The 48 Hour Hookup (Chase Brothers)

by Sarah Ballance

  “Not. Like. That.” Claire looked around, feeling somewhat ridiculous, but ridiculous was what small-town rumors were made of. Finding them sufficiently alone, she said, “He’s Hot HVAC Guy.”

  Jessie’s eyes flew wide. “You slept with Hot HVAC Guy?”

  Claire could have died a thousand times at the volume of Jessie’s voice. “Could you not?”

  Jessie shook her head. “Um, no. No one could not. You’re kidding me, right?”

  “You told me to call them.”

  “I didn’t know he was from Fusion!”

  Claire almost spit out her coffee. “How could you not know that?”

  “Because I’m a grown-ass woman with a job. I don’t follow that stuff.”

  “Yet you knew who he was.”

  “I saw the picture,” Jessie admitted, “and it may have contributed to an orgasm or two—which, by the way, you’ve just ruined—but I didn’t do a background check. God, no. If I’d found he had a wife and a couple of kids, that would have killed the fantasy. Kind of like finding out my best friend actually slept with him. What are you doing?”

  Claire looked up from her phone, where she’d been rapidly keying in Liam’s name. “I’m making sure he’s not married.”

  “What if he is?”

  “He’ll go back to her in pieces.” After a moment, she sat back, relieved. Not married. No kids, either. Just three look-alike brothers, all gorgeous, one of whom had bet Liam he couldn’t catch the Runaway Bride.

  Where the hell was anyone betting her she couldn’t get away?

  …

  Ironic, Liam thought, that the job had been one of the easiest he’d done. There was no need for an estimate. Not anymore. He’d pulled numbers off the furnace and called the manufacturer. The so-called old furnace had been installed six years before, which was plenty new when they were expected to last a good twenty years. When Ethan arrived, they’d gone through and tested everything, cleaned it up, and Claire was good to go.

  And gone.

  He wasn’t sure where she’d headed off to, and he knew he shouldn’t care. In fact, he should have been grateful there would be no awkward good-bye. Instead, he packed his stuff while Ethan wrote up the service ticket. Before he left, he put a banana on Stanley’s window sill and checked the fire, which as far as he knew hadn’t been re-lit that morning.

  “Nice place,” Ethan said. He’d been oddly quiet.

  “Yeah, it is.” And that was all Liam said, which probably meant he, too, was oddly quiet. Which was fine. Ethan would respect that.

  Or so Liam had thought.

  He took a long last look around the lodge before he closed the door on those few surreal days of life with Claire. Doing so hurt, but there weren’t any decisions to be made. No regrets to ponder. Just…done.

  With that thought nevertheless heavy in his mind, he put his stuff in the back of the truck and strapped the snowboard on top of it while Ethan stowed what was left of the equipment. Approximately thirty seconds after Ethan fired up the pickup and the doors were shut, he gave Liam a look.

  “So what happened?”

  Liam sighed and turned the hot air vent so it didn’t blow in his face. “What have you heard?”

  “Not a word from you,” Ethan said pointedly.

  “For the record, I really don’t want to talk about this. And so I won’t have to, I’ll say this: Sawyer bet me I couldn’t hang onto the Runaway Bride, and I was dumb enough to not immediately hang up on him.”

  “Wait a minute. The Runaway Bride? Claire…something.”

  “Stevens.” Liam was surprised Sawyer hadn’t relayed that piece of information.

  Ethan gave him a puzzled look. “That’s not the name I just wrote on that paperwork.”

  “No, it’s not.” Liam sighed and eased back in the seat, wishing he had a hat to pull over his eyes. He trusted Ethan to get them off the mountain in one piece. Mostly. “That’s her television name. She came up here for some anonymity, so needless to say, she left that name in the city. The attention was driving her nuts.”

  “I imagine. Every time I have to field a phone call from a teenage girl looking for you before I’ve even had my coffee, I want to hop on the next plane to wherever Rue is and stay there.”

  Ethan’s fiancé, Rue, traveled for work, which was putting it mildly. “Where is she now?”

  “Hopefully somewhere over the Atlantic,” Ethan said, sounding suddenly light. Elated. “I’m meeting her plane tonight. She had a long layover in London that she spent with her brother.”

  “Pretty smart for the two of you to actually spend some time on the same continent before the wedding,” Liam said dryly. Rue was an award-winning conservation photographer who’d made a fast name for herself. The downside was that she was always off in remote places, many of which Liam hadn’t heard of until she was boarding a plane in each respective direction. He didn’t know how Ethan slept at night, knowing she was off the coast of fucking Yemen in Socotra taking pictures of those dragon’s blood trees, or north of the Arctic Circle in some remote Norwegian village, but Ethan was quite literally the happiest Liam had ever seen him.

  Which made that knowing look he was giving him twice as annoying as it needed to be.

  “What?” Liam snapped.

  “Maybe you need to talk to Crosby. Find out the next step in the just slept with a client playbook.” He shook his head in mock defeat. “If we had an HR department, they’d quit. En masse.”

  Liam didn’t say anything. Crosby had met his wife on a service call.

  Liam most fucking certainly had not.

  Ethan hit the brakes, earning a dirty look from Liam.

  “What? Was I supposed to plow over that rabbit? It probably had a family.”

  Wordlessly, Liam closed his eyes again. He didn’t need to see the mountain or the snow or really anything but the inside of his apartment back in the city.

  “You afraid if you’re not single, the phone calls will stop?” Ethan asked.

  Liam snorted. “I’d marry you if I thought it would make the calls stop.”

  Ethan shot him a knowing look. “You didn’t exactly deny sleeping with her. And I didn’t say a word about marriage.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Ethan, I don’t want to marry her. I’ve known her days.” Truck cabs were too damned small. Maybe he should ditch his wrecked one and trade up for a crew cab. A loud, noisy four-door that required absolutely no proximity and would always be heard over the sound of a chainsaw.

  “Maybe you’ve noticed,” Ethan said, “us Chase men get swept off our feet pretty much on day one. When it’s the right person, that is.”

  “And maybe you’ve noticed,” Liam shot back, “my feet are still firmly on the floorboard.” Then he realized he had one ankle sitting on the opposite knee and jerked his foot to the floor mat. The last thing Ethan needed was to make a point, however idiotic.

  Ethan just shook his head and grinned.

  It was going to be a long ride home, and Ethan clearly wasn’t going to shut up, so Liam changed the subject. “How are the wedding plans coming?” Ethan and Rue were getting married in the spring, and Liam had a feeling it wouldn’t be at the church on the corner. “Am I going to need a passport?”

  Liam had been joking, but Ethan nodded. “Yep, you might want to get on that.”

  Was he serious? “Are we just shutting down the business for your wedding?”

  “Just for a couple of days.”

  Liam swore.

  “Hey, Mom and Dad could use the vacation, and I don’t know how else we were going to force them to take one.”

  “Good point.” He sighed. “She doesn’t snowboard. Or ski. She can’t even ride in a sleigh without disaster striking.”

  “Who, Mom?”

  Liam rolled his eyes. “No, asshole. Claire.”

  Ethan choked on a laugh. “What kind of disaster struck on a sleigh?”

  “The horse apparently found the harness bells as annoying as the rest of us an
d went home early, after which I publicly outed her as the Runaway Bride. We had a thirty-minute walk back.”

  “Okay, so disaster struck. I believe you now. Has she spoken to you yet?”

  “Yeah. She forgave me for that.” Multiple times, but Liam didn’t throw that part out there.

  “So what did it?”

  “She overheard me telling Sawyer I’d nailed her, that I wasn’t sure if that meant I’d lost or won the bet, and I couldn’t wait to get home.” Liam said every word with his eyes closed.

  “Shit, man. You’re screwed.”

  Well and truly.

  Because he missed her already, and there was no way of undoing any of it. Not the bet. Not the sex. Not the smashed truck or the hot chocolate or the tree that fell. Twice. There was no going back and no moving ahead.

  There was just nothing but her.

  And she was gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Four days before Christmas

  Liam was kicked back in his recliner, not even seeing what was on TV, when his buzzer rang. He ignored it. He didn’t need to see anyone. He didn’t need to talk. He really just needed to forget about Claire, and especially forget about whatever kept him from forgetting about her. It wasn’t like they’d actually had one of those moments where he knew he couldn’t let her go.

  Or maybe it was precisely because of that. Yeah, they had stuff in common. And the sex was amazing, but it went beyond that. It was some damned indescribable feeling that burrowed into his chest and stayed there, and no amount of beer had come close to washing it away. The Chinese takeout he’d ordered earlier hadn’t budged it either.

  And staring at the television wasn’t helping any more than listening to the buzzer. Finally, he kicked the foot rest down and answered it. “Yeah.”

  “It’s…it’s Claire.”

  He wasn’t even sure he heard her right, but he knew her voice. He had a goddamned visceral reaction to her voice. “Come on up,” he said, glancing around and finding the place mostly decent. His coffee mug from that morning was still on the counter, and he’d thrown his jacket over a chair, but hell, if that made her run, she probably should.

  She’d barely knocked when the opened the door, wondering at the last second which version he’d find. The made-up, camera-ready Claire, or the natural one—the one who’d fallen in a snow drift with him and smashed hot chocolate against his chest. He hoped for that one.

  She didn’t disappoint.

  She looked like she’d just stepped off the slopes, with her hair pulled back, blue eyes bright, lips a natural, delectable shade. She wore those same snug-fitting stretchy pants and a ski jacket that almost exactly matched her eyes.

  She was…stunning. The kind of beautiful that would bring a man to his knees, though looking at her, he realized he’d pretty much been there since that morning she’d walked out of the club room that held abandoned poker hands and smelled of stale cigars.

  “You didn’t charge me for the service,” she said, kind of like she was pissed.

  Bewildered, he stepped aside, letting her in. “You came all the way here to tell me that? I didn’t even write the ticket.”

  “I didn’t trade sex for you to service my furnace.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Okay, so maybe she had come all the way here to yell at him. Unless she was back for some other reason, which didn’t help his mood much.

  She was glancing around, taking in his apartment. He kind of was, too. Memorizing how she looked in there, taking notes for when she’d leave. He knew damn well she couldn’t stay.

  Finally, she asked, “Then why didn’t you bill me?”

  He shrugged. “We did. Standard service call.”

  “Three hours upstate? And you were there how many days?”

  Was she kidding? Actually here to give him crap about the stupid bill, and for that matter for it not being high enough? “You know what’s funny?” he said, actually not finding anything the least bit amusing. “I’m standing here thinking how ungodly beautiful you are and realizing the city sky has never been as blue as your eyes, and you’re over there worried about underpaying a fucking furnace bill. You can write the damned check for whatever you want to write the damned check for. Are you happy now? Is that why you’re here?”

  She threw out her hands. “I don’t know. I guess I just…wanted to see if you were real.”

  He just stared for a long moment before he finally said, “If I haven’t convinced you of that yet, I’m afraid I’m out of ideas.” Maybe he could use a few. Something to distract him from remembering what was under those clothes, and the way she said his name and how she looked riding him, her head thrown back, the tips of her long hair grazing his thighs. Because he hadn’t been able to unsee that, and now he was seeing it with her in his apartment.

  “Not that kind of real,” she stammered. “Or maybe that kind. I don’t know. I just—”

  He hauled her in and kissed her, hard.

  If he’d caught her off guard, she recovered nicely, fisting his shirt, dragging him lower, pulling him deeper. But what started as a demand quickly dissolved into slow, unmerciful exploration. His heart hammered and raced like he’d never been touched before. Her lips were soft and warm, setting fire to him. “Stay with me a while,” he murmured. “Please.”

  “As long as there are no winter sports in here,” she managed. “Or raccoons. I’m fresh out of bananas.”

  “I promise you’re safe from live critters and winter sports. I, on the other hand, fully intend to ravage you. It might be the worst idea I’ve ever had, but you’re here, and my heart has already stopped once. I might need a kick start of some kind. Or maybe you’ll just go ahead and finish me. I don’t care. I just want you.”

  “I think I can finish you,” she murmured.

  “I’m going to hold you to that.” He reached over to lock the door, not letting go of her. Too afraid she was a figment of his imagination who would disappear. Hell, she probably would anyway. She’d showed up to dispute her bill, not declare her undying love. But he held on anyway. It wasn’t a thing he did, holding on. Certainly not anything he’d wanted to do before, but she was different. He didn’t know what that meant, other than not letting go.

  He had her shirt off before they made it through his bedroom door, and he relieved her of everything else she wore before she hit the bed. She’d made that makeshift bed at the lodge seem incredible, but seeing her there, naked and stretched out on his bed, freshly washed comforter billowing around her, kind of like the snow had that day he’d landed in the drift with her on top of him, skis tangled.

  He stripped off his clothes and then the comforter, playfully tossing her to the side before joining her on the bed. Every cell in his body begged for him to dive right in, but he captured her hand and her gaze and for a moment just drowned in the fact that she was there. Not as part of a memory, but the fantasies…yeah, this was happening.

  She touched his cheek with her free hand and brushed back the hair that had fallen in his face. The way she was looking at him, he half expected her to say something profound—something he’d have to run from later. Instead she said, “Why is there a stuffed raccoon on your bed?”

  He laughed. “Because I have three brothers,” he said. Like that made sense. Eventually, if she met them, it would. In the meantime, he wanted to spend zero seconds discussing them.

  “Did you name it?”

  “Name what?” He kissed her fingertips, then that little spot at her collarbone, then worked his way lower, enjoying the way her hand tightened in his hair when he grazed her breast with his teeth.

  “The stuffed raccoon.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a grin, looking up. “I sure did.” Right then, he had. “His name is Bandit.”

  He expected that to have been cute, but he wasn’t sure she heard him. She had her eyes closed, probably because he’d eased his fingers inside her and was shamelessly stroking her, not fast enough to drive her in any particular direction. Ju
st slow, lazy, deep penetration that had the good girl arching her back and clutching at his sheets, her holds on him forgotten. Had he been a better man, he would have coaxed all that pleasure out of her, but he wasn’t a better man. He was a man who had spent way too many nights alone, remember in far too vivid detail the way that woman exploded around him.

  He managed to reach his condom stash, untouched since he left her, without breaking contact. And when she opened her eyes to see what he was doing, she didn’t look away, either. She watched him put the thing on, then held both of his hands, their fingers laced, holding on tight, as he sank into her.

  God help him, he didn’t want to leave. Not even for the second it would take to drive deeper. He’d thought he couldn’t possibly remember how incredible she was, but the truth was, he didn’t remember enough. There was no way a memory could do justice to the way she responded to him, drawing him in, throwing back her head, whimpering his name, dragging her nails across his back.

  How the hell was he supposed to let that go?

  He was still wondering that later, when he walked her out. It was the middle of the night. He wanted her to stay, but he didn’t argue when she said she should go. He’d already worried about what would happen if someone saw them together in the morning, so as much as he wanted her in his arms, her timing was a bit of a relief.

  Letting her go wasn’t. Mostly he just wanted to haul her back upstairs. She was so beautiful standing there, even if the city lights had nothing on the stars that had provided ambient light on top of her mountain.

  He didn’t seem to be the only one with second thoughts. She hesitated on the front stoop, fingertips toying with the hem of the shirt he’d thrown on against the December cold. Dirty snow, the result of a recent couple of inches, sat in chunks at the curbs. There were no evergreens. No endless skies.

  No place for that here.

  “What are we doing here, Liam?” She frowned, but not even that didn’t mar that ethereal glow that made her look like some kind of angel. Her hair shone, her eyes luminously blue against the grimy city.

  He traced his fingertips lightly over her cheek. When she shivered, he almost held her, but then he remembered where they were and took a step away from her. The hurt look on her face made his chest tighten and cemented the knot he seemed to carry with any distance between them. Whether that was ten inches or ten miles didn’t seem to matter. He just hated not touching her. “I assume you’re not looking for the obvious,” he said.