In short, her best friend had taken Zachary Fox, rock star and man voted “Reigning Sex God” by a men’s magazine three years running, up on his offer of a one-night stand.
Charlotte’s mouth fell open. “You—with Zachary Fox—” Throwing one arm around Molly, Charlotte smacked a big kiss on her best friend’s cheek, Molly’s skin a pure cream now touched with color. “My hero!” She pulled back her arm a second before her ice cream would’ve toppled over. “At least one of us will have outrageous stories with which to shock any grandchildren we might or might not have.”
Molly giggled and leaned into Charlotte, her wild tumble of black hair pulled back into a tight braid. Then, eyes on the water rippling with color from the lights of nearby businesses, Molly told her how the one-night stand had turned into a much more complicated arrangement that held the potential to tear open old scars so jagged and raw that Charlotte wasn’t sure the wounds had ever truly healed.
“Do you think I’m being ridiculous?” her best friend whispered. “About not being caught by the media with Fox?”
“Of course not.” Charlotte finished off her cone, balled up the napkin it had been wrapped in, and took Molly’s to the trash as well before coming back. “I was there, remember?” She closed her hand over Molly’s, heart hurting for her friend. “Did you tell Fox about what happened? So he knows it has nothing to do with him?”
Shaking her head, Molly pointed out the gleaming super yacht that had appeared in the distance. They watched the sleek craft glide in, the words they exchanged in the ensuing minutes layered with old pain.
Driven by her love for the woman who’d been her best friend since they first met in nursery school over two decades ago, Charlotte said, “I’m scared, Molly. All the time.” Until she couldn’t breathe sometimes. “You know why.”
Molly hugged her close, her voice fierce as she said, “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“No, it’s okay.” She turned to face Molly, looking into the warm brown eyes that had been the first thing she’d seen after she woke in the hospital bed just over five years ago. Molly hadn’t left her bedside for a single minute. “I miss out on so much because I’m scared—and the thing is, I’m intelligent enough to know it.” To be painfully aware she was living in a cage of her own construction. “That just makes it worse.”
“You’re selling yourself short.” Molly scowled. “You said I was brave, but I wouldn’t have made it through high school and foster care without you. You were my rock.”
“You were mine, too.” Charlotte shook her head, refusing to allow her friend to be sucked under by the trauma and anguish that had blighted her teenage years. “Don’t let that tough, strong, fifteen-year-old girl down, Molly. Don’t shortchange yourself like I do.” Charlotte knew it was too late for her to break the bars of her own cage, but Molly had a shot and Charlotte would do everything in her power to make sure her friend took it.
“Is it worth it,” Molly said at last, the agony of memory in every word, “for a single month?”
“That’s for you to decide,” Charlotte said, then fanned her face. “But I vote for breaking the bed with Mr. Kissable.”
Molly burst out laughing, the sound a little wet. “Maybe you need a rock star of your own.”
“No way. I’d rather go to bed with T-Rex.” It was a flip comment that hid countless fantasies. And fantasies they would remain, she thought, as she and Molly found a place to eat after her best friend finished grilling her about her new boss. Because the fear inside her, it would permit nothing else, permit no extraordinary life where she caught and held the attention of a man like Gabriel Bishop.
THE NEXT MORNING, CHARLOTTE was still thinking about Molly and hoping her friend would find a way to talk to her rock star about the past, when geeky, sweet Tuck poked his head around her cubicle wall. “Charlie, did you hear?”
Put on guard by the awed shock in his tone, she said, “What?”
“Anya,” he whispered, eyes all but popping out of his head and dark blond hair disheveled. “He fired Anya.”
Charlotte collapsed into her chair, her knees like jelly. “Oh, no.” If Anya was gone, she had to be next. She jumped a foot when her phone rang even as the thought passed through her head.
“Ms. Baird. In my office.”
Hanging up with trembling hands, she pushed up her glasses and told herself she could deal with T-Rex and the chopping block. After all, she’d survived far worse. That’s what she had to remember. She’d survived. “I have to go upstairs,” she said to Tuck.
The nineteen-year-old’s face telegraphed his distress. “God, Charlie.”
“It’s okay. I’ll come see you afterward.” If she was even allowed back on the floor and not just shown the door.
People didn’t stare at her this time. She might’ve taken that for a vote of confidence if not for the funereal gloom on their faces when they glanced at her out of the corners of their eyes. Most of them had already been through the gauntlet, come out safe on the other side.
Most of them weren’t in a redundant position.
The walk upstairs and down the corridor felt like it took an eon, and then she was entering the T-Rex’s den, his door having been open. He was standing with his back to the glass wall with its incredible view, his cell phone to his ear. Today’s suit was a deep charcoal gray paired with a steel-gray shirt and a charcoal tie. Austere and dark, it threw his features into stark relief.