Legal Heirs - Box Set Edition: Books 5-8 (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) (5 page)

*

“Why are you doing this, isn’t it a bit extreme?” he asked as she packed her bag the next morning. “Nina, is gone, she’s not ever setting foot in the office again, but I don’t think that’s what this is about. You know me better than to think any other woman could turn my head, my love. I don’t have to tell you that, you are the only woman for me, only you, until the day I die.”

“Stop talking!” she said, covering her ears as tears spilled down her face. “I need to be by myself and I don’t want you to come looking for me or track my cell phone. None of your Special Ops crap, I mean it. I’ll be back in a week and I’m sure this dark mood will have passed, if I stay I’ll say something or do something to ruin us. I’m hurting, and I just have to feel it and find my way out of it. My dad’s coming to pick up Atticus….”

“Atticus is just fine here with me, we need each other if you’re going away,” he said, and the sound of those words made her want to stay with her husband and son.

“Okay,” she said quietly, and she left before he could reach out a hand to touch her and change her mind.

*

“So we’re all in for Mother’s wedding, is that right?” Amanda asked, as she and JP sat with Maddie and Bly on the back deck of the boat.

“Count me out,” Maddie said, rubbing her little belly, “I get motion sickness now, I hope it goes away after the babies are born.”

“Yeah, I’m not gonna be able to make it either,” JP said, “We’re training a couple of new people at the office, so I’m gonna have to pass.”

“Well, I guess it’s just you and me, kid,” Bly said, and smiled at Amanda.

Amanda leaned toward her brother and kissed his cheek, “Yep, you and I are used to dealing with Mother’s endearing insanity, and it’ll be nice, I hardly see you anymore. By the way, I love the house, Alex, it’s the one I want for sure, can you do the money transfer or whatever tomorrow, please? I’d really like to move in as soon as we get back from Paris.”

“That’s an awfully big house,” Maddie said, she was annoyed at the way Amanda manipulated her brother to get what she wanted, “are you sure you need all that room?”

“I’ll take care of it in the morning,” Bly said, “I’m going to miss this boat, lets drink a toast to the new owners, they’re taking it to Hawaii tomorrow.”

They lifted their glasses, and toasted with sparkling water instead of champagne. Bly said he was spending the night on the boat, and asked if JP and Amanda would mind giving Maddie a ride to the house.

“I’ll stay with you, Alex, I’ve never slept on this boat and that master bedroom looks so inviting,” Maddie said.

“No,” he said, a little too quickly, “the rocking of the boat will make you sick. So how’s your law firm going, JP? Are you seeing many clients? How’s Finn getting along?”

“We’re rocking and rolling, lots of business, Finn’s hanging in there. He doesn’t say much, but he’s had a hard time since Charlotte’s car wreck.”

“What?” Bly said, and he was on his feet standing over JP, “what are you talking about, what happened, where is Charlotte?”

“Maddie, you didn’t tell him? Oh my God, Alex, I can’t believe no one told you. Charlotte was in a terrible wreck after we went shopping about two weeks ago. She’s okay, but she lost her baby, and she’s taking it really hard,” Amanda said.

Bly was pacing the deck and Maddie was fuming mad.

“Is she in the hospital, why the fuck didn’t you mention this, Maddie? Fuck, you are so wrapped up in yourself!” Bly’s voice was so cold and hard it caused Maddie to jump.

“She’s gone off on her own for a while,” JP said, “Finn brought Atticus to work with him today and he’s pretty messed up over the whole thing.”

“Oh, I should go by and offer to keep Atti for him,” Amanda said. “I had no idea Charlotte was gone. Where did she go, JP, to a spa?”

“Take Maddie home,” Bly said, dismissing them all, and he went into the main salon to talk to Billy Kipling.

“Billy, you’ve been acquainted with Finn and JP for a long time, I need to know if your loyalty is to me or to them,” Bly said.

“I worked with the two of them from time to time, that’s about it. What do you need, Alex?” Billy asked.

“Charlotte left town today, I want you to find out where she is as soon as possible,” he said.

Chapter Four

Charlotte cried most of the way to Big Sur, and the seven hour drive left her drained and on edge. When she opened the door to Jack Sheppard’s cabin, she walked straight through to the back deck. Fog rolled in off the Pacific and waves crashed against the craggy shoreline below. The sun was falling from the sky and being swallowed by the ocean. Soon it was all just a swirling gray haze, fog rose around the deck and Charlotte went back inside, afraid she might truly be lost in the mist.

It was a contemporary cabin, sheathed in redwood, and it wasn’t large, but it was dramatic. It hung off the edge of a cliff and had ocean views to the west and mountains to the east. The pounding surf was like a powerful living thing. The waves were pulled and pushed by the power of the moon, and they created an organic rhythm. She flipped a few switches on a wall and lamps glowed and gas logs in the fireplace sprang to life. She hauled her luggage out of the car and shivered as the fog caressed her skin. She locked the door after she hurried back inside, and as the fog engulfed the house it dulled the constant roar of the waves.

Charlotte checked her cell phone and none of the missed calls were from Finn, he said he would give her a week and she knew he meant it. Still, it left an empty place inside her to think he hadn’t tried to call. What if he never called again, what if she never found her way back home? She went into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of vodka from the freezer, then she leaned against the counter and took a long swallow. It burned going down and reminded her of the night she left Bly to be with Finn. It made her cry to think of that night, to remember Finn’s body under her hands, hot and hard and finally hers. She tilted the bottle back quickly, and coughed and gulped air as she tried to swallow, but began to cry again. The clock on the wall said it was only seven o’clock, but she was lonely and feeling a tiny buzz from the vodka. She wiped her nose and took another drink, then she dropped her clothes as she walked through the house and crawled into bed.

Dreams surrounded and chased her and she couldn’t get free of the fog. She heard Atticus crying and Finn calling to her, but she was lost, and although she searched for them they were always farther away in the mist. She woke up in the big bed alone, her face wet with tears, and she heard an insistent pounding on the door.

“Go away please, I have a gun!” she shouted through the door and the knocking stopped.

“Charlotte open the door, it’s me.”

“Bly?” she said opening the door just a crack, and he pushed it open and crushed her body to his.

“Charlotte, fuck, I was worried sick about you. Are you alright?” he asked, holding her at arm’s length and searching her face. His brow furrowed with concern as his finger traced the scar high up on her forehead. “It makes your beauty more poignant somehow, that small bit of imperfection,” he said quietly.

She stood before him naked, she’d shed her clothes on her way to the bed, and she was completely exposed.

“Oh,” she said, and she pulled free of him and went into the bedroom for a robe.

When she came back into the living room she could barely see him as he stood on the deck amidst the clinging fog. She went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of vodka and handed one to Bly, then she sat on the stone hearth.

“How did you find me, and how on earth did you get here so fast?” she asked, sipping the drink.

He sat on an ottoman across from her and drank and his eyes never left her. He felt a tightness inside of him loosening just being near her. She was sitting on the stone hearth, the silk robe parted so that her long legs were exposed. Her shining black hair hung almost to the erect nipples that were visible through the thin fabric. It was all he could do to keep from smashing the glass of vodka against the stone fireplace and dragging her to the floor. He needed to spread those mile-long legs and fuck her until she said the words he wanted to hear.

“I have my ways of finding out the things I need to know, and of course, I have a jet,” he said, as he finished his vodka. “I pay Billy Kipling to do a job and he’s good at it. I didn’t know about your accident until a few hours ago, my wife neglected to tell me.”

“I don’t like the sound of that, the way you said, “my wife.” What’s going on, Bly, why aren’t you happy with her?”

He laughed at that and rubbed his eyes, then ran a hand through his hair so that the wayward strands fell across his forehead.

“Do I really need to answer that Charlotte? I’ve tried to love her, but what the fuck am I supposed to do with all this feeling inside me? Really, please tell me what I’m supposed to do? I fucking love you, and I can’t get over it and I’m worn down from trying. She’s having twins, and I’m happy, I suppose, and I’m sorry about your wreck and that you lost your baby. But, I’m fucking selfish, Charlotte, I wanted you to be the mother of my children. I think about you until I’m so sick with need… then I convince myself that I could almost live without you if Atticus had been my son.” He looked at her then as if some miraculous thought had occurred to him, but as he considered it, his face turned grim. “You saw the results of that test, didn’t you? I should have insisted on a copy, but I knew it was too much to hope for when I looked at your beautiful baby boy.”

A chill ran through her and she looked away from him, it would be so easy just to tell him. Atticus was still so young, just fifteen months old, he would never remember that Finn had once been his daddy. She could say three words and change all their lives, just, “he is yours,” and the world would be altered forever. But she felt that Finn was right when he said Atticus was meant to be his son, their souls were connected for a reason. After the wreck and her miscarriage the doctor told her there was a chance she wouldn’t have another child. Bly had two babies on the way and Finn would be childless if the truth were known. It was a convoluted twist of fate, just a small matter of DNA, and she had been so sure that Atticus was Finn’s. As she looked at Bly’s wide mouth and the dimple in his chin, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t known the first moment she held her son.

She had set the course of their lives when she chose Finn, and that was that. Her love for Bly would remain just an ache she pushed far back in her heart. That love had created a little boy who would grow up as Atticus Hale. He would flourish with Finn’s love and strength to guide him, he would become the man she imagined that Finn and Bly would be if they were combined. It would have to be enough that in the world there was a child that Charlotte and Bly had created with their bodies, and that she and Finn had shaped with their love.

“I’m exhausted,” she said, “I want to sleep, my body is still healing, I guess.”

“Can I stay here with you, Charlotte? Nothing will happen, believe me. I needed to see that you were alright, I nearly lost my mind when I heard you’d been in an accident. I’ll gladly suffer as long as I know you’re safe and sound, but I can’t live in a world without my Charlotte.”

*

When she woke in the morning he was already having coffee on the deck and he had an IPod playing in a dock that sat on a low table. She poured a cup of coffee and sat beside him and he smiled and said, “I brought you some new music, I know how you love your songs.”

“Thank you! Did you pick all the songs yourself? You couldn’t have, when would you have time for that?” she asked, and felt the heat rising in her cheeks. She scrolled through the playlist and played an old Goo Goo Dolls song that she loved.

“I have plenty of time when my mind is swamped with thoughts of you, which is pretty much all the time” he said quietly, as the song began.

“Could you whisper in my ear, the things you wanna hear, I’ll give you anything, to keep it comin’, do you wake up on your own, and wonder where you are, you live with all your faults… I wanna wake up where you are….”

“Get dressed,” he said, “I hear there’s a good place for lunch with a ‘once in a lifetime’ view.”

They drove to Nepenthe Restaurant and Bly was so right, it was a view you had to see to believe. The Santa Lucia Mountains formed a glorious backdrop for the restaurant that sat eight hundred feet above the Pacific. The ocean stretched into forever, it seemed, and Bly and Charlotte sat outside in the crisp autumn air that felt like heaven.

Charlotte drank a cold, delicious glass of sauvignon blanc, and Bly had a beer. They ordered lunch, Charlotte had the Dungeness Crab Louie and Bly had the Ambrosia burger. They talked and laughed and fed each other bites from their plates. The chef came to their table and said he was so glad to welcome Alexander Bly and his lovely wife. Bly didn’t correct him and it frightened Charlotte, but also made her wonder, what if….

“You must have the four layer chocolate cake with homemade vanilla bean ice cream,” the chef said, “truly a desert for lovers.”

Charlotte turned her gaze to the blue horizon, and Bly said it sounded wonderful.

“I know, I should have corrected him, but it was like an unexpected gift,” Bly said.

“Bly, Finn is not happy knowing how you feel about me, please don’t push it,” she said, looking into his eyes.