“Rule two,” he whispered with a hint of smug satisfaction, still holding my hips as he pushed in shallow strokes that drove me wild and made it hard to keep quiet. Over and over he pushed into me, the hot thick drag and slide deep made me tremble, made it hard to stay upright. Chase must have read my mind because he quickly took charge, flipping our positions so we were chest and chest as he tortured me with long, slow, deep thrusts.
“Chase,” I moaned and sank my teeth into his shoulder as his hips moved faster and harder. It was slow and intense but sweet too. It felt meaningful and intimate, more intimate than it should for two people who were just having sex. I opened my eyes and found him smiling down at me with so much affection that my heart skidded to a stop and tried to leap out of my chest and offer itself to Chase. I was in trouble. Between the way he was looking at me and what he was doing to my body, that thought I’d been avoiding for weeks now, maybe days, was pushing its way to the surface.
As the pressure and the pleasure built, those blue eyes held me captive and I knew without a doubt that I was in love with Chase Donovan. Again. But as my body tensed and fluttered, I knew this wasn’t some teenage crush or schoolgirl puppy love. This was the real thing. Real, grownup, feel it down to my bones, love. “Kenz, babe,” he growled as his hips moved faster and faster.
“Yes, Chase. Yes.” And then I flew apart, his name spilling from my lips like a prayer, and like always, Chase was there to cover my mouth, swallowing my cries of pleasure as his own orgasm swamped him.
“Fuck, Kenzi! Babe.” He looked at me like he didn’t recognize me, and smiled. Then he kissed me again, long and hard and slow, until our bodies slowly came down, exhausted and sated. He rolled onto his back and pulled me into the crook of his arm. “You wicked woman, I’m pretty sure you’ve cast a spell over me.”
I laughed. “I think it’s this place,” I told him even though I knew that wasn’t the full truth.
The truth was that I’d fallen in love with my childhood crush, the boy next door. My fake fiancé.
A few days later and I still hadn’t shaken the shock over falling in love with Chase all over again. It made me jumpy and put me on edge, had me short with my employees and stressing over things that I normally handled with ease. In short, I was a mess. “And not at all ready to climb out of this bed.”
But I did. A quick shower and a simple outfit of jeans and an Organics by O’Brien tee, and I was ready for the day. Mostly. I gathered my long hair into a loose ponytail and went in search of coffee. Chase wasn’t in bed so I could only hope that he’d put the pot on, because I really needed caffeine to make it through another day at my shop.
But there was no coffee and no Chase. The coffee simply hadn’t been made, and Chase, he was pacing the length of the backyard and running a stressed hand through his hair. He was talking on the phone but I couldn’t hear any details, and since there was no coffee in my system yet, I didn’t really care.
Searching for the beans, I poured them in the grinder and went to flip the switch just as my phone vibrated on the counter. “This is Kenzi.”
“Ms. O’Brien, my name is Matilda Baker and I’m Mr. Phillips assistant. I’m calling to invite you and your fiancé to dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Phillips next Monday evening.” My breath hitched at her words. Farmer Frank was within arm’s reach.
“Next Monday works just fine Ms. Baker. Is there anything Mr. Phillips would like me to bring?”
“No,” she said with a smile in her voice. “Just you and your intended. He’s already well aware of your products, which are great by the way,” she whispered as though she shouldn’t be saying such things. “Think of this dinner as a way for him to get to know you, beyond the business.”
Great. So, in the end he was just like Peter Sterling, using his personal beliefs to dictate the way the rest of us behaved. “Sounds great, Ms. Baker. Thank you very much.” She rattled off an address and a time before disconnecting the call. I should have felt relief or excitement, or something other than the indifference coursing through me.
Maybe I just needed coffee. But a part of me thought that maybe I just should be happy with what I have now. My business made a good profit every year, but when you wanted more, then you had to play the stupid corporate games that people forced on you. Right now, I was really regretting my ambition.
Still, this was my path and I was determined to see it through to the end. Which meant I needed to tell Chase, who still paced in the yard. I couldn’t hear any specifics, but his tone said he was unhappy or maybe unsure.
First, coffee.
With the pot now dripping, I edged closer to the door so I could tell Chase to keep Monday clear, and I caught a few snippets of his conversation. He spoke to someone called Tom and he’d mentioned Colombia several times. That’s when I knew I didn’t need to hear more. I could have eavesdropped and gotten all the information I could, but I didn’t want to because I knew.
Chase was leaving.
Again.
Despite his promises, despite all the effort he’d gone through to purchase that land from Sterling, he was leaving. For Colombia.
I knew he would leave and that only made me hate myself for ignoring good sense. For allowing Chase to leave me dick-matized to the point I let the truth escape my mind. He was a traveler. A wanderer. Those kinds of people didn’t settle down unless they had a good reason, and clearly I wasn’t a good enough reason, which wasn’t even fair since he had no clue I’d fallen for him.
I would never learn, clearly.
Which meant I needed to get out of here. Yep, I was fleeing my own house just to get away from my feelings and the man who’d inspired them. But, like a coward, I poured my coffee into a to go cup and went to start my day early.
Luckily the store kept me too busy to think about anything but sales and inventory, as tourists flooded the town to take advantage of the nice weather and all the outdoor activities Truly had to offer. But as the day wore on, more and more townspeople came into the shop. Not for the mini muffins or the sale on skin scrubs, nope they all showed up to ask about the sign for Adventure Chasers, which of course, I knew fuck all about. But as soon as there was a free moment in the store, I turned to Emily, my friend who also worked at the shop part-time three afternoons a week when her little boy was with her ex’s parents.
She shrugged, but before she could answer the one person I didn’t want to see walked into my shop. “He put up a COMING SOON sign on the old Sterling property. I’m surprised you didn’t know,” Amber said with far more delight than was necessary given the mundane news.
“And you know in Truly, that counts as big news,” Emily said in air quotes that I fully understood.
I turned to Amber, unwilling to play her silly games today. “Was there something you needed in here or did you come in here just to be a bitch?”
She sucked in a breath of surprise at my harsh words because she always made catty comments and I rarely responded. But she always wore that innocent expression that worked so well on most of the town. Everyone just thought she was an absolute sweetheart.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t give me that crap. You do your best to make sure I know you don’t like me, but guess what Amber? I don’t give a shit. So, if you didn’t come in here to buy something, leave.” She stared at me and I stared right back. Today wasn’t the day I backed down, not again.
She relented first. “I just thought, you know, because our men are friends.”
I cut her off. “No, you didn’t, so please, cut the shit. This is the first time you’ve said two words to me that weren’t snarky or bitchy. I don’t care about you and I don’t want to know you, and if you don’t leave my store now I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.” For someone like Amber, I knew that threat of public humiliation would get her to leave. Quickly.
“I could just call up Chase and tell him how you treated me today,” she threatened.
“Go right ahead. I won’t let you or anyon
e continue to insult me, no matter who’s on my arm.” I marched over the door and held it open, pushing it harder than necessary when she walked through it.
“Damn, Kenz, that was actually kind of hot,” Emily said with a loud laugh and a slow clap. “I didn’t think you had it in you, my little hippie chick.”
I didn’t either. “Thanks,” I told her instead. “I don’t know what her problem is with me, we don’t even really know each other.”
“You’re kidding right?” Emily smacked the bamboo counter and laughed. “She’s jealous. You’re all curvy and bohemian and successful, and you’re happy with who you are. She’s supposed to be the pretty one, but aside from her hot husband, she’s got nothing. Fuck her.”
I didn’t believe that for one second because friends had to say kind words about you, but I nodded because she meant well. “Man, you’ve got a mouth on you. How did someone with tiny ears around all the time learn to swear better than me?”
She grinned and shrugged. “My dad was in the Army. Growing up, he’d say the most outrageous things at the dinner table, risking Ma’s wrath.”
“I would’ve guessed a sailor,” I mumbled. Standing up to Amber made me feel better, despite all the other turmoil going on inside my head. And I had a feeling that maybe my day was starting to look up.
Chase
After spending an hour on the phone with Tom settling details of the trip to Colombia, I felt a ball of tension tighten in my gut and chest, and it had everything to do with a certain blond plaguing my thoughts. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was bothering me, but when I came back into the house and found the coffee had been brewed but the house was empty, a deep sense of dread settled deep in my gut.
I didn’t really have time to focus on those feelings though because there was a lot to be done. I needed to pack and arrange a ride to the airport here and in Colombia, work out what I wanted to write and make arrangements to talk to some of the locals. I had a few days to get travel plans in order, but I also needed to place ads and make a few phone calls to guides I want to interview for Adventure Chasers. I had a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it all.
So of course the doorbell chose that moment to ring. With leaden legs and a distracted mind, I pulled the door open and bit back a groan. “Mom. What’s up?”
“Well, I figured since you were perfectly content to pretend like we weren’t living right next door for the time being, that I’d drop by. See what’s up,” she said, scanning the area behind me before pushing past me, circling the room with a nosy eye.
“Kenzi isn’t here,” I told her, full of frustration that I couldn’t pinpoint. Mom didn’t deserve my anger so I took a deep breath and turned to her concerned eyes.
“I know. I saw her leave a while ago. How is everything going around here?” Her tone said she thought there was more to the story than I said.
“Fine, Mom.” I followed her into the kitchen, dropping down in a chair. “Are you sure? She looked a little, I don’t know, disappointed when she left.”
I froze. “What does that mean?”
She gave me that mom look that said she thought I was an idiot. “It means, I’ve been disappointed by a man a time or two and I know what it looks like. So, what did you do?”
“Nothing.” At least nothing I knew of, anyway. And definitely nothing I wanted to tell my mom about. “What’s up?”
She grinned. “Oh nothing, I just heard something about a big celebratory kiss inside Organics by O’Brien, and something about a sign on the old Sterling property.”
Fucking small towns. You couldn’t toss a rock without the whole town talking about it for forty-eight hours straight. “Yep, both of those things are true.”
“And you’re still sticking with a ‘professional arrangement’?”
I sighed. “That’s all it is, Mom.” That was a big fat lie, but telling her more would only subject me to more interrogation. The woman would have been a great asset to the CIA, the way she gnawed at a bone until the marrow seeped out. “Look I have a trip to get ready for, but if you’re still in town when I get back, maybe we could all have dinner?”
“That would be lovely. Where are you guys going?” She smiled wistfully, the way she always did when my travels came up.
“Guys? It’s just me. My old boss, Tom, asked me to cover a small festival in Colombia. Kenzi isn’t going.”
She smacked her lips and stood, disappointment rolling off her in waves. “Then I guess you were right. Business only.” With an affronted sniff, she turned and left, leaving me in the cocoon of silence that I suddenly found suffocating.
I didn’t know exactly what the hell she was saying, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. There was too much to do and not a lot of time to do it. First on my list, find Kenzi and let her know about Colombia. I showered and dressed, then spent another two hours being waylaid by phone calls from everyone and their mother asking about hiring opportunities for hiking guides, climbers, and even cave divers wanting to put their names in the hat for work opportunities. Colorado was crawling with adventurers, constantly looking for work that would keep them close to the action any season of the year.
As I left Kenzi’s house, typing more items on the constantly growing list on my phone, I smacked into someone with a deep chuckle I recognized. “Hey Matt, what’s up?”
His smile was strained and that immediately put me on edge. In addition to being a good friend, he was also a police officer which meant his visits could go either way. “Not much, just coming to see how things are going.” He looked back at the house with a question in his eyes.
“Things are going fine. I need to find Kenzi though, so let’s do this on the move.”
“Do what?”
I gave him a look. “Seriously, man? Your poker face is shit, always has been. What’s going on?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out,” he shot back ominously.
I sighed and slid into the passenger seat of Matt’s old ass truck, waiting for him to get the beast moving. “Will you stop speaking in code and tell me what the hell is going on?”
He sighed and took the quickest route to Main Street. Well, the only route because the town was so damn small, but he drove there quickly like he didn’t want to be in an enclosed space for too long. “Amber said Kenzi has a problem with her.”
“Seriously?” I glanced over at him, sure this had to be a joke. But Matt nodded, a grave look on his face. “And?”
Matt pulled into a newly empty spot and killed the engine. “And if you two are going to be a thing, they should probably get along.”
“Who said we’re a thing?”
Matt barked out a laugh. “Anyone with eyes. Besides, I know you two had something going on back in the day. Maybe it was just friendship or maybe it was more, but I saw you once. I came to see if you wanted to shoot some hoops and your mom said you were in the backyard. I went out and saw you and Kenzi, talking and laughing. Maybe even flirting.”
Shit. Matt had known the entire time? “How long?”
“Sophomore year.”
I laughed. “And you never said a thing?”
He shrugged and got out while I followed. “I figured if you wanted people to know you would stop hiding her. Eventually.”
I opened my mouth to deny the accusation, but his arched brow stopped me cold. Wasn’t that the same accusation Kenzi had made? I shrugged it off.
“We were friends,” I told him as we walked the short distance to her shop. “Nothing more.”
“Right.”
It rang hollow to my ears too, but I was sticking to my story, dammit. The wooden chimes sounded as Matt and I stepped inside the now empty shop, watching Kenzi and the young cashier restock items with smiles on their faces. “Be with you in a moment,” she called out.
I looked over at Matt. “Did you need more mascara to last the entire ten hour shift?”
“Very funny. Asshole,” he grinned and socked me in the shoulder, transporting m
e back a million years to high school. “I want to clear the air with Kenzi.”
“Clear the air about what,” she asked as she appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. There was no welcoming smile, no cheerful glint in her green eyes.
Matt sighed. “Amber.” Kenzi waited for more details. “She said you have a problem with her.”
Arms crossed defensively. “I do. She’s constantly rude and belittling me, making sure I know exactly what she thinks of me. So today, I returned the favor. Is that a problem, Officer?”
Matt blinked, as shocked as I was by her steely tone. “Uh, no. I just wanted to make sure everything was fine.”
“It is for me.” Her gaze bounced between us and I could see her already getting the wrong impression. “Did you guys need something else?”
Matt shook his head and mumbled a barely audible apology before beating a hasty exit from the shop. Kenzi’s gaze landed, expectantly, on mine.
“We need to talk,” I told her quietly and grabbed her arm. “Is there somewhere we can have some privacy?”
She pulled out of my grasp. The move was gentle, but the message, harsh. “Just say what you have to say, Chase.” Her voice held a note of resignation that I didn’t like. It sounded like she’d already given up on me. On us. Were we even an us?
I looked around the store, at the distinct lack of customers and groaned. “Please?”
“Fine. Follow me.” I tried not to look at her ass as she led me down a dimly lit hall that smelled like summer and sun and rain and flowers. It was instantly relaxing. She pushed a door that opened into a small room that looked like a spa and an office had a baby. “What’s up?”
The small wooden desk stood between us. “My old boss called and asked if I could do a quick assignment for him. In Colombia.” I waited for her anger, her excitement…something. All I got was a steely gaze. “I leave in a few days.”
“How many?”
“What?”
“How many days, Chase?” Her tone was impatient and disappointed, but what in the hell did she have to be disappointed about?
Fake Fiancé Next Door_A Small Town Romance Page 9
