She glared at him. “It’s a little late for listening. Goodbye, Michael.” She opened the building door with a shove.
Charlotte. Always the drama queen.
“Dammit,” she muttered. “I forgot to have Lily call me a car.”
Michael followed her as she shuffled to the curb. “Do you want me to do it? Or I’ll call Lily.”
She rifled through her handbag, hunched over it while resting it on her leg. “No. I’m fine taking a taxi.”
“Then let me give you a ride. I have my car. It’s cold out here. You’ll freeze.”
He took a step toward her and she shot him another one of her piercing looks. Her breaths left her lips in puffs of white and her cheeks began to turn bright pink. “I like the cold.”
“No, you don’t. You hate it.”
“You think you know me, Michael. But you don’t. You never took the time.”
Clearly, they were having two separate conversations. He didn’t have the patience for more of her thinly veiled innuendos about his personal shortcomings. “Okay, then. Have a nice day.” He turned and headed for the parking garage.
“I hope you have the worst day ever!” she called back.
Fine. Be like that.
He trudged around the corner and retrieved his car. When he pulled out of the lot, Charlotte was still standing on the sidewalk, looking for a cab. A heavy sigh left his throat. It would be easiest to turn on his blinker, take a right turn and leave Charlotte to fend for herself. But there was this little voice inside him, a voice he normally ignored, suggesting that he might have a few things to make up for, even if he might never know his actual past transgressions because Charlotte spoke in secret code most of the time.
He rolled down his window and the icy air rushed inside. “Charlotte. Come on. I’ll give you a ride.”
“A cab will come along any minute now,” she replied, not looking at him.
The street was dead. You’d have more luck if you walked over to Seventh Avenue. “I’ll turn on your heated seat.”
She glanced back over her shoulder. That flash of her blue eyes was still pretty damn potent from this distance. “Fine.”
Shoulders bunched up around her ears, she hurried around to the passenger side as Michael rolled up his window. The instant she climbed inside and closed the door, her sweet vanilla scent hit his nose. Her presence was impossible to ignore in the confines of the car. It sent a powerful wave of recognition through his body. Even with her prickly attitude toward him, if she said she wanted him, he’d go so far as to blow off work for an hour. He never did that for anyone.
“You have to promise you’ll drive carefully.” She rubbed her hands together in front of the vents. Without asking permission, she reached over and cranked up the heat.
“Charlotte, you know me. There is no such thing as careful.”
* * *
Charlotte’s heart was beating so fiercely, it didn’t even faze her when Michael laid on the horn and yelled at the car in front of him. Everything was getting to her right now, like having the air sucked out of her triumphant announcement that she was going to buy an apartment, only to learn from Michael that he’d made an offer to Sawyer weeks ago. It was bad enough that he’d never said a thing while they were together about cooking up a deal with her brother to sell the Grand Legacy units. It was the perfect illustration of the divide between Michael and Charlotte. A normal couple, a real couple, would have discussed such things.
She felt like such a fool, but she had to go through with buying the unit. Her brother knew Charlotte as the woman who made bold, sweeping promises and later changed her mind. Plus, she couldn’t stand the thought of Michael being one sale ahead of her.
“Dude. You’re killing me with this.” Michael jammed the heel of his hand into the car horn again. “Just go.”
“See? This is why I didn’t want a ride from you. It’s more relaxing having a complete stranger take me somewhere.”
Michael zipped into the next lane without using a blinker or even looking. “You’re in excellent hands.”
She slumped back in her seat, unable to ignore the conflicted feelings pinging back and forth between her head and her heart. She hated Michael. Or at least she was trying very hard to. Every logical brain cell in her head knew the reason why—she’d tried harder with him than she had with any other guy, and she still wasn’t enough. So why was there some fragment of her that was happy to be in the car with him, even when she also despised his driving? Who had decided that this irrational part of her brain, hopelessly turned on by the vision of his hand wrapped around the gearshift, should have a voice?
She’d spent an awful lot of time during those five weeks in England talking with Aunt Fran about Michael, about the differences between men and women, heartache and the ways in which Charlotte was regularly sabotaging herself. It was good to be open and optimistic, Fran had said, but it wasn’t so smart to dive in headfirst every single time. Well, she hadn’t quite put it that way. Her exact wording was, Charlotte, stop picking out your children’s names on the first date. Call it what you will—jumping the gun. Running away with the circus. Going overboard. It was Charlotte’s greatest inclination. She knew this about herself.
By all reports, she’d been that way since she was a little girl. Her brothers teased her mercilessly about her endless string of crushes, all of which she’d been stupid enough to identify by name, starting at the age of four with the first boy she ever kissed, Darren Willingham, on the playground in preschool. As the story went, Charlotte had announced her engagement to be married to the unwitting Darren at the dinner table that night. She had no way of knowing if Sawyer and Noah were making up the part of the story where Charlotte produced crayon drawings of her wedding dress, the flowers and the church. The only other witness to the conversation had been their mother, and she’d passed away before Charlotte could ever ask her about it.
Despite the regular razzing from Sawyer and Noah, Charlotte remained undeterred on her quest for love. By the time she was sixteen, she’d figured out that the affection she wasn’t getting at home was easily obtained by sneaking out of the house, taking the train into the city and partying all night. It wasn’t love, but it was an acceptable substitute, and after a few drinks obtained with a fake ID, a handsome guy flirting with her on the dance floor, wanting to kiss her and hold her and take her home, it sure started to feel like something real. Love had always been Charlotte’s drug of choice. She’d wanted it more from Michael than she’d wanted it from any other man.
What a shame she’d invested so much time and effort into the Michael project. She’d killed herself trying to be the perfect girlfriend, making him meals that took hours to prepare because everyone knew what a horrible cook she was. She’d tried to get him to open up about work problems—she could see how stressed he was—but he wasn’t big on talking about any of it. Charlotte had been so sure that whatever was wrong, she could make it better. None of her efforts seemed to make much of an impression on him. Maybe it was because he was used to women fawning all over him. Even if that was the case, it still hurt. Of course, cooking and listening had become the least of her worries when she’d finally decided that the best approach with him was a direct one.
She’d
