He looked back down at Lacey. She’d lifted her hands back over her head when she’d thrown the shirt, and now she’d crossed her wrists as though she wore invisible shackles. There couldn’t be a clearer signal that she was his.
She closed her eyes and he kissed her again, resisting the urge to move too fast, to unsnap those pants and slip his hand down to the heart of her. He had to make her want him with an ache as strong as his own. His fantasy wasn’t about taking Lacey, or having Lacey; it was about the two of them being together, wanting each other. He gentled his touch to a whisper, stroking her gently as the breeze that fanned her hair over the rock cooled his face. She moved her hips, asking for more, but he kept the pressure light while he bent his head and kissed the tender skin on the underside of her smooth upper arms.
He worked his way down all the softest parts of her, the side of her breast, the thin skin over her ribs, the slight depression where her hip bone dipped and disappeared under her belt. She tensed, lifting her hips, pressing herself against his hand, and he worked his way back up again, up over the landscape of her body, across the gentle swells of creamy flesh and the pink tips of her breasts to kiss her neck and rest his cheek against hers.
***
Chase’s breath brushed Lacey’s ear, and she shivered in spite of the heat. It felt so good to be wanted. To be with a man who didn’t take you for granted.
She’d never, ever felt like this with Trent. When she’d married him, she’d discovered that her determination to save herself for marriage had left her unskilled and unsure of herself. But Trent didn’t seem to care. He’d scaled her like Everest, like something that needed conquering, and she’d let him, even when she hadn’t wanted to.
With Chase, she wanted to.
She had ever since she’d laid eyes on him behind the counter at the dealership. She’d wanted those strong square hands on her breasts and those lips on her mouth. As if reading her mind, he palmed her breast and ran his thumb over the peak. She hadn’t thought the ache inside her could get any stronger, but her nipple hardened until it hurt. God, she wanted him. Even when he’d insulted her that first day, she’d wanted to…
She froze. What was it he’d said?
Go sell yourself to someone else.
And that’s probably what he thought she was doing now.
What do you want? he’d asked Tell me what you want.
She was doing it again. She was selling herself. She’d sleep with Chase, he’d help her out, and then he’d own her, body and soul, just like Trent had.
He’d sweet-talk her into a relationship, get her to walk away from her former life, and then slowly his love would turn to disapproval, his advice and assistance to rigid control. He’d mock everything she wanted to do, put down all her accomplishments, and criticize her until she felt utterly helpless. She’d be absorbed into his world, and her own would become smaller and smaller until it didn’t exist at all. Until she became nothing but his.
She felt herself shrinking, growing smaller and smaller, as if she was turning into a plastic Barbie doll whose only purpose was to pose for Ken. The world around her—the trees, the sunshine, the breeze tickling her skin—seemed to recede like an outgoing tide, and all she could see was Chase, so big, so strong, so possessive.
She jerked out from under him and scrambled to a sitting position, tugging the strap of her bra back onto her shoulder and reaching up to snatch her tank top out of the tree. Sliding down from the tailgate, she stubbed a toe on a rock and stumbled away from the truck, struggling to put her shirt back on.
She’d been an idiot. She’d been telling herself this meant something—to Chase as well as her. But as soon as he’d offered to help her, he’d moved from kisses to more intimate touches. As if he’d earned the right. As if she really was for sale.
Clutching a branch for balance, she took another step backward, then stumbled as something slithered through the mud and slid into the water.
Snake.
She shrieked, jerking away and tripping over a rock before she landed on her butt in what she now assumed was a snake-infested stream.
“Lacey, for God’s sake.” Strong hands lifted her from behind, and she kicked out and slapped him away, spinning around and stepping backward onto the bank. She couldn’t let him touch her. Couldn’t let him own her.
She was never going to let that happen again. She’d flip burgers. She’d clean motel rooms. She’d pump gas. She’d do anything but take money from a man and become his plaything.
She backed away. Chase stood calf-deep in the stream, his shoulders hunched, and knees bent as if he was about to clap a wrestling hold on her. His shirt was soaked through, and stuck to his skin, the damp glossing his muscles and confirming that yes, he did look strikingly like the man on the cover of the Men’s Fitness magazine in his waiting room.
Only that man had been smiling.
***
Chase stared at the drenched, muddy female in front of him and wondered how she could possibly be the same person as the sweet, fragrant, willing woman who’d been lying beneath him moments before.
He should have known better. Lacey wanted something, and she’d worked him up into a frenzy so he’d do anything she asked. He could have sworn she was enjoying herself damn near as much as he was—but she’d been playing him, well aware that giving him everything she had wasn’t the way to get what she wanted.
She was picking her way over the gravel scattered between the boulders, mincing along like a cat in wet grass.
“What happened to your shoes?” he asked.
She nodded toward the truck’s front tire, where one gold sandal glittered just beneath the surface of the water between two rocks. Plucking it from the stream with one finger, he tossed it her way.
Cheering on other players had apparently been the limit of her athletic prowess. She didn’t just catch like a girl; she didn’t catch at all. Flailing at the sandal, she knocked it back into the water and nearly fell as she bent to pick it up. She wavered precariously on one foot while she shoved her toes in it and struggled with the delicate straps.
Straightening, she tossed her head. Her hair had somehow escaped the mud that had splattered them both, but the rest of her was wet, muddy, flushed, or all three.
While she fished another shoe out of the water and fumbled it onto her foot, she teetered and almost lost her balance. He stepped forward and caught her, but she pushed him away.
“Leave me alone, Chase. I’m not for sale.”
“What?”
“You told me to go sell myself to someone else, but then you decided you were buying after all, didn’t you?”
***
Chase looked as if she’d slapped him.
“Lacey, I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t…”
“I’m not. It made me realize I had sold myself to Trent. I always sell myself, because I don’t have anything else to offer.”
“You have a lot more to offer.”
“I have nothing, Chase. No skills, no talents. Not even a car that runs. Hell, I can’t even live in the damn thing because it’s parked right in front of your office.”
He widened his eyes at the curse words, but she wasn’t about to take them back. She meant every damn word.
“So let me help you.”
“No.” She tilted her chin up in her best Scarlett O’Hara I’ll never be hungry again impression. “I’ll get a job.”
His eyes scanned her body, fixing on her lips, her breasts, and then her hand.
“What about that ring? Couldn’t you sell it?”
Lacey looked down at the ring gracing her finger. She’d forgotten about the cubic zirconium she’d bought in a Walmart off the highway after a trucker had tried to pick her up at a gas station. Men had pretty much left her alone once she’d marked herself married.
Plucking it off her finger, she tossed it downstream and felt suddenly buoyant. The fake diamond hadn’t weighed a thing, but tossing it away had felt symbo
lic, somehow, especially since she’d decided in that moment that she didn’t need Chase’s help.
“Walmart. $2.99. Maybe there’s a muskrat out there that wants it.” She waved her now-naked hand in the air. “I bought it to keep truckers from trying to pick me up.”
She held her hand out, splaying her fingers and tilting it left and right like a newlywed admiring her diamond—but what she was admiring was the pale ring of flesh on her finger where her wedding ring had been. She felt like she’d thrown off her shackles, and no way was she putting on a ring, ever again. If another trucker tried to pick her up, she’d kick him in the shins and spit.
“I need to get back to the motel,” she told Chase. “I told you, I don’t want to buy your damn truck.”
***
They drove into town in silence. When he pulled up to the motel, he dared to look at her for the first time.
“I didn’t mean what I said the other day, Lacey.”
“It doesn’t matter. It was true, in a way. I’ve always had some man paying my way. I’m not letting that happen anymore.” She grabbed her purse and slid down from the truck. “I’m sorry about my language. Sorry about—well, everything.”
He watched her slide down to the ground and walk up the concrete steps to the second floor of the motel, where she let herself into one of the dozen identical turquoise doors. Number seventeen. When the door closed behind her, he got out of the truck and headed for the motel office. Lacey might not want to rely on a man, but somebody had to help her.
“I want to pay for a room in advance,” he told Floyd Ledger. Floyd had been the owner of the Ranch Motel for as long as Chase could remember. The guy spent all day every day in the tiny, cluttered rooms that could be seen from the counter. There was always a laugh track blaring from an unseen television, and Floyd’s flesh was as pale and hairless as the underbelly of a frog from living in the dim recesses of the motel.
“Number seventeen,” Chase told him.
Floyd squinted, his slack lips twisting into a scowl. “Won’t have that kind of thing going on here. That girl…”
“That girl might as well be my sister,” Chase said. “There’s nothing going on.”
Chase could feel the doubt radiating from Floyd’s blank stare like some kind of psychic wave.
“There isn’t,” Chase said. “I blew it. There’s nothing going on, and there probably never will be. Don’t tell her I paid for the room, either. She’ll move if she finds out.”
Floyd grumbled something incomprehensible that sounded distinctly vulgar, but he lifted the credit card imprinter from under the counter and set Chase’s card in place willingly enough. Setting an old-fashioned carbon form into the machine, he grunted as he pulled the slide slowly over the card. “How many nights?”
“Give her a week,” Chase said. “Maybe that’ll be long enough for her to get over the dumb things I said.”
Chapter 14
“Guess you liked the pancakes.”
Lacey hadn’t been sure of her reception from Pam this morning. She didn’t know how often Chase and his sister talked, but she knew she hadn’t exactly helped him the day before. Not the way Pam had wanted her to, and not the way Chase wanted her to either. But judging from Pam’s welcoming smile, she didn’t know a thing about the way the test drive had turned out.
“They were great.” Lacey swung her purse into a booth and slid in behind it. “But I think I’ll just have coffee today.”
“Oh, come on. I’ve got the batter made, so it’s on the house. I know you’ve got to get that car fixed, and that’ll run you a pretty penny even if Jeb gives you his special hot chick discount.”
Lacey flushed. “Actually, that’s why I came in.” She rushed to cover her gaffe. “I mean, I would have come to see you anyway, but I wondered if you were hiring.”
“I wish.” Pam slid into the booth across from her, propping herself against the windowsill with her legs thrust straight out on the vinyl bench. She eyed her white-shod feet with her face creased in mock pain. “I could use the help, but as you can see, business isn’t exactly booming.”
It was the answer Lacey had expected, but she still felt a dull thud of disappointment as her heart sank to the bottom of her rib cage. “Do you know anybody in town who’s got a job opening?”
Pam swiveled to face the table and leaned forward on her elbows. “Wish you’d come to town a week ago, before Chase hired Krystal. That would have been perfect.” Her plain face lit up with sudden curiosity. “Hey, how did that test drive go?”
Lacey fooled with the bundle of flatware in front of her, carefully unsticking the glued paper strip that encircled it. “I didn’t buy the truck.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“It went—not so good.”
“That’s not what I heard.” Pam gave her a knowing smile. “Cody said you two had a pretty good time.”
“It started out okay.” Lacey felt like she was teetering on the slippery rocks in the stream again. “But your brother—he was really rude that first day, Pam. I’m not sure I can get over it.”
“Oh.” Pam sighed. “You can’t just forget about it?”
“I wish I could.” As she said the words, Lacey realized they were true. She’d give anything to be able to forget what Chase had said—to be able to start fresh and finish what had started in the bed of the pickup.
“Maybe if you give it a couple days, you’ll feel better.”
Pam was definitely an optimist. A very determined, matchmaking optimist. Lacey knew she should tell her the truth—that she’d never get over what Chase had said to her—but she didn’t want to disappoint her new friend. The woman’s good cheer and sunny outlook was like a shot of oxygen, making Lacey feel lighter and stronger. Her optimism was contagious. “Maybe. Meanwhile, I need to find a job.”
***
Chase watched Lacey sashay down the sidewalk. Couldn’t the girl ever just walk? She seemed to sashay everywhere, or strut, or worse yet, trot. Trotting made her jiggle—not a lot, because she wore a decent bra. He knew that because he’d had to get past it when he’d…
Stop thinking about it. She shut you down. It’s done.
He leaned sideways, almost tipping the high stool behind the counter so he could watch her cross the street. It looked like she’d gotten her outfit dirty somehow. Or maybe that was some kind of pattern on the fabric. He hadn’t noticed it this morning, though, when she’d come out of the motel room.
Not that he’d been watching for her or anything. He’d just happened to be looking up at the balcony for the seventeenth time in five minutes when she stepped out of the room. He wondered if she’d found out he’d paid for it. If so, she’d chosen to ignore it.
That was okay with him. He didn’t need her thanks. Hell, he didn’t deserve it. Paying for the room was small potatoes compared to the way he’d insulted her.
The trailer door banged against the wall with a report like a rifle.
“Chase.” Krystal’s voice was sharp as she slapped a set of keys on their hook behind the counter with a thump and a jangle. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” He frowned at the computer screen. “You sell anything?”
“Do you see customers with me?” she asked. “No. But I’m staying tonight, remember? I’ll sell something then.” She pouted. “If we had brand new Toyotas, I bet I’d have sold something.”
“Krystal, that was Link Masters and his wife. They have twenty acres outside of town and raise chickens and foster kids. They’re not going to buy a new car.”
She plopped down on the stool as he got up and stepped around the counter. “But maybe we’d get a better class of customers if we had better cars.”
“From where? Nobody in this town can afford a new car.”
“Maybe people would come up from Cheyenne.”
He didn’t bother to answer. Cheyenne had their own dealerships, so nobody was going to come to Grady for a Camry. He headed for his office, which was
starting to feel more and more like a sanctuary from Krystal’s pipe dreams and nagging.
“You were watching that woman, weren’t you?”
He didn’t answer that either.
“She’s over at Jeb’s. I bet she’s applying for my old job.”
Chase paused with his handle on the doorknob. “You think?”
“Yeah. But she won’t get it. He’s holding it for me. Hoping I’ll come back.” She gave Chase a flirtatious smile. “I told him I wouldn’t. I told him you were going to start selling new cars, and I’d probably get to drive a Tundra.”
“Krystal, no car company’s giving us a dealership. Not in Grady.”
“Go ahead.” She tossed her hair and her sunny mood turned stormy as fast as a Texas tornado. “Kill my dreams.”
***
Chase slammed the door of his pickup and slouched over the steering wheel, gripping it in both hands and banging his head twice on his knuckles. He’d left Krystal behind the counter, going on and on about the relative merits of the Toyota Camry versus the Honda Accord. She didn’t know a damned thing about any of the cars on the lot, but she’d boned up on all the stuff they didn’t have.
He’d been looking forward to skipping town, spending a quiet evening at home—but Pam had run over with a bag of takeout for Fletcher Galt just before five.
“The dinner rush is about to start,” she said. “I don’t have time to take this to him. You can do it, right?”
It wasn’t really a question. Chase had taken the fragrant sack without a word and shrugged into his jacket.
“I put some in there for you too. Thought maybe you could stay, make sure he really eats it.”
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