Maybe it was time to leave.
Grey eased Charlotte away from the other guests until they reached the deck railing. He pointed out the various landmarks and she leaned her shoulder against his and showed every indication of hanging on his every word. He hadn’t touched her since their earlier kiss. He hadn’t been game. Now he turned his back on the view and spread his arms along the railing. Not quite an embrace, but an invitation for Charlotte to take what she would from him. Shelter, if she wanted it. Protection if she felt the need. Or anything else she might want to avail herself of.
Charlotte traced her fingers along the inside of his arm, up to his elbow and back, and when she reached his hand she covered it with her own, so soft and slim against the rough squareness of his. He liked the contrast. He liked a lot of things about this woman.
‘Ready to go?’ he murmured.
Relief crossed her face and was gone in an instant but this time he saw it. Charlotte Greenstone was more than ready to leave the family embrace and probably had been for hours.
‘Yes.’
‘C’mere,’ he murmured and drew her towards him, touching his lips to her hair as she nestled against him as if she’d been there a thousand times and would be there a thousand more before they were through. ‘You should have said.’
‘It’s your show.’
Yes, but it was her identity that was taking the battering.
They made their farewells after that. Sarah receiving Grey’s guarded goodbye with a tight-lipped smile and eyes that wished him to hell. He hadn’t encouraged Sarah’s attentions over the course of the afternoon. Sarah hadn’t given chase, hadn’t made a scene, hadn’t singled out Charlotte again. Sarah waited, that was all, and Grey wished to hell she wouldn’t.
‘Where to next with your work?’ asked his father as he and Olivia saw them to the door.
‘Could be Borneo,’ said Grey. ‘Could stay here a while. Plans are pretty fluid at the moment.’ He slid Charlotte a quick glance. Charlotte picked it up and responded with a smile.
‘Borneo’s lovely,’ she enthused, playing the Boheme and playing it well. ‘Wonderful place to visit and to work. My godmother and I spent half a year there once, when I was a child. Think of the history.’
‘Think of the malaria,’ said Olivia dryly. ‘What were you and your godmother doing there?’
‘Just looking,’ said Charlotte. ‘We did that a lot. Thank you for having me to lunch.’ She didn’t say she enjoyed it. Olivia didn’t say, ‘Do come again.’
Women.
Grey wasn’t used to a pensive Charlotte Greenstone. A woman who wore her beauty effortlessly, almost unconsciously, but who’d grown quieter and more reflective with every passing kilometre. As if lunch with his parents and Sarah and all the rest had drained her dry.
‘I’m sorry about my mother,’ he said, after another fifteen kilometres of silence.
‘Mothers are protective of their young,’ she said quietly. ‘You don’t have to be a biology major to get that. Anyway, it’s not as if I’ll be seeing her again.’ Charlotte closed her eyes as if to shut out reality. ‘May I offer up a little bit of advice?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘When you do find a woman who interests you, introduce her to your family gradually. Try one limb at a time; or one family member at a time. Don’t involve Sarah, not at the start. It does no one any favours.’
‘Noted,’ he murmured. ‘And thank you.’ He’d do well to keep his eyes on the road and off his companion. His wildly beautiful companion with hidden depths. ‘Are you hungry? We could stop somewhere on the way home. I did promise you dinner.’
‘I can’t eat any more today,’ she said. ‘Your mother sets a fine table.’
‘You have to eat something later on.’
‘I might have a cognac nightcap.’
‘That’s not food.’
‘Want to bet?’
They drove in silence after that, apart from a murmured comment here and there. When they got to the outskirts of Sydney, Charlotte surprised him yet again by requesting that he drop her at an inner city Rocks address rather than the one he’d picked her up from.
She directed him into a steeply descending driveway, dug a set of keys from her handbag, and pressed a remote switch attached to the key ring. The eight-foot wrought-iron driveway gates began to ease open. A heavy-duty garage Roll-A-Door began to open further down the drive. ‘Who lives here?’
‘Me,’ she said as Grey drove down into a spacious underground car park with room for a dozen or so vehicles. ‘The house at Double Bay belongs to Aurora. At least, it did. Now it’s mine, only I couldn’t face going there tonight. She’d have been disappointed in me today, I think. In the hurt I caused, no matter how much better off Sarah’s going to be without you. Too many lies. Far too many lies of late, and they just keep getting bigger. You can park there.’
He did as suggested, brooding over her remarks as he strode around the car to open the door for her.
She smiled, briefly, as she got out of the car and he closed the door behind her, but there was no leaning into him as there had been for his parents’ benefit. No playing of power games.
‘I’m sorry about today,’ he said gruffly. ‘I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.’
‘You didn’t. We had a deal. A good deal—one I entered into willingly.’ She offered up a small smile. ‘Don’t mind me if I seem a bit morose. It’ll pass.’
He hoped so.
‘Would you care to come up for a coffee?’ she said next. ‘I’ve no agenda, no ulterior motive other than I don’t think much of my own company these days and I do my best to avoid it. You could tell me about your research. About what you hope to find in Borneo.’
Grey hesitated.
‘Never mind,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s not mandatory. We’re square now. And you probably have other places to be.’
Somewhere between this morning and now, Charlotte’s confidence had taken a hammering and self-derision had found purchase. His doing, not hers, and he cursed himself for not seeing, not giving any thought whatsoever to Charlotte’s feelings about the role he’d asked her to play and the hits she would take on his behalf.
‘You should know that a research scientist never misses an opportunity to expound on his work,’ he offered gravely. ‘You don’t even have to be an appreciative audience. You just have to be awake. And, yes, I’ll join you for coffee.’
They stepped into a lift and went up a few floors and came out onto a landing with only two doors leading from it, one of which was labelled ‘Fire Escape.’
Charlotte’s penthouse apartment boasted a million-dollar close-up view of Sydney Harbour Bridge, framed by enormous, double—or triple—glazed tinted windows. White was the predominant colour in the apartment; white walls and ceilings, white marble floors, white kitchen fixtures and benches and a snow-white leather lounge. And then, as if someone had taken exception to the designer palate and vowed to melt it down, an eclectic array of paintings, sculptures, books, tapestries and floor rugs in every imaginable colour and from every imaginable historical period had been added to the mix.
He stopped in front of a painting formed entirely of various coloured oil paints dripped onto a canvas in no particular order.
‘Do you like it?’ she said.
‘What is it?’
‘Abstract art. Jackson Pollock’s finest. It’s whatever