Love and Let Die (Masters and Mercenaries #5)(61)

He stood staring at her as she started for the door. He didn’t move to open it for her. She was sure he wouldn’t stop it from hitting her on the ass as she left either.

Had he been an illusion, too? For years he’d been her ideal man. It wasn’t that she really thought he was perfect. It was just that she loved his imperfections, too. He’d been the first man to treat her with any kindness, the first to bring her pleasure of any kind. He’d told her she was pretty and smart and she’d taken that as love.

“Charlie?”

She sniffled, not willing to face him. “Do you think any of it was real?”

He was silent.

She walked out the door. He’d given her his answer.

Now she had to find her own.





Chapter Nine

Ian kept his hands steady on the wheel, his eyes on the road, but that wasn’t what he was seeing. He kept seeing those tears in her eyes as she pulled the robe around her, hiding her body. Somehow he’d expected her to throw him her middle finger and walk through the club naked. He hadn’t expected her to turn in on herself, to look so f*cking fragile. Charlie wasn’t fragile. She didn’t take crap from anyone.

Except him.

“Take a right at the next stop sign.” Alex sat beside him in the big SUV. “You know I wouldn’t have to give you directions if you had just let me drive my own damn car.”

Ian turned at the proper time. He didn’t reply to Alex. It was one of those times when words were meaningless.

All three women were in the back. Charlotte didn’t seem to have a problem with high protocol now. She’d been perfectly silent, her eyes on the world outside the window. Those eyes hadn’t sought him out once since the moment she realized he was serious about the “just sex” thing.

Do you think any of it was real?

Her question was playing in his head. It had been real. Every f*cking second had been real for him. He’d loved her. He just didn’t trust himself to try it again. He couldn’t put himself through losing her a second time. He couldn’t trust her at all.

Could he?

Revenge should be so much f*cking sweeter. He should be sitting here in Alex’s dad car that barely did sixty-five on the freeway thinking about how much fun it was to show Charlie exactly how he felt. But revenge seemed hollow when all he wanted to do was hug the person he was avenging himself on until he could get her to smile again. It kind of made the whole f*cking effort pointless when he felt like a shitbag because his revenge plans worked.

“Don’t miss the next turnoff. It can be hard to see in the dark. Again, a good reason for me to drive,” Alex said.

“Alex.” Eve had a way of making her husband’s name—or any name—a perfect admonition.

“I’ll have you playing with your curtains in no time at all.” His night vision was perfect. Alex had to be getting old if he thought he couldn’t see that turnoff.

“It’s not curtains. It’s countertops. The contractor wants to make sure they’re the right ones before they install them tomorrow,” Alex explained. “The invoice says it’s our soapstone, but the contractor thinks it’s the wrong color.”

Ian shook his head. There was no way to comprehend the changes that had come over his best friend since he’d remarried Eve. “What the f*ck is soapstone? Why do you care about countertops? What is wrong with you, man? You’re dragging us around in the middle of the night over home décor. When did you become Martha Stewart?”

Alex let his head fall to the side window, bashing it a couple of times before he sat back up. “Well, we all need a hobby, *, and you took listening to Guns N’ Roses and drinking Scotch so I was left with f*cking soapstone countertops, which are, according to our designer, the very latest in home design and which I can very likely manage to shove up your ass if you don’t stop being an arrogant prick.”

“Alex, I thought we were going to be patient with him,” Eve said in a very gratingly calm voice.

Alex turned to look at his wife. “He’s driving my goddamn car because he’s such a control freak he can’t let anyone else drive.”

Eve’s hand came around the headrest, resting on Alex’s shoulder, and he settled down.

It sucked because Alex seemed just about ready to start a fight and that would have been so much better than the silence that descended on the SUV again. It might do him some good to pull the car over and trade some punches. Ian glanced up at the rearview mirror. It was dark, but he could get a glimpse of her face. He wasn’t used to Charlie being so silent or so withdrawn. She was confident, bold, his match in most ways, but now she had gone someplace deep inside herself and he didn’t like it. She was in the car, but her head was somewhere he couldn’t touch her. It was perverse. He knew he’d been the one to send her to that place, but it bugged the shit out of him. He would rather she yelled at him and called him a bastard to this silent sorrow.

“It’s the last house on the left,” Alex explained. “Just pull in the driveway and Eve and I will run inside.”

And leave him out here with Charlie? Probably not a good idea. Sure, Chelsea was here too, but he’d already proven he didn’t have a lot of discretion when it came to Charlie.

What he wouldn’t tell her was he’d run to the bathroom like a scared five-year-old because his first instinct had been to lie in bed with her all night long. He’d forced her to do it doggie style because he didn’t trust himself not to kiss her. Because the minute he’d gotten her naked and alone, all he’d wanted to do was get inside her and stay there for hours and hours until he was tired and he could wrap himself around her and sleep with her in his arms.