Chase:: A Bad Boy Romance

by Kylie Walker

  CHASE

  By:

  KYLIE WALKER

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  BONUS BOOK

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

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  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 2016 By: Kylie Walker

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Kylie Walker holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  PROLOGUE

  She felt like she was floating. Her body was suddenly weightless and without the pain that she had come to know so intimately. At first, she was confused. She was looking down at the scene below her, watching it like it was a movie. There was a small crowd of people and they were looking at something along the side of the road. In her confused state she floated over and above where they were gathered as she looked down. What she saw jolted her senses and it all came flooding back. Axel had been in a rage, unlike anything she had ever seen before. He was so quick that she didn’t see the first blow coming. She felt his fist slam into her head and her body being thrown backward. Dazed, but still conscious, she had tried to lift up her head. Suddenly he was straddling her and telling her to take a good look at his face because it was the last one she would ever see. He threw another punch at her face and then another. She kept lifting her head back up. If showing him she was still alive was all she had left, then she was going to do it, until he killed her.

  The third punch rendered it impossible for her to lift her head, but she was still conscious when he started kicking her in the stomach. She tried to roll into a fetal position but it was too late. She heard the sound of cracking bones in her arms as his foot connected with them. She vaguely remembered him raising that same foot up and smashing it down into the side of her head just before he knelt down to the floor where she was and put his hands around her throat. She was unconscious from the beating before he began to squeeze and now as she looked down at the unrecognizable carcass alongside the road it was hard to believe that was the body that she had lived in.

  She searched the sad faces of the people standing around her just as she heard the sounds of an ambulance approaching. She wondered which one was unlucky enough to have found her body. Which one of these good Samaritans would wake up screaming at night with visions of her bloody, swollen, twisted carcass dancing in their head? She didn’t remember Axel loading her onto the bike. She wasn’t sure how he kept her from falling off before they got to this fairly isolated spot. Her memory began again when he pulled the bike over and turned off the ignition. He hadn’t picked her up gingerly. Not that it mattered to him but there was no point. She was already gone by then. She watched him drag her off the bike and toss her limp body along the side of the road, into the weeds as if she were a bag of garbage. Leaving her there meant no more to him than littering. As long as no one saw him do it, he would walk away guilt and consequence free.

  The siren was loud and she turned and saw an ambulance and a police car racing toward them. The crowd of people moved apart as the ambulance came screeching to a halt. She watched the police officer take a man and woman to the side and begin interviewing them. The woman looked shaken to her core and her husband kept his hand softly on her shoulder as she shook and sobbed and tried to tell the officer exactly how she had discovered the lifeless body that the paramedics were now working on.

  The medics were a man and a woman. They ran to the body with a body board and bags that looked like they weighed a hundred pounds. The female reached the body first and she let her bag fall off of her shoulder and dropped to her knees next to it. Her partner brought over the body board and the female gently placed a gloved hand underneath the matted brown hair stuck to its neck and another on the hip and she rolled it up gently so that the man could shove the board underneath it. She lay the body back down just as gently. Jordan wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter. She wasn’t there any longer. She was already dead, but she quickly figured that out for herself. She heard the woman tell the man that she couldn’t find a pulse. Without hesitation, the man took hold of the bloody and already torn shirt she was wearing and ripped it off of her. The bruising to her stomach and ribs was horrific. Deep purple shoe marks decorated her sides and her stomach was swollen, probably with the blood from the organs Axel had injured as he beat her. The medics left her bra in place and began CPR. Jordan watched curiously as the woman compressed the body’s chest while the man covered her nose and mouth with a mask and began to squeeze a big blue bulb with his hand, forcing oxygen into the no longer functioning lungs. Ironically her thought at that very moment was that she should have left him a long time ago.

  She tore her eyes from the dramatic scene unfolding below her and looked through the crowd. She knew he was there somewhere, she could feel him. It was dark, cold feeling, just like the look in his eyes just before she slipped into unconsciousness and he proceeded to kill her. She spotted him about twenty feet away. He was standing across the road in a clump of trees and bushes, watching. She wondered briefly if he could feel her there too. But she quickly decided against it. Feelings were not a part of his DNA. The only thing that pumped through his veins besides the darkness was a strong sense of self-preservation. She knew for sure that was the only reason he was there now. He wanted to be sure that she was dead. He wanted to be sure she could never tell anyone what he had done to her. She was pulled back to what was happening to the body below her when she heard the male medic say, “I still don’t have a pulse.” She immediately turned to look back across at Axel. He seemed to be smiling and in the chaos of the moment no one noticed as he climbed back on his bike with a look of sheer relief on his face and pulled away.

  “Come on honey!” the woman was yelling. “Please don’t die on me. Come on, not today, not on my shift.” She seemed like a nice lady. I would hate to be the one to tell her that it was too late. I’m already gone and I don’t know how to get back. “Come on sweetie, breathe for me.” The man was talking to me too. They were both calling her sweetie and honey because they didn’t know her name. If she had one wish at that moment, other than still being alive, it was that they at least knew her name. Axel never used her name anymore. He called her all sorts of nasty, vile things, but not Jordan because using her name would imply that he had any respect for her existence and obviously he didn’t.

  The medics had put the sticky pads on her bare chest and they’d hit the button each time the

  robotic voice told them to. It had netted them not
hing the first two tries. She watched now as the voice from the machine said, “Charging…Clear….Administering shock.” The body jerked up off the ground as the pulse of electricity charged through it and then the strangest thing happened. She could feel the pain. She could feel the medic’s fingers on the side of her neck and from her place on the ground she heard the sound of a female voice saying,

  “I’ve got a pulse!”

  Chapter 1

  Jordan

  Jordan pulled her eyes open in a panic. Sunlight flooded the room and fear seized her chest. She was late! She sat straight up in bed and looked at the clock on the nightstand. The neon numbers were almost invisible in the face of the sun that came in through the window. She squinted and finally saw that it said, ‘6:59 am.’ With a sigh of relief, she realized that she wasn’t late at all and she smiled at her own silliness. She had the biggest interview of her life today and of course, she wasn’t going to sleep through it. As if offering proof, the numbers on the clock changed just as the first alarm she had set on her phone began to screech. She had set four of them, each one ten minutes apart…just in case. She reached over and picked up the phone and shut off the alarm. She smiled again when she saw the text from her roommate Natalie that said,

  “Sorry about opening your blinds, but I wanted to make sure you didn’t oversleep. Good luck today!” She wished Natalie was there so she could tell her she had woken up a minute before her alarm…so there! She smiled to herself. She would stop by the coffee shop while she was out and rub it in, just a little bit.

  She let her feet hit the floor and stretched before getting out of the comfortable bed and going out to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. The place was deathly quiet as it usually was first thing in the morning. Their neighbors had nine-to-five jobs, so by eight o’clock the building was virtually silent. Jordan enjoyed the solitude, it was her favorite time of day. She loved sitting quietly and reading the paper or watching the morning news while she sipped her coffee. She knew she would miss it if she got the job with Louis Marketing, but it was a small price to pay for a dream job.

  Not if she got the job, but when, she corrected herself silently. She was going to get the job. Natalie routinely reminded her that she had to start thinking with a more positive attitude if she expected to get the good things she deserved out of life. She developed a mantra as she went through the motions of getting herself ready for the interview. The job is mine. I have the job. My success is assured. She stepped underneath the shower head as she said it and let the cool water energize her. Cooler water made her skin tingle and awakened her senses. She wanted to be wide awake this morning and clear headed. She was going to get this job.

  The job is mine, she thought again as she dried her wavy brown hair and pinned it up in loose curls all over her head. She had let it set while she finished getting ready. The job is mine, she said again as she went over to the chair where she had laid out her outfit the night before. She took a deep breath now when she looked down at it and remembered that she had maxed out her last credit card to buy it. She shook off the anxiety and told herself it would be okay because the job is mine. She slipped on her white bra and panties before sliding her arms into the fitted white blouse and buttoning it up the front. Then she stepped into the pencil skirt. It was camel colored and soft to the touch. She liked the way it felt against her skin. It was comforting. She tucked the blouse in, zipped up the skirt and put on the black leather belt before she slipped into her black patent leather heels. She turned to look at her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the closet door behind her. The outfit was classic and simple and once she added her string of fake pearls and the knock-off watch that she had gotten for Christmas last year she would look professional and pulled together. The job is mine, she said into the mirror with a smile.

  Jordan was a photographer and she was proud of saying it was who she was, not what she did. She had an eye for the human face and what made it most attractive. That eye came in handy when she applied her make-up. She didn’t use much, just a little bit of concealer around her forehead and beneath the line of her jaw and lighter powder on the bridge of her straight nose and between her eyebrows. She blended it all together and added a touch of mascara and lip gloss and then just a gentle brush of light blue shadow across the top of her lashes to make her blue-gray eyes pop. Once she finished she took the pins out of her hair and shook it out. It fell down across her shoulders in gentle waves and she ran her fingers through it and once again took a good look at herself.

  “Perfect,” she whispered. She looked at the clock and smiled again. She was ready to go with plenty of time to stop by the coffee shop and chat with Nat. She grabbed her small tan purse and tucked her portfolio underneath her arm and headed out. It was just a few blocks to the coffee shop and the morning was beautiful. She enjoyed the quick stroll and all the way there she told herself, the job is mine.

  As she walked through the door of the little coffee shop she heard a whistle and turned to smile at her friend. “Not bad, girl.”

  “Not bad?” she asked with a mock pout.

  “Okay, fine. You look amazing.”

  Jordan smiled. “Amazing enough for a free drink?” She gave Nat a wink and Nat rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t we have a coffee maker at home? You know the one I left coffee for you in this morning because I’m such an incredible roommate?”

  “I had one cup and it was greatly appreciated. But I have this big interview today and I think just a little more caffeine would put me in the right frame of mind.”

  Natalie chuckled and shook her head as Jordan waved to the other two barista’s, Rachel and Devon behind the counter before she took a seat. Jordan sat down and a few minutes later Natalie brought her coffee over and sat down with her friend.

  “Are you ready?”

  Jordan smiled. “I was born ready. I eat interviewers for breakfast.”

  “Did you eat breakfast, by the way?”

  “Yes, Mom, I ate a healthy breakfast since it’s the most important meal of the day and I have to be ready for whatever the world hurls at me.” Jordan rolled her eyes before she took a sip of the latte her best friend had made. Strong, iced, with plenty of soy milk. Natalie knew how she liked it.

  She twirled a strand of dark red hair around one finger, as she watched Jordan with a concerned eye. “Sorry, but I know how you sometimes don’t take care of yourself when you’re nervous about something.”

  “I’m not nervous.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m not!”

  “So that wasn’t you rushing around your room last night like a kid before the first day of school, laying out your outfit and talking to yourself about positive thinking?”

  Jordan frowned. “The walls in that apartment are way too thin.”

  “Tell me about it. I was the one trying to sleep.”

  “Sorry.” She offered Natalie some of her latte as a show of remorse.

  “Like I didn’t caffeinate the minute I walked in here,” Natalie joked looking around the space. “It’s one of the perks of being a manager. I tell the underlings to do all the work while I sit and drink.”

  “Gee, I can hear you,” Devon said, rolling his eyes.

  “Gee, I know.” Natalie turned back to Jordan. “You’ve got this.”

  “I know I do.”

  “This could be the start of great things for you.”

  “I know it could, and it will. It will.” Jordan added the second ‘It will’ to calm the nerves.

  “You deserve this.”

  Their eyes met, and they gave each other a short, mute nod. They had that sort of shorthand communication that all best friends did after knowing each other for so long. Not only had they lived together for years, they had been friends back in college. Natalie had been through it all with her; the one always there.

  Jordan pushed thoughts of the past out of her head as she stood. “Okay. Time to go. I still look okay?”

  �
��Except for that coffee stain on your blouse,” Natalie said, pointing.

  “What?” She looked down in horror.

  “Just kidding. Go knock ‘em dead.”

  Jordan scowled and shook her head as she left, the sound of Natalie’s chuckle faded behind her. Wouldn’t that have been just like her? Get all dressed up, feel great, and then spill coffee she had convinced her best friend to give her for free. It would be best to get to the interview and stop pressing her luck. She was already taking a chance by walking down the street in heels. She was never the most graceful or coordinated person though she tried hard to be.

  She did deserve a break she told herself as she walked in the lobby of the company she hoped to work for with her head held high. She had talent, drive, and determination and she had worked so hard to get this far. If she hadn’t been derailed early on in life, she could have been much further along. It had taken a long time, way too long, to accept that she was worthy of more from life than the bare minimum. Only a person who had been what she had been through would understand that.

  This isn’t the time to think about it, she reminded herself as she walked toward the reception area of the Louis building. I can do this. I will do this. No doubt about it. The only worry she had at that precise moment was that she would have to deal with Mr. Louis himself during her first interview. She had heard that he wasn’t easy to impress. That’s okay, though, she told herself. I’ve got this.

  Chapter 2

  Chase

  “You’re going to be in on the interview?” Brigitte’s big, blue eyes widened in surprise when he informed her of the change in his schedule.

  He nodded tersely before he corrected her, “I’m going to be conducting the interview personally.” He didn’t have time to explain it to her and since he was the boss, he didn’t really have to. He felt generous though and gave her a reassuring smile. “You know how important this campaign is. Not just for us but for the client.”