Widow - Anne Stuart [77]
The house seemed deserted, though she knew that was too much to hope for. Lauretta and Tomaso were up at the cottage, getting madame settled, trying to calm her querulous fears. Olivia was probably taking her afternoon rest—she wouldn’t forego that for love nor money. Particularly for money, which had always held more sway with her mother than so-called love.
Charlie still couldn’t get over her mother’s odd conversation. Never in her life had her mother told her she loved her, or at least not that Charlie could remember. Olivia wasn’t the demonstrative sort, and she’d never been particularly fond of children. She had trotted Charlie around Europe as if she were a partially housebroken toy poodle—watching her like a hawk, cooing over her on occasion, but mostly handing her over to someone else’s care. By the time Charlie was twelve she’d lost count of the schools, the countries, even the fathers she’d had. By the time she was fourteen she’d learned to do without anyone.
She’d always thought that was the way she preferred things to be. But for some reason she was getting mortally tired of being so damned self-reliant. Just once in her life she wanted to lose her temper, have a tantrum, stop being in charge of everything.
That was impossible, of course. She was a responsible woman, with people depending on her. It didn’t matter that she wanted to jump in her car and go chasing after Maguire to give him a piece of her mind. The lying, treacherous, slimy bastard had used her, and God knows how far he would have gone if her mother hadn’t interrupted. Right now the notion of venting her fury had taken on an almost grail-like dimension.
At least Olivia had managed to save her in time, and for that alone Charlie should be eternally grateful. She was just having a hard time summoning that well-deserved gratitude when all she wanted to do was break something over Maguire’s hard head.
There was nothing she could do about it but get on with life. Maguire had escaped, and it was just as well. She needed to focus her energy on getting her life back together, not on an infuriating, lying journalist.
She needed a shower and a change of clothes, but she couldn’t decide where she wanted to go. Her bedroom upstairs was haunted by the memories of Pompasse and the noisy lovemaking of her erstwhile fiancé. The studio held even stronger ghosts.
In the end she had no choice—her clothes were upstairs. She could only hope that Gia and Henry had taken their activities elsewhere if they were busy continuing them.
They weren’t. Henry was sitting in her room waiting for her, and it took all of Charlie’s formidable self-control not to turn around and leave. She could handle it, she told herself. She could handle anything.
“This is my room, Henry,” she said in a deceptively polite voice. “I don’t remember inviting you in here.”
“You’re angry,” he said, an understatement. “I don’t blame you. I’m completely horrified by what I did last night. I have no excuse, no right to ask you to forgive me.”
She waited. She knew perfectly well he was going to ask, anyway. She just didn’t know what she was going to answer.
He rose, crossing the room to take her hand in his. He had very narrow, soft hands. Perfectly manicured, always immaculate. Hands that had never done a day’s worth of real labor in his entire protected life. He drew her back to the bed, and she let him, letting her hand rest in his, observing her own reactions from a distance.
Odd, but she didn’t feel that chill, that fear from the touch of his dry, cool skin. She didn’t feel anything at all anymore. Maybe Maguire had cured her. Or maybe she’d just gone beyond distaste into numbness.
He sat down beside her on the bed, gently stroking her hand, and she let him, her attention on the darkening clouds outside, the rapidly approaching storm.
“I need