her meaning.
Charlie’s brows jumped at the suggestion. “Why don’t you meet me up there in about twenty minutes? I gotta say hi to a few more people first.”
The beauty sucked in her bottom lip and gave him a wink. “Don’t leave me waiting too long.” Still holding the sleeve of condoms, she turned and switched her hips as she moved through the crowd.
Charlie sighed and then turned back to address Gisella.
She was gone.
Glancing around the perimeter of the room, Charlie’s heart pounded in double-time. He moved through the crowd, searching.
“How about a dance?” a new woman asked, looping her arms around Charlie’s neck.
“Not right now.” He tried to pry the woman’s arms away but she locked her hands together and kept him ensnared between her arms. “I’m looking for someone,” he confessed.
“Another woman?” she asked, inching up an eyebrow.
Charlie glanced down and recognized Lexi—another fling from last month. “Oh, hey.” He changed up his program. “How are you? I’ve been meaning to call.”
“I just bet you have,” she said, smiling though her tone held a lethal edge. “I should have listened to my girlfriends and stayed away from you.”
Charlie’s lips curled wickedly. “Then why didn’t you?”
Lexi hesitated and then allowed her eyes to roam down the front of his body. “Because I wanted to see whether you’d live up to your reputation.”
He arched an eyebrow, his ego expanding. “How did I do?”
She flashed him an incredibly white smile. “You’re a cocky sonofabitch.”
“That is what makes me so adorable.”
“One of these days…”
From the corner of Charlie’s eyes he caught sight of Gisella heading toward the door. He finally pulled Lexi’s hands from around his neck and winked at her. “Hold on a second.”
“Yeah. Right. I won’t hold my breath.”
Charlie plowed back into the crowd and tried to maneuver his way to the door. But every few steps another woman would grab him by the arm, the neck and even his crotch to ask why he hadn’t called them in such a long time.
At the door, Gisella stopped and kissed Isabella on each cheek and then waved goodbye to her.
“No. Wait,” he called after her, but the loud music swallowed his voice and a throng of women kept pulling at him. By the time he made it to the door and then glanced down the hallway of his Buckhead high-rise, Gisella was long gone.
Chapter 2
“He’s not my type,” Gisella repeated to herself. No matter how many times she made the declaration, a part of her rebelled at the notion. The thought just kept coming to the forefront of her mind how handsome-no-how fine Charlie Masters was. From the moment that six-two, golden brown Adonis strolled inside his high-rise apartment, Gisella could hardly take her eyes off of him.
The man exuded confidence and possessed an undeniable sexual prowess that dampened his fair share of panty liners whenever he walked by. And those eyes—playful hazel green—that sparkled if you were fortunate enough to hold his attention.
No wonder every woman in the room was practically drooling and shamelessly throwing themselves at him. It wasn’t surprising that he looked as if he was reveling in his element.
From the moment she’d slipped her hand into his, there was a powerful magnetic pull toward him, which was right on course since she had an affinity for bad boys, the very habit that she’d promised herself to break.
With a determined shake of her head, Gisella erased Charlie’s image just as she arrived at her car in the high-rise parking garage. “Forget about him,” she mumbled under her breath as she unlocked the car and slid in behind the wheel.
But that was easier said than done. After moving over four thousand miles to get away from the last playa extraordinaire who’d broken her heart, Robert Beauvais, she swore her next man would be the more stable kind—the marrying kind. When his name and image floated across her head, she couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Of all the men she could have fallen for, she had to fall in love with an international male model.
If there was one life lesson learned, it was to never trust a man who’s prettier than you are.
Gisella laughed at herself as she pulled out onto the highway and headed toward her half sister’s apartment in downtown Atlanta. The distance wasn’t too far, but with so many one-way roads, it was easy for her to keep getting turned around.
By the time she made it to Anna’s place, it was beyond late, and her sister had already gone to bed for the night. It was just as well because the last thing she wanted to do was play Twenty Questions.
Since Gisella’s move to America, Anna had taken her role as protector a bit too seriously. Gisella suspected it had a lot to do with Anna’s obsession with police shows and forensic files. For her, trouble lurked around every corner, especially if there was a man involved. Where Gisella had one ugly breakup, Anna had a string of them.
Despite being beautiful, men had lied to, stolen from, beaten up and slept around on Anna. You name it, she had been through it, and when Gisella called her crying about Robert’s infidelity, Anna convinced her to leave France and start over with a new life in Atlanta.
Nine months later, Gisella wasn’t exactly sorry she’d made the move, but she realized that she had underestimated just how broken and bitter her sister really was. Once a month, Anna and a handful of her college girlfriends would host the Lonely Hearts Club. It was supposed to be a book club, but its real function was for the women to get together and gripe about men.
At first Gisella welcomed the sisterhood meetings as a place to vent over the demise of her engagement, but at what point were these women going to move on?
Gisella used the meetings as the first step in healing.
Anna used the group as a monthly soapbox.
After tiptoeing to her sister’s room, Gisella slowly turned the knob and opened the door, then eased her head inside. Under the soft glow of light from the nightstand table, Gisella found Anna’s sleeping form curled up on her side with a thick book next to her. Smiling, Gisella eased into the room and made it over to the bed to gently remove her sister’s reading glasses from her face.
Anna moaned and stirred, but she didn’t wake. “Good night, big sis,” Gisella whispered, leaning down and placing a kiss against her sister’s forehead before turning off the light.
Gisella crept to her bedroom and quickly kicked off her heels and slid out of her clothes before heading toward the adjoining bathroom. In the short time it took for her to make it to the shower, Charlie Masters had eased into her thoughts, and a smile had curved its way back onto her lips.
Humph. Humph. Humph. It really should be a crime for a man to be that hot, that fine, that sexy.
Without meaning to, Gisella made a few calculations and realized it had been more than a year since she had last experienced the touch of a man. Never mind the whole seduction of kissing and…well, just getting laid.
Sighing as she stood underneath the spray of hot water, Gisella allowed her active imagination to take flight. Still smiling, she pretended Charlie had joined her in the bathroom’s billowing steam and that it was his hands instead of the mesh sponge massaging liquid soap across her soft skin.
Gisella moaned and lolled her head back as if giving her imaginary lover full access to her slender neck.
“You taste like strawberries and chocolate,” murmured Fantasy Charlie, nibbling on her ear. His slick hands now roaming around her body and then cupped her