by Diana Palmer
Nettie nodded, appearing no happier than Chase felt, but she recovered, quickly and deliberately. “Good idea. I’m starving. I’ll get cleaned up and meet you back down here in ten minutes.”
Mutely, Chase nodded.
Nettie backed up the stairs. “Help yourself to a drink in the kitchen, and there’s candy in the jar on the coffee table if you can’t wait for lunch.” She tossed him a smile, then turned to continue up the stairs and out of sight.
For some reason, Chase began to perspire. He shook his head, wishing he could shake out the cobwebs that had collected there recently. He’d been under too much stress. He was starting to question himself, to lose his intrinsic confidence. He was a knife with a dull edge, that’s what he was.
Words began to flash in his mind. Unwelcome words.
Two weeks and no strings. No strings…no strings…
A dull throb started in his temples. He shook his head again. Oh, yeah, he was definitely coming down with something.
No, I wouldn’t risk everything for love…
The dull throb intensified.
“What difference does it make?” he growled to the empty room, “I wouldn’t risk everything, either.”
Chapter Seven
Glory Bea’s Café was located ten-point-eight miles due east from Nettie’s house. Not too far, but Nettie was a sweaty, shaky, dizzy mess before they’d gone halfway.
For some reason, Chase had turned silent and glowering—at least that’s how it looked from the passenger seat.
Clutching her purse with one hand, the door handle with the other so she’d have something solid to hang onto, Nettie tried to relax by focusing on the road ahead. Unfortunately, it seemed to be spinning.
Wondering what Cosmopolitan magazine would say about projectile vomiting in her date’s Porsche, Nettie gave up on the idea of relaxing and attempted simply to endure the drive to Glory Bea’s. Shutting her eyes against the traitorously undulating highway, she tried to recapture that ain’t-life-grand delight she’d experienced while flirting with Chase on her front porch.
No dice.
In the time it had taken her to run upstairs and change clothes, Chase had changed, too—into a different man. The Chase who had welcomed her return with a low whistle was smooth and polished, with the demeanor of a man who dated often. Too often. Nettie felt awkward, uncertain and, well, cheated, as if suddenly she were going to lunch with Chase’s plastic soapopera twin.
Risking vertigo, she opened her left eye and glanced at him. Ray Ban sunglasses hid his eyes, and the remaining threequarters of his face wasn’t giving away any secrets, either. She was seated just a little over a foot away from him and yet she felt as if she were in the car alone.
Alone. She hated feeling alone.
Her nausea increased. She wanted to be breezy, sophisticated. She wanted to laugh and flirt and pretend she didn’t have a care in the world.
Chase hit a pothole. Nettie slammed her one open eye shut. Oh, lordy! What if she became really and truly ill, right here, right now? What if she had the panic attack to top all panic attacks and couldn’t hide it from Chase? That would be entirely too much reality to interject into a relationship that had a shelf life of two weeks, tops. A relationship like theirs was meant to be fun, casual and distinctly un-serious. She squeezed the door handle harder.
“Are you all right?”
The question pierced her fog of distress. Wanting desperately to appear calm and poised, Nettie turned toward him and forced a wide smile. “Just fine.” Unfortunately, she forgot to open her eyes, which somewhat marred the effect she was after.
Gradually, she became aware of the car slowing as Chase pulled to the shoulder of the road and shifted to Park. She felt him turn in the bucket seat.
“Are your eyes closed for a reason?”
“Yes. I’m resting.”
“Ah. Would you mind not resting for a moment?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t mind.” Gingerly, she let her lids flutter open, testing for spinning scenery. Thankfully, the world beyond the automobile appeared to be fairly stable for the moment, so she turned to look at Chase. He’d pushed his sunglasses on top of his head and was studying her with one of the expressions she had come to know and appreciate: intent, curious and sincere. It was a sexier look than any hey-baby grin he could have manufactured.
“What’s wrong, Nettie?”
“Wrong?” Remember, think fun. Think casual. Think “fling.”
“Nothing’s wrong.” She attempted a laugh that unfortunately made her sound like a demented canary.
The mouth that had so fascinated her the night before lifted slightly. He nodded toward the passenger-side door. “Can you let go of that handle?”
Nettie looked down, surprised to see that she was still squeezing the door handle to within an inch of its life. When she tried to let go, her frozen fingers refused to unfurl.
“They’re stuck,” she murmured.
“Mmm. So it seems.” Gently, Chase reached for her other hand, the one grasping her purse, and eased first one finger, then another from around the leather straps. Transferring the purse from Nettie’s lap to the floorboards, he palmed her hand with both of his, massaging slowly. “What’s going on?”
Oh, dear. She glanced away, searching empty space for a reasonable answer.
With a crooked finger, Chase nudged her chin, insisting that she look at him again. He leaned across the center console, his gaze dark and penetrating. “I’ve been told I’m a pretty exciting guy. But I can’t recall making a woman hyperventilate in the first ten minutes of a date before. Tell me what’s happening here.”
When her shoulders stiffened around her ears, Nettie tried consciously—and futilely—to relax. Oh, what’s the use, she conceded silently. Tell him. Bluffing wasn’t working, and if she became any more tense from the effort it would start to look as if rigor mortis had set in.
Frustration and resistance mingled with surrender. She had wanted the next two weeks to be her Camelot, with Chase starring as Sir Lancelot, the one passionate, wild indiscretion in her otherwise painfully cautious existence. But there were no panic attacks in Camelot, no pasts to overcome or wounds to heal. That didn’t happen until after the wild indiscretion.
Defeated, Nettie sighed. This would be, she was sure, her only date with Chase. He had signed up for a two-week fling, not a double dose of reality.
Even if he wanted to try again, she wasn’t sure she could live through it.
“I’m having an anxiety attack,” she confessed as her gaze drifted away from his. “I get them from time to time.”
A little understatement. When she’d first started having the attacks after Brian and Tucker died, “from time to time” had sometimes meant around the clock. She couldn’t count the nights she’d awakened with the dreaded symptoms already in full swing, her heart pounding, her body sweating and her mind so convinced something awful was about to happen that she had wanted to run screaming from the house.
She felt Chase studying her before he responded. “It embarrasses you?”
Her gaze snapped back to his. “Yes, it embarrasses me. Of course it does.” Letting go of the door handle, she gestured expansively. “I’m in an air-conditioned Porsche having a hot flash. And I’m only twenty-five.”
“What do you usually do when you have an anxiety attack?”
“Usually?” Her lips quirked. “I panic more.” Chase smiled and brushed her cheek with his finger. The touch felt infinitely soothing. “Lately I’ve been listening to self-help tapes.”
“And what do they suggest?”
Nettie rolled her eyes. “You don’t want to talk about this.”
Chase raised a brow. “How do you know? Maybe I need the help. I’m a little anxious myself.”
“You are.” Nettie scoffed. “You don’t strike me as someone who panics over nothing.”
“Nothing?” His knuckle ran lightly down her cheek, following the curve to her full lower li
p. “Why wouldn’t I be anxious? I’m on a date with a beautiful woman.” He spoke softly, hypnotically. “My mind is racing. Does she like me? Will I say something I shouldn’t? What if I move too fast?” He smiled. “Or not fast enough? What if I don’t want this date to end, and she can’t wait to go home?”
He shook his head slightly, his voice dropping to a murmur. “It’s like being sixteen again.”
Mesmerized by this man who had spoken her thoughts, Nettie nodded. “Yes.”
His thumb grazed her lower lip. “What would your program suggest in a nerve-wracking moment like this?”
She swallowed as the pad of his thumb circled around to her upper lip, tracing its shape. There were no other moments like this. “It suggests accepting the feelings, the, uh, body sensations and then, um…What are you doing?” Her lips were moving beneath his fingers. It was the most incredibly sensual sensation.
“You have a beautiful mouth,” he said. “Like an angel’s. After you accept the feelings what does your program tell you to do?”
Bemused by his effortless hop from personal to prosaic, Nettie smiled. And they say men can’t multitask. “Then you float.”
“Hmm. Float?” He arched a brow. Leaving her lips, his fingers trailed lightly down the side of her neck.
“Float.” Nettie tried to concentrate. “Distract yourself, get involved in something else.” When his knuckles dipped into the curve of her collarbone, she thought she might do something embarrassing, like moan in broad daylight. Before lunch, even.
“Then?”
“Then you, um, let time pass.” How curious. Until now she’d had no idea her collarbone was an erogenous zone.
“Let time pass,” Chase repeated, adding, “Surrender.”
Nettie’s eyelids drifted all the way closed. “Surrender?”
“Be willing to lose control.” He drew closer, and she wondered how he did that with his fingers—touched so lightly, yet left a trail of sensation that said, I was here. “Are you willing to lose control, Nettie?”
With her eyes still closed, she felt him brush so close that his mouth almost, but not quite, met hers. She smelled his skin, warm and clean and spicy, as he passed by her neck to rest his ear against the uppermost part of her chest. Nettie’s heart pounded against her breastbone. She shivered.
“Strong,” he said, staying where he was for another moment. “Your heartbeat is quick and strong.” Lifting his head, he followed the same path up her neck, past her chin to her lips. This time he stayed right there, a hair’s breadth away, as he reached for her right hand to place it over his heart. “Mine is the same. Quick, strong—because of you. There’s nothing wrong with that, Nettie. Is there?”
Lord, no. Willing herself to open her eyes, she looked directly into his. He was going to kiss her, and, no, there didn’t seem to be a thing wrong with that.
Chase closed the passenger-side door to his Porsche and watched Nettie skip lightly up the porch steps to her front door.
“Thanks for lunch. I’ve never—” She turned as she spoke, laughing when she saw him still standing by the car. “What are you doing down there?”
“Admiring the view.”
Her gaze flicked over his head to the green fields beyond her property. “You’re facing the wrong way.”
Slowly, he shook his head, his mouth curving into a grin. “Nope.” Pushing away from the car, he made quick work of the porch steps and stood in front of her, looking down.
He simply didn’t tire of looking at her, he thought, not even when he tried.
After he’d kissed her in the car, he’d asked her if she felt distracted enough to forget about the anxiety. “What anxiety?” she’d murmured on a sigh so breathy and sexy he’d kissed her again. In a cherry-red, scoop-necked T-shirt and blue jeans, she was sexier, more feminine and classier than any woman with whom he’d ever been involved.
Smiling at him smiling at her, Nettie said, “I was going to say thank-you for lunch. I’ve never eaten french fries dunked in a chocolate shake before.”
“No?” Seeing that she had her house keys in her hand and aware that in her effort to keep their relationship under wraps she might not want him to linger, Chase placed a palm on the screen door high above Nettie’s head. Classic male-takes-control pose. He hadn’t tried it since high school; he hadn’t needed to since high school. “So, what’s your verdict?”
Nettie glanced at his hand, back at his face, appeared to know exactly what he was doing and didn’t seem to mind. “Not bad. A little messy, but somehow they tasted…right…like that.”
“I told you. Once you try them that way, you never go back.” He’d fed them to her himself. Picking out the longest, skinniest fries on his plate, he’d dipped them leisurely into the frosty drink, held them up and dared her to taste. He had absolutely loved watching the ice cream drip onto her chin, watching her giggle and lick it off and then watching her eyes widen with surprise when she realized he hadn’t been kidding, that the odd combo really did taste good. Most of all, though, he had loved the way her crystal-blue gaze had held his while he’d dropped the fries into her mouth.
Chase shifted on the porch. She engendered the damnedest combination of affection and lust he’d ever felt.
“I had a great time, too,” he said quietly. His free hand went to his hip as an idea came to mind and he considered whether to pursue it. Before he progressed to a conscious decision, the words poured out. “Listen, Nick offered to let me use a little cabin or, I don’t know, a hut or something on his property while I’m here.”
Nettie giggled. “It’s not a ‘hut.’ It’s the Enchanted Cottage.”
“Come again?”
“Haven’t you seen that movie?” Still sheltered by his raised arm, she leaned against the screen door and chatted as if she didn’t have a care in the world or a single thought of shooing him away before they were seen. “The Enchanted Cottage is a lovely romance. Lilah and I must have watched it twenty times when we were teenagers. There’s a little house on Nick’s place that’s only been used off and on for years, so we’d sneak in and camp out there sometimes with our girlfriends. We’d tell ourselves we were in the enchanted cottage from the movie.”
She looked impish and winsome as she spoke. Chase felt her carving a permanent smile on his memory. “You’d sneak in, huh? Breaking and entering.”
“Don’t tell Sara.”
He raised his free hand in a Boy Scout salute. “Your shady past is safe with me. For now. So what would you do there?”
“Ooh, fun things. Talk about boys and eat graham crackers with canned frosting.”
Chase laughed. “Pretty wild.” He lowered his head toward hers. “Let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Did you ever take a boy there?”
Nettie squinted an eye as if she couldn’t quite remember and was trying to see back into the past. “I think Lilah may have. Trespassing with girlfriends was about as daring as I was willing to get. At the time.”
“I can’t give you the thrill of trespassing, but I could use your input.”
“About?”
“Nick offered me the use of your cottage, because he thought I might want a little privacy while I’m here. I think he might want me out of his hair, too.”
A dimple appeared in Nettie’s cheek. “The farmhouse is too small for two big strapping individualists like you?”
Actually, what Nick had said was, If the boy turns out to be yours, and you want to get to know him without anyone else in the way, I’ve got a little place…
Chase shook his head. He still wasn’t ready to talk about this. Several times during lunch, he’d tried to direct the conversation to a more personal level. Each time, she’d turned the tables on him, deflecting his questions. He’d discovered that she wrote and illustrated kids’ storybooks for a living and that her favorite Christmas gift had been a set of forty colored pencils when she was eight, but that was it. She hadn’t allowed the conversation to get any more personal, except to make it clear t
hat she was a career girl.
A career girl who accepted the fact that he was a career man.
The rules had already been set. A few weeks. No strings.
“I thought a little privacy might not be a half-bad idea,” he said and then scowled. That had sounded better in his head than it did out loud. Aloud it sounded like he was making a play for her. Like he’d been thinking about it, planning for it. Which, he reminded himself, you are.
“What I meant was—”
“I think privacy is a good idea.”
Chase sucked in a breath. At another time, with another woman, he would have anticipated that response. He’d feel pleased. He’d begin to envision the rendezvous, but in a relaxed, even lazy way. He might not think about it again at all until the moment was at hand, except perhaps to pick up a bottle of champagne.
So why, now, was his heart hammering and his brow starting to perspire?
When he realized he was starting to sweat all over, Chase dropped his hand and shook his head. This was the damnedest thing.
“What?” Nettie asked, tilting her head.
“What…what?” Ah, you are an articulate son-of-a-gun, Chase applauded himself. You’ve been a journalist for how long?
“You were shaking your head,” Nettie answered him.
“Right.” He wiped his palm on his jeans as discreetly as he could, then swiped the perspiration from his upper lip.
Where was his will? He was a fighter by nature. He possessed a strong mind. If he wanted to be casual, then, dammit, he ought to be able to make himself be casual.
“I know you’ve got a work schedule,” he began.
She nodded. “But I’m due for a vacation.”
Chase swallowed. That’s it. He was a goner. “I’m picking you up tomorrow at nine. Nick’s driving into Minot. He’ll be gone until early afternoon. I make great French toast, so be hungry.”
Nettie groaned. “You dare say that while I’m still digesting a Giant Dakota Burger, fries and a chocolate shake? After those calories, we women tend to stick to salad and grapefruit for the next couple of meals.”
