Digging her teeth into her lip, she gathered up the papers, an envelope, and a few other files and pushed them into her briefcase.
“I’m ready. I can go over the rest of these on the drive up to the lake house.”
I frowned.
“I’m sorry; it won’t be but maybe thirty minutes more of work.”
If there was one thing I was going to have to get used to, it was Charlie being married to her job. I wanted to chuckle. Fuck … I was already making plans to share her with this damn company.
“Let’s go,” she said, grabbing her purse and rounding her desk.
CHARLIE WAS RIGHT; she only had about thirty minutes left of work to do, and she knocked it out on the drive up. She also made five phone calls and chewed out three of the people for not having their jobs done or not having something done right. She talked about shipping companies, telecommunications, biopharmaceuticals, as well as growth and low-cost expansion in some automotive plant in fucking Germany. To say I was impressed was an understatement.
When she finally threw her work into the backseat and let out a sigh, I turned to face her.
“How in the hell do you know about all of that shit?”
She laughed. “It’s my job to know it all. I don’t know everything about all of it, just the things that matter. I pay people who know the important things. We have former FBI agents, Nobel Pr
ize recipients, Ivy League professors, and economists, just to name a few, working for us. They’re the ones who are supposed to know their jobs.”
“Yeah, but how do you know when they’re falling short on the job?”
Charlie shrugged. “I learn what I need to know about the companies, what we need to do for them, and when that’s not being done, I have to play the hard ass.”
“And that means making people work all weekend?” I asked.
“If that’s what needs to be done. It’s not my fault they’ve jacked around all week and didn’t get their shit done. I manage to take the weekends off.”
I smiled.
“You’re making my cock hard hearing you say the words ‘jacked around’ and listening to you talk like that. And how you stood up to that prick earlier. Christ, I almost whipped out my dick and jacked something around right then and there.”
“Tucker!” she exclaimed, hitting me on the shoulder as I let out a laugh.
The closer we got to the lake house, the more the memory of that weekend came back to me. It was an amazing weekend, but one that ended not so great. I was hell bent to make sure there wasn’t a repeat.
“I forgot how beautiful it was up here,” Charlie softly said when we pulled up and parked. The lake was behind the house, and you could see it driving down the driveway.
“How often do you come up here?” she asked.
“Not often.”
I wasn’t about to tell her I had only been here three times since that weekend she walked away from me. That each of those times I was forced by my parents to be there.
When we got out of the car, she lifted her arms in the air and let out a moan while she stretched. Dropping her arms to her sides, she walked toward the lake.
“If this was mine, I’d be here every weekend.” Without taking her eyes off of the lake, she kept talking. “Did I ever tell you I bought a hundred acres of land?”
My head jerked back. “You did? When? Where?”
Her arms wrapped around her body. “Last year. It has a little cabin and a small lake on it.” Charlie glanced over my shoulder. “Near Marble Falls. You and Nash would die of if you saw the deer at this place.”
My heart sped up at the thought. “I could use another head on my wall.”
She rolled her eyes and made her way back to my truck where she got the bag that Lily had packed for her and her work stuff.
We walked through the large foyer and living area and down the hall to the master bedroom. It was the same room where we’d made love for the first time. I chanced a peek at Charlie when we walked into the room. Her smile was evidence that those same memories hit her as well.