Colossal, huge, biggest fuck-up of his life. He’d jumped to conclusions and screwed up royally. Had he taken a minute and asked, she would’ve explained, he knew she would’ve. The time they’d spent together, she’d been open.
If only he hadn’t been such a dick.
“Let’s head in.” Nixon motioned to the conference room.
Genevieve hesitantly stepped into the room. Bobby, the blonde woman followed, and Alec was next. Nixon caught Chasin’s attention before he could walk in.
“You know her?”
“Yep.”
“We gonna have a problem?”
“Probably.”
“You fuck her?” Nixon’s voice had dropped to a whisper.
“Yep.”
“Christ. We’ll talk after the meeting.”
No, they wouldn’t. Chasin wasn’t staying after they were done—he was following Genevieve out the door and he’d explain.
Chasin and Nix had barely gotten into the room when Bobby launched in. “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice. Melissa, Vivi’s manager, tells us you guys are the best and we’re fortunate you’re willing to fit us in. Talk about dumb luck, Vivi coming here with you literally three blocks up the road. I thought she was nuts coming out to the boonies. But damn, now I’m grateful.”
Vivi.
No flinch when her friend used the same nickname he’d called her that night.
“Genevieve’s the client?” Chasin asked.
“Yes. She uses the name Vivi Rush though,” Bobby explained.
An unnatural amount of bitterness crept in. Genevieve hadn’t mentioned she was a singer. No, not a singer—Alec said country music star.
What in the actual hell?
He didn’t know shit about country music. He’d never had any interest in listening to a song about a man losing his dog, his woman, and his truck all in the same day. That shit sounded depressing. So not knowing a damn thing, he had no idea who Vivi Rush was.
“Let’s get to the country music star part,” Chasin said. Genevieve flinched, the same way she did when he’d called her Vivi, which meant she didn’t miss the bite in his tone.
“Chasin—”
He didn’t allow her to finish and asked, “And why does Genevieve need protection?”
Chasin felt it, all eyes were on him. Nixon and Alec were alert, Bobby was confused, and fuck him, Genevieve looked scared.
“A fan has an unhealthy obsession with Vivi. At this point, we feel—”
“Unhealthy?” Chasin cut Bobby off. “Is there another kind of obsession?”
“Of course there is,” Bobby snapped. “The kind where fans can’t get enough of her music. The kind that leads them to buy it, talk about it, fill venues, buy merchandise.”
Chasin’s lips curled in disgust. Christ, the woman was talking about Genevieve like she was a product instead of a person.
“I can see this was a mistake,” Bobby started. “The label gave us a few options, including using her regular bodyguards. I thought coming here was best, since you’re close. But I was wrong.”
“Bobby.” Genevieve grabbed the woman’s hand. “Let’s sit down.”
“No, Vivi, no. I understand you’re not taking this seriously. You don’t want to believe it. I get it, I do. You like to live with your head in the clouds, writing your music.” Chasin’s eyes were glued to Genevieve so he didn’t miss her face twitch at the insult. “What you have to understand is, it’s my job to make it safe for you to do that. This is serious, Vivi. He’s escalating.”
Chasin wanted to know what escalating meant but he couldn’t get past the rush of anger. Someone was obviously stalking Genevieve, yet she’d invited a stranger into her home, made him dinner, talked openly to him, drank a bottle of wine with him, and allowed him to fuck her. All within hours of meeting him. Then she’d let him spend the night, and they’d spent the second day much like they’d spent the first, only there was a little more conversation. But it was worth noting that at no fucking time had she told him she was a goddamn country music star.
What the fuck?
An irritated rumble built deep in his gut, burning his lungs, and when he could no longer keep it contained, it rushed out in a snarl, “Jesus fuck, Genevieve.”
Both women jolted at his outburst but it was Genevieve who paled. Fuck him, just like the night he’d laid into her and left. Except this time, it wasn’t only hurt that flashed—a liberal amount of panic shone in her golden eyes.
“Chasin,” she whispered.
His name was not an answer.
“Outside,” he barked.
“Wait. What?” Bobby stepped in front of Genevieve.
Chasin would’ve thought the protective gesture was amusing if he wasn’t so pissed off. Genevieve had at least three inches on the petite blonde, and thirty pounds. Thirty pounds that gave Genevieve her sexy curves. Tits and ass that were both abundant and soft. A body that was built to take a man like him.
Perfect in every way.
“Chasin, let’s all sit down and—”
“Out. Side.”
Gold glittered, and fucking hell, Chasin felt it in two places—in his gut and his dick. And when she narrowed those golden orbs on him, snapped her shoulders back, placed a hand on her hip, and prepared for battle, Chasin felt that, too—gut, dick, and a third place—his chest. All three burned.
“Do not bark at me like I’m a dog, Chasin Murray. I don’t know who the hell you think you are, ordering me around.”
That was when Genevieve unintentionally gave Chasin the opening he needed.
“You know who I am.”
Pain flickered—just a flash, there then gone. But with it came longing. He was well-acquainted with the emotion, therefore he didn’t miss it.
Genevieve didn’t look like she wanted to feel it, she almost certainly didn’t want him to know she felt it, but he saw she did, the same as him.
The stubborn set of her jaw reminded him of one of the many things he liked about her. The woman was gorgeous, soft, sweet, funny, sensational in bed, smart—but she was no pushover.
He thought he’d been wrong, he’d thought he’d been played.
As it turned out, he’d been wrong about a lot, but it wasn’t that.
He’d been right about one thing—Genevieve Ellison was indeed his perfect match.
And he was going to prove it to her.
4
Chasin didn’t know it—couldn’t know, because he didn’t know me—that his words once again cut me to the quick.
You know who I am.
I suspected I did. I knew the type of man he was, the type who had made it clear he thought I was a lying cheat. The type who would jump to conclusions. The type who had no issue gutting someone, uncaring their words had ripped open decades’ worth of wounds.
I glanced down at the newly inked words on my forearm—but it’s not me—a fresh reminder I’d gotten tattooed three days ago, one that I’d memorialized on my flesh so I’d never again forget.
Chasin was not the man who’d ever know the real Genevieve Ellison. No one would. I’d remain cold and distant. I’d be Vivi Rush. She was tough, ballsy, and full of sass.
Yeah, I’d give in and be her from here on out.
But that didn’t solve my current crisis. Not the one where I had a crazed fan stalking me. No, I had a bigger problem, one that I needed to shut down. And in doing so, I was going to embarrass the hell out of myself.
Genevieve would care.
Vivi did not.
“Yeah, honey, I know you.” I laid on my Tennessee drawl thick. Slow like molasses, I let my words roll off my tongue. “But you don’t know me. Maybe you think because I let you in my bed you now get to boss me. You were good, I’ll give you that, but, darlin’, not so good I’ll snap to.”
Lies. All lies. Chasin wasn’t good in bed, he was great. Best I’d ever had. So good, that had he not been a dick, I absolutely would’ve snapped to if it meant I’d get more. Not just more se
x. More of his gentle teasing, more of his smiles, more of him looking at me like he thought I was something special.
A slow smirk tugged at Chasin’s lips and I knew I’d made a bad play, and when he opened his mouth, I found that even though I had years of practice, he was better. Way better.
“Good? Babe, now I know you’re lyin’. Good’s when you got someone between your legs that’s got enough talent to get you off once. Great’s when you get that twice. Honey, what we had was fuckin’ phenomenal. I know that because I had you over that edge four times before you asked for more. Which, honey, I gladly gave you. And that was the first night. You wanna talk about day two?”
Did he…
Did he just say that?
Hell to the no! It was the truth, he’d given me five spectacular orgasms the first night. Two for me was unheard of, five was so far out of the realm of my imagination I’d never considered it. But that didn’t mean it was okay for him to blurt it out.
God. What a dick.
Bobby gasped beside me. I hadn’t shared about Chasin and I’d never intended to. I’d never been big on sharing, not even with my best friend, but over the last few years, I’d shared less and less. I kept my thoughts and feelings to myself, only allowing them to come out in my music.
I glared at Chasin, which only amused him more.
Asshole.
“Now that we’ve established that Chasin and Ms. Ellison know each other, maybe we can all sit,” the man who’d introduced himself as Nixon Swagger said. “I’d like to go over what the label sent us and ask a few questions.”
Bobby tugged at my hand but I didn’t take my eyes off Chasin.
Why did he have to be so damn good-looking?
“Just so we’re clear, five orgasms or fifty won’t ever earn you the right to boss me, asshole.”
“Noted.” The disbelief in his tone wasn’t lost on me.
Total asshole.
And with another lopsided smile, Chasin sat and looked to Nixon. Bobby and I sat across from Chasin.
“I’m Alec.” A man cleared his throat and introduced himself.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Genevieve.”
“Got that.” He chuckled and I could feel my cheeks heat in embarrassment.
As the mortification of my stupidity set in, which I firmly blamed on Chasin and his highhanded order, I looked at the table.
“Ms. Ellison,” Nixon called.
“Please call me Genevieve,” I muttered.
“Okay, Genevieve, how long have you been in Cliff City?”
“Ten days,” I answered.
“And since you’ve been here, has anything happened?”
Other than meeting a man, spending the weekend with him, and thinking that I’d met the man of my dreams?
“No.”
“Something happened back in Tennessee,” Bobby answered and my gaze snapped to her. “We didn’t want to say anything until I met with you, but another letter was left at her home in Oak Hill.”
“We?” I asked.
“Leslie, Mel, and I.” There was a beat of silence then, “Don’t be mad,” Bobby rushed out. “We know this is a lot for you. We didn’t want you upset.”
No, they didn’t want me stressed. They wanted me writing music.
“Bobby, you know I love you. We’ve been friends a long time and you’ve been by my side from the beginning. All of you keep saying I’m not taking this seriously. Well, how can I when all of you are trying to handle me?”
“It’s my job to—”
“Fuck your job, Bobby. You’re my friend. You’re supposed to have my back, not listen to Melissa and Leslie.” My friend’s eyes widened and her brows pulled together. Fuck me, she didn’t understand why I was pissed. Whatever. “What’d the letter say?”
She opened up her big, slouchy handbag, pulled out two Ziploc bags, and set them on the table. “I opened it. Once I saw what they were, I tried not to touch them and put them in the bags.”
And there it was—proof there was no getting away from this person.
Enjoy Maryland.
Nothing else. Heavy block letters, black ink, white paper.
Staring at that note, something struck me. Something I’d known my whole life, but right then, I felt the cold hard slap of reality.
I had the shittiest luck known to mankind.
Of all the men in Kent County to be kayaking past my dock at the exact moment I’d lost my balance and fell in the river. Of all the men in the entire world for me to lock eyes with and think, oh, yeah, I’m inviting him in and then go so far as hoping he’d want to stay awhile, it had to be Chasin Murray.
But he didn’t stay awhile. He left, thinking I was a cheat.
As if.
Now here he was. My shitty luck continued—he worked for the security company my manager wanted to hire to protect me.
I was almost too afraid to ask if it could get any worse because, in my personal experience, it could. Which meant it would, and I was not at a place in my life where I could take much more. I was on the verge of throwing in the towel, moving to an island by myself, and living the life of a hermit prepper.
The last thing that hit me was Bobby had obviously stopped in Tennessee after leaving Los Angeles before coming to Maryland.
“Why did you go back to Oak Hill?” I asked.
Bobby’s head tilted, the movement so dramatic her ear nearly touched her shoulder.
“What?”
“I thought you were flying straight here from LA?”
“Vivi, I told you on Monday I had to go back to Oak Hill.”
She was looking at me like I’d lost my mind. Monday hadn’t been a good day for me. It was the day after Sunday. The day after Chasin had left me and I’d been up all night writing, crashing for a few hours, then waking up and going straight back to my guitar. I’d been lost in my head all week, but Monday had been the worst of it.
“I was writing,” I told her.
She’d been with me long enough to know what that meant. When I was in the groove, I lost time, sometimes hours, sometimes days. It depended on my mood and what I was feeling.
But even knowing me well, Bobby still looked concerned.
“Right,” she muttered.
Bobby wasn’t stupid. Even without Chasin’s outburst, she would’ve put two and two together and come up with me and Chasin having a wild fuck-fest. But, she wouldn’t put two and two together and come up with me being heartbroken because Chasin had bailed after calling me a cheating bitch.
“Will you tell us about the first time this person made contact?” Alec asked.
“That’s hard to know. But the first time it hit our radar was when gifts started being delivered to Vivi’s house,” Bobby told him.
“How is that difficult to know?” Alec continued.
“Because fan mail gets sent to a PO box and then someone at the label goes through it.”
Alec nodded and scribbled something on a notepad in front of him. “And no one at the label picked up on anything out of the ordinary? Threats? Romantic overtures? The same fan sending an excessive number of letters?”
“Romantic overtures? Sure, Vivi gets marriage proposals all the time. Men and women both send letters saying they’re soul mates, or the sender says that Vivi looked at them from the stage and when their eyes met they knew they were meant to be. Stuff like that happens all the time. Threats are less frequent but they happen. If someone doesn’t like a song or they think some of the lyrics are too suggestive, or they didn’t like what she wore during a concert or in a video, they think they have the right to tell her to stop making that kind of music or change her clothes. But most of the time, those letters are simply telling her she’s going to burn in hell.”
Burn in hell.
How many times have I heard that? Tons. Some people were outrageously unkind. Some people were straight-up mean. After years of reading and hearing things about how horrible I was, one would think I could let it roll off me—not care and move o
n. But the truth was, it hurt.
My gaze slid from the creepy note I was staring at to Chasin. He wasn’t looking at the note, or Bobby; his attention was on me.
All of it.
Suddenly it felt like we were the only two in the room.
And just like when we were sitting on my couch, his eyes locked to mine. Only then, I’d been stupid. I’d allowed myself to have fanciful thoughts. Delusions of grandeur. I’d desperately wanted Chasin to see me. He had no idea who I was. He didn’t know Vivi. There was no recognition when he saw me. No hint of acknowledgment when he heard me talk.
Chasin hadn’t the first clue who I was, and it’d felt so damn good, I’d let myself get swept up in it. At the time I was dizzy with it, captivated by it, riveted to him and him to me.
Now it felt cold.
Now he knew me and I knew him and everything was ruined. My life was like a bad country song. You know, the one where the girl loses her man, her dog, and her pickup all in one night. Maybe that’s why I’d never owned a dog, I was too afraid of losing it. And I didn’t drive a pickup. I drove an El Camino I’d found at a junkyard and had restored. I loved that thing.
And I’d never had a man to lose—Chasin and the weekend I’d spent with him was the closest I’d allowed myself. Now I knew I never wanted to take that chance again. I also remembered why I’d never taken one in the past.
But it’s not me.
Those words staining my skin would remind me if I ever got another wild hair and decided to try again.
The conversation went on around me while I’d gotten lost in my head. I wasn’t listening until Nixon called my name.
“Sorry, what?”
“Since you’ve been here, have you received any packages, calls, visitors, anything like that?”
“No.”
“No one?” Nixon pushed.
“Chasin—”
“Besides him?”
“Well, the cleaning service came. And I heard the gardener. But I haven’t had visitors. And no calls. And groceries were delivered.”
“Those are visitors, Genevieve,” Chasin fumed, and my gaze sliced back to him.
Chasin's Surrender (Gemini Group Book 5) Page 3