It's In His Kiss(57)

“You really do think you’re a hot little number, don’t you?” Louis Santos called after her, trying to move past West to make sure she heard him. “Women like you are nothing to Alexander Bly. He has that reputation, you know, fuck them and leave them, he doesn’t know about love. And guess what, beautiful Charlotte? No matter what pretty words he says to you, he doesn’t want to know about love.”

“Hey, that’s enough, Santos,” West said, shoving him into a deck chair and flashing a menacing look at the three men standing nearby. “I can assure you Mr. Bly won’t be buying your boat, and his personal life is none of your fucking business. As for Charlotte, she’s off-limits, you’d do well to remember that, unless you’d like for me to cut your balls off and hand them to you.”

*

What was it with some men? Charlotte wondered. Give them a small taste of power and they used it to manipulate women. Louis Santos brought back memories of Jamey Huang, with his scary good looks and hidden agenda. She had been on the verge of winning the case for Bly International against Huang World Wide Corporation when she’d been abducted. Jamey and his gang of hired thugs had held her for ransom, and the reason had nothing to do with Alexander Bly’s billions—he’d wanted something else. As desperately as she tried, she couldn’t remember what had happened in Hong Kong. Those details were blacked out, just gone, and she realized that was her own fault, because there were some things she didn’t want to know.

“I’d like to say that you are truly a vision, with the blue sea at your back and your dark hair blowing in the breeze. But the look in your eyes says I should stay quiet and walk on by.”

Charlotte shielded her eyes from the sun as she turned to look up at him. She was standing on a cobbled street at the edge of the village, lost in thought. The man who spoke was incredibly handsome, and his eyes were filled with mischief as he smiled down at her. The thought flashed through her mind that handsome wasn’t an appropriate word to describe him, beautiful was more like it. She was tall, but he towered over her, and the muscles of his arms and chest strained the pale blue linen shirt that he wore. His hair was jet-black and his eyes were a deep, sparkling Mediterranean blue, like her own.

Other than when she glanced in the mirror, she’d never seen a set of eyes exactly that color. Her own mother had pale blue eyes and lighter hair, and Charlotte had asked time and again why they looked so different. When Charlotte was a little girl with long black hair, pale skin, and those electric blue eyes, the kids at school called her Snow White or told her she looked like a wild, heathen witch.

“You have your father’s looks,” her mother said every time she asked, but that was all she would say about the man Charlotte had never met. “He was like a knight in shining armor, or a real lady-killer,” her mother would say as she gave her beloved daughter a quick kiss, “depending on how you care to look at it. We had a summer romance, then he rode off into the sunset. But he left me with a wonderful gift to remember him by… you, my little beauty.”

Charlotte looked up through her thick, dark lashes at the blue eyed, black haired young man and wondered if his father had been a real lady-killer, as well. The top buttons of his linen shirt were unfastened so that it fluttered open in the breeze, and she caught a glimpse of large tattoo across his chest. It was an unfurled banner that said “Blessed” and Charlotte wanted to ask about it. Her best friends, Finn and JP, had been Navy SEALs, and they had a few bizarre tattoos. Finn said his tattoos told stories of covert missions he had survived, private wars he and other men like him fought on foreign soil, risking their lives to keep America safe.

“I feel like I’ve met you before, and no, that’s not a pick-up line,” he said, gesturing to an empty table at a sidewalk oyster bar. “I’m Christopher, and I’m not dangerous so you don’t have to worry. I’m a pilot—a Naval aviator, actually. I had a few days to kill, and Bali is an extraordinary place to do just that.”

“I’m Charlotte,” she said, sliding into a metal chair and trying not to blatantly stare, but he was so unnervingly attractive she couldn’t help herself. “Great tattoo. It reminds me of my two best friends, they’re in Special Forces and we were roommates in law school. I’m not sure where they are right now, and I should know. We’re like family, we watch out for each other…”

“So you’re a lawyer and you lived with two men who are SEALs. That’s not a situation you hear about on an average day.” He laughed and reached across the table for her hand.