Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2) (16 page)

“Yeah.” Jake kicked the flat rooftop and slanted him a curious, envious glance, the kind of glance Chase sometimes slanted at married buddies when he saw them hugging their wives and playing with their kids.

“Makes me feel strong,” Chase admitted, very, very low. “Like I screwed up about her jacket, but at least I got something else right.”

Jake contemplated the street below, his shoulders hunching a little, his mouth rather grim.

Christ, had Chase started talking about
emotions
? Jesus, even when she wasn’t around, this woman made Chase talk too much.

He flung himself across the next gap, just catching the edge of the roof with his toes and throwing his hands up to grasp the ridge of the roof before he could slide off, hauling himself up and running along the narrow ridge. Ian and Jake caught up with him a couple of rooftops over.

“Not a bad idea,” Ian said to Jake. “I’m not saying my idea, that we go see the Mona Lisa, was a bad one either, but I can see why this was on your short list.”

“A lot less crowded up here,” said Jake, the mountain lion. “Mark’s gonna kill us for going when he was busy arguing with those CIA idiots at the embassy. We’ll have to come back out.”

“Changes the whole dynamic when you don’t have to go shoot somebody,” Chase said. “And no gear.” Well, they probably all had guns on them somewhere, but no
obvious
gear that would get them arrested. “Kind of peaceful.”

They considered that peace for a moment, and then, almost in unison, all focused on the largest nearby gap between roofs—over two meters and with a six-floor drop. Nobody even had to talk about it. They were
all
going crazy, spun up for this mission and stalled while the head shed dithered over information. Chase wasn’t the only one capable of breaking into restaurants just to add a little interest to his life in these circumstances.

Elias dropped back beside them, with a rough sound of gravel, astonishingly light on his feet. “Having trouble keeping up?” he asked, green eyes glinting.

Yes, there might be just a tiny bit of rivalry between the French elite counterterrorist units and the U.S. black ops with whom they were currently in wary cooperation.

Ian took off immediately at the challenge, flying over the gap with efficient grace. Chase and Jake followed, and the four of them ran, jumped, rolled, slid, swung for a while, until the next flat rooftop invited a pause for breath. Damn, Paris looked beautiful up here. It looked exactly like all those movies, which was kind of amazing. Mostly by the time they got to go to beautiful places, those place were half-destroyed, often by their own side’s bombs.

Paris looked…well, Paris looked like
Paris.

And we’re going to keep it that way, too. Fuck those bastards who want to destroy it.

“You started doing this when you were a teenager?” he asked Elias. “Playing on the rooftops like this?” Parkour.

Elias shrugged. “We didn’t have much money. It was kind of my way of owning the city.”

It was a pretty nice city to own.

We’ll always have Paris
, some guy had once said. Chase was pretty sure it was a good thing for the world to always have.

“We’ll get them,” he said, firmly. Conviction meant everything. There was no room for doubt. They got their targets, period.

He believed it, the same way he had to believe in his ability to take that two-meter jump over a thirty-meter drop. No hesitation, no doubt, just do it.

Elias said nothing for a long moment, gazing at the streets below. Then, without any of that sardonic edge, just low and firm: “Thanks.” He met Chase’s eyes. “It’s nice to have you guys on our side.”

“Don’t mention it,” Chase said, meaning it. “Hey, I’ll catch up with you guys, okay?”

“Why?”

“I had a little visit I wanted to pay to that apartment over there.” Chase smiled and took a running leap to catch against a balcony.

***

Vi’s team was the best. The life of them, raucous and heated on the terrace, relaxed Vi, and she grinned at them as she ordered them another round of drinks.

That was right. Who the hell
did
care if their reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor were now down to an average of two stars out of five, thanks to all the trolls who had found it hilarious to go online and laugh at the “food poisons the president” thing? (Even though the American president was
still sitting in Washington, DC,
and hadn’t even boarded his stupid Air Force One for Paris yet.) Who cared what idiots thought?

She took another sip of beer, just to help her not care what idiots thought.

Her
second
, Adrien, a dynamic twenty-two year old with a passion for food and theater and art that blended well with hers, and a young man whose sense of command wasn’t predicated on sexism like Quentin’s had been, leaned forward, gesturing, his black hair flopping over a high forehead as he articulated every way the idiot trolls could go choke on their fast food burgers and die.

Amar, chef de partie, scraggly beard and hair caught in a small ponytail but nevertheless escaping in frizz in all directions, gesticulated, forgetting his beer glass and then sipping the beer that spilled off the back of his hand while everybody laughed.

Lina slouched back in her chair, amused at something Mikhail had said, but not quite as easily laughing. The pressure might not be as acutely on Lina’s name as it was on Vi’s, but nobody knew where the damn salmonella had come from yet—
if
it even existed, which Vi still refused to believe—and if it came from the pastry kitchen, the guilt would feel horrible.

If there
was
salmonella, Vi would really rather it came from her part of the kitchens. Nobody else to blame.
The buck stops here.

She squared her shoulders. Because these shoulders could take it.

Beyond Lina, Vi could glimpse the great statue of Marianne in the center of the Place de la République, where very, very recently she and everyone here had left flowers in memorial, weeping. Dozens of huge protests for all kinds of issues had filled République since then, of course, a sign of how the city pulsed with life no one could put out. Right now, a group in roller skates was dancing to a boom box from which, occasionally, a particularly loud sock hop refrain reached them.

Lights played with the dark everywhere—the red lights of cars braking, the warm lights spilling out of cafés, bouncing off red awnings to pick up additional tones, gleaming in shades of warm and dark off paving stones, and glowing from street lamps against the great white marble base of Marianne and over the skaters, the people watching the skaters, the groups passing and crossing, heading toward home or stopping at the cafés and bars.

Vi loved this quarter. The kind of place where students and young people just starting their careers could still afford to go out, where the theaters were full of music and comedians and small, quirky plays.

Screw the critics. She had her faithful. They’d come back.

She didn’t cook for the critics of the world anyway. Nor for the president of the United States and his First Lady, however nice that would have been. She cooked for the people of this quarter. The workers and the children of immigrants and the artists and the actors, the young people with good jobs starting to move in as the quarter got more and more expensive, the people who came here to hang out because the other side of Paris was too pale, too fake, too BCBG and bourgeois for them. They wanted to keep it real.

“Thanks, guys,” she told her team. “It’s nice to have you on my side.”

Up on the rooftops, she caught a glimpse of four silhouettes running and leaping and smiled a little.
Des traceurs de parkour.
It was always fun to catch a glimpse of them. Like a glimpse of luck. Of energy. Movement without rules. She should do some kind of dish that evoked parkour. Height and vertigo and no limit to the lines of movement.

No limit. And if you had a bad fall, you picked yourself back up.

And avoided the kind of man who pushed you down mid-leap.

She nodded to herself firmly.
Avoid him.

And let that be a lesson to you: the next time you catch a burglar red-handed, don’t sleep with him. As ways of meeting men go, the fact that he’s breaking into your kitchens is never a good sign.

Chapter 14

“What part of
go away
do you not understand?” Vi demanded, keeping the chain on the door.

“I brought something.” Chase held up a small backpack.

“Did you do something to Quentin?”

“Quentin?” Chase looked vague. “Small guy, kind of scrawny?”

“He always seemed big to me,” Vi said dryly.

“It’s funny how many different perspectives there are on size and power, isn’t it?” Chase smiled at her happily.

“He called me, screaming about me siccing criminals on him.”

“Must have a guilty conscience if he’s that paranoid.”

“Chase!”

Chase shrugged. “I may have provided him a quick demonstration of what it’s like to be struggling in the hands of someone bigger and more powerful who can do whatever the hell he wants to him.” Just for a second, that cool, grim, lethal look showed under his easy charm.

All the hairs on Vi’s nape rose in response to that look. Then Chase winked at her, the look entirely disappearing.

“Did you
hurt
him?” It wasn’t her fault that a greedy
I hope so
clenched in her at the question.

“Well…hurt.” Chase shrugged and spread his hands. “People have such a wide range of pain tolerance. I didn’t cut his balls off, at least. Not this time.”

Vi was probably supposed to be relieved about that.

“I wanted him to have something to look forward to,” Chase explained. “In case he ever thought about trying to mess with you again.”

“Chase! Damn it. Starred chefs move in a small world, you know. I have a reputation.”

“For being someone a man shouldn’t mess with unless he wants his ass kicked?”

“For kicking those asses myself! For
not
needing some man to handle my problems for me!”

Chase considered that. “That’s a really good point, honey. To explain my own point, I thought you did handle that problem yourself. I hadn’t even met you when you gave him a concussion and fired him. I just wanted to reinforce your point. We don’t know who else he might have assaulted in his life. He probably didn’t start out with the entitlement to take on someone like you. Probably went smaller and more vulnerable until he built up his sense of impunity.” He frowned as he thought about it. “Actually…maybe I should go ahead and cut his balls off.” He half-turned back toward the stairs.

Vi had never really thought about possible previous attacks in Quentin’s past either, and now that she did…it was an ugly, ugly thought. Vi had been a pretty, female, teenage apprentice in a kitchen full of men on power trips herself. That was when she’d taken to making sure she had a knife on her.

She caught Chase’s sleeve. “Maiming a civilian sounds like a career ending move to me. At least it would be one in our military, I’m pretty sure.”

He hesitated. Frowned. Subsided. Then remembered: “Not that I have to worry about that any more now that I’m a civilian.”

Vi fought the urge to wrap two hands around his throat and just strangle him. “Look, other than driving me crazy, was there something you wanted? If you say sex, I’m going to shove you down the stairs.”

He smiled. “Honey, if you want to say no to sex to me, no shoving is necessary. I’d be sad, and my heart would be broken, and my life would be ruined, but still…
you’d
be okay.”

Damn it, how did he manage to be so funny and so annoying and so damn
solid and reassuring
all at once? “Chase. Why are you here?”

“I told you.” He held up his backpack. “I brought something.”

“I don’t care.”

“Also some food.” He held up take-out that clearly smelled of the Chinese restaurant down the street. “In case you haven’t eaten again today.”

“It’s one in the morning.” So the night was still young.

“Yeah, but this is the first time your light has been on when I’ve swung by. And certain people are far too fussy about crossing ethical lines when asked to ping the location of your phone.” He scowled.

“My phone is in the river. What people?”

Chase coughed. “Oh, you know…hacker buddies.” He changed the subject quickly. “Honey, also, please don’t take this the wrong way, but if you don’t want to let a man into your apartment, you shouldn’t open the door at all. I could break that chain with one shove.”

“But then I’d knife you.” Vi smiled sweetly.

Chase rested his head against the jamb and smiled a little. “I’m so crazy about you.”

“Yeah, well, I know this is going to be a hard one for you to absorb, but just because
you
want me doesn’t mean
I
have to give you what you want. That’s because I’m not a
thing.
”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m
really
sorry about the jacket. I shouldn’t have done it. I was a stupid, arrogant ass.”

Okay, well, they agreed on
that.
She gazed at him a long moment and sighed. “Fine, you can come in.” But only because she still had absolute faith in her ability to handle him. Also because that big, hot body, those blue eyes, and the way he looked at her, like she was his personal gift from heaven, just got down into her middle and heated her all up from the inside out. “But don’t touch anything.”

“I’ll try not to sneeze, too,” he said solemnly.

“What?”

“You already forgot?” He clutched his heart. “Our first meeting?”

“When you broke into my restaurant, planted salmonella or something, and ruined my career?”

He ignored that. “It was so romantic. ‘Don’t touch anything! Don’t breathe on anything! If you sneeze, I’m killing you.’”

“I had good instincts when I first met you. The sad thing is how fast you turned me into an idiot.”

Chase licked his finger and made a sizzling noise as he touched it to his shoulder.

“Oh,
purée
.” Vi strode back into the apartment, leaving the door open. Although it was really true about that sizzle. He fried her brain, that was the damn problem.