But it did matter. Charlie brought their drinks back, and Carla beamed at him. Jonah wanted that light shined on him. He didn’t deserve it, not after the way he’d treated her, but he wanted it just the same.
“Why are you here?” Jonah wanted to get this over with, so he could get Carla away from Charlie as soon as possible.
“Can you be nice for like five minutes?” Carla pinched his forearm, which did the same thing to him as all of her other touches—it made blood rush to his dick. It was sick and twisted, and he took a long swallow of beer to calm himself down.
“No, he can’t.” As usual, Charlie was going to say too much. Jonah held his breath, hoping that his friend wasn’t going to lay out why Jonah couldn’t have nice things. “Ever since college, he’s been a surly asshole.”
Jonah took in air, but stared Charlie down, trying to silently communicate a plea for discretion.
“You’ve known each other since college?”
“Yeah, we were the same year,” Jonah answered, hoping he could steer the conversation away from a trip down memory lane. “So, man, what are you doing in Cuba?”
“Vacation.” Charlie sat back and took a long drink of his mojito. He looked like a tool drinking through a straw. Normally, Jonah would give him shit about that, but he wanted this excursion to be as short as possible. “And I have a proposal for you.”
“Are you secretly in love with him?” Carla piped in, uninvited. He looked at her half-empty glass and color brushing her cheeks, glad that at least she was getting some amusement out of all this. “If you ask him to marry you, can I be in the wedding? I’ll give him away.”
“If I didn’t know you were in a rush to get rid of me before...”
Charlie looked back and forth between them for a long moment, with a smile that, back in college, would have meant a trip to Windsor, Canada, and a killer hangover. Now that they were over twenty-one and didn’t have to go over a border to drink, it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
Charlie looked at him. “What ever did you do to make this glorious creature hate you?”
“I don’t hate him.” Carla smiled at Charlie again, which had Jonah on the edge of a coronary event. “He’s too pretty to hate.”
Jonah scoffed and pointed at his friend. “Clearly you have some vision issues.” Charlie had always been the best-looking, best-dressed, most well-connected guy that Jonah knew. He could charm the panties off a nun—literally—with barely a wink and a cocky grin.
Carla blessed him with her gaze, and he lost his train of thought. “I can see just fine.”
“Should my feelings be hurt?” Charlie asked. He never could stand not being the center of attention. “Do you want to hear stories about Jonah in college? There’s plenty of shit to mine there. I mean, clearly he hasn’t gotten better with women.”
Hearing Charlie talk about college and women in the same sentence set every nerve in Jonah’s body on fire. Shame and an intense desire for Carla never to know about his college football career—or why he left—raced through him.
“Tell me more.” Carla leaned in, oblivious to the turmoil inside of Jonah.
“No.” Jonah gritted his teeth.
“One story, nothing too embarrassing. I promise.” Charlie had to know that Jonah was about to explode, but his friend just winked. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I was quite the dilettante in college.”
“I’d never believe that about you.” Carla was fucking cooing over Charlie’s poor-little-rich-boy act. Fucking hell.
“Well, I was forever trying to get people into trouble, and Jonah was always keeping them out. That’s the pattern of our friendship.” Charlie took a sip of his drink. Nothing he said was false, but Charlie didn’t need to tell her why he was the way he was.. “Anyway, I had arranged a booze cruise on Lake Michigan for Memorial Day. And, in his typical way, Jonah found himself tying back his girlfriend’s hair as she barfed in the lake about an hour in. I had to keep him from jumping in and swimming to shore for Dramamine.”
“That’s sweet. Exactly what the perfect boyfriend would do.” Carla’s words, even though she was defending him, cut him open. He prayed that Charlie wouldn’t tell Carla the whole story. This wasn’t how he wanted her to find out; he didn’t want her to find out at all. He wanted her to continue thinking he was sweet and go ahead being wrong about him.
“You’re a lost cause then.” Charlie shook his head and took another long sip of his drink. “Carla, have you ever considered doing television?”
Jonah, relieved at Charlie’s insanely short attention span, looked at Carla then, the color in her cheeks intensifying as she looked down into her drink. She shook her head.
“Charlie’s a television producer, the family business. Ignore him unless you want Keeping up with the Hernandezes to be a thing.”
“The last thing I want to do is be on TV.”
“I don’t do trash reality TV.” Charlie had clearly picked up on some tension around Carla as a public figure. “I do mostly educational or competition shows—food, home improvement, travel.”
Carla perked up at hearing that. “I am an interior designer.”
Charlie pulled out a business card, and handed it to Carla with the kind of flourish and killer smile that Jonah had seen evaporate panties and inhibitions all over the world. “If you ever change your mind.”
“Thanks.” Carla slipped the card in her purse, and Jonah wanted to dig it out and toss it into the pool. He didn’t like the idea of Charlie and Carla even working together. He hated this jealous part of himself. Though he usually avoided it by not getting too involved with anyone, Carla had dug under his skin in record time. “Now, what’s your proposal for Jonah?”
Charlie sat back, which made Jonah grip his beer even tighter. “I’m trying to get him on TV, too. I want him to do a travel show.”
“Like a hotter, crankier, Anthony Bourdain?” Jonah’s skin crawled at the scrutiny from both of them. Carla’s eyes lit up, and she looked at him as though she was as attuned to him as he was to her. Charlie’s smug look had him wanting to rip his friend’s face off. That would actually be a win-win. He’d get to rip a face off, and there would be no more talk of a television show.
“Exactly,” Charlie said.
“I’m not interested in doing fluff TV. I told you that last year.”
“You weren’t listening to me, man.” Charlie shook his head. “I don’t want to do fluff. And you’re the only guy I know who can make himself at home anywhere. Look at you here. You meet new people and get them to trust you, to invite you in.”
“I don’t trust him.” For once, Carla’s smart mouth was going to help him.
“Yeah, well most people do.” Charlie folded his hands on his knees, and Jonah gripped the arms of the chair. He knew how dangerous Charlie’s hard sell could be. “That’s why you get such great pictures—it’s why they’re all covers.”
Jonah’s insides squirmed under Charlie’s look, but he didn’t give it away. He wasn’t used to praise. It had never made him comfortable during his football-playing days; it wasn’t comfortable now. Maybe because his football-playing days had taught him how quickly all the praise could be taken away.
Charlie must have known that he had him anyway. “Just tell me you’ll think about it.”
Jonah nodded, and his friend stood.
“Leaving so soon?”