The Chase

by Lauren Hawkeye

  “Because he’d never met me!” I’d be lying if I said her words weren’t getting to me. But that connection between Adam and I... I just can’t believe that it isn’t real. I might have been an idiot to not notice the lack of a contract, but as she says, I was dazzled. I don’t think I’m so simple as to imagine something that isn’t there.

  Seeing that she’s not getting through to me, Miss Black narrows her eyes. Her long, slender hand wraps around my wrist, and I wince as her sharp nails dig into my skin.

  “What exactly do you think is going to happen here? That he’s going to marry you, and all your financial problems will be solved?” She sneers, and anger starts a low burn in my chest.

  Until that moment, I hadn’t considered that being with Adam could mean the end to my financial woes. That wasn’t what drew me to him. I might be smarting from the way my mom called me on my snobbery, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to run back and settle into life in my own double wide. It might work for some people, but it’s not for me.

  And I really hope that Adam doesn’t think I want him for his money.

  “Let me tell you something, Miss Daniels. Adam Kincaid is a hedonistic, self-indulgent rock star. To him you are the whore with a heart of gold, the damsel in distress—a novelty. Once he’s done with you he’ll toss you aside, and by that point you won’t even have this job left.” Reaching a hand into her pocket, Miss Black withdraws something shiny and dangles it in front of my face.

  It’s a new bracelet, identical to the first—a slim gold chain with a black bead set in the centre. “Since it’s one of our other girls who stirred Mr. Thomas up and got you into this situation in the first place, I’m going to be very, very kind. I’ll only expect payment from your time with Mr. Kincaid, not the date with Mr. Thomas. I’ll allow you to work it off.”

  She slides the bracelet over my wrist, her touch very nearly seductive. “I take care of my girls, Miss Daniels. Come back with me. Once you’ve worked off your debt, I’ll make sure that you’re promoted. Only the biggest name clients for you. You have something special, and I’ll make you rich. You’ll never have to worry about money again.”

  I stare at the bracelet, my pulse beating a wicked tattoo in my veins. Just a few days ago, and the promise of that much money would have made me do nearly anything, just to propel myself out of the life that my mom clearly wants, though wanting life in a trailer park baffles the hell out of me.

  But now... I don’t know if I can, not even if it means survival. Adam has ruined me for everyone else. And though I feel in my gut that he’s not the person she says he is, she’s played on some of my base fears.

  Why would someone like him want to be with someone like me? The rock star and his white trash girlfriend? It doesn’t fit.

  “I need to think.” I stand slowly, afraid that if I move too quickly Black will sick her goons on me.

  She smirks, clearly thinking she’s just humoring me. “All right. But our plane leaves in one hour. I expect you downstairs, in the lobby, in thirty minutes.”

  “Fine.” I want to scream. I hate this woman. Hate her. And we are not the same.

  I’ll find some other way to make a living. I will.

  Because if there’s one thing Miss Black’s talk cleared up for me, it’s this. I don’t care what darkness Adam is carrying inside. I don’t care what he was going to tell me before Amy interrupted us.

  Adam chased me down, and it looks like he caught me. And I don’t want to ever let go.

  Chapter Nine

  I’m surprised to find the door to Adam’s dressing room closed, and I’m not sure whether or not I should knock on the door.

  Screw that. We were naked together here just moments ago... and if he truly does feel about me the way that I think he does when my imagination isn’t creating obstacles, then he won’t mind. In fact, he’ll be waiting anxiously for my return, to hear how my mother is.

  My very happy, incredibly healthy mother.

  I need to have a little chat with him about his assistant. Hell, I need to have a little chat with her.

  “Adam, where—” I’m anxious to tell him what happened with Miss Black, yet another clue that my heart has already made its decision, because I don’t share with people, ever.

  But when I walk in I get the surprise of my life.

  “What the fuck?” I stand just inside the door, feeling dizzy as the blood rushes to my head. Adam is wearing jeans now, the fly unbuttoned completely, and is still shirtless.

  The bonus? Amy, that conniving little be-yotch, is topless too. Completely topless, though her leather pants are still in place, and she’s grinding her rather impressive tits right into Adam’s face.

  They both turn as I speak. Amy just smiles, the expression tinted with triumph. Adam’s face is full of horror.

  I don’t buy it for a second. Narrowing my eyes, I point at the redheaded cow, wishing I could stab her with my finger.

  “You know how many people will sue you if you suffocate Adam Kincaid with your tits?” Rage takes me over, white hot anger that this woman I’ve never knowingly done a thing to would set me up like this, try to steal my happiness just because she can’t have her own. I want to stay classy, but I can’t keep my hillbilly roots from coming out.

  I might rag on my mom. But no one else in the world gets that right.

  Stalking across the room, I grab Amy’s arm and pull. She’s bigger than I am, but I have rage on my side. I drag her off of Adam, and she shrieks, reaching out and clutching a fistful of my hair.

  “Who do you think you are?” Her nails rake down my face, and I wince, but I’ve been in my share of scraps before. She’s relying on biting and hair pulling, so I elbow her in the gut, feeling grim satisfaction as she doubles over with a gasp. Kicking out the backs of her knees, I drag her down to the floor, pinning her in place with my body weight.

  She flails, and it’s like riding a bucking bronco, or what I imagine it would be like, at any rate.

  “Get off me, you whore!” Her head smacks into my own, and I see stars. When my vision clears, I hazard a look at Adam, who is watching us with utter shock on his face.

  And he has a boner so big I’m a little concerned.

  “Adam! Stop gaping at the chick fight and get Sax!” I roll my eyes; he narrows his. Instead of rushing to get his behemoth body guard, he steps in and pulls me off of Amy. I glare as the other woman rolls over and props herself up on her knees, sneering at me.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Adam wraps his arms around me, and I close my eyes, settling into the warmth of his embrace. It means a lot that, of the two of us, I’m the one he’s protecting.

  From the hiss that emanates from Amy, she’s not nearly as appreciative.

  “What’s wrong with you?” She screams at Adam as she draws herself up to her feet; his mouth drops. Rock star boy clearly isn’t used to being yelled at. “I’ve spent almost two years being whatever you needed—whoever you wanted. Turning away from all of your men. It was okay, because I knew in the end we’d be together.”

  Adam’s body tenses, and he grunts with utter disbelief. “Amy, I don’t date w... okay. Well. I didn’t date women. It wasn’t that anything was wrong with you... except you were a girl!”

  I want to bang my head against the unyielding wall of his chest. Men are so dense, even quasi-gay ones. The shock in his voice tells me that he really, honestly had no idea that Amy was in love with him.

  “I understood. I did. I was happy just being your friend.” A tear runs down Amy’s cheek, bringing with it a black track of mascara. “And then she did something to you. And she’s a whore. A whore, Adam!”

  Adam’s hands ball into fists. “Don’t call her that.”

  I’ve had enough. I step from the protective circle of Adam’s arms and face Amy head on. “It’s not an insult if it’s the truth, Adam. I’m a whore. A call girl. An escort. But I’m doing it to make something of myself. And I’d rather that than deception and harm caused to
others.”

  “You think I’m pathetic, you bitch? I’ll tell you what’s pathetic... taking money from a man for sex, then cutting off your whole life just to get in on the rock star action.” Her eyes blaze with fury, a light of cruelty shining from them as Sax and another of the giants land in the room, probably drawn by her shriek, and take control of the situation. Sax picks her up and tosses her over his shoulder, and she doesn’t even struggle, just continues to sneer.

  “You know it’s true, Carly.” Amy manages a cruel smirk, even upside down. “At least I cared. I wanted him to be part of my life. I didn’t just want to be absorbed into his.”

  “Enough! Carly is staying. With me.” Adam’s voice is full of disgust as he gestures at Sax to get Amy out of there. “And then she won’t have to do anything. She can just be with me.”

  His first words fill me with elation, because deep down, there’s nowhere I’d rather stay than here, with him. But then the rest of it filters in, and my blood runs cold.

  “What do you mean, I can just be with you?” I look up at him sidelong; he’s running his hands through his hair, distracted.

  He catches my stare with his own, and frowns at my perturbed expression. “Do we have to get into this right now? I’m reeling a little bit from all... that.” He gestures toward the door that Amy was just dragged through.

  I don’t care for his dismissive tone.

  “Yes, we do have to get into this right now.” Turning, I poke him in the stomach with my finger, grimacing only a little when it winds up hurting me rather than the other way around. “What do you mean?”

  He frowns. “I meant what I said. I’m not letting you go back to Miss Black or to whoring or poverty. I have more money than either of us could spend in ten lifetimes. You don’t have to do anything. I just want you to stay.”

  His words are earnest, and I know he means what he says—he’s decided, just as I thought I had. He wants me to stay. But he’s bringing up an issue that hadn’t occurred to me before.

  “And if I stay, what will I do?” I speak slowly. “Drop out of school, travel the world with you... and what?”

  “You wouldn’t have to do anything.” He’s excited about this now, drawing me close, not noticing that my body is stiff. “I wouldn’t expect you to. Though if you really wanted to, I suppose I need a new assistant.” He frowns at that.

  I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing. “And what will your new assistant be required to do? Give you blowjobs on your tour bus? Because I’m pretty sure you’ve got groupies for that.”

  Horror washes over me as I identify what I’m feeling, what he’s saying. To be together, he thinks I can just come live in his shadow, doing nothing... losing all sense of myself, the one thing I’ve spent my entire life trying to find.

  Worse? The puzzlement coming off of him tells me he doesn’t see the problem with this. Doesn’t see that the reason I got into this whole fucking situation in the first place is because I was trying to claw my way out of the gutter... me, on my own terms.

  A few days ago I would have been tempted to take this easy route.

  Now? No fucking way.

  “You’re way overreacting, Carly.” He scowls at me with frustration. “I’m just trying to help you.”

  “I know you are.” Hot tears clog my throat, but I swallow hard, not willing to set them free. And he’s speaking the truth—the reason he kidnapped me in the first place was to help... because it made him feel good. Not a bad thing, not really, but the fact that he’s blinded to what this a does to me?

  That’s a deal breaker. I won’t ever be my mom, so crushed by a man that she couldn’t pull herself and her daughter up from the depths. And if that means leaving someone that I think I’m falling in love with, going back to Miss Black so I can find my way on my own two feet?

  Then that’s that.

  “Adam... this isn’t going to work.” I can’t hold back the tears any longer, and they spill over, scalding my cheeks, dripping down like rain. My heart aches far more than it should, given how long I’ve known this man. But then, maybe I did inherit something from my mama after all... the ability to love far too much, far too soon.

  “What the fuck? Carly, what do you mean?” Panic paints his face with distress, and it almost breaks my heart. He might be oblivious, but he really does care. I know that now.

  Too bad it’s not enough... and it’s too late for more.

  He reaches out for me, and I step back, out of reach. The pain that sears across his face is echoed in my heart.

  “Carly, I don’t understand. What did I do? You can stay in school. You can do whatever the hell you want.” Not willing to be ignored, he catches me by the back of the neck, draws me in for a kiss. I can’t help but respond because, as always, it makes my body melt... but this time it also smashes my heart into a blender and sets it to pulverize.

  “You can’t possibly understand, Adam. That you would even suggest that I just come be with you shows that you don’t really know me at all.”

  The tears are choking me, and even as I tell myself that it’s ridiculous, because in the end we really do hardly know one another, my heart disagrees.

  “I don’t understand.” Seeing my own pain reflected in Adam’s eyes doesn’t soothe me; instead it makes it worse. I’ve found a soul mate in him, and while I’ve never believed that there’s just one match for every person, it’s hard to tell that to my emotions. I want to soothe him, but I can’t. “Tell me what to do to fix this.”

  For the first time, I see what Miss Black means. Adam is surrounded by people who yes him to death all the time—there’s nothing he wants that he can’t have. It’s not his fault, but it’s still the way that it is.

  And unless I want to lose myself, it just doesn’t work for me.

  “My father left my mother when I was three years old. He’d been her sugar daddy, always enabling her, petting her, indulging her weaknesses. When he up and left, she just fell apart. She literally didn’t have the strength or the guts to make a life for herself, or for the daughter she was saddled with. She lost herself in gambling, throwing away money we didn’t have, and she took up with any man who would make her life easier, because she just didn’t believe she could do it herself.” My voice shakes. “I won’t be like her. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it on my own. Even whoring out my body. Because at the end of the day, it’s my body. My work. My money.”

  “Carly, I believe that you, more than any woman I’ve ever known, can stand on your own feet. You don’t have to prove it to me.” When he clasps my cheek in his hand, strokes his thumb over my cheekbone, I almost back down.

  It feels so good, being with him, crazy as it all seems.

  “I know you believe it.” Shaking by now, I stand on my toes to brush a kiss over his lips. I can taste my own desperation.

  “But what’s important is that I believe it. And so I can’t stay.” My throat is clogged, my eyes are burning, and my hands shake as I step, back, turn away. He says my name as I walk out the door, then shouts it.

  It takes everything I have to walk away, to walk the concrete stadium steps to the front of the venue.

  To climb into the limo and see the satisfaction curving Miss Black’s lips.

  “It’s for the best, Miss Daniels.” She pats my leg; I barely feel it, I’m so numb. “Some of us just aren’t meant for love.”

  That’s what I tell my heart when it screams at me to go back, to return to that craziness that feels so right.

  But maybe Miss Black is right. If I want to be my own person... then maybe there’s no room for love.

  Chapter Ten

  “What do you think?” Miss Black asks as we exit the limo, bracing ourselves against the wind of the impending storm that’s blowing in. The car has driven across the tarmac, all the way to the foot of the small private plane that’s waiting for us. Her eagle eyes are searching my face, recording every nuance of my expression.

  I know what she’s doing. She’s
showing me all this, showing me what I could have by sticking with her. She wants me to be impressed.

  “It’s nice.” Too bad for her I’ve already been in Adam’s plane. With Adam.

  She doesn’t seem to like my lack of effusive praise. “You’ve pulled yourself together remarkably well, my dear. That’s an admirable trait. You remind me of how I used to be.”

  I eye her as she waits for my reaction, but I just shrug. I don’t feel much of anything.

  “Come on then.” Briskly, she takes me by the elbow and starts walking me to the plane, both of us blown slightly off course by the wind. She seems to be in more of a hurry than I think is necessary, and she’s pinching me. Hard.

  My feet, however, are dragging.

  Deep down, I know I made the right choice. All of my life, I’ve told myself that I won’t be like my mom. That I’ll be ruled by logic and not emotion.

  But emotion is making a really convincing case right now.

  I want Adam. And I feel like I’m losing someone who could change my life, just to hold myself to an ideal that no one cares about but me.

  My steps slow even further, wanting to drag me back to Adam, to his cocky smile and the drugging power of his kisses.

  “Don’t even think about it, dear.” Miss Black’s fingers dig into my arm, hard enough to bruise. “You’re getting on that plane.”

  Should I struggle? Should I just go with her? I place my foot onto the first metal step, leading up to the plane, feeling my ears ring.

  The ringing grows louder. I turn, realizing that it’s not my ears—it’s sirens.

  “Holy shit.” I blink, sure I’m seeing things. But no... I’m not imagining it. There’s a police car screaming across the tarmac, lights flashing crimson and blue, sirens blaring.

  The siren grows deafening and the car slows in front of me. Before it can even come to a stop, Adam is jumping out the back. Dressed in those faded jeans, a plain grey T-shirt and flip-flops, with his face still naked from his cold shower, he looks both wild eyed and beautiful.