Charlie's Angels

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Her eyes opened.

His breathing stopped.

“Charlie,” she whispered sleepily.

It was the sexiest word in the history of language. “What?”

“Is it still snowing?”

He roused himself from his visual trance to go peer out the window into the night. The moon revealed swirling flakes still falling to blanket the countryside. “Yes,” he answered.

“Charlie,” she said again.

If he didn’t guard his reactions to every sigh and word and each flutter of her lash, he was going to lose all self-respect. “Yes?”

“Do you suppose I could have a bath?”

Ohmygod.

“I’m kind of achy.” She brought her open hand to her chest. “Probably from the seat belt, but I’m thinking a warm soak would feel good.”

“You’re in luck, then. I just happen to have a whirlpool in my master bath.”

“Oh, that would be heaven.”

Damn near. “Let me help you. Are you dizzy?”

She sat up and brought a hand to her temple. “A little.”

“Wait while I go fill the tub.” He hurried to run hot water and turn on the jets, add Meredith’s bubble bath, then returned for Starla. He slid one arm around her waist, and she wrapped hers around him and steadied herself. They walked that way, hip to hip to the hallway, and then he guided her ahead of him with both hands on her shoulders.

“Here are towels and a robe.” All he had to lend was his own. He helped her sit on the corner of the enormous tub. “Tell you what. You just sleep in my room tonight. While you’re in here, I’ll change the sheets. Then I’ll take the sofa.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Her hair draped over her shoulder in a silken wave. He opened a drawer and pulled out an elastic band. “Here. It’s Meredith’s.”

“Thank you.” She smiled up at him. “You’re a sweet guy, you know that?”

She captured her hair in a loose knot on her head, then, bending to remove one sock, she swayed.

“Whoa.” Charlie caught her by the shoulders and balanced her. “Here.” He knelt in front of her. “Bending over probably isn’t a good idea.” He picked up her foot and peeled the sock away. Her feet had turned him on with socks, he didn’t dare look now. He looked straight ahead at the Hawkeyes emblem on his sweatshirt.

She steadied herself with a hand on his shoulder.

After pulling off the other sock, he purposely stared at the mounting bubbles in the tub. “Can you get your jeans?”

She straightened up in her sitting position, reached under the sweatshirt and unbuttoned and unzipped.

It was obvious that she’d have to bend over, so he took control. He could do this. Not everything was about sex. This was about helping a person his daughter had managed to get into this situation. “Stand up.”

She did. The sweatshirt hung over her hips, thank God.

Charlie reached under it, concentrating on finding the waistband, located it and jimmied the denim down over her hips, his fingers coming in contact with warm skin and satin in the process. This activity would raise any man’s blood pressure, and he’d been without a woman for a long time. She’d said he was sweet. If she only knew. She had to know. “Okay, have a seat again.”

She sat. Concentrating on the task alone, he pinched both denim legs at the hem and pulled the jeans down her legs and off. His peripheral vision didn’t miss the length of slender bare limbs. The most gorgeous woman he’d ever met was getting naked in his bathroom.

“Holler if you need anything.” He backed out of the room and pulled the door shut, then leaned his forehead against the wood for a full minute. When water splashed, he backed away as if the door had jolted him with a high-voltage current. Sheets. He was changing the sheets now. He tucked and smoothed, found an extra clean blanket.

Charlie saw the room as she would view it. A man’s room. Practical. Simple. He imagined her pale hair against the plain navy-blue sheets and pillowcases, her ivory skin touching the cotton… He didn’t even know her. He’d never seen her before today, but her presence was the most disturbing experience he’d had in…forever.

He was obsessed. Enchanted. Horny, he wanted to rationalize, but that word corrupted the beauty of what he really felt when he was around her. No, she didn’t inspire lust. She inspired awe. A purity of admiration he should be laughing at himself for feeling.

“Charlie?”

He would change his name after she’d gone.

Charlie stepped to the door. “Yes?”

“I’m feeling pretty dizzy. From the hot water probably. Would you mind terribly…helping me, I mean?”

He opened the door enough to speak to her. “You want me to come i-in there?” His voice cracked like a seventeen-year-old’s.

“I’m afraid I’ll fall and bump my head or something. I don’t want to be any more trouble.”

Forcing one foot in front of the other, he crossed the room. He was an adult, after all. This was his bathroom, and he could assist a person in need without slobbering all over himself.

Good God in heaven, there was a pale pink bra dangling from the back of the chair he’d placed there for her; her jeans were folded on the seat, his sweatshirt tossed over those and a minuscule scrap of satin that might have been her underwear was on top of the whole pile….

There were bubbles up to her midchest, thank goodness, but her pale shoulders were sleekly wet and slender. With her hair gathered on her head, her neck looked slim and vulnerable…like the rest of her.

What exactly did cardiac arrest feel like?

No, his heart was beating because blood throbbed in the most conspicuous place, and he hoped she wouldn’t notice. He picked up one of the towels he’d left and managed to look at her.

Her cheeks were bright pink with embarrassment. She hadn’t wanted to call on him for help. He was a complete stranger—and a man besides, and she probably felt awkward and vulnerable. Everything slipped into perspective in that second and somehow he was back in control again.

“Can you stand by yourself? I’ll face the other way and hand you back the towel. You just hold on to my shoulder or my arm or wherever you need to keep your balance.”

He turned around then, and behind him water sloshed. She took the towel, and then her hot moist fingers clamped on to his shoulder in a firm hold. “Okay. I’m going to sit here for a minute and dry off.”

She used the chair behind him. Charlie stared straight ahead at the foggy mirror. Here and there a watery streak revealed a glimpse of flesh and white towel. He got light-headed, too.

“I can’t tell you how good that felt,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“But now I’m so tired again.”

“You can go to sleep. The bed’s ready.”

“That sounds wonderful. I didn’t let the water out.”

“I’ll do it. Do you have the robe on?” Please God, let her have the robe on.

“Almost.”

He’d left the door open, and the cool air was drying reflective spaces on the mirror. One of them revealed a length of spine and a swell of hip. Charlie honorably looked the other way. Then back.

The robe fluttered the hot air of the room as she pulled it around her. “Okay. I’m ready. Just let me get my clothes.”

Charlie turned as she was gathering her clothing, discreetly tucking the bra and panties between layers of denim. He offered his arm and she took it, leaning heavily on him for balance as he led her to his bedroom and the king-size bed with the covers turned back.

Starla placed her things on a chair, sat on the edge of the bed and tugged the band from her hair. The platinum mass fell over the shoulders of the robe. “Thanks,” she said.

“You’re welcome. I’ll clean up in there and leave you to your rest.”

After he’d drained the tub and hung the towels, he passed through to find her fast asleep…the robe tossed to the foot of the bed. He’d have to buy a new one because he’d never be able to wear that one without seeing her in it.

After he changed his name, he would buy new sheets, too—and a different bed. He would never be able to fall asleep in this one again. Not after the most beautiful woman in the universe had slept in it…bare-assed naked.

Chapter Four

Charlie was horny. All right? No shame in that. He might as well admit it to himself and move on. About two in the morning, he argued that lack of physical release had never been a problem before. At three-eighteen he acknowledged that, okay, Starla, the trucker from heaven, had never been in his bed—or in his head before.

It was no wonder that when Meredith made her way to where he finally slept on the sofa, it was already almost eight o’clock.

“Daddy, SpongeBob is on and I usually eat breakfast during Rugrats.”

He opened his eyes and blinked. “Already?”

She nodded. “I’m very, very hungry.”

Charlie sat up and rubbed his scratchy jaw. “All right. Give me a minute.”

His daughter moved up to lean against his knee. “Did the angel sleep in your bed?”

A vision of his robe tossed to the foot of the bed flashed in his mind, and he forgot to argue the angel tag. “Uh-huh.”

“And you sleep-ded out here in your sweatpants?”

“Sort of.”

“Can we have panacakes?”

“Sure.” He got up and made a trip to the bathroom, looked out the front windows at the falling snow still piling up, then started preparations for breakfast.

Coffee was brewing and he had mixed pancake batter from a box when Starla came out of the bedroom and approached the bar dividing the rooms. Meredith turned from where she sat perched on a stool and smiled at their visitor.

Starla had dressed in her jeans and his sweatshirt—he’d have to get rid of it after she was gone, or he’d forever picture her slim shoulders and the fullness of her breasts beneath the worn cotton. Her feet were bare and her hair was pulled into a loose knot with Meredith’s band. “Good morning.”

“’Morning,” Charlie and Meredith chorused.

Her aquamarine gaze dropped to his chest.

He hadn’t pulled on his T-shirt. “Did you sleep okay?” he asked.

She averted her attention and took the stool beside Meredith. “I did, but I woke with a headache.”

Immediately, he shook out a couple of capsules and placed them on the counter in front of her, then went to grab a T-shirt and pull it on.

Meredith had the refrigerator door open when he returned. She withdrew a colorful pouch and proceeded to strip away the slim straw and pierce the juice box with it. She set the drink before Starla. “You can have one of my Mickey Mouse coolers. It’s juice and it tastes like strawberry.”

“Why, thank you.” Starla picked up the capsules and swallowed them down with a sip through the straw. After tasting the offering, her gaze caught Charlie’s. The drinks were incredibly sweet and appealed to kids. He discreetly set a glass of orange juice within her reach.

The area around the stitched cut on her forehead was bruised, and even the skin beneath her eye looked tinged with purple.

At his perusal, she raised fingers to her temple self-consciously. “I look a fright, don’t I?”

In his opinion, she could still win the Miss Universe Pageant hands down. He poured batter on the hot griddle. “Does it hurt?”

“It’s tender.”

Charlie tended his pancakes and flipped them at the appropriate time. He stuck several slices of frozen bacon into the microwave and set plates on the counter. “Garreth—the doc—said it was a clean cut and he made tiny stitches. You shouldn’t have a scar.”

“Have you heard the weather report?”

For someone who looked the way she did, she seemed unconcerned about the possibility of scarring. Her attention stayed focused on getting her truck on the road. “I just got up a few minutes before you did.”

Starla watched him efficiently prepare the meal. He’d only been up a short while. That explained the bare chest she’d admired upon entering the kitchen. She smiled at his time-saving methods and no-frills breakfast. But thinking bare reminded her of last night’s bathing process and how he’d assisted her to the bathroom and even out of her jeans and later out of the tub.

So far she knew several things about Charlie McGraw: he loved his daughter desperately; he made a good living—this spacious log home was evidence of that—he was adequate in the kitchen; and he was a gentleman.