Sexual Persuasion (26 page)

“And now?”

“I know who I am.”

“The rumor around town is that you’re Max Carpathian’s lover.”

“I’ve heard them. I’m not. Never have been. I never denied it, because my sexual preference is no one’s business.”

“Max is well-known in the community. He’s―how shall I say?―prolific?”

“That’s a good description. But he’s a good friend, and what he does in his personal life is his business. I’m only concerned with his professional life. Keeping him on the straight and narrow, excuse the pun. Not easy, I admit. But I let him know this morning I’m leaving his employ.”

“Better for you.
You’re smart. You’ll have no trouble moving into another situation.” Gianni sipped his vodka. He gazed out the window. “Are you ashamed of the time we spent together?”

“No, but at the time, I wasn’t comfortable with being bisexual. I guess I hadn’t quite come to terms with my own sexuality. You were the only man who ever turned me on.”

Gianni looked wistful. “It was magic, wasn’t it?”

Alex thought back to that first night. To the beautiful man whose touch electrified
him. “Yes, but we didn’t fill each other’s needs.”

“No. I wanted all of you, and you needed to keep part of you for yourself. I’ve learned from that experience. I can sense when I’m about to suffocate Michael, and I pull back. But he’s different than you―more like me.”

“That will work well for the two of you.”

Gianni got up, finished his drink in one gulp. “I’ve
gotta go. Come down with me.”

Betrayal

At four, Charlotte asked Lenore to close up, and she walked to the wine shop. She bought a nice bottle of pinot noir to surprise Alex, then taxied to his condo on the wharf. She’d treat him with tender loving care, massage his back and neck, and make tension-relieving love to him.

The taxi pulled into the circular drive of Alex’s building. Holding the shopping bag containing the wine, she
paid the driver and got out. She stopped when she saw Alex standing at the door of a white Lexus SUV parked in the turn-around. She blinked hard. Gianni Caravelli stood next to Alex, his hand to Alex’s cheek in a gesture of affection. Alex smiled as he put his hand gently on Gianni’s shoulder. She drew a breath, frozen in the moment. Anyone could see these two men were lovers.

Her heart raced, and her stomach did an ugly somersault.

She couldn’t breathe.

Time stopped.

The world stopped.

“You
gonna stand there, lady,” the taxi driver bellowed, “or are you gonna close the door?”

The bag with the wine bottle slipped from her hand, shattered, and splashed wine all over the ground, on her. Alex must have heard the driver’s question or the crashing
of the bottle or both. He turned. When he saw Charlotte, their gazes locked. His mouth opened.

Charlotte
hustled back into the taxi. “Get me out of here. Now.”

Alex ran toward her. “
Charlotte, wait! It isn’t―”

But
Charlotte slammed the door, cutting off Alex’s words. Cutting off Alex. “Did you hear me?” she repeated to the driver. “Go!”

Alex banged on the window, but
Charlotte covered her ears and turned away as the taxi sped out of the circle and headed for Atlantic Avenue. She didn’t look back. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have seen anything through the tears filling her eyes.

“You know that guy’s running after us,” the driver said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know him. Hurry.”

The drive home seemed interminable. The city sped by in streaks of colors without form or meaning. How could she have been so stupid? He’d lied to her, all the while professing to tell the truth. Alex had been playing both of them, Gianni
and
her.

“I’m meeting with the love of my life tomorrow. I’m going to convince him to move in with me. I’m sure he will.”

That was what Gianni said―
“the love of my life.”
How could she have known Gianni was talking about Alex? How could Alex have lied so convincingly? Had she been nothing more than a test to see if he could make it with a woman? Darcy was right all along. She couldn’t wait to lock herself inside her apartment and forget every moment since she’d met Alex Andros.

The driver pulled up in front of her doorway. She paid him and started toward the door. Lenore stood outside talking to a customer. She saw
Charlotte, said good-bye to the customer, and rushed over to her. Charlotte rubbed a tissue under her eyes and saw it smudged with mascara. She could only imagine what she looked like.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“Nothing. I can’t talk about it.”

“Well, you’re going to.
In the office.”

“I can’t.”

“Charlotte, I’m not letting you go upstairs in this state. No telling what you’d do. The store’s empty except for Emily and one customer, so you march into that office.”

Dark clouds had formed overhead, and the rain started, first a mist, then a hard pelting downpour. The streets emptied as everyone ran either to their cars, hovered in doorways, or stayed inside the stores. Fortunately, Emily was attending to a customer.
Charlotte thought about going upstairs to her empty apartment. Alex’s scent filled the space. On the sheets where they slept, on the sofa where they’d recently made love. She really didn’t want to be alone. She wanted to be with the Alex she knew yesterday, not the one she saw today. She didn’t want to hear his voice over the intercom, didn’t want to listen to his lies.

She dutifully followed Lenore’s command and scurried into the office. Lenore spoke to Emily, then closed and locked the door behind her. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay, give.”

Charlotte blurted out everything about Alex’s past, his lover, his deception. She didn’t care any more about protecting him. Why should she? He had ripped out her heart. Lenore listened, saying nothing but soothing words to make Charlotte feel better. She didn’t. Not after witnessing the ultimate betrayal by a man she’d grown to trust. She’d heard sincere before. From Jack Davidson, while he did unspeakable things and lied about it. From men before Jack, and now from Alex. He’d told her his relationship with Gianni spanned one short period of his life. Now she knew differently.

Liar, liar.

* * * * *

The dark thunderous clouds broke, and rain
assaulted the windshield in sheets. How should Alex read the omen? Dark clouds ahead, or dark clouds breaking? His stomach revolted. He had to make Charlotte listen. He couldn’t lose her.

The look on her face burned in his brain. He knew what she thought. Of course she would. His stress yesterday had as much to do with Gianni as with Jack and Max. He’d already made up his mind to leave Carpathian Enterprises, and informing Max added another layer of anxiety. But never in his wildest dreams could he have envisioned what happened today.

He drove through the hellish Boston traffic and circled the block three times before finding a meter two streets away. Rain stung his skin through his shirt. He didn’t care.

No light shone in
Charlotte’s apartment window, but the store lights were still on. He checked his watch. Five to six. Another glance at her window. He went inside the store. If she wasn’t there, he’d talk to her over the intercom, make her listen. He was soaking wet. Emily came up to him, her face red.

“Hi, Mr. Andros.
Bad rain, huh?”

“Where is she?”

“Um, Charlotte’s not here. She…she had some errands to do. I’m supposed to lock up.”

“You’re a lousy liar, Emily. Where’s Lenore?”

“Lenore’s, er, uh, she’s with her. They left half an hour ago. They’ll be back tomorrow.” She lowered her voice. “Come back tomorrow. Please.”

He shook his head. Water dripped from his hair. He looked at the closed office door.

“Please,” Emily pleaded. “I’m not supposed to let you in. I should have locked the door earlier.”

He went to the office and turned the knob.
Locked. “Charlotte. Open the door.” He banged on it. “Dammit, Charlotte. Let me explain. What you saw is not what you think. It’s much more complicated.” He bit in his bottom lip. “I know you’re in there. I never lied to you, I promise. I just…didn’t tell you everything. Now open the damn door.”

The door opened, and Lenore slunk out, closing it behind her. “She’s upset, Alex.”

“Out of my way. I’ll pick you up and move you if I have to.”

“Good luck. I’m no lightweight. You better be in damn good shape.”

“Don’t test me.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you. Give her time.”

“For what? To twist what she saw? I know what she saw. And trust me, it’s not what it looked like. Now are you going to move, or do I have to move you?”

Lenore stared at him. Her eyes were like slivers of black coal. “It better be good. That’s all I can say.”

She moved, and Alex opened the door. Charlotte sat at her desk, eyes all red and black and swollen. She straightened. “Go away.”

“No. You’re going to listen to me if I have to tie you up.”

“You did that once. Is that what you did with your boyfriend? Didn’t I measure up, Alex? Wasn’t I kinky enough?”

“Shut up,
Charlotte. I know what you think you saw. But it wasn’t that at all. If you don’t believe what I’m going to tell you, I’ll leave, and you’ll never hear from me again.”

“Liar.
You’re a liar.”

“I never lied, but I didn’t tell you everything. It’s the part I never wanted to tell,
because it exposed the truth about me. Not that I had a gay relationship―you already knew that. But that I let someone down. Badly. Now you know who he is. Small world. He gave me permission to tell you because this is as much about him as it is me. And you know him.”

“So what did you do? Conjure up a story you both thought I’d believe? What for? You’re moving in with him this weekend. It’s all out in the open.”

“Gianni is moving in with his lover, a neurologist named Michael Schiff. He said he’s been in the store with him. Balding, glasses, intellectual looking. Nothing like me or Gianni.”

Charlotte
tipped up her head, sniffed.

“I told you the truth before. Gianni was my lover, and I fell out of love. I didn’t tell you that Gianni was desperately in love with me.
Pathologically so.” Alex moved to the small fridge. “I need a drink. Do you have anything here?”

“
Diet cola.”

“Not what I had in mind. Anyway, it’s a complicated story.” He told her about how he met Gianni, how the relationship began.

“It was good in the beginning. We got along, had a lot in common. It was exciting for me, something I never experienced. Gianni was easy to love. He made up for the love I missed from a distracted mother and distant father. I enjoyed it. I can’t say I didn’t. But after a while Gianni wanted me all the time. He didn’t want me to have any other friends, and whenever I went anywhere, he wanted to know where and with whom. Fortunately, we’d never agreed to live together, so I’d kept my apartment.” He raked his fingers through his damp hair. “Maybe I will have a cola.”

“Help yourself. Drink it and go.”

“As long as you listen.” He took a can, snapped it open, and took a long swallow, then continued pacing the small office. “I was suffocating. I wanted to get out without hurting him because I knew how much he cared for me. Of course he didn’t understand how I could have fallen out of love.”

Alex stopped his story.
Charlotte sat with her hands folded tightly in her lap, like a good little schoolgirl. He didn’t know who found this story more difficult, but he thought he had the edge. In the short time they’d known each other, he’d released bits and pieces of his life as if they were state secrets. Now he was revealing the most personal details, and it opened him raw.

“Once it had gone bad, Gianni tried everything sexual to arouse me.” Alex felt a wave of insecurity, embarrassment, even. “You know how easy that is when I feel strongly about someone. Nothing worked. He kept insisting I was mad instead of what was really happening. You get over mad; you don’t get over falling out of love. I lost my patience and bolted for the door.” He met her gaze. “I didn’t know how to handle it,
Charlotte. I thought of asking Max, but I didn’t want him to know I had a gay lover. Instead, I stayed away from Gianni, figuring he’d get the message and it’d be over. But of course he didn’t. And it wasn’t.”

A furrow creased her brow, causing a dark and foreboding expression. Did she sense the imminent disaster?

“Finally he called. I was in the middle of studying for exams. I told him I was meeting a classmate to study, and I’d be over the following night. My classmate was female. I looked up, and Gianni stood there, watching us. He made a scene. I was humiliated. It reminded me of when I was fourteen and the kids in school taunted me about my jailbird father.” Alex paced some more, guzzled his drink. He let out a long sigh and clasped the back of his neck, massaged it, but it didn’t release the tension.