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“Don’t cry,” insists Charlie. “You need to trust me on this one. You probably just caught Grant off guard. And he hates that. He hates the fact that this is out of his control.”
I pull away from him, wiping at my face with my fingers. “I’m not going to cry. I just can’t believe that I would let myself get so—attached. I messed this fake engagement up in one fell swoop.”
“You didn’t mess up anything,” Charlie tells me. He plants a hand on either of my shoulders and gives me what I’m certain is a look that’s meant to instill confidence in me. “Trust me. I know my brother, better than most. Grant just doesn’t like being caught off guard.”
“I don’t even know where he could have gone,” I insist.
Charlie thinks on it for a moment. We drift out of the restaurant and into the main lobby of the hotel. There’s still no sign of Don and Cheryl, which I appreciate. I don’t want to try and come up with any more lies today.
Trying to handle them is difficult enough, especially since it’s so personal to me.
Then he says, “It doesn’t matter.”
I frown. “What do you mean? Of course it does! I can’t try and fix this if I can’t talk to him, and I can’t do that when I don’t know where he’s at, and he’s not answering any of my calls.”
“First off, you didn’t mess anything up, and you don’t have anything to fix,” says Charlie. “Second, it doesn’t matter because my brother has never once been late to a meeting. When noon comes around, he’s going to come march through those doors to deal with the client, and he’s going to act like nothing’s wrong until it’s done with.”
I chew at my lower lip. “Your dad is never going to let me trail along to the conference hall.”
“God, no, you’re right. He’s not going to do that,” says Charlie, with a laugh and a roll of his eyes. “But I’m going to be there. Let me talk to Grant.”
“You would do that for me?” I ask. I don’t mean to sound surprised, but I wasn’t expecting that kind of help. I figured that whatever happened next, I would have to deal with it on my own.
Charlie says, “I’m the one that told you to come clean. I might as well help you deal with the fallout.”
The corners of my mouth twitch up at the edges. “You don’t happen to know somewhere I can spend the day, do you?”
“I mean, I would go with the hotel bar, or the pub across the street,” says Charlie. “I’m a bit of a bar crawler, Ashley. I don’t spend a whole lot of time going to the tourist traps.”
“I didn’t think that you would.” I know that I’ve spent most of the time in London on my own, but it feels different this time around. I’m not going to be able to enjoy myself at all, for starters. I know that the whole time I’m out there, I’m going to be busy thinking about Grant, and this mess I’ve spilled all over the place.
In fact, the thought of going out and exploring London doesn’t sound even remotely enjoyable.
But I also know that it’s going to be a big mistake to stay in the hotel all day, because then I’ll be sad and alone with my thoughts. And I can’t even call my sister for real support about things with Grant. Plus, if I do call her now, she'll definitely be able to tell I'm upset.
Much better to go and try to find something that’s distracting, even if I don’t feel like it.
Charlie looks me over, and then he grows more serious than I’ve ever seen him before. “You didn’t let me make a mistake last night. Telling Don, that would have wrecked things between me and Grant. I slept on it, and I know you were right.”
I swallow. It feels like there’s a knot in my throat. I want to tell him that the two situations are totally different, but I’m not that petulant. Besides, Charlie is trying to help me.
Right now, I figure that I need all of the help that I can get.
He continues, “I trusted you enough to listen last night, so I need you to trust me enough to listen now. Let me talk to my brother. We’ll sort it out.”
“Okay,” I say, letting out a shuddering breath. My palms are sweating. I wipe them off on the sides of the black skinny jeans that I’ve pulled on for the day. The high collar of the gray top that I’m wearing is already feeling stifling.
Maybe before I go out for the day, I’ll go up and change. Get a shower. Something.
Charlie gives me one more flash of a smile, and then turns and heads to his own room to get ready for the big meeting.
And there I am, alone in the hotel, alone in the city, and alone in the country.
Chapter twenty-one
Grant
Thestripofsidewalknext to the Thames is crowded. This section of the city is heavily focused on the tourism industry. The Eye looms above me, casting a shadow onto the street. There’s an aquarium just a little bit further up the road, and some sort of a horror display before that. An ice cream vendor sits on the corner of the street, and there are people everywhere. Children laughing, people running around, meeting up with their friends and their family. It was easy enough to find a hotel room last night down in this area. I really needed to walk for a bit, to clear my head, and to be alone.
