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“Thanks,” Charlotte said with a forced smile once Stephanie had the bag in her custody.
Without another word, Stephanie pulled out her phone again and started tapping away with the brown bag snuggly in the crook of her arm.
Did she come over here just to see what I was doing? Irritation prickled her skin, warming it. What did she think I was going to
do? Steal the river rocks?
By the time Charlotte emerged from the hallway and crossed over to the administrative side, Stephanie was already at the opposite end of the corridor. There were only a couple of doors on that side and Charlotte always assumed they were storage closets or something.
When Stephanie opened the door, Charlotte got a flash of what lay inside. It didn’t look nearly as extravagant as Alex’s digs, but she had the same beautiful view of the golf course.
Jealousy tightened Charlotte’s chest like a vice squeezing her ribcage.
Eight hours passed in unmitigated agony. Every heart-stopping time Charlotte heard footsteps outside her door, her stomach dropped out of her body. It was never Alex. By the time six rolled around, Charlotte was ready for a cold beer and her favorite sweatpants. If only she’d find Jayson hiding in the dark and waiting for her again. She knew he wouldn’t risk it, but she hoped anyway.
Charlotte was slipping out of her flats and back into wedges when the sensation of eyes on her back made her turn toward her open door.
“I didn’t mean to alarm you,” Alex said, leaning against her door with one hand tucked into the pocket of her high-waisted suit pants.
“You didn’t,” she snapped too loudly. Alex’s sudden appearance made it impossible to moderate her tone or blood pressure.
Alex tipped her head to the side, conveying the if you say so she didn’t verbalize. “I didn’t take you for a cat,” she said, the hint of a smile playing on her lips.
Slipping her other foot into her shoe so she didn’t look like a lopsided flamingo, Charlotte furrowed her brow.
“What?”
“Dropping presents at my door,” she explained, unable to conceal her am
usement.
While Alex looked at her like she was an adorable toddler who’d just spoken her first full sentence, Charlotte grinned internally. She’d been going for thoughtful and attentive not
. . . adorable . That wasn’t the characteristic she wanted Alex to associate with her.
Abandoning any hope at playing it cool, Charlotte feigned a little vulnerability. “Childish, right?” She added a glance down at her hands before worrying it was too heavy a touch.
“I’m sure you’re used to better than a ten-dollar plant.”
Alex’s unreadable face dropped the temperature in Charlotte’s body. She’d hoped for a reaction, maybe a little smile and a platitude about thoughts counting. But there was nothing but Alex’s dark eyes and her inscrutable face.
Insecurity and doubt flooded Charlotte’s nervous system, turning her stomach into a churning tangle of knots. She resisted the urge to clear her throat to move the lump that had settled there. Instead, she strapped her bags to her arm and started for the door as if she might bulldoze Alex to get passed her.
Despite Charlotte’s determination to leave, Alex remained stone still, her steady gaze never wavering. Never ceasing to present a challenge.
“What do you want, Charlotte?” Alex asked, her voice so low Charlotte felt the words vibrating in her own chest.
The question stopped her a foot away from Alex, who was blocking her path like a creature in a fairy tale. Charlotte didn’t know the secret phrase to get her to move.
“What do I want?” Charlotte parroted, unsure how to interpret the question. Of all the ways she’d envisioned this going today, Alex’s indecipherable reaction was not one of them. She erred on the side of humor. “I want a lot of things.
Equality. World peace. Dismantling the patriarchy.”
Alex refused to give her any quarter. “What do you want here? From me.”
The question, direct and terrifying, turned Charlotte’s mouth dry. Her room to squirm out of Alex’s inquiry shrunk to nothing.
“You have this restlessness,” Alex continued without shifting from her relaxed position against the door frame.
