by Jamie Pope
“Why? A woman who enjoys food enjoys life. And you are beautiful. You shouldn’t be self-conscious about that.”
“Stop flirting with me, Drayson.”
“I’m not. I don’t flirt. I’m just telling you the truth.”
“You don’t flirt, do you? I see your brother walking around the bakery with that little swagger of his. Flirting with all the women who walk in there no matter what their age. I can’t help but think he’s full of it. But in a good way. Does that make sense?”
“Yes. That’s Jackson. Loved by the masses.”
“My oldest brother is like that. He’s a pilot. He’s based out of San Francisco now. Women just fall all over themselves around him and he eats every single bit of it up. He used to be an air force pilot, but now he flies commercially and looks damn good in his uniform.”
“Is he married?”
“No. My mother prays every night for him to find a woman to settle down with, but he’s not ready yet and he’s not the type to break hearts. He only wants to have fun and I don’t blame him. Our parents got married and had us young. We saw how much of their lives they missed out on because they had so much responsibility. Perry’s going to do every wild thing he wants to do before he settles down and he’s unapologetic about it. I respect him for that.”
“Are you close with him?”
“I barely see him. He flies internationally mostly, but when we do get together, we have a great time.”
“What about your other siblings. I think I remember you saying you were one of four.”
“I am. Two boys. Two girls. I’m the baby. My sister’s wedding was the last time we were all together. We rented a place up in Spokane just before it. It was important to my sister that we all have that time together. She said that it was the last time it was going to be just the four of us as we were. She made us relive our childhood. We played cards and stayed up watching horror movies all night and cartoons in the morning with huge bowls of sugary cereal.” She smiled at the memory. “My brothers balked at first, but they went along with it because that’s the kind of men they are and they ended up having a good time.”
“It’s good that you all are close.”
“You’re close with your siblings, too.”
He nodded. “I feel like Mariah has always been a little closer to Jackson. He’s more easygoing. I think she thinks I’m too stuffy.”
“She wouldn’t say that if she knew about your secret wrestling addiction.” Amber grinned at him, still surprised by his admission.
“I’m going to keep that a secret. We can’t let people know too much about me.”
“Why not? What would be the harm in letting people know that you’re human, that you watch something purely for entertainment’s sake? That just like millions of other people, you find enjoyment in watching one two-hundred-fifty-pound man body slam another?”
“Same reason you go around letting everyone think you’re a free-spirited wild child when you’re really a workaholic in a flowy skirt.”
“I am not a workaholic! You take that back.”
“You have three jobs and you’re going to graduate school. You work harder than anyone I know.”
“I like to work,” she said feeling slightly defensive.
“I know. You’re just like me.”
“Am not.”
“You value education. You come from a large traditional family and you like to work. We’re similar. I proved my point. Maybe I’m a little more adventurous than you.” He looked her directly in the eye then. “When I play, I play hard.”
She let out a slow breath, knowing there was a world of meaning in those words. The word play caused all sorts of images to fill her head. Him playfully kissing her, him playfully nipping the inside of her thigh, him playfully tumbling her into bed before he slid inside of her. She could play hard, too, and he was somebody that she would like to play with. “What if I played a little too hard before?”
She had played fast and loose with her heart. She had given it to a man who didn’t love her the way she loved him, and she regretted it. She had been too softhearted, too easygoing, too go-with-the-flow. She had promised herself when she ended things with Steven that she was never going to be like that again, but then there was Chase who she was so attracted to, who she wanted to be around all the time, who she thought about when her mind was supposed to be on other things, more important things like her career. He was dangerous. He was the type of guy she could really lose her heart over. The type of guy she could fall in love with, and it was crazy because she barely knew him and there were a million reasons that they were all wrong for each other. But that didn’t change the way she felt when he looked at her.
“What did he do to you, Amber?” He took her hand in his and stroked his thumb along her knuckles.
“Nothing big. He just tried to strip the soul out of me.”
Eddie returned then with a basket of bread that was still steaming from the oven. “I almost forgot to give you these. We make the best yeast rolls in the city. You should consider selling them in your bakery.” He surveyed the contents of the table. “Why aren’t you eating or drinking? You find hair in your glasses or something?”
“No. We were just talking,” Chase said. “Sometimes everything else just kinds of fades away when we do.”
Chapter 6
Their conversation had turned to other topics after Eddie had come to their table for the second time. Chase made an effort to keep things light, to make Amber smile. He knew people had bad breakups and feelings were hurt, but Amber’s ex must have really done a number on her. It couldn’t have just been that things went bad, that he was simply an ass. It was more than that because the look in her eyes when she spoke about him... There was true hurt there, deep hurt there and it made Chase want to soothe it away. It made Chase want to make her forget every shitty thing that the guy had ever done to her.
Those feelings surprised him. Alarmed him. He thought she was cute. He liked her smile, liked to talk to her. But soothe her?
She made him want to throw out his checklist, throw out the rules he had set up for a woman he was going to date because the rules didn’t matter. Amber seemed the opposite of him on the outside, but they were similar creatures. And the more he learned about her, the more he wanted to know.
He pulled up in front of her building later that evening. It was a huge Victorian that was split into separate apartments. Even in the dim evening light Chase could see that it was painstakingly maintained, and all the original details of the facade had been restored. He hadn’t been inside it yet, but he knew he liked Amber’s place. She could have chosen to live in one of the hundreds of tall apartment buildings downtown, but she had chosen this place, in a purely residential neighborhood, away from the restaurants and the nightlife most young people her age sought. It seemed as though a person could find peace here after they came home from a long day at work.
“I want to invite you inside, Chase,” she said without looking at him. “But I don’t want you to think that this is an invitation for sex. I just want you to come inside my home for a little while.”
“Okay, Amber,” he replied, because there was nothing in that moment that he wanted to see more than the place she laid her head at night.
They stepped out of the car and he followed her closely up to her apartment. It was getting dark and he kept thinking about how often she must return home late at night. Alone, late at night. He didn’t like to think of her alone out in the city after dark and now that he knew her better, he knew he would think about her on nights she had late classes, wondering if she’d gotten home okay.
“You’re too quiet,” she said as she turned the key in the lock. “What are you thinking?”
“That it’s chilly and if I touched your arm I would probably feel goose bumps.”
Her apartment looked different than he expected. The major pieces of furniture were basic. A big comfortable-looking couch, a large chaise longue, end tables that she might have bought at any big-box store, but it was the little things, the little touches, that made her apartment homey. Her walls were covered with photographs. Mostly of her family. Black-and-white photos of her with her siblings, a large portrait of her parents embracing each other on the shore of the beach. She and a baby girl laughing.
There were also little framed photos of the places she had been. Hot air ballooning in the Oregon wine country. A beautiful shot of a waterfall that he recognized from Olallie State Park.
There was an enormous bookshelf on the far wall that had been stripped down and hand painted. The word read was painted in large bold letters across the side and there were tiny printed words covering the rest of the surface. “Dictionary pages,” she said.
“You always seem to read my mind.” He looked over at her. “I like it very much.”
“Thank you. My sister and I made it.” He nodded, not surprised that she’d made it herself. He looked further around the room. There were colorful throw pillows and blankets, mosaic vases filled with wildflowers and an old brick fireplace where the only painting in the room was.
Nothing in the room matched, but everything went together. It should have been jarring. There were so many things to look at and yet he felt relaxed there. It was so different from his apartment, which was luxurious and neutral and could pass for a very comfortable hotel suite.
“I’m not sure why I’m holding my breath all worried about what you think. I usually don’t care what anybody thinks of my place because I love it. But I can see the wheels turning in your head.”
“It fits you. I like you, Amber, and I like your place. Where do you design your jewelry?”
“Come.” She grabbed his hand. He was sure she didn’t mean to cause a jolt of electricity to go through him when she locked her fingers with his, but she did. He had touched her before. He had kissed her, but having her fingers intertwined with his seemed more intimate. More personal. It was closer than he had been to anyone in a very long time.
She led him to a small bedroom that was just a little bigger than a closet. There were built-in shelves on the walls with her tools neatly organized and on display and a narrow desk for a workspace with sets of clear plastic drawers that held her supplies. “Why is there a bed in here?”
“For the nights when I’m too tired to head down the hall to my room.”
“I don’t like that. I don’t like that you’re so tired you can’t walk ten feet to your room.”
“I have to work. I have to teach. I have to go to grad school. These aren’t wants for me. I need to do all those things.”
“You need someone to take care of you.”
“I don’t.” She shook her head, her face set in a stubborn expression. “I can do it all. Do you think I’m not strong enough to handle it all?”
“I think you can, but we all need someone sometimes. There’s no shame in that. There’s no shame in asking for help when you need it.”
She nodded. “Right now I need you to sit on the couch with me and watch TV.”
“Only if I get to hold the remote.”
“I’ll let you hold it if you promise me no team sports.”
“Damn. There was a synchronized swimming competition I really wanted to see.”
“But I really need to see the world champion spelling bee. I’ve got money riding on the girl from Des Moines taking the whole thing.”
They grinned at each other for a moment and even though he felt comfortable with her, he felt nervous. Nervous that he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off her, nervous that if he pulled her into a kiss like he wanted to, he wouldn’t be satisfied until they were both naked and sweaty. And once he got her like that, he knew that just once would not be enough.
So he just took her hand again and led her out to her living room where they sat and watched reruns of Law & Order.
* * *
She had butterflies. That was the only way Amber could describe what she was feeling. Chase was sitting next to her, shoes off, arm wrapped around her, watching television as if this was something normal. As if it was something they did every night. It wasn’t. And right now she could be designing jewelry or studying her textbook or making notes for next week’s class, but she didn’t want to do any of that. Tonight she was allowing herself to do nothing, to sit with a handsome man and relax. Only she couldn’t relax fully because she had her feet tucked beneath her and she was curled into Chase’s side. She had never been this attracted to a man and she felt like a teenage girl. She felt as though she was sixteen again and sitting next to the most beautiful boy in school. She felt jumpy, as if she had never been kissed or touched or made love to. She felt innocent, as though her heart had never been broken before.
She looked away from the television and up at his profile. His strong jaw, his clean-shaven face. Even though the only visible light in the room came from the television, she couldn’t help notice how handsome he was. It was almost as if she was seeing him for the first time. And maybe she was. They had eaten one of the best dinners she had ever had. Crab-stuffed fried shrimp. Duck and andouille gumbo and smothered chicken with fresh hot rolls. For dessert they had shared coconut bread pudding. It was all delicious without being fussy. And there was Chase who made her laugh and was easy to talk to. He was relaxed, and he was fun to be with. She had misjudged him, thinking he was coldly handsome and unbearably stuffy. He had said something to her that had shaken her up. That she was the workaholic and he was the one who knew how to take time and enjoy things. She would never have thought of herself that way until he pointed it out.
He had a way of making her worldview shift with just a few words.
And the way he looked at her... She felt it all the way to her core.
You need someone to take care of you.
That comment should have made her angry. If anyone else had said it, it would have. But just for a moment she let herself imagine what it might be like if she let him take care of her, what it would be like if she came home to him every night and ate dinner with him and just talked about silly things with him.
They were more similar than they were different. It was funny how they’d ended up on such different paths that wound up crossing.
“You’re looking at me,” he said in the low voice of his that always warmed her insides.
She was busted. There was nothing she could do but admit to it. “I am. I like the way you look.”
“I like the way you look, too.” He looked at her, into her eyes, and wrapped one of her curls around his finger. “Don’t look at me. It’s very hard for me not to kiss you right now.”
She wanted him to kiss her. The lights were dim. There was no one around. They were pressed against each other like magnets. Nothing would be able to stop them once they got started. She didn’t have enough willpower. Her body wanted to be loved.
But she knew she might get addicted. It had happened the last time. She had been so in love with Steven that she started to lose herself. She wore only what he liked and ate where he wanted and did what he wanted to do. His friends became her only friends.
She hadn’t noticed when it happened, but little by little his control over her grew and she was living to make him happy. She’d never told anyone that. Not even her mother. She thought she was strong. She had tried to be strong, but she was afraid that with certain men she became weak, became blinded.
You won’t make it in this world without me. You need me.
She kept hearing Steven’s words. Seeing the disdain on his face whenever she did something that h
e was displeased with.
She was afraid that it could happen again with Chase. Not that he would mentally abuse her like that, but that she would allow herself to become so wrapped up in him that she would forget who she was.
And Amber didn’t want to do that again. She had too much to accomplish to let that happen.
“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked him, needing to step away so she could clear her head. “Or would you like something to eat? I have popcorn. My mother made some of her world famous peach tea when she was here the other day. I can get you a glass of that.”
He kissed her then. Ignoring her questions and what she wanted, but giving her what she needed. He cupped her face in his hands and swept his tongue deep inside her mouth. She moaned. She could feel herself melting. She couldn’t help it. She reached for him, wrapping her arms around him, pulling him closer to her.
She didn’t realize that he had shifted, that he was laying her down on the couch till she felt her back hit the cushion. She broke the kiss and looked up at him. Wanting to tell him to stop but unable to get the words out.
“No sex,” he said. “I promise. But I’ve been looking at you all day and I know if I leave here tonight without touching you, I’ll regret it and I don’t want to be a man who lives his life with regrets.”
She nodded and relaxed into the cushions. He felt good on top of her. Heavy. His body was hard and long and somehow fit hers perfectly. She wanted to wrap her legs around him, to feel him more, to feel him inside her, but he’d promised her no sex and she was going to trust him.
His lips brushed her throat and all coherent thoughts rushed from her head. He was a man who knew how to seduce, who knew how to get what he wanted—he had caused her to tip her chin upward, giving him more access to her throat as he slowly kissed every inch of it.
“Chase.” She cried out his name as his hand reached beneath her tank top and grasped her breast, his thumb stroking her nipple through her bra, making it painfully hard. He was erect. She could feel him brushing between her legs, the heat of him. She rubbed against it, unable to stop herself. He broke the kiss and looked down at her, need in his eyes.