“Hi,” she murmured, throat dry.
He lifted one dark brow, his features impossible to read, his large frame stiff as he stood, legs planted wide, hands jammed in pockets.
She looked over her shoulder, scanning the lounge room. “Did you need something?”
When she looked back at Alessio, it was to see his eyes boring into hers, the air between them crackling with unspoken desires.
“Dash has just fallen asleep,” she explained in a stage whisper.
“How about a coffee?”
The truth was, Charlotte was floundering. After their slightly terse exchange at his car that afternoon, her heart and mind had been all over the place. She’d been pulled from one direction to the other in her mind, finding it impossible to discern her complex thoughts and wishes. For years, doing what was right for Dash had been her guiding light, her only true north. This was the first time she’d felt her commitment wane—not to Dash, but to the path she’d set them on, to the slavish observance she gave to her fears of losing custody if she were to do anything that proved Maggie’s parents right, that justified their reason for worrying about her suitability as a guardian.
“Charlotte?” He frowned, eyes scanning her face with concern now, so she realised she’d been standing there staring into space for the better part of a minute, grappling with the very same thoughts she’d been worrying over all evening.
“Coffee,” she said quickly. “Yes, okay. Coffee is fine. Come in.” She stepped back and waved into the lounge room, feeling a now familiar clenching of her organs as Alessio moved past her, leaving in his wake the faintest trace of his uber masculine cologne.
Aware of each of her limbs, she moved to the kitchen, eyes drifting to him often. She’d been tormented by her mind. Now, though, she realised Alessio too seemed to have something that was bothering him.
“Are you okay?” She asked solicitously, pushing her own thoughts and fears aside.
His brow furrowed. “Why do you ask?”
“You seem…not okay,” she said with a lift of her shoulders, struggling to verbalise what precisely had led her to that conclusion. A sixth sense of sorts, a feeling that she knew what he was feeling, even when he didn’t speak.
“I’m fine,” he disputed, pushing a hand through his hair.
Charlotte began making the coffee, and the silence between them grew thick and heavy, until finally, Alessio broke it. “I had dinner with them tonight.”
She didn’t need ask to whom he was referring.
“And how did it go?”
He sighed angrily, then frowned. “It’s hard to say.” He looked around her apartment, as though searching for something. “Caleb left early.”
Though she had no reason to feel it, a guilty flush darkened her cheeks. “He comes to help close up sometimes,” she said with a shrug that was an imitation of casual.
“So I hear.”
“I’ve told him it’s not necessary. I can take care of myself. But he insists…”
“He’s in love with you.”
Charlotte’s eyes pierced Alessio’s. She contemplated denying that, but to what end? Pouring their coffees, she nodded slowly. “I know.”
“But you don’t feel the same way?”
She spilled a bit of coffee. “How can you even ask me that?”
He didn’t respond.
“Do you think I’d be doing this with you if I was in love with Caleb?”
“Why not?” He pushed, with no idea how his casual volley back of the question hurt her. “This is a very temporary, casual fling. It doesn’t change anything for either of us, in the long term, and Caleb doesn’t even know about it. Why should this preclude you being with him, if you love him?”
Her lips parted and stars flooded her eyes. She felt nauseated and woozy all at once. “That’s disgusting and completely…wrong.”
“Why?”