Bingo! He found news items about Brandon and Yvonne Wallace at high-brow events and photos of the man with a beautiful woman who had honey-olive skin and a figure that was made for slinky evening gowns. He could picture her behind one of those old forties microphones singing in a smoky nightclub while all the men fantasized about her.
One of the recent photo captions noted that the couple had been married for ten years. Which meant he had been married when he knew Rayne.
Chase sat back in his chair. So she’d had an affair with a married man. And he’d made a stupid comment about how much he was enjoying sneaking around with her, like he was dating a married woman. And then he’d given this idiot her phone number when she’d clearly been avoiding him—which might or might not mean she still had feelings for him.
Sometimes, Chase thought, I truly am my own worst enemy.
He powered off his laptop and tucked it into his shoulder bag. He had to be at Dulles at an ungodly hour the next morning, so he put his bags by the front door and headed out to Zipped to face Colin’s wrath. He assumed Colin would have heard from Savannah by now, and he was hoping he could get some brotherly advice because despite what Rayne thought, he wasn’t ready to end their relationship.
As Chase settled himself at the bar, Colin greeted him warmly and poured him a glass of Sam Adams beer, and Chase realized that Savannah hadn’t called yet. He briefly wondered if that was because she was busy comforting Rayne, but he hated to think about Rayne crying, so he took a long sip of beer and said, “Hey, bro, I need to talk to you about something.”
“Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be back over,” Colin said, dumping a tower of dirty glasses into a rubber bin behind the bar.
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you before you hear it from Savannah, so...”
Colin stared at Chase for a second then tossed down the white towel he’d just picked up. Bracing his arms on the bar, he gave Chase his full, if slightly wary, attention. “OK, what’s up?” he said. And then his cell phone rang.
Colin pulled it out of his pocket and smiled as he held it up to show Chase Savannah’s name on the screen. “Too late.”
“Don’t answer it!” Chase said.
Colin looked at him like he was insane and hit the answer button.
“Hey, sweetie,” he said into the phone. A second later, he glanced at Chase. “Yeah, he just got here.”
Chase squirmed in his seat, feeling a sudden urge to grab the phone and smash it.
“Did he now?” Colin said, and Chase didn’t know if Savannah was telling him about Rayne or Nepal.
“Tomorrow, eh? Well, I hear Nepal is pretty nice this time of year,” Colin said, shaking his head at Chase. “I can get rid of him if you two want to come here for dinner. And by dinner I mean liquor.”
Chase put his head in his hands.
After listening for a few minutes, Colin said, “OK, I understand. I’ll check in on you later, but let me know if I can do anything. And tell Rayne I’m sorry.”
As Colin set the phone down, he let out a long whistle. “Wow. This is low even for you.”
Chase lifted his head. “Christ almighty,” he said before his brother could launch into a full tirade. “I can never get a word in edgewise around here. Just once I’d like to be able to explain myself before everyone assumes I’m a selfish asshole.”
“Fine. Explain,” Colin said coldly.
Chase opened his mouth but suddenly didn’t know where to begin.
“Dude, today,” Colin said, slapping the bar.
Chase was starting to think his sister Jessica would have been a better source of sympathy. “I like her. I really do. A lot.”
Colin raised an eyebrow and waited.
“I screwed up, OK? I know that. I’ve been trying to get this gig in Nepal since before she and I hooked up. And it just came through a few days ago and I didn’t know how to tell her so I waited till the last minute.”
Colin was still eyeing him coldly. “And it never occurred to you to say no this one time?”
“How could I? I’ve been working this contact for weeks. If I said no now, I’d look like a joke and he’d never work with me again, and that sort of thing gets around.” Chase ran a hand through his hair. “And I have to be there on Thursday because that’s when the writer is there. I tried to explain, but after everything you and Savannah have told her about me, she just assumed—”
“Don’t you put this on me!” Colin said. “This is entirely your doing. You could have at least waited a few days so you wouldn’t be missing the gala.”
Chase was silent for a moment. “It never even occurred to me. When the guy told me the writer would be there in three days, I just automatically said I could, too. I didn’t even stop to think about it.”
“God, you’re hopeless!” Colin threw his arms up and walked away.
Chase definitely should have gone to Jessica for comfort. When Diana walked up to ask what he wanted to eat, he said he wasn’t hungry. He drained his beer then pushed himself away from the bar and went looking for Colin. He found him in his office.
“I need a favor,” Chase said, his hand on the doorframe as though he needed the support to stay upright.
“Really? What a surprise,” Colin said, dropping his pen and leaning back in his chair.
“Why are you acting like I stole your Matchbox cars?” Chase asked, his patience nearly worn away. “What does this even have to do with you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Colin said. “Maybe because if Rayne is upset, Savannah is upset, and if Savannah is upset, it has to do with me. Which is exactly why I told you to stay away from Rayne.”
Chase could feel a migraine building behind his eyes. Stupid, complicated life. Suddenly Nepal didn’t feel far enough away.
Rubbing his eyes, he said, “Look, I just need you to keep an eye on her—especially at the gala. There’s this guy... Brian. Brandon, maybe? I’m not really sure what the story is, but I think he might be the guy Savannah told you about, the one who really did a number on her. He’s been calling her.” Chase left out the part about him giving the guy her number.
“And you want me to do what exactly?” Colin asked. “Keep your ex-girlfriend from hooking up with anyone else while you’re gallivanting around Asia?”
“Just keep an eye on her, please. Don’t let him get close to her. I’ll fix everything when I get back.”
“Famous last words,” Colin said. But when Chase kept staring at him, he finally said, “OK, fine. I’ll do what I can. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”
Chase went to bed early, but he couldn’t sleep. He just lay there in the dark going over things in his head. Around midnight, he started to text Rayne but kept erasing and starting over and finally realized that what he needed to say wouldn’t fit in a text. And it was too late to call her.
If he wasn’t leaving town, he could treat it like a fight, give her some time to calm down, and then they’d make up and have mind-blowing sex. But if he wasn’t leaving, they wouldn’t have even fought in the first place. It made his head hurt, and he finally reached the point where he was so exhausted that he told himself he’d figure it out in Nepal. Everything was always easier once he got on a plane.
He’d barely fallen asleep when his alarm went off at 4 a.m. He felt weirdly hung over as he stumbled to the shower. He hadn’t left himself much time to get ready before the airport shuttle was due to arrive, and the fact that he was moving in slow motion didn’t help. He barely had enough time to shower, dress, throw his toiletries in his bag, wolf down a bowl of cereal, and lug his gear downstairs.
Riding in the van toward the suburbs, he watched the first rays of sunrise color the early morning gloom as sleepy commuters headed the other direction into the city. Slowly, he started to feel his usual excitement.
He had everything he needed right there with him, and he felt free. He told himself it was good that he’d taken the gig because if Rayne couldn’t understand that about him—couldn’t appreciate the core of him—then it never would have lasted anyway. There would have been another overseas gig or another ex-boyfriend with money and status who would have come between them. He wished he could have stayed for the gala, but it couldn’t be helped.
Instead of being vindicated, though, he was sadder than he could ever remember feeling.
At the airport, he checked in for his flight and wound his way through security, then rode the people mover to the terminal, where he bought coffee and a danish and sat down to wait for his flight. The writer he’d be working with was already in New Delhi, and they planned to meet up in Kathmandu that night—which would actually be the next day because of the long flight and eleven-hour time difference.
Chase picked up a newspaper that another traveler had abandoned and scanned the news. Tensions in Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Protests in Delhi over a string of assaults on women, a sea change in the making. Unrest along the border between China and Mongolia. Lots of promising opportunities for a photojournalist. He was starting to warm up to the idea of staying in that part of the world for a while after this assignment ended. He’d never been to China, had always wanted to see Mongolia.
As he was waiting in line to board the plane, he got an email from an artist he’d contacted who’d been out of town for the past few weeks. He wanted to donate a painting for the fundraiser. Chase was almost at the gate, so he quickly forwarded the message to Rayne’s personal email account, cc:’ing the artist, so he couldn’t say much, just Good luck with the event.
He didn’t expect a response. And he didn’t get one.
Chapter 14
After her blowup with Chase, Rayne barely touched her General Tso’s chicken and drank way too much wine. She slept fitfully and missed her alarm the next morning, and when she woke up, her first thought was of Chase getting on a plane. Her second thought was the realization that her throbbing head and nausea meant she had a migraine.
She dragged herself out of bed and glanced at her phone. She had an email from Chase about another painting for the gala. Her eyes filled with tears, and she shoved the phone deep into her purse and headed for the shower.
When she got to work, she walked straight into Sheila’s office with her sunglasses still on and handed her Brandon’s business card. Sheila looked at the card and back at Rayne. “What’s this for?” she asked.
“Brandon got Vincent to drop the sale price by five percent, and he’ll match whatever we raise at the gala,” Rayne said. “Tell Jeremy to get in touch with him.”
“Oh my god, that’s incredible!” Sheila said. “He just cut our fundraising needs in half. Even more than that. I can’t wait to tell Jeremy. But how did you... how did he...?” She took a closer look at Rayne. “Are you feeling OK?”
“Migraine,” Rayne said. “Is the coffee machine fixed?”
Sheila nodded. “But maybe you should go home instead. We can cover things here.”
Rayne shook her head. The gala was only three days away. “I’m fine. A little caffeine should do the trick.”
She turned to go and saw a large framed photo of the very house she was standing in and recognized it as one that Chase had taken. Beside it was a series of photographs of the Borneo rainforest.
“He dropped those off yesterday afternoon,” Sheila said. “There are five in all. Very generous of him. He does beautiful work.”
“Yeah,” Rayne said.
“Did he catch up with you yesterday? He was looking for you, seemed pretty anxious to find you.”
“He found me.” She wanted to blame it on the migraine—they always made her weepy—but she knew that wasn’t why she had tears in her eyes. And she was grateful for the sunglasses. She just might keep them on all day.
Chase slept most of the way to Kathmandu. Over the years, he’d developed a knack for sleeping whenever and wherever he could. Often enough he had to be awake when he really needed to sleep so he’d gotten used to getting by on a few hours here and there when he was on assignment. It could be a little surreal. Sometimes he wasn’t sure when he was awake and when he was dreaming, especially when he got on a plane in an orderly airport like Dulles and landed in the mayhem of a third-world country.
Kathmandu’s airport was full of young hippie wannabees, white kids with Rasta dreadlocks and heavy, Army surplus backpacks looking—and smelling—like they’d been traveling for weeks. Mingling among them were the serious hikers, who had likely come to trek the Himalayas or maybe hike to base camp on Everest (no one tried to summit the mountain this time of year). Chase shared an affinity with those guys, not the ones who paid tens of thousands of dollars for someone to basically lead them up the mountain so they could say they’d done it but the guys who came back more than once, driven by the challenge and the opportunity to test the limits of their self-reliance.
He was feeling the effects of his jumbled sleep and the altitude—had to get his sea legs back—so he went straight to the guest house he’d booked online.
On the taxi ride over, Chase was surprised and saddened to see that the earthquake’s destruction looked fresh even though it had happened several months ago. The rubble had been cleared away for the most part, but buildings still showed gaping wounds or sat roofless and exposed to the elements, sometimes with people living in the ruins. Conspiculously missing from the skyline was the tall white Dharahara Tower, which had crumbled to the ground. He trudged into the guest house feeling drained, but he brightened when he saw the young woman behind the counter. “Namaste,” he said.
She had the smooth brown skin, high cheekbones, and wide smile of a native Nepali. Long silky black hair and a slender figure, too. Her name came to him instantly: Maya. Funny, he probably never would have remembered if he’d met her in the States.
“Namaste!” she said with a smile. “It’s good to see you again, Chase Allison.”
“It’s good to see you, too, Sunshine. Any way I can get the room in the front corner again?”
“It’s all ready for you.” She handed him a key.
“Thanks. Oh, and I’m meeting up with someone this evening—a writer named Roy Fellows. If I’m not downstairs by then, could someone come and wake me up?”
“It would be my pleasure,” she said, still smiling that dazzling smile.
He shook his head, grinning. She had to be seventeen at most. “You are a dangerous woman. But still much too young for me.”
“Getting older every minute,” she said as he headed for the stairs.
Settling into his room, he realized that he hadn’t thought about Rayne since falling asleep on the plane. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She was always hovering in the back of his mind, but he hadn’t obsessed about how they’d left things in hours, and it was a relief. Once again, everything was easier when he was traveling.
Once Rayne had a cup of coffee and got down to work, she started to feel better, more in control. When Colin stopped by to finalize the catering plan, they wandered around the house together deciding where they’d put tables and chairs for maximum traffic through the house.
“I think your best bet is having a couple waiters moving around with trays of food, and also small stations of food and a bar on each floor, plus the foyer,” Colin said. “That way no one has to go far from the art to get food or drinks.”
“Yes, absolutely,” Rayne said.
Colin confirmed that they would be having finger foods, including artichoke turnovers, pancetta-wrapped figs, and mini-crab cakes—along with champagne and a few types of wine.
As she walked him to the front door, he said, “This is a beautiful old house. I can see why you want to save it.”
“Thank
you so much for helping out,” she said.
He paused in the foyer and faced her. “I just want to say that Chase is an ass, and I’m really sorry.”
Rayne felt tears start behind her eyes—migraine and fatigue, of course—and forced herself to smile. “I appreciate it.”
“If you’re looking for a date to the gala, I know a lot of guys who are much more reliable than my brother. I’d be happy to set something up.”
“God, no! I mean, I’m fine. And I’ll be so busy I wouldn’t be able to keep track of a date anyway. But thanks.” The truth was that the thought of being there with anyone other than Chase was too much to contemplate.
“No problem.”
He reached for the door, and she put a hand on his arm. “I’m so happy you and Savannah are together. I was rooting for you the whole time, you know. And what happened between Chase and me doesn’t have to affect our friendship.”
He smiled. “Absolutely not. I’ll see you Saturday.”
He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, and she felt better, she felt connected, and in a spiteful moment, she hoped that Chase was feeling lonely.
Colin headed down the front steps, then ran back up to hold the door for Crystal, who was carrying two large paintings wrapped in brown paper. She came inside breathless and red-faced from the exertion.
“I brought two,” she said. “I hope that’s still OK.”
“Absolutely!” Rayne said. “Put them over here.” She gestured to Crystal to lean the paintings against the stairway. “Can I take a peek?”
The Pursuit (Capitol Love Series Book 2) Page 13
