Page 86 of Owen North

“I’m not sure I carry it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not my father and never will be. I don’t play the game as well as he did.”

“Are you trying to, though? Or are you trying to figure out your own way to live your life? One that doesn’t require you to keep carrying all that weight?”

I search her face. It’s so damn beautiful, just like the inside of her. “Some days, it feels like that weight is all I know,” I say honestly, sharing myself in a way I’ve never shared myself.

“I know that feeling.” She pauses. “I hope you never learn to play the game well.”

I want to kiss her.

Charlize is the only woman I’ve been with who hasn’t wanted me to play the game. I want to show her how I feel about that.

Somehow, I manage to keep my mouth to myself. Instead, I find my brain and say, “You should go to bed.”

She nods. “I should.” She doesn’t move, though. “Do you still speak French?”

“It’s rusty, but yes.”

“I’m going to need to hear something in French. I mean, you can’t tell a girl you speak that language and not speak to her in it.”

With our fingers still linked, I rub my thumb across the palm of her hand. “Fais de beaux rêves, belle fille.”

Her breaths come a little faster as she stares at me with the kind of desire that will get us into trouble if I let it. “I have no idea what you just said, but I’d really like you to say that to me alot. And if it has anything to do with your stalker tendencies, let’s just pretend it doesn’t.”

Fuck.

“Go to bed before I take you there,” I rasp, letting her fingers go.

Charlize goes to bed.

I give her half an hour to fall asleep before I make my way into the bedroom. That’s after contemplating sleeping on the sofa because fuck knows how I’m going to stay on my side of the bed tonight.

She’s lying on her side, all the way to the edge of the bed with her legs pulled up to her stomach. The room is dark, but I spend long enough looking at her to see this.

When I’ve almost talked myself into going back out to the sofa, she looks at me and says, “I promise I won’t hug you in my sleep.”

I scrub a hand down my face, wishing like fuck that I’d never spoken to Jill about sleeping with staff members. I also wish I was more like my father who would never have honored any agreement in this way.

“It’s not you I’m concerned about,” I say.

Ten minutes later, I’m on my side of the bed, staring at the ceiling, figuring I’m in for another restless night, when Charlize says, “I’ve never met a man like you, Owen. I’m glad I convinced you to really like me.”

How anyone can not like Charlize is unfathomable to me. That she thinks anyone would need convincing is also puzzling.

I want to point all this out to her, but what I want more is for her to go to sleep. She worked hard today, and I saw her exhaustion during dinner and then after while I worked the room. So, instead of getting into another conversation with her, I simply say, “There was no chance of that not happening.”

She embraces silence for five minutes before saying, “Goodnight, Owen.”

“Goodnight, beautiful.”

* * *

I wakewith Charlize in my arms.

I’m spooning her, holding her tightly, my erection pressed firmly against her ass.

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