by Elena Aitken
Yep, if he wanted a woman who thought he was amazing and couldn’t wait to spend more time with him, he should have stuck with the blonde. Bailey Wilcox was not impressed. Still, he found himself grinning.
“Okay, you don’t have to smile,” he said. “But you have to admit that I helped you out with Justin.”
He thought maybe, just maybe, there was a hint of a smile at one corner of her mouth.
“Justin is… a huge problem.” She frowned. “But not in the way you think.”
Chase frowned. “Is he an ex? I’m happy to stick close for the rest of the night to be sure he doesn’t bother you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Can you just not shut that off or do you really think that will work?”
“Shut what off?”
“The supposed charm.”
“Supposed?” He arched an eyebrow.
And damn if her lips didn’t curl up just the tiniest bit. “You just can’t shut it off,” she said, as if she’d figured it out for sure.
Yeah, maybe she was right. He was flirting with her, but he wasn’t sure why, either. It seemed like his default mode. “So, about that sticking close thing…”
Bailey shook her head. “Not necessary. He won’t be a problem until tomorrow.”
“I can stay over.” Chase couldn’t help the grin he added.
Now she shook her head in clear disbelief over his audacity. “Unless you’re going to come to work with me and pass yourself off as an expert on the American alligator, I don’t think you’re going to be much good to me.”
“I’ve seen some alligators.” Mitch had told him he had to come back down and go hunting sometime. “Eaten a few too.”
Bailey’s eyes widened. “I’m working to help preserve their habitat along the coast.”
Oh. She was an alligator lover. “It’s not my favorite meat,” he said. “I do prefer chicken.”
She rolled her eyes.
He ran a hand through his hair. He hadn’t had this much trouble flirting in a very long time. “And Justin is some kind of alligator specialist?” Shit. He didn’t want Justin to have the nerdy scientist thing in common with Bailey.
Which was completely ridiculous. Bailey Wilcox should not be this interesting to him and he definitely shouldn’t care who else she was interesting to. As long as the guy wasn’t a bar dickhead who didn’t understand the word no.
“Justin is my competition.”
Chase dropped his hand. “What do you mean?”
“I’m working on securing a grant from a foundation that is focused on preserving the plant and animal habitats along the Louisiana coast. My proposal includes tagging alligators and watching their patterns over the next year or so.” She studied him for a moment, as if gauging his interest. “I’m working to prove that the erosion of the coastline is affecting the alligator population. As the coastline changes, more and more saltwater is coming up into freshwater areas, including the bayou. Alligators can live in saltwater for short periods, but long term the increased salinity will push them out. They are an important predator and a key part of the ecosystem. Their absence will further change the coast which will have impacts on the people who live and work there. I’m hoping to use my data to convince partners to invest in protecting the coast and to raise public awareness of the issues.”
“What’s Justin got to do with it?” Chase asked.
“Justin is also interested in that grant money and stole my plans for the program. Whichever of us gets the proposal together first will also be asked to speak at a local conference. It’s completely about ego and a promotion for him.”
“And it’s all about alligators?” Did he know any other woman who was into alligators? He honestly couldn’t think of one.
“Well, there are several species that are affected by the changes. I’m also fond of frogs and toads.”
She was definitely not his usual type. “No kidding.”
Bailey shrugged. “Nope.”
Something about that niggled at the back of Chase’s mind. “Who’s in charge of the foundation you’re applying to.”
“Bennett Baxter.”
That was why it sounded familiar. “I know Bennett. He’s one of the co-owners of Boys of the Bayou.”
Bailey nodded. “I know.”
Of course she did.
“I could set up an introduction.”
“In exchange for what?”
Chase blinked at her. “No exchange necessary.”
“Because you love alligators and want to do whatever you can to help protect their habitats?”
He wasn’t exactly sure why he was volunteering his help, actually. Clearly this woman was smart and determined, and he had next to nothing to really offer her. Why did he feel compelled to try anyway?
“Uh. Sure.” Protecting wildlife didn’t seem like a bad idea. Not that Chase had given it a ton of thought. But there was something about the way Bailey talked about all of it that made him think he wouldn’t mind learning more. From her. Where he could see her eyes sparkling and hear the excitement in her voice.
Wow. That was…unprecedented. Of course, he’d never dated a woman who was interested in alligators or frogs. Or soil erosion, probably.
She rolled her eyes again. Something that was also fairly unprecedented in the women he hung out with. Other than his sister. Juliet definitely rolled her eyes at him.
Juliet would like Bailey. He wasn’t sure why that occurred to him just then, but he was sure of it.
“Why would you really want to introduce me to Bennett Baxter?” Bailey asked.
Chase thought maybe honesty would get him further with this woman than flirtation. “Because there’s something about you that makes me want to do something to impress you, and that’s about all I’ve got.”
She looked surprised for a moment.
“Oh! And money,” he said as the thought occurred. “I have money, too.”
“Uh. What?”
“I’m rich.” Okay that wasn’t something he generally blurted out. For one thing, most people he spent time with knew that. He was a Dawson from Virginia. His father was loaded. For another, even he knew that you weren’t supposed to talk about being rich. Juliet would have definitely rolled her eyes at that.
“You’re…rich.”
And suddenly his wish came true. Bailey Wilcox smiled. Big. And then laughed.
Chase felt himself grinning. “I am. Seriously.”
She shook her head. “Wow. I mean…who says stuff like that?”
He shrugged. “It just kind of popped out. But I am. I’ve got money. I’ll give it to you to save your alligators.”
She was clearly not sure what to make of that. She blew out a breath. “No, Chase, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“How can me giving you money for alligators not be a good idea?” he asked. “Of course, it’s my father’s money, technically, but maybe you could come home with me and give a presentation and win my dad over. Too.”
She looked beyond surprised now. She looked a little like she thought Chase might be a weird stalker. Probably because that was the kind of thing a weird, stalker might say. They’d just met and he was talking about taking her home with him to meet his parents? And indicating that he was suddenly interested in alligators because of her?
But, stupidly, he was. He might just have some reading to do on the subject of the Louisiana coastline.
Not to mention his interest in the idea of taking Bailey home with him where he could take her out and show her around D.C. and… What the hell was he doing?
“I don’t think I’m going to take your money, Chase,” Bailey said.
Right. Because he was acting like a weird stalker.
“I understand. But I really would like to make a donation or something. Maybe—”
“I can’t take your money.”
But instead of backing away and looking for the nearest exit, she stepped forward.
Before Chase could react or analyze that, Ba
iley took the front of his shirt in her hands and pulled him forward while going up on her tiptoes.
If he’d realized what was happening, he might not have lost his balance and taken an unexpected step forward.
But he would have never in a million years expected Bailey Wilcox to spontaneously kiss him.
So, his chin hit the top of her head, snapping his teeth together. While reaching out to keep from knocking her over, he also stepped on her foot. And ended up with one hand grappling for the wall behind her. While the other landed on her left breast.
Bailey instinctively pulled back, her head thumping against the wall behind her. She tried to steady herself by grabbing the first thing in reach, which was his side, and the skin bared by his shirt pulling up as he stumbled. Her nails raked over his skin, the sharp sting making him suck in a breath.
Finally, the clumsy cascade stopped and they both froze. Three ticks passed on the clock. Then they looked at each other.
And Chase became aware of several things at once. Bailey had tried to kiss him, this was possibly the most awkward kiss of his life, and his hand was still on her breast.
He gave her a small smile. “Maybe we should try that again.”
He leaned in, but she turned her head just as he was about to make contact. His lips skimmed over the corner of her mouth and he almost face planted into the wall as she ducked under his arm and slipped away.
“Uh, no.”
Chase turned. “No? You started it.”
“Yeah. And I was going to say something like it would be a bad idea to take money from you because that would make the kiss I wanted really gross. But I changed my mind.”
“The kiss would be gross?”
“If I kissed you and took money from you. That’s kind of icky, right?”
“There is nothing icky about us kissing, Bailey.” He paused. “I mean, I assume. Since we haven’t actually done it yet, I guess I’m not sure.”
Her eyes got a little wider at that and she planted a hand on her hip. “You think it would be icky? Even without the money thing?”
Even his attempts at levity weren’t going as planned here. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way. I haven’t described anything as icky since I was about five.” When her eyes got even wider, he held up a hand. “Of course it wouldn’t be icky. Or gross. It would be…”
He should not have trailed off. That became clear almost immediately. Trailing off indicated that he was trying to find a nice word. And that wasn’t true. He was trying to figure out what he expected a kiss with Bailey to be like.
He really wasn’t sure. At all. The things he thought of when he thought of Bailey were not as simple as hot. He suddenly realized that hot was such a weak word. What did it even mean? It was superficial and over-used and somehow not appropriate for a smart, impassioned, hard-to-impress scientist who came to bars because she simply liked the beer.
“I can not believe that you can stand there, staring at me like a dope, saying nothing and yet being incredibly insulting,” she said.
“I’m not trying to insult you,” Chase protested. “I was trying to imagine kissing you and all I can think about is you sitting at the bar with a highlighter and the fact that you tromp around in hip waders trying to protect alligators.”
He should probably stop talking now.
“You should probably stop talking now,” she told him. “That whole kiss idea was stupid and I’m thrilled that you think of my highlighters and hip waders when you think of me. Goodnight, Mr. Dawson.”
Without thinking, Chase reached out and snagged the back belt loop of her pants, stopping her. “Hey, just a second.”
She whipped around, opening her mouth to no doubt tell him to go to hell. But before she could say more than, “Wha—” Chase leaned in to cover her mouth with his.
At least, that had been the intention. She was still talking and he ended up somehow kissing her teeth. Kind of. It wasn’t really a kiss so much as it was his mouth landing on—or sort of inside—hers, then their foreheads colliding, her jerking back, and him stepping on her foot again.
He lifted his head and met her eyes. Geezus.
He let go of her belt loop and she took a step back. Two of them.
“I’m usually pretty good at this,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m sure you think so.”
“If you would just stand still and keep your mouth shut, I’d show you.”
Again, wrong thing to say to the woman who clearly didn’t know when he was kidding around. Of course, he did really want to show her. Not just because he really wanted her to know he was good at this, but because he really, inexplicably wanted to kiss her.
“Gee, if my mouth is shut, how will I go on and on about what an amazing sex god you are?”
He actually loved her sarcasm. And the way her ponytail kept slipping. And that she loved frogs. This was so fucking strange.
“Good point,” he told her. “You’re allowed to say the following words, Yes. More. Harder. Oh, Chase. And you’re the best I’ve ever had.”
There was a flicker in her eyes that told him she knew he was being an ass on purpose this time.
“You know, I think I’m going to stick with the big lizards that I know are going to bite me if I get to close rather than the…animals I’m not as sure of.”
Animal, huh? He gave a little growl. “I’ll bite you, Bailey, but only if you ask really nice.”
She gave him a smile. The kind that he’d wanted from the beginning of all of this—genuine and just a little flirtatious.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Then she slipped past him and walked away.
Chapter 3
Two months later…
“Know how to save a life yet?” Mitch asked as Chase answered the video call from his buddy.
Chase laughed and tossed his duffle bag to the side as he flopped onto his couch.
“No, not yet. I can find your thigh bone, though—the femur, by the way. But only if I can cut everything else out of the way and really dig in. And have my book open while I do it. And the hot girl across the table from me helping. So… no. Don’t be doing anything that might kill you.”
Mitch laughed and Chase settled further into the sofa cushions, weary to his bones, his femur included. He took a deep breath. And grimaced. He smelled like formaldehyde and felt like he’d been doing manual labor all day.
Standing around dead bodies, leaning over with tiny scalpels, learning to discern a radial nerve from an ulnar artery wasn’t like digging ditches—or building a boat dock—but damn his back and neck and feet were aching like they had when he’d first showed up on the Louisiana bayou and started doing actual heavy-lifting work for the first time in his life.
He was going to lie here for a while before he headed for the shower. Again. He’d showered in the locker room but damn, the formaldehyde had soaked in deep. He didn’t know if he was going to get used to it or just give up eating for these first two semesters of medical school. The cutting on bodies didn’t bother him, but the smell zapped his appetite.
Thankfully, he’d already had a few care packages delivered from Louisiana. They came about every week or ten days and had since the end of August when he’d left the little bayou town of Autre. The gumbo last night had been spicy enough to be smelled and tasted over the formaldehyde. The pecan pie not as much. But he’d held his nose and ate it anyway. No way could he let Ellie Landry’s pie go to waste.
He loved hearing from the Landrys and he’d heard from them a lot since he’d started med school at Georgetown. Calls, texts, packages. It seemed he never went more than three days without some kind of contact from Autre. He wouldn’t be surprised if his sister, Juliet—who had now moved to Autre to be with Sawyer—had mapped out a schedule of who was calling or sending him something each day and had it tacked up on the wall in Ellie’s bar.
Chase had only spent two weeks with them this summer, but damn, they’d soaked in deep. In a good way.
“Shit man, even I could find the thigh bone,” Mitch said. “Hell, one of my buddies had a four-wheeler accident about three years ago and I saw his femur sticking out and knew immediately what it was.”
“You didn’t fucking know it was called the femur.”
“Yeah, well, no one’s paying me big bucks to know,” Mitch joked. “Holy shit that’s your thigh bone, dude was all I really needed to know.”
Chase chuckled. The Landrys were going to keep him grounded, that was for sure. They were all supportive and encouraging about medical school, but none of them were going to let him get a big head about any of it. They were, however, going to make him want to go back to the tiny town along the bayou and be the local doctor. He could already feel it.
The idea of taking care of a town full of people he’d know and see go through everything from tonsillitis to childbirth to Alzheimer’s was terrifying. And tempting. That was what medicine should be about—truly knowing people, taking care of them as if they were your friends, caring about everything including their mental and emotional health as much as their physical health. That was what all of the jobs in Autre were about. It had only taken him two weeks to learn that. If he knew the people there for much longer, he’d be building his own cabin, buying a fishing boat, and never leaving.
Of course, small town doctor in Louisiana was a far cry from what he’d envisioned as his future as a physician. He’d chosen a profession that was highly respected and made a decent income while also being able to feel like he was touching lives. But he’d always pictured himself in a big city hospital or clinic. Not a dinky little town down south where they ate strange food and drank moonshine that could also be used to strip paint if needed.
Of course, that “decent income” part might be a little different in Autre, Louisiana too. If he cut a stray bullet out a guy down there, he’d probably be paid with meat from the alligator the guy was hunting when he accidentally shot himself in the foot.
“Do not tell me the story about what you all did to that guy’s thigh after that,” Chase warned Mitch. “I’ve been cutting on dead bodies for weeks, but I still don’t know if I can handle some of the shit you all do.”