and saw her. He stopped dead and though he didn’t say anything, guilt was stamped so cleanly on his features, he didn’t have to speak.
Charlie felt as though she’d been slapped. Was that all she had been? A tool used to capture Henry? Had none of it been true? Ever? Reeling from the implications of George’s statement, and the fact that Vance hadn’t denied it, she hurried down the hall, away from the boardroom, away from the man shouting her name.
“What the—” George muttered as Vance took off after her at a dead run.
Charlie beat him to the office and turned to slam the door on him, but Vance was too quick. He slapped one hand against the door and hit it hard enough that it smacked against the wall.
“Don’t you even speak to me,” she warned, and threw the papers needing his signature at him. They fluttered like oversize snowflakes to the floor.
Hurt, humiliation and good old-fashioned temper were steering her course now. She felt as if she were going to explode from the pressure building inside.
“Charlie, dammit,” he said, slamming the door closed so no one could overhear them, “hear me out at least.”
“No. There’s nothing you can say to me now that I want to hear. That’s it. I quit.” And to think only moments ago, she’d been dreading that decision. Now there was no other choice.
She hurried across the room to her desk and bent down to yank open the bottom drawer. She grabbed her purse, kicked the drawer shut and stood up.
He was right in front of her. His dark hair falling over his forehead. His brown eyes, with those gold flecks, were churning with emotion and his jaw was so tight, she saw the muscles there twitching.
“No way are you quitting.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“Watch me.” He grabbed her and held her in place, though she squirmed and wriggled and tried to break free. Finally, in desperation, Charlie drew her right foot back and kicked him in the shins.
He yelped, and that was satisfying, but he didn’t let her go, and that was infuriating.
“Dammit, will you just hold still for a second and listen to me?”
“Why should I?” she shouted. “I heard what George said to you and more importantly what you didn’t say back.”
“I didn’t have a chance to say anything. I saw you there and then you were running—”
“What would you have said, Vance?” She threw the words at him as a challenge. “Would you have denied it? Could you?”
He didn’t say anything, but the flicker of regret on his features said plenty.
Pain lanced through her. “I wondered, you know, why you were being nice to me. Remember, I even asked you. You didn’t answer me, but then how could you?” She shook her head in disgust. “Not easy to say, ‘I’m seducing your secrets out of you, Charlie—that okay with you?’”
“All right, fine,” he grumbled. “That was how it started. I think. Hell, I don’t even know for sure anymore.”
“Right.”
“I’m telling you the truth, Charlie.” He let her go, shoved both hands through his hair and said, “Ever since you walked in here, I haven’t been able to think straight. At first I thought it was your hair distracting me. Or maybe those damn shoes.” He shook his head again as if trying to understand all this himself.
“But it wasn’t any one thing at all. It was just you, Charlie. Your laughter. Your eagerness to learn. Your love of … everything.” He choked out a laugh. “You sneaked up on me. And yeah, I thought it would be a good idea, to take you out a couple times, romance you a little. See if I could figure out if you were a spy or not.”
“Romance me. At the Zoo Diner?”
“See?” He threw both hands high and let them drop to his sides again. His expression was baffled. “See what you do to me? I sat in the middle of that toddler hell and actually had a good time. I didn’t expect that. Didn’t expect you. What you did to me. How you made me feel. How you made everything better.”
Charlie wished she could believe him, but how could she? How could she ever trust him again? She felt the sting of tears in her eyes, but blinked them back. “You were using me. Just as Henry did.”
“No,” he said firmly.
“Yes,” she said. “But I’m done being used. By you. By anyone. I quit, Mr. Waverly. I’ll be by this weekend to pick up Jake’s and my things.”
“Charlie—”
She walked past him, head held high. He didn’t follow and that was good. Because Charlie didn’t know if she had the strength to walk away from him twice.
Vance shut himself up in his condo and didn’t speak to anyone. He didn’t go to work. Didn’t return his brother’s calls and refused to give a flying damn about Waverly’s or anything else.
His house was so quiet, it was driving him crazy. He stood in the doorway of Jake’s room and looked at the empty crib, feeling a similar emptiness in his own chest. The room still smelled like baby and Jake’s toys were still scattered across the floor. He bent down and picked up the red rubber ball and idly tossed it from hand to hand.
Then he wandered across the hall to the master bedroom. The room he hadn’t been able to sleep in since Charlie left. How the hell could he? She’d stamped herself all over the room. The T-shirt she slept in. Her hairbrush on the bathroom counter. Her slippers on the floor beside the bed. Her pillow that smelled like peaches.
The damn woman was everywhere but where she belonged.
He tossed the ball to the floor, stalked down the hall to the living room and out onto the terrace. He didn’t look at the chaise because recalling that particular memory at the moment might just finish him off. Instead, he stared at the river and mentally went over the plan that had begun forming when Charlie called that morning to say she would be at his place at one o’clock to pick up her things.
“I know what I want now,” he said, squinting into the sunlight dancing on the surface of the river. “And what I want, I get.”
He’d given Charlie two days to cool down. But when she showed up there at one to pack up her stuff, they were going to talk. Well, he was going to talk and she was going to listen. If he had to tie her to a chair.
The doorbell rang an hour later and Vance cursed. He wasn’t completely set up yet. He needed five more minutes. It figured the woman would show up early.
He walked barefoot across the room, his worn jeans dropping low along his hips, his bare chest warm from being out on the terrace collecting every damn flower he owned.
Yanking the door open, he stared down at her and he felt that hard, solid jolt of lust and what he recognized now as … love. She looked so damn small. Her hair was in a long braid hanging down the center of her back. She wore a bright blue blouse that did amazing things for her eyes and her khaki shorts stopped midthigh. Her sandals had daisies on the toes
