“Did you say something?” he asked, rising in his seat.
“I said I wonder if you realize that you’re a life saver. Thank you for driving me back here.”
“My pleasure.” He leaned over and placed a hand behind her seat. “There is a way you can repay me, though.”
“What would that be?” she asked warily.
“Move my Marianne up on your panty list.” His full cheeks colored a furious shade of red. “At least in time for our wedding night.”
She grinned and nodded her head. “I think that could be arranged.” Charlotte hopped out of the pickup before she could laugh out loud and embarrass the man further. “Thanks again, Fred.”
“You’re welcome. And when your customers come in discussing these thefts, remember to tell ’em Roman Chandler wouldn’t steal anything.”
Except her heart, she thought, sadly.
Fred drove off, leaving her standing on the sidewalk. She stared first at her business, then at the upstairs window leading to her apartment. Neither place beckoned to her right now. Since Roman had spent the night, her small apartment was no longer a safe haven to which she could escape. Her office smelled too vile for words, and in her shop, Beth’s chatty presence would have Charlotte revealing painful secrets in no time. And her mother’s house was off limits because Russell was home.
She felt like a displaced person with nowhere to go—until she realized there was one place she could curl up and be alone in peace. She stopped by the shop only long enough to tell Beth she was taking the day off, detoured into Norman’s for a sandwich and soda to go, before going up to her apartment, changing her clothes, and ducking out onto the fire-escape-like-terrace, her treasured book, Glamorous Getaways, in hand.
Some people chose comfort food. Charlotte chose comfort books. One in particular. A breeze fluttered the pages and she turned to the one she studied most, the famous HOLLYWOOD sign. She sat back against the wall, legs out in front of her, book resting on her knees. She sighed and traced the letters she knew by heart, then propped her chin in her hands and stared at the glossy pages.
Ironic, that this same book that gave her peace also represented her greatest pain. Charlotte understood why. Glamorous Getaways brought her back to a simpler time. A time when she still believed in Prince Charmings and happily ever afters. A time when she thought her father would come home and sweep Charlotte and her mother off their feet and onto an airplane to Los Angeles. To join him and give her back the security she’d lost. He never had.
So this book should be unsettling, yet it soothed her in a way only innocent childhood beliefs could. Charlotte didn’t delve deeper. Life was complicated enough. And the Chandler brothers’ coin toss had certainly mixed up her life and emotions in a way she’d never imagined possible.
Charlotte wasn’t into pity, nor did she believe she’d done anything to deserve this twist of fate. But, all things considered, she couldn’t say she was surprised. Psychiatrists had a field day with the notion that girls fell in love with men who reminded them of their fathers. A statement she’d once have disputed with a vengeance, but of which now she was living proof.
The Chandler brothers were many things: dedicated bachelors, devoted sons, and intensely loyal men. She knew Roman had never set out to hurt her. She believed he’d discounted her from his list of available women because of her family history. But she’d certainly simplified his life by falling into his baby-needing arms.
* * *
After finishing with his brothers, Roman locked himself in Chase’s office and got lost in what he did best. Writing. He tuned out everything and everyone else and spent the late morning and better part of the afternoon typing up an article on small-town life. Slice-of-life articles weren’t his thing, but somehow, this time the words poured from his gut.
Big cities, bigger stories. Large continents, even larger human interest stories. But at the heart of each of those broader pieces, Roman realized he could find the essence of people—their ties to each other, their community, their land. Just like the people of Yorkshire Falls.
When Roman wrote a news piece—whether he was driving home the inequities of poverty or famine, the brutal truth of ethnic cleansing in foreign lands, or the need for a variance or new zoning laws so someone with degenerative arthritis could own a pet and walk him without pain—the stories centered on people and what they needed and did to survive.
As a journalist and as a man, the objective view had been easier for Roman, and so he’d chosen to tackle the outside world while putting up blocks against his feelings for those people and stories back home. Because home represented Roman’s greatest fear—pain, rejection, loss. The kind he’d seen his mother experience.