B0161IZ63U (A) (6 page)

“I’m fixing it for you.”  Chase motioned to himself.  “And if I need to get naked to finish the job, then you need to find a way to bite your tongue, shut your mouth, and don’t even think about opening it again unless it’s to say, ‘thank you for putting my house back together, Chase.’”

Lila sputtered, shaking her head as she fought a losing battle against her smile.

She knew she wasn’t angry with Chase for taking his clothes off.  In a few short hours, he’d kick-started her car engine, fixed her water heater, resuscitated her air conditioner, brought dead electrical outlets back to life, and was in the process of tackling her shoddy kitchen plumbing.  All in jeans and a t-shirt. Of course he needed to get more comfortable. The truth was, he
had
spent the last few hours putting her house back together.  For free.  Thousands of dollars of damage reversed, all with his skilled hands.  His brilliant mind.

No, she wasn’t mad at Chase for getting half naked.

She was mad at herself for having to
force
her eyes away.

Scoffing, Chase tugged his gold necklace over his head, as well.  The locket nearly tumbled from between his fingers, dangling down into the cool air.

Lila jumped up from her seat in the dining room, adjusting her short silk robe before moving into the kitchen and taking the necklace.  She knew what it meant to him.

He allowed her to take it, holding her eyes.

“I’ll hold it,” she said.

His eyes fell to her lips and stayed there.

Before she could think to stop them, her eyes did the same to his.

They both breathed in deeply.

Lila turned away, unable to allow the moment, whatever it was, to stretch on for a second longer.

It couldn’t.

Chase watched her go, waiting until she’d sat back down at the table to open the cabinet door under the sink.  He sat down on the kitchen floor, positioning his body next to the open cabinet. Just as he was fixing to pull himself under the sink, he froze, watching her carefully lay his necklace across the dining room table. While she was distracted, he allowed his eyes to move along that short scrap of silk she called a robe.  One side was falling off her shoulder, showing the delicate curve of her collarbone, and the subtle beginnings of her breast.  His eyes fell more, savoring every inch of her. For what had to be the millionth time, in a secret corner of his mind reserved only for her, he lingered on the dark expanse between her legs, visible in the open slit of her robe.  He could faintly see beyond the dark shadow the robe made at her pussy.  He knew heaven lived there, waiting beneath those flaps, giving him just enough of a view to jumpstart his senses into overdrive.  She crossed her legs, oblivious to his stare, hiding the sweet shadow from view, but he’d already seen enough.

It was Chase’s turn to be mad.  At her, or himself, he wasn’t sure.

He slammed a hand onto the sink over his head, arm flexed as he guided his body underneath.

Lila sighed in relief when those heated eyes disappeared under the sink. She finally allowed herself to look his way.  Only his hard abs were visible now, moving and tightening as he worked on the drain. His long torso stretched across the floor of her large kitchen with one leg bent at the knee.  His bare toes flexed as he worked to fix her broken house.

She jammed her eyes shut when the adoration coursing through her for her oldest friend seemed to go into overdrive.

To that day, it confused her why calling him a friend no longer felt right.

It no longer fit.

As her thoughts raced, she was, once again, thankful that his face was hidden beneath her kitchen counter.

Since he was a kid, Chase had always looked at her with a gleam in his eye.  Now that he was nineteen, and apparently had grown into his body by a
mile
, that gleam had started making suggestions.  Without ever saying a word, those green eyes of his made
perilous
suggestions, the kind her heart simply couldn’t entertain.

His eyes were beginning to speak to her, speaking words he would never say.

It was only in the past few months, however, that her body had begun to respond.

--

“Who the
fuck
is Lila?”

Chase found himself gaping into the stunned brown eyes of Julie Barnes, the petite blonde who was straddling him, in complete shock. It was late morning, and the sun was quickly rising, blaring into the windows that flanked his king sized bed on either side.

Chase had blessedly woken up to the sight of his cock between this beauty’s pretty pink lips, thrusting in search of her warm tongue while smiling at the pleasant surprise.

He’d picked Lila up from jail less than 24 hours ago. Having spent the rest of the night piecing her house back together while she strutted around in that infuriating robe, it was no surprise that she was still at the forefront of Chase’s mind.   In fact, Lila had been so squarely at the forefront of his mind that he’d spent the better part of the morning working hard to get her
out. 
With a little help from his beautiful blonde company, who’d stopped grinding on top of him in mid-swirl, he’d been well on his way.

He was still inside her as he sputtered for an appropriate response, only managing a confused grunt when she threw his royal blue sheets away, leapt off the bed, and began to dress frantically. Being torturously ripped away from Julie’s warmth, Chase’s dick slapped his stomach.  The slap sounded angry. Like his penis was aware that he’d cost them both a good time. 

“Julie, come on.  You’re imagining things.”

She hadn’t been. 

She’d been doing a beautiful job showing him a morning of delight and ecstasy.  Apparently, she’d shown him so much delight and ecstasy that he’d screamed out the name of the one woman he’d never had, but couldn’t seem to get out of his head.

When he realized this was a fight fought in vain, he fell back on his pillows with a plop, still staring up at the ceiling in dismay.

Julie left the room in a huff, and his brain raced.

Who the fuck is Lila?

He didn’t even know where to begin.

With a deep groan and throbbing dick, he rolled out of bed, stalked across his room and started a cold shower.

--

“Almeida. Whaddup doe?”

Chase nodded to his roommate, Ronnie, as he made his way out of his bedroom, freshly showered. He adjusted the basketball shorts on his hips as he moved barefoot across the concrete floors of their two-bedroom apartment.

Ronnie, the alarmingly tall, skinny, vanilla latte colored starting center for the Harvard Crimson basketball team, was cooking up his famous breakfast dish, eggs and chorizo.  Half black and half Mexican, it was a dish that his mother had taught him to make years ago.  It always reminded Ronnie of home, and it was delicious.

Since Chase had purchased the upscale apartment with cash from he and his brother’s inheritance, he was happy to offer his best friend the second room at half what it was worth.  Ronnie came from a single parent household.  Raising him, his mother barely had two pennies to rub together, and she worked three jobs to help pay for his food and housing once he came to Harvard. She always made it a point to thank Chase by stuffing him with her delicious cooking every time she was in town to visit.  Her eggs and chorizo had always been his favorite, and Ronnie made a mean duplicate.

“Morning,” Chase grumbled, scratching his bare stomach.  He squinted against the bright sunlight blaring through their windows as he stepped into the kitchen, grateful when he opened the stainless steel fridge and successfully blocked it out.  “Smells good.”

“Have at it, son. Plenty to go around.” Ronnie smiled proudly, his giant Afro moving with him as he took the cast iron skillet from the stove to the island, spooning the eggs onto two plates. He left the third plate empty. “I was planning on making a plate for your company too, but she just got done storming the fuck outta here, so… More for us.”

Chase took a swig of orange juice straight from the carton, burping.

“What set her off?” Ronnie asked.

Returning the juice to the fridge, Chase closed the door, turning to his friend with crossed arms.  “I said Lila’s name.”

“During?”

“Yeah.”

Ronnie chuckled.  “Shit...”

“I can’t get her out of my fucking head.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“I would fuck the shit out of her, Ron.”

Ronnie chortled.

“She knows it too.  That’s why she fights me so hard.”  Chase looked deeply pained as he sat down at the kitchen island next to Ronnie, and they began to dig into their eggs.

“You really need to figure out a way to move on from that, my dude.  Cause she’s definitely not thinking about you.”

“She’s always thinking about me,” Chase said, between bites.  “She just can’t admit it.”

“You’ve been spouting that same bullshit all year.  Move on, dude.  She is not. Thinkin’. About you.”

“You don’t know that.  You don’t know her.”

“I know she just got done fucking some dude who showed up in the middle of class the other day. I know that.”

That got Chase’s attention.  His head flew up, eggs forgotten.

Ronnie nodded. “Swear to god, man.  Dude shows up in the middle of class, takes Professor James out the room, and she comes back ten minutes later
hair
fucked up,
lipstick
fucked up, wearing his shirt.  Wearing
his
shit. That shirt was at least five sizes too big for her, my dude.  It was hilarious.”

Chase dropped his fork audibly, unable to stand anything about this conversation, but also unable to reel in the curiosity raging around in his stomach. He knew that Lila dated. In fact, she’d dated many guys in the year she’d been in Cambridge. They came and went at various intervals.  None ever stuck for too long. That didn’t make it any easier to hear about. “Who was the guy?  Does he work on campus?”

Ronnie wasn’t a cruel person, and he wasn’t setting out to hurt his friend, but Chase had been running after Professor James for way too long. Ronnie was only telling Chase about her nailing some guy because he felt obligated to help him move on with his life.  Now he was wondering if it had been the right thing to do.

“Nah man,” Ronnie answered, more gently. “I never seen him before.”

“What did he look like?”

He shrugged with a frown.  “Some white dude. Tall?  Dark hair?”

Chase let his eyes flutter shut as reality washed over him.  He reached up and covered his face with his hands.

“What?”  Ronnie pressed, suddenly feeling bad.  Perhaps he’d gone a little too hard on his friend’s fragile feelings.  With all of the pretty young things Chase brought giggling into their apartment every night, Ronnie thought Chase might’ve finally made it to a place where he could move on.  Clearly that wasn’t the case, and Ronnie never wanted to hurt his feelings.  “You know him, or something?”

“Yeah.” Chase picked up his fork and tried to go back to his eggs, but he just played them against the sharp tines, staring blankly ahead.  “He’s my brother.”

--

“Rise and shine, fiancé.”  Kelly Hannigan sang into Jack Almeida’s ear from where she sat on the small of his back.

Jack grumbled his response but didn’t open his eyes.

“Come on, babe.  You’ve slept the morning
and
the afternoon away.  We’ve got that party tonight remember? I’ve already let you sleep in later than we planned.  You haven’t even showered,” she whined, hopping to the floor and swatting his ass.  “Outta the bed.  I have lunch waiting for you on the table.”

Jack heard her feet slapping against the wood floors of her Cambridge estate—what would soon be
their
Cambridge estate--as she skipped out of the room.  He managed to pull himself into a sitting position on the bed.  His feet hit the floor, but he couldn’t stand up.  He’d closed his eyes for eight straight hours, desperate to escape the world, but he hadn’t slept.

He looked to the open door of their bedroom, hearing her humming along to the classic music station playing on the radio in the kitchen.

It didn’t make him smile the way it usually would.

He and Kelly had met in Manhattan during a conference for tenured professors at Harvard.  At thirty-five, she was the youngest professor at the conference, and very well respected. Even as every intellectual in the building vied for her attention, she’d almost broken a limb in an attempt to get across the room to Jack, who’d been there at the request of an old client.

They’d gotten to talking, clicked, and the rest was history. After only a month of dating, Jack popped the big question while presenting an even
bigger
ring, receiving an enthusiastic
yes
from Kelly before he’d even finished asking. Sick and tired of bouncing back and forth from Cambridge to Manhattan to see each other, they’d finally settled on Jack leaving his Manhattan brownstone, and setting down new roots in Cambridge.  Kelly was a tenured professor, after all, it wasn’t as if she could just pack up and move.  Jack was a lawyer, so it would be much easier for him to rebuild in a different city than it would be for her.

It didn’t matter that, during his college days at The Harvard Law Review, they’d all deemed him
Manhattan Guy
.  It didn’t matter that he’d been born on, raised on, lived and breathed the island of Manhattan for all twenty-nine years of his life. It certainly didn’t matter that the island of Manhattan was an extension of his bone marrow.  It was so much a part of the person he was that he sometimes found himself gasping with longing when he thought of it.

He’d convinced himself Cambridge was the right move.

The only move.

It had only been a week, and he was already rethinking that decision.

He knew the reason.

It had taken him a year to cancel the reservation Lila James always kept in the forefront of his mind.  He would’ve bet good money that he’d exercised her from his psyche completely until he’d had the unfortunate luck of looking across the grass at that insipid Crimson event, and seeing her smiling face.  His emotional reaction at the sight of her had been immediate, and only intensified when he’d found the nerve to approach her. It was a miracle that he’d managed to bite his tongue long enough to carry on a civil conversation.  Never in his life had he been forced to speak through so many walls.  Even a bulldozer would struggle to break through.