Lucky Charmed Read online

  I nodded. “Good for you,” I said, as my legal brain started ticking away.

  Being an investor—especially one getting the name of his company included in the project—meant bringing major capital to the table. Investing that kind of money would mean sticking around long enough to watch the progress. Or it would for me. An accountant would probably set up a per diem for his stay. And seeing as nothing had even started yet—dear God he could be there in Charmed for months.

  “So you’re here for a while, then?” I dug my nails into my upper arms.

  Sully blinked a couple of times, studying me like he was contemplating his words. That was bad.

  “I got a house, Carmen,” he said. “In Charmed. I’m not leaving.”

  There was one of those moments where things spin around and lights look funny. I blinked it clear and breathed in lieu of words. There were none. He bought—

  “You—” I shook my head and forced a smile. “You what?”

  Sully gave me a long look, followed by a glance toward the Oreo lady. She’s not gonna save you, buddy.

  “I assumed you’d probably heard.”

  I snickered. “Why?” I asked. “Why would I hear about random people moving here?”

  I mentally patted myself on the back for making him a nobody. But why didn’t I fucking hear about him buying a house? I went to those monthly breakfasts at the Chamber of Commerce. Occasionally. Someone there should have known. I couldn’t pump gas without someone telling me about my ex-husband’s latest hilarious Facebook post. Or my mother’s most current medical issues. But let the hot carnie that made me an overnight scandal come back and buy a house in Charmed, and nobody has anything to say?

  Sully held up a hand. “I don’t know. Never mind.” He laid the hand against his chest, and my eyes fell to it.

  Damn it, I’d loved his hands. The long, roughened fingers of a working guy, even back then. My mind flashed to what they looked like—what they’d felt like on my skin a hundred years ago, and heat rushed to my face.

  “I mean, what do you think? I hang out with Realtors?” That sounded stupid even to me.

  “Well, it’s actually a rental for now.” He backed up, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. “With an option to buy if everything works out.”

  Oh dear God, thank you for that. He could still go. Things just need to not work out. Man, that was catty.

  “But I guess I figured—small town. You’re a lawyer—”

  “How’d you know that?” I asked.

  His tired expression focused as he tilted his jaw. I saw the spark. The challenge. The grin that pulled at his lips. He grabbed a new package of chocolate grahams from the shelf without breaking eye contact, and switched them out with the one in my hand.

  “Well, people do talk to me.”

  Oh. Hell. No.

  No, he didn’t.

  I lifted my chin, and refused to look away. No matter what was liquefying in my chest as his gaze burned through me. No matter what images flashed like a movie reel in my head. I wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.

  “Good for you,” I said, placing the package back on the shelf. I needed them more than ever, but not in front of him. “Welcome back to Charmed.”

  I started to walk around him, but he grabbed my arm.

  “Carmen, wait.”

  His voice was like hot honey over my body.

  I hate honey.

  I was proud of myself. My acting ability was stellar. The fact that I didn’t suck my tongue down my throat, choke on my own spit, or jerk my arm free like I’d been bitten by a rabid squirrel—was Oscar-worthy. Instead, I patted his hand and smiled up at him, slowly stepping to the side until his fingers slid free.

  “We’re adults now, Sully,” I said, wondering where the hell the words were coming from. “It’s all good. Have a great day.”

  And I walked away. And out. And to my car. The pains stabbing through my middle stole my breath. Thank God I was empty-handed, because being chased down for shoplifting cookies while in a blind haze of what-the-fuckery would have been the final icing on a messed-up cake.

  Fumbling for my keys, I hit the button and got in as quickly as possible. I had to leave. Now. Before he came out. Before I could see what he was driving and then obsess every time I saw the same vehicle in another parking lot. Before I could succumb to the temptation of watching to see where he went. Where he lived, what his home looked like.

  “Leave,” I whispered, my voice sounding vaguely desperate. My eyes burned. I shook my head and tilted my head back. “No. You will not cry, damn it.”

  I blinked at the roof. I was thirty-three. Eighteen was a long time ago. Suck it up, Carmen.

  I took a deep breath and looked up, just in time to see him walk out of the store. He’d slid the sunglasses over his eyes, causing a stray lock of dark hair to fall next to his face. He was probably twenty-five feet away, and I could feel that strand of hair on my fingertips.

  Without another look, I pulled out and drove away.

  Chapter Two

  Everything I knew about love I learned from Sully Hart. Everything.

  Sullivan Xavier Hart made his appearance on the carnival circuit the summer of my junior year. He was nineteen, wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps running Lucky Hart, and so he was along for every stop. He was hard to miss. He had taken over the Ferris wheel controls from a coworker and stood there like a Norse god or a vibrant shining star on a runaway freight train. He made eye contact with every single person that gave him a ticket and by the time you passed him you were connected. Sully Hart virtually sizzled with electricity; it was impossible not to be mesmerized by him. And while the sensible part of me knew he probably mesmerized girls everywhere he went, I couldn’t help myself. The second we met, and those intense unblinking hazel eyes landed on me, I was his.

  It didn’t matter that I was sort-of-kind-of already Dean’s. We hadn’t really said it. We weren’t serious, and besides that—Dean was a boy. This guy, in my seventeen-year-old wisdom, was all man. And not just any man. A man on the move. A man with a life. Someone who saw different people and places every week. That was like crack to my nomad-needy heart. I couldn’t resist it.

  It was relatively innocent. Nothing happened that summer except a lot of talking and some very heated, teasing kisses that left me breathless. We kept in touch for a while, until life got in the way. Senior year got crazy; my mother was hell-bent on my getting into a good college and going to law school, and I was hell-bent on getting out of Charmed. Law? Good God, nothing sounded more hideously boring than that, but it could write me a decent ticket to anywhere. And then Dean, who I had managed to get kind of serious with, dumped me before prom because I still hadn’t had sex with him. I was waiting. Lanie waited, so I was, too. And Dean pushing me just made me hold out longer.

  My mom and I were constantly butting heads over schools, so I signed up for a local community college to piss her off. So, with a month to go before the semester started, and a fuck-it-all attitude, I went looking for Sully Hart the first night of the carnival. And dear God, I found him. He was sitting on a fence with a few of other carnies, one of whom I recognized from the year before. Her name was Kia, and last year she hadn’t been so beautiful and exotic-looking. Jealousy coursed through me as I watched them laugh together, obviously a thing. I started to turn back. But then he saw me.

  The way he slid slowly off that fence and looked at me like the rest of the world disappeared, I knew it was on.

  There was nothing innocent about it.

  Sully taught me everything. And I don’t just mean sex. Falling in love with him was easy. It was natural, like we were made to order. Our bodies fit; we finished each other’s sentences; our thoughts were always in sync. The feel of him close by was tangible, whether we were touching or not. We fell hard and fast. He called me his love, and for twenty-two days, we were nonstop. Incomparable lovers. Best friends. Inseparable. After the carnival left Charmed, I drove to its
new city or he skipped out and came to me, but we were never apart. Until the miles became too far, and a decision had to be made.

  I made mine.

  He made his.

  They weren’t the same.

  * * *

  I pulled into the parking lot in front of the trailer-park office, squeezing between my mom’s car and Larry’s giant ugly SUV in a spot that wasn’t really a spot. It’s all there was, and I grabbed it. I palmed my keys and sat behind the wheel in a state of sweaty turmoil, knowing I didn’t have long. One of the slats in the mini-blinds was bent in the middle at right about her eye level. Either the heat or Mom’s curiosity would get me soon, but I had to pull myself together.

  I was flushed, my hands trembled, and I wanted to puke. Geraldine Frost would take one look at me and zero in on that like the second coming. My mother had a laser-like ability to detect a problem in my life, and while I could tell her the truth, I wasn’t in the mood for another lecture about my teenage sins.

  Instead, I squinted like I was having a migraine and rubbed my temple as I got out, waving at Mr. Greene and waiting for the fussing. He was a sweet old guy who had the beginnings of dementia, and yet walked the entire trailer park every day, pointing his cane at people he felt weren’t following the rules. I jiggled open the trailer office door before he could fuss, and squinted deeper and more pathetically. You’re never too old to play sick.

  Mom sat directly to my right, clicking away at something on her computer screen as if she were the busiest, most important person on Earth and wasn’t playing Spider Solitaire. She peered up at me over her Dollar General cheater glasses, her dark red hair glowing a little too red in the florescent light.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  See?

  “I have a headache,” I said.

  “You don’t get headaches,” she said, frowning at me like she was reading my skin.

  “I do, too,” I said, feeling one coming on for real. I pulled the brown hair band from its perpetual place on my wrist and twisted up my hair in a messy bun. I needed it off of me.

  She grabbed one of my hands.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “You’re clammy,” she said, like it was an accusation.

  “Okay, I told you I don’t feel great, so—”

  “It’s probably stress. Did I tell you about the migraines I’ve been getting?” she asked. “All this worry and tension.”

  And there we were, back on her. “What tension?” I asked.

  The door opened behind me.

  “Hey Car,” Larry said. He pushed his way in behind me.

  “Hey, Larry,” I said, my cheek twitching at the Car nickname.

  I couldn’t stand that, but Larry Landell had managed the Bailey’s Pond Trailer Park since before I was born and had seen me grow up there. He called me what he called me. And he had given my mother a job as office secretary, so he could back off some of the admin stuff, so who was I to gripe about something as petty as a name.

  “You here to pick up the books?”

  Because I’m a lawyer, somehow that relates to all things legal, financial, accounting, and otherwise with certain people. Like reporting their sales tax and checking the books each quarter for anything auditable. Because I was Gerry Frost’s daughter and technically trailer-park family, I got to do it for free.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, giving me a double-take.

  Jesus.

  “See?” My mother pointed a pen at me. “I told you, you look like shit. All pasty and squirmy.”

  “Well, good,” I said, pulling up a rolling chair. “My ego needed a kick in the crotch today, so now I’m much better.”

  “Did you hear, yet?” Larry asked, to which my mother reacted by picking up a folder and swatting him with it.

  “Imbecile! I told you!”

  “Oh, sorry, Gerry,” Larry said, looking at her with hurt puppy-dog eyes. Oh lord, he still had it bad for her. That’s why he suddenly needed a secretary. Certainly not for her hunt-and-peck typing skills. My mom was still a good-looking woman, just a little flighty.

  “Tell me what?” I asked, rubbing my forehead. I was pretty sure I knew where this was going.

  “Nothing,” my mom said.

  “Gerry,” Larry said, tilting his balding head.

  “I swear,” she said under her breath, violently shoving the cheaters on top of her head.

  “Mom?” I asked wearily. “Is it about the new entertainment complex?”

  She blew out a breath. “You do know.”

  “No secret. You and I talked about it two weeks ago,” I said, dropping my hands to my sides and trying to look innocent. “You signed Lanie and me up for that… gazebo thing. The ‘let’s-hold-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya’ debacle.”

  “The ‘Build a Charming Charmed’ project,” she said defensively. “It’s a good thing, Carmen. Don’t make fun. And it starts tomorrow, so I expect you there.”

  It was the city council getting out of paying for some of the new structures for the complex. They got the town all fired up to volunteer, to come together and donate time to build a big pavilion and a gazebo. And—I don’t know what else. But anyone who could swing a hammer or tote wood was scorned if they didn’t sign up to help. I did not have either skill, nor did Lanie, but ours were the first names she wrote down on her pink clipboard when she signed up to be in charge of manpower.

  “Lanie’s out of town.”

  “You aren’t attached at the hip,” she said. “You can show up. This is a good thing.”

  “It’s giving weapons to unskilled labor,” I said. “Someone’s gonna get a cracked skull.”

  “Whatever.” She flicked her fingers. “It’s teamwork. Six o’clock.”

  “I’m going on vacation,” I said. “I won’t be around for—”

  “That’s three weeks away. You’ll be around for enough,” she said. “You being a part of this might help your reputation.” She glanced at me. “You’re too defensive. And then there’s Dean.”

  “No, there’s no Dean.” I turned to Larry. “Did you ever find out how the land sale was affecting the trailer park? You never told me.”

  “Larry says it’s not part of it,” Mom said. “He says Bailey kept it.”

  I nodded. “Okay.” I glanced at Larry. “Thanks, Larry.”

  Mom narrowed her gaze in on me. “You know who it sold to.”

  I sighed. There was no winning.

  “Yes, I know,” I said, closing my eyes. “Lucky Hart.”

  Larry cleared his throat. “The Lucky Charm, I heard they’re going to call it. Silly name.”

  “It’s kind of genius, actually,” I said. “Just—”

  “The old man’s not running it anymore,” my mom said.

  “He died,” we said in unison. I realized I hadn’t said a word to Sully about his dad dying. It would have been the right thing to do. The adult thing to do. I wasn’t thinking like an adult up at that moment, though. I’d been thinking about eyes and man-chest and how to make it out of the store without collapsing in spasms.

  I stared at her coffee cup, which was preferable to her scrutiny. “I know. I… just ran into… hang on…”

  “What?” she said, frowning as I put my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes. “You ran into who?”

  “You know who I ran into,” I said. Literally. Smack into his chest. “The big question is, why did you know? Why was he surprised that I didn’t?”

  My mother sighed like I made her tired. Yeah. I made her tired.

  “Carmen.”

  I cocked my head. “Mom.”

  “I found out from Susan Harmocker,” Mom said. “She works for one of the councilmen, and she gave me the scoop.” She winked. “Secretary-to-secretary.”

  Good Lord. Now she had a tribe.

  “And when was this?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “A few weeks back?”

  “A few weeks,” I echoed. People knew for a f
ew weeks. “Seriously? I don’t live in a bubble, Mom. No one could pick up a phone?”

  “Do you know he lied?” she said, narrowing her eyes with disdain.

  “No,” I said, crossing my arms. “No, I don’t know. I don’t know anything. There’s been a town-wide conspiracy to keep me out of the loop.”

  “He didn’t apply for the permit under his own name,” she said. “He used a pseudonym to hide it.”

  Ten dollars said that Susan Harmocker threw that word out there and Mom came home and looked it up.

  “LH Industries?”

  She frowned. “How’d you know?”

  Bigger question was, how did I remember that? The last time I’d heard the name was fifteen years earlier, in a random conversation about his family’s company.

  “LH is Lucky Hart,” I said. “It’s the legal incorporated name of the business.”

  Mom chewed on the side of her cheek and shrugged. “Well, still,” she said, straightening a stack of papers. “It could have been a little more above-board.”

  I widened my eyes. “Look who’s talking. How above-board were you, not telling me about this?”

  She gave me her I’m your mother and that’s that look.

  “You have enough on your plate with your job and Dean and—”

  “I have no Dean on my plate, Mom,” I said. “I divorced him, so our plates don’t play together anymore. That problem went away. Six years ago.”

  She hated that I’d gotten divorced. Not that she was ever particularly in love with Dean—she found him a bit whiny and controlling—but in her mind, as long as I was married, I was taken care of. And grandchildren could pop out at any minute. Little did she know I’d been on birth control our entire marriage. It never felt right to bring kids into our life. I never knew why, but I hadn’t been wrong.

  “You know what I’m saying,” she said, pushing back in her chair. “You have enough,” she repeated.

  I really didn’t know, but her tone didn’t leave room for questions.

  “So you felt that being blindsided with Sully Hart was better?” I asked. “Did it not cross your mind—anyone’s mind—that a little prep might be nice?”