Spiraling Deception (21 page)

He gave me a wide smile that didn’t quite
reach his eyes and stuck his hand out toward me. “I’m Jonathan
Gray.”

I took his hand, which was ice-cold. “Like
the author?” I withdrew my hand after a brief shake.

He frowned in confusion.

“
You know…the author John
Gray:
Men are from Mars, Women are from
Venus
.”

He shook his head. “No, can’t say I’ve heard
of him. But I’m a Jonathan, not a John, so there you go.”

“
Oh…okay. Sorry. I’m
Charli,” I awkwardly replied, not wishing to give him my surname
for some reason.

“
Where you headed,
Charli?” He smiled again, but his eyes were as cold as his hand had
been. I tried to suppress a shiver.

“
LA. And you?”

“
New York. So what brought
you to Italy, Charli, or Venice, I should say more
precisely?”

I bit my lip, trying to think of an answer
that sounded vague enough. “Um…a short holiday and some
sightseeing.”

“
Hmm,” he murmured. His
forefinger ran across his lip while he stared unnervingly into my
eyes. “Do you often go on holidays alone or”—he glanced around the
lounge, as if assessing whether I was with someone and then
returned his gaze to mine—“are you with your boyfriend?”

“
What makes you think I
have a boyfriend? I could be with a friend or my
husband.”

His gaze narrowed and his teeth bore in what
was probably meant to be a grin but it was just plain old creepy.
“No ring for starters.” He nodded to my left hand. “And forgive me
for observing, but I couldn’t help notice you when you came into
the lounge. You’re a very beautiful young lady, Charli.”

Okay—it was official—this guy creeped me
out. It wasn’t so much the words he said but the tone he said them
in and that cold steel glint in his eyes that raised the hairs on
the back of my neck.

“
Thank you,” I muttered,
and then checked the departures screen on one of the two
televisions that hung from the ceiling in the lounge.

Oh, thank God—the screen indicated my plane
was preparing to board. I stood and began to collect my things.
“I’m afraid I have to go now. My plane is about to board.”

From my peripheral vision, I saw him stand
as well and when I raised my head to say good-bye, his hand shot
out and grabbed my wrist. “He’s not who you think he is,” he said
bizarrely. The tone in his voice was laced with aggression and
bitterness.

The word
who
came to my lips, but
I didn’t ask; instead, I yanked my arm from his grip and turned on
my heel, praying silently he didn’t follow me. It wasn’t until I
was finally seated on the plane, buckled safely within the confines
of the seatbelt and taking a sip of the complimentary champagne did
I wonder whom Jonathan Gray was referring to.

“
Up and at ’em
sleepyhead.”

Courtney’s singsong voice crooned in my
eardrum; her breath fanned across my cheek. Rolling across the bed
away from her, I snuggled deeper under the blankets.

“
Oh no. No, you don’t.
Wake up, Charli!” she admonished, rolling with me into a spooning
position.

“
God, Court, your breath
stinks.”

She huffed out another puff of air that
fanned across my face and I held my breath until the odor
passed.

“
Argh! I mean it. Your
breath is rank. Seriously, Court, go and brush your
teeth.”

“
I will as soon as you get
your brooding ass outta bed.” She tugged the covers off my
shoulders with an almighty jerk and the cold air instantly pierced
my skin.

“
What the hell, Court!” I
yelled in frustration. “And for your information, I’m not brooding.
I’m still jet-lagged.” Which was a lie, of course. I was pretty
sure jet lag only lasted a couple of days—not two weeks.
Reluctantly, I heaved myself up to a sitting position against the
headboard of my bed and glared at my best friend.

“
Newsflash, Charli: jet
lag doesn’t last for weeks, maybe twenty-four hours tops. Admit
it—you’ve been brooding and moping around here ever since you got
back from Italy.”

My mouth snapped open, then closed and then
opened again. My hands flailed around in the air. I most likely
looked like a guppy fish with deformed fins but I had to show a
little face for the sake of my pride. “Have not!” I protested
indignantly. “I’ve been job hunting, sending resumes off left,
right, and center for every teaching position out there and
I’ve…I’ve…” I floundered like the fish I apparently was.

“
Yes, and when you’re not
doing that, you’ve been holed up in your room listening to sappy
love songs or sleeping like the dead.”

“
Have not!” This time my
voice came out whiny.

“
Have too,” she retorted.
“You haven’t been the same since you got back from Italy and you
know it. Now, what I would like to know is what in the hell
happened between you and him over there?”

Nuh-uh, I was not going to
go there. Ever. The last thing I wanted to admit to anyone, let
alone my best friend, was that I had fallen for some arrogant, rich
playboy who had left me in the dead of night in a foreign country.
I was not that girl. I was supposed to be tough, independent,
intelligent, and focused on my career one hundred percent—not some
heartbroken heroine from a sappy romance novel. The idea of having
any kind of relationship—and especially with someone like Roman
Knight, who definitely and unequivocally was
not
relationship material—should be
the farthest thing from my mind. Just the thought of me grieving
over him was beyond embarrassing and plain old pathetic.

But the sad fact of the matter was, I really
missed the damn jerk. In less than a week spent with him, he’d
really gotten under my skin. And no matter how many times that I
told myself it was nothing more than an impulsive holiday fling and
to snap out of it, I couldn’t get the arrogant ass out of my head:
The sound of his deep, authoritative yet sensual voice. The formal
way he held himself, which was too rigid and stuffy. But underneath
those layers of carefully constructed control was a gorgeous man
with a wicked sense of humor. The memory of how my body responded
to his touch, to the taste of his firm yet soft lips and his earthy
scent was more than I could bear sometimes—it honestly hurt just to
think about him.

Ugh!

I sighed and banged my head against the
headboard. “Ugh! You’re right. I have been brooding.”

“
Ouch, stop that. You’re
going to hurt yourself, Charli.” Courtney pulled the end of my
ponytail to thwart any further head banging.

“
Ow! You stop. You don’t
need to pull my hair so hard.” I rubbed my scalp and frowned at
Courtney.

Courtney fisted her hands on her waist.
Determination settled in on her features. “So are you ever going to
tell me what happened between you two?”

“
No.”

“
Why not?” She
pouted.

Exhaling, I shook my head once. “Nothing
really to tell, Court. We had a couple of great days together
touring around Paris and Venice, we had sex, and then we went our
own separate ways. No promises, no strings—it was what it was. End
of story.”

Courtney’s eyebrows shot to her hairline and
I had to stifle a giggle. When her lips thinned and she initiated
the evil eye, I couldn’t help the peal of laughter that tumbled out
of my mouth. After a few seconds, Courtney joined me until we were
both in fits of giggles.

That’s why I loved Courtney so much—she
knew, of course, that I was lying through my teeth but Court also
knew I was stubborn by nature and if I refused to share anything
personal about myself, then no amount of nagging, pleading, or
coaxing would work. It was the equivalent to flogging a dead
horse.

When Courtney, with Jake
in tow, picked me up from the airport, they had both given me the
third degree all the way home. My response from that day until now
had been pretty much the same:
Roman had
to fly home earlier because of some business crisis and that’s the
reason I flew back alone on a commercial flight. No, he did not
hurt me and yes, we parted amicably. No, I won’t be seeing him
again and for fuck sakes, for the last time yes, he treated me like
the perfect gentleman.

Jake, always the big brother, of course
didn’t believe a single word I’d said and I figured if Jake ever
saw Roman Knight again, his fist would be doing the greetings.
Courtney, however, was the hopeless romantic of the three of us;
she just gave me a small, sad smile and a long hug.

When our giggles subsided, I gave Courtney a
pointed stare. “Now can you please let it go?”

Courtney studied me for several long
minutes. Her eyes scrutinized mine as I sat perfectly stoic and
allowed her scrutiny. I had the feeling she genuinely needed to
know whether I was going to be okay.

“
Okay,” she finally
replied and I exhaled a long, grateful breath.

“
So apart from making sure
you’re really okay, I have another reason for waking your lazy ass
up so early.” She waved a thick cream envelope with a gold crest
embossed on the upper left hand corner in front of my
face.

“
You’ve got mail, my
friend.”

“
What’s that?”

“
It’s a letter,
dummy.”

“
I can see that,” I
deadpanned. “But who’s it from?”

“
According to the gold
seal, it’s from some Whitfield Academy in New York City, so I’m
guessing it might be a reply to one of the job positions you
applied for. And, I have a good feeling about it.”

“
But I didn’t apply to any
Whitfield Academy and I certainly didn’t apply to any schools in
New York City. Do you know how much it costs to live in Manhattan?”
I seized the letter out of Courtney’s still waving hand and turned
it over in my fingers to examine. Courtney shuffled closer to me
and peered over my shoulder.

“
The only schools I
applied for on the East Coast were both in Boston,” I mused,
examining the envelope.

“
Impressive school crest,
isn’t it?” Courtney nudged my shoulder. “Open it.”

Sliding my nail under the flap of the
envelope, I withdrew a single page of matching parchment and
read.

“
What’s it say?” Courtney
asked after several seconds, bouncing in excitement on the
bed.

“
It’s a…conditional job
offer…on the proviso that I meet their criteria in a face-to-face
interview.”

“
Ohmigod! When? Where?”
Courtney snatched the letter from my fingers and scanned the
contents for herself. “Ohmigod. They want you to fly out this
Monday. That’s, like, in three days. Oh, and they are willing to
pay for your flight. All you have to do is reply via email by noon
tomorrow.”

“
I haven’t even heard of a
Whitfield Academy, so how in the hell would they know me, let alone
be offering me a position?”

“
Look, Charli.” Courtney
pointed halfway down the page of the letter. “The position is for
first grade. You always said teaching grade one was your first
preference.” Her eyes swung to mine in open curiosity. “Are you
going to go?”

“
I don’t know, Court. This
all seems kinda…weird.” Simultaneously, we both turned and looked
suspiciously at the letter, as if it would magically tell us
something more.

After a long pause of silence, Courtney
said, “Well, if they’re willing to pay for your ticket out there,
then you’ve got nothing to lose by going to the interview. At least
hear what they have to say.”

Reluctantly, I relinquished the nail I’d
been biting, and exhaled. “I guess. Maybe.”

“
Okay, well first, let’s
check this Whitfield Academy out on the Internet, see if they’re
legit or not before you decide anything,” Courtney said.

I nodded my head in agreement. She jumped
off the bed in search of her laptop.

Chapter Fourteen

Whitfield Academy was in
Lenox Hill, on the fringe of the Upper East Side of New York City.
The pre-war five-story ornate building stood proudly on the corner
of 3
^rd
and East 73
^rd
streets, four blocks over from Central Park. With
its aged limestone facade, internal dark solid oak wood
floorboards, grand sweeping staircases, and vaulted ceilings,
Whitfield Academy depicted a distinguished portrait. I could hardly
believe this place was an actual elementary school. But as I stood
in the middle of the grand foyer of the ground floor, children
ranging in various ages buoyantly bustled past me—the proof was
right before my eyes. This very old, dignified building was indeed
an elementary school—an elementary school for the very wealthy
apparently, going by the surrounding décor and the matching
monogramed school uniforms the children all wore.