Picking up the Manhattans she’d just mixed, she went out the back door of their custom-built home. It was an excessively hot July on the California coast, but the cool breeze coming off the bay and across the yard felt refreshing.
She rounded the corner of the house to the side yard, where Benton watched over her two children playing in the massive sandbox their daddy paid someone under the table to build. Benton smiled broadly, hands tucked in his trouser pockets, when he saw her, and her heart fluttered like his auburn hair in the wind. God, the man was beautiful. He took a glass from her, their fingers brushing. Electricity zinged up her arm, tightened her breasts. They had a connection. She’d felt it the instant he and his wife arrived at the house she’d shown, and eventually, sold to them. She’d bet the commission on her next deal that he felt the same. And now they were neighbors, three doors apart. So convenient, especially when she had a husband whose business kept him on the road more than off.
Benton’s hazel eyes held hers over the rim of his glass. A single maraschino cherry bobbed in the well of the glass like a buoy in the bay. His gaze held delicious promises of what he planned to do with her. She shivered with delight.
Looking back, Charlotte should have turned around and walked back into the house. A fling to scratch an itch wasn’t worth her marriage, children, and the fallout that followed. But she wouldn’t have had her Lily. She also wouldn’t have found herself in her current situation: a widow hell-bent on leaving town before her precious children returned home with the knowledge of what she’d done.
Instead, Charlotte had lured Benton up to the apartment above the detached garage.
“Olivia, Lucas,” Charlotte said to her children who played in the sand. “Mommy and Mr. St. John have grown-up things to discuss. We’ll be right there.” She lifted her Manhattan toward the apartment, careful not to spill. “Follow me, Mr. St. John. I have some real estate I’d like to show you.” She walked across the lawn, her weight on her toes so her heels didn’t sink, and with a bounce in his step, Benton tailed her up the narrow staircase to the second-floor apartment.
She’d barely closed the door before he took her glass, setting both drinks on a nearby table, and crowded her against the wall. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for this?” He growled the words, boxing her in. “Weeks, Charlie. Fucking weeks.” His mouth landed on hers and hips ground into the juncture of her thighs. His tongue swiped over her lips, dipped into her mouth. He tasted of cherry from the one sip he took of his cocktail, mints, and the lingering bitterness of coffee. He smelled of drugstore aftershave and nervous sweat.
“No need to rush. We have plenty of time,” she said when he tore his mouth from hers and kissed a dotted line down her neck.
Hands she’d admired when he signed their real estate documents skimmed down her thighs. They pushed up her pencil skirt, bunching the material at her waist. He ran his finger along the edge of her silk lace panties, from hip to crotch and back. “You attached to these?”
Before she could answer, he tore them off. She gasped, her head banging into the wall at the suddenness of it. The skin on her hip stung like a rug burn. He gently rubbed the tender flesh and suckled at her bottom lip.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “I can’t seem to control myself around you. You make me wild.”
“Then let’s get wild.” Her smile was seductive.
He took her against the wall just that once, because afterward Benton grew a conscience like a wart he refused to burn off.
The damn man.
Charlotte zips closed the suitcase that holds her shoes and glances at the clock. It’s the fourth case she’s packed and she doesn’t have much time. Olivia will most likely be home tomorrow and she’ll bring Lily, and everything Lily overheard about Charlotte before she ran away. Lucas could show up tonight from wherever it is that he went off to. Okay, so she lied. He didn’t text her. Nancy did. She needed to borrow Charlotte’s COACH tote, the pewter one that looks divine with her slingback heels. But Charlotte needed a viable excuse so Olivia wouldn’t drag her up the mountain to face Lily. She was finally free of Dwight. She wouldn’t risk her freedom altogether. So she told her daughter the text was from Lucas.
Whenever she threatened to leave him, he’d plead for her to stay. Then he’d get angry that she threatened to go in the first place. He told her he’d follow her. He’d tip off the police about what really went down the night Benton died. He’d sacrifice himself to keep her at his side. His shiny, well-connected arm ornament.
He would, too, so she bided her time until she knew he wouldn’t come after her.
Fortunately, Dwight was never interested in monitoring their finances. Taxes made his eyes cross. It’s why he kept draining his company’s accounts. He spent more than he saved. Math wasn’t his forte. He was grateful Charlotte didn’t mind handling their books, making it too easy for Charlotte to send most of her earnings to the offshore accounts she set up when she received the inheritance from her mother Dwight never knew about.
Her daddy was right to disown her when she failed to graduate college and married Dwight. He told her Dwight wouldn’t amount to anything. Admittedly, marrying him had been foolish and impulsive. But Dwight fit her mold of a perfect partner. She thought one day her daddy would be proud. He’d write her back into his will. Welcome her home with open arms.
He never did. But Gilbert Dayton didn’t foresee his own wife, who was wealthy in her own right and concerned as any mother should be about her only daughter, divorcing him. Thanks to Val Dayton, Charlotte was set for life.
The doorbell rings and Charlotte scowls at the clock. Her ride is early.
“I’m still packing,” she tells the driver when she answers the door. She gestures at the luggage nearby. “Take these. I’ll be out when I’m ready.”
“Yes, Mrs. Carson.” He brings his department store aftershave odor with him when he steps into the house.
Charlotte returns to her bedroom and packs up the bathroom. She loads her satchel with makeup and perfumes. When she’s done, she returns to the front door, passing decades of family photos in the hallway. She puts the satchel on the floor and takes their last family portrait off the wall, the one she reframed. She removes the photo and tears it in two. Dwight floats to the ground. Lucas, Olivia, and Lily circle her, proud and gorgeous in their evening attire.
Her lip trembles. She presses the photo to her chest. She’ll miss her babies.
She closes the front door, leaving her house for the last time. She meant what she said to Olivia. She’ll die if she’s sentenced to prison.
“All set?” The driver opens her door.
She hands off her satchel and settles into the back seat of the sleek town car with blacked-out windows.
He rounds the car and gets in front. “Where to? SLO Airport?”
She smiles at her reflection in the window. Her plans are bigger than that.
“LAX.”
His squinty eyes peer at her in the rearview mirror. “That’ll cost you.”
She peers inside her purse to check she remembered to empty the safe of cash.
“That won’t be a problem.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He shifts the car into gear. It glides from the curb, away from her failures and toward something much better.