Chase shook his head bitterly. All these years he had convinced himself he had to be alone to run KinCo―that he couldn’t have his career and a relationship, too. And now, he had found someone that changed his mind and all she wanted was to devour him in a hotel room, finish her job, and leave. Maybe Donna Ogrodnick was right―this is what Kate did. She slept with her clients to control them, or get a thrill, and then she was off to the next job.
Chase saw Kate’s hand resting on the seat next to him and longed to reach out and hold it again; to hold her and tell her how he felt, but it was useless. Kate would finish this job and leave, and he needed to make sure he still had his life, or at least pieces of it, still in place. Then he’d have something to cling to. Something to focus on besides Kate Piper.
Chapter 13: Kate
Kate threw down a couple of aspirin with another glass of water. Her head was pounding. She wondered how she could still have a hangover the next afternoon, but decided she deserved a hangover―and much worse. She put on the most comfortable pajama bottoms and fluffy socks she had in her suitcase, along with a white tank top, then piled the full weight of her hair up on top of her head in a loose bun. She scooted up to the breakfast bar in her bungalow and opened her laptop to video call Lindsey. She stretched out and rocked her neck back and forth as the phone rang. There were few spots on her body that weren’t sore.
Lindsey’s pixie face popped up on her screen. “Hey, Pipes.”
“Hey.”
“Ooh. Someone looks like they had a rough night. Bad time at the gala?”
Kate shook her head. “Where do I even begin?”
“With the dress, of course. You forgot to call me so I could see you in it.”
“Right, sorry. Yeah, the dress was good. Thanks again for sending it.”
Lindsey beamed into the camera. “And I bet Mr. Gorgeous was to-die-for in a tux. Am I wrong?”
Kate felt a flush and grinned at the camera.
Lindsey’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “Oh my God, Kate. You slept with him?”
“I did.”
“You slut.”
“I know.”
“I’m jealous,” Lindsey said, pulling a bottle of wine into view and pouring herself a glass. “Tell me every detail. You know I live through you.”
“It was…unexpected.”
“Ooh, so did he get all alpha-male on you and take you like the sexy beast he is?”
“Kind of the other way around, actually.”
“Holy crap.”
Kate nodded.
Lindsey looked at Kate admiringly. “You’re my hero. Can I be you when I grow up?”
“Believe me, you don’t want to be me. I screwed up. I never should have let that happen.”
Lindsey put her wine down and stared at Kate, incredulous. “Are you nuts? He’s gorgeous. And single. When do we ever find that combo?”
Kate shrugged.
“Do you like him?” Lindsey asked.
“I do,” Kate admitted.
“Now,” Lindsey continued, “this does screw up our plan of growing old together, two old coots sitting on a porch talking about how we didn’t need a man. But I can fend for myself, I guess. So, what now?”
Kate looked down. “Nothing now. It’s all a mess. I screwed up, Lindz, and at the absolute worst time.”
Lindsey’s brow furrowed. “What’s going on, Kate?”
Kate exhaled, and tears flooded her eyes. “She was there.”
“She who? Wait…Oh crap. No. Way. Donna Ogrodnick?”
Kate nodded.
Lindsey slapped both of her hands down in front of her. “That bitch. Is she stalking you?”
“I don’t know. If I thought I could get away from her tentacles by coming all the way to Oklahoma, I was wrong. Apparently, she’s knee deep in this deal. She’s working for the investment bank who’s launching the IPO.”
“Holy crap.” Lindsey said.
“If I screw up this job…If I miss anything, she’ll be right there to let everyone know. Any chance I had of building my business would be gone.” Kate took a sip of her water. “Every time I manage to get a client, she swoops in behind me and tells lies about me until my credibility is decimated. And her favorite line—that I sleep with my clients—has been a total lie. Until last night.”
“Crap.”
“Right. I just became that girl. The one she accused me of being all along.”
“Now hold on there, Kate. We know Donna Ogrodnick will tell whatever lie works best. You don’t have to worry about her. If you weren’t a threat to her business, she wouldn’t be coming after you. Remember that. Remember who you are.”
“Right.” Kate sniffed.
“OK, dumpy. Tomorrow we work on our strategy. Tonight…there’s only one thing that will make this situation better.” Lindsey ran off screen and came back with a small black speaker. “Dance party, Kate.”
“No…”
“Oh, yes. It’s a kitchen dance party.” Music began to thump through Kate’s computer and she watched Lindsey adjust her camera and stand up, clap her hands, and beckon Kate to stand up, too. “Come on, Piper. Get your groove on.”
Lindsey’s smile filled up the lens and then she backed up, shimmying her hips. Kate felt a smile spread across her face and she exhaled with a laugh. “Okay, Lindsey,” Kate said as she stood. Her shoulders and hips began to rock with the beat of the music. She did a twirl and raised her arms high over her head.
“Shake it, girl!” Lindsey yelled. “Dancing queen!”
Kate moved back into the kitchen, listening to the music, her head bobbing and her feet moving. She felt the stress leave her body as she gave it up to the music, the moment, and her best friend shaking her ass on her computer screen. Kate spun around and shimmied at the camera. Then there was a knock on the door. Kate froze.
“What’s that?” Lindsey asked, turning off the music.
Kate turned and looked at the front door. Chase was looking at her through the glass, smiling. “Oh, no,” Kate said. “He’s here.”
“He, who? Oh…him, him.”
“I’ve got to go, Lindz.”
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. On second thought, do everything I wouldn’t do.” Lindsey grinned and the screen went black.
Kate closed her laptop and paused to try to compose herself before turning to the door.
Chase stood on her porch in jeans and a t-shirt. She saw a smile spread across his face as she opened the door.
“Am I interrupting something?” asked Chase.
Kate tried in vain to push her hair into place then crossed her arms tightly. “Dance party,” she said.
“Dance party? You were having a dance party in your kitchen?”
“It’s a thing,” she said simply, then looked down at Chase’s hand.
He lifted up a bag. “Your makeup bag. Apparently, you were so anxious to get out of the hotel this morning you left it. They delivered it.”
“Oh, thanks,” she said, blushing. She looked behind him at the other quiet houses lining the compound; she saw no one and opened the door. “Would you like to come in?”
Chase paused. “For a minute. Are you worried someone might see me coming over here?”
“No, I guess not.”
“If I wanted to sneak over I’d just use the tornado shelter,” he said, breezing past to sit at the kitchen counter.
“What shelter?”
“We are in Oklahoma,” he said. “When my grandparents built these houses, each got a tornado shelter, and the shelters are connected by a series of underground tunnels. I used to play down there when I was a kid.”
“Oh,” she murmured as what happened last night begin to weigh heavily on her mind again. She watched as Chase walked over to the counter and leaned against it, one well-muscled leg crossing over the other. He was so at home here, hanging out in her kitchen. She fought the urge to go over and wrap her arms around him. “Chase, listen, I’m sorry about how I acted
this morning.”
“Are you?” Chase set his intense eyes on her.
Kate puffed out her breath. “There is something between us. I’m aware. We slept together within a week of knowing each other, for Christ’s sake, but I’m trying to do you a favor. I don’t want you to be hurt.”
Chase turned his gaze on her and his shoulders relaxed. “That’s it? That’s your spiel?”
“Huh?”
Chase walked around the kitchen and directly towards Kate. She took several small steps back until she was up against the counter. “Don’t do me any favors, Kate,” he said, leaning closer, whispering with a husky voice into her ear. “Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to work so close to you as it is, and after last night, to be right across the lawn from you all day, knowing how you feel in my arms? How much I want to touch you?”
His minty breath was warm on Kate’s cheek and the need to turn and feel his mouth on hers was so urgent her chest ached.
She turned her mouth to speak but Chase pressed her lips closed with his thumb. “See you at work,” he said, and walked out the door.
Chapter 14: Chase
“Wow,” Chase said into the phone as he looked out across the KinCo complex. “Are you sure?” The night shift was loading trucks under the glowing overhead lights. One by one, Chase watched as they shook themselves awake and rumbled off into the night. “Thanks, Lou. I sure will. Thanks.”
As Chase placed the phone back into its cradle, he could hear a vacuum running down one of the distant office hallways. Under the single lamp on his desk, he began to scribble circles and squares slowly on a yellow legal pad. The lines began to intersect and overlap, and he found his pen drawing deep, twirling cylinders across the page. He wondered if Kate was still there, dancing in her kitchen. He drew the pen roughly across the page, scratching through the lines, then balled up the paper and threw it away. His eyes lingered on the balled up paper for a moment before his leg shot out, sending the trash can across the room.
That afternoon, he had paced around his house, trying to stop himself from standing at the window to look across at Kate’s bungalow. He failed. As dusk fell across the compound, a soft light glowed from her kitchen, and Chase wondered if she was in there―if she was thinking of him.
Fitz watched him from a corner of the room and let out a whimper now and then, but Chase didn’t respond. He was replaying every word Kate had said the night before, trying to find some hidden meaning. The soft sheen of her skin flashed across his mind and how it glistened as he ran his hands across her body. How she had clung to him and cried out as their bodies moved perfectly together―and how she turned away immediately after.
She had warned him, she said they shouldn’t be together. What if she was right? He shook his head. No, he couldn’t let himself think that. Her fear of being with him made her so paranoid she started to imagine there was a plot against him. Chase couldn’t blame her. She was probably sensing his duplicity. Her reaction was his fault. If he’d just come clean, he could fix everything.
There was a knock on the door, and Chase rushed to answer it so quickly, Fitz didn’t even have a chance to bark. There was a delivery man standing on his porch.
“Kate Piper?” he asked.
Chase frowned. “No, she’s across the way.” He pointed, then saw a bag under the man’s arm. “Is that hers?” Chase asked, grabbing it. “I’ll take it over.”
The delivery man grasped the other side of the bag and looked up at Chase, both of their knuckles wrapped around a corner. Chase towered over the man and scowled down as he said, “I’ll sign. Let go.”
This was the excuse Chase needed to see her. He ran through what he would say. He would lay all his cards on the table. Kate could stomp on them if she wanted to. At least he would have come clean. He told Fitz to stay, then darted out his front door and straight across the lawn.
As he raised his fist to knock on the front door, he saw Kate there in the light of the kitchen, dancing. His arm dropped. She looked so happy, so free. He wished he could make her look like that, but as he stepped back into the shadows of her front porch, he knew his revelation would knock that beautiful smile off her face. He couldn’t tell her.
Chase braced himself, then knocked on the door. Just as he feared, he saw Kate’s face drop when she saw him. He gave her the bag and ran without saying what he came to say.
There was a heavy moon hanging in the sky as he jumped into his truck and sped off onto the back roads of town, the feel of the accelerator below his feet and the soothing whir of the tires and engine calmed his mind. He found himself at the entrance to his office, not remembering exactly how he had gotten there. He walked inside, nodding silently at the security guards and stepping into the elevator. When he reached his office, he walked directly to his desk and began to rummage through some business cards stuck in a back corner. After flipping through a dozen, he found Lou Tarly’s number.
It was late in Boston, but Chase couldn’t wait until morning. After several rings, he heard Lou’s deep, scratchy voice come on the line. “Chase?” Lou asked. “Is that you, son? Is everything alright?”
“Yeah, Lou,” Chase replied. “I’m sorry to call you so late, but I have questions only you can answer.”
Twenty minutes later Chase felt the fizzy tendrils of new emotions stretching and combining in his mind. He leaned back into his chair and made himself breathe. Kate. Beautiful, amazing Kate. After what he learned, he knew he never wanted to be without her. But he knew he couldn’t tell her the truth.
Chapter 15: Kate
Kate was tucked into a corner of Big Cal’s office, watching a group of sales guys that had gathered around his desk.
“Cal,” one said, “tell us about time before the internet.”
Each of the guys had collected his Friday cookie tin from Constance and was sitting or standing around Cal, hoping to get a classic bit of Cal’s wit before heading back to work.
“Son,” Cal replied, “people actually had to talk to each other back then. None of this text-ing and app-ing. You would have been in sorry shape. You actually had to talk to girls. Face to face.” Cal reached out and slapped the man playfully on the arm.
Kate had snuck in hoping to find Chase. He couldn’t be found and had been clearly avoiding her the whole week. Last night, the windows to his house remained dark. When she stopped by his office, all his staff would say was that he was in an off-site meeting. He’s trying to give me some of my own medicine, Kate thought. Serves me right.
“Cal,” Kate heard another sales guy say, “I heard you drove market to market to get orders, even when you knew you didn’t have the product to sell them.”
“That’s right.”
“Without inventory?” the guy asked in shock.
Cal smiled. “Well, back then, we took the orders on a paper form with carbon copies attached to a clipboard. It took weeks to fill an order, not days. That gave Rose a chance to work her magic in R&D and figure out how to make what they needed. In all our years, we never had to turn an order down or say we couldn’t fill it.”
The sales guy looked around at his buddies with a grin. “Well, Big Cal, given your strict moral code, I’m wondering how you felt about that?”
The group waited bright eyed as Cal straightened up for a moment, hitched up his belt, then hoisted one foot up on the corner of a chair like a coach in a huddle. “Well, boys,” he said, “let me begin by saying…God is a Republican. Therefore, it’s okay.”
The group howled.
A ticking sound popped against Cal’s office window. Everyone looked up and saw Rose standing on the other side of the glass, smiling at Cal. He took his foot down and straightened up, his head tilted to one side. Rose raised one eyebrow, withdrew a tube of red lipstick and drew it across her lips slowly, never leaving Cal’s stare.
“Um, fellas,” Cal stammered, “I think my wife would like to have a word with me. You all skee-daddle, now.”
Everyone got up with a
smile and a smack on the back of their neighbor. Kate followed. “Hi Rose,” she said as she exited.
“Kate,” Rose replied, her stare never breaking with Cal’s, then she walked into his office, shut the door, and dropped the blinds.
Kate walked over and leaned on Constance’s desk, both of them looking at the closed door.
“Wow,” Kate said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Have they always been like that?”
“For forty years.”
“Huh.” Kate said. “I didn’t know love could be like that after forty years.”
“Yup.”
Kate looked back at Constance’s desk, which was now devoid of cookie tins. “How long have you been doing this cookie thing?”
“Pretty much forty years,” she said simply. “I like to bake. Takes my mind off things.”
Kate felt a ding on her phone and looked down. Lindsey was calling. She stepped away from Constance’s desk to take the call. “Hey, Lindz, what’s up?”
“Kate. I just got a ping on my alert system. I don’t know the details, but it looks like Chase was in a crash.”
Kate put her finger to her ear, trying to hear Lindsey more clearly. “A crash? What do you mean? What kind of crash?” Kate saw Constance raise her head.
“There was just a quick story on the wire. A Chase Kincaid was the driver of a car that crashed at a race in North Carolina this morning. That’s all the info there is. I don’t even know if it’s our Chase, but given his history of racing, I―”
“I’m on my way. Text me everything you can.”
Kate hung up and looked at Constance.
“Is it Chase?” Constance asked.
“Yes, I don’t have details.” Kate’s eyes darted to Cal’s office door. “I’ll call you with any info I get. I’m on my way to North Carolina. Connie,” Kate reached out, “Will you please let Cal and Rose know?”
“Of course,” Constance said, squeezing Kate’s hand. “You be safe, too, now.”
Chasing Kate (An American Dream Love Story Book 1) Page 8
