Maureen Child - The Highest Bidder

The answer was so simple. His heart had known from the beginning. It was only his brain that had refused to see the truth.

He loved Charlie Potter.

And he was never letting her go.

Charlie waited outside the boardroom for Vance to be free. She had a sheaf of papers requiring his signature and Justin had been haranguing her on the phone about them for the past half hour. Once Vance had signed them, she’d take them downstairs so Justin’s heart palpitations could stop.

Standing against the wall, she shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable standing too long in the high heels Vance liked so much. She smiled to herself as she remembered their first time making love when he’d insisted that she never get rid of them.

Silly, she knew. But he made her happy. Enough that she was postponing the inevitable by staying with him a few more days. She didn’t want to leave, but what choice did she have? She couldn’t love a man who didn’t love her back. There was no future in that. For any of them.

Her head tipped back against the wall and she stared up at the ceiling. How would she ever live without him? How could she continue to work for him knowing that what they had shared so briefly was over? She wouldn’t be able to and she knew it. The only sane thing to do would be to quit her job.

Then she would have lost everything.

Frowning now, she straightened up when the boardroom door opened. She heard George Cromwell speaking, his gruff voice unmistakable.

“That was a good job you did, Vance. Catching the blackmailer.”

“Yeah, thanks. I’m glad it worked out.”

Her stomach dipped and rolled in reaction to Vance’s voice, and she nearly sighed at the hopeless case she’d become.

“I heard the rumors about you and that cute assistant of yours. Clever of you, romancing her so you could get to the bottom of it so fast.”

Vance stepped out of the boardroom and saw her. He stopped dead and though he didn’t say anything, guilt was stamped so cleanly on his features, he didn’t have to speak.

Charlie felt as though she’d been slapped. Was that all she had been? A tool used to capture Henry? Had none of it been true? Ever? Reeling from the implications of George’s statement, and the fact that Vance hadn’t denied it, she hurried down the hall, away from the boardroom, away from the man shouting her name.

“What the—” George muttered as Vance took off after her at a dead run.

Charlie beat him to the office and turned to slam the door on him, but Vance was too quick. He slapped one hand against the door and hit it hard enough that it smacked against the wall.

“Don’t you even speak to me,” she warned, and threw the papers needing his signature at him. They fluttered like oversize snowflakes to the floor.

Hurt, humiliation and good old-fashioned temper were steering her course now. She felt as if she were going to explode from the pressure building inside.

“Charlie, dammit,” he said, slamming the door closed so no one could overhear them, “hear me out at least.”

“No. There’s nothing you can say to me now that I want to hear. That’s it. I quit.” And to think only moments ago, she’d been dreading that decision. Now there was no other choice.

She hurried across the room to her desk and bent down to yank open the bottom drawer. She grabbed her purse, kicked the drawer shut and stood up.

He was right in front of her. His dark hair falling over his forehead. His brown eyes, with those gold flecks, were churning with emotion and his jaw was so tight, she saw the muscles there twitching.

“No way are you quitting.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“Watch me.” He grabbed her and held her in place, though she squirmed and wriggled and tried to break free. Finally, in desperation, Charlie drew her right foot back and kicked him in the shins.

He yelped, and that was satisfying, but he didn’t let her go, and that was infuriating.

“Dammit, will you just hold still for a second and listen to me?”

“Why should I?” she shouted. “I heard what George said to you and more importantly what you didn’t say back.”

“I didn’t have a chance to say anything. I saw you there and then you were running—”

“What would you have said, Vance?” She threw the words at him as a challenge. “Would you have denied it? Could you?”

He didn’t say anything, but the flicker of regret on his features said plenty.

Pain lanced through her. “I wondered, you know, why you were being nice to me. Remember, I even asked you. You didn’t answer me, but then how could you?” She shook her head in disgust. “Not easy to say, ‘I’m seducing your secrets out of you, Charlie—that okay with you?’”

“All right, fine,” he grumbled. “That was how it started. I think. Hell, I don’t even know for sure anymore.”

“Right.”

“I’m telling you the truth, Charlie.” He let her go, shoved both hands through his hair and said, “Ever since you walked in here, I haven’t been able to think straight. At first I thought it was your hair distracting me. Or maybe those damn shoes.” He shook his head again as if trying to understand all this himself.

“But it wasn’t any one thing at all. It was just you, Charlie. Your laughter. Your eagerness to learn. Your love of … everything.” He choked out a laugh. “You sneaked up on me. And yeah, I thought it would be a good idea, to take you out a couple times, romance you a little. See if I could figure out if you were a spy or not.”

“Romance me. At the Zoo Diner?”

“See?” He threw both hands high and let them drop to his sides again. His expression was baffled. “See what you do to me? I sat in the middle of that toddler hell and actually had a good time. I didn’t expect that. Didn’t expect you . What you did to me. How you made me feel. How you made everything better.”

Charlie wished she could believe him, but how could she? How could she ever trust him again? She felt the sting of tears in her eyes, but blinked them back. “You were using me. Just as Henry did.”

“No,” he said firmly.

“Yes,” she said. “But I’m done being used. By you. By anyone. I quit, Mr. Waverly. I’ll be by this weekend to pick up Jake’s and my things.”

“Charlie—”

She walked past him, head held high. He didn’t follow and that was good. Because Charlie didn’t know if she had the strength to walk away from him twice.

Vance shut himself up in his condo and didn’t speak to anyone. He didn’t go to work. Didn’t return his brother’s calls and refused to give a flying damn about Waverly’s or anything else.

His house was so quiet, it was driving him crazy. He stood in the doorway of Jake’s room and looked at the empty crib, feeling a similar emptiness in his own chest. The room still smelled like baby and Jake’s toys were still scattered across the floor. He bent down and picked up the red rubber ball and idly tossed it from hand to hand.

Then he wandered across the hall to the master bedroom. The room he hadn’t been able to sleep in since Charlie left. How the hell could he? She’d stamped herself all over the room. The T-shirt she slept in. Her hairbrush on the bathroom counter. Her slippers on the floor beside the bed. Her pillow that smelled like peaches.

The damn woman was everywhere but where she belonged.

He tossed the ball to the floor, stalked down the hall to the living room and out onto the terrace. He didn’t look at the chaise because recalling that particular memory at the moment might just finish him off. Instead, he stared at the river and mentally went over the plan that had begun forming when Charlie called that morning to say she would be at his place at one o’clock to pick up her things.