“You won three more awards,” Hal offered hopefully.
Chase nodded. Hal moved to go to his room.
“Hal?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks.”
“Sure, Chase.” He was about to leave, but turned back. He came around and sat down on the couch across from him. “What happened tonight?”
“Hope’s asshole boyfriend decided to screw somebody on a conference room table, from what I gathered.”
Hal’s jaw dropped. He knew he had shocked his manager. He didn’t usually talk like that, but after tonight…
Hal lowered himself into a chair. “I heard rumors backstage. So they’re true?”
Chase nodded.
Hal rubbed his chin, thinking, then looked up. “Where is she?”
Chase took a long drink of his scotch, draining the glass. “Gone.” He poured another drink from the bottle, which was left out on the table.
“Well.” Hal sighed. “I can’t say I blame her, having gone through the same thing with you.”
Chase tilted his glass back. It took a moment for his words to sink in. “What?”
“I mean, all those years ago. Back in high school.”
“I never cheated on Hope!”
“Well, she said you did.”
“She…I never cheated on Hope! Why would I? I loved her.”
Hal seemed confused. “Well I didn’t think you would, but she said she saw you with the girl.”
“What?” He sat up quickly. “That’s impossible!”
Hal stood. “I believe you, but I’m not the one you need to convince.” He walked off towards his bedroom.
Chase sat in the dark, thinking. Then, he called his pilot. It was late, but he needed the jet to be fueled and ready to go first thing in the morning.
* * *
Hope took the redeye back to Chicago. All she wanted to do now was turn in her article and be done with Chase Hatton for good. First thing in the morning, she waltzed into Jack Delaney’s office with a rough copy.
“I still need to get approval from Hal Westbrook, but I’ll send him an electronic copy right away.”
“Hope, close the door.”
Her heart skipped a beat; the editor had never wanted to talk to her in private before.
“Take a seat, Hope.” Jack Delaney rose. He came around the desk and leaned against it near her, his legs stretched out in front of him. “When we first hired you, I saw a lot of raw talent in you. But to be frank, I’ve never seen that potential fulfilled. You…hold yourself back too much. Don’t take risks. In your writing, and I daresay, in your personal life.” He put a hand on her shoulder kindly, something so totally out of character she almost had to check the nameplate on his desk again. “If there is one thing I’ve learned in my”—he cleared his throat—“fifty-some-odd years of life, it is life isn’t worth living if you’re not willing to take a risk now and then.” He returned to the other side of the desk, putting his reading glasses on and picking up her article. He peeked at her over the top of the glasses. “I’m afraid this is the last article you have written for The Chicago Globe News,” he finished. He returned his attention to the paper in front of him.
“You’re firing me?” She was stunned.
Delaney continued reading, not looking up. “Yes.”
She slowly rose and left the office. What a week! she thought morosely.
* * *
Hope answered the knock, opening the door to her apartment.
“Chase!”
He stood in a t-shirt and jeans, a small, leather duffle bag slung over his shoulder.
He craned his neck around her at Phillip, who laid on his stomach, one arm dragging on the floor, eyes closed, mouth open.
“What the hell…?” Chase began.
“Hope, honey,” Phillip drawled. “I think there’s somebody at the door.”
Frowning at him, she stepped into the hall, closing the door behind her. “He’s drunk,” was all the explanation she offered.
Chase lifted his head. “We need to talk.”
“Well, we can’t talk out here.”
He grabbed her hand, dropping his bag in the hall and then led her toward the stairwell. They climbed to the top, opened a door and stepped out on the roof. She paced over to where a low brick wall defined the building’s edge. Staring down from the dizzying height, she felt her stomach lurch and her knees go weak.
“I can’t believe that s.o.b. came back here after what he did,” Chase muttered.
She spun around in fury, tears blinding her. “Don’t be a hypocrite, Chase!” she spat.
He actually nodded his head. Not like he agreed with her, but as if she’d proved something to him. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.” She rushed toward him, heading for the door to the stairwell. “I can’t do this!”
He grabbed her arm as she passed and spun her around. “Dammit, Hope, we’re going to talk about this!”
“Okay. Okay!” she screamed, hitting him and pushing away. “We’ll talk about it then.” She walked over to the low wall again and leaned her arms down on it, this time oblivious to the drop-off below.
The conversation with Jack Delaney replayed in her head. “You…hold yourself back too much. Don’t take risks. In your writing, and I daresay, in your personal life… If there is one thing I’ve learned in my fifty-some-odd years of life, it is life isn’t worth living if you’re not willing to take a risk now and then.”
She whirled back around, taking a deep breath and looking him straight in the eye. “I’m talking about you and Susie McNamara.”
“What?”
“Dammit, Chase! Do you need to hear me say it?”
“Yes, I guess I do.”
“I heard you, all right? I heard you that night!” Her eyes blazed with anger and tears ran down her face.
“I don’t understand what you are talking about.”
“Ahhh! I don’t know why you have to do this to me!” She bit her lip, again fighting an urge to turn away. “Chip Carter told me. He told me that you had been seeing Susie behind my back. Dropping me off nights and going to her.” A sob escaped. “And, you g-got her pregnant.”
“Hope!” He made a move to comfort her, but she stepped away.
“No! Don’t touch me!”
He turned his back on her. After a few seconds, he asked her, “And you just believed Chip?” His anger was evident in his voice..
“No! No, of course not. I’m not an idiot.” She took a shuddering breath and her eyes took on a distant look. “But then I saw you. You were with Susie. You told her ‘Hope wouldn’t mind’ ‘she and the baby came first,’ and that you’d be there for her. And then, and then…you kissed.” She staggered two steps backward, spinning around and covering her face with her hands, shoulders shaking.
He froze, silent as seconds ticked by. “Wait! I remember now! Susie was concerned you would be mad because I stayed away so long talking to her at the dance, so I told her you wouldn’t mind, she and the baby came first and I’d help see her through it, as a friend. The baby wasn’t mine; it was Chip Carter’s.”
She whirled around. Her mind struggled to grasp what she had heard. She stared at him, speechless for several seconds. “Y-you didn’t cheat on me?” Her mind was slow to comprehend. “You never cheated on me?”
He moved forward, touching her arms. “No,” he answered definitively. “I could never have done that to you. I was in love with you.” His words were like a cool salve for all the old wounds she had carried with her since prom night. Without warning, she broke down, and he held her, both of them sinking to their knees.
“Oh, God! I’m sorry. I didn’t want to believe him, but when I saw the two of you kissing…”
“She did kiss me. And I told her in no uncertain terms you were the only girl for me. And then I left her to find you.”
“And I was gone.”
“Yeah,” he said dryly. There was a pause. He pulled away
a little, looking her in the eyes. “So, that’s why you left town with Chip? Because you thought I had gotten Susie pregnant?”
“I didn’t leave town with Chip.”
“What? Come on. We need to be honest with each other. You’re not going to tell me you weren’t making out with him in the parking lot, and it’s just coincidence you both disappeared the same night without explanation?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, yes. I didn’t leave town with him. My gosh, Chase, I still hated him for making my life so miserable with all those rumors he spread about me. And as far as making out in the parking lot goes, I was upset and he offered me a ride and then he…”
“Made a move on you?”
“Yes. And I, well, I…kicked him…in the crotch, and walked home.”
He laughed. After a beat he questioned, “You walked home from the high school?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a long way!”
“Yeah. Especially in high heels. Though, as I recall, I ditched those pretty soon and walked the rest of the way in my panty hose.” They shifted to sit on the rooftop, Chase with one knee up and his arm around her, who had her knees curled to one side and was leaning into him.
“And no one stopped to offer you a ride home?”
“Oh, sure. I got offers. All from guys. And I’d had enough of guys that night.”
He snorted and then they sat in a daze, absorbing all the new information they had learned and reexamining the night in its new context. After a few minutes, he put his hand under her chin, lifting her face and gazing into her eyes. He asked softly the question she now knew he had been asking himself for eight years. “So why did you leave me, then?”
She cringed, hearing the hurt in his voice, the hurt he had been living with for so long. “I didn’t leave you.” She paused, remembering. “When I got home that night, there were movers everywhere. My mother was packing everything. She had it planned all along. She had talked to my teachers and everything. She was worried about my dad coming after us again, so she waited until I had my senior prom, not telling me anything for fear of spoiling it for me, and we moved that night. She was especially ready to go after she had heard…my version…of what happened at the dance.”
He squeezed her to his side, closing his eyes and sighing. “I can’t believe this!”
“All this time…”
They sat for several minutes in silence. Then, she pulled away to turn and look at him. “You thought I left with Chip Carter?”
He laughed. “I know, it doesn’t make much sense, but none of it did. You were there, and then—”
“I was gone.”
“And Kyle Stockwell told me he saw you going ‘hot and heavy’ with Chip in the parking lot.”
“Chase,” she murmured, touching his face, “I am so sorry.”
He took her hand from his face and kissed it. “No, Hope. We are both to blame, and both blameless, in a way. Man, if I ever see that Chip Carter...”
“I remember now!” Hope sat up, excited. “Chip told me his parents had made him join the Army. He was leaving the next day.”
“They probably wanted to get him away from the whole Susie mess.”
“Yeah. And he told me he was giving me my last shot at him. I have never met anyone with such a high opinion of himself.”
He laughed, hugging her to him again. They sat in the quiet on the roof, the sound of traffic distant, alone in a city filled with millions of people. “So that’s why you were so upset with me last night. The whole Phillip thing—”
“Stirred up a lot of bad memories for me.” She was quiet. “What Phillip did upset me, made me feel angry and hurt. But when I thought you had cheated on me, I was devastated.”
He turned her to face him again. “You left before I won my award last night. When I was up on stage I thanked Hal and the crew and you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I thanked you for being the inspiration for every love song I’ve ever written, and I told everyone listening that I loved you. I always have, Hope. And I always will.” He leaned in and kissed her in a way he had never kissed her before, as if giving her all the old wounds of the past along with all his hopes for the future.
She was stunned. “You said that on TV?”
He laughed. “Yes, I did. Didn’t you see a newspaper today?”
She shook her head, thinking about the day she’d had. After getting fired, she’d come home to find Phillip on her doorstep. The day had gone from miserable to one step beyond miserable.
“Well, everyone wants to know who ‘the mystery woman’ is who inspired my music. I’m afraid you will be hounded for awhile.”
They sat in silence again. She spoke what was in both of their hearts. “So, what do we do now?”
He helped her to her feet. “We start over.” He took her hand in his. “I heard you want to be a pilot, or a photographer.”
“That’s right!”
He chuckled, and then pulled her in to kiss her once more, passionately.
When he pulled away, she said, “My, you’re fresh! We just met a minute ago.”
“Are you complaining?” He grinned, raising an eyebrow.
“No way!” She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. “I love you.”
He sighed happily. “Gosh, I’ve been waiting a long time to hear you say that!”
They stood in the comfort of each other’s arms for awhile, until he heard her muffled voice from his chest. “I want to be alone with you, but we can’t go down to my place. Phillip’s there.”
“And we can’t go to my penthouse. I heard it’s already being staked out for signs of ‘The Mystery Woman.’ I could get us another hotel room?”
“Ooh! A clandestine meeting, sounds interesting.”
“No. If this is going to be our first time…alone together—”
“You mean making love?” she queried with a wicked grin.
“—then it needs to be special. Intimate, not—”
“Tawdry?”
“Exactly.”
“Hum.” She pretended to pout.
“Come on. I’m being serious.”
“I’m sorry,” she said with a chuckle. “What about putting Phillip in a cab?”
He seemed to contemplate this briefly, then grinned. “Let’s pack him up.”
When they got inside the apartment, Phillip was snoring loudly.
“Now that’s just pathetic,” he muttered without sympathy.
She called a cab, and then paged through the phone book again.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking up Liz McPherson’s address.”
“Who’s Liz McPherson?”
She jotted something down. “The slut who was with Phillip in the conference room.” She ripped the page off with a sense of satisfaction. “Here, give this to the cabbie.”
“Ohh!” he chortled. “You’re bad.”
She kissed him on the nose. “Yes, but that’s what attracted you to me in the first place.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Chase thought about her the whole way down in the elevator, and as he assisted the stumbling Phillip into the cab. He liked the grown-up Hope. Now that she was feeling comfortable with him again, and was able to joke around more, he found her to be even sexier than before. The elevator ride back up, anticipating being with her, was exquisitely painful.
He knocked on the door. She opened it.
“Hel-l-l-o,” she purred, her hand running up the doorframe beguilingly. She had changed into a sheer black blouse over a silky black camisole and jeans. He could feel his willpower flying out the window.
“Hel-l-l-o!” he answered in kind. He grabbed her by the hips, a huge smile on his face.
She backed into the room, dragging him with her, and closed the door. She pressed him against the door, playing with his long hair seductively.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve never seen this side of you.”
“I’m not sure she existed b
efore tonight.” She sauntered away, and he watched the tantalizing sashay of her hips without moving. “Do you want some wine?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Not really.” The words carried a suggestive tone.
She smiled at him. “I think I need some. I’m nervous,” she confessed.
He laughed in surprise. “You don’t seem like it.”
“I’m weird that way.”
“Good to know.”
“Oh my gosh, Chase! Does Hal know where you are?”
He snorted. “Of course, he does.” He reached over the arm of the chair and rubbed a sleeping Mr. Mewford behind his ear. “I think the man had a tracking device embedded somewhere on my body so he can know where I am at all times. Actually,” he said more seriously, “he sends his love. He…encouraged me, with some rather strong words this morning, to come out here and make things right with you. What he didn’t know is I had already called a pilot and had my jet fueled.”
She smiled, raising her glass of wine. “To Hal,” she murmured. She took a gulp and then brought her glass to the table and sat on the couch, patting the seat next to her. He came and sat down, now suddenly feeling nervous himself. She took a long sip of her wine, and then set it down again, touching his hand lightly. They both studied their hands while she talked.
“This is strange, isn’t it?” She rubbed her fingers over his hand; her voice was tender and sweet. “First, you were my childhood friend. Then, you were my teenage crush. Then”—she sucked in her breath—“we were a pair of idiots. And now…” She raised her eyes to meet his, and a charge of electricity arced between them. “Now we’re adults who have always loved each other, but spent years apart.” He turned toward her and rested his elbow against the top of the couch, cheek in his hand as she spoke. She reached up and touched his face, her hand trembling. She continued talking, as if to herself. “I dreamed about this, about you…” Her thumb brushed across his lips, and he closed his eyes, sucking in his breath. Without seeing her approach, her lips were on his. They explored, experimenting. He noted each sensation, both familiar and long-missed.
Just as abruptly as her kisses had started, they ended. He opened his eyes slowly, and she stood and took his hand. He followed her wordlessly, fascinated by her, as she led him to the bedroom. When she dressed earlier, she must have lit candles; now they shimmered about them. She still had the white, wrought iron bed he remembered her having as a child. She shut the door on Mr. Mewford, who had followed them, with a soft, “Go on, now.” She continued to lead him to the side of the bed, and then turned to him, looking unsure about what was to happen next.
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