woman. He rubbed a hand over his stubble and listened to the rasp. What he needed was to be more like Jackson. After having sex, chicks became a distant memory. His friend was in it for one thing and one thing only.
“Since she handled the party once,” Jackson continued, apparently clueless that he’d pissed Trace off, “this year should be a snap.”
“It would be if she remembered she’d done it.”
“What are you talking about?” Jackson stared at him for a moment before he narrowed his eyes at the realization and laughed. “You dog. You boned her and accidentally pronged her, didn’t you?”
Trace’s fingers curled into fists at the vulgar way he made it sound. If he had ever taken Charlotte’s blood, he’d have discussed it with her first and he’d have been gentle, so as not to frighten her. “No, I didn’t.”
“So what happened then?”
“During the party, she walked into one of Sebastian’s little sexcapades.”
Jackson whistled. “I’m assuming she saw more than a little horizontal action?”
“Yep. Apparently, she saw him in all his glory. Fangs, blood, sex. All of it.”
Jackson’s brow furrowed. “You wiped her memory of just what she’d witnessed, though, right?”
“No.” He grabbed his suit jacket, which had been hanging over the back of a chair, and pulled out his folded scorpion knife. Opening and closing the dual blades a few times, he nodded, satisfied, at the clicking sound it made. “I wiped her memory of the whole time we were together.”
Jackson spread his hands, palms up. “Dude, why?”
Trace shrugged. He recalled the deathbed promise he’d made to his father about duty and honor and family. “I realized things had to change.”
Sure, he could’ve wiped her memory of the incident and continued on as normal. In fact, he’d automatically touched a hand to her forehead to begin the simple process of sifting through her memories. But as he looked into her eyes, he’d realized how unfair and selfish he was being. He had lied to her and would need to continue to lie in order to maintain their relationship. For his sake, and his sake only. In the end, he’d respected her too much to do that, so he’d done what he thought was best, even though it was one of the hardest decisions he’d ever made.
“It was best to just clear her memory of the whole thing.”
“That’s intense. Was it hard? I mean, you guys seemed pretty close.”
What was it with the goddamn questions? “Yeah, and what does a guy like you mean by that? You get close to every woman you meet. It can’t be that difficult to break things off with them. Why are you flipping me crap?”
“Whoa. You need to chill out.” If Jackson’s eyes were daggers, Trace would have been sliced in two. “My definition of close is obviously very different from yours.” The guy patted his pockets, searching for something. Not finding it, he walked over to the other set of bunk beds and spent a good minute smoothing a hand over the pillow.
When he spoke again, his voice was uncharacteristically quiet. “I’m talking close. You know, talking and shit, really getting to know each other? Not just rolling around in the sack. Hell, that needs no communicating. When you play poke in the dark as much as I do, it’s obvious what fits where.”
He flicked the red-streaked hair out of his face with an angry toss of his head and turned back to Trace. “In case you didn’t realize it, my friend, there’s a very big difference.”
His friend’s words hit Trace like a punch to the kidneys. He’d had that kind of relationship with Charlotte, but he’d thrown it away.
CHAPTER FIVE
“THE ESTATE IS DIFFICULT to find,” Trace had said on the phone. “I’ll send my driver to pick you up.”
Charlotte forced herself to sit back against the leather seats as the limousine slowed and turned into a long, winding driveway. She’d been in the car for over an hour and was anxious to see the place. Although she strained to see through the tinted windows, she could only make out a few landscape lights marking their way in the darkness.
It had been more than a week since he’d left her house at dawn without saying goodbye. If she’d had his number or a way to contact him, she might have considered calling him herself, thanking him again for coming to her rescue, but she couldn’t. But then, the more she thought about it, even if she had his number, she probably