I looked at Chase.
She looked at me.
We both licked our lips. I shuffled my feet. She chewed her bottom lip.
The memory of our kiss in the waiting room hung on the air between us, rivaling the pungent odor of the recovery room in potency.
Fuck it.
“So we kissed,” I said. Or maybe blurted. “A full-on kiss.”
Her cheeks filled with a delightful pink tinge I’d never seen there before. Chase Sinclair was blushing?
“We did,” she finally agreed.
“Any chance we can do it again?” I grinned hopefully.
Chase rolled her eyes. “Let’s just find a motel first.”
I blinked. And because I’m a guy, a big fat tight spasm claimed my cock. “Err …”
Instead of responding to my obvious perplexity, she stepped past me to stand beside Doofus’s cage. She ran her hand over his back leg, avoiding the bandaged wound. “Is he going to be okay?” she asked, without looking at me.
I let my gaze run over her profile for a moment, my chest tight, my groin tighter.
Motel? Really? Motel?
Finally, I pulled my hormones back under control, stuffed them in a dark box and let out a sigh. Reaching forward, I touched her arm.
“Stupid question, yeah?”
“The only stupid question is the one not asked,” I said.
She let out a dry snort, turned back to Doofus and stroked his back leg again. “Unless you already know the answer to the unasked stupid question and it confuses the hell out of you.”
“Can I help?” I asked, pulse pounding. “Clear up the confusion, I mean. If you’re confused about how awesome I am at kissing …”
She let out a sharp sigh. “You know, O’Dae, sometimes your good-natured humor makes me want to punch you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said nothing.
Two ways of dealing with confrontation I’d learned from my parents’ divorce: quiet ease or laid-back jokes. It was obviously time to go with the first option now, even if my gut told me to make another joke. My gut wasn’t to be trusted sometimes, but I had to make amends for yelling at her earlier somehow.
A few minutes later, she dropped her hand from Doofus and gave me an ambiguous nod. “Let’s go give Little Miss Regrowth our numbers.”
“Who?”
She chuckled. “The temp behind the desk.”
“Ahh. Sure, let’s do that.”
We were at the door when something suddenly struck me. “That explains the stilettoes,” I said aloud to myself.
Chase arched an eyebrow at me, lips twitching. “But not the attitude.”
Man, had I said it that loudly?
“C’mon.” She wrapped her fingers around the door handle. “Let’s get out of here.”
After the most frustrating five minutes of my life – during which the temporary receptionist, aka Little Miss Regrowth, kept shouting at Chase and exaggerating her lip movements to the point it looked like she was having some kind of conniption, and to which Chase flung back snarky comment after snarky comment with enough bite a pit-bull would have been impressed – things reached boiling point.
I’m not lying when I say my muscles were taut with tension. I was half expecting Chase to lean across the counter and shake the girl every time she raised her voice higher and regarded Chase with open concern and pity.
I think it was the pity that did me in the most. Not able to take it any longer, I rapped my knuckles on the counter and fixed the temp with a level stare. “Given we’re meant to be an advanced species,” I said, “we really do know how to make those not considered normal by society’s standards feel like crap, don’t we?”
The temp blinked. “Huh?”
Chase took my hand and dragged me across the reception area. A second after that, we walked out of the animal hospital.
We were halfway across the car park, the warm sun beating down on us, the concrete under our feet doing its best to rival the rays in temperature, when Chase let out a ragged sigh. “You don’t have to keep protecting me, Caden. Or defending me.”
My chest tightened. “I’m not. I haven’t—”
“Yeah, I shouldn’t have let her get to me,” she cut me off. “But I’m completely capable of dealing with shit like that by myself. I’ve been doing so for twenty-two years now.”
“You were dealing with clueless receptionists when you were still in nappies?”
A blank look came over Chase’s face, followed by a frown. She rubbed at her face. I didn’t miss the exasperated groan muffled by her palms.
“I’m sorry,” I said, catching her wrists and lowering her hands to her side. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to … to … be me, I guess.”
She studied me, silent for a moment. “You frustrate the hell out of me, O’Dae.”
“I don’t mean to,” I answered honestly.
A frown pulled at her eyebrows and she shook her head. “C’mon,” she said.
I cast her a look as we continued to walk toward the Speeding Dragon. “I think she’d get to anyone. I was waiting for her to start treating me like I was backward when she commented on my Australian accent. Maybe I should have thrown in a few more crikeys and fair dinkums?”
Chase snorted a laugh. The decided lack of frustration in it made me feel a little better. “Yeah. Of course, I didn’t help things when I signed at you, did I?”
I grinned. “Not really. What did you sign, by the way? I missed it.”
“That you should tell her you’re Chris Hemsworth’s cousin.”
I burst out laughing.
Chase flashed me a grin that was pure mischief.
When we reached the Volvo and got in, I buckled my seatbelt, doing my best to appear relaxed. My brain kept whispering a single word over and over: motel.
Finally, as Chase started the engine and pulled out onto the road, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Reaching over the center console, I touched her shoulder. “I don’t expect you to stay at a motel with me,” I said when she glanced my way.
“I know.”
I had no idea what to make of that answer. My heart was thumping away in my chest, fast and crazy, and altogether too hung up on the fact that Chase had suggested we check into a motel together. I wanted to look at my crotch and mutter “Down boy”, but suspected Chase would see me and know exactly where my thoughts were going.
“You should give Brendon a call,” she said, lips curling in a smile as enigmatic as her previous answer, before she returned her focus to the busy street. “Let him know what’s going on. Use my cell.”
She waved her hand at my feet. A brilliant purple handbag sat on the passenger side floor. She was giving me permission to go searching in her handbag for her mobile phone.
Wow. This was a next-level moment.
I scooped up the bag and rested it on my lap, then opened the zipper to reveal its contents. I don’t have a sister – I’m an only child, remember – but I do have female cousins and female friends. Permission to go looking through a handbag is a big deal.
“Nice bag,” I said, trying to be cool.
She grunted. Keeping my big dude hands steady, I moved things around, searching for her mobile. There was a purse (also purple), about fifty packets of chewing gum (all in various stages of consumption), a hairbrush, two glasses cases and three pairs of sunglasses, what may or may not have been a crumpled parking fine, two granola bars, two tubes of lip balm, a small leatherbound sketch book, the edges of the paper frayed and well-worn, and so many loose pencils I didn’t bother counting.
There was also a hard plastic container I recognized as her hearing-aid case.
Chase. In a bag. Her personality, her passion, her stubbornness, all right there in a purple bag.
“It’s in the side pocket.”
Her voice – and the slight humor in it – made me lift my head. I scowled at her with mock reproach. “Don’t laugh at me.”
She did exactly that.
> I couldn’t maintain the ruse any more and grinned, returning my attention to her bag. I found her mobile and withdrew it from a pocket inside that I hadn’t noticed before. I tapped on the screen, and touched her arm.
“Four two four two,” she said without looking at me.
My chest got tighter. I was not only being granted access to her bag, I was being granted access to her phone’s security PIN.
I was halfway through keying in the number when the phone pinged in my hand – a very loud tone accompanied by a very powerful vibration.
“Shit,” Chase blurted, with a harried look at her phone.
Before I could stop myself, I read the incoming message that appeared on the screen.
Don’t forget your toothbrush, babe. D.
“Donald the Dude has sent you a message,” I told her. I couldn’t drag my eyes from that message. And my throat was so thick, my mouth so dry, the words came out a scratchy mess.
Pulling in a deep breath, I finally looked over at her.
“Ignore it,” she instructed, her eyes fixed back on the road. Her hands gripped the steering wheel with knuckle-whitening force.
I nodded. I’m aware the action was ridiculous, given she wasn’t looking at me, but if I tried to answer with words, what would have come out would have been something along the lines of “This guy, Chase? Really, this guy? This is my competition? This guy is a dick.”
Re-keying her security code, I drew in another deep breath, dialed Brendon’s number and waited for him to answer.
The whole time, however, Donald the Dude’s message kept flashing in my head. It didn’t stop during the entire time I spoke to Brendon. Not at all.
Don’t forget your toothbrush, babe. D.
Don’t forget your toothbrush, babe. D.
Don’t forget your toothbrush, babe. D.
I really really didn’t like that guy.
Chapter 4
“A dog is one of the few things in life that is as it seems.”
~ Mark J Asher
Chase
I didn’t listen to Caden talking to Brendon. Listen. Ha ha. I should say, I didn’t focus on it. If I’d focused on it, I would have been able to make out the words. Instead, I let his voice be the fuzzy, muffled collection of sounds a voice is to me when I’m not trying to hear it.
Instead, I focused on the road. And my completely unexpected plan to check us both into a motel.
I’m not sure where that plan had come from. I’m equally unsure why I didn’t retract it when Caden gave me the chance. I was meant to be seeing Donald tonight, after all, although I was already beginning to suspect even if I was in San Diego I wasn’t going to Donald’s. Being with Caden, even after what happened between us on the freeway, was making me realize very clearly the difference between a healthy relationship and a toxic one.
Although relationship wasn’t exactly the correct word, when it came down to it. I wasn’t really in a relationship with either of them. Not in that context, at least. But Caden, with his sometimes infuriating relaxed humor, was infinitely … more comfortable to be with.
Comfortable. Was that the kind of word a girl of twenty-two wanted to use to describe a relationship?
I would have thought no, but then, neither were the words emotionally manipulative, and that’s what came to mind with Professor Douchebag.
Wherever the plan to stay in a motel had come from, I was following it through. It didn’t matter that driving back and forth between LA and San Diego on a daily basis wasn’t that big a deal. Southern Californians do it all the time.
It didn’t matter Mom and Dad would freak out. We were going to check into a motel.
Sometimes I think my father might be right about me being emotionally cracked.
I’d have to let my boss at the pet shop know I was going AWOL for a few days. I’d definitely have to let Mom and Dad know the same, even with the inevitable freaking out. Caden was letting my sister know, via Brendon. To be honest, I was half expecting to hear Amanda squeal through the phone, bad hearing or not.
What was I doing?
I’d like to think I was doing it because of Doofus, and a part of me was doing it for that very reason: the thought of the dog having no one there during his recovery did not sit well with me at all.
When Tanner was diagnosed with leukemia I was still at college, spending my days being arty and clever, my afternoons screwing the cool Art History professor, and my nights doing the same whenever he called me. Pathetic, right?
Tanner’s diagnosis made studying seem less important. What was important was being there for my nephew when my sister couldn’t. What mattered was being there for my sister when our dad … well, that’s a whole different story. Suffice to say, watching my nephew fight death put things in perspective for me, and I no longer wanted to spend my days in an art studio surrounded by people who thought weed would un-tap their muse so they could find the answers to life’s great mysteries, or that eating olives and cold cuts made them the epitome of bohemian chic.
I know an injured stray is not at all in the same league as my nephew having leukemia, but it was having a similar effect on me. A living creature should never have to suffer alone. And Doofus was a defective living creature. He had a disability. As clichéd as it sounds, I couldn’t help but feel like he’d been brought into my world because I knew how that felt: to not function the way God – or Mother Nature, or Buddha, or whoever the hell really was in charge – intended.
But being there for the dog, making certain he knew on some doggy level he was cared about, wasn’t the only reason. Nor was it, I fear, the main reason.
The main reason for announcing Caden and I were going to check into a motel was because I wasn’t yet ready to not be in his company. Which was problematic, given only a few hours ago I was adamant he could “bite me” in his attempt to make me fall in love with him.
Okay, I wasn’t even close to that. But the bastard was firing things in me that hadn’t fired for a long time. Not since Professor Douchebag did his number on me.
The kiss in the parking lot at LAX had shaken me a little. The kiss in the animal hospital’s waiting room had shaken me a lot. Like I mean, holy fuck, was-that-an-earthquake, a lot.
The interlude in the motel was more about … Maybe, just maybe, if Caden and I …
I swallowed, my head roaring. My blood pumped through my veins like a flooded river. I could damn near feel it coursing through them, the cannon-like pounding of my heart feeding its rapid force.
Was I really about to check us into a motel just so I could … just so we could …
And what would Donald do at nine o’clock when I was a no-show? The fact he’d texted me twice since our airport meeting, plus the call to invite me to his house …
In the time I’d been with him he’d never exhibited any signs of jealousy toward any of the other guys I interacted with. What did it mean that he seemed to now, after only a brief introduction to Caden?
Donald was one of my father’s work colleagues. Was it possible he knew of Caden’s role in saving Tanner? Did he see Caden as more of a threat to whatever screwed-up claim he had on me?
I thought of Donald. Pictured him. Donald, to whom I’d given my heart. Donald, who’d stomped on said heart – and my dignity along with it – when he declared me too imperfect, too defective, to be in a serious relationship with. Donald, who I’d caught whispering into the ear of another student – something he’d never done to me – in his office a few days later. Donald, who’d never taken me out to any public function, who’d told me when he was dumping me he couldn’t have a partner who couldn’t converse normally with people at art gallery openings or other cultural events.
Donald who’d started screwing the other student with perfect hearing a week later …
I gripped the wheel. What the fuck had I been thinking? I’d agreed to see that Donald at nine? Professor Douchebag? I called him Professor Douchebag for a reason. I had to remember that. I had to …
And yet, on some disturbed, unnerving level my stupid, stupid heart, wanted to see him. He’d been the first man to make me feel like I had worth … the first man to treat me like I wasn’t a child needing to be protected, to be constantly reminded I wasn’t living the way I should.
He’d listened to me. Encouraged me. And now he was calling me again. Calling me babe …
I stopped the train of thought before it could send me into a spiral I did not want to head down.
Yanking on the steering wheel, I flung the Speeding Dragon into a sharp right turn, hit the gas, and then a few seconds later, banked the Volvo into a sharp left before hitting the brake.
The sudden acceleration and abrupt halt sent both Caden and me jerking forward and backward in our seats. My teeth clicked. The seatbelt pressed between my breasts. The Speeding Dragon shuddered at my mistreatment of him. I’d apologize later with a sudsy bath and some Turtle Wax, but for now, my focus was on where we were.
In the parking lot of the Happy Traveller Motel.
Heart racing, I stared at the front of the motel – the first one we’d come across since leaving the animal hospital.
Caden said something beside me. I wasn’t ready to look at him, to ask him to repeat himself so I could hear. I needed to digest what I was doing for a moment.
The Happy Traveller sat there in the bright sun, its signage like something from the 1950s, the illuminated Vacancy sign announcing there was a room waiting for us. It didn’t look like a dive, it looked … dated. Tired.
Was this where I was … where we were …
Oh boy.
“Okay,” I said, opening my door with a gusto that belied how nervous I was feeling. “Let’s do this.”
Caden’s fingers wrapped around my wrist, halting my rather manic exit from my car. I fixed my gaze on his face, pulse beating in my throat like a butterfly that had overdosed on Ritalin.
“Why are we here, Chase?” he asked.
The question sent a tight finger of tension sinking into my tummy. It also seemed to steal any ability I had to form an answer.
A slow smile pulled at his lips. I watched it, my throat so tight I could barely breathe.
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