It was her turn for the big disclosure. “Well. Believe it or not. I have a meeting.” He looked at her with lifted brows when she paused. “With Astrid Larsson.”
At this, he jerked to sit up. A dozen questions zipped across his face like he couldn’t decide which to ask first. “How? Why? Where?”
“Because Mansi knows someone who knows someone who knows someone; because I want to talk to her; and at her house, which is obscenely intimidating, and I have no idea what to wear.”
He blankly gaped at her, from shock at what she was saying or from shock that she was saying it at all, she couldn’t tell. He rubbed his face with a hand. “Okay, I feel like I missed something here. You’re willingly going to talk to Astrid Larsson, the woman who very famously was married to your dad when—?”
“I know who she is, Chuck,” Olivia said with a soft smile. “And yes, you missed something. I didn’t want to tell you on camera at the house because I’m not ready for anyone to know yet. That’s why I had Mansi set it up. Discreetly. The truth is, that day your parents came over, I’d had a long conversation with my grandma, and she told me things I didn’t know—that no one knows. Other than her, Astrid, my parents, and now me and Mansi.”
His eyes had grown wide with expectant wonder. An eager but not intrusive hope that she was going to let him into the circle too.
She knew staring back at him that she could trust him not only with the truth, but also with her whole heart.
She told him everything.
Chuck’s eyes had grown wider as he listened to her, taking in the shocking truth, until they were nearly filling his whole face. Then his brow suddenly bent into a jagged furrow, and he jumped out of the bed.
“What?” he shouted. His anger on her behalf ballooned into the room and made her tingle in a very specific and pleasant way. He began to pace at the bedside, swearing and fuming in indignation. His whole reaction was slightly undercut by the fact that he was naked. “Olivia, this is huge!Astrid Larssonhas been lying for thirty years? I can’t even—” He swiped his hair and huffed. “No. This is too much. You have to—” He couldn’tseem to keep up with his own thoughts. “This is—Wow.Forget the profile on me.Thisis your bombshell!”
“What are you doing?” Olivia asked when he reached for his phone on the nightstand.
“Calling—I don’t know.Someone.This is—! I can’t—! I’m going to—!”
“Okay.Easy, cowboy,” she said, and sat up to remove his phone from his grip. “I don’t need you to run to my rescue on this.”
He paused, chest heaving, and stared at her. “But, Olivia, this is…wrong.” The word burst from his mouth like something he coughed up. A foul, bitter thing that he could not stand to have inside his body.
An endearing laugh warmly bubbled from Olivia’s chest. “Chuck, while I appreciate your enthusiasm on my behalf, this kind of reaction is what got you fired from a movie, remember?”
The realization visibly settled over him. The tension dissolved from his brow, and he blinked a few times. “You’re right. Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize. It’s honestly really hot that you care so much. But I don’t want you to do anything to get yourself in trouble again. Come here.” She waved him over and pulled back the sheets he’d thrown aside.
He gave her a sly grin and spoke in a low growl. “You think this is hot?”
“Yes. And it doesn’t hurt that you’re standing there naked. Now, get back over here before I totally lose my train of thought.”
He climbed back in the bed and looped his arm around her looking all too pleased with himself.
“Don’t look so smug. You can’t even form a sentence when I wear leggings.”
He grabbed her arm and pressed a trail of kisses up the inside of her wrist. “I would have killed a man to see your ankles in the Victorian era.”
“Good thing it’s not the nineteenth century.”
“Indeed.” He continued his kiss trail up her shoulder and to her neck, where he sank his lips into the crook below her jaw that positively melted her.
“Are we going to continue this conversation?”
“What conversation?”
“Chuck.”
“No, I’ve seriously forgotten. What were we talking about?” He unsuctioned his face from her neck and looked at her with a drunken grin.
“Your lack of self-control.”
He kissed her lips. “Sorry. Making up for lost time.”