“Umm, well I haven’t been home all that much, but he did sleep with me last night. We had good snuggles.”
Abby’s shoulders shook as she laughed. “Is that what you kids are calling it these days? Snuggles?”
Krista meant to play along and not draw attention to the fact that Abby wasn’t making any sense, but when she opened her mouth, she said, “What?”
“I was talking about Chase, not Bear,” Abby explained as her laughter died down.
“Oh.” Okay, that made sense.
“So did you two get to talk? You and Chase?” Abby sounded like a kid asking about a Christmas present.
Hearing Abby’s voice bursting with so much animation in it made Krista’s heart swell. Normally it was flat with more than a little hint of sadness. A part of her wanted to warn Abby not to get her hopes up about Chase sticking around. But she wasn’t going to be an emotional party pooper raining on Abby’s parade. Plus, it just sounded like Abby was excited to see her son again, not that she was having any misgivings about him sticking around. Where was the harm in that?
“Not really. I only saw him briefly.” Krista didn’t feel the need to divulge the fact that her brief encounters were because she was too chicken to have a real conversation with him. That he’d tried to talk to her, even wanted to have dinner with Krista, but she’d hightailed it out of the hospital room and Abby’s house last night before he got any deeper under her skin. Not that it had really done any good. Those two face-to-faces had definitely gotten under her skin, penetrating not only her heart, but her mind as well. Chase was in her head and there was nothing she could do about it.
Since she hadn’t been able to sleep—again—she’d gotten up early and put in a little extra time getting ready this morning. She’d blown out her hair and put on mascara, lipstick, even a little eyeliner. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn eyeliner.
Yesterday, when she’d unexpectedly seen Chase not once, but twice, she’d been a hot mess. Exhausted. Bags under her eyes, stains on her scrubs, her hair looking like a beehive resided in it. And she’d been paler than a baby’s butt. Last night had been slightly better, but not by much. At least she’d been wearing cute pajamas and her hair had been down. Still, she knew that her under-eye bags had been in full effect and if her skin hadn’t been pale it was only because it had been flushed with lust.
“I was sure when you guys were kids that you’d end up together. That you’d get married, have babies,” Abby said with that ever-familiar sadness beginning to bleed into her voice.
“We were young,” Krista answered. Sure, she’d thought the same thing, but why put any energy into talking about it?
“For years after Chase left, I thought that somehow, someway, you two would find your way back to each other.”
You and me both, Krista thought to herself.
Abby turned so that she looked directly at Krista, hope radiating from her eyes as she said, “Maybe you will. Maybe this happened to me for a reason and you two will get back together. You belong together.”
Krista had remained silent when Abby had been solely excited about her son’s return and the chance to see him again, but she couldn’t stand by and let a woman who was so emotionally fragile begin to believe in something that had absolutely no chance of coming to fruition.
Continuing to braid the thick, dark hair, Krista casually said, “I think that you may have watched one too many soap operas. Chase and I were over a long time ago. He’s here to see you, Abby.” She added that last bit to try to refocus the woman’s excitement.
“Hi, Mom,” Chase’s deep voice sounded from the doorway, startling Krista and causing her to jump, sending the brush that had been lying on her lap crashing to the floor.
“Chase.” Abby whispered. Krista could feel Chase’s mom shaking beside her.
She stood to get out of the way and make a quick exit so that mom and son could have their long overdue reunion privately. Reaching down to retrieve the brush, Krista froze as a large hand encircled hers when Chase also reached for the brush. Shivers of electricity shimmied up her arm from Chase’s heated touch. When she looked up, her eyes locked on his caramel irises. Suddenly everything else in the world disappeared. All that existed was Chase. His eyes. His touch. His heat.
A small voice that must have been put in charge of her self-preservation, screamed in her head, Get out now!
After pulling her hand away as fast as if she’d been burned by fire—which, in a way, she had!—she straightened and began walking out the door. She needed to get out of there.
“I’ll let you guys catch up. See you later, Abby. Let me know if you need anything.” The words poured out of her like water flowing down the rapids.
“Krista.” Chase’s raspy voice stopped her at the door.
A few more feet and she’d be safe. Staring straight ahead at her exit, her back towards Chase and his mom, she stood frozen aside from the movement of her peach-colored scrubs which covered her rapidly rising and falling chest as she took in choppy breaths.
Get. It. Together, she sharply admonished herself.
* * *
Chase knew that Krista’s great escape had less to do with giving him and his mom time and more to do with the fact that when they’d touched it had been so powerful it had almost knocked him on his ass. The second he’d touched her always cold hands, he knew that she’d felt it too. He’d seen it in her eyes.
So he waited to see if Krista was going to make a run for it or turn and face the music. He hadn’t seen her in a lot of years, but if she was anything like the Krista he knew and loved, she would turn around. She wouldn’t be happy about, but she would do it. Krista would not let anything get the best of her, especially something she would think she should be in control of—like her reaction to the explosive chemistry between them.
Just as he’d predicted, she slowly turned on her heels. With a very contrived casualness, she arched her brow. “Huh?”
Once again, Chase had gotten her undivided attention, and once again, he had no idea what to do with it. This wasn’t the time or the place to have a real talk, which absolutely needed to happen. So once again, he shot out the first thing that came into his mind.
“You look really pretty today.”
He saw her green-blue eyes soften slightly. “Thank you.” Then they narrowed as a small smile tilted her lips.
“What?” He knew something was going on in that beautiful head of hers, but he had no idea what.
She shrugged as if it were insignificant. “Nothing really. Just maybe next time you give a lady a compliment, you shouldn’t qualify it. I think your game may be a little rusty, rock star.” Leaning around him, she waved at his mom. “I’ll come by and check on you after my shift.”
Chase watched as she turned and left the room. Sure, he had a thousand comebacks he could have said. But in a tactical move, he’d decided to remain quiet and let her go. First, it was good to let her feel like she was in control of what was happening between them. He knew the truth—that she had no more control over it than he did—but he was not about to burst her delusional bubble. Second, she had just unwittingly thrown down the gauntlet to him. It might have been said as a smartass comment but Krista had just said that he was off his game. Chase was more than looking forward to proving her wrong.
“She still likes to keep you on your toes,” his mom’s voice sounded behind him.
Right. His mom. Krista had a way of making him forget that anyone other than the two of them existed.
“Yes. She does,” Chase said as he pivoted back around. Leaning down, he wrapped his arms around his mom’s tiny frame. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Now that you’re home.” His mom held him tight.
Chase waited for any of the anger or resentment he’d bottled up and pushed down over his lifetime to spread through him. He braced himself for it. But instead of any negative feeling bubbling to the surface, Chase just felt…happy. Happy to be here. With his
mom. Home.
“It’s good to be back.” Chase rubbed his mom’s back and waited for her to release him from her iron grip.
When she did, he pulled up the chair beside her. Looking at her today, light streaming in through the windows, he saw that, although there may be a few more wrinkles gracing her face, she still looked the same. She’d been seventeen when she’d had him, so she was in her early forties but looked about ten years younger than that. When she had been in her early thirties, she’d looked like she was in her twenties.
He watched as her eyes searched his face as if she were trying to commit every line, every inch, to memory. Tears began to brim as she took in a shaky breath.
“I can’t believe you’re really here.”
He nodded as a lump rose in his throat. He’d missed his mom. All the years he’d stayed away, he’d made himself become numb towards her. It was what he’d had to do when his dad had been alive. There was no way he’d been able to come visit her then. Not that he had even after Roger had passed. It had just become habit.
“How long are you staying?” He could hear the desperation just under the surface of his mom’s timid voice. It was as if she were terrified to hear the answer.
That was the second time he’d heard that question today. And just like the first time, he still didn’t have an answer. “I’m not sure.”
Abby’s face fell in disappointment, but she tried to answer him in an upbeat tone. “Okay.”
Seeing her struggling to hide what she was feeling broke Chase’s heart. He’d seen her do that with his dad his whole life. Whether she was scared, sad, mad, hurt, she put on a brave face and covered all of that up.
“Don’t.” His tone came out much harsher than he’d meant it to.
She froze and some of the color drained from her cheeks. He wanted to kick his own ass for speaking so gruffly to her.
Reaching out, he gingerly covered her hand as he apologized. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’ll be here until I know you’re okay.”
At his calming tone and comforting words, her face lit up again.
She started telling him how proud she was of him, how much she’d missed him. He’d heard those same words on messages she’d left for him over the years. Seen those words on e-mails and letters she’d sent him. But there was just something so different about sitting in front of her and hearing them. They washed over him like they never had before.
As he moved the topic along, asking her about her life, he couldn’t believe how much Krista’s name came up. Krista this. Krista that. Chase wasn’t sure if his mom was just strapping on her bow and arrow to play cupid or if Krista was actually her only form of social interaction.
After seeing the condition of her house yesterday, he didn’t think she was in the habit of having people over. When he was growing up, Chase’s mom hadn’t been allowed to have friends. His father had strictly forbidden it.
For some reason, Chase had just assumed that after his dad died his mom would move on with her life. She would be free. Free to have her own life. No one to scare her, hurt her, keep her under lock and key.
Now, he was starting to get the feeling that, even though that might be the case, his mom had still lived like it wasn’t. Guilt began to creep up as he spoke to his mom and got an idea of what kind of condition she was in.
Yes, she’d told him to get out and not come back. Yes, she hadn’t left his asshole of a father. Yes, he wished his childhood would have been different and his mom was partly to blame for that.
But Chase was a man now, not a boy. He was successful. He was wealthy. He’d been living a privileged life for years and his mom, it seemed, hadn’t been living at all.
Before Chase made any decisions about the future, he needed to get to the bottom of this, find out what was really going on with his mom. And he knew exactly who to ask.
Krista.
Chapter Nine
A loud growl sounded, vibrating off the walls of the elevator. Krista’s hands flew to her stomach. She was hungrier than she’d originally thought.
Just a few moments ago, she’d been on her way to the cafeteria to grab a sandwich when she’d been called to a meeting in the north wing of the hospital, where the admin offices were located. Her supervisor Marina had been very vague with the details, but when she’d asked if she could run and grab something to eat, she was assured that there would be food provided.
The elevator doors opened and she started down the long corridor to conference room B. Although Marina hadn’t wanted to tell her what this was about, Krista had a pretty good idea. Her contract with the hospital ended in two months. By then, she’d have the necessary hours to become board certified. She was one of the best PTs they had at HCCH. Money was not everything, but she did hope that they took both her job performance and pursuit of board certification into consideration when they renewed her contract.
Krista knew her worth. She just hoped that they did. Unfortunately, they probably also knew that this was the only hospital she wanted to work in. Sure, she could commute to Chicago, to the larger hospitals. However, that was the last thing she wanted to do. So chances were, whatever they offered her, she would take. Which was why she was not looking forward to this meeting. She only liked to negotiate things when she had the upper hand. In this case, they did.
On the upside, at least this little interruption to her day was diverting her mind from the thing it had been obsessing about for the last twenty-four hours—no matter what she did to try and stop it!—Chase. Not even a minute had passed without some Chase-related thought popping up and making itself known. It was really beginning to piss her off.
Two days ago, Krista would have admitted—only to herself, of course!—that she thought about Chase way too much. She had even put in place self-imposed guidelines in an attempt to limit such wasted time. The rule was that she allowed herself one hour per day, which she normally utilized at night while listening to his music, to think about Chase. Said allotted time was the only time that she permitted herself to indulge in missing him, thoughts of him, fantasies starring him. It hadn’t been a complete success, but it had helped her to not obsess, which she took as a win.
Now, her entire game plan had been flipped upside down and inside out. Every minute of every hour was Chase filled. It seemed like there was nothing she could do about it.
So she’d had to revise her Chase strategy. Her mind was a goner. It had gone to the dark side and there was nothing she could do that seemed to control it. What she could control was her response to her obsessive thoughts and Chase’s presence. Keep her guard up. Not let him get a foothold into her psyche or her panties.
With that guy, it wasn’t ‘give him an inch and he would take a mile.’ Nope. It wasn’t even Chase who she distrusted. It was herself. She had to protect herself from herself, and that meant keeping her distance from Chase Malone.
At this point, she would consider it a victory if she was able to make it through his visit without spending any length of time with him—and of course without having any sexual-in-nature incidents. Krista was hanging on by a very thin, rapidly fraying thread. Looking at Chase as the enemy was the only way she would survive. Her happiness, her heart, and her sanity were on the line.
Her stomach growled once again, and of course Chase’s voice popped into her head when he’d asked her to dinner. “From what I remember, you do like to eat.” Ugh. He could be such a smartass. He got away with it because he was a sexy, hot, sexy, gorgeous, sexy, talented—oh and had she mentioned sexy—smartass.
That was the other thing she needed to make sure she guarded herself against. She knew his game. It was so easy to be drawn into their patented banter. It was one of the things she missed the most about him.
Their relationship hadn’t been all flowers and candy. Chase challenged her and she did the same to him. They called each other on their BS, which, nine times out of ten, ended up in a fight. But those had always led to hot make-out sessions when they
were pre-teens and hot make-up sex once they were teens.
Everything with Chase was hot. Too hot. They had always brought out the fire in each other. Krista had dated other guys since Chase. Some of them even semi-seriously, but she hadn’t shared the same combustible energy with any of them. She knew that if she spent any kind of time with Chase the sparks that had been flying between them would be the least of her worries. She feared that if she let her guard down, even for a moment, there would be a fiery inferno she would not be able to walk away from unscathed.
As she rounded the corner, she saw that the door to the conference room was closed. She had a brief thought that that was odd but dismissed it immediately. After turning the knob and stepping inside, she saw that there was quite a spread laid out on the light oak oval table in the center of the room. Her stomach was definitely going to enjoy this meeting even if it ended up that her bank account didn’t.
The room was empty other than the insane amount of food. Moving towards the small sandwiches that were in the center of a blue dish, she saw that they were cut in triangles. Score! For some strange reason, she’d always cut her sandwiches into pizza shapes. She still did it. Her cousins and sisters would sometimes make fun of her, but she couldn’t care less. It made her happy.
Just as she picked up one of the triangle shapes of goodness, she heard the door shut behind her. Turning her head, she expected to see the hospital administrator Mr. Fields. She almost spit out the bite of bread and lunchmeat when, instead of a short, portly, balding fifty-something man standing in front of her, there was a tall, sexy twenty-seven-year-old rock star.
“Hi,” he said casually, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for him to be standing in a staff only conference room.
Chewing quickly, she swallowed the bite she’d just taken (which was a difficult task, considering the fact that Krista’s mouth had gone dry at the sight of the sexy stubble that ran along Chase’s jawline). “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she barked at him. “You can’t be in here. I have a meeting.”
Crazy Love - Krista & Chase Page 9