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Chaotic energy bubbled from her until I was sure she would launch from her chair.
When I glanced over, I caught her sneaking a peek at my mother.
I reached over and laid my palm on her thigh, my breath stuttering in my lungs with the contact.
Big mistake.
And too late to change my mind.
I gave her a reassuring squeeze ignoring the way my blood spiked. A few seconds later, I slid my hand down to her knee where I kept it until I felt the tension come to a head, and finally her release with a barely perceptible sigh.
After our moms ordered, the waiter turned his attention to Mariah, who ordered salmon and a house salad. Hold the dressing.
She looked like her order, and again, I wondered what I was thinking when I spent any time with her at all. She worshipped at the altar of manipulation and tactical maneuvers. Every action designed to attain power. Mariah’s efforts to hook me were never about me; they were about connections. Just one wrung on the ladder to status and influence.
I came from a successful family, but she’d likely never looked into my actual clientele. As a financial planner for individuals, I focused more on the middle class. I made money, but my bank account would never be as wealthy as my parents. Something I was fine with as long as I felt good about my job.
I’d recently taken consulting contracts for larger companies on a case-by-case basis and when I did, I upped my pro bono client percentage from five percent to ten. She definitely wouldn’t approve.
Everything about the decision felt right. Two-parent working families trying to plan for their children’s college and their eventual retirement. Others wanting to stretch what seemed like a great financial portfolio until one of them or their children came down with a chronic illness.
I helped the people in the gray area. The ones who didn’t have a fat enough portfolio to interest your average investors. They were the most vulnerable. They had a good start, but no one to teach them how nurture it.
But they had me now and I took care of their money like it was my own.
“I’ll take the ribeye,” Charlie said next to me, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Charlie, dear… don’t you think something a little lighter would be best?”
I eyed the hand Mrs. McAllister laid on Charlie’s wrist, her condescending lilt grating on my nerves.
“And the twice-baked potato,” Charlie added, completely ignoring her mother. If you didn’t notice the way her hand had balled into a fist on the table.
Mariah grinned, her expression cruelly victorious.
“All those carbs. They’ll go straight to you—”
“Make that two please and add an extra side of twice-baked potato.” My voice left no argument. Charlie’s stiff shoulders slumped with my words as a breath of tension whispered from between her lips. Her fist opened until her palm lay flat on the table.
Mariah sighed with a roll of her eyes and Mrs. McAllister’s mouth snapped shut… a welcome victory.
The conversation resumed. Charlie’s dad asked me about my investment firm and my direction in the company. The ice thawed between our mothers enough to spark a discussion about the expansion of the golf course at their country club and the memorial garden they’d been planning. Even Daniel and Mariah took part in the chatter, but none of them, not a one, asked about Charlie.
What the hell?
And the minute the food arrived, Charlie just stared at it.
She’d eat it. She was too defiant not to, but the shit her mother said would be there in every bite.
Well, I could fix that.
Grabbing my fork, I reached over and scooped up a bite of the potato on her plate. Whipped and fluffy with sour cream, the crust dotted with applewood smoked bacon over cheddar cheese; I made sure I got a bit of everything.
Her gaze locked on that first bite, and her tongue darted out to brush her lips.
Yeah, she wanted it. And she deserved to have it without a heaping of guilt dulling the flavor.
I curled my hand around her neck and waited for her to meet my eyes. “Come here.”
