Harlequin Romance September 2021 Box Set Page 6

  They sat down in the dining room to eat the dinner Chef Diego had left them. Pollo guisado was a delicious spicy chicken stew. Dessert was a small chocolate cake in the shape of a heart, adorned with candied edible rose petals. The sight of the cake caused a catch in Luna’s throat. That was a cake for lovers to share. The staff would have no way of knowing that she and Charlie were here for what could only be described as self-improvement. In a way, for Luna it was the culmination of her treatment.

  As she looked at the cake, she said, “I want to tell you about Kentucky.” She needed to expose herself to him. To voice the words that she’d kept secret for so long. Doing so would cement her recovery. And he was the perfect person to talk to. A CEO with his own problems who lived half a world away from her. Someone she’d never see again after this brief interlude together.

  “Okay.”

  “As I was expressing to you before, issues around appearance and perfection are common in my world. In order to compete, which is what it sometimes feels like, I had started to restrict the food I ate. Obsessing on it, really. It took me over.”

  His brow furrowed with concern. “It’s unfortunate it went that far.”

  “Yes, it definitely snowballed when the paparazzi started to comment on how much weight I’d lost—positively of course, saying how enviably slim I was. In reality, though, my body weight had dropped so low that I hardly had the energy to get out of bed every day.”

  “Ugh,” he growled, “disgusting that anyone would make your body their business at all.”

  “And then it reached a breaking point when I man I was dating, Troy Lutt, took some photos of me when I was at my lowest weight and sold them to the tabloids.”

  “I’d like to wring his neck.”

  “Yes, it taught me that people will sink to unimaginable levels for their own gain.”

  “Luna, I can’t even fathom how horrible that must have been for you.”

  “I couldn’t function. And yet the press ran those pictures as if I looked great. When I saw them, I knew I was looking at someone very ill, even though that’s not what the world saw. I didn’t want to put a name on my problem. I just wanted to consider it an occupational hazard that I’d be able to handle.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. Thank goodness for my stylist, Anush, who, over the years, has become my best friend. The more she tried to point out that it had become an issue, the more I tried to push her away. I kept my family at a distance, too, but they knew. Anush kept on it, though, until I had to admit that I needed outside help.”

  “Thank you, Anush, whoever you are.”

  “She assisted me in arranging everything. A recovery program that wasn’t far from my parents’ ranch in Kentucky. My mom and dad were supportive and grateful that I was able to get professional support in time.”

  “And now?”

  Luna took a breath before she answered. “I completed an intensive program for treatment of anorexia nervosa.” There, she’d said the words out loud. The medical diagnosis. “I can now recognize triggers before they cause me to take regrettable actions. It’s something I’ll have to manage for the rest of my life but I know I can do it. We don’t know each other but you’ll have to believe me when I tell you that I wouldn’t have been able to sit here and enjoy a meal a year ago.”

  “Thank you for sharing something so intimate with me, Luna.”

  It was incredibly liberating to tell the story to someone outside of her bubble. It had been a dark road she traversed, but she’d made it to the light. She felt bare but enormously relieved. Her adrenaline was running, giving her the courage to try again what she’d started last night in the pool. This time, when gravity brought their faces together, neither of them withdrew. Instead, they allowed their lips to meet, touching and then leaning away, touching and then leaning away. Her eyelashes fluttered uncontrollably. And then their lips parted and their tongues mingled, and Luna swooned under Charlie’s kiss.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I NEED TO come up for air,” Luna said as she removed her arms from around Charlie’s neck after they’d been kissing for several minutes. Her move threw him into disorientation, so captivated had he been by her soft lips. She brushed her hair back off her face and swallowed hard. “I haven’t kissed someone like that in a long time.”

  “I’ll bet it’s been longer for me than it has for you,” he said as he brought the back of his hand across his mouth as if to wipe off what had just happened.

  “You haven’t been with anyone since your wife died?”

  “Absolutely not.” After the first year, old friends and colleagues had tried to fix him up with women they knew. Said it was healthy for him. He politely refused every time and they’d eventually given up. The loss of his beloved wife and child had left him not even curious about dating again. Amelia was the only woman for him. Now, at thirty-two, he was finally open to questioning his self-imposed exile. Charlie had even felt the spirit of Amelia come to him in the darkest hours of torturous nights and tell him that he needed more than what he’d whittled his life down to. “That was part of the impetus for this week with the M Agency. To remember how to socialize again.”

  “For me, too.”

  He had to admit to himself that he smarted with rejection when she’d broken the kiss. Before his brain had a chance to say no, he’d gotten lost in the pillowy sensation of her full lips on his, each of his hands on either side of her face. “I’ve forgotten what kissing like that felt like.”

  “So, what did it feel like?”

  “Good. Dangerously good.” He was grateful for the smile that admission brought, lightening the awkwardness of the moment. “Just for my education, did I kiss you or did you kiss me?”

  “I believe it was mutual.”

  “I don’t think it can be mutual. One person has to make that final move to initiate contact.”

  “I think it was you.”

  “No, I think it was you.” Another welcome chuckle.

  “Shall we agree to disagree?”

  “And make a pact to be sure it doesn’t happen again?” That fell out of Charlie’s mouth as natural as day. Really, he was getting the sense he might like to do a lot more kissing of Luna’s succulent mouth. And not just her mouth, either. Those inklings had been so suppressed in him, he could hardly believe that they were surfacing. Yet they were. Things were moving too fast. Maybe it was, in fact, time he opened to dating again. To sharing touch, physical intimacy. But it would be a slow process. This week was meant only to slip the key into the lock. He wasn’t ready for the gates to open.

  She’d probably experienced a tiny jolt of rebuff by his suggestion. That was okay. Better a little misunderstanding now than something much bigger later. “Of course,” she murmured.

  Revealing her eating disorder to him couldn’t have been easy. He couldn’t begin to understand what that agony must have been like for her. He hoped she wouldn’t think that had anything to do with him suggesting that they didn’t tempt fate with any more physical contact. “Not that I don’t find you extremely attractive.” He was hopeless, making a mess of his words.

  “No, I understand. It was a moment. It’s passed.”

  All squared away then. So why was Charlie at full-on war with his arms, which were fighting to wrap themselves around Luna’s shoulders again? Eager to reinitiate the splendid meeting of their lips and tongues joined in that merging that made the world around him melt away. To bring his lips to her elegant neck, to the divot between her breasts that he bet smelled as fragrant as the flowers of the island. To take his mouth further still, into the secrets of her very being.

  That he was in close company with a woman at all was hard to fathom. He’d so forgotten the pure charm of a woman, the fundamental differences that completed yin to yang, Adam to Eve. How Luna moved, with a limber slink that struck him as inherently feminine. How unspeaka
bly soft her skin was. And what she was stirring inside of him—a primordial pull toward her, making him want to be both predator and protector at the same time. Was he ready for an awakening? Was it the right thing to do?

  At last, he refocused enough to ask a question. “You’ve said your dating life has been under scrutiny as much as your appearance?”

  “Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Yes, the paparazzi are almost as interested in who I’m seen with as they are with what I’m wearing. I go out with men who are in the entertainment industry that I’ve met on set, or sometimes my team matches me up with someone else who is single. Like Troy. My publicist fixed me up with him and then he embarrassed me publicly. There’s irony for you.”

  Charlie wasn’t able to understand what Luna’s life was like. Evenings spent with men she didn’t even know. Is that what he was supposed to be doing with new women? “Do you find that you get along with them?”

  “I can pass an evening with someone. Invariably, they’re looking to leverage being seen with me to further their own careers. The whole thing is riddled with insincerity.”

  “I’d imagine so.” He studied her again, wondering if this rich and famous and troubled woman longed for basic things, like genuine love. Children. Like what he used to have. “Have you ever really cared about anyone you’ve dated?”

  “To be honest, no. Very few people look at me and really see who I am inside. Like I told you, they see Luna Price. A thing. A commodity.”

  If he was with her, he thought, he’d show her every day that he cared about her. The woman, not the image. She deserved that much. What a strange predicament her life must be. No wonder she’d developed unhealthy behaviors.

  In a natural sync, they brought the plates into the kitchen. He was still recounting the kisses they’d shared, and thought he might for the rest of his life. They’d been smart enough to recognize that they’d acted on impulse and wouldn’t do it again. It was best not to confuse their intentions for the week. Still, he was reeling. It was more than just the possibility of opening up to a woman again, after he thought he never would, that had him in tumult. It was Luna specifically—she was reaching down into his soul with her own truth, which was terrifying in its starkness.

  “It’s nice to have this time with you, Charlie.”

  “Is it?”

  She gave him a questioning look. Had he said the wrong thing again? “I’m going to bed. Good night.”

  “Good night, Luna.”

  Before she left the kitchen she lifted up on tiptoes to plant a silky peck on his cheek. As he watched her walk away, he bought up his hand to the exact spot that was radiating from where her sweet lips had touched it.

  * * *

  Charlie watched as Luna lean back and took a sip of her juice. It was another picture-perfect morning in their private courtyard. Equally scenic was his beautiful companion, in a gauzy dress that hid nothing of her lanky physique, all planes and angles. The unplanned kisses they’d shared last night hadn’t lost their prominent place front and center in his mind.

  “What does the company name AMgen represent?” She folded up one knee, pretzeling herself in the chair, and probably didn’t realize how provocative that looked. The twitchy response in his center was proof.

  “The AM is for Amelia. And gen, as in generation, innovation. I was a young man when I started the company.”

  “You married young, too.”

  “Amelia and I were schoolmates. We were together from the time we were teenagers. Married at nineteen, poor as dirt. We used the little bit of money we got as wedding gifts from relatives to start AMgen in a tiny office on Old Street in London. Amelia ran things and kept the books.”

  “And look at your company now.”

  “She grew up with nothing, raised by a single mother. I told her I’d give her everything she could ever dream of, and that our children wouldn’t want for anything. That I’d be bold, take my ideas as far as they could go.”

  “The business grew quickly?”

  “Yes. Every bit of money I made, I put back in. I was able to hire more employees and lease large office space. An unheard of ascension for someone my age, really. Then Amelia had a wobbly pregnancy so she stopped working in order to rest. When Lily was born, we were on cloud nine. We had it all.”

  He felt a veil of stone weigh down his face, even under Luna’s compassionate watch. His had been an idyllic story to tell. Until the tragedy. Until the part that turned everything upside down. Until what was important was stolen away by a thief in the night.

  “Charlie, I’m so sorry your happiness didn’t last forever.”

  “It was a car accident at Christmastime. The roads were slick and icy. Amelia and the baby had been returning from a visit to her mother’s house.” He’d replayed the story endlessly, told it to countless psychologists and counselors in the beginning. It never got easier. “I was at home at the time. It was a trip she’d taken a hundred times, even in winter weather.”

  An exhale whooshed out of him. Would the gruesome details ever recede into the distance?

  “Go on.”

  “The driver of the other car had an excessive amount of alcohol in her system. Slammed into Amelia’s car at a high speed. My wife and baby were killed instan—” He couldn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

  Luna got up from her chair and went to him. Such an unfamiliar gesture, yet he was grateful for an offer of affection. Still sitting, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his face into the side of her hip. The loneliness he’d emotionally stifled for so many years beat within him. Sorrow overtook him. Perhaps the floodgates had opened a bit after last night, when Luna told him about her own deep struggles. She combed her fingers through his hair. Her pure and gentle consideration was a salve. Neither spoke for a long while.

  “So, you see,” he finally said when his breathing flowed clearly again, “I want to uphold my promise to my wife and child, to continue to grow, to challenge, to lead. I’ll do whatever it takes. It’s my way of keeping them alive. I’ll never remarry or love again.”

  * * *

  Luna sat propped up on pillows in the middle of the gigantic bed in the master suite. A beach-read novel lay on one side of her, the script for her next film on the other. She wanted to review her lines. Her phone and the TV remote controls were scattered on the bed, as well. The large flat-screen on the wall ran a sitcom without sound.

  Earlier, in the courtyard, she’d witnessed a drama far more powerful than anything her profession could have produced. No movie, symphony, painting or any other art form could have expressed the gravity of raw emotion she’d seen when Charlie told her about the death of his wife and child. From the minute she’d met him, the suffering behind his green eyes was evident. Only now, she knew the exact specifics of why. As he recounted the early days of his marriage and the forming of his company, it was as if invisible bullets were shooting through him. He contracted here and there, jerked this way and that as he told the story with tiny, almost unperceivable movements that hadn’t been unnoticed by her.

  Afterward, she’d moved toward him on impulse, compelled by his pain to want to comfort him. Human to human, with no motive or forethought. It was the least she could do, the right thing to do. He’d clutched her tightly for a short moment, needing her as a pillar, as she’d guessed he might. Quickly enough, though, he finished and dropped his arms. Had he made himself too vulnerable? Or was it that the burden of grief he’d been carrying for ten years already knew only to rear itself in short bursts? Afterward, he said he was tired and wanted to rest a bit, a late-morning siesta. Alone in his portion of the villa, of course.

  She imagined him stretched out on the luxurious sofa he’d claimed as his bed. Hmm, she thought with a wry smile, did the sofa know how lucky it was to have him on top of it? Those explosive kisses they’d accidentally shared still ricocheted through her.
The power of his lips, coveting her, ushering her into a haze she didn’t want to wake from. A yearning pulsed within her. Today, as he spoke of his undying love for his wife and baby, a longing she had never recognized began bouncing around in her.

  Sprawling back on the pillows, Luna watched the ceiling fan swirl. The devotion he had described was nothing she’d ever known. Maybe she actually did hope for a man to love her, and whom she could love back. She was twenty-eight years old. It was time she made some decisions. What would it be like to have mutual admiration and respect with someone? To give and to receive. To hold one up when the other was down and vice versa. For someone else’s best interests to be hers. That she’d been able to confide in Charlie about the anorexia felt like an enormous step. What would it be like to further share burdens with someone, along with joys?

  CHAPTER SIX

  LUNA’S PHONE BUZZED. “It’s Madison Morgan. I’m checking in to see how things are going.”

  “It’s unusual to be in such romantic surroundings when neither of us are here looking for anything ongoing.” She surely didn’t need to tell the matchmaker about the ups and downs and intimate forays that had already occurred.

  “And you’re absolutely sure about that?”

  “Yes.” She answered definitively even though she was no longer sure at all. “I’m here to reset on what’s important. And Charlie is here to get comfortable being out there in the world.”

  “You know all about that, Luna. Help him out.”

  She didn’t exactly understand what Madison was talking about, but somehow Luna pictured her as a fortune-teller wearing a turban and staring into a crystal ball.

  Later that day, Luna decided to give Charlie a little visual demonstration of her public skills. Maybe Madison was right—that was something she could help him with.

  “I’m Charlie Matthews. Who are you?” he joked when she sashayed into the living room. Still lounging on the sofa, he sat right up and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.