C's Comeuppance: A Bone Cold--Alive novel (29 page)

Fletch stood and leaned over the desk, balanced himself with splayed hands that reddened with each word he spoke. “Look, boy, let me assure you that whatever ill feelings you have against me—and I know you’ve got them—I can match for you. I do not mean to embarrass this lady here—and it’s obvious she is a lady, although I question her taste in male companionship right now—but she needs to know what you are.”

“And how would you know
what
I am, Fletch? How would you know what’s going on with me when you’ve been busy touring the fleshpots—”

“You just can’t keep it nice, can you?”

“It must be the company I’ve had all these years.”

The rolling of Jemma’s chair as she pushed back from the desk stopped their conversation. “I want all of you to leave.” She stood and settled her gaze on Fletcher. “I’ll be happy to show you the Newton place although I sincerely doubt that’s why you came, even though you made the appointment before these were taken.” She turned to C and T, who had relaxed his hold on his brother. “Out!” She pointed to the door.

“Jemma—”

“Don’t start, Charles. I’ve had all the stress I want. Enough surprises for a lifetime. And I’m getting exponentially older by the minute.” She placed her hands on her hips and tapped her toe.

“C’mon, Fletch, I know where there’s a decent cup of coffee and a lady about to be very surprised. You can leave your car here.” T started to the door, stopped and waited for the manager to gather his briefcase. “But it occurs to me I rode with C here. Let me have the keys, bud.” He held up his hand and C dug in his pocket, tossed them to him.

“Jemma, why don’t we visit that property this afternoon when things have cooled off? Say,” Fletch shook down the Rolex, “two o’clock?”

“Perfect.” Her tone was clipped. She pursed her lips and stared at C, who had not moved from his position two feet from her. “You can’t stay here.”

“Well, he can’t come with us. Figure it out, C.” T said as he held the office door open for Fletch and pulled it closed behind them. It caught briefly, then clicked open a hair’s-breadth.

“I believe you’re very unwelcome here.”

“You didn’t know I had a temper?”

“Good-bye, Charles. Walk wherever it is you’re fixing to go. I’m really not interested in making pleasant conversation with you right now.”

“Then let’s just skip the conversation and get right to the physical.” He made to hold her, but she sidestepped him. “C’mon, Jemma, he’s a scheming ol’ bugger out to make a fool of me. And since he has nothing whatsoever at stake in you, you’re not immune!”

“You are disgusting! When he called me yesterday, he said—”

“Don’t care what he said. Nor do I know why you should possibly be defending him. I tell you, he’s up to something.”

“Like finding out what you’re up to. Which, by the way, is what we’ve all been interested in doing for two weeks. You got bored, so you created excitement for yourself.” Her voice quavered.

“And was that enough excitement for you last night, too? How about the mug shots this morning?” He motioned to the computer screen. “Are we both in this for excitement? Babe, this is tame by my standards.”

She didn’t answer him.

“Okay. Let’s start over.” He wiped an imaginary slate clean. “That man and I have been joined at the hip for years. So I shouldn’t have implied that he’d slit my financial throat for pleasure.” He looked at Jemma for confirmation and she gave him a little nod. “So I should apologize to him?” She nodded again. “
Apologize?
”

“Yes, Charles.”

“What if—”

“No what ifs about it. If you expect Fletch to take you on your face value of being someone other than the character he’s known—and helped create—then you have to take the first step and be a bigger man about this.”

“I thought all that moral mumbo-jumbo died with my grandmother.”

Jemma crossed her arms. “Alas, morals are alive and well in middle-America. You, sir, have had the ill fortune to land in a hotbed of them. And don’t tell me you hadn’t a clue.”

He lifted his lip in a mock-snarl. “I don’t think I’ve ever apologized to Fletch. We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“You didn’t. You do now.”

“And this will accomplish what?”
“You’ll have taken the high road and proven yourself the better man.”

“And you’re convinced I can do this?”

“I’m convinced that you’re already a better man than the one that showed up here two weeks ago.” She dropped her eyes from his face to study the tips of her shoes. “Or I couldn’t be…” She let her voice trail off.

C seized on the word and closed the gap between them. Lifting her chin he encouraged her to finish her thought. “Go on.”

“I, ah, I wouldn’t have gone to dinner with you last night.”

“Your cheeks are hot. I think you’re lying.” He touched his cheek to hers, whispered in her ear. “I think you’re falling in love with me.”

“You have an ego as big as all outdoors.”

“Comes with the territory.” He kissed her neck.

She caught her breath. “Charles, go apologize to Fletch before he leaves.”

“I’m sure he’s gone.”

“I’m sure he’s not. I haven’t heard the front door yet.”

“I need a kiss for courage.”

“You are stalling.”

His lips brushed hers, his tongue glanced off her lower lip. “Want to stall with me?”

She grabbed his head in her hands and smacked a kiss on his lips. “There! All done!” There was a look of surprise in his eyes. “And when you finish with Fletch, take my car and go find Marty and Jake. It’s their hash that needs settling!”

***

“You old eavesdropper.” T left the restroom only to find Fletch peeking through the slit between Jemma’s office door and the frame. “I’d think your time would be better spent mounting a website reply to all these photos or publishing our own.”

Fletch waved a hand in his direction. “You need to check in with the office every once in a while. Webmaster got lured away by your main competition and the site’s been static for a week.” He took one more peak into Jemma’s office. “I just needed to observe them to see what kind of problems I have now.”

“
You
have? And you couldn’t have done that before you embarrassed her?” T tugged on Fletch’s arm and drew him toward the front door.

“Well, I did think about it.” He brushed at his sleeve. “Don’t pull the merchandise out of shape. Besides, I didn’t know the truth about you and Lyla until I watched you that day on the beach.”

“And?”

“And I knew what was going to happen unless I stepped in and changed it.”

“And?”

“And it was like trying to stop a snowball from rolling downhill.”

“And?”

“
And
C’s as out of control as you were.” He turned to Carolyn. “What is it about the women around here that these boys can’t keep their minds on business?”

Carolyn gave him a slight grin as she walked to the door, arms laden with folders and her purse. “Mr. Fletcher, I’m surprised you have to ask.” She stopped in front of him, smiled coquettishly, let her drawl become more pronounced. “We Southern girls been turning heads for centuries.” She sashayed to the front door, opened it, then halted halfway through. “You might as well just sign a check for the Newton property. It’s a good buy and it’s a cinch you’re going to be here a bunch. That man in there—” she inclined her head toward the office “—not only is he caught, but he wants to be caught so bad.” She winked as she closed the door.

T shrugged to Fletch’s upraised eyebrows. “Surely you’ve got the course of true love down pat, Fletch. You’ve watched it enough, haven’t you?”

***

The office door opened and C emerged. He jiggled Jemma’s car keys while he reached for the clarinet he’d left on Carolyn’s desk. “T, why don’t you get the car? I need to have a word with Fletch.”

Jemma stood in the doorway and cleared her throat.

“What?” C turned back to her.

“That wasn’t the entire deal.”

“That was the gist of it.”

“Charles.”

“Yes,
Charles
,” Fletch repeated with a smirk. “Whatever you have to say to me, I’m sure you can say in front of your brother.”

C shot T a pleading look, but the younger brother stood his ground.

“Charles.” Jemma’s voice was low.

“Okay, okay.” He clutched the clarinet and shot Jemma a sidelong glance. “You owe me for this.”
“In a lifetime, I don’t think you can possibly repay what all I’ve put up with these two weeks as it is. And it doesn’t appear to be getting any better,” she shot back.

“Well, that is where you are wrong. It can get better.” He winked at her. “It can get ‘best.’”

She folded her arms across her chest and glared at him.

“All right, all right.” He turned back to Fletch. “Okay, buddy, listen real good because I’m not going to ever say these words to you again.” He closed the distance between them. “I apologize for any insinuations I made about your righteous intentions here this morning.” He looked over his shoulder at Jemma and, with a wave of her hand, she encouraged him to continue. “I’m sure to my dying day that your reasons for sneaking into town like this and checking on Jemma are strictly friendship-related and have no bearing on whether or not what I do with my personal life affects our mutual livelihood.”

“Well, I should have had the recorder going. An apology from Eddie C Samuels. It’s a red-letter day.”

T cleared his throat and Fletch rolled his shoulders. “And, as I seem to be reminded, I accept. You know I always have BCA’s best interests at heart.”

“Don’t push it, Fletch.” T opened the front door. “C, don’t even think of joining us at the Quik-Lee now. Jemma, lunch at the counter in an hour or so?”
She nodded to them as T and Fletch left.

“So how did I do?” C turned where he was, faced her over a clarinet lifted to play.

“The flesh was willing even if the spirit of the apology was weak.”

“But I’m back in your good graces?” He tried a few notes, let the instrument linger on his lips.

“Charles, I’d find it very hard to banish you from them permanently.” She rubbed her arms in a nervous gesture. “As to what you said in there… You know I’m falling in love with you. And I don’t know why.”

A smile spread across his features. “Damn, Jemma, let’s lock the doors. Let me make love to you.” He didn’t move toward her, even as he held his breath for her reply.

“You know that isn’t going to happen right now.”

“The world thinks we already have.”

“Therefore we should? Personal morality, remember? The reason you apologized?”

“I apologized because you made me.”

“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”

“You don’t even feel better about it? About doing the right thing?”
He cocked his head in thought then raised his hand with a paper’s width between thumb and forefinger. “This much.”

“You have a long ways to go, Charles.”

“To where? Upright citizenship? Babe, it ain’t ever going to happen. Love or no love. I’m me.”

“Eddie C.”

“Edward Charles. A man who would actually consider apologizing because it’s the right thing to do. Eddie C wouldn’t have done it for nobody no how.” He slashed the air with the clarinet.

“See? You can be redeemed.”

“I don’t want to be what T’s become.”

“Who says you have to? Who is T now that you so despise him?”

“He’s a shell of his former self. A do-gooder. He kowtows to that woman like she was a queen! Home, hearth, family—”

Jemma pointed at him, punched the air with her finger. “And
you
can’t stay away.”

C closed his eyes, moved the clarinet from side to side as if counting. “Point. Counterpoint. One. Two. Trump. Overtrump. You. Me.” He opened his eyes, let out a soft humph. “Okay, Jemma, you win.”

“Win what?”

“This round. This point. This decision. I’m here because I can’t stay away from T’s happiness because I can’t seem to make my own.” He pressed his lips together, then licked them nervously. “If someone had lined up all the women in the world a month ago for me to choose from, you would have been near the bottom of my preference pile.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“Looks have nothing to do with it. You’re not only a beautiful woman, you’re a good woman. What in hell am I doing falling in love with a good woman?” Her eyes widened. “Yeah, I’m falling in love with you. I’m captured. I’m sliding down.” She started smiling. “At first it was a challenge to see if I could scale those old defenses because, to be quite honest with you, I’ve never met a woman whose defenses I couldn’t take down when I wanted them down.” He studied the ceiling, decided how to phrase the confession. “Until you, that is. I don’t want to take them down. I want you to let them down for me.” He looked at her squarely. “Besides that, I’m letting you get away with murder as far as my reputation is concerned. I actually care about what you think of me. And that’s as much a first for me as apologizing to Fletch.”

The gold flecks in her eyes sparkled, teased. “Maybe the question should be what’s Jemma Lovelace doing falling in love with a—surely you don’t consider yourself a bad man, Charles?”

“Not bad, just,” he tossed his head trying to think of an adequate adjective, “just unrepentant.”

“But not unredeemable.”

“There you go again making me sound like a clipped coupon!”

Jemma laughed. “Charles, go find Marty and Jake. Make some sort of bargain with them that both sides can stick to.”

“So I’ve bared my soul to you and we’re still not going to do the horizontal mambo?”

“Now that’s C talking. And no, not now we’re not.” The phone rang and she reached for it. “But you can pick me up for lunch in a hour.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

J
emma twisted the front door mini-blind wand and watched for C and her SUV. She glanced over her shoulder at the wall clock: 11:05. Maybe he hadn’t been able to find Marty and Jake. Just as that thought cemented itself in her mind, C pulled in and she went to meet him.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that you wait inside for your date?” he asked as she latched her seatbelt on the passenger side.