by Paula Roe
Had it really been nearly two years? No holding hands, no intimate touches, no morning kisses. If truth be told, Dylan hadn’t been big on those things, anyway. She’d always felt a little ripped off, even if she was content to bask in his starry glow.
With a sigh, Vanessa reached for the newspaper in the seat pocket. She had to stop thinking about this so much. It would make her crazy if she let it.
Yes, she’d had her fair share of awful moments, put her faith and trust in people who didn’t deserve it. But she couldn’t go through life like that anymore. She couldn’t, for her girls’ sake.
You just need to be there for Chase, if and when he needs you. The rest…well, you can sort that out later.
Decision made, she unfolded the paper, glanced at the headlines—Waverly’s had hit the front page again—and settled in for the flight.
* * *
A week. Seven whole days and she’d not heard from Chase.
She’d planned to call him the day after she’d left, but Erin had developed a fever and she was up and down for the next two nights, checking and rechecking her temperature, administering baby aspirin and lying in bed with half an ear open for sounds of restlessness. And during the day she had no time to think of anything except for the kids and her work.
Sunday saw her exhausted and planning an early night until Chase turned up on her doorstep.
Everything about him was rigid, from his shoulders and back, to his firm jaw and stance. Wound up to the point of impossible tightness.
Oh, no.
“I thought you should know. Sam died last Monday.” His voice was bleached of emotion.
When she gasped, his jaw clenched and his eyes slid from hers to a point past her shoulder.
“Oh, Chase…” Anguish brimmed to the surface, threatening to spill over. “Come inside.”
“I can’t. I have a meeting in an hour, then I’m leaving for New York in the morning.”
“Where…where are you staying?”
“The Benson near Capitol Hill.”
“Chase.” She nudged the door wider. “Cancel your meeting and come in.”
The raw pain in his eyes nearly broke her.
“I…” He glanced away and she could see his jaw working, then his throat, as he cleared it.
“Chase?” She reached out for his arm. “Are you…?”
His hard glare, combined with the distance he put between them as he stepped back, stopped her cold.
“Don’t ask if I’m okay because I’m damn-well not.” He dragged in a deep breath, swept a hand across his eyes. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come.”
“No, I—”
“I’ve gotta go.”
Before she could say another word, he turned on his heel and strode away, leaving her more alone than she’d been before.
* * *
Later that night, after Vanessa put on a brave face for Erin and Heather then cried in her room, she sat brooding on the couch, a glass of wine in hand and a clean piece of paper on her knee.
She was so very grateful for her girls, for her life, imperfect though it was. She’d had her heart broken, but still she’d pulled herself together. And now, here was the bundle of complication that was Chase Harrington. A spanner in the works who’d inadvertently made her believe that love could happen again, and in the most unlikely places.
Her heart wrenched, a painful, bittersweet feeling as she halfheartedly put in the final folds of her figure.
His rejection cut deep. After everything they’d shared, everything he’d revealed to her, he still didn’t trust her to see him at his most vulnerable. Her heart ached for the boy who’d first learned that horrible life lesson all those years ago.
She tapped her fingers on the table, absently drumming out a rhythm.
It wasn’t right, leaving him like this. Maybe she’d come into Chase’s life for a reason. Maybe he had to be shown you shouldn’t let the past eat away at you, and that the world wasn’t filled with cold, hard people.
Maybe they were each other’s second chances.
She gently placed the origami on the table, critically assessing her work. The sharp lines and intricate folds revealed a perfect, tiny miniature of One Madison Park. Chase’s apartment.
With a sigh she tossed the rest of the paper on the table.
What was Chase doing now? Getting drunk at a bar? Or brooding alone in his hotel suite, dwelling on a bunch of what-ifs he couldn’t change? Was he blaming himself? Was there something he could’ve done, a treatment or drugs he could’ve provided? Or was he racked with survivor’s guilt?
He shouldn’t be alone after something like this. She couldn’t bear either scenario, imagining him trying to cope with the sense of futility that death brought.
Vanessa sprung to her feet, plunked the wineglass on the table and went for the phone.
With her thumbnail flicking her front tooth she dialed the familiar number, jigging one leg impatiently as it rang.
“Stella? I need your help.”
* * *
Half an hour later, she took the elevator up to Chase’s hotel room, the shiny mirrored walls reflecting the determined lines on her face, the serious glint in her eye. Beyond that, she barely had time to notice that her hair was a mess and she’d not put on any lipstick. With a dismayed groan she dug in her handbag, came up with an old tube of strawberry gloss and quickly applied it as the doors swished open onto the top floor.
She sighed at her hair, smoothed it back into its ponytail, frowned then removed the tie. After a gentle tousle she shrugged. Too late now.
She stepped out into the corridor, heading toward the door at the far end. It was an imposing double-locked affair, barring entry to all.
Just like Chase, she thought, her soft footfalls engulfed by plush carpeting. Her heart hammered away, full of doubt and hope as she chewed on her fingernail, biting it down to a painful nub.
Damn. She quickly dropped her hand, shoved it in her coat pocket and took a deep, steadying breath.
It was all or nothing now. She pressed a palm to her chest, her heart beating way too fast. A thin trickle of sweat made a track down her lower back and she bit her lip, a foot in both camps for one indecisive second.
Then she knocked on the door.
Eleven
Chase was halfway through the contents of the liquor cabinet, slumped in the leather couch and glaring through the wide plasma screen that currently displayed the news.
His phone vibrated again, the fourth time in ten minutes, but he ignored it. There was a massive hole in his heart that no amount of alcohol or self-flagellation could fill. Yes, he’d prepared himself for the moment, had gone over and over it in his head, way too knowledgeable about the realities of the disease and what everyone could expect when Sam’s time inevitably came.
And yet he’d been woefully unprepared for the actual reality of it all. Hell, Mitch had held it together better than him, even encouraged him to return to New York after the funeral.
Stay busy, keep working. Occupy your mind.
Of all the pointless, terrible things that had happened in his life, this had to top it all.
And oh, the irony. It had taken one boy for him to realize how much of a caricature he’d become. He was severely out of touch with everything and everyone, operating in the alternate reality of his billion-dollar life. He hadn’t known how to be real anymore.
But thanks to Sam, he’d changed. His quest had led him to Vanessa and all the amazing possibilities he never thought would be offered to him. She and her small, self-sufficient family had showed him what was important.
Ah. Vanessa. Red hair, green eyes and a seductive mouth that rocked his world.
Walking away from her had taken every ounce of his control, every single shred of strength. But he had to.
Seeing her face filled with so much sadness, so much pity for him had nearly sliced him open, spilling emotion right there on the floor. He’d been horrified by the prick of tears behi
nd his eyes.
He never cried in public, not after that last mortifying time in junior high. The chanting, the cruel taunts… Christ, he’d never let go of that, would he?
Yet here he was, fifteen all over again, struggling to hold everything together, to force the tears, the emotion and fear back inside, to show no one vulnerability or weakness.
Thank God she hadn’t seen him like that.
It had taken supreme willpower to stuff everything back behind those walls before they had a chance to crumble. But he’d done it, even as her eyes had welled and she’d reached for him.
Breaking down in front of her, losing it, was something she didn’t need to see. Control defined him: emotion did not. If he couldn’t keep it together, he was good to no one.
Deep in brooding silence, he barely heard the knock on the door until the tapping became a firm pounding. Gritting his teeth, he muttered a dozen colorful words under his breath before settling on the least offensive.
“Go away!”
The knocking stopped.
“Chase,” came the muffled reply. “It’s Vanessa. Open the door.”
With a groan, he ran a hand over his face, ending at his stubbled chin. The rough hairs jabbed into his palm, a reminder that he’d not shaved in a couple of days, that he was in desperate need of a shower and that, strangely, he couldn’t give a damn.
“Chase,” she repeated firmly. “I’m going to keep knocking until you open this door.”
He cursed aloud now, lurched to his feet then swayed as the alcohol hit.
Goddammit. After a couple of slow, heavy blinks and a deep breath, he made his way to the door, swallowing thickly all the way.
“Go home, Vanessa,” he growled through the door.
“No.”
“Go. Home.”
“Open the door, Chase.”
“Dammit, I don’t want to see you!”
After a brief silence, Chase shoved his eye to the peephole. Had she taken the hint?
No.
“Well, I need to see you,” she said, glaring right into the hole.
Arrrrrgh! With all the frustration behind his groan, he yanked the door open.
And looked straight into a pair of beautiful green eyes, fixed firm and steady on him.
The anger died on his lips.
Vanessa sniffed. He smelled of expensive bourbon and despair, his grief something she could almost touch. It was a barrier keeping her at bay.
She swallowed, bolstered her courage and refused to let that give her pause. This was her fighting for what she wanted. For what she sensed he couldn’t say outright.
“This is not a good time for me, Vanessa,” he muttered, one hand sweeping through his hair as he glared at the floor. “Go home to your children.”
“I think you need me more.”
He stilled, raking her with his red-rimmed gaze. “Really.”
Before she had a chance to blink, he’d yanked her inside, slammed the door behind him and shoved her up against the wall. “And what do you know about what I really need?”
“I know you shouldn’t be alone. Let me be with you.”
Everything about him, the tone of his voice, his granite expression, the way he crowded her, all screamed keep out. He was trying so hard to push her away and she could see the war he waged inside: the air was thick with it.
Worry crawled up her throat but she forced it back down.
“You want to be with me?” he snarled. “Perfect Vanessa Partridge with her old-world money and her highbrow family wants to be with me?”
“Chase…”
“Yeah, me. Fat, ugly Chase Harrington from Obscure, Texas.” He pressed into her, his face so close not even a breath could escape, the air sweet with the scent of bourbon. “The geeky son of Mad Max Harrington, whose parents threatened divorce every weekend—to the delight of the entire town—then had loud make-up sex in the nearest hotel room while I died of shame every. Single. Time. That’s who you want to be with?”
Oh, Lord, he was killing her. Tears prickled behind her eyes, his anguish laced with self-disgust breaking her heart into a million tiny shards. Through her coat, beneath his thin shirt, his pulse raced, his breath deep and angry, and she swallowed, refusing to succumb to the danger in those flame-blue eyes. He was trying to push her away and dammit, she would not let him.
She shifted her feet even though he had practically every other inch of her body pinned.
“I’m so sorry, Chase,” she said slowly. “I’m so sorry that your past made you so distrustful. And I’m sorry about Sam. It’s an awful thing to happen to a child, let alone a child who’s close to you. But he was terminal. Nothing you could’ve done would’ve saved his life. You know that.”
He glared then suddenly pulled back, taking that searing heat with him. “No, I don’t know that,” he said.
She’d frowned. “Surely you can’t—”
“Maybe if I’d been involved in his life instead of ignoring Mitch’s calls, the disease could’ve been caught earlier. I mean, what the hell is all that money for if you can’t make a difference?”
“But you did make a difference.”
“Yeah. I read him a book,” he spat out, every word lashed with contempt.
It infuriated her. “Don’t do that. Don’t you dare make out like you did nothing. Sam had a wish and you made that come true. To say it was less than that is not only belittling his memory—it’s also an insult to Mitch. If you want to yell and scream, do it. If you want to get drunk, do that too. But do not say that you did nothing. I think it’s probably the best thing you’ve done in your entire life.”
When he said nothing, she deliberately softened her expression and took a step forward, forcing herself to be the one in his face this time. “Chase, I’m here now. I lost someone, too. I want to help you.”
When his nostrils flared she sucked in a sharp breath, sensing danger as the mood shifted. His eyes darkened, then his frown, but she held her ground when he took that last step and closed the gap.
Barely nothing separated them. Not a breath, nor a gasp, nor a heartbeat. But when she moved in to kiss him, he leaned back and all she could feel on her lips was the tense air between them.
She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Just waited, hope roaring through her veins as she held his troubled gaze in hers.
“I wish I could make it right for you,” she said softly, not trusting her voice above a whisper. “I wish I could help.”
He groaned, a sound so full of frustration that it made her want to wrap her arms around him and draw his pain into her body.
“You are. I want—” he took her in, devouring her with his eyes “—you. I’ve wanted you from the very start.”
Then his mouth dipped and he was almost touching hers, almost but not quite. She breathed nothing—felt nothing—but him. He surrounded her, filled her.
Then suddenly they were kissing and everything else just disappeared. His lips slid against hers, hard and demanding, and she took it, let him bruise her mouth, grip the back of her neck and angle her head so he could go deeper.
He pressed against her, backing them up until they hit the wall and she had no place left to go.
She wouldn’t want to anyway. Vanessa had imagined this moment for a long time, him kissing her, his tongue thrusting and tangling with hers while his manhood throbbed insistently between them. It had hijacked her waking moments, snuck into her dreams, accompanied even the most mundane of tasks.
And now she could think of nothing else.
“Take me to bed, Chase,” she whispered in his ear, and felt his breath shudder in, his body a humble mix of power and need.
“Not yet.”
He grabbed her hand and tugged her down the corridor, shoved open a door and flicked on a light.
The bathroom. An expensive, elegant display of tiling, golden fixtures and a huge spa bath. But it was toward the massive double-headed shower he went, taking her with him. He shoved the glass door open th
en turned back.
Slowly, silently, he undid her coat buttons, his gaze never leaving hers as he peeled the edges away. After she shrugged out of the coat, he grabbed the bottom of her sweater, dragging it up over her head.
Then his breath came out in an almighty rush.
Thank goodness she had on halfway decent underwear instead of her ratty old sports bra.
The chain-store brand white satin push-up created the illusion of cleavage, shoving her breasts up into a seductive silhouette and, judging by Chase’s expression, was worth every penny.
His hands went to her waist, fingers splayed over her skin and Vanessa shivered.
His eyes snapped up to hers. “You’re beautiful.”
She felt the heat rise in her neck and she swallowed, smiling shyly. “Thank you.”
“Dunbar was a grade-A jerk.”
She shrugged. “I know.” She slipped her arms around his neck and leaned in, silencing him. “But do you really want to talk about him? Or would you rather…” She brought her mouth to his ear and whispered, “Take my clothes off and get wet?”
When she took his earlobe between her lips and nibbled, a deep groan was her reward.
Oh, yes. His arms snaked around her, pulled her flush against him and she gasped. Yes.
He was rock hard and she was eager to get naked. He obliged by sweeping his hands up and over the swell of her breasts, palms running over the mounds before gently digging around in the cup and popping one free.
She gasped aloud as he wasted no time on niceties, simply took her nipple into his mouth and sucked.
His mouth was hot, wet and so very good. His tongue did crazy things to her skin, whirling around that hard nub of flesh, tasting and teasing until her knees began to buckle and her breath came out in small pants.
He did the same to her other breast, hand in cup, mouth on nipple, while he massaged the other, his rough hands creating a flurry of sensation that rose with every passing moment.
Their ragged breaths echoed off the walls, interspersed with Vanessa’s gasps when his teeth rasped over her sensitive nipple. Her entire body felt wired, as if Chase had somehow set her very blood aflame. His arms tightened around her, bringing her closer to him, to the hardness that pressed insistently into her belly. It made her insides flutter, crazy with anticipation.