Page 52 of The Playboy's Most Unexpected Baby

“And now you waltz back into town and you tell me you think we should talk.”

“Well, I do think we should.”

“If you wanted to talk to me, you could have answered my phone calls. You could have called me back. You could have, I don’t know, not run off to Boston. Especially at a time when you knew we had things to discuss. I don’t know what to say to you right now, Charlie. I hate the fact that you’re coming back here and telling me you want to talk to meas if that was your ideawhen you and I both know that I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks. As if you think you have to try to talk me into a conversation, because I’m the one who’s been stubborn and withholding! I don’t know how you can even imply that. I’ve been nothing but cooperative this whole time, and you’re the one who ran away.”

She waited.

“You’re right,” Charlie said.

“You’re not even going to deny it.”

“Do you want me to deny it? We both know it’s true. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise,” Charlie said. “Look, it sucks what I did, Olivia. I get that. I should never have?—”

“God help me, Charlie, if the next words out of your mouth are any version ofI should never have slept with you, I am going to get in my car and drive away and the hell with this meeting and the hell with your house. There’s only so many times you can make me feel like an idiot.”

He fell silent. She had him pegged — that was exactly what he had been planning to say.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she told him. “I don’t want to hear what a mistake it was or how much you regret it. I feel stupid enough about the whole thing as it is. It was a mistake on my part as much as it was on yours. I regret it too. But you don’t see me running off to Boston or anywhere else about it. You don’t see me abandoning my responsibilities. I didn’t have to show up here today, you know. I could have hung you out to dry, and I didn’t. You should keep that in mind the next time you get the idea to treat me like garbage.”

“You’re right,” Charlie said.

“What do you mean, I’mright?”

He turned away. He couldn’t face her while he said the words. “I shouldn’t have taken off, all right? I get it. But I couldn’t help it.”

“Of course you could help it,” she said. “If that’s the best you can do, I’m done with this conversation.”

“So you won’t even talk to me?”

She sighed. “Actually, I do need to talk to you,” she said. “I don’t want to, but there’s something we have to discuss. But after the meeting. I want to get this out of the way.”

She turned and led the way into the office without looking back to determine whether he was following or not. After a moment, of course, he did follow. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner he could retreat back to Boston.

Even though to do so would be to extend his cowardice, he didn’t think he could handle anything else.

Cait, Scott, and John were standing around the outer walls of the room.

“About time you showed up,” Cait snapped as he came into the room. “Why didn’t you two arrive together today?”

“Oh, knock off the interrogations,” Olivia barked back at her. “We don’t have to prove anything to you.”

Cait’s eyebrows shot up — she clearly hadn’t been prepared for Olivia’s response. The truth was, neither had Charlie. He’d seen her lose her temper before, of course, but she had never done it in this room. She had always been perfectly composed, even charming, when they had come to these meetings.

But something had changed. Olivia looked as if she’d had enough of it all.

Charlie didn’t blame her for that. She must have been furious at the fact that she was seeing him for the first time in weeks under these circumstances. He counted himself lucky that she hadn’t just come out and told everyone the truth about their arrangement.

She wouldn’t do that, would she?

He hoped not. But he didn’t know for sure.

If this was ruined now, he knew he’d have only himself to blame.

Olivia marched up to one of the chairs facing Rogan and dropped into it. “Can we get this over with?” she asked him. “I have things to do today.”

“You don’t seem yourself,” Rogan noted.

“She seems like someone not necessarily in love with her husband,” Cait observed.

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