“And you’re rather mind-numbing, but you don’t see me complaining,” I replied.
If I thought there was a chance of having my eyes scratched out before, it was practically a given now. Kinsey attempted to stand up but Parker pulled her back down.
“Okay, okay,” soothed Adam, playing peacemaker. “Look, perhaps there’s someone else who could serve us?”
I doubt my bad attitude toward Kinsey came as a surprise to Adam. I’d forewarned him that she was fair game.
I heaved out a long sigh as if it was all too hard. Kinsey’s glare remained as she tried to make sense of why he was cutting me so much slack. I didn’t get a chance to say anything. Ryan – privy to the whole conversation from the information station – appeared at my side. “Is there a problem?” he asked, like he didn’t know.
“They don’t like me.” My choice of words made both Décaries chuckle. It was the first time I noticed how similar their laughs were.
“I like her,” volunteered Parker, looking at me like he was stuck in some sort of trance.
“Ugh!” Kinsey groaned, folding her arms tightly and leaning back in her chair.
“Oh, Kinsey,” said Ryan wistfully. “How are you, darling? You’re looking as toxic as ever.”
“Go to hell, Ryan,” she snapped.
“Don’t hate Charlotte because she’s rude,” he taunted, slipping his arm around my waist and pulling me close. “Hate her because Parker thinks she’s beautiful.”
Parker threw both hands in the air defensively, speaking to Kinsey. “I never said that!”
“You didn’t have to,” baited Ryan, lowering his voice and winking at him.
“Okay, enough now,” said Adam, finally drawing the line. “Let’s just order.”
Ignoring Adam, Ryan turned his attention to Whitney. “What about you, dim Whit? What are your thoughts on our new waitress?” Whitney didn’t answer, prompting him to continue torturing her. “I’ll bet Adam thinks she’s pretty, don’t you Adam?”
The whole table was deathly silent and all eyes were on Adam – except mine. My baleful glare was directed squarely at Ryan. I contemplated stabbing him with my pen. It wouldn’t have stopped him talking about me like a piece of meat, but it might have freed me from his clutches.
“I’m sure he finds her attractive,” said Whitney, finally finding her voice. “All of the women you bang when you fall out of the whore tree are beautiful, Ryan. That’s usually all they have going for them. Clearly you didn’t hire her for her good manners.”
“Bravo, Whitney,” praised Sera, grinning at her.
I wanted to pat her on the back and congratulate her too. It didn’t even bother me that she’d mistaken me for one of Ryan’s blondes. It was the first time I’d ever heard anyone put him in his place.
I knew there had to be more to Whitney than the meek shell of a girl I’d seen up to that point. Adam didn’t suffer fools easily. There’s no way he would have invested so much time in her if she were as shallow and empty as Kinsey.
It was a bittersweet moment. Whitney Vaughn wasn’t timid and dull. She was just heartbroken. And little did she know, I was partly to blame.
I knew the second Ryan opened his mouth he would have come out fighting, blowing our charade to pieces whether he meant to or not. It would have been the quickest way to destroy Whitney.
I dragged him away from the table, back to the information station. “Not one more word,” I ordered, wagging my finger at him.
Ryan grinned wickedly. “Oh Charli, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
He wasn’t entirely wrong. My webs were becoming more tangled by the day. And it was entirely my own doing.
16. The Right Question
“Charlotte, you have to wake up.” That was my Saturday morning wake-up call. Nothing about his smooth voice sounded urgent so it was hard to take him seriously. “I have something to show you.” I groaned and snuggled in closer to his warm body. I slowly ran my hand down the length of his arm, tangling my fingers around his. He leaned in and kissed me, doing nothing to convince me that getting out of bed was a good idea. “You have to come outside to see it.”
The minute Adam got up and started getting dressed, the bed held no interest for me. “Why are we going outside, exactly?” I asked, dragging on my jeans.
“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you. Come and see.”
Spending time in New York City had presented me with a cache of new experiences. I now had one more to add to the mix.
Snow.
I was so excited to see it, I could hardly breathe. I wanted to run across the marble foyer and out the front door the second I saw the sheet of white on the pavement outside. The only thing holding me back was the firm grip Adam had on my hand. Not even Marvin’s conversation could engage me for very long. Adam stood talking to him at the door while I stepped into a foreign world.
I stood completely still, gloved palms outstretched, catching the small white flakes as they drifted through the frigid air. Cold weather wasn’t exactly new to me but I’d never seen snow. And after the events of the night before, the simplicity of a new experience breathed new life into me.
“Can we go for a walk?” I asked, impolitely interrupting Adam and Marvin’s conversation.
“How far do you want to go, Charli?” teased Adam.
“Miles and miles.”
Marvin chuckled heartily. “You have a long day ahead then, Miss Charli.” He pointed to the sea of white lightly blanketing the street.
I had no idea what to expect. I’d woken up in an alien universe. Luckily for me, I was with someone who was willing to show it to me.
Central park was where we ended up, in front of the picturesque Bethesda Angel fountain. I trudged through the powdery fresh snow like an unsteady toddler. Adam patiently stood watching.
“She’s beautiful, don’t you think?” I asked, staring across at the angel, blanketed in white.
“Exquisite,” he replied, sounding totally uninterested.
I looked back at him, grinning. “I get the impression you’re not enjoying this as much as I am, Adam.”
“Tu va attraper la mort, Charlotte.” He translated before I had a chance to speak. “You’re going to catch your death of cold.”
I stomped back to him. “Saying it in French doesn’t make it true, monsieur. It’s a total myth.”
“How can you be sure?”
I hooked my arm through his as we wandered over to the steps. “Because a Czechoslovakian fairy once tested that theory.”
“More theories?”
“It’s true, Adam. Her name was Maruska and she was hopelessly in love with a boy called Bedrich. But he cruelly rejected her so she vowed to get even, determined to make him catch his death of cold,” I explained. “Every night for years and years she’d wait until he was sleeping and hide lumps of snow under his pillow.”
“Classy. Did it work?”
My grip on his arm tightened. “No. He remained perfectly well, found the love of his life and lived happily ever after. Eventually Maruska died alone and miserable, which proves only that a broken heart can kill you. Cold weather can give you frost bite or hypothermia, but not a deathly flu.”
Adam stopped walking, halting both of us. He took a step forward and turned to face me. He looked at me so intently, I began to fear what he was going to say.
He grabbed my hands. “Let’s get married.”
I was sure he’d left off half the sentence, and attempted to correct it. “Let’s get married some day? When we’re grown up, sensible and know what we’re doing?”
He dropped his head but kept the hold on my hands. It seemed an eternity before his eyes drifted back up to mine. “No Charlotte, right now.”
Nothing about him seemed unsure. I couldn’t pass it off as a joke or something said in the heat of the moment. We were standing in the snow, for crying out loud. The moment was freezing.
“Cold weather brings on delirium.”
&n
bsp; His hands slipped around my waist, drawing me close. “I’m not delirious. I’m playing by your five-minute rule. I’m loved and I love. What more could I possibly want?”
“Longer than five minutes, hopefully,” I teased.
“Five minutes or five lifetimes, Charli. I don’t care. I’ll take what I can get.”
I sometimes feared that Adam was unfairly enchanted by my fairy tales. I’d never forgotten the stories Alex had regaled me with throughout my childhood. As I grew I began to realise that he’d invented most of them to win whatever war was being waged with me at the time. It would be fair to assume that the Jamaican fairy, Ezola, didn’t really fade and wither away because she refused to eat vegetables – taking all of the sunlight with her and plunging her kingdom into darkness for eternity. But some tales were too brilliant not to be true. And those were the stories I carried with me. I’d grown up saving wishes, believing that fairies made beds for their babies in tulip blooms and chasing kisses from fairies on windy days.
My father had a lot to answer for.
To everyone else on earth, these were strange flaws. But Adam loved my craziness. We’d spent over a year apart. The dynamics between us had hardly changed. He loved me just as he always had. I loved him more, and made a point of telling him so every chance I got.
There was love and absurd amounts of desire and affection. But curiosity was noticeably absent. There was a time when I couldn’t answer Adam’s questions quick enough.
Since I’d been back in his arms, he’d never once asked me about my year away from home. It was as if he was happy to strip it from history and pretend we’d never been apart. I couldn’t do that. My year of travelling had altered me just as much as Alex’s fairy stories, and if Adam didn’t know all about it, he’d never truly know me.
“You haven’t asked me the right questions yet,” I told him.
Adam tried again. “Charlotte Blake, will you please marry me?” He spoke very slowly, enunciating every word. “That’s not the right question?”
I shook my head and his confused frown became more concentrated.
“Did you ever wonder about me, Adam? While I was away, did you ever think about where I was or what I was doing?”
“Every single day.” He spoke grimly as if I’d reminded him of something horrible.
“You’ve never asked me about it.”
His arm moved up my back and he hugged me tightly, whispering his answer in my ear. “Because none of it matters to me.”
I wedged my arms between us, breaking our embrace. “I wasn’t out robbing banks! I was doing exactly what I’d dreamed of my whole life.”
“At what cost, Charli?” he asked quietly.
I spent a long time trying to make sense of his question, but couldn’t. I had no clue what he was talking about, and demanded he explain it to me.
“About a month after I got home, Nicole called me, distraught.”
He looked straight at me, no doubt trying to gauge my reaction at the mention of her name. If he were successful, he would have picked the moment that my heart fell through the bottom of my feet. Any mention of Nicole Lawson was bound to mean trouble.
“What did she have to say for herself?” I asked, fighting the urge to yell the question.
“She told me that you’d changed plans and decided to travel with Mitchell instead of her.” He sounded so disappointed in me that I wanted to apologise – until I remembered that I’d done nothing wrong.
Nicole left town without even calling her mother. It was abominable to think she’d found the time to call Adam and fill his head with lies after doing her vanishing act. It crushed me to think she’d been so intent on destroying me.
“Why did she feel the need to keep you in the loop, Adam?” I asked, perfectly calmly.
He shrugged. “Misery loves company, right? I guess she thought I’d understand what she was going through.”
“I see. You can’t really blame me, though. I had thousands of dollars from the sale of the boat burning a hole in my pocket.” Adam’s expression remained totally blank. If he was outraged by my alleged wickedness, it didn’t show. “Dumping Nicole in favour of Mitchell made total sense. Because of him, I got to see Africa.”
“I don’t need to know this, Charli,” he grumbled.
“It’s not even true, Adam,” I snapped, finally coming clean. “And if you’d stayed in contact with Gabrielle, you’d probably know that by now.”
His eyes never left mine as I set him straight. It was important that he knew everything. Adam dug a groove in the snow with his boot as he listened to the story of how my lifelong best friend had stolen the money he’d gifted me, skipped out of town and smashed my already broken heart. “The lie she made up about me leaving with Mitchell was just good guess work. She probably knew he was my last hope of getting out of town. If Mitch hadn’t taken me with him, I’d still be stuck in the Cove.”
“And all of this happened within a month of me leaving town?”
I nodded. “Everything fell apart once you left.”
His blue eyes bored into mine with an intensity I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was the look that always left me wondering what he was truly seeing. Finally he leaned forward, pressing his cold lips hard against mine, scaling back to a light touch as he murmured two tiny words against my mouth. “Marry me.”
To keep my mind clear and my body upright, I broke his hold. I wasn’t against the idea of marrying him. There was something remarkable about knowing I had something most people spend their lifetimes searching for. Nothing would ever change my mind about him. And apparently nothing I ever did seemed to perturb him either.
“Are you sure you want to marry me?” I asked. “We’ve spent far more time apart than together.”
“It makes no difference. I have loved you the whole time. My heart gave me no choice.” He smiled at me and I was suddenly in real danger of being swept away in the moment. “It’s not that I can’t live without you, Charli. I’ve proved that I can. It’s just that I don’t want to, ever again.”
I grinned at him. “I can see why having me around frightens your mother so much. You used to be so sensible.”
I could almost hear Fiona’s voice in my head, screaming at me to leave her boy alone.
“Eventually, she’ll recover,” he insisted, reaching for my hands, squeezing them hard as if he was trying to reassure me.
“Alex won’t. He’ll kill you.”
“I’m not afraid of your father.”
“You should be.”
He smiled, totally unruffled. “If you’re searching for a reason not to marry me, you needn’t try so hard, Charli. Just say no. I’ll wait.”
His cockiness made me laugh. “How long?”
“For you? Forever. How long would you like me to wait?”
I studied his bright eyes for a long moment, deliberating. “Five days,” I said finally.
He dropped my hands and folded his arms. “Wednesday?”
“Yes. Monday for wealth, Tuesday for health, Wednesday the best day of all.” I ticked the days off on my gloved fingers. “Thursday for losses, Friday for crosses and Saturday, no luck at all.”
“What about Sunday?” he asked, chuckling.
“No mention of Sunday,” I replied. “But Wednesday’s a great day for a wedding.”
***
Even the simplest of weddings requires a certain amount of preparation.
First thing Monday morning we were at the office of the City Clerk applying for a marriage licence. It didn’t seem that complicated to me. We filled out the necessary paperwork, forked out thirty-five dollars and were handed a licence.
Adam’s frown intensified as the process went on. I waited until we were out the door before questioning him. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“No. I’m learning to go with the first.” He slipped the paperwork into his pocket, freeing his hand to reach for mine.
“You’re looking a little anxious.”
/> Adam held my hand as we manoeuvred our way down the icy steps. “I think we should consult with an immigration lawyer, Charli. We need to change the status of your visa.”
I groaned. “Not today.”
“Ignoring it won’t make it go away. We’ve got to get all of our ducks in a row.”
“Lining up ducks is your forté, not mine.”
“How about I take care of the ducks and you concentrate on the more important details?” he suggested, sounding much calmer.
I could think of a hundred details more important than my immigration status. I wanted everything to be perfect. Getting married would be the last big secret we could share. And it would probably last only as long as the day.
Forewarning his mother would’ve been horrendous. Adam had spelled out two scenarios. The first was that if by some miracle she decided to give her blessing, it would turn into a New York high society event that neither of us would take any delight in. The second scenario seemed much more likely. She’d rant, rave and destroy me bit by bit, ensuring there would be nothing left for her youngest son to tie the knot with. Of course, Adam put it much more diplomatically. “She’ll be displeased,” he’d told me.
I decided not to tell my father either. Adam bravely volunteered to call him – even offering to ask for Alex’s permission. I shuddered at the thought. I knew I was meant to be with Adam. My soul commanded it. After all we’d been through, promising to love each other forever just wasn’t a big leap. Such powerful declarations usually sounded desperate and off kilter when said out loud, especially to my father, so telling Alex after the deed was done made total sense to me. The only family member who would be privy to our news prior to the event was Ryan. Both of us knew that convincing him to bear witness for us would be a hard sell. He was the most cynical person I knew when it came to matters of the heart.
Our journey to his apartment was spent coming up with a game plan. “Don’t let him talk you out of anything – or into anything for that matter,” warned Adam, extending his hand to help me out of the cab.
I was careful not to mention Ryan’s new furniture when we walked in. The fire we were about to start needed no extra fuel. Two new black leather couches took up the space left by the lounge suite we’d pilfered. Yolanda had obviously been a worthwhile investment. They suited the room better than the others had – not that I’d ever tell him.