The Billionaire's Temporary Bride (Scandal, Inc #3)(28)

She made it all the way across Georgetown to his house before she realized she had no way of getting inside. Instead, she sat back down on the front steps and hung her head in her hands.

"There you are," Jack said, opening the door behind her. "I've been looking for you."

"I was looking for you," she said. "I thought you were in Massachusetts."

Jack furrowed his brow. "I was at a meeting on Massachusetts Ave. You don't think I would have given you a heads up if I was heading out of town? Ed called me after you showed up at the office. He said you brought some kind of gift."

"I'm such an idiot," Charlotte said. She nodded down at the pie. "I made you a pie. I ate some of it on a bench. It was whole when I brought it to your office."

"Now it has a hole instead. Did you really make that for me?" He sat down on the step next to her and picked up the pie. "No way. Rhubarb?"

"Yeah, I thought I'd surprise you."

"I am surprised. Thank you."

"It's ruined now."

"It's far from ruined." Jack pulled the wrap off. "You have anything to eat this with?"

"Like ice cream?" Charlotte asked.

"Like a fork," Jack replied.

"Oh." She reached into her purse and pulled out the plastic forks.

Jack took the unused one. With the first bite of pie he closed his eyes and grinned. "That's amazing," he said. "Where did you learn to make pie like that?"

"From my mother," Charlotte said. "This doesn't really compare to hers. You'll find out soon enough."

"Oh yeah?" Jack waited to swallow before he grinned at her. He invited her with his eyes to dig in to the pie.

"Yeah, she called me on her way back. We're meeting them this weekend. So we have to get our story straight if they're going to believe us. They'll need more than your charming smile."

"Is that right?"

"That's right. This might take a while."

As Charlotte looked at him, she forgot all about the frustration of that afternoon and the doubts that had nagged her all the way back from his office. Maybe she didn't know what was going to happen that weekend when they visited her parents. Maybe she didn't know what would happen in a year or two. But at least in that moment, as she sat on the steps eating pie, she was sure she had everything she wanted.

Jack took another bite of pie. "You know, that's alright by me."





Chapter 11

Charlotte sank lower in her seat as Jack rounded the corner onto her parents' street. The windshield wipers of his Cadillac pushed the light rain back and forth across the glass, and Charlotte tried her best to focus on the streaks the wipers left behind instead of the view beyond. She didn't have to look to know what the neighborhood looked like. Wisteria, Pennsylvania, was the magical town half an hour outside Philadelphia where nothing ever changed.

A gust of wind stirred the bright autumn leaves from the ground and blew them past the car, drawing Charlotte's attention up to the trees. Most of the maples and elms that lined the street were already bare. Charlotte wondered if there was any chance of getting Jack to turn the car back around and make the three and a half hour trip back to DC, but she knew it was too late to ask when she spotted her parents' house at the end of the street.

It would have been hard not to. Even from a distance, no one would mistake it for any other house on the block. The house itself wasn't all that different from the ones around it. The whole neighborhood was made up of two- and three-bedroom capes and bungalows built in the 1930s and 1940s, but it was the long, glowing strings of orange, pumpkin-shaped lights her parents had hung from the trees. The carved pumpkins lining the walkway up to the tiny porch didn't help either.

Charlotte's parents always over-decorated for and over-celebrated every holiday, every birthday, and every milestone, major or minor, but Halloween was one of their favorites. The attic and basement of her parents' house were mazes of box after box of seasonal decorations. She wondered what celebrations they'd have in store now that their daughter was getting married.

As Jack pulled into the driveway, Charlotte tensed. She reached over and placed her hand over his.

"I have to warn you," she said. "My parents can be a little enthusiastic, and, um, opinionated." Charlotte didn't want to see Jack's reaction when he met her parents. She just wanted to fast forward through all of it and pretend it never happened. She worried that they wouldn't like him, that they'd question her judgment. She worried that they would like him and make everything that much more complicated.

Jack seemed amused at her warning. In fact, he seemed happier than he had been in the entire time she'd known him. Looking at him, she would have guessed he was going somewhere great, like a concert by his favorite musician or a trip to… Charlotte realized she should probably know Jack's favorite things if she was going to convince anyone they were really a couple.

"I'm used to dealing with opinionated people," he said. "I've been called just about every name in the book for my political beliefs, my fame and my wealth. I don't think an evening with the Crowleys will bring my world crashing in."

"It's not your politics or your fame I worry about. My parents like to act like I'm still a kid," she said. "Plus, I don't know what they'll make of you."