Legal Heirs - Box Set Edition: Books 5-8 (Surrendering Charlotte Chronicles) (2 page)

Charlotte jerked her hand away and called Zack into her office, “call security, Zack, I’d like this man escorted out of the building immediately. If he resists, notify the police that he attempted to molest me.”

“You’re overreacting, Charlotte,” he said, standing to leave, “no need for hysterics,” and he left her office and disappeared into a waiting elevator.

“What was that about, should I notify security, have someone follow him?” Zack asked.

“No,” she said, scribbling his name on a piece of paper, “here’s his name and the name of the company he worked for. Make note of it just in case, I’ve got to run, I’m late for court as it is.”

“Your court date has been postponed, you’re free for the rest of the day, the court clerk called a few minutes ago.”

“Oh, okay. Good, fine… I’ll pop in and see the best looking man in town, that should make me feel better,” she said.

“Your husband or your son?” he asked, and she winked at him and said, “Husband first, then my little angel!”

*

“I’m looking for Finn,” Charlotte told the pregnant girl sitting at the reception desk in JP and Finn’s office.

“He’s in his office with Nina, want me to buzz him?” the girl asked, barely looking up from her magazine.

“Well I’m not sure, is Nina a client?”

“No, she works here, paralegal or something,” the girl said, still reading the magazine.

Charlotte walked to the door of Finn’s office and knocked and then opened it.

He was bending over a stack of papers on his desk and a pretty woman was standing very close to him doing the same thing.

“Come in, my love,” he said when he looked up and saw Charlotte. He moved past Nina as if she wasn’t there and hugged his wife to him. “I thought you had court this afternoon, but I’m glad if you have time for me instead,” he said, and bent to kiss her.

Nina shuffled the papers and Finn turned to her, he stood behind Charlotte with his arms around her as if he were showing her off. It made Nina uncomfortable to see Finn in love, he’d been uncatchable, and she had tried very hard to catch him in the past.

“Charlotte Hale, pleased to meet you,” Charlotte said, and the two shook hands.

“My love, this is Nina Chandler, she’s helping out until we find a permanent legal assistant,” Finn said, and Nina looked at him as if he’d slapped her, then she left the room with a flourish.

“So Finnegan, who hired ‘little miss broken heart’?” Charlotte asked, and pressed her lips against the hot skin of his neck.

“What’s that supposed to mean? JP hired her, and I just gave her two weeks’ notice,” he said.

“Why, because she has a massive hard-on for you?” Charlotte said, and they both laughed so hard that JP yelled from his office for them to shut up.

“Can women have hard-ons?” Finn asked, when JP gave Charlotte a peck on the cheek and they all sat together.

“I just meant she’s hot for you, it’s plain to see,” Charlotte said. “What temp-agency in hell’s waiting room did you pluck her out of, John Paul?”

“She found us, she’s an old friend. We met her in basic training, way back when,” JP said.

“Ugh, not one of those girls who serviced both of you at the same time. That’s just disgustingly gross!” Charlotte said, kicking off her shoes. She curled her feet under her body in the chair and from the amused look on Finn’s face she realized she wasn’t wearing panties.

“Serviced sounds like it was a chore,” JP said, “I can promise you, that girl warmed to her work, she was something of a prodigy.”

“A cock prodigy?” Charlotte asked, “how charming, and it makes me feel so comfortable having her working so closely with my husband.”

“Enough reminiscing,” Finn said, and he walked around his desk and pulled Charlotte up and against him. “Get out of my office, JP, I need my wife.”

“Good luck,” JP said as he left, “I need mine, too, but she doesn’t need me anymore.”

“You went to work without your panties?” Finn asked, moving his hand under her skirt and between her legs.

“Yes,” she breathed against hot mouth, “you told me not to wear them anymore.”

“Were you in court this morning?” he asked, moving his fingers over the silky wet folds of her sex as she pressed against him.

“Yes,” she said, and it was barely a whisper.

“Did you win?” he asked, circling her clit until she was on the edge of orgasm. He moved his hand away abruptly so that her head rested against his chest, and she panted out the word, “yes!”

When she finally caught her breath, Charlotte pushed away from Finn and slipped on her shoes. She picked up her purse, took his hand and they walked out onto the sidewalk.

“Where are you taking me, my love?” he asked, and she led him into the freight elevator that would take them to their former lofts.

“My old bedroom,” she said, “that’s where I want you right now. You need to learn to finish what you start, Finnegan.”

He backed her into a corner as the elevator rose to the top floor and kissed her like his life depended on it. “What about the woman who lives there now?” he asked, kissing her breasts through the fabric of her blouse and rubbing her tender nipples with his thumbs.

“We had better hope she’s not home,” she said, producing a key from her purse and leading him to the loft bedroom.

Chapter Two

Charles Tremont ran his fingers across Evangeline’s satiny smooth skin and down past her naval
, before she stopped his hand. They had stayed in bed the entire day and made love and he never wanted it to end. She made him feel like a boy of eighteen, with her perfectly sculpted curves and unbridled passion. She arched against him as they made love and she cursed him when she lost control and climaxed. She swore she hated him as she scratched his back and bit his chest and ground against him in pure pleasure.

“I’m in love with you, I’ll leave my wife and we can be together from now on,” he said, when she pushed his hand away and left the bed to get dressed.

“Don’t be ridiculous, darling. I’m a diversion for you, and you bring a bit of naughtiness to my life. You’re a competent lover but I don’t feel anything for you. Surely you realize I have an erotic and highly satisfying sex life with West, I’m not about to give him up,” she said, as she smoothed her stockings over her long legs and fastened them to the lacy garter belt she wore.

Charles caught her hand as she passed by the bed and pulled her down next to him, “You’re stunning, but you know that don’t you? Like a movie star from the glamorous days of Hollywood. Here, this is for you, Evie, a token of my love.”

The box was from Bulgari and inside was a wide rose-gold cuff set with large emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds. She slipped it on and Charles kissed the inside of her thin wrist. She carelessly ran a hand through his hair and kissed him passionately, then left the bed and continued to dress.

He was behind her in a moment, his hands on her shoulders, his breath hot against her neck, “Evie, I’m going back to New Orleans in a few months, come with me. You’ll love it there, and even though you’re much too young, you are about to have grandchildren. Wouldn’t you like to be near them, wouldn’t you love to have a powerful and influential man as your husband?”

“I’m not as lucky you are, darling. You’re always saying how incredibly beautiful your little grandson is, I doubt that my grandchildren will be the least bit attractive. Honestly, who are these people Alexander and Amanda have married? No one has ever heard of their families, it’s terribly distressing, Charles. You cannot imagine what my children have put me through; they’ve thoroughly disgraced our good name. If you recall, I was married to a man much more powerful than you, and I can’t say that I ever felt any true love for Holden Bly, ah well,” she said, reaching for her skirt and stepping into it.

“I can help you make the best of the situation with your children, Evie, if you come with me and we get married. You could get to know Charlotte’s little boy, I know you’d be crazy about him. The truth is, I love you and I’ve never really been in love before, I need to know that you’re mine.”

“You are a hopeless romantic, Charles. What about the girl from your past, Charlotte’s mother? Didn’t you love her?” she asked, buttoning her Chanel jacket and stepping into Louboutin pumps.

“That was almost thirty years ago, I was a different man then,” he said, and he let his hands fall away from her.

“Well my darling,” she said, kissing him, then opening the door to leave the suite, “thank you for lunch, and for the bracelet, and of course, for the sex.”

*

“Is my sister here yet?” Evangeline asked West when he picked her up at the airport. “I can’t stand the flight from London to Paris, you go up, and then you come down. It’s ridiculous, there’s not even time for a cocktail. Tell me darling, is there any word from my destitute little sister?”

“She’s at the house, she’s been here for two days, where the hell were you?” West asked. His hands were clenched on the wheel of the Mercedes.

“Shopping darling, you know that. So did my sister try and fuck you?” she asked, leaning to kiss his cheek before she took out her compact to check her makeup.

“Yes, and I let her,” he said.

“What? Have you lost your mind? You’re mine, how dare you lie down with that little bitch in heat. Oh isn’t she the sad, grieving widow! How dare she come here to enjoy my hospitable charity and then seduce my one and only love? And you, you’re no better than she is, it makes me ill to imagine that you put your dick in such trash!” Evangeline ranted on and on, and when West began to laugh, she screamed like a banshee and told him to stop the car and let her out.

As soon as they were home, she stormed into the house screeching her sister’s name. “Gabrielle, you whore in bitch’s clothing come down here and face me. Oh, you insufferable little money-grubbing, gutter-crawling, social-climbing, street-walking, classless, nymphomaniac!”

“What on earth are you yelling about, Evangeline?” Gabrielle said, as she walked down the stairs wearing one of Evangeline’s silk kimonos and holding a tall glass of vodka. She kissed both of her sister’s cheeks then ducked when Evangeline tried to slap her face. “Are you accusing me of sleeping with… him? My God, he works for you, do you honestly think I’d sleep with the hired help?”

“He isn’t the hired help you ignorant slut, he’s my lover!” Evangeline said, taking the glass of vodka from her sister and drinking half of it at once.

“Oh! Well, if I’d known that I would certainly have let him sleep with me,” Gabrielle said, and the sisters hugged and went into the living room to talk.

West watched the two sisters, Gabby, as she called herself, had arrived with fifteen suitcases and an attitude that made Evangeline look like Mother Theresa. West kept his mouth shut and let her order him around only because Evangeline had said to be nice to her. Supposedly she’d had the shock of losing her aged husband and being completely disinherited by him, so she was truly grieving. She was attractive and a few years younger than Evangeline, but she didn’t have the head turning beauty and grace her sister possessed.

“Evangeline, we need to talk,” West said, he stood over her, hands on his hips, and she and her sister looked up at him, surprised. “We need to talk now about you and the ambassador, we can do it here, or in private. I know you’ve been seeing him and I want you to stop.”

“How dare you speak to my sister like that?” Gabby asked.

“Hush, Gabby,” Evangeline told her. “West, there’s nothing to talk about, you know I do as I please, but I do care for you….”

“Fine, I’m out of here. I thought we had something good, and not just in bed. I thought we were… never mind,” he said, and went upstairs to pack his bags.

She followed him to her bedroom and watched as he gathered his belongings. The shelves she had made available for him in her closet looked empty and bereft as he packed his shirts and sweaters into his suitcases. Then the table on his side of the bed seemed lifeless without his books. He changed his shirt and she felt the thrill she always got in the hollow part of her stomach when she saw his elegantly muscled body. He made her feel the way she had felt when she was a girl in Brazil, when she lay beside a deep green lake with her first lover. West always looked at her with that same guileless love in his eyes, he loved her for who she was, and in spite of who she was. She was a bonafide narcissistic bitch and they both knew it, but he loved her anyway.

“West, wait darling,” she said, running her hands over his chest.

He stopped her hands and said, “Either you love me or you don’t Evangeline. I love you, but I won’t be your cabana boy. I’ll be at the Saint Regis until noon tomorrow, then I’m going home.”

*

Evangeline lay in bed that night and sleep wouldn’t come. She turned to West’s side of the bed and buried her face in his pillow, she wanted to cry but her eyes were dry. Several times she paced the room and thought about going to him and pressing herself to his big, hard body. When she finally slept, it was a restless, dream-filled sleep. In her dreams she was a child again in Pomerode, Brazil. She could hear her mother and father speaking German, and she could see herself praying with her little sister in the big Lutheran church. She wasn’t glamorous or perfect; she was a wild little heathen with long braids and a cotton dress her mother made just for her. She was Evangeline Sommerfeld, a pretty girl born into a small community of Germans whose ancestors settled in Brazil in the early eighteen-hundreds. A girl who had dreamt of being loved by just one man long before she had dreamt of being famous or marrying a billionaire.