Never Fall for Your Enemy (especially not at Christmas): A laugh-out-loud sweet romantic comedy (It's Complicated Book 2) by Kate O'Keeffe

Author:Kate O'Keeffe [O'Keeffe, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wild Lime Books
Published: 2021-10-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

I stamp my feet against the cold, gray day as I wait in a park in Kensington, steam clouds forming with every breath. I glance at the time. Zara’s a couple of minutes late, so I do what I always do when I’ve got a spare minute. I open Instagram and immediately type in Hugo’s profile name. There’s no new photo this time, just the collection of the happy couple I’ve seen over the last week or so.

I close the app and pull up my browser. The page that greets me states Stephen Hislop nearly drowned.

Yup, I did it. I checked the story out. My journalist’s sleuth brain got to work on fact finding soon after I got home from the potluck dinner last night. And there I saw it in black and white: Charlie was on a fishing expedition with Stephen Hislop and five others when the famous billionaire fell into the water. Charlie saved him.

I twist my mouth as my eyes glide over the now-familiar words.

When told he had performed a heroic act, the man, who wished only to be known as ‘Charlie,’ stated modestly, “I only did what anyone else would have done under the circumstances.”

I admit it. I misjudged him, pure and simple. I jumped to the conclusion that he made the story up to impress the Ducks. I was wrong.

There, I said it. I was wrong about Charlie Cavendish.

Well, I was wrong about Charlie Cavendish lying about saving a famous man from drowning. He’s still the smug, smarmy, rich guy he’s always been.

The smug, smarmy, rich guy who has apologized to me twice.

The smug, smarmy, rich guy who bought candy for me in a foreign country because he thought I’d like to try it.

The smug, smarmy, rich guy who has ingratiated himself to the ladies of the building who now think he’s the cat’s pajamas.

The guy I want to kiss.

Argh!

Talk about the guy being a conundrum wrapped up in a riddle.

It’s like that episode of Friends where Rachel messes up the holiday dessert recipe. There are layers of sweetness to him—the jam, the custard, the fruit—and then there’s a whole layer of bitterness that seems out of place, that infiltrates everything, rendering the entire dessert wrong.

Charlie is that dessert.

I think on that for a while. Nope. I find out pretty quickly that imagining the guy I want to kiss as a dessert is so not helpful.

I tuck my hair behind my ears. Men like Charlie can be extremely charming. I know that from bitter personal experience. It doesn’t change who he really is.

Does it?

I banish my unsettling thoughts from my head as I click my phone off and slide it into the pocket of my wool coat. I lean down and pick Lady M up off the grass and give her a stern look. “Now, Lady M. We are going to a pet store today with a new friend. You need to be on your best behavior. No growling at people, no trying to eat the rabbits, and most importantly, you’ve got to be nice to Stevie.

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