Chapter Eight

Charlotte

Working in a corporate atmosphere was a little different than being on the floor at a hotel most of the time. For one, it meant wearing what I would have considered ‘impress them’ clothes every single day. The morning routine on its own was pretty heavy.

My mornings would start off with a six a.m. shower, an hour to do makeup and get my hair the way I wanted it, usually in a tight bun on the top of my head, get dressed, and get in the car. Depending on where I was, of course. If I was in Tulsa, I was home in my tiny apartment rather than back with Dad, where my things were the same as when I’d been there every day. I just kept a lot less groceries in the house now.

That’s because often, I was elsewhere. Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City, and occasionally in areas where we were thinking of expanding, which included New Mexico and Arizona. California would come later. My job was to get us to the border with some big openings before then. I was even eying a possible hotel in Utah.

If I was in one of those cities, I had a suite usually. Sometimes, the suites would be booked and I would schlep it with a regular room, but the company wrote off my stay no matter what room I used, so if a suite was open, I took it. A tiny bit of comfort for me in consideration of the travel.

Today, I was in Houston, but I needed to get out of town pretty soon. I wasn’t heading to one of the hotels, though. No, my sister and her best friend, Amber, had other plans for me.

“Then, we’re going to go do this big expo thing out in Odessa. They do it once a year for prospective brides where they show off all kinds of services and stuff. They even have giveaways, and you know Amber loves a good giveaway. I swear, that girl. She’s marrying Luke Galloway. She’s never going to hurt for money again. And yet she acts like if she doesn’t at least hunt for a deal in the weeklies then she is being wasteful. Not me. I want to live my best life, and that doesn’t involve scouring websites and newspapers for the best deal on Pepsi, you know?”

It had been like this, non-stop, for a good ten minutes. Tamara was going on and on, and I only punctuated the pauses with the bare minimum effort words.

“Yup,” I said, rotating that one in from the cast of characters that also included ‘mm-hmm’, ‘wow’, and ‘no kidding.’

“Anyway,” Tamara continued, seemingly unfazed by my lack of participation, “we need you down here at least tonight, and then again in a couple weeks for the rehearsal and the big day.”

“And you’re sure Amber wants me to be a bridesmaid?” I asked.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know Amber. I knew her quite well, in fact. It was just that she was younger than me, my sister’s best friend. She and I had never really hung out much, and aside from when she was a teenager and I was older, we didn’t really talk about anything important. Even then, it was more about me than her. I never really felt like I knew her that well.

“She does,” Tamara assured me. “She’s really excited you said yes.”

“Well, I mean, you didn’t give me a choice, T.”

Tamara laughed. It was her way of saying that while what I said was true, she was not going to take any responsibility for my discomfort in the situation.

“Look, Logan is running the ceremony, Owen is running the security, and Collin is best man. Jesse couldn’t be left out, so he’s also standing with Luke. But Amber doesn’t have anyone else but me and you, so…”

“By default,” I said. “I see.”

“She does really care about you, you know,” Tamara said. “Just because you left when you became an adult doesn’t mean we stopped caring about you.”

There was a note of sad bitterness in her voice that I hated hearing. I knew she felt, in a way, that I’d abandoned her. But I’d had to get out of Foley, and I couldn’t tell her exactly why. Not without crushing her.

“I know,” I said.

“So,” Tamara said, changing her tone as she shifted into a subject she was far more interested in, “is Graham coming?”

I sighed.

I had told her very little about Graham, and her curiosity was overwhelming. I didn’t blame her, since I rarely ever dated and hadn’t mentioned anyone as a serious candidate to her in years. And while I was secretly excited about the prospect of being in a wedding where Jesse would absolutely be there, the fact was that I was technically seeing someone.

Technically.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. We don’t… we don’t really do a whole lot together.”

“Isn’t he your boyfriend, though?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Look, it’s a lot different when you get older. You don’t just spend every second together because you already have a life. Besides, we’re both so busy. I’m busy running the southwest region of the company, and he’s the COO, and…”

“So he’s just a guy you’ve been dating,” Tamara said.

“Not… exactly,” I said.

The thing was, I knew Graham was a lot more serious about me than I was him. But while we’d gone out a dozen or so times and always had a great time, I’d shied away from being physical with him. I told him I was more into commitment before that, which was true—it just perhaps wasn’t as true as I was letting on. I did value commitment before physical stuff. It’s just that with one very specific person, that commitment was arbitrary, and so were my hardline rules about being physical. And that person was not Graham.

Still, I was getting older. The window for kids was likely closing, if that was something I wanted at all. I was the same age as Luke Galloway, and everyone said he was getting married late as it was. I was practically ancient. Jesse was three years younger than me, and while that meant he was the same age as my sister and Amber, a little younger actually, it meant that he had more time. More options. Especially with his whole… thing. The look, the talent, all that. He could, and often did, get any girl he wanted. I needed to just add his name to my naughty list of memories and move on.

So why couldn’t I?

Graham, on paper, was perfect. Good-looking, successful, kind, wealthy, the only thing he wasn’t was warm . His family had come from money, and had always come from money, and while Graham was a nice man, he seemed to have a block between his emotions and the rest of the world. If he wasn’t smiling or laughing about something, he was blank. It made it harder to connect with him, and while I knew he was developing as much emotion for me as he was capable of expressing, I needed more than that.

I needed passion. I needed danger. I needed drama.

I needed Jesse.

And I couldn’t have him.

I’d gotten my one night with him, and I’d chosen to leave the bed and do the interview. I chose my career over finding out where that one magic night could have led. That was on me. He didn’t stick around to see me. In fact, he might have thought I was in a relationship already, with Graham’s brother, the CEO.

It was a lost cause. I needed to get over it. I was sure he had.

“You never told me how you met him,” Tamara said, snapping me out of my thoughts and back to reality. “I mean, I know you work for the same company, but how did you meet him?”

“At a gala opening for the Houston hotel,” I said. “I went alone, but his brother, Tom, was high on me for promotions in the company and was touting the Houston deal as all me. He introduced me to his brothers, and Graham and I hit it off.”

“He has another brother?” Tamara asked, her interest suddenly piqued a bit higher.

“Yes, but trust me, you don’t have a shot. His husband would likely put the kibosh on it.”

“Dammit,” Tamara muttered. “What about Tom?”

“Happily married for forty years,” I said. “I got the only single one. And he was divorced already when I met him.”

“Always with the luck,” Tamara said.

I was going to argue with her, and then it hit me that while she had pursued both Jesse and Collin Galloway, only one of us had ever actually dated and slept with any of the brothers.

“Anyway, he was staying in Houston for a few weeks, so we went on a few dates. I don’t know, it just kind of snowballed. Every time he’s in a town I’m in, we go out, and we hold hands and kiss and stuff. So I guess we’re together?”

“That sure sounds like a couple,” Tamara said.

“You’re probably right. At any rate, I have to go. He’s here.”

“Here? Here, where?”

“At the hotel. In Houston. Where I am working. I told you this earlier in the conversation, T.”

“Right, right, well, tell him to come. I’d love to meet him.”

I got off the phone just as Graham came striding through the doors of the hotel. Technically, we were not supposed to be dating, so we greeted each other with a short hug and a kiss on the cheek, which could be written away as Graham’s more Euro-centric upbringing than anything intimate. After he checked in with the front staff and did a round of the hotel like he usually did, he met me in my office on the second floor. It was tucked away, looking almost like two rooms of the hotel, mostly because it was. It was a room, and an office, built especially for me or whoever was regional manager or was given access to work there. When I was in Houston, it was mine.

“So what are your plans this evening?” he said as he took off his jacket and sat in one of the chairs across from my desk.

“Well, like I said in the text, I think I might have to go out of town,” I said. “My sister’s best friend is getting married in a few weeks, and she wants me to be a bridesmaid.”

“How exciting,” he said, showing no extra emotion beyond the ever-present genial smile. “Are you going to be there the entire time?”

“Oh, no, no. I don’t like Foley, Texas that much,” I laughed. “I am just going for tonight and then coming back. I might have to go back a few more times, though, until the wedding. I don’t intend on taking more than a day or two off.”

“Ahh, I see,” he said. “Well, that muffles my plans a bit. I was heading into Paris for a meeting in two days and wanted to see if you would join me. We could share a room or I could get you your own, no pressure. But I thought I could show you some of my favorite places in Paris for a few days while I get some business done there.”

“That sounds amazing,” I said. “I’m sorry I can’t go.”

“As am I. I leave tonight. Perhaps you could join me later?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d have to set some things up to take care of business while I was gone.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “And this wedding. Do you want me there?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t expected him to ask. Usually, he didn’t, assuming that if I wanted him somewhere, I would ask.

“I see,” he said, when I didn’t answer. “Well, we can talk about why you didn’t say yes later. For now, let’s have a bit of supper before I leave. Shall we?”

He stood, offering his hand, and I took it, wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I just commit?