He lifted a brow, leaned back in his chair and smirked. “Can you honestly look me in the eyes and tell me you wouldn’t marry Charlie?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
He laughed. “I call bullshit. If she had come to you and told you what happened, that she was being backed into a corner and needed to have a fake marriage, you wouldn’t have jumped at the chance? To spend an entire year pretending to be married to her? An entire year of fucking her whenever you wanted?”
I rubbed the back of my neck and looked down at the floor. “Maybe, if she had come to me. But she didn’t. Instead she decided to fuck around with my emotions. Pretend she was into me to get what she wanted.”
His head tossed back in a fit of laughter. “Oh shit, you don’t get it, do you? Bro, you’re both fucking crazy about each other. You’re too hurt and stubborn to admit it, and she’s too damn scared to admit it. She didn’t ask you because she was worried you’d say no. I bet the idea of having to be married to someone for a year made Charlie feel physically sick. Married to you though, the guy she secretly pines over … that she could do.”
“Secretly pines over me? How the fuck do you know that?”
Nash’s smile faded some, and he cleared his throat. “It’s not hard to miss, asswipe. You just gotta open your eyes.”
My brow lifted as I stared at my best friend. There was something he wasn’t telling me. He knew something about Charlie and her feelings for me, but he wasn’t going to offer up how he knew. I let it go; I wasn’t in the mood anyway.
“So, what are you going to do? I’m pretty sure Charlie isn’t going to let this go. Are you going to let her know you know about the marriage clause?”
A slow smile moved over my face. “No. I’m going to make her work for it. If I hadn’t watched that tape from my office, I’d have fallen right into her plan only to get my damn heart broke in a year when she tells me she wants a divorce. Payback is a bitch, and Charlie Monroe is going to have to prove to me she wants to marry me for one reason only.”
Nash grinned. “And what’s that reason?”
My heart ached slightly in my chest at the idea of it.
“Because she loves me.”
A WEEK HAD passed with no word from Charlie. She hadn’t been into Sedotto and neither had Terri or my sister Lily. I found it a crazy coincidence that my bar’s name meant seduced. I’d gotten the idea from my grandfather. He loved Italy and said the country seduced him with her beauty. Italy made him happy. My bar made me happy.
I chuckled as I poured a shot of whiskey. I never drank when I was working, but tonight I needed it. I hadn’t really slept since the morning I woke up while holding Charlie in my arms. I wanted nothing more than to stay there with her. But I was hurt and angry and scared by the way my heart pounded in my chest.
I downed the shot and closed my eyes. The image of Charlie looking into my eyes as I fucked her hit me again. It was an endless torture day after day.
Maybe I was making a mistake with this plan of mine, which was causing me to second-guess myself. I needed to tell her I knew about her little plan of seduction.
All of a sudden the air changed, and I looked toward the door. There she was. A fucking vision of beauty dressed entirely in black. My eyes did a quick sweep of her body like I always did when I saw her. Lily stood on one side of her, Terri on the other. Jim and Nash followed behind the girls. Nash leaned in and said something to Lily that made her cheeks flush as she looked at him and smiled a smile I’d never seen on her face.
What in the hell?
Jim walked up and tapped the bar. “Hey, you don’t mind if we hang here tonight, do you? Charlie’s with us, and Nash told me you and her were not in a good place.”
I couldn’t pull my eyes off of Charlie as I watched them all walk over to the large round table that had “reserved” marked on it. Shit. Had one of them called earlier and talked to one of the managers to let them know they’d be here? It was a standing thing; if any one of them called and requested a table, my managers knew to rope one off for them. Perks of knowing the owner.
“Nah, not at all. Charlie and I are just fine.”
I finally brought my gaze to Jim. His eyes widened some and then he chuckled. “Yeah, those are words I never thought I’d hear you utter.”
Jim, Terri, Nash and Charlie, along with another buddy of mine, Blake, had been friends since our freshman year of college. Lily popped into the group a year later after she started at UT. Terri and Jim hadn’t been dating then; that came about a few years ago. We were inseparable even after the whole thing with Charlie and me. We were like the three musketeers times two.
After pouring another whiskey, I made my way over to the table. Charlie had her face down, looking at her phone, which was typical. I was positive it was for work. As I walked up with Jim, I said so only he could hear, “Let me sit next to her.”
“You sure?” he asked in a hesitant voice. My friends knew to put th
emselves between Charlie and me. It was a rule I’d put into place seven years ago, more for myself than Charlie. Sure, for the first few months it was so I didn’t strangle her, but after that, it was purely for me. Anytime I was close to her, it physically hurt.
“Yep,” was all I said before sliding into the booth and right up next to Charlie. She stilled for a brief moment and then went back to typing away on an email.
“All work and no play makes for a dull day,” I whispered against her ear.
“Fuck off, asshole.”