‘Dinner at my place this evening?’ she wrote back, before she lost her nerve entirely. ‘Seven p.m.?’
This time his reply came almost instantaneously. ‘Why?’
Not a man bent on being amiable. Not entirely unexpected, given that her parting words to him two months ago had been, ‘Don’t call me and I won’t call you.’
‘Need to talk to you,’ she wrote back. Now there was a phrase guaranteed to send a chill up a man’s spine.
Charlotte sat back and stared at the computer screen after that, sat there for ten minutes with her heart in her throat, waiting for a reply that did not come. When the phone rang, she almost slipped her skin. Charlotte reached for it gingerly, hoping it was Greyson, hoping it was not.
‘Charlotte Greenstone,’ she said as evenly as she could, while her hands shook and her knees shook and she tucked her free hand between her knees in an effort to stop the trembling of both.
‘So talk.’ Greyson’s voice; deep and gravelly and riddled with wariness.
‘Hello, Greyson,’ she said, in a voice that wobbled only faintly. ‘I half expected you to be in Borneo.’
‘No.’
‘No.’ She ran through the script she’d prepared in her mind. Some sort of compliment was supposed to come next, but her brain had gone blank the minute she’d heard that familiar deep voice.
‘What do you want, Charlotte?’
‘Not money.’ She remembered Derek’s words of last night and figured she might as well get that one out of the way. ‘You don’t ever need to worry on that score.’
‘I wasn’t,’ he uttered dryly.
‘Because money’s not the problem here.’
‘So what is the problem here?’ he said. ‘I’m assuming you’re not ringing because life felt empty without me and you want to pick up where we left off? Am I wrong?’
Charlotte closed her eyes. She hadn’t armoured herself properly against Greyson’s thinly veiled hostility. She should have. ‘Never mind,’ she said raggedly. ‘This was a really bad idea. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.’
‘Charlotte, wait!’
She waited in silence. Trembling. Quailing.
‘Dinner, you said,’ he muttered, and his voice was as ragged as hers.
‘Yes.’
‘You should know that I’ll not be able to keep my hands off you if we have it at your place. You should know not to be with me in private right now. I’m telling you this as a courtesy.’
‘Somewhere else, then,’ she managed, while his words seared through her, bringing equal parts heat and apprehension. ‘There are dozens of restaurants nearby.’
‘Name one.’
She did. A steakhouse slash cocktail bar. Nothing fancy but there was privacy to be had in darkened booths if conversation demanded it, and this conversation surely would.
‘I’ll meet you there at seven,’ he said. ‘And, Charlotte?’
‘What?’ she said faintly.
‘If you want me to be at all civilised, you’ll be letting me pay for the meal.’
Greyson Tyler was no stranger to trouble. He knew the ways in which it crept up on a man. He knew how it smelled. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that meeting Charlotte again for a meal and whatever else she had in mind spelled trouble for them both. His needs were a little too intense when it came to delectable yet thoroughly unsuitable Charlotte Greenstone. There was no telling what he might demand of her, or the concessions he might make in order to get those demands met.
He’d stayed away. He’d been the gentleman and kept his distance. He’d done everything she’d asked of him and, dammit, he’d been hurt in the process.
Cancel.
That was what he should do. Tell her she’d been right all along about them wanting different types of lives, and that he couldn’t see any reason to meet up with her again. No reason at all.
Cancel.
But he did not.
Greyson arrived fifteen minutes early to the restaurant Charlotte had suggested: a scarred and bluesy corner bar with a blackboard menu promising quality fare that didn’t cost the earth. A quick glance around told him that Charlotte hadn’t yet arrived. He ordered a beer, found a shadowy corner booth with a view of the entrance and settled down to wait.
Charlotte the wilful, the reckless, the vulnerable. Best lover he’d ever had. Unstinting in her responses and mesmerising in her sexual abandon. Not a woman any man would forget in a hurry and he cursed her afresh while he sat with his beer and waited, and nursed the scars she’d given him.
He didn’t know why he was here—lining up for another serve of nameless sorrow—except that she’d asked him to meet her and she’d sounded so unsure of herself and that in itself signalled trouble. Maybe her workmates had found out about her fictional fiancé. Maybe she’d lost her job and her reputation—her problem, not his—but he would hear her out and help if he could. He could do that much without letting bitterness hold sway.
They’d only been on a handful of dates. Hardly her fault if her withdrawal had come too late to save him from going under. He could give her that much.
Honour demanded it.
Grey saw Charlotte before she spotted him. Small woman with generous curves and a waterfall of wavy black hair pulled back off her face with a vibrant silk headband. She wore tailored black trousers, dainty high-heeled sandals, and a sleeveless vest top in the same pinks, purples, and greens as her headband. A purple leather handbag completed the outfit, and she looked more like the pampered socialite he’d taken to his mother’s barbecue than the experienced Associate Professor of Archaeology he knew her to be.
He stood as she approached him. Stood because a woman who expected a man to open car doors for her would surely expect that as well. Stood because the fighter in him demanded he pursue any advantage he could with her and size was one of them.
She cast him a quick smile and slid into the bench seat opposite. A waiter materialised and took her order for mineral water. Greyson’s beer stood mostly untouched and he left it that way.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said politely.
‘I’m a sucker for punishment.’ Nothing but the truth. ‘I’m also curious as to what you have to say to me.’
‘Ah,’ said Charlotte. ‘Yes. That. I kind of need to work my way up to that particular discussion. How’s your mother?’
‘My mother’s well.’ Not where he’d been expecting this conversation to go. ‘Why?’
‘No reason. How’s the Sarah situation?’
‘I’ve seen her once since we spoke after the barbecue. We talked. She left. She blames you, by the way, for my newfound insensitivity.’
‘Handy,’ she said quietly.
Charlotte’s drink came and the waiter directed them to the blackboard menu. Neither he nor Charlotte was ready to order. ‘You’ve lost weight,’ he said. She still took his breath away with her perfection of form and features, but there was no denying she’d dropped a few kilos from her slender frame. Kilos she could ill afford to lose.
She’d lost weight; she looked wan. He was the son of a doctor. ‘Charlotte, are you sick?’
Grey watched in horror as tears swam in Charlotte’s eyes and threatened to overflow.
Oh, God, she was sick. ‘What is it?’ Information. He needed