Before Daylight. Andie J. Christopher

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СКАЧАТЬ when he’d been fired from the family business. He’d earned his reputation as a misogynist asshole with that video, and he’d tried to do penance since. He’d struck out on his own, and gotten out of the public eye. He regretted the distance between him and his family, but he was done being the family fuck up.

      And despite the shadow of his shady past, he was happy with his life, or at least, he pretended to be. But in the past year or so, since Jonah had settled down, Charlie found himself wanting more. He wanted more than someone who assumed he was still that guy in the video. Someone who looked at him the way Carla looked at Jonah.

      He didn’t begrudge Jonah’s happiness. His friend had had a long road to finding contentment with his wife and baby Layla; his college football career had ended abruptly and tragically after both his mother and girlfriend passed away. But Charlie couldn’t help the pang of longing he felt whenever he was around Jonah and Carla.

      Even though he’d been on a date almost every Saturday this year, Charlie had been having no luck finding someone who fit him as a long-term partner. Women either wanted him because they thought he would put them on TV, or they didn’t take him seriously because he was a reality television producer. He made fluff. Too bad he was mostly attracted to women who thought the latter and never took the time to get to know him beyond the surface.

      Women like Laura Delgado.

      He rewound the footage until he saw her. His dick got hard just from the flash of her elegant neck and the side of her sharp jaw. The jaw he could still feel almost cutting into his palm as he held it still for a kiss. Getting Laura Delgado to let him kiss her had felt victorious. He wished they hadn’t had so much to drink, and could have done more than kiss and frolic on the beach before falling asleep, wound together on a hammock.

      When he’d woken up on the deck of his suite at almost noon the next day, partially cooked from sunburn, she’d been gone. Too bad, because he’d had plans for the lovely, prickly ballerina. And those plans hadn’t faded away. If anything, they occupied more and more of his thoughts and his dreams. He’d never craved like this, and it was getting irritating.

      Flashes of her gorgeous olive skin, her huge brown eyes, and that fall of thick hair tantalized him whenever his mind wandered. He felt like a crazy person wanting a girl he’d randomly made out with at a wedding so much that it was fucking with his sleep. He must have been living like a monk a little too much these days. All of his dating hadn’t led to nearly enough sex; he needed connection for that he hadn’t found with anyone but Laura.

      When Carla and Jonah got back from their honeymoon, he was going to have to get Carla to give him Laura’s number. Carla knew him well enough to know that his reputation didn’t fit anymore. He had to see her again.

      There was a commotion outside of the editing room where he was working that pulled his attention away from his stupid, dick-torturing memories. When the door opened, he could barely believe his eyes.

      A very angry Laura Delgado, face red and breathing jagged, standing there and looking ready to kill him.

      “You fucking asshole!”

      Funny, he remembered her sounding sarcastic, bored, and a little breathless once he’d finally gotten her to put her mouth to better uses, but the thread of rage in her voice was new—and sexy. He tried to comb his mind for anything he could have done since returning from Bali that would have warranted this entrance and came up blank.

      “What did I do?” He stayed sitting, certain he shouldn’t make a move right now. His future ability to have children probably depended on it.

      Her eyes narrowed into slits, and she slammed the door behind her. She wore a flimsy, cotton sundress, and he had to school himself not to give her the lazy once-over he was dying for. Somehow, he knew that flirting wasn’t going to get him out of trouble this time.

      “You did it on purpose, didn’t you?” She walked toward him, her right hand forming a fist. The light shining from the screens cast part of her face in shadow, which served to make her look even more pissed off, like a cartoon villain. Was she actually going to punch him?

      Confused, he held his hands up to cover his face. “I still don’t know what I did.”

      She stopped about three feet away from him, and he was kind of glad. He was down for whatever sort of bedroom shit she’d like to do with him, but face-punching wasn’t his kink.

      “Are you just playing dumb, or are you just as clueless as I was until this morning?”

      “Option B.”

      Her hand uncurled, and he finally breathed. She was still panting, and he wanted to offer her a seat, but she was a bit like a bomb about to go off right now, and he wasn’t sure of the right move.

      “We’re married.”

      His brain flickered on and off like the lights during a thunderstorm. She couldn’t possibly have said what he just thought she said. He looked at his left hand, wondering if a wedding band had suddenly appeared.

      “When?”

      She cocked her head and pursed her lips, regarding him as though he were an idiot. “When do you think, asshole?”

      The “asshole” didn’t have quite the same sting as the first one, so he guessed he was winning there.

      “In Bali?” His brain was a complete blank. Embarrassment crept in over his confusion. He hadn’t gotten blackout drunk since college. And, even then, it was once or twice. He even remembered making the stupid video, which was probably a big part of the reason Laura was so upset about being married to him. “I don’t remember.”

      “Well, I don’t either.” She put her hands on her slim hips, still looking down at him.

      “Do you want to sit down?” He gestured at the other editing chair, figuring she might need to take a seat. He’d have been on the floor in a very un-masculine dead faint had he been standing when she’d told him that they were married.

      “No. I won’t be here long.”

      “I think we have some things to talk about.” Like divorcing him. Fuck. No one in his family but him had ever been divorced. That’s not something Laughlins did. His parents would be devastated if he was the family’s first and second divorces. He could imagine his mother’s tutting over his failure right now. His brothers were all happily married and reproducing at an alarming rate—not him.

      “I don’t need to sit down for you to agree to an annulment.”

      Charlie shook his head, hoping to clear the cobwebs, but she must have taken it as a refusal to give her what she wanted.

      “You’re going to say ‘no’ to me?”

      “No. I’m just—I’m just confused. How the fuck did this happen?”

      She leaned over and he got a whiff of her scent. Fresh. Citrusy. He remembered that scent from burying his face in her neck and kissing up and down her pretty throat. Just that got his dick half hard, and he suppressed the groan that would probably bring back the fist.

      “You. Tell. Me.” Finally, she sat in the chair facing him. He looked at her face instead of her endless crossed legs. “I figure that you got me drunk and found the officiant because you knew that СКАЧАТЬ