you? I went to an American university to get away from my family, from being an Andraste. Ilikedbeing Charlie. You and Richard are some of the only people I know that I am certainliked me for me—not for my title, not for my parents, not for my wealth or my position. You didn’t want me for what I could do for you—” He laughed. “Actually, you didn’t want me at all in the beginning. I had to compete with your studies and your jobs and your commitments to get you to even notice me and I loved that challenge.”
“You were too damn good-looking,” she muttered and swallowed two mouthfuls of wine in quick succession. Her idea or not, her nerves frayed. She wanted to be angry. She wanted to weep. She wanted to yell. She wanted to cheer. The conflict turned everything upside down.
“Yeah?” Charlie’s grin grew. “How good-looking?”
“Sex-on-a-stick good-looking.” She’d promised honesty and as hot as her face grew with that admission, she planned to hold herself to it. “You with your sexy accent, modulated tones and cut body and your smile…” She glared at him. “Your smile turned me inside out and all I wanted to do was see it again—and ten years later, here I am turning into goo because you smile.”
His grin grew. “I wish I were as eloquent—it was your breasts for me.”
“My breasts?” Her jaw fell open. Did he really just say that?
“Yeah. You wore this little T-shirt with a V-neck and it dipped just low enough to reveal the edge of that dark beauty spot on your right breast. It—it was provocative. That you were sassy, dismissive and altogether focused on everything but me, that had its appeal too.”
A shiver rippled over her skin and she couldn’t stop staring at him. “So you told Richard and what did he say?”
“That you deserved to know the truth, but I better be damn sure. Because if my life was as I described it, involving you in it might not be what you wanted. I could tell you the truth and lose you in the same breath.” His grin faded. “I thought about it all that summer, tried to start the conversation a million times inmy head. But when we came back to campus that autumn, I was so damn happy to see you, I didn’t want to spoil it.”
She’d missed him that summer too. They’d talked every chance they got, but he was in Europe and she was home on the farm and their schedules conflicted more often than fell into sync.
“And once we moved in together…you really couldn’t tell me.” It wasn’t a question. She understood, the longer he went without telling her, the messier it became. “But why did you make plans with me? For the future?”
“Because I wanted that future with you. Anna—if my father hadn’t passed away, I wouldn’t have been tied to the family business or to the royal business. I would have to make an appearance once or twice a year then I could have stayed away and been with you. I thought I would tell you after we graduated—when we took our first vacation together. I planned to whisk you away to this sunny little spot in the Mediterranean, hole up in an island paradise, confess all my sins and then make love to you until you forgave me and we worked something out.”
Her heart squeezed at the description. He let go of her hand to refill their wineglasses. The half glass had already taken the edge of the jittery feeling inside her skin.
“But when my father passed so unexpectedly, my security had to get me home—they had to inform me—because my role changed.” He didn’t look at her. “But you couldn’t forgive the deception, I think. You never said it to my face and I honestly was very distracted—” He blew out a hard breath. “But why did you leave that night? Why did you leave thatway? Why didn’t youtalkto me?”
“I always thought it was because you lied.” The fires of the past singed her soul, but it was the right question to ask. “Because you didn’t havetimefor me. You were gone. Tied up in meetings. You left. I waited for you to talk to me—to tell meall the things you just said.” Licking the wine off her lips, she hunched her shoulders and shook her head slowly. “But I think that was my excuse—and far from my proudest moment.”
