Dedicated to Emiliamay for loving the story and suggesting 'Arms' for a song. Told you I'd reserved it for a chapter!

A/N: Hello folks! Here's the next instalment for Brandon and Charlotte. There's a lot more of them in this chapter so I hope that tides you over. People asked why I featured Jake and Tessa last time. Trust me, it isn't merely a whim. There is a purpose in Charlotte getting involved in their growing attraction, something that will allow something else to happen in the plot later. It does neither writer nor reader any good to needlessly include a segment that has no significant importance to the story.

Vote and comment! Thanks!

***

It was a rainy morning.

Despite getting home late last night—just a little over past midnight—and spending another hour on the phone with Brandon who refused to go to sleep without a long, hushed and intimate conversation—I was still wired.

The late-night phone call with Brandon relaxed me after my misadventures from the party, draining most of my adrenaline and replacing it with warm, comforting languor as he murmured achingly sweet things to me last night.

It felt odd that despite the physical distance separating us, we were more comfortable talking to each other in the dark, in different states, than we have been lately, despite being in the same room. It had been like that since the Nicole and Zach mystery cropped up.

In the dark, your troubles don’t show. If you can’t see them, you can pretend they’re not there, right?

We were practically half asleep when we finally hung up.

I drifted into slumber but it hadn’t been the least restful. I kept waking up in the middle of the night, acutely aware of the cold, empty spot next to me.

When the sunrise started to streak the sky with faint wisps of light, I tossed the covers off and got up.

Wearing nothing but a tank top, cotton pajamas and a navy blue cotton robe specked with dark red hearts, I padded barefoot to the kitchen and started the coffee machine, relieved to fill the too-quiet penthouse.

There were a lot of things to process from last night—the Jake and Tessa affair, the Don and Bessy affair—but I didn’t have the sleep-revived brain cells to deal with them at the moment.

Mindless little things I could do so I spent a good two hours sitting at my desk, doing correspondences and my other admin-like Mrs. Maxfield duties.

I’d just started to putter around in the kitchen so I could put some breakfast in my stomach when my cellphone sounded.

I frowned at the call display.

It was seven-twenty-four in the morning.

Even Brandon wouldn’t be up at this hour yet—not after the late night he had as well.

“Jake?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

“Did I wake you?” he asked. “You don’t sound like I just woke you up.”

“No, I’ve been up since five in the morning,” I told him, still puzzled. He didn’t drink much last night so he couldn’t be hung over but something about his voice was raspy and weak. “How about you? Why are you calling?”

He sighed loudly. “Can I come up and see you? I need to talk. I’m down at the lobby.”

Half-intrigued, half-worried, I told him to come up.

While waiting, I continued to bustle around the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee and start breakfast. From the way Jake sounded, we were both going to need it.

“Hey,” Jake greeted as he stepped inside, poking his head around and finally spotting me. “Good morning.”

I raised my brow at his attire—it was all the same clothes from last night’s party. His hair was disheveled, his green eyes tired and sporting dark shadows underneath, his jaw scruffier than it had been yesterday.

“I’m guessing you greeted the morning somewhere other than your own bed,” I said dryly.

He blew a breath out and slumped on a stool by the breakfast bar across from me. “You could say that.”

“Do you want some coffee?” I asked. “I’m not sure if you need to stay up or sleep after we’re done this conversation.”

“I’ll have a cup of coffee.” He raked a hand through his hair and muttered, “I have slept a couple of hours—and another couple doing the best and worst thing of my life.”

I grimaced as I handed him a steaming cup of coffee and gestured to the the small creamer and sugar set. “Sounds ominous. Do I have to sit down for this? I don’t want to topple forward and fry my forehead on the griddle.”

That brought a small smile out of Jake although his eyes remained pensive. “It depends on how you look at it, really.”

I popped in two slices of bread into the toaster before flipping the eggs and bacon strips on the griddle. “Well, let’s hear it. I’m itching to know because I’ve never seen you like this before. I don’t know what could’ve happened between the time you dropped me off to fifteen minutes ago.”

“So that bet yesterday,” he started, drumming his fingers slowly on the counter. “I totally lost it.”

I couldn’t help cringing in disappointment. “Damn! Really? You were doing so well! I was rooting for you!”

“I slept with Tessa.”

And just like that, everything in the penthouse became silent—except for the crackling of the bacon and eggs on the griddle.

My eyes darted straight to Jake just as I remembered to snap my mouth shut.

Holy macaroni. The whole ‘Jake and Tessa affair’ was just an expression—not a premonition.

I grabbed my own cup of coffee and gulped down a good amount of it to overcome the sudden dryness in my throat.

Good Lord, I was hoping to make them fall in love—not fall in bed all in one night!

“Charlotte, listen,” Jake said as he set his elbows on the counter and leaned forward. “If you don’t want to listen to this, I’ll totally understand. This isn’t really your problem. And normally, this wouldn’t be anybody else’s business but mine and Tessa’s but I’m completely lost with what to do. I can’t call up my best friend because this is his baby sister we’re talking about.”

“He’ll kill you,” I croaked in agreement, imagining just how badly Brandon was going to take this news. “He’ll torture you and kill you slowly.”

Jake scoffed. “I wouldn’t expect anything less of him. I’d do the same to any guy who’d take advantage of Tessa.”

I set down my coffee and leveled him a look. “Except that the guy in question is you.”

“I know!” he groaned loudly, burying his face in his hands. “This is such an awful mess.”

I felt a pang of sympathy for Jake. For someone who just got laid, he didn’t look the least happy about it.

If this had been another guy with Jake’s reputation, I wouldn’t be so understanding. I would probably assume the worst and predictably blame the man for seducing Tessa, although after meeting Brandon, I quickly realized seduction wasn’t a one-way thing at all.

I turned off the griddle and transferred the food into plates, pushing one toward Jake before I carried mine to the spot next to him on the breakfast bar.

“I can tell that this isn’t as simple as it sounds,” I told him as I sat down. “While we eat, you can tell me exactly what happened—not the intimate details!—so that I can help you figure out what to do. I care about both you and Tessa, and I don’t want my husband murdering either of you, so we’re going to brainstorm on this once we know all the facts and come up with a plan.”

Jake lifted his face to look at me, his green eyes stormy. “Are you sure you want to get involved in this mess? Brandon isn’t going to be pleased to know you know about this when he doesn’t.”

I sighed. “As much as I hate this line because it’s been overused as an excuse whenever convenient, what Brandon doesn’t know won’t hurt him—unless there are extenuating circumstances.”

Jake furrowed his brows. “Like what?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe if you got her pregnant or something. My goodness, Jake. I thought you’re the expert on all of this.”

“I was,” he said with a grimace. “And that’s really the problem, isn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?” I shook my head in confusion. “Okay, you’ve got to start from the beginning because I’m neither a mind-reader nor a novelist with a talent at plots.”

“Alright, alright,” Jake relented, exhaling sharply and leaning against the low back of the stool. “I dropped you off first, and then Anna, and Tessa was last because the route made sense.”

Tessa and Anna used to share an apartment near the university but when Anna started her affair with Jason, which Tessa openly disapproved of, she moved out and into a place of her own.

“She was tipsy and staggering on her heels so I took them off and carried her to her apartment,” he continued, his voice catching with emotion.

If this had been a casual fling, Jake wouldn’t bat an eye at this.

“She was still grumpy at me—God knows why—and she was scowling, but in that adorable way, you know?” he said.

I didn’t really know but I had an idea. Kinda like when Brandon looks all brooding and serious and instead of intimidating me, it made the butterflies in my stomach flutter. “Seeing her mad was a little disorienting—hell, everything she was doing last night was disorienting,” Jake grumbled before he stuffed a forkful of egg in his mouth.

He chewed silently for a minute—and I thought maybe it was because he didn’t want to talk with his mouth full, but at the look on his face, he seemed to be analyzing something complicated and fascinating.

“I mean, the dress, her killer legs, her eyes, her damned lips—I constantly felt like I was getting punched in the gut every time I looked at her.” Jake sounded annoyed but it was amusing because it was obvious he was feeling things he didn’t want to feel. “One moment, she was Tessa, whom I’ve known most of my life, and the next she’s this... this... siren, beckoning me—and every other damned male in that party.”

A few hundred questions were hovering at the tip of my tongue but I didn’t want to direct the conversation. It would be better for Jake to come to his own conclusions, no matter how much it surprised both of us.

“So, yeah, maybe I was a little bit overprotective,” he admitted without a hint of remorse. “Someone had to be if she was going to get through that party without every panting male’s filthy hands on her.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to hold in a smile. “Overprotective might not be the right word. Possessive is more like it.”

Jake rolled his eyes in irritation. “Overprotective, possessive—call it whatever you like. The goal was the same and it was to look after Tessa. And I explained all of that to her last night when I set her down inside her apartment. She didn’t agree with me and started tearing a strip off me.”

He took a deep breath and ran a hand down his face, rubbing his roughened jaw. “We started arguing because I wanted her to understand. I don’t quite remember how we went from fighting to kissing to scrambling to her bed.”

His expression softened, his gaze tender as a faint smile pulled up one corner of his mouth. “It’s completely unexpected but that was the best sex of my life.”

“The best, huh?” I asked wryly. “In all of your experience, which everyone knows is vast.”

“It might have something to do with the fact that it was Tessa,” he answered bluntly. “We fell asleep soon after that and I don’t even cuddle afterwards. But with her, I didn’t want to go anywhere. I would’ve been happy to stay in bed with her all day. That was my moment of epiphany, I think.”

Jake groaned softly and briefly closed his eyes. “I woke up before she did and I spent, I don’t know, maybe a good half hour just staring at her. But she stirred and when she realized what we’d done, she jumped off the bed like she couldn’t get away from me fast enough, and told me to leave. She said it was a mistake—a glorious one, which she shared responsibility with me—but it was to be never repeated.”

Oh, Tessa.

“I told her I didn’t want to leave,” Jake continued, his voice now rougher with agitation. “I told her I wanted to stay and figure it out with her. And she told me there was nothing to figure out. That I should just tally it up with my other one-night-stands and forget about it.”

He turned to me with an angry expression. “Can you believe her? Where in the world did she get the idea that I was going to make love to her and then write her off?”

I mentally noted Jake’s use of make love, and shrugged at his question. “Probably from the common knowledge that you do have a history of casual flings long enough to fill a ledger. She’s seen you date a little too casually over the years, Jake. She hasn’t seen evidence yet of the opposite to make her think of you wanting something different from her.”

Jake stared into space, mulling this over as he nibbled on a piece of toast while I silently went on with my breakfast, giving him the time he needed.

After several moments passed, he glanced at me. “You know, before I met you I wasn’t really prone to romantic attachments. I was dazzled by you—I imagine the same way anyone would be if they tilted their heads up to the sun. I wanted a little bit of that light for myself. It made me realize that I could have that—that I could have more than the temporary pleasures I’d sought from women.”

I kept silent because I didn’t know where Jake was going. He was in my kitchen, pouring his heart out about Tessa, and apparently detouring with a flashback on his previous infatuation with me. It made me nervous because I so wanted him to be over that stage but I held on to hope because he wasn’t looking at me like he once did.

“Then whenever I saw you and Brandon, it made me think of just how amazing it could be if I found something like the two of you did. Hell, the two of you could sell marriage to the most hardened cynics,” he went on. “Seeing what you had—that opened my mind. And my heart too, I guess. And I’ve looked. I’ve made myself accessible to the possibility. I know tons of women. I stopped holding them at arm’s length like I used to. I wanted to fall in love. To make the plunge.”

I smiled at him as he grew more animated with his admission. “Last night, or this morning, being with her and having her in my arms, was the first time I felt like something altered for good in me. It was with the last person I expected to feel this way about. And I don’t want to just let it go when it could possibly turn out to be the best thing in my life. But she doesn’t want me. And I don’t know know what to do.”

My heart broke for Jake as I watched him rake both his hands through his hair and lower his head to stare at his plate.

I had a strong suspicion that Tessa wanted Jake. But there were a lot of reasons that held her back from going after she wanted.

I was familiar with that dilemma. I knew what it was to be held back by fears that something too good couldn’t possibly be true—that you could hardly be the exception when you felt there was nothing special about you.

While like Tessa, I had insecurities, I at least didn’t have to contend with having a sister like Anna who unintentionally cast her in the shade all their lives. Boys probably took a pass on her all the time to chase after the more glamorous sister.

"Are you sure you want to pursue this, Jake?" I asked him gently. "I don't want to help you if you're just going to go about this like an experiment and move on to the next specimen. It'll break Tessa's heart and I think that, lovers or not, you don't want that to happen either."

He lifted his head. "I can't vouch for the future if fate has other plans but I want this now as I know it. I would never want to hurt her. If I didn't feel this strongly, I wouldn't come within ten feet of her but I..."

I waited as his voice trailed off to a mere whisper.

"I miss her already."

I grinned and patted his shoulder. "Has anyone told you that for a reputed playboy, you're quite prone to falling in love almost instantaneously?"

He smiled. "I do, don't I?"

"It's just mere justice, I think, for the trail of broken hearts you've left behind," I quipped and we both laughed.

“You know,” he said after our chuckles slowed. “I asked her once to marry me.”

My eyes widened. “What?”

He groaned. “I was just teasing, of course, because I’m an ass like that sometimes.”

“Explain,” I told him with an exasperated sigh.

“When she was twelve, she gave me a letter,” he started, staring off into the distance again as he recalled the memory, a faint smile ghosting over his lips. “In it she told me she loved me. She had pigtails and braces then. Just a kid. I told her that I’d wait for her. And asked her if she would marry me when she’s old enough. She answered yes with all the seriousness a quiet twelve-year-old could muster.”

A picture of a dreamy-eyed, younger Tessa flashed in my mind and my heart twisted for her.

Jake’s charms were abundant and he was often flamboyant about them. At twenty-one, he must’ve been devastating to a little girl’s infatuated heart when he decided to humor her as he often did everyone.

“And what happened?” I prompted him.

He shrugged. “Nothing. I didn’t really think about it again. I mean, I was just joking. She was twelve! I thought she was adorable for writing me that letter. ”

“For someone with plenty of experience with the female population, you can be pretty oblivious,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “For a twelve-year-old girl as reserved as I’m sure Tessa had been, baring her heart out to you like that was no joke. You promising to marry her was probably a momentous event in her life then.”

“Well, she grew up and never mentioned it again,” he pointed out with a frown.

I leveled him a look. “Why would she when growing up, she’d probably been regaled with your sexual conquests left and right? Tessa’s smart enough to realize the truth—that you never really meant to keep that promise.”

“How does she know that?” he demanded. “Maybe I meant it. Was I expected to stay celibate while waiting?”

“Jake, you know you didn’t mean it,” I told him with as much patience as I could manage. “You’re just saying this now because of your bruised pride. Don’t insult Tessa’s intelligence that way.”

He looked troubled for a moment as he debated my statement before letting out a long, loud sigh, his shoulders slumping. “You’re right, of course. Why the hell would she believe me? I’ve been overgenerous with my affection to women over the years. She would’ve quickly realized, as she got older, that what I told her, joke or not, was nothing special.”

He glanced up heavenwards as if some answers might fall out of the ceiling. “Hell, looking back at it now, you shouldn’t have believed anything I told you either because apparently, what I say doesn’t mean much.”

Then suddenly he put a hand over mine on the counter, drawing my eyes back to him.

His expression was serious once again. "Do you hate me?"

I raised my brow in puzzlement. "Why would I hate you?”