Trust An Even Hand Read online

  Charlene frowned. She hadn’t thought this much about the two terrible men in her past since she’d actually filed for divorce. She was definitely rattled. And she knew exactly why.

  Damn Club Volare, and damn Luke Logan. It was pretty much impossible to avoid thinking about BDSM with him around, and she’d worked so freaking hard to try to forget that part of her life.

  Speaking of which—where was he?

  Charlene looked around and caught the little girl smiling at her, her tiny little hand partially covering her mouth in possibly the cutest gesture ever. Ok, that could cheer anybody up. Charlene smiled back and waved, and only then did she realize the little girl was looking past her, just as she heard the door opening again.

  She turned, and it was like getting hit by a wave. She knew he was coming, and still nothing could have prepared her for it.

  Luke.

  Here, in the light of day, she got the full hit of Luke. And just…holy fucking shit, but that was a man.

  Still in the white button-down you knew he wanted to take off, still in those jeans and those cowboy boots, still with the sandy hair and the gold-flecked blue eyes. Still six feet and change.

  Still with the ability to stop time.

  His eyes were on her. Only her. Every time he looked at her, she felt like that. It made it impossible to think. All she could do was take him in—the dusky tan of his skin, the dip where his collarbones met, the hard planes of his muscular chest under that shirt. Clean-shaven, but his hair mussed. And those eyes, pinning her where she stood.

  Charlene felt her body start to react, like it always did. Traitorous freaking body. Her nipples started to harden, her core started to tighten, and for a second she forgot about everything else. She forgot about being rattled by a young-enough-to-babysit shop girl, she forgot about wedding problems, she forgot that Luke and Gavin had some dumb plan between them.

  There was nothing else in the world but the way Luke Logan made her feel, when he looked at her like that.

  Like she was sexy. Desirable. Like he wanted her, and he would have her, and for a moment Charlene was absolutely sure she would let him…

  She blinked. Nope. It was that Dom energy, the way he commanded a room. He was doing it now, walking towards her like he owned the place. And that was exactly what she had to watch out for—she already knew what happened when she let her guard down. Jimmy had made sure of that.

  And if Jimmy could mess her up as badly as he had without even a fraction of this chemistry, imagine what Luke Logan could do to her.

  Did she know what she did to him?

  Charlene stood there, in the middle of a flower shop, and she was the most beautiful thing there. The way she looked at him, her eyes wide open, her lips slightly parted—a natural submissive. She couldn’t hide the way her body responded to him, and if Luke didn’t have years of experiencing wielding a Dom’s level of self-control, the whole damn world would have known how he responded to her.

  Watching her try to fight it was damn near tragic.

  He closed in on her, not giving two shits about the rest of the world, until he saw something else. Lines at the corners of her eyes, tension at the corners of her mouth. Something else was wrong.

  Luke frowned. He’d seen Alan Crennel, the man who’d already made life so difficult for Gavin and Olivia and all of Club Volare, when he’d finally made it to the florist. Driving away in his very distinctive car. Luke had hoped it was a coincidence. But maybe not.

  A low growl tickled his throat. If that man had messed with Charlene, he was going to regret it.

  “What’s wrong?” he said to Charlene, and closed the distance between them to just a foot or so. Intimate. She didn’t back away.

  But she lied.

  “Nothing,” she said, looking down.

  Luke looked towards the back of the store, where the register was, a desk for arranging flowers, a few other things. There were two women there, one with blue hair, one of them older, both of them whispering and looking at Charlene—and now him, too.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  Immediately, she did. Goddamn, those brown eyes looking up at him. He could think of a few situations where he could make use of that.

  “You wouldn’t get away with lying like that if you were my sub,” he said.

  Those big brown eyes flashed.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “Don’t call me ma’am.”

  He grinned. “You want me to call you what I should call you?”

  Charlene flushed, looked away. “Ok, well, the point is, I don’t need your help with all of this.”

  “You’ve mentioned that. Several times,” he said. “You don’t see me as the wedding-planning type?”

  Finally, he got a smile.

  “Not even a little bit,” she said.

  “Well, once again: too damn bad. You’re stuck with me, unless you want to go ahead and plan someone else’s wedding.”

  Charlene flinched at that—he’d struck a nerve. He noted it. He’d tread more carefully around the idea of weddings, given that Charlene’s ex-husband had turned out to be such a turd. But if that was a raw nerve, planning an actual wedding must be tough. Yet she’d practically begged to do it.

  Interesting.

  “Besides,” he said, drawing Charlene’s attention away from whatever crappy memory she was dwelling on, “maybe you can teach me a thing or two. Like what the hell this is,” he said, pointing at a flower that looked like exactly one thing.

  “That’s an orchid,” Charlene said.

  “That ain’t what it looks like.”

  She laughed. “Believe it or not, you’re not the first person to notice that.”

  “I bet.” Luke looked at her again, watching the dusky flush rise in her cheeks, the smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “I like it.”

  The smile almost escaped.

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” she said.

  Luke could have enjoyed watching Charlene Bastien try to pretend she didn’t want to smile all damn day, but his protective instincts twanged, and he paid attention.

  Yup. Just a few feet away, a little girl in picture-perfect pigtails was trying to balance on a stool, stretching for some flower just out of reach.

  He moved quickly, startling Charlene, and got there just in time.

  “Whoops,” he said, catching the child as she toppled off the stool and then swinging her in the air, to make it into a game. It worked; there was giggling.

  “You want that flower, huh?” he said as he set her down.

  Shyly, the little girl nodded. She was smiling, but retreating from Luke at the same time. Not that unusual; kids often reacted to his size.

  But Charlene saw it.

  “Hey, sweetie, what’s wrong?” she said, and came over, dropped down to the child’s height, her legs folded over, very nearly kneeling on the ground. Couldn’t be easy in those heels.

  He watched her face. She was so kind, so totally focused on helping this little girl who’d been let loose in a flower shop. Luke looked around—a woman who looked like the grown-up version of the little girl, minus the pigtails, was poring over a price list near the register.

  Now Charlene and the child were whispering conspiratorially and looking at him.

  “She wants that flower,” Charlene said, pointing.

  Luke grinned. He could buy one flower and make two women happy. Done.

  “I’ll get you that rose,” he said to the little girl.

  Suddenly, the little girl piped up, her voice strong. “It’s not a rose,” she said. “It’s a Lisianthus.”

  Now Charlene grinned. “She knows a lot about flowers.”

  Luke loved smart ass little kids. He especially loved encouraging them. It was the main way he drove his sister, with her two girls, crazy.

  “Is there anything you don’t know?” he said.

  But the little girl’s expression changed
, lightning fast. Now she was gravely serious, and it was all Luke could do not to laugh even harder to see that on such a little face.

  “Yes,” the little girl said.

  “What is it, honey?” Charlene said. “Maybe we can help.”

  The little girl sighed, and Luke again had to stifle a laugh. So serious.

  Then she looked up at Charlene, eyes wide.

  “Why do they call it the birds and the bees?”

  This time Luke had to cough to cover it.

  Charlene blinked a couple of times. Opened her mouth, closed it. Looked up at him hopelessly.

  The little girl sighed again. “I keep asking, but no one will tell me.”

  Charlene’s eyes were wide open, silently begging him for help.

  That was another look he’d know what to do with under different circumstances.

  This time he just smiled, followed her lead by kneeling down, and looked at the little girl with as much seriousness as he could muster.

  “That’s ‘cause grown-ups get nervous talking to little kids,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “That’s stupid,” Pigtails said. “Grown-ups are stupid about lots of things.”

  Luke looked at Charlene over Pigtails, and winked. The little girl wasn’t wrong.

  And she wasn’t done.

  “Grown-ups get really stupid about that, especially,” she said, darkly.

  Charlene, still struck mute, mouthed, Oh my God, at him over the little girl’s head, her eyes filled with panic. Yeah. Time to find Pigtails’s mom and hand this one over before…

  “But my teacher told us about marriage, it’s not hard,” the little girl said. “I just don’t know why they call it that. It’s stupid.”

  They looked at each other.

  And then Charlene burst out laughing, and it was one of the best things Luke had ever heard. Soft and full-throated at the same time, full of music.

  He wanted to hear more of that.

  He wanted to hear a lot more from Charlene Bastien, all around.

  So he got caught out staring at her when little Pigtails got her last word in.

  “How long have you two been married?” she asked.

  Charlene’s face immediately fell. And it fell hard.

  Luke watched her force a smile at the little girl, and gently push a strand of hair behind the little girl’s ear. “We’re not married, silly,” she said. “Go ask your mommy if she’ll let you have that Lisianthus, and Mr. Logan here will buy it for you.”

  The little girl lit up and went off like a tiny little rocket, powered by happiness and other little-girl things, and Luke only barely noticed. He was watching the beautiful woman in front of him who was trying to pretend she wasn’t sad.

  If he asked her about what she was really sad about, she’d shut down.

  “How about you?” he said. “You get your flowers?”

  There—exasperation. That was better to see on Charlene’s face than sadness, any day of the week.

  “No,” she said. “And I have no idea why. I made the appointment with the owner directly, but there’s obviously some sort of problem. It all seemed sort of shady, and I’ve been waiting, but—”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

  Charlene’s eyes went wide again, just for a second. Goddamn, he could get used to seeing that.

  Then her eyes narrowed.

  “Is this part of the thing you and Gavin are keeping me in the dark about?” she said.

  Luke studied her. The tension had come back to her shoulders, hunched forward, closer to her ears. Her eyes focused. Her whole body tight, ready to flee or fight.

  She didn’t trust people not to lie to her. To trick her.

  Which meant he’d screwed up.

  Charlene went on, “Look, I get not wanting to stress Olivia out, but—”

  “You’re not crazy,” Luke said, and those were the magic words. Charlene stopped talking, startled out of it, and just stared at him. “You’re right, there was another reason Gavin asked me to tag along. I didn’t take it seriously, so I didn’t want to worry you over nothing, but that was a mistake. I won’t do it again. I’ll explain later. But right now I’m going to go handle this for you so you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. Better to get it taken care of, get some sense of whether Alan Crennel and his Sinsations club were actually a threat first.

  Plus, Luke was annoyed. That had been a rookie mistake, keeping something from someone who’d been hurt by lies in the past, and he could have avoided it. He wasn’t going to fail Charlene like that again.

  Which was why, when he got up to the register, he turned around once to check up on her. Which was why he saw Charlene’s face drain of all color, all life. Which was why he saw her expression turn to fear as the door opened and a tall, skinny man in a suit walked in.

  Luke didn’t have a good memory for faces. But this one he would never forget. The last time he’d seen this sorry son of a bitch, he was making Charlene cry.

  It was her ex, Jimmy Walters. Back from whatever rock he’d crawled under, and with his eyes locked on Charlene.

  Chapter Four

  Charlene had no idea how to react.

  Well, to a few things. First, there was Luke admitting that he’d made a mistake. And that he would fix it. And that he would explain.

  Literally she could not remember the last time a man, any man, had said that to her. Certainly not any Dom. Her brain short-circuited a little bit, and then she’d just stood there with her mouth open, like a fool.

  So of course that was the exact moment her freaking ex-husband decided to re-enter her life.

  For a second she thought she was hallucinating. Charlene would almost rather have been hallucinating, and just gotten herself to the hospital for whatever they do when you hallucinate your hellish ex-husband in a flower shop.

  But no. It was Jimmy, in the flesh.

  And Charlene was paralyzed.

  She’d thought about this moment, if it would ever come, if she’d ever see him again, and how she would handle it. She’d thought about it so many times. In her weirdly painful, angry fantasies, she’d always been totally on top of her game, completely aware and about ten steps ahead. She’d level him with some withering line that didn’t betray too much of how badly she’d been hurt, of how damaged she still felt. Something that made him feel as small as he deserved to feel. Something that let him know, always and forever, how wrong he’d been.

  And instead she just stood there like a terrified rabbit.

  But Luke didn’t.

  It happened so fast that she almost wasn’t sure what was happening. One second she was frozen in Jimmy’s sights as he walked toward her with all that unearned confidence, dressed to impress, with that smug smile on his face.

  The next moment Luke stood between Charlene and her terrible, stupid past. All six looming feet of him.

  Jimmy tried to walk around him, but Luke boxed him out. Charlene looked down—now she could feel Jimmy’s eyes on her, and it didn’t feel good.

  Jimmy said, “Charlene—”

  “Stop talking.”

  Luke’s baritone rumbled out, filling the warm, humid shop. Charlene, still rooted to the spot, started to thaw.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she heard Jimmy say.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Luke said, in that same low voice. “If she wanted to talk to you, she’d talk to you. It’s clear she doesn’t want to. And she doesn’t have to do a goddamn thing she doesn’t want to do.”

  Charlene blinked. He was right. Luke Logan, infuriating as he was, was right. She didn’t have to do a goddamn thing she didn’t want to do, and that included standing here, frozen, feeling like she had no choice but to let her terrible ex-husband ruin her day.

  She turned and ran out of that flower shop as fast as her heels would carry her.

  The next day, Charlene felt stupid. And then she felt stupid for feeling stupid.

 
She’d run home from that wonderful ex-husband surprise without thinking too much about it, and only realized when she got home that it was because Luke had almost…given her permission? To do exactly that. And it had been exactly what she’d needed.

  She’d sent a text to Gavin and Olivia, telling them she was fine (she was not fine), then she’d cried like a teenager in the shower, and then she’d gone to bed.

  And now she was faced with the clear light of day, and a whole bunch of questions.

  First: Jimmy had come right for her. He hadn’t just walked into a flower shop, been surprised and delighted to see her (for some freaking reason Charlene assumed made sense in Jimmy’s twisted brain), and then moseyed on over to pay his respects. He’d been there to see her. Which meant he’d known where she was.

  How?

  For the first time in memory, Charlene had called in sick to her own damn restaurant. Because Jimmy knew where it was.

  So now she was pacing around her house, trying to remind herself that this was, actually, a safe place. This house—with its old green shutters and heavy beams across the ceiling, its big covered porch and its oversized, private lot, and its big garden that she loved to putter around in—this house was the one thing she’d bought for herself with her father’s money. And she’d done it after Jimmy left.

  Hell, if she’d done it before Jimmy left, he might have stuck around—the fact that she used all that money to start a charity had apparently been the last straw for that prince of a man.

  Bullet dodged, she thought to herself, but still, after all these years, it stung that Jimmy had been the one to leave. He’d taken that from her, too.

  But this house was hers. It was everything she could do with her new life. It was everything she wanted her new life to be. Unfortunately, it was also empty.

  And she was just pacing around in it, trying to plan a wedding in her head. Trying to be useful.

  And trying not to think about Luke Logan.

  Charlene couldn’t bring herself to finish anything. She’d start the dishes, then catch herself daydreaming. Cleaning hadn’t helped. Not even gardening. She couldn’t even concentrate enough to make lists, and making to-do lists was how she relaxed.