“We talked this morning,” I hissed.
“No. I tried talking to you this morning and you walked away from me.” His voice was low and muted but our audience missed nothing.
“There’s nothing to discuss. Leave.” My voice sounded strange, like I was trying to whisper and yell at the same time.
“Fine,” he said, shrugging. “We’ll talk later.”
Part of me hoped he’d join his sisters at the table. That might have made it seem a little less like he’d come there just to see me. But he didn’t sit down. He walked out of the shop without another word and the minute the door swung shut, all eyes were on me.
“You need to leave him alone,” ordered Lily.
“Does it look like I’m trying to do anything but that?” I demanded.
“You have Adam,” said Lisa, as if I needed reminding.
“Yes, I do,” I spat.
“So what are you doing? Do you want both of them now? That’s not very ladylike, Charli.” Jasmine chided. The smile she gave me didn’t match the choler in her voice. She was grinning like she’d just won the lottery.
“Why does he want her? Why do they always want her?” asked Lisa in a tone so theatrical I could only half believe she was serious. She looked like she was about to cry and I did not want to see her cry.
“He doesn’t. He’s just confused,” Lily soothed, making me laugh out loud. She whipped her head round and shot a look of sheer poison at me. Lisa burst into tears, a weird guttural sob.
“He’s all yours, Lisa. Take him. Please, take him,” I begged.
Jasmine’s smile remained, which added to my vexation. I had somehow become the villain and it happened so quickly, I didn’t see from which direction it came – until I connected the exultant smile on Jasmine’s face to the emotional mayhem in the room.
Lisa had designs on Mitchell. Lily was doing her best to ensure they came to fruition, but Jasmine was more intent on torturing me.
“You called him,” I accused, pointing at her from across the room.
Lisa and Lily stared at Jasmine.
“I thought he’d like to know.” She folded her arms and leaned back in her chair.
“Like to know what?” asked Lily, patting Lisa’s back.
Jasmine’s icy glare was replaced by a sympathetic look. “That Lisa was here of course. You know what Mitch is like, he needs a little encouragement.”
I was actually beginning to feel sorry for the junior Beautifuls. Unrequited love was one thing, but Jasmine was playing on a whole level above those two.
“We need to keep him away from Charli,” said Lily, turning to glare at me again.
I said nothing. There wasn’t any point.
Adam walked through the door just in time. I got the feeling they were about to lynch me or burn me at the stake. I’d never been so grateful to see anyone.
A quick sideward glance at the table of Beautifuls was the only attention he paid them. “Is everything okay, Charli? You look a little bit flushed.”
“She’s embarrassed, or at least she should be,” said Jasmine acerbically.
Adam didn’t speak but raised his eyebrows, questioning me silently with his eyes.
“Tell you later,” I promised.
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Are you here by yourself?” he asked, leaning across the counter to speak quietly. It made no difference. The Beautifuls had supersonic hearing.
“Yes she is,” confirmed Lily dutifully.
Adam turned to face her for the first time since he’d walked in. “Well, I guess she’s lucky you’ve been here to keep her company.”
“Charity work is good for the soul,” said Jasmine, reaching under the table for her handbag. It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed the huge advantage Jasmine had over her sister and Lisa. She recognised sarcasm and was capable of responding appropriately. Her dumb blonde act was just that.
Lisa and Lily followed her lead as if she’d silently given them orders. Lisa’s crocodile tears stopped, proving that she was the second best actress in the shop. Jasmine waited until her entourage had walked out before speaking again.
“Adam, my family is hosting a black tie dinner soon, to celebrate our birthday. You won’t be there of course, it’s after you leave. But I think you should know that Charli with be there. She’ll be my brother Mitchell’s date.”
Adam turned back to me with the confused expression that overtook him whenever he was cornered by a Beautiful.
I shook my head in disbelief and he turned back to Jasmine.
“Excuse me?”
Jasmine smiled, flicking her hair off her shoulder. “She’ll be my brother Mitchell’s date,” she repeated. “I don’t like it any more than you do but it was bound to happen. He’s been back in town for two days and they’re already gravitating towards each other.”
“Jasmine!” I choked out her name. I wanted to choke her. “You called him. He came here because you told him I was here.”
“Texted him,” she corrected as she waved her phone at me.
“You know Lisa likes him. She thinks you’re helping her chase him.” My tone had an edge of revulsion now.
“I know. Poor thing,” she lamented. “As if Lisa Reynolds would ever make the grade.”
Adam said nothing. His eyes darted between Jasmine and the floor, but never at me.
“Why would you do that?” I asked, sounding more defeated than angry now.
“Because it would be a tragedy to see Adam invest so much time in you when it’s hopeless. He could be spending these last few weeks here broadening his horizons.” Her grin was reserved only for him.
Adam found his voice at just the right moment. “My horizons would never be that broad, Jasmine.” His tone was respectful but his words were not.
She overlooked the monumental insult he’d just paid her but I didn’t doubt that she understood. She breezed towards the door, turning to face me one last time.
“Honesty is always the best policy, Charli.” The superior tone was back with a vengeance. I watched as she walked out the door, fighting the unbelievable urge to drag her back in by her hair. How dare she get the last word in! How dare she assume that Mitchell being back in town would change anything! I picked up the first thing I could reach, a magazine I’d been reading, and pegged it as hard as I could at the door. Adam flinched. The bell jingled furiously and then there was the inevitable silence. Silence because neither of us knew what to say. I was so angry I could feel myself shaking.
It was Adam who spoke first. “I am in competition with a Beautiful?” he asked, only half jokingly.
“Believe me, there is no competition.” I said it too weakly to sound convincing.
I could feel the tears beginning to well in my eyes and I looked up to the ceiling, hoping to stop them brimming over.
“She really got to you didn’t she?” he asked, reading the situation entirely wrong.
Finally the tears escaped and there was no point trying to hide the fact I was crying. Gripping my sleeve in my clenched fingers, I wiped my eyes. I’d woken that morning feeling completely blissful. I struggled to understand how it had turned so ugly.
Adam swept the tears from my cheek. “I know what we have, Charli. I’m not concerned by anything Jasmine has to say.”
I knew he was trying to reassure me but his words were irritating. After my encounter with Floss, I didn’t even know what we had. I snatched my hand free.
He waited.
“Ask me if I love him,” I demanded, still focusing on the floor.
“Perhaps asking if you love me would be more appropriate.”
I stopped pacing and looked up him, seeing confusion and sadness in his eyes.
Ignoring his question, I answered my own. “I do not love him but I know everything about him.”
“Alright,” he said simply.
Stepping on only the white squares of linoleum and avoiding the black, it took four paces to reach him.
“I know nothin
g about you.” I stared at him, refusing to unlock him from my gaze. His mouth moved a little bit, as if he was going to speak but thought better of it. “You know everything about me, my heart, my head and my body. But I know nothing important about you.”
The look he gave me was one of sheer agony. “Do you want to get out of here?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I can’t. Nicole’s off doing goodness knows what with her substitute Prince Charming and Alex would kill me if I closed early. It’s been a quiet day and the takings are way down.”
I walked back around the counter and opened the cash register. The amount of money in the drawer seemed pitiful.
Adam reached for his wallet. He took out a wad of notes and slapped them on the counter. “The takings are way up today,” he replied. “Can we please get out of here now?”
Tentatively, I picked up the money, smoothing out the notes. I estimated hundreds of dollars but was too scared to count it.
“You need to talk to me.” My voice faltered, no authoritative tone whatsoever.
“Just put the money away and we can leave. Then we’ll talk,” He sounded much stronger than I was.
All my energy had been used fending off Mitchell and the Beautifuls. I didn’t have it in me to argue with him. I stuffed the money in the till and reached for my coat. Adam stood silent as I followed Alex’s closing up routine, locking the door and flipping the closed sign. He caught my hand as I walked past but I refused to stop, pulling him towards the back door.
The silence continued into the car park. His car flashed orange as the doors unlocked and he opened the passenger door. I stood looking at him for too long, unsure what I wanted to do.
“Please, Charli,” he said. “We can come back for your car later.”
It took me a while to realise it had started raining again. Adam made no attempt to escape it, reminding me of the very first day we’d met, in the car park over the road. Water streamed down his face but he ignored it. Realising I wasn’t in a hurry to get in, he closed the door.
“I know about the necklace,” I burst out. “Floss told me everything. I can’t accept it now.” I reached into my pocket and held it out to him but he didn’t move. “You have to take it,” I insisted. I grabbed his hand and slapped the pendant into his palm.
“I have never met anyone like you, Charlotte.” His eyes drifted away from me for the first time as he looked at the black gem in his hand.
“That’s because I’m strange. It’s a well-known fact. Ask anyone.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. He took a few probationary steps towards me.
“Stay back,” I warned, throwing my hands in front of me. “You still haven’t told me anything.”
He stopped. “What would you like to know?”
He bounced the necklace in his hand as if it was scalding, and I felt the need to let him off the hook. Confessing to what Gabrielle had told me seemed like a good idea.
“I know that your family is filthy rich, Adam. Gabrielle told me.”
The pained look on his face didn’t slip. It seemed an eternity before he spoke again.
“What about the life that comes with the money, Charli?” His voice faltered, like he’d considered changing his question half way through. “You couldn’t possibly know about that. I’m concerned that you’re going to hate my world. I’m not sure there’s enough magic in it for you.”
“You’ll be there. The rest I can deal with.”
“My family does have a lot of money,” he conceded. “They’ve always had a lot of money.” He spoke as if he was confessing to a crime.
“It makes no difference to me,” I insisted.
“I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. I just enjoyed the fact that it meant nothing to you. Until I got here, I’d never made my bed or done a load of laundry. I’d never even made my own cup of coffee. I am the ultimate spoiled brat,” he confessed. He slipped the necklace into his pocket. “Anything I give you, Charli, can never compare to what you’ve given me.”
I fervently shook my head. “I don’t want anything from you.”
The small space between us felt charged. “Truthfully, I could buy you whatever you wanted. I’m manipulative like that.”
“You think I’m not manipulative? I manipulate everyone I know. You’ve seen what I’m capable of.”
He laughed shortly. “It’s not that same thing.”
“It’s exactly the same thing.”
“I fear you might be a little biased.”
The dimpled smile he gave me won out over my anger. I felt like we were finding common ground where I’d feared there might not have been any. A few tiny chinks in his armour brought a kind of hope to me. I had always known I was flawed and insecure. Finding out that he was too put us on a more even keel.
“I’m not biased. It changes nothing,” I said triumphantly.
“I might not be worth it, Charlotte,” he warned, looking confused.
The smartest boy I had ever known just wasn’t getting it. “You said my name while you were sleeping. Someone who thinks of me even as he sleeps is definitely worth it.”
The look he gave me was becoming familiar. It was the same puzzled expression that made me wonder if he thought I was a little unbalanced. Perhaps I was the one who wasn’t getting it. I stood for a long moment, searching for whatever it was that he thought I was missing.
He saw my preoccupation and misinterpreted it. “If you’re having second thoughts about coming to New York – ”
I put my finger to his lips. “I never have second thoughts. I always go with the first.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he murmured against my finger.
***
Being at Gabrielle’s house no longer felt like we were breaking rules. Adam got out of the car and I followed, not giving him a chance to open my door for me. We were almost at the house when I spotted two little red tulips jutting out from the rockery, bright against the mass of greenery that would be overflowing with flowers in spring. He saw them too and leaned down to pick them.
“No,” I protested.
He straightened up. “Why not?”
“I’ll tell you another time,” I promised, turning back towards the house.
“Not so fast, Coccinelle,” he said.
“I still have no clue what that means.” After my first attempt at translation, I’d been reluctant to research it again.
“I am prepared to make a deal with the devil. I will translate for you if you tell me why you just reacted as if picking flowers is a federal offence.”
As if on cue, my phone beeped. “Are you not going to reply?” he asked, studying me closely as I glanced at the message and retired my phone to my pocket.
I felt the colour fade from my cheeks and I wondered if I looked pale. “Its Nicole again.”
“The flowers,” he persisted.
“The translation,” I demanded.
Without warning, he dipped me backwards, so low my head was just inches from the ground.
“What are you doing?” I gasped.
His voice was serious but the smile was warm. “Ladybug. Coccinelle is French for ladybug.”
Adam loved small details. I’d all but forgotten the conversation we’d had on the beach where I’d confessed to saving ladybug wishes. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d remembered.
If a beep could sound urgent, that would have described the sound coming from my pocket. “Nicole must really need to talk to you,” he said, righting me. “Maybe you should call.”
I reluctantly took the phone and read the message. I struggled to look at him and he moved his head, trying to follow my eyes as they flitted everywhere but at him. No wonder he found it so difficult to read me. It was like watching him trying to navigate a road that I’d already smashed up.
I was about to do the unthinkable.
“It’s not Nicole,” I said. “It’s Mitchell. He’s at my house. He wants to see me.”
His
lips formed a straight line. “So you’re going to drop everything and go running?”
“I have to put an end to this, Adam. Please understand.”
He nodded stiffly. He didn’t understand and unfortunately for me, I was too inept to explain it to him.
The journey home should have taken half the time that it would have in my old car but I drove ridiculously slowly. Caution and safety had nothing to do with it – I was buying time.
21. Memory Lane
I sat in the car longer than I should have, trying to prepare myself for the conversation ahead.
Mitchell leaned against the railing of our veranda with an unreadable expression on his face. It occurred to me that he probably wasn’t entirely sure it was me sitting in the Audi.
I enjoyed seeing him squirm for a short minute before getting out of the car and storming the veranda like I was about to charge at him. “You have five minutes and I shouldn’t even be giving you that.”
“I just want to talk, Charli. I’ve been trying to talk to you since this morning,” he said smoothly.
I could feel him standing behind me as I twisted the key in the lock of the front door. “You need to leave me alone.” I wanted to sound stronger and considered repeating the sentence with more anger – and maybe a growl. The gesture of throwing my keys down on the hallstand seemed to have the same effect.
“Calm down, feisty one. We’ll talk and then I’ll leave you alone,” he promised, reaching for my hand. I snatched it away.
“Four minutes,” I warned.
He smirked and walked through to the kitchen, unaffected by my hostility. “Do you still drink tea?” he asked, flicking on the kettle with the familiarity of someone who lived there.
“Can you please get to the point? I have better things to be doing right now.”
Mitchell sat down at the place usually reserved for Alex. “By better things, you mean the American?” I couldn’t pick the emotion in his voice. The expected tone of jealousy was absent, leaving me wondering if I’d become conceited as well as mean.
“Adam. His name is Adam,” I replied, trying to lose the attitude.
“So you’re going to shack up with him when your trip is over?” I raised my eyebrows. “Nicole told me.”