Page 32 of Country Road Romance

“I don’t think that you have todoanything per se,” she said. “Just see where it goes for now. You don’t have to make any decisions, unless you want to. I think you might want to remember that you’re in charge of your own life, no one else.”

Those words were an uncanny echo of what Charlie had said just a bit ago.

“You’re wiser than you look, you know.”

“That’s high praise coming from you.”

They continued on bantering like this for a few more minutes, until Charlie ambled over.

“He really is the human equivalent of a golden retriever,” Hannah said without missing a beat.

“You’d be surprised how often I get told that,” Charlie said, utterly unselfconscious. “In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s what got me the job with the Romance Network. They saw the kind of guy I was, the way that my brown eyes are like limpid pools of chocolate, and the rest is history.”

“Well listen to this guy,” Hannah said. “He’s got it all figured out, including his own career.”

Even as Charlie was clearly having a good time chatting with Hannah, Jared noticed that he kept looking at his phone, and while he wasn’t normally one of those people who was offended when people did that, he thought he could sense that something was wrong.

“Charlie, do you need to take that?”

“Um…no, no I don’t,” he said, shoving the phone into his pocket. “It’s nothing.”

Jared tried to give him the kind of look that he was so used to getting from others. “I may not have known you very long, Charlie Garrett, but I can still tell when you’re lying. You’re not very good at it.”

He hadn’t thought it was possible, but if anything Charlie got even cuter when he blushed like that.

“I mean, I guess if you want to know the truth, it’s my mother. She’s been texting a lot, and I haven’t had the chance to respond.”

“And don’t you think that you ought to answer her texts?”

Jared didn’t actually think that it was any of his business whether Charlie Garrett texted his mother or not, but he also couldn’t help thinking about how his own mother would feel if she was constantly texting her son and not getting a response.

“She might be worried about you, you know. Particularly if she managed to hear about what happened last night.”

“Yes,” he said, dragging the word out, “I suppose I should.” He sighed. “It’s just that things with her are always a bit difficult. I know she loves me, but we don’t always see eye-to-eye on things.”

Before he could think better of it or let his nerves get in the way, Jared was hugging Charlie. At first the other man didn’t seem to know what to do, and then he was returning the gesture, sending little jolts of electricity shooting through every nerve in Jared’s body.

“It’ll be okay, Charlie,” he said. “We’ll be here for you when you finish the call.”

Charlie was the first one to break the hug, but there was still a fond look in his eyes that made Jared’s stomach do a backflip.

“I’m just gonna run upstairs and take this,” Charlie said, and that quickly he was gone.

“Well,” Hannah said, “this should be fun.”

CHAPTER 10

As soon as he stepped away from Jared, Charlie wished he could go back. He knew he wasn’t imagining the little spark of connection that had leapt between them, just as he hadn’t been imagining it in the kitchen when they were making cherry jam. Jared might like to pretend to the rest of the world that he was ironic and aloof from it all, but in their brief time together Charlie had begun to see a different side of the man, one who was very different from the ice queen that he’d met at the airport just a day ago.

For the moment, though, Charlie had to focus on talking to his mother. As he’d said to Jared, the two of them had never seen eye-to-eye on most things–including, for a very long time, his sexuality–but they’d managed to find a measure of peace. That didn’t mean that he stayed in touch with her as much as he should, even if he had moved her out to California.

When he got to Jared’s room he closed the door behind him and sat down on the bed, taking another minute to just gaze around at all of the signs of the boy who’d once lived here. He felt a smile pulling at his lips as he thought about what it must have been like for Jared growing up in a house like this one, filled with love and joy and light.

Okay, enough letting your mind wander. Let’s get this over with.

Even after he’d pulled the phone out of his pocket, however, it took him several minutes to actually type in the number and hit the call button.

As the phone began to ring, Charlie heard laughter coming from downstairs, and he felt the usual pang. Things had never been like that with his family, even when he’d lived at home. His father might have been accepting of his sexuality, but he had never been particularly kind to his wife, who he tended to treat with a sort of casual cruelty.

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