She turned to reopen the front door, but Charles grabbed her from behind and wrapped her up in a big bear hug. His heart was pounding.
“Oh, my baby,” he said as he held her. And then he turned her back around. “I didn’t mean to imply any disrespect, Jenay. I wasn’t . . .”
But that look on her face said it all. She was done.
He let out a heavy sigh of regret. “I’ll take you home,” he said.
And even the term home, when she was actually living in a hotel, in his hotel, made her cringe.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Charles drove slowly along the low, rolling hills that led them back into town. While he was upstairs getting his keys and his wallet, his sons had left the house, knowing the last thing he needed was to have them hovering around right now. But it was obvious to Charles that Jenay couldn’t wait to leave that house either, and possibly him. It felt as if they were going along just fine, and then bam. They ran into a brick wall. A wall he didn’t realize he had erected.
He glanced at her as he drove. She seemed so flustered that it broke his heart. Normally, he would let people think whatever the hell they wanted to think. But he couldn’t leave her this way. “I wasn’t trying to disrespect you, Jenay,” he said.
“So what were you trying to do?” she asked him. “Disregard me? Did you decide you wanted a bed warmer full time and you were giving me the job?”
“You know better than that!”
“No I don’t know better than that!” she shot back. “I thought I did. You’ve shown nothing but kindness towards me, Charlie. I thought we were heading in the right direction. And we were. Only different directions. I’m thinking we’re heading in the direction of marriage, while you’re thinking shacking up will do.”
“I thought it would help both of us, Jenay. Not just me. I haven’t lived with a woman for over fourteen years! I needed to ---”
“You needed to what?” Jenay asked. “You needed to know if I was good enough to live with you?”
“I needed to know that you were alright,” Charles admitted. It was a devastating admission for a man like him. “I’m out of town often, you know that. Hardly a week goes by when I don’t have to handle some business out of town. I thought you’d be safe at the Inn, but you see what happened there? So I decided I should move you into my house. And yes, I decided unilaterally. That’s how I function. It was wrong, but that’s how I’ve handled my life all of my life.”
Jenay looked at him.
“So I made the executive decision to move you into my house. Nobody was going to come anywhere near my home without permission. Nobody was going to set you up there, or even think about harming you there. I knew it was too soon for us to talk about marriage. I knew that wasn’t on your radar screen right now. But what happened to you three weeks ago, the way they so easily set you up, and how it could have turned out so differently for us, did something to me, Jenay. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but other than daytrips to Boston and New York, I’ve stayed close to you since then. It affected me like that. I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. I wasn’t trying to disregard your wants and needs. I was trying to protect you. I did it clumsily, and because I didn’t talk to you first, I did it wrong. But I swear to you I wasn’t trying to disrespect you.”
Jenay turned her gaze upon the dark, back roads they traveled. She didn’t know what to believe. But it was a fact. Other than a couple of daytrips to handle his business over the past month, after that jewelry fiasco, Charles was a constant in her life. They slept together at the Inn, or at his house, every night.
She looked at him. “I appreciate your concern,” she said, “but I’m not moving in with you or anybody else. And just like you handle your life; just like you function the way you function? I function that same way, too. I have to have the only vote in where I live and whom I live with and how I live my life. I gave up that right when I married Quince. I’m never giving that up again.”
Charles glanced at her, and then back at the road. He should have known better than to think she could be handled. He should have known better.
“I’m not the village idiot, Charlie,” she said, and he laughed. “You didn’t put an idiot in charge of your hotel. You didn’t decide to get in a romantic relationship with a fool. Treat me right, treat me fair, treat me respectfully, and we’ll make it just fine. Treat me wrong, treat me like some piece on the side, treat me in anyway disrespectfully, and it’s over. I’ll be so out of here you won’t believe how quickly I leave. You feel me?”