Catia (Starkis Family #6) (4 page)

“This was more for you,” she said, licking her lips as she popped the button on her blazer, letting her full breasts spill out.

Forget about my guys stroking out—I should have been more concerned about myself.

Clearing my throat, I sat back, picking up her personnel file. “You know the drill on the job sites, Cat. Jeans, work boots, and hard hat.” And preferably a flannel shirt that would hide those ridiculous curves, though I knew not even a potato sack would conceal her attributes.

Looking amused, she said, “I know. I have been on my fair share of job sites. But Wendy said we would just be reviewing my projects today, that I wouldn’t actually be visiting any of the sites until tomorrow.”

“Oh.” So she really had dressed to impress me? I’d have been lying if I said it hadn’t worked. Not only did I remember how incredible it felt to have her gorgeous body pressed against mine, I wanted her again. And again…

Not that we could go there. Catia had proven when the going got tough, she ran. I could have really used her support when I was fighting for my girls. A time or two, I even picked up the phone to call, but then our time in that hotel room came flooding back, and I slammed the phone down, cursing her name.

“Well, don’t let me keep you. You can start training with Wendy so long as you understand something—you’re my employee, and that’s all you’ll ever be.” When I saw the light go out in her beautiful eyes, I felt like an ogre. But I had to protect myself, not to mention my daughters. The last thing they needed in their lives was a woman who’d admitted to being a carbon copy of my ex-wife.

“Understood,” she said stiffly, standing. She extended her hand. “Thank you for the opportunity. I promise I won’t let you down.”

As I watched her walk out of my office, I tried to decide if I’d just made the best or worst deal of my life.

***

I went to my parents’ house after work since my mother picked the girls up after school every day.

“Hello?” I said, walking through the door. I heard giggles coming from the kitchen, and given the tension in the air when I’d dropped them off at school that morning, it was a welcome sound.

“Hi, honey,” my mom said, looking up when I entered the kitchen. “You’re early.”

“We’re helping Nana make cookies,” Emily said, pointing at the cookie sheet filled with little mounds of dough. “We can stay ‘til they’re done, can’t we?”

“Sure.” I sat on a chair at the kitchen table my father had built for their twentieth wedding anniversary. “We’ve got some time before we have to go home and start dinner.”

“You’re more than welcome to stay here for dinner,” my mother said, pointing at her slow cooker. “Roast beef, baby carrots, and potatoes. Should be ready soon.”

“Can we?” Elsie asked, folding her hands under chin. “Nana makes the best roast beef.”

I hated to impose on my parents any more than I already had, but Mom wouldn’t have asked unless she wanted us to stay. “Okay, thanks. Where’s Dad?”

“He’s out in the shop, working on some project. Why don’t you go see him, honey? You have time before dinner.” She inclined her head toward the new fridge I’d insisted on buying them when their last one conked out after two decades of faithful service. “Grab a beer for yourself. Your dad might like one too.”

“Sounds good.” It sounded better than good. After the day I’d had, I couldn’t think of anything better than kicking back and having a beer with my old man.

I’d tried not to notice that the girls hadn’t come running when I walked in the door. No hugs or kisses when they saw me either. But at least there hadn’t been any tears, so I supposed I couldn’t complain.

I wandered out to my dad’s woodworking shop. Ever since he’d retired from construction ten years ago, he’d taken his furniture-making hobby more seriously. His pieces were so sought after he’d built a lucrative side business that never gave him time to get bored.

“Hey, Dad.” I set his beer on a table beside his workbench before peeling back the tab on my own. “How’s it going?”

He was working on a beautiful pine coffee table in his signature rustic style. “Things are good, son. How ‘bout you?”

I shrugged before taking a long pull from my beer. “Can’t complain, I guess.” I could have, but I didn’t want to burden my father with my problems.

“Girls giving you a hard time?” He chuckled. “I used to tell your mother raising one girl was harder than raising two boys.”

I grinned, thinking about what a little troublemaker my kid sister had been. Now she was a PTA mom, married to a doctor, and swore to her kids she’d never done anything wrong when she was their age. Only we knew better, but we’d promised to keep her secret.

“I guess they’re just having a rough go of it.” I couldn’t blame them given all the upheaval in their lives lately. “Sometimes I question if I did the right thing, taking them away from their home, making them change schools.”

After setting his sander aside, my father wiped the raw wood with a damp rag. “Don’t second-guess yourself, Chase. You did the right thing. The girls weren’t safe in her care, and you know it.”

“I know, but I feel like they hate me for taking them away from Karen. She may not be perfect, but she’s still their mom, and they love her.”

“I know.” My father sat on the edge of an old wooden stool, running a hand over his coarse silver hair. “She’s the only one they’ve got, and it’s your job to make sure they don’t grow up hating her.”

“Even if I do?”

My father scowled. “You don’t hate her. She gave you those beautiful babies in there. You can’t hate her.”

“I know you’re right, but sometimes…” There was no sense dwelling on everything that had gone wrong. There was nothing I could do to change the past.

“Sometimes it’s hard, I know. And you get angry and frustrated and want to hit something.” He chuckled. “You haven’t changed that much since you were a boy.”

“I guess not.” Except now I was smart enough to go to the gym and take it out on a punching bag instead of another guy or a sheet of drywall.

“But this has been goin’ on awhile. You sure that’s all that’s got you down today?”

“I don’t know that I’m down exactly.” I tipped back my beer, trying to decide how to tell my old man about Catia. He’d heard about her while we were working together and knew I had a thing for her, but once she left town, I’d never mentioned her again. “I guess I’m just confused.”

“About?”

“Wendy hired someone today, someone I don’t exactly approve of. She’s damn good at her job, a definite asset to the company…”

“Then why don’t you approve? I thought you gave Wendy carte blanche to hire anyone she wants to.”

“Usually, but I have some history with this one.”

“Ah, I see.” My father tipped his own beer back before setting it aside. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Who is it? Anyone I know?”

“Catia Starkis.”

“Oh, wow.”

“Yeah.” I closed my hands over my face, squeezing my eyes shut. “I don’t know what kind of game she’s playing, but I can’t shake the feeling she’s up to something.”

“She tell you why she wants to work for you?”

“She gave me some crap about wanting to do right by me.” I rolled my eyes. “But I’m not buying it. Cat isn’t the kind of woman who comes crawling back, admitting she made a mistake. She has too much pride for that.”

“And too much pride can be a very dangerous thing, can’t it?”

I knew that was a shot at me. “Meaning?”

“Was she the only one who made a mistake, or is she the only one brave enough to admit it?”

My father didn’t know the whole story, so I couldn’t blame him for calling me out. “Things got pretty heated between us toward the end. We may have let them go further than they should have.”

A smile lit up my father’s weathered face. “You must have forgotten to mention that before.”

I rarely talked to my old man about my sex life. There were just some things a grown man didn’t talk to his parents about, and that was one of them. “Yeah, well, I thought that meant she was willing to take a chance on me, but she cut me loose instead. She decided it would be best for both of us if she headed back to Chicago.”

“Was that the best thing for you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I’d lain in bed so many nights, after a long day in court or a particularly nasty fight with Karen, and wished I could have held Cat in my arms or at the very least called her, but she hadn’t left an opening. I had too much pride to force the issue.

“Do you still have feelings for her?”

Typical of my father to cut right to the chase. “If you’d asked me a week ago, I probably would have said I was over her, but seeing her again today reminded me how much I wanted her.”

“Past tense?”

“What?”

“You said you wanted her. Past tense?”

Did I still want her? I shouldn’t have, but that didn’t mean I didn’t. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

“Sounds like you have some things to figure out.”

“You know why she left?”

My father shook his head.

“She said she thought she was too much like Karen. She’s fun and outgoing, loves to have a good time, isn’t necessarily the maternal type. She said she couldn’t stand to put me through what Karen had.”

My father scratched his chin, looking thoughtful. “Interesting. Do you see the similarities between her and Karen?”

“No, but maybe I’m blind to her faults like I was with Karen for the longest time.”

“Sounds like you’re having a little trouble trusting your instincts.”

“Can you blame me?” I drained my beer, crushed the can, and tossed it in the wastebasket. “I’ve screwed up my life once already, and I have innocent kids in there who are paying the price.”

Heaving a sigh, he said, “I know you blame yourself for breaking up your family, but that’s not fair, and you know it. She stepped out on you.”

“Yeah, but maybe if I’d been home more—”

“Don’t!” My father raised his hand, his favorite way of getting me to shut up and listen. “I worked long hours when you kids were growing up. I had no choice. We had to eat. But your mama sure as hell never looked to another man to fill those long and lonely hours, and your wife didn’t have to either.”

“I know, Dad.” Everything he said made sense, but thinking that I hadn’t been man enough to keep my wife satisfied still hurt.

“Not every woman is like Karen, but you’d best be damn sure you don’t choose another one who is.”

“I’ll be careful.” As far as I was concerned, my heart was locked up tight. I had no intention of letting anyone in anytime soon.

Catia

I’d been working for Chase for five full days, and I’d barely seen him. I caught glimpses of him shuffling his daughters into the car in the morning, but beyond that, he’d made himself scarce. I hadn’t moved all this way to play hide-and-seek with the man, so I had to devise a plan. Fortunately fate intervened to give me the perfect excuse to spend a little one-on-one time with him, providing he didn’t shoot me down.

Tapping my knuckles on his office door, I waited for him issue an invitation before I poked my head in. “Hey, you got a minute? I wanted to ask you for a favor.”

He beckoned me with his hand. “A favor, huh? I guess that depends what it is.”

I didn’t blame him for being cautious. I would have been too in his position. “Kara told me they’d invited you to the party tonight.”

My sister had decided she didn’t want a traditional baby shower with presents and silly games, so she was hosting a sophisticated catered affair for all of their friends and family where everyone could write little notes or record video messages for the baby. I thought it was a sweet idea, and it meant I could spend time with Chase in a social situation. With any luck, he wouldn’t be ignoring me this time.

“They did.” He folded his hands behind his head as I tried not to stare at his bulging biceps in that tight-fitting white button-down shirt.

“Then you’re going?”

“Yeah, my parents offered to keep the girls overnight, so I booked a hotel room in the Hamptons.”

“You did?” I had too—at the same hotel where we’d made love. I could have stayed with my sister or even my parents, but nostalgia had me book the very same room I’d shared with Chase.

“Yeah, why so surprised? I figured you’d stay with them, and I—”

“I’m not. I’m staying at a hotel too.”

“Please don’t tell me it’s the one we stayed in.”

“It is.”

“Damn.” He picked up his phone, glancing at the time. “You think it’s too late for me to try booking somewhere else?”

The fact that he didn’t even want to spend the night under the same roof with me hurt, but I was determined not to let it show. “Probably. Rooms in the Hamptons usually fill up pretty quickly, even at this time of year. But it’s ridiculous for you to try to find somewhere else to stay.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why? You’re going to cancel and stay with your family?”

“No.” I crossed my arms, daring him to challenge me. He thought he had the upper hand, but I refused to be bullied. “They already have a full house. Kara invited our cousins and their families, as well as some of her friends. Some booked rooms in town, but the rest are staying with them. It’s too far from the city for most people to drive back, and a few even flew in.”

“Makes sense. So what are you suggesting? You think I can talk someone into swapping with me?”

Tired of putting up with his juvenile behavior, I glared at him. “What’s wrong? You don’t trust yourself around me?”

He chuckled. “No worries there, girl. I got you out of my system a long time ago.”

That may have hurt if I’d believed for a second he was telling the truth. “Good, then you won’t mind giving me a lift to the Hamptons? Since we’re going to be staying the same hotel, it won’t even be an inconvenience.”

“Hold up a minute,” he said, raising his hand. “Why can’t you drive yourself?”

“I’ve been driving a rental since I got back to town. I bought a new car, which was supposed to be ready late today, but there was a glitch at the dealership. I won’t be able to pick it up until Monday. I returned the rental this morning—”