by Bella Andre
“I figured you and I were long due for a little romance.”
Chloe cocked her head as she looked at Chase. Really let herself look.
At first, she’d been too blown away by his outward beauty to really see much. And then, she’d been afraid to stare because of what she might see in his eyes when he looked at her...and what he might see mirrored right back at him.
How could he not see that he’d been romancing her every single second since he strode out to her on that rainy road and told her to get into his car?
She smiled at the memory of that first night. How she’d wanted him despite herself—and liked him a great, great deal more than caution warranted.
She let herself pretend, for just a few moments, that this really was her life. That Chase was the man she’d been with for years. That they went on romantic outings to Napa Valley starred restaurants all the time.
And that she was happy, not just for one night. But always.
Because she was loved.
Really and truly loved for who she was.
“It’s another reason why your photos are all so beautiful,” she found herself saying to him. “You aren’t just creating the fantasy for all of us. You want to believe in that fantasy, too, don’t you? I swear, your whole life you must have had to fend off women with big, long sticks.”
He gave her his best version of lecherous. “Just one really big stick.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “I set you up perfectly for that, didn’t I?”
The waiter came to refill their water glasses just as she asked, “Are the rest of your brothers like you? Big and tough on the outside, but gentle romantics on the inside?”
As the waiter left, Chase pretended she’d just wounded him, his hand over his chest. “I once picked up a novel on my sister’s bed that used the words velvet-covered steel to talk about the guy’s junk. I’m pretty sure what you just said reduced me to a velvet-covered marshmallow. Our waiter may never look at me the same way again. He’s probably calling the club now so they can kick me out of it.”
Chloe laughed again, loud enough that a few heads turned to admire the beautiful couple in the corner. “Being a nice person doesn’t in any way change the fact that you’re all man.”
“That statement would have had a heck of a lot more impact if you weren’t half-giggling as you said it,” he informed her, half-joking, half-serious.
Still giggling, she said, “Sorry. Although, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get the words velvet-covered marshmallow—or the image of it—out of my head.”
“I plan on making damn sure they’re gone later tonight,” he promised, heat flickering in his eyes along with the laughter.
“So, back to your family. Are any of your other big, strapping brothers closet romantics?”
She couldn’t help it—she loved hearing about his brothers and sisters, imagining how nice it would be to always know that they were there for you. To laugh with. To joke with. Even to argue with.
“It will just be our little secret.”
Chase shook his head. “I’m pretty sure screwing anything that moves doesn’t qualify as romantic. Apart from Marcus. He’s the only one who doesn’t play that way anymore, although he definitely used to before he met his girlfriend.”
“Screwing anything that moves.” Chloe worked to tamp down on the sudden twisting in her gut and tried to keep her voice light. “As long as everyone knows the score, I guess that’s okay.”
But Chase instantly saw through her. “I’m not going to lie to you. I used to be one of those guys.”
She swallowed, hating the thought of Chase so much as looking at another woman. Kissing another woman. Touching another woman. Making love to another woman.
Her stomach lurched and she abruptly put down her fork. “Okay. Thanks for being honest.”
He reached across the table, taking her hand in his. “I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to be that guy anymore.”
She wanted so desperately to believe him. But she knew first-hand that it wasn’t that easy. “But isn’t it exactly what you’ve been doing with me?”
“No.”
“Yes,” she countered. “We met, I moved, we had sex.”
“You’re different, Chloe. You’re special.”
Angry at herself for how badly she wanted the fairytale to come true, she said, “How can you possibly know that? In the four days since we met, you and I have had sex nearly every moment that we’ve been alone. That fits the criteria pretty perfectly, doesn’t it? Odds are pretty darn high that you’ll move on to your next shoot and find another woman who can’t get enough of you.”
She could see that flicker of frustration on his face. The same one that had him taking her up against the front door a couple of hours ago.
Why did she keep pushing him like this? Why couldn’t she just accept that he meant what he said about her?
But she knew why, knew that deep down she was afraid she was the same twenty-two-year-old girl who had fallen for her ex’s lines, his pretty words, for a warmth she’d so desperately wanted to believe was there...and ended up marrying a man who didn’t know—or like her—at all.
Chloe didn’t know what she expected Chase to say, if she’d thought he would drag her into the back of the restaurant to teach her another lesson about just how good they were together, but she definitely didn’t expect him to reach into his jacket pocket, pull out an envelope, and put it on the table.
She looked at it, then up at him just as he said, “I didn’t fall in love with you because you’re so lovely it hurts to look at you. I didn’t fall in love with you because you make love like a dream. All of that is just a bonus.”
She swallowed hard. Those three sentences had just made the top ten things any man had ever said to her.
Her hands trembled as she picked up the envelope.
She could tell there were pictures inside it. And she was afraid to look at them.
Not because she was worried about not looking pretty...but because she’d learned over the past few days that Chase saw everything.
Especially the things people were trying their hardest to hide.
Finally, she slipped a finger beneath the flap and pulled out the small stack of photos.
She was laughing in the photo on top of the stack. Her mouth was wide open, her head was thrown back as she looked at something on Amanda’s phone.
“She was showing me one of those funny auto-correct lists. A woman had texted her husband
‘I’m pregnant’ and he wrote back ‘I’m leaving you’ when what he meant to say was ‘I’m leaving now’
because he wanted to come home and celebrate with her.”
Tentatively, Chloe turned to the next photo. She was laughing again, this time in the middle of the pool, after falling in while trying to help fix Amanda’s hat at just the right angle.
A smile moved onto her lips before she realized it was coming. “I had such a great time with everyone,” she said softly before turning to the next photo.
Chase had captured her talking with Marcus that night at the party at his house. She’d been loose because of the wine and had let down her guard with Marcus after a surprisingly fun day with everyone. It was obvious just how desperate she’d been to let happiness take root within her heart again.
Thrown off by what Chase was showing her about herself, she moved on to the next picture, one where she was packing up dresses and a half-dozen beautiful fabrics were spread out across her lap.
She’d never seen herself look like that, had never see herself dreaming before.
Emotion threatened to swamp her, so she quickly moved to the next picture in the stack.
Oh.
If only she’d stopped with the fabrics, with the dreaming, with the desperate longing for happiness.
The final picture was from that first afternoon out in the vineyards, when she’d looked up at the end of the day and Chase had his lens pointed at her. She remembe
red the terror of knowing she hadn’t hid her feelings for him. Feelings she hadn’t even been able to understand because they were so raw, so new.
So pure.
“Ask me again how I know you’re special, Chloe.”
The pictures dropped from her fingers onto the table.
She didn’t need to ask.
Chase had shifted his seat so that he was sitting close enough to hold her hand beneath the tablecloth.
“Thank you,” she said softly, her throat clogged with emotion. “It’s been a wonderful night.”
She licked her lips, squeezed his hand with hers. “A perfect night.”
Oh God, she was going to cry, could feel the tears building up, threatening to spill. All it would take was one sweet word, one heartfelt look, and she’d be a goner.
She was working so hard on holding those tears back that she didn’t notice Chase standing up until she felt him gently tugging at her hand. Blinking up at him in confusion, she rose to her feet and let him lead her across the room, his hand on the small of her back, simultaneously comforting and arousing. He pulled her into his arms and they were dancing to the song the three-piece jazz band in the corner had just begun playing.
The Look of Love.
Chloe lifted her face to his in surprise. “This song.” She flicked a gaze at the band, then back at him, shaking her head. “It’s almost like they know about—”
Her voice broke before she could finish the sentence. But she had to. Had to admit it to herself.
To Chase.
Her voice so soft she didn’t know if Chase would even be able to hear her, she whispered, “It’s like they know about the way you look at me. About the way you’ve always looked at me.”
And, she now knew from seeing that picture he’d taken of her in the vineyard that first night, it was the way she’d always looked at him, too.
With love.
And with his large, strong body cradling hers, with his heart pounding against hers, Chloe pressed her face into his shoulder...and finally let her tears come.
* * *
Chase had never felt like this before, like his heart was breaking one beat at a time as Chloe softly cried while they danced.
He wanted to give her everything. He wanted to slay all her dragons. He wanted to hold her close and never let her go. He’d told her he loved her, but he knew she still believed she needed to leave him to prove that she was a strong person.
She’d told him the night was perfect, but she was crying.
His whole life, he’d always known exactly what to do. Women hadn’t been much of a challenge, but now he knew that was because he’d never really cared before.
Until he’d fallen in love with Chloe.
Chase wished there was a simple answer, wished he could convince himself it was as easy as taking her ex-husband apart for ever hurting her in the first place, and that once he dissolved the threat to Chloe’s well-being, everything would be fine.
But how many times had he and his brothers gone out to avenge a wrong against one of his sisters, only to end up the bad guy, only to have them cry, “I’m not a baby! When are you going to let me stand up for myself?”
How the hell was Chase going to let her go and do what she believed she needed to do?
And how much would she hate him if he couldn’t do it?
Chapter Sixteen
By the time the song ended, Chloe had managed to recover her grip on her emotions, thank God. Glad she hadn’t put on much makeup, she quickly wiped her tears away while Chase led them outside to a beautiful lavender- and rosemary-scented terrace complete with a bocce ball court.
“Bocce ball used to be my favorite game to watch as a kid,” she said to try and bring some normalcy back to things after crying all over him. “I would sneak out to the park where they had a couple of courts and watch families play together.”
“Did you play, too?”
She shook her head. “Not officially. But when there was no one around I would play with tennis balls I’d collected.”
She let go of Chase’s hand and moved onto the empty sand court and picked up one of the heavy balls. “These are the fancy balls I’d see other people playing with.” She laughed softly. “If anyone ever saw me, they probably thought I was making a mockery of the game with my tennis balls.”
She was surprised when Chase took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “Show me how it’s done.”
Chloe almost told him she hadn’t intended to end their über-romantic evening by rolling balls in sand for points. But wasn’t that exactly one of the things she loved most about Chase—that there were no hard and fast rules in his life? No shoulds. No have tos.
And, best of all, no shouldn’ts.
Slipping off her heels so she wouldn’t leave big divots in the sand with the sharp points, she picked up the tiny white ball. “This is the jack. We toss it out, then try to see who can get closest to it with our own balls.” She picked up a blue ball and handed it to him with a grin. “Since you’re all man, why don’t you be blue?”
He put his hand over the ball, somehow managing to pull her closer rather than just taking it from her. His mouth settled down over hers in a way that was at once familiar, yet shockingly surprising, and Chloe couldn’t stop herself from twining her free hand around his neck and going up on her tippy-toes to kiss him right back.
When the sound of a passing car reminded her that they were on a public court in the middle of the resort, she forced herself to pull away from his sinfully delicious mouth.
His thumb brushed across her lower lip. “I like this game already.”
She blushed at the heat in his words, even though there really wasn’t a single reason left to be blushing in front of Chase anymore. Not after all the ways they’d made love, the number of times she’d come with his mouth and hands on her.
But something told her she’d always blush with him, that those butterflies would always be there, flying around inside her belly whenever he gave her one of those hot, intense looks.
She wanted so desperately to look toward that future, to envision what it could look like, to let herself dream of little girls and boys with his eyes, his tanned skin.
But she couldn’t let herself do that tonight. She could only be with him right here, right now.
“Tell me how we score the game,” Chase said, pulling her from her dark thoughts.
She explained that the team with the balls closest to the jack scored the points for each round.
“I have an idea,” he said when she’d laid out the rules, and she couldn’t miss the wicked undercurrent in his voice.
“I can’t wait to hear this.”
And the truth was, being with Chase was so wonderfully exciting, so exhilarating, that even playing a simple game was more fun than she’d ever had before.
What would a life with him be like? Would each day be better than the one before?
Lost in her thoughts, she was surprised to feel his fingertips lightly skimming the skin beneath her chin. She looked up at him and her knees nearly buckled from the desire—and love—shining in his eyes.
“Do you want to guess my new spin on the rules?” he asked in a husky voice.
“Every time a person loses a point, they have to give the other one a kiss?”
He moved his mouth so it was barely a breath from hers. “So innocent,” he whispered against her lips.
It took all the breath she had left to tease back, “But you want to change all that, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?” he asked, his question a caressing challenge to her fantasies.
Oh God, she almost came right there, in the middle of a bocce ball court in Napa.
“Yes.” The word was released from her lips before she knew it was coming and his mouth captured hers again, far too briefly.
“If I win this game, I also win you for the night. If you win, you win me for the night.”
Oh God, they weren’t going to play tonight for a
pointless score...they were going to play for each other instead. The wicked suggestion had her body immediately responding with a flood of warmth low down in her belly and at the tips of her breasts.
“If I win,” he said in a low voice that thrummed through her veins faster, hotter than a shot of tequila, “you’ll be mine tonight for anything, everything, I desire.”
She felt her lips open, felt air rush from them in the reverse of a gasp. “Anything?”
“Anything.”
No. God, no, she shouldn’t want what anything entailed.
“Everything?”
He ran his fingers over a lock of her hair. “Everything, Chloe.”
She’d already done more wild things with Chase this week than she had before in her whole life. Bathtub sex. Outdoor sex. Up against the wall sex.
She tried to tell herself there couldn’t be more, but it was no use.
She knew there was. Simply because she’d already been fantasizing about it. About doing all of those forbidden things she’d once wanted, things she’d been told were wrong to want.
“And if you win, lovely Chloe, I’m yours to do with as you wish.”
Oh God. She honestly didn’t know if she wanted to win...or lose.
* * *
Chase had never played bocce ball before, but he and his siblings had often played similar games where they hurled rocks at a target. At the outset of the game, Chase had been fairly certain he’d win. It didn’t take him long to realize he should have known better.
By the time they were down to the final point, 14–13, Chloe’s lead, he told her, “You’re really good at this.”
She smiled up at him. “I know.”
He loved the playful way she kissed him, none of those dark shadows in her eyes for the time being. “Are you trying to distract me?” he asked.
“I would if I needed to...”
He had her in his arms before she could finish her sentence. “You just gave me a good idea.” He dropped his eyes to her lush mouth, so lovely, so soft. “Prepare to be distracted.”
