She stopped up short. Her large pink slippers slid against the newly mopped entryway, causing her to wobble. He reached for her, but before he touched her, she caught her balance and turned. Now she was facing him once again. He tried to suppress a smile that was trying desperately to break across his face. Her ninja-like quickness had always amused him. She was so tiny, so delicate, so graceful. But when she wanted to move, she moved.
“Yes, Bear has a teddy bear,” she spoke matter-of-factly, in the same tone she would use to tell someone what time it was or that the sky was blue.
Chase knew her. He was sure that she was trying to hide the amusement in the ridiculousness of her statement in hopes of keeping him at arm’s length. When Krista decided to shut someone out, she built walls—high walls—that were protected by not only a deep moat surrounding its perimeter, but also snipers positioned around her heart and mind. Those suckers shot down anything that tried to pass.
He’d seen it happen with several girls who she’d considered her best friends when they were in high school. They’d betrayed her, normal girl stuff, and when they’d come crawling back to make amends, they’d pulled out all the stops. Tears. Notes saying how much they missed her. One of the girls, the blond one, had brought a collage of pictures of her with her excommunicated group of friends to Krista’s house. Krista had studied the picture-covered cardboard carefully, Chase had even seen a small smile appear on her lips. He’d thought maybe, just maybe, the ice had been cracking. That this girl had done the unthinkable and put a small chink in Krista’s emotional armor. He’d been wrong. Once she had finished looking it over, she’d asked, actually told, her no-longer friend to leave and take her “art project” with her.
For two years, the girls had tried to get back in Krista’s good graces. No matter what they’d done, nothing had worked. Krista would joke around with Chase sometimes and say that they were dead to her. She didn’t care if they cried, begged, or pulled on her heartstrings, that friendship had sailed.
Her sisters had even tried to talk Krista into forgiving the girls. They’d said that it was better to forgive and forget. He could still remember like it was yesterday, sitting at the Sloans’ kitchen table after Haley had said that and Krista immediately answering back with a cold look in her eye. “Oh, I forgive them. But I will never forget.”
Chase just never imagined he’d be on the receiving end of that look in her eye. But here he was. Staring right at it.
“You can bring Bear back here. I can keep him,” Chase offered.
The company would be nice, and Chase had never had a dog. His dad hadn’t allowed pets in the house, and once he’d left, he’d started touring almost immediately. It wasn’t really a lifestyle suitable for pets.
“No,” she said firmly. “Bear doesn’t like men. Well…men he doesn’t know.”
“I’m good with dogs,” Chase countered, his lips turning up into a smile.
He’d lived in a world where most people didn’t tell him no. In fact, no one told him no. It was oddly refreshing to have someone not just be a ‘yes man,’ or ‘yes woman’. In this case, Krista was definitely all woman.
“You’re good with a lot of things. That’s not the point,” Krista immediately shot back. Challenge glimmered in her mesmerizing eyes.
“What is the point then?” Chase raised his left brow, loving this exchange.
“The point is Bear stays with me. Who knows how long you’ll even be here.” Krista turned on her heels back towards the door.
“Can I take you to dinner tomorrow?” he asked just as her hand wrapped around the doorknob.
She froze. He saw her shoulders tense. “No.”
“Why not?” he countered before she could turn the knob.
“Because,” she said curtly as he watched her wrist pivot, turning the handle down.
Chase closed the distance between them, stepping behind Krista. Out of pure instinct, he reached up and flattened his hand on the door.
“Because why?” he asked, as the scent of her shampoo once again wafted up into his senses. He inhaled deeply as he stared down at the top of her head.
She turned around slowly, her sea-green eyes lifting beneath her thick, dark lashes, and he felt his heart slam into his chest. She was only inches away from him. Her head tilted up to accommodate his six-foot-one stature, which was in stark contrast to her five-foot-two. He watched as her lips parted and she breathed slowly but heavily.
“Because. I don’t want to go to dinner,” she said spacing her words evenly apart.
Her voice wasn’t as steady as he was sure she’d wanted it to be. And as much energy as she was putting into hiding her body’s response to him, the eyes really were the windows to the soul. She might very well have shut him out on a mental level, but she definitely was not having the same success on a physical level. Her eyes were telling the whole story.
“You sure? From what I remember, you do like to eat,” he stated with a questioning tone, cocking his head to one side, knowing full well what reaction he would invoke. He was as sure of her response as he was that the sun rose in the east and set in the west.
Her eating habits had always been a sore subject to Krista. Chase could remember countless times when her family had teasingly referred to her as the bottomless pit, said she must have a hollow leg, compared her eating habits with that of an entire football team, and they were always quick to point out the fact that she could out-eat any of her older male cousins. It was all done good-naturedly, but for some reason, it had rubbed Krista the wrong way. Instead of taking pride in the fact that she could eat anything and not gain a pound, Krista found it insulting somehow.
Not that that had stopped her family, or, it seemed now, Chase. Normally he wouldn’t intentionally try to ruffle Krista’s feathers, even though it was sexy as hell when said feathers got a little ruffled. But desperate times called for desperate measures. He wasn’t going to get into Krista’s good graces, that much he knew for a fact. His only hope was to get her talking. And if exchanging verbal jabs was the only way to get her in the ring, then so be it.
As if on cue, she locked her jaw, her lips pursed in a forced smile, and her eyes slanted in irritation.
It was too damn cute. He didn’t even attempt to hide the amusement in his eyes. His blatant enjoyment at her reaction caused her expression to grow even more irritated.
“Let me rephrase. I don’t want to have dinner with you.”
Feigning innocence, Chase nodded with mock understanding, “Ooh, is that what you meant?”
“You enjoying yourself, rock star?” she asked flatly but through gritted teeth.
She might have been determined to seem totally unaffected by him, but her eyes, her body, and her breathing betrayed her attempts.
“I am, actually,” Chase said, his voice growing gravelly. As much as he was trying to keep this exchange light and flirtatious, things were heating up hotter than a jalapeño pepper. “More than I have in years.”
“I seriously doubt that.” Disbelief at his statement shone through her catlike eyes.
He could try to convince her. Tell the truth, that being with her was the only time, besides when he was onstage playing music, that he felt truly alive. Not just physically or mentally either. She awakened his soul. But he knew that they weren’t there. Yet. She would roll her eyes at him and come back with, “Nice try, sport,”—or “rock star,” which seemed to be her new preferred name for him—or some other snippy reply to diminish his heartfelt sentiment.
So instead, he looked her dead in the eyes and asked, “Are you calling me a liar?”
Something of significance flashed in her eyes. It was there for less than a second, but he’d seen it. He didn’t know what it’d meant or why she’d covered it up so quickly, but it had definitely been there.
Before he could even begin to decipher its appearance, she said, “No. You are a lot of things. A liar is not one of them.” Her last sentence was spoken almost begrudgingly.
> “Really. A lot of things,” Chase repeated.
His head moved just a millimeter closer to her, being drawn like a magnet. At his small shift, her almond-shaped eyes widened with awareness. He couldn’t stop himself from brushing a stray red strand of silky hair that was lying across her forehead.
His hand fell to his side as his lips burned to taste hers, but instead of kissing her, he asked, “Care to share what things exactly?”
Her pink tongue made another appearance, sweeping across her lips. His body responded to the seductive gesture by tensing with need. He was strung tighter than he’d ever been in his life. He didn’t push her. Didn’t move. Just waited.
A war was going on behind those green-blue eyes of hers. He couldn’t be sure exactly what she was thinking, but if he were a betting man, he would say it had to do with him and continuing this conversation.
All of his senses became heightened to everything around him. The feel of the cold tile beneath his bare feet. The sweet scent of her shampoo and body lotion combined with the lemony smell of the Pine Sol he’d doused the house in. As a ‘rock star,’ he’d been offered a lot of drugs. Most of them he’d stayed away from, but years ago he had tried ecstasy, and right now, his skin felt just as sensitized as when he’d been under the influence of the drug. That’s exactly what Krista felt like to him—a drug.
He found himself holding his breath, wondering which side would win. He was hoping that whatever internal battle she was fighting would ultimately go in his favor.
Her eyes cleared and he saw that a victor had been crowned. No longer did she looked torn or unsure. “Nope,” she said simply.
Then, taking advantage of the fact that he’d removed his hand to sweep her stray strand of hair from her forehead, she turned the knob behind her back and was out the door in a flash.
“Kris—” The door shut in his face before he could even get out the first syllable of her name.
He thought about going after her, but there was no point. This was a marathon, not a sprint. His mom being in the hospital might have been what had prompted him to return to Harper’s Crossing. But now that he was here, now that he’d seen Krista again, it was not the only reason he planned on staying.
Chase knew now, more than ever before, that what Krista and he shared was not puppy love, young love, or even just first love. It was real love.
Krista might not like it. She might fight it. She might deny it. But he knew she felt it. He’d seen it in her eyes. Heard it in her voice. Felt it in her body language.
As he walked into the kitchen to get himself a drink of water, he adjusted his rock-hard length in his sweats. He knew he could take care of it on his own, but he also knew that it wouldn’t even come close to satisfying him. He sighed as he pulled a clean glass from the cupboard. He might as well get used to this. He had a feeling he was going to be living in a perpetual state of sexual frustration for the foreseeable future.
Still, a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. If that was the price he had to pay to get a chance at being with Krista again, for good this time, he was more than happy to pay it.
Chapter Seven
Three nights in a row with no sleep sucked lemons. To say that Krista was running on fumes would imply that she was actually running, which was not true. She was barely moving.
With each step she took up the stairwell, she felt like she was swimming upstream. Going up from the first floor to the fourth to check on Abby, Krista had made it only halfway up the first flight of stairs before seriously regretting her misguided choice to not take the elevator.
This poor decision stemmed from her new get-in-better-shape plan. She hadn’t made it to the track this morning for her run. Sadly, it wasn’t because she had been sleeping, cozily tucked in her bed. Nope. She’d been wide awake, staring at the red illuminated numbers on her bedside clock that mocked her each time they changed, all the while listening to the melodic sounds of Bear sawing logs.
After returning home with the beloved Teddy, Bear had hopped up on her bed—Teddy hanging from his mouth—circled three times, and plopped down, and he hadn’t moved until Krista had forced him to go out to the bathroom before she’d left for work. She’d barely been able to get the door open and then closed again, which she attributed to her lack of sleep.
Her unexpected reunion with Chase last night had stricken her wide a-freakin’-wake. Krista wasn’t sure if it was due to the adrenaline or lust that had been racing through her system after she left Abby’s house. It was most likely both.
For hours, she’d tossed and turned in her bed, trying to convince herself that she hadn’t really been all that affected by Chase’s return. She’d applied all of her persuasive efforts into trying to plead the case that she hadn’t almost spontaneously combusted at the sight of Chase shirtless in his low-slung sweats that hung in just the right spot on his hips to accentuate the sexy, defined lines of his abs. Or that when he’d had her trapped against the front door she hadn’t crossed her fingers and toes hoping, wishing, silently pleading for him to lean down and press his full lips to hers, pick her up, and take her against the wall.
She’d tried everything in her power to deny, deny, deny. But it was no use. Which was frustrating beyond belief. Krista had always prided herself on being a mind-over-matter girl. Then, on the rare occasions that failed her, she usually moved on to the fake-it-‘til-you-make-it mindset. Unfortunately, neither of those mental tricks had worked while lying in her bed, tossing and turning with visions of Chase, memories of Chase, fantasies of Chase.
Krista was a practical girl. Although she’d spent the greater part of last night floating down the River of Denial, she knew the cold, hard truth. She was affected by Chase’s return. Her heart, soul, and hormones were firmly in the “Team Chase” camp. They were rooting for her to spend time with him; catch up with him in and out of bed. Her body had been reminding her of how good things had been with Chase, even their first time—which had happened to be both of their first times.
After having seen his physical reaction to her, Krista knew Chase would be more than willing to take a little stroll down sexual memory lane. She wasn’t just going off of the all-systems-go, how-you-doin’ sweat tent he had been rocking last night either. All she’d had to do was look in his eyes and she’d seen how much he wanted her. Even in the hospital room yesterday, without the visual exhibit A in his pants, she’d felt the chemistry sizzling between them like bacon in a frying pan. There had been so much heat exploding between them it was like Pop Rocks if you drank them with Coke.
But her mind was the one that was in charge. It was the sole member of the “Team Krista” camp. It knew better than to listen to her heart, soul, and definitely her hormones. Luckily, as she had just reminded herself last night, her mind was running things. Always had been. Always would be.
Reconnecting with Chase, physically or emotionally, was not a good idea. Nothing good could come from it. Actually, that’s not true. She could come from it, and God, she knew it would be more than good.
But what then? What happened when he left again? What happened when he continued his life? What happened when the front pages of every magazine was splashed with pictures of him hooking up with groupies, models, actresses? What happened when her heart—which was still broken from the first time he left—broke into a million more pieces?
Exhaustion swept through her. Pausing for a moment, she looked at the final flight of stairs she needed to climb to reach her destination. She felt like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky. The soundtrack played in her head as she took each step. Dun-dun-da-dun-dun-da.
Finally, she made it to the top of the staircase. She was slightly out of breath. Krista was hoping that was due to the fatigue brought on by sleep deprivation and not a true barometer of how out of shape she was. Either way, her mind was made up. Sleep or no sleep, tomorrow was her day off and she was going to start it with a run on the track.
When she opened the door to the fourth floor, the first
thing she saw was Jamie walking towards her.
“Hi.” Krista’s voice sounded weak even to her own ears.
“Hey. You just missed your cousin.” Jamie smiled from ear to ear and was positively glowing, Alex had that effect on her. Actually, he had that effect on a lot of women, but to the dismay of most of the female population in Harper’s Crossing, the only woman who had ever had the same effect on him was Jamie.
Krista had been in the room the first time they’d met. Jamie had just moved to town when Alex had been hurt after a beam had fallen on him while he was evacuating people from a building that was on fire. Krista’s whole family—and there were a lot of them—had gathered in Alex’s hospital room, waiting for him to wake up. When he did, the first person he saw was Jamie. She was checking his vitals. Before he was out like a light again, he’d asked Jamie to marry him. True, he didn’t know her and he’d been hopped up on pain medicine, but it was still one of the most romantic things Krista had ever witnessed.
Now, as Krista walked towards her, Jamie ducked into a room, waving her hand for Krista to follow. Jamie wasn’t really one for dramatics, so Krista hoped everything was okay. A thought occurred to her as she followed her cousin-in-law. Maybe Jamie was pregnant. A little burst of energy spread through Krista’s weary bones. She would be so happy if that was the news she was about to hear.
Alex had adopted Jamie’s son, whose father had died in an automobile accident the same night Jamie had told him she was pregnant when she was seventeen years old. Jamie hadn’t let the fact that she’d been a single teen mom slow her down. She’d put herself through college, working and going to school at the same time, and done a great job with Joey. Jamie never talked about how difficult those years must have been, but Krista knew they had to have been extremely hard. This time, she would not only have Alex, but also the whole Sloan family to help and support her.
Crazy Love - Krista & Chase Page 7