I smiled just a tiny bit.
He sat down on the bed next to me and gathered
me in his strong arms, pulling me into his lap, making me feel small and
protected.
I buried my head in his neck
and inhaled his scent, expensive cologne and Noah and home.
He stroked my palm and slid his fingers
up my forearm lightly.
“Charlotte,” he said.
“I love you.
You are everything to me.
Everything.”
His lips found mine as I melted against him,
tasting his minty breath.
He pulled
away and I curved my body into his as he held me tight, one hand against the
small of my back, the other holding my hand.
“There is no one on this Earth, in this
universe, that could compare to you.
You are beautiful, intelligent, amazing.
You are everything I have ever wanted,
everything I could have ever dreamed.”
He tilted my chin up and forced me to look him in the eye.
“I never imagined in my whole life I
would find someone like you, and that if I did, you could ever love me back.”
His eyes were on mine, so intoxicating, so
intense, that it was almost too much.
Just being close to him set my body and my heart bursting into hot
flames, igniting inside my stomach and licking their way down to my center.
“I have not been doing a good job making you
feel loved,” he said, and it was almost as if he were talking to himself.
Darkness clouded his face, and I knew he was
blaming himself for my insecurities.
I knew his tendency was to turn everything back onto himself, to
self-loathe, and I hated that he was blaming himself for something that was all
me.
“No,” I said.
“No, you are doing a good job.
I do feel loved, Noah.”
I put my head against his chest, hearing
the strong, steady beat of his heart, and I was instantly calmed.
He shook his head and swallowed, his eyes
softening, the emotion on his face evident.
“It’s a case, Charlotte,” he said.
‘That’s all it is.”
He pulled back and looked me in the
eye.
“This is how it works in big
cases.
Casey Anthony, George
Zimmerman… these people were in the care of their lawyers, because it’s often
the only safe place for them to be.”
I felt the side of my mouth twitch into a
smile.
“Are you saying Lilah is
like Casey Anthony or George Zimmerman?”
“I’m not comparing her to those people.
But her case has the possibility of
becoming just as big.
There have
already been calls.”
“From who?”
“The Times, the Post, the Star.”
He shook his head and pushed my hair
back from my face.
His touch was
soothing, his hand warm.
“Please, I
don’t want you to worry about Lilah.”
I nodded.
“Promise me.”
“I promise you, Noah.”
I fell into his eyes as he kissed me again, his
hands tangling in my hair.
“God,
you are so beautiful,” he said.
“I
exist just to make you happy.”
He
shook his head, and looked at me in that way of his, like he was looking at me
in wonder and awe.
“Let’s get out
of here,” he said after a moment.
“I
thought we had to wait for Lilah.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“Clementine can take care of Lilah.
If she finds her, she’ll call me.”
He placed me gently on the ground then stood up
and wrapped his hand around mine.
“Let’s go do something.”
“Like what?”
He pulled me close to him, his chest pressing
against mine.
“I’m taking you to lunch.”
“You just ordered room service!”
“Fuck room service.
You are way too beautiful and perfect to
be squirreled away in some pretentious hotel room.
Let’s go enjoy the city.”
This time, when he led me down the hallway of
the hotel, I felt nothing but happiness.
***
We had lunch at Gramercy Tavern, where we opted
to sit in the tavern section of the restaurant instead of the stuffier dining
room.
Even on the tavern side the
space was opulent and sophisticated, all dark oak and round tables.
Wide wooden planks ran parallel to each
other across the high ceiling and the shelf behind the sprawling bar was
stocked with top shelf liquor.
Noah ordered for us, heirloom tomato salad with
peaches and pine nuts to start, smoked pork shoulder with peppers for our
entrée, and a strawberry shortcake ice cream sandwich for dessert.
Our conversation was light, focusing not on
anything to do with the Lilah Parks case or my sessions with Dr. Jason
Cartwright, but on plans for the new office, decorating ideas I had, how crazy
my mom had been for talking to those reporters.
I kept looking for an opening, a way to
bring up what had happened to me on the way to the hotel with the man who’d
accosted me while I was in the car.
I decided to do it as soon as lunch was over, when
we were safely back in our apartment, but as we walked outside, Noah had other
plans.
“Let’s go and do something for our wedding,” he
said.
“Like what?”
He shrugged.
“I don’t know.
Plan something.
Buy something.
Taste a cake, pick out a dress.”
I giggled.
“I don’t think you can just go and do things like that,” I said. “I
think you need to have appointments.
And besides, you can’t go with me to pick out my dress!
It’s bad luck.”
“Register?”
He waved his hand over his head.
“I always see people in movies
registering with one of those little wands.”
I shook my head.
“I’m not registering for gifts.”
It would be strange, I thought, to
expect our friends and family to bring us gifts, when Noah (we?) already had so
much.
“Right.”
Noah nodded, understanding my thinking without either of us having to
say anything.
“We could do
donations in lieu of gifts?”
“Yes.”
I bit my lip, thinking about it.
“Books.”
“What?”
“Donations of books.
I read this article once, about the
amount of children who don’t even own one book, and it just… it stayed with
me.
I found it so completely
sad.
We could register for
books.
Not just for children, but
for adults, we could distribute them to homeless shelters, food banks…”
Noah nodded, his eyes brightening.
“I know just the place.”
Twenty minutes later, we pulled up in front of
The Strand, a huge independent bookstore on Broadway and 125
th
.
The bright red wraparound sign out front
boasted that there were eighteen miles of books inside.
We walked in and I inhaled that wonderful scent
of books and paper, the kind of scent you couldn’t get at a big chain bookstore
anymore, because it had been beaten out with the smell of coffee and the
plastic of their general merchandise sections.
“Have you been here before?” Noah asked as we
made our way through the displays to the floor-to-ceiling rows of fiction.
I shook my head.
“No.”
It made me sad, thinking about how close
this place had been, and how I’d never taken the time to enjoy it.
I made a vow to get out and enjoy New
York more, no matter how crazy things got with the school and the wedding and
our new case.
We reached the mystery and thriller section,
and I ran my hands over the smooth spines of the books, that familiar
excitement growing inside of me.
Books.
I remembered what it
had been like when I was younger, the trips to the bookstore my mom would take
me on every Sunday.
She had failed
me as a mother in a lot of ways, but one of the things she had given me was a
love of books.
She’d let me read
everything and anything, and because of that, my tastes were eclectic.
“Make
a list,” Noah said.
“Pick your
favorites.
As
many as you want.
We’ll put
them on a website, people can buy them from their independents, and we’ll have
them shipped to the reception.”
“We will?”
“Yes,” he said, like it was the easiest thing
in the world.
“We’ll put together a
tower of books.
We can supplement
it with ones we buy ourselves, and then before we leave for our honeymoon, we
can deliver them to the places of your choice.”
I smiled and couldn’t help but clap my
hands.
I threw my arms around him,
burying my face in his neck, and I felt like maybe he was blushing just a little
bit.
“It’s not that big of a deal, Charlotte,” he
said sheepishly.
“But I am happy to
have pleased you.”
Noah’s phone
rang then, and he pulled it out and looked at it.
“I have to take this,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows at him, questioning.
“It’s not about Lilah.” He offered no further
information, instead disappearing back toward the front of the store, his tone
annoyed as he barked instructions to whoever had just called him.
I pulled out my own phone and started making a
list in the notes section, tapping out authors and titles. There were so many books
I wanted to register for already, and I hadn’t even made my way to the romance
section.
It was a few moments later when I heard two
girls talking through the stacks.
“That was Noah Cutler,” one of them said.
“Holy shit, he is
smokin’
,” the other
one said.
“Even hotter than his
pictures.”
“Gorgeous and rich,” the other one said
wistfully.
“How come I never meet
men like that?”
Because he loves me,
I thought to myself, looking down at my engagement
ring which was so bright
it sparkled even under the
dim industrial track lighting of the bookstore.
I sighed and allowed myself a moment of
happiness, then crouched down and began adding more titles to my list.
I’d moved to romance and was wondering if it
would be inappropriate to add some erotic romance when my phone buzzed in my
hand.
A text.
From John.
“Hi, Charlotte – thank you for speaking
with me today, and I am sorry if I scared you.
Would you be willing to meet me tonight
at my apartment?
Six o’clock?
I can explain everything then.”
He’d followed it up with the address of an
apartment high on the west side – past the neighborhoods known for being
liberal and earthy crunchy, past Morningside Heights and deep into Harlem.
I swallowed around the lump in my
throat.
I was going to have to tell Noah.
Right away.
As soon as we left the
bookstore.
I should have told him before, but with
everything going on with Lilah, there hadn’t been a good time.
It’s not keeping a secret,
I told myself.
It’s just a delay.
I
heard the sound of Noah’s footsteps echoing across the wood floors of the
bookstore before I saw him.
“Charlotte,” he said.
“Hi,” I said, shoving my phone quickly back
into my bag and standing up, the newest J. Kenner book in my hand.
“Do you think it would be wildly
inappropriate to be displaying sexy romance covers at our wedding?
My mom would have a conniption, I think,
although she definitely reads them.
They’re shoved in a bin under her bed that’s marked ‘Winter Sweaters.’”
I looked up from the cover, the smile on my
face fading as I took in Noah’s dark expression.
“Charlotte,” he said again.
His voice and demeanor were controlled,
so controlled it sent a shiver of trepidation through my body.
He reached out and took the book out of
my hand, placed it back on the shelf, not bothering to make sure it was in the
right place.