Page 105 of No More Words

CHARLOTTE

Most parents teach their children honesty is the best policy. Charlotte’s daddy taught her to lie.

“Deception is an art,” she remembers him explaining once over a cup of Earl Grey and biscuits. His office was located near her high school. She’d meet him there every afternoon on her way home from class. He insisted what he taught her would take her further than any Pythagorean theorem or Byzantine Empire lecture could.

“Master it, and this will be yours.” He gestured at his office space with the inlaid walnut paneling and plush steel-blue carpeting. Paintings from contemporary artists the likes of Nova and Gallegos that were as provocative as they were repulsive. Charlotte thought of them as hauntingly beautiful. She wanted her own art gallery in Laguna Niguel with its homes on high cliffs over sea-glass blue waters, not her daddy’s square office in a steel tower. Stocks and REITs were interesting if one liked that sort of thing, which Charlotte didn’t. Boston was an icebox in the winter and a sweatshop during summer, and neither was good for a girl’s complexion. Her sights were set on something much grander in California, with its fast cars and sun-drenched men.

She escaped to California as soon as she was admitted into USC. Within a few years, she met Dwight Carson, someone who was suddenly shinier in her eyes than the art gallery she aspired to own, with his lofty political aspirations and charming personality. One day, he’dbe in the White House and she’d be right beside him. She left campus without her diploma and followed Dwight and his dreams, making them her own.

Enraged that she’d waste her future, Charlotte’s daddy disowned her. But she didn’t mind. She and Dwight were going places she could never get to as Gilbert Dayton’s daughter. She and Dwight married. They had a beautiful baby girl they named Olivia, and two years later, a son they called Lucas. Dwight launched his winery consulting business, meeting all the right people up and down the west coast, and Charlotte earned her real estate license, quickly rising to the top of her firm as the highest producing agent.

She then met Benton St.John. Gorgeous, athletic, looked at her just the right way, Benton. And for a brief bit of time he was the shiniest trinket in the window. She wanted nothing more than her neighbor. If her husband could have a little morsel on the side, she could have her treats, too.

Charlotte remembers the day Lily was conceived. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, smoothing her floral-print pencil skirt over her lush hips as anticipation warmed her blood. She undid one more pearl button on her pink silk blouse so that just enough cleavage showed. Tempting, not tacky.

Picking up the Manhattans she’d just mixed, she went out the back door of their custom-built home. It was an excessively hot July on the California coast, but the cool breeze coming off the bay and across the yard felt refreshing.

She rounded the corner of the house to the side yard, where Benton watched over her two children playing in the massive sandbox their daddy paid someone under the table to build. Benton smiled broadly, hands tucked in his trouser pockets, when he saw her, and her heart fluttered like his auburn hair in the wind. God, the man was beautiful. He took a glass from her, their fingers brushing. Electricity zinged up her arm, tightened her breasts. They had a connection. She’d felt it theinstant he and his wife arrived at the house she’d shown, and eventually, sold to them. She’d bet the commission on her next deal that he felt the same. And now they were neighbors, three doors apart. So convenient, especially when she had a husband whose business kept him on the road more than off.

Benton’s hazel eyes held hers over the rim of his glass. A single maraschino cherry bobbed in the well of the glass like a buoy in the bay. His gaze held delicious promises of what he planned to do with her. She shivered with delight.

Looking back, Charlotte should have turned around and walked back into the house. A fling to scratch an itch wasn’t worth her marriage, children, and the fallout that followed. But she wouldn’t have had her Lily. She also wouldn’t have found herself in her current situation: a widow hell-bent on leaving town before her precious children returned home with the knowledge of what she’d done.

Instead, Charlotte had lured Benton up to the apartment above the detached garage.

“Olivia, Lucas,” Charlotte said to her children who played in the sand. “Mommy and Mr.St.John have grown-up things to discuss. We’ll be right there.” She lifted her Manhattan toward the apartment, careful not to spill. “Follow me, Mr.St.John. I have some real estate I’d like to show you.” She walked across the lawn, her weight on her toes so her heels didn’t sink, and with a bounce in his step, Benton tailed her up the narrow staircase to the second-floor apartment.

She’d barely closed the door before he took her glass, setting both drinks on a nearby table, and crowded her against the wall. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for this?” He growled the words, boxing her in. “Weeks, Charlie. Fucking weeks.” His mouth landed on hers and hips ground into the juncture of her thighs. His tongue swiped over her lips, dipped into her mouth. He tasted of cherry from the one sip he took of his cocktail, mints, and the lingering bitterness of coffee. He smelled of drugstore aftershave and nervous sweat.

“No need to rush. We have plenty of time,” she said when he tore his mouth from hers and kissed a dotted line down her neck.

Hands she’d admired when he signed their real estate documents skimmed down her thighs. They pushed up her pencil skirt, bunching the material at her waist. He ran his finger along the edge of her silk lace panties, from hip to crotch and back. “You attached to these?”

Before she could answer, he tore them off. She gasped, her head banging into the wall at the suddenness of it. The skin on her hip stung like a rug burn. He gently rubbed the tender flesh and suckled at her bottom lip.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I can’t seem to control myself around you. You make me wild.”

“Then let’s get wild.” Her smile was seductive.

He took her against the wall just that once, because afterward Benton grew a conscience like a wart he refused to burn off.

The damn man.

Charlotte zips closed the suitcase that holds her shoes and glances at the clock. It’s the fourth case she’s packed and she doesn’t have much time. Olivia will most likely be home tomorrow and she’ll bring Lily, and everything Lily overheard about Charlotte before she ran away. Lucas could show up tonight from wherever it is that he went off to. Okay, so she lied. He didn’t text her. Nancy did. She needed to borrow Charlotte’s COACH tote, the pewter one that looks divine with her slingback heels. But Charlotte needed a viable excuse so Olivia wouldn’t drag her up the mountain to face Lily. She was finally free of Dwight. She wouldn’t risk her freedom altogether. So she told her daughter the text was from Lucas.

Whenever she threatened to leave him, he’d plead for her to stay. Then he’d get angry that she threatened to go in the first place. He told her he’d follow her. He’d tip off the police about what really went down the night Benton died. He’d sacrifice himself to keep her at his side. His shiny, well-connected arm ornament.

He would, too, so she bided her time until she knew he wouldn’t come after her.

Fortunately, Dwight was never interested in monitoring their finances. Taxes made his eyes cross. It’s why he kept draining his company’s accounts. He spent more than he saved. Math wasn’t his forte. He was grateful Charlotte didn’t mind handling their books, making it too easy for Charlotte to send most of her earnings to the offshore accounts she set up when she received the inheritance from her mother Dwight never knew about.

Her daddy was right to disown her when she failed to graduate college and married Dwight. He told her Dwight wouldn’t amount to anything. Admittedly, marrying him had been foolish and impulsive. But Dwight fit her mold of a perfect partner. She thought one day her daddy would be proud. He’d write her back into his will. Welcome her home with open arms.

He never did. But Gilbert Dayton didn’t foresee his own wife, who was wealthy in her own right and concerned as any mother should be about her only daughter, divorcing him. Thanks to Val Dayton, Charlotte was set for life.

The doorbell rings and Charlotte scowls at the clock. Her ride is early.

“I’m still packing,” she tells the driver when she answers the door. She gestures at the luggage nearby. “Take these. I’ll be out when I’m ready.”

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