The Other Life of Charlotte Evans

What she’d first been attracted by – apart from the police-fit body and sense of humour – had been that Ben always attacked everything with determination and enthusiasm. He was also a physical guy, good with his hands.

She smiled to herself; he still was whenever he got the chance. The lust-filled ache in her gut and the desire to touch him hadn’t dimmed either. His skin was soft and smooth and flecked with white paint. She didn’t need to make her voice sound sexy, it just was. ‘Bedroom or lounge?’

‘Right here.’ Clearly ready for action, he started to lower her onto the stairs. But she pushed him away. Wriggled to standing.

‘I think I’m too old for sex on the stairs.’ Lissa would tut and sigh, but she wasn’t the one about to get carpet burns and a sore back that would interfere with her teaching. Taking Ben’s hand, Charlotte tugged him up the first step, her free palm scraping over his cop-short buzz cut, feeling the rough softness under her fingertips. He was a man of opposites; fun and serious. Sport-fit and focused and yet happy to laze away whole afternoons on the sofa watching action movies. Loved to eat, but hopeless at cooking. She met his gaze and her stomach purred, low and hot. ‘Bed or shower?’

‘Bed. No… shower. Hot. Wet. Nice.’ His hands went to cup her face but she drew back.

‘Wait! You’ve got paint on you. Look – still wet.’

‘In that case…’ His eyes brightened and he pressed a paint-covered hand over her black lycra top, over her left breast, and squeezed. ‘Gotcha!

‘Ben!’ But she couldn’t help laughing as she looked down at the white fingermarks. ‘This is – this was – my good teaching top.’

‘Well, let’s take it off then.’

‘Oh… if you insist.’ She tugged it over her head and laughed as he kissed her neck, his breathing getting harder, and faster. ‘Bed? Or shower, Benny boy?’

‘Hmmm… too tough to call. Wow. Such life and death questions. Too hard… You know… if someone held a gun to my head and asked me to choose… I’d have to say…’ He backed her against the stairs again, pushed his hand under her bra and pressed a kiss to her cleavage. ‘These two beauties are my absolute favourite part of you. Perfect… Juicy… Not sure which I love the most; left or right—’

‘Be serious. One minute… these stairs hurt. Okay. I’ve decided. Bed it is.’ She pushed him away and ran up to the bedroom, then jumped onto the bed.

He was two steps behind her, wiping his hands down his jeans until he was convinced they were dry. Then he climbed onto the bed next to her.

‘Hell, Charlie, I am serious. About you. About the wedding and making a home, for us. I’ve never been so damned serious about anything in my life.’ He slid his mouth over hers. For a few moments she was lost in him, in them, as he murmured, ‘I can’t wait. I love you… I want you. Every bloody day.’ Like a pro he unclipped her bra, cupped her right breast as he kissed her harder, then pulled away, breathing fast and looking at her with seriousness and mischief in his eyes. ‘I hate night duty. I hate missing you, thinking of you sleeping here without me. Thinking of all the things we could be doing instead of pounding the bloody streets and arresting some stupid prick for DUI.’

Charlotte wrapped him closer. ‘I miss you too. I hate hearing the sirens and thinking it could be you out there, chasing, hurting… I hate hearing the news…’

He silenced her with another kiss. This was one conversation they’d had countless times and there was no answer to it. It was his job and he loved it; she could no more ask him to give it up than contemplate giving up her dancing. So they were stuck – or just had to make the most of it.

She ran her thumb down his cheek. ‘Let’s never go to work again. Let’s just stay here for ever and do this. We’ll feast on marshmallows and salt and vinegar crisps and drink buckets of ice-cold chardonnay. For breakfast, lunch and dinner.’

‘Always. Just you and me, in here.’ His fingers played over her left breast and she curled against him, wanting him. Loving him.

‘No one else.’ It was a game they’d played since they first met – since that very first party. He’d asked her if she wanted to go somewhere… quieter… and she’d agreed, liking the way he looked and the damned cheek of him for asking her outright and knowing exactly what he wanted: her. In bed.

They’d nipped out from the party and bought a bag of crisps and marshmallows from the all-night store and staggered back to his place. Had a competition to see who could fit the most fluffy sweets into their mouths. Then downed it all with white wine – out of the bottle. He’d let her win and made her laugh and made her feel sexy and funny and likeable.

Just after their first – unforgettable – kiss he’d said something like let’s stop the world and get off. And she’d thought I could do that. No intrusions. No other commitments. I could make a world with him.

And they had.

His words were whispers against her ear. ‘Until we have to pay the mortgage, obviously… then I’ll send you out to teach and just lie here waiting for you to come home and service me as required.’

‘Watch it, mate. Serviced? You’ll be lucky.’ She slapped his backside gently and then squeezed – because, God, she loved that bum. ‘Slave driver.’

‘You bet.’ He shifted a little against her and his mouth nuzzled her neck, this time his hand cupping her right breast. Soft. Caressing. A playful tweak of her nipple, another caress as she arched against him, relishing the way he managed to find all her sensitive parts and make them sing for his attention.

His hand went to her left breast again and he squeezed. She moved against him. He squeezed again, fingers stepping across her skin, skimming over to her right breast. He was certainly giving them lots of attention today.

Yummy.

Then he went completely still.

It was a strange kind of still. As if someone had flicked an off switch.

‘Hey?’ She wriggled against him, feeling his heat through his jeans. Stroking his back. Stroking the soft skin and rubbing against it, because she suddenly felt a strange and unwelcome need for comfort. ‘Hey? Benjamin Niall Murphy, don’t tell me you’ve fallen asleep on me?’

There was a moment where she felt him inhale deeply. Then she felt the soft breeze on her shoulder as he blew the breath out and he pulled away. Definitely not like him. Ben was a man who liked to finish what he started.

‘Ben?’ She peered at him, holding his face in her palms. ‘You okay?’

He had a small, uncertain smile on that gorgeous face. The kind of smile he’d had when she’d told him about her father dying. And about the confusion and pain she’d felt when her parents had told her she was adopted – and how them telling her she’d been chosen was supposed to somehow help her get over discovering she’d been rejected by her birth mother. It hadn’t.

And like the time he’d told her he’d tried to save a jumper’s life on the Tube… and failed. It was a brave smile. He was being brave.

What the hell?

‘What’s the matter?’ Her heart started to thump hard and fast against her ribcage. Why would he do the whole smexy thing and then stop midway? So many things ran through her head, but none of them made sense. ‘Ben. What’s the matter? You’re scaring me.’

‘It’s okay. I mean…’ He took both of her hands in his and a sudden cool wind came from nowhere, lifting goosebumps onto her flesh, stripping the heat she’d felt inside and out. ‘Baby, it’s probably nothing, but…’

‘But, what?’ The thumping in her heart doubled and there was white noise in her head.

He let one of her hands drop and his fingers found their way to her left breast. The white noise stopped, time stopped, and his words seemed to echo through the silence. ‘Here. Here, baby. I’m sorry. I don’t know…’ She’d never seen her confident, decisive, soon-to-be husband so stuck for words, and that made her fear escalate a thousand times more. ‘There’s a lump.’

Chapter Two (#ulink_015434c1-2a72-5060-b4bd-970fa7e44b85)

‘What do you mean? A lump? No. Don’t be silly. I know what my breasts are like.’ Small. Barely there. Just enough, Ben always said. More than a handful and all that…

But Charlotte could tell by the way he was looking, by the way he was pressing on her breast, that he was being far from silly.

She followed his fingers with her own. Eyes closed. Heart now completely stalled as her stomach rolled and rolled. She pressed the soft skin of her breast. At the edge of her fingertip she felt something. Maybe.

Something. She moved a half inch over.

There.

There, above her nipple. Towards the left. A hard, round lump.

He was staring at her as if she’d broken his heart… as if his heart was breaking. ‘Can you feel it?’

‘Yes.’ Yes. She crawled away from him, but fought the urge to fold herself into a fetal ball. ‘It’s probably nothing, right?’

‘Yeah.’ He didn’t look convinced. ‘It’s probably nothing. Just a…’ His shoulders heaved up and down and he curled his fingers and stroked them down her cheek. ‘Something and nothing. It’s probably just the way you’re made and we haven’t noticed it before.’

Because, it wasn’t there before. ‘Maybe it’s… I don’t know. I’m too young for it to be anything serious, right?’ Her fingers jabbed against the hard ridge on her breast again. Found the lump. It was something. Not nothing.