by Chloe Cox
Taken by Chance
A Club Volare Novel
By
Chloe Cox
Copyright 2013 Chloe Cox
Just a quick note…
Hi you guys! Ok, I’m just going to say this up front: I love Chance. He is, of course, based on people I’ve known in real life (though I’m not saying more than that!), and I am a total sucker for the combination of dominating and playful. I don’t know exactly why that is, but I do feel like Chance is a guy I would love to spend time with.
Ahem.
I hope you guys will love Lena, too—she’s got her own issues, but she’s a good person, trying to do her best, and not always succeeding. I feel for her, there. And it made me so, so happy to get these two to their own HEA.
Chapter 23 included. ;)
xoxo Chloe
chapter 1
Chance Dalton counted the men gathered below the unnamed woman’s apartment, pacing in circles outside her gate, sometimes yelling up at her window. Waiting with the patience of scavengers. Hunting her.
Fucking animals.
He counted to keep his mind orderly, rational. His body was already tense, his pulse providing a thick rhythm for his anger. He had to keep it rational.
He just hated men who bullied women.
There were four of them. All of them carried cameras, their stock in trade. Three of them were sweating uncomfortably in the eighty-degree heat, had guts protruding over their belts in various degrees of ill health. Chance guessed it was hard to keep in shape when your job required you to stake out celebrities for days at a time, living on fast food and candy bars, sleeping in the back of your car. The fourth was different. Skinny, wiry, jumpy, wearing a pretentious fucking blue fedora: the only one who seemed really with it. The one who kept his eye up on her window, waiting for the curtain to flick back, waiting to get a glimpse of her face.
He was the one who kept shouting up at her.
What the hell was with these people? Chance was usually the last guy to knock a paying job, considering some of the shit he’d been paid to do overseas, but this was something else. This was professional stalking. This was being paid to make someone’s life miserable for a freaking photograph.
He wouldn’t have noticed, probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought, except this time they were after her.
He hadn’t known she was famous, though she was certainly beautiful enough, and he definitely couldn’t imagine what she’d done to merit interest from these vultures. She lived on the top floor of that modest California craftsman across the street from the walled compound that Chance had helped turn into Volare L.A. Hers was just a normal house set back from a narrow side street off Abbot Kinney Boulevard, looking peaceful and bucolic behind a high wooden fence, sun-splattered below a few shade trees. Someone had split it into a duplex sometime in the past decade—probably the gray-haired woman who lived on the first floor. The house probably sold for peanuts back in the seventies, and now it was a million-dollar house, just because Venice Beach was booming.
Somehow, even with all that dark-haired, honey-skinned beauty, she didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who lived in a million-dollar house.
Best goddamn part of his day, every day, just watching her walk down the block to get breakfast. Always at the same time, always laughing with the older woman at her side, the two of them friends, maybe family? Always she bought breakfast for the busker on the corner, too.
Always, she had a smile for Chance.
He hadn’t realized how dull his world had been until he’d gotten that smile. Sleeping around L.A. had gotten old, L.A. itself had started to feel old, and he’d had to admit that no matter where he went he was stuck with the memories of the things he’d done—and then he’d seen her.
Smiling at him. Shy at first, but so expressive. Like they had their own private joke about breakfast or coffee or whatever, even though they’d never exchanged a word. Chance had resisted the temptation to go after her the way he knew he could, had looked back on his track record in L.A. and decided he didn’t want to risk that a no-strings fling with her would backfire in the way it had with so many others, leaving her bitter and disappointed. No matter how honest he was up front, women always seemed to develop feelings and want more from him, and he didn’t want to see that smile disappear. But then these pricks with cameras had shown up, and now this was the second morning in a row that she hadn’t left her house, and the smile was just a fucking memory anyway.
Christ, he couldn’t get her out of his head. Couldn’t get the things he wanted to do to her out of his head. The memories of other women just turned to ash when he thought about her. Thought about how she’d feel under him. About what she’d sound like.
He didn’t even know her name.
They had her trapped up there, like an animal. Laughing together, making jokes. Like it was funny.
Just thinking about it made him angry all over again. He ground his teeth and decided the bullshit stopped here. This was his goddamn neighborhood now, his city, and that woman across the street was something special. He wouldn’t ask anything of her, and he wasn’t going to take advantage of her, the way he knew he could, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let these idiots hurt her, either.
“Hey.” Chance heard the fedora call out. The skinny, hat-wearing pap lifted his camera to his face and Chance followed his line of sight.
Her window, the curtain held back. Just a sliver of her face flashing in the light.
She looked frightened.
Chance felt the familiar lurch in his gut, the fire crawling up his spine, down his arms, looking for a way out. What he really wanted to do—what every synapse in the primitive part of his caveman brain was telling him to do—was to go kick some ass. Show that skinny asshole what it felt like to be hunted. Cornered.
“Heel, Chance,” he seethed to himself.
He was right. A minute later, he saw the door to the craftsman open. From his vantage point on one of the decks on the second floor of Volare L.A., he could see the shock of silvery hair: the older woman.
Alone.
In a minute Chance was down the stairs and running across the path to the back door. He burst through onto the street just in time to see the older woman swat at the skinny asshole in the hat and drive all the paps back from the gate.
She was kind of a badass. And older, but not old; up close, she was one of those women who aged flawlessly, better looking than most women half her age.
Still, maybe she wouldn’t mind an escort.
“Ma’am?” Chance said as he jogged up alongside her, careful to get between her and the asshole in the hat. He gave all four of them a once over. “Can I help with anything?”
She gave him a frankly appraising look, the kind of thing that might have made him blush if he’d possessed the capacity for it. Then she smiled.
“I’m just fine, but you might wait around while I go to get my breakfast to make sure these idiots don’t do something stupid, like trespass on my property, or violate the privacy of my tenant.”
Chance grinned for the first time all morning. “I’d be happy to, ma’am.”
“Call me Thea.” She winced. “I’m not that old.”
“All right, Thea,” he said. “Nice to meet one of the neighbors finally. Don’t you want to know my name?”
“Chance Dalton, I’m very aware of who you are, and of what you’ve brought into my neighborhood,” the woman called Thea said, a little too gleefully. “And let me tell you, I approve.”
Chance laughed. “Well, all right, then. Good to know I’m welcome.”
“Don’t you want to know why these monsters are bothering Lena?”
Lena. So that was her name. I
t sounded good.
“Honestly, Thea, it doesn’t seem like any of my business. But I will be happy to remove them for her.”
Thea raised an eyebrow. “You know she hasn’t left the house in two days? Just crying all the damn time. If I were younger I’d kick his ass myself.” Thea glared at the man in the hat, who kept his eyes on the window.
Chance balled his hands into fists, opening and closing them like he was pumping a safety valve. He didn’t need any encouragement to want to get physical with these assholes. “You mean that photographer?” he asked.
“Yeah, him, too,” Thea sighed. Something in her tone made Chance look back at her—for a moment she seemed so sad, the kind of expression he’d seen on a mother’s face when her child got hurt.
That didn’t help.
“I’ll only be a few minutes,” Thea said, walking away.
Chance barely heard her. His attention was now focused on the four men crowded around Thea’s gate. He moved toward them and they moved back. He stood between them and the gate, his arms crossed to keep him from feeling the itch too bad, feeling Lena’s eyes on his back as he took his post and feeling weirdly proud of it. Which was ridiculous; he didn’t know her. He knew why he was doing what he was doing, and it had everything as much to do with his own baggage as it did with wanting to protect a woman he didn’t properly know.
Well, so what? he thought to himself. Sometimes it just felt good to do the right thing.
The four paps backed off a few more feet, one of them cursing, heading back to a car parked down the street. Three remained, the skinny one looking right at him. What Chance wanted to do was smash their cameras, the weapons they used to harass a woman from a cowardly distance, see if any of them were man enough to fight. Hoping one of them was that dumb.
But Chance also knew that that was technically kind of insane. He knew that would only scare the woman watching from the window behind him, and rightly so.
“Goddamn common sense,” he muttered to himself.
One of the paps looked at him with even more alarm. Chance smiled. There had to be a way that he could help Lena get out of here without committing a felony or scaring the shit out of her. No matter what the story was, no matter what she’d done—if she’d even done anything at all—she didn’t deserve this. There had to be something he could do, something that would work in a place like this…
By the time Thea came back with her breakfast burritos, Chance was grinning to himself, freaking out the paps even more. Maybe he could have some fun with this. Maybe he had a plan.
~ * ~ * ~
Lena made a deal with herself: if she let herself peek through the curtain again and he was still there, she’d…
Nope. She couldn’t think of anything. There were no household chores left to do. She’d done them all. She’d done all of Thea’s, too—anything to keep her busy and inside the house. She had nothing to bargain with.
Nothing to hide behind.
Lena felt the tears coming again and cursed. She was so damn tired of crying. Of being a victim. Of letting Richie do this to her, of allowing those jerks outside to get to her. Her frustration would build until she’d almost reached her limit, where her anger at what they’d done to her would begin to outweigh the anxiety and humiliation, and she’d be on the verge of storming outside to curse them out and find her car, when she’d remember. She’d remember that Thea, who was taking care of her so kindly, who was like a best friend and a fun aunt all wrapped into one, that even Thea must have seen the photos that Richie leaked online. Thea, who read her trashy magazines religiously, had probably opened one and gotten the surprise of a lifetime.
So she’d remember that Thea had most likely seen those pictures, and then she’d remember that everyone she knew had probably seen those pictures, and the shame would come back with such intensity that it actually paralyzed her. As though if she were to stop moving, stop even breathing, she might be able to will herself to disappear, to obliterate the whole thing even from memory…
Lena didn’t even feel right complaining. She’d had just enough success as an actress that people might recognize her if she jogged their memory, that people assumed she must be rich because she’d been on TV. She wasn’t. And she was just hot enough and just recognizable enough that a narcissistic ex-boyfriend might decide to leak some explicit photos to rejuvenate his own career.
But Richie had done worse than that. He’d convinced her to do things she hadn’t ever been brave enough to do before. He’d fucking groomed her. And then he’d secretly taken photos.
Lena shook her head. The worst part was that this reaction, this hiding away from it, the freaking crying? None of it felt like her. She’d always been tough as nails, hard and suspicious after a lifetime of watching people use each other, and now it was like something was broken. Maybe it was just one transgression, one disappointment too many. Maybe L.A. had just used up all she had left. She was trying not to think about it, but she was trapped in the freaking house with nothing to do, not letting herself go online, not watching TV, and with those photographers waiting outside. Hard not to be reminded pretty much constantly.
And now he was involved. Chance Dalton. The man who’d occupied her thoughts pretty much since he’d moved in across the street. To be fair, he’d probably occupied most people’s thoughts. Six foot a million, buzzed head, wicked smile, blue eyes that sparked over dimples, military tats over arms like thick bunches of steel cable, and the man shows up in L.A. to run the sex club everyone wants to join. So, on top of all that, obviously he must be amazing in bed.
Practically all of female L.A. had thrown themselves at him. And they kept throwing themselves at him, because the rumors were that he was amazing. If you believed those same rumors, he’d already done half the women in L.A., and they’d line up to give him seconds. Everybody wanted him. Hell, they probably would have been after him even if he’d been a nobody—just looking at him was enough to get Lena wet. It was nothing short of a miracle that any man could interest her in that way after what Richie had done, but Chance was definitely not just any man. The black t-shirts and jeans did nothing to hide the musculature underneath, or the smooth, athletic grace of the way he moved, like he just enjoyed using his body. Using bodies. Everything about him seemed just one step removed from the wild.
And every time he looked at her, she felt naked.
Just, something in his eyes, even from across the street…
Much better to be thinking about him. Lena flicked aside the curtain and stole another look outside. He was still there. With his arms crossed, staring at the photographers, who were now huddled together across the street. Were there fewer of them now?
Wait, what the hell was going on? He looked like he was guarding her house. A man she’d never had the guts to talk to, who she was sure had barely noticed her amidst all the incredibly beautiful women who threw themselves at him all day long, looked like he was standing guard over her.
Lena shook her head. That was ridiculous. Maybe not any more ridiculous than her actual life at the moment, but ridiculous nonetheless. She was probably just getting cabin fever. Or it was wishful thinking. Or…
“Thea?” Lena whispered.
Her landlord-turned-adopted-family had just come down the street, carrying a take-out bag from the breakfast burrito place and smiling. Smiling? And…stopping to talk to Chance?
“Oh shit,” Lena said quietly. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”
Thea was nothing if not impulsive. And nosy. And meddlesome. And impish. And possibly Lena’s favorite person on the planet, but that didn’t keep Lena from experiencing a wave of panic when she realized that Thea had turned all of those talents on Chance Dalton.
Chance Dalton, who remained the one guy she could fantasize about safely. Thea was…
Oh God, they were laughing. Together. Like they were planning something. Chance turned around, looked right at her, and waved. Then he held up one finger, as if to say, ‘just one minute,’ wi
nked, and jogged back across the street to disappear into the Volare compound.
Lena jumped back from the window, eyes wide open, blinking fast. What the hell did that mean? What? How long had he been out there? Oh God, had he been talking to the photographers? What if that wink…
Another horrible thought struck her: he must know, too. Just like Thea. He must have seen the photos. And the paparazzo scum outside her house would know who he was, just like she did. They’d know he ran Volare, they’d know Volare’s reputation. Lena was momentarily overwhelmed by horrifying visions of the paps bringing Chance into the story, asking him lewd questions, making ridiculous insinuations, as though Lena hadn’t already been humiliated enough. The thought of Chance playing along with that…
She shook her head. Stop being crazy, she told herself. You don’t know him and he doesn’t know you. Besides, would it be so much worse for one more person to have seen those photos?
But somehow it did feel worse. Lena had kept herself cooped up in her apartment, hidden away from reality, to protect herself from all this crap, and she’d let her imagination run wild to comfort herself. She didn’t realize what a big part Chance Dalton, a man she didn’t actually know at all, had played in those escapist fantasies until now. So what if it was a little foolish, and maybe adolescent, and kind of weird? It had worked. It had given her a break from remembering that the last man she had trusted, despite all of her experience, despite everything she’d seen in this industry, had ruined her career by violating her privacy so completely that the idea of trusting anyone ever again now seemed hopeless naïve.
Well, that tiny little comfort was gone now. If Chance hadn’t seen the pictures yet, he was probably looking at them right now. Back to cold, hard reality.
“Lena?”
Lena turned around to see Thea setting down the food on the coffee table. Lena couldn’t help but envy the incredible shape her friend was in—she’d never guess the woman was nearly seventy if she didn’t know it from being Thea’s emergency contact. Lena figured it had to do with a positive outlook and enjoying life, something that normally rubbed off on her. But now that they were in private, Thea didn’t bother to hide her worry.