RUSH (City Lights, #3)(50)

I was tired of people doing everything for me. So f*cking weary of it. “Yeah, okay,” I said dully. “That sounds great. Thank you.”

“I’ll be right back.”

I heard her rustle around in the kitchen, then the whir of the blender, and then she was back, and the scents of pineapple mingled with her own vanilla scent.

“Here you go.”

“Thank you,” I said quietly, and took a sip from the cold glass she’d pressed into my hand. “It’s good.”

I heard the smile in her words. “My mother taught me. Of course, she always used fresh pineapple when we could get it—which wasn’t often in Montana, I can tell you— but I can’t cut one of those suckers properly to save my life. The packaged, frozen kind is easier. Hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.”

A silence fell, and then I heard her intake of breath. “Okay, well, um, do you need or want anything else?”

What I needed, I realized, was to get my ass out of bed, out of this room. For her. For me too, I suppose, but mostly for her. I didn’t have anything to give her, not one damn thing, but I could make her feel good about her job. That, I could do.

. “Charlotte?”

She stopped, turned. I heard her voice rise slightly. “Yes?”

“I’d like to take a walk today, if you’re up for it. If you’re free. Maybe around noon?”

“Uh, yeah…yes! Of course. I could pack a lunch for us. We could eat in the Park?”

Eating among other people. Not my favorite thing. But she sounded so…happy.

“Sure. Whatever you want.”

“Okay, great!”

She was talking to me differently. Our kiss was right there on her lips, coloring her words, making her smile.

You stupid, stupid man.

Charlotte didn’t need my pathetic overtures, my warped version of romance. I hadn’t been thinking clearly last night. I’d been in pain and then exhausted in every fiber of my being. I was her boss. She was my employee. But the memory of her soft lips on mine kept rolling in like a bowling ball, knocking my neat little reasons down, one after another and I couldn’t let that happen.

Fuck hope. Like Harlan said, certainty is better. And there was no greater certainty than what I’d told her last night about inflicting my ugliness on her. I’d promised her I wouldn’t do it and I meant it.

I started to tell her that maybe a walk wasn’t such a good idea but she was already getting off the bed. “I’ll go get it all set up and meet you whenever you’re ready.” She was smiling at me. I didn’t have to see it, I could feel it.

When she’d gone I fell back against the pillows. “Shit.”

*

I took a short, careful shower, and got dressed. The whole process took me nearly forty-five minutes. Speed, it seemed, was no longer my thing.

Suck it up, snowflake. Those days are over with a capital O.

I made my way downstairs, ready to tell Charlotte that I’d changed my mind. That I didn’t want a walk after all. But what could I do? She was my assistant, and I couldn’t stay in this goddamn house another minute.

“I packed a light lunch,” Charlotte said, and I heard the creak of wicker. A picnic basket. “Sandwiches, fruit, cheese, wine…”

“Sounds like a very French picnic. Lucien would approve.”

“Is red wine okay? Some people are picky. I didn’t think to check.”

“Bring whatever you want. I don’t drink.”

“Oh, you don’t? Not…anything?”

“Never have. Most of the guys at Planet X partied pretty heavily but I never did. No drugs, no booze. I always wanted my highs to be natural and to never lose a day to a hangover.”

“Oh.”

“But go ahead,” I said quickly. “I’m not a dick about it. It’s just not for me.”

“Another time,” she said. “And maybe it’s better I stay sharp, since I’ll be leading you across busy streets and such.”

“No argument from me there.”

She snorted a laugh. I heard her rummage in the basket then the clink of glass as she set a bottle on the foyer table. “Well, the basket’s lighter, anyway.”

I held my hand out. “I’ll carry it.”

“Oh, um, are you sure?”

A flash of irritation lanced through me. Not at her, but that I’d been reduced to someone who couldn’t be trusted to carry a f*cking basket and walk at the same time. “Yes,” I said evenly. “I’m sure.”

“No, of course,” she said quickly, and then the sweet scent of her grew stronger as she approached. She pressed the basket handle into my hand. “Here you go.”

I took it with my right, her arm in my left, and she led me to the stairs.

“Oh! Did you bring your migraine meds?”

“No. Didn’t think about it.”

“Well, you’re a man-about-town now. Better safe than sorry.”

Man-about-town? God, what a goofball. A sweet, sexy goofball.

She went up and I took the last flight of stairs down, to wait for her in the foyer, trying my damndest not to think of our kiss.

“Here you go,” she said, bounding back down the stairs. She pressed the pill bottle into my hand and her skin grazed mine, and even that…