Charlie entered and she looked at him and couldn’t decide what she wanted to do more—run to him or slap his face.
‘Shut the door,’ she ordered.
OK. This was bad. And he didn’t think it was about the phone call. She looked serious. Deadly serious. Her pinstripes had never looked primmer. He turned and did her bidding then faced her.
‘You’re closing the centre down.’
Carrie suppressed a gasp. She could see his jaw clench and unclench and guessed the calmness of his statement had cost him a lot.
She swallowed. ‘The centre is not viable. It will be my recommendation to the board that closure is the most expedient course of action.’
Charlie felt the burn of anger scorch his chest. ‘Expedient.’
Carrie flinched at the disgust in his voice. He repeated it as if it was the dirtiest word in the dictionary. She lifted her chin. ‘Yes. Expedient.’ To hell with him.
‘I thought you’d changed. I thought you’d started to see past the bottom line.’
His barb hit home. He knew she had. She had changed so much in her time there. But that didn’t alter the facts. ‘My job is to look after the hospital’s money.’
Charlie strode to the door and whipped it open. He pointed to the teenagers that were already lining up for their first game of pool. ‘What are these kids going to do? Where are they going to go?’
‘That data is not required by the board—’
‘Data?’ he interrupted furiously, slamming the door closed. ‘They’re people!’
Carrie swallowed. ‘Rest assured, as with any report, I will also state the reasons against closure, which will include those issues.’ Dear God, she sounded so pompous. So bureaucratic.
Charlie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The centre was the heart and soul of this needy community. He couldn’t allow this to happen. It was madness. ‘Is this because of us?’
It took a brief moment for the full implications of his statement to sink in. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Well, let’s see. You haven’t mentioned a word to me once about the state of play and then this morning you overhear a phone call and now you’re shutting me down?’
Carrie felt herself stiffen. ‘I resent your inference. This was a professional investigation. What happened between us privately has absolutely no bearing on the outcome.’
‘You sure there isn’t a little vengeance in there, Carrie?’
She stared at him, at his indignation, and her heart ached. But she didn’t need to stick around and be insulted. Have her integrity called into question. She’d been down that road once in her professional career and had barely survived. She wasn’t about to let Charlie do it to her all over again.
She picked up her laptop and fished around in her pocket for the locker key he had given her the first day. ‘You will be receiving official notification in due course.’
Charlie rubbed a hand through his hair and stared at the key dangling from her outstretched fingers. This was making him crazy. First his father and then this? It was too much for one morning. She looked so self-righteous. So businesslike. What did tie-dye Carrie think of it? Didn’t this bombshell affect her at all?
‘There’ll be an outcry. This centre will close over my dead body,’ he warned.
She hoped so, she really did. But the words wouldn’t come. This conversation had dealt the fatal blow to their relationship…friendship…kissing-buddy thingy—whatever the hell it was. As hard as it was, it was necessary for them to both move on. He had a chance with his ex and she had a life with Dana to get on with.
She went for a nonchalant shrug. ‘That’s not my concern. Goodbye, Charlie. I hope you and Veronica are very happy.’
The light flippant delivery cost her dearly. She walked past him, her head held high, her back erect, her fingers squeezing the laptop bag handle with a death-like grip. She didn’t want to go. But she couldn’t stay, either.
Charlie watched Carrie disappear and realised the awful truth. She was ruining him twice. She wasn’t only going to take the centre away but she’d also walked away with his heart. He had fallen in love with her.
It had crept up on him unawares but it was there nonetheless. No wonder he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. No wonder the women at the club the other night had left him cold. He’d been fooling himself that it was lust—a combination of pinstripes and abstinence. But as she walked away and an intense pain ripped through his gut, he knew it was deeper than that. Much deeper.
Deeper than anything he’d ever felt before. Sure, he’d loved Veronica but, looking back, he wasn’t so sure he’d liked her very much. His father had liked her so that should have been a clue from the start. And to finally have his father’s approval had definitely helped keep the thing between them going.