Chasing the Dream: Dream Series, Book 3 (14 page)

Shit!
“Well, if you must know, we’ve actually been out on three dates,” I asserted. “Last month, he took me to a Luke Bryan concert. He,
Kevin
, is a phenomenal dancer! What he can do in a tiny space would probably even make
you
blush.” I don’t know why I felt the need to push Chase’s buttons, but I did. And I liked it. “Then we had dinner Friday night—out, and Sunday night—in. Pizza and a movie in
his
apartment.”

“Okay,” Chase smiled and sat back, ‘smug’ plastered on his face like a mask from a cheap costume for Halloween.

The ride in the car to dinner was a charged and stressed one, and it was coming out in my every move. My brain replayed the kiss over and over. His strong hands, his soft lips, his skillful tongue. I scolded myself repeatedly, reminding myself that we needed to keep it professional. I reminded myself that I was just a game to Chase—that Chase was just another Dickwad Danny.

Chase had chosen a tiny, dark pub to grab a burger and a beer for dinner. Another tiny place in Manhattan. Was
everything
so small in this huge city? We seated ourselves at the only open table, a booth, which was as small as the pub. It was so small that our knees bumped when he slid in. I moved to the side to allow him space, which had him smirking at me and chuckling softly.
You will not get to me, Chase Smythe.
When the waitress came to take our order, he once again tried ordering for me.

“I’ll have a bacon cheeseburger, medium, with onion rings and a Rolling Rock beer, in the bottle—cap on. She’ll have the same,” he said handing the waitress the menus.

“Actually,” I said, shooting Chase a glare, “she’ll have the grilled chicken sandwich on the croissant, sweet potato fries and Diet Coke.”

Chase shrugged and gave the waitress an apologetic shrug. “Also, we have to be somewhere in about an hour,” I said to the waitress, checking the time on my cell phone. “Is it possible to be out that fast?”

“No problem, hon,” she said, tucking her pencil behind her ear and giving Chase a second glance before leaving the table.

“You really won’t let someone take the reins from you, will you?” he asked, sizing me up again.

“For starters, when I
do
have burgers, I like mine cooked medium-well.”

“Steaks medium-rare. Burgers medium-well. Got it,” he said with a wink.

I gave up. Keeping things professional and ignoring his flirtations, I grabbed the clipboard and busied myself with it. Chase, sensing the snub, grabbed his cellphone and started tapping away. The second page on the board was his flight information for tomorrow. I scanned and plugged in some times into my own phone with alerts so I would be sure to be on time. I turned the page and noted it was a medical sheet.
Good health.
That’s good to know.
Allergic to pet dander.
Huh, who knew? I flipped to the next page and saw CHASE SMYTHE’S HOTEL AND SET RIDERS. Curious what this was, I scanned the page and realized it was his list of demands for his hotel and sets.

Two dozen ice cold bottles of water.
Okay, that seems reasonable.

Dolce & Gabbana ‘The One’ (brown) skin care products and colognes.
That’s the scent!

One case of locally brewed beer in glass bottles.

Belvedere Vodka and Triple Cream Blue Cheese Stuffed Olives.
Gag! Blech! Maybe there was something to the alcohol rumors.

Black sheets on the bed.
Okay…?

Candles that smell of cut grass.
Interesting.

Four-dozen movie theatre size boxes of Good & Plenty candies.
Omigosh. That’s the taste when he kissed me! And that unidentifiable spiciness…Licorice.
Then I noticed my clothes. I was wearing the colors of Good & Plenty candies! His comment when he saw me as I came out of my bedroom
‘You look good enough to eat,’
rang in my ears and made me laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Chase asked, peering at what was holding my interest on his clipboard.

“I’m dressed like a box of Good and Plenty candy,” I groaned.

“Yes, you are,” he growled back. “
Love my Good and Plenty candies, don’t know any other candy that I love so well
,” he sang like the commercial from the nineteen fifties. Then, he leaned into my ear and whispered hoarsely, “But frankly, you taste so much better.”

Our drinks were delivered, and Chase pulled his keys from his pocket and popped off the top with his trusty bottle opener, and pulled a long swig from the bottle. I watched his stubbly jaw and neck move…that Adam’s apple move… It was so damn sexy. My heart began to race again. Why is he doing this? It must be a line he used with all the girls. I cleared my throat and sipped at my Diet Coke hoping it would cool me some, and continued to read his riders. But my mind was in such a haze that I was practically blind and couldn’t read anything. My thoughts were occupied with that kiss back in the apartment. his saucy comments just now, and that jaw and neck.

Professional.

To fill the silence, took a breath, and tried for some conversation. Last night he’d grilled me about my family, my brothers and such, but I when I asked him the same questions, I got his standard answers. I was curious about his family life since I had followed Chase’s career for the past ten years and read every detail about his family. His father died when he was just six years old and his mother re-married a couple of years after that. That second marriage didn’t last long though, and I recalled something about the stress of Chase’s acting career. So, instead I asked Chase to tell me about some of his favorite filming projects. And as expected, he freely talked about that, leaving me to sit back and relax a bit. However, I could only relax a bit because when Chase lifted his burger to his mouth, I couldn’t take my eyes off of how he ate.

The scene shoot at the boathouse was amazing. The “boathouse” was actually a restaurant, a real, working restaurant, on a lake in Central Park, not a seedy little boathouse. It was high end. For the shoot tonight, Chase’s character was in pursuit of the criminal. All of this was done on the rooftop while diners, all set extras, ate “unknowingly” below them. At the end of the night, they went to shoot the final scene where Chase’s character, Detective Young, is shot.

There were crash mats laid out, pulleys and harnesses, and blood packs. The guy ‘Detective Young’ was pursuing turned and shot at Chase (Detective Young) and Chase’s body jerked back and slid down the slick green, metal roof and onto the large crash pad below. But, ‘Detective Young’ got off one last, lucky shot and the ‘perp’ fell off the other side of the roof and into the water below. They ran the scene about eight times and every time the gun went off, I jumped, especially seeing Chase’s body react so violently to the harness he was attached to.

Finally, the director called that it was a ‘wrap’ and the crew started to pack up the gear. Chase came running over to me, his eyes ablaze. He scooped me up in his wickedly solid arms and spun me around.

“Wasn’t that epic?! I
love
shootout scenes!” he said, setting me down, but not letting go. I wiggled out of his arms, looking around to see who saw. No one seemed to notice.

“Didn’t that harness hurt?” I asked.

“Not at all!” he exclaimed, pulling us toward the Town Car. “Let’s go for drinks! I’m so revved up right now!

“For one, I’m exhausted. It’s after one in the morning. And lastly, I’m nineteen.”

“No way you’re nineteen,” he challenged.

“Yes
way
,” I shot back. As his eyes raked over me in that touchy-feely way, my skin ached for him to touch me with his hands again. My lips instantly recalled the heat from his lips, and my tongue was eager to dance anew. My mind had been playing that kiss over and over again in its own looped movie reel. Exhaustion was making my brain fuzzy, the brain that needed to be functioning to push back those feelings of yearning for this man.

“Well, you didn’t kiss me like a nineteen year old,” he said, leaning in.

“What the fuck does that mean?” I squeaked, my need for sleep dropping the filter it needed to talk to him. I yanked open the car door and threw myself inside, slamming my back against the seat back on the far side of the car. His comment about my not kissing like a nineteen year old only reinforced that he’d kissed many, many girls.

Chase climbed in and the car started moving.

“Just saying, you kissed me like a woman, not a girl.” I whipped my head at him and wanted to tell him off, but his eyes caught me, trapped me. He looked deeply into my eyes, and even in the dark of the back of the car, at one in the morning, his blue eyes dazzled. I searched those dazzling blues and didn’t see him comparing me to other girls… or women. No, I saw something else—something else entirely. But I couldn’t, or didn’t want to, label it.

“Newsflash. I
am
a woman. And
you
kissed
me
,” I spouted, trying to sound strong, and perhaps offended, but what I heard was … curiosity and wonder. Did I wonder why he kissed me? Of course I did. I wasn’t a model, or an actress. No one famous. I wasn’t a groupie, someone who wanted him—okay, maybe I was a bit of that, or a lot of that—but I knew Chase’s reputation, and I had already been used by a player, scumbag of a guy. I was not going to be that girl again. And I was trying to keep things professional. I liked the internship I’d gotten. I wanted to do a good job. I wanted to make my mom and dad proud of me. And I wanted to show Mr. Stevens that his efforts to get me the internship interview were worthy. For all of those reasons and probably a half of a dozen more, I needed to keep a serious,
professional
distance. And nothing about Chase made that easy.

Chase rubbed his lips with his right hand fingers. I tried to focus on the ring he wore on his index finger, a simple silver band, not on his lips, but my mind was memorizing every curve of his full lower lip, and the divot in his upper lip, the spot they call the
Cupid’s Bow
which made no sense to me. And then his lips moved and I was entranced with how those lips formed each word. “Well, it was one helluva kiss. Been on my mind all night, and not one I’m going to soon forget.”

Silence fell over us. Our breath the only sound. My heart was pounding in my chest and I wondered if he could hear it.

“What was with that apology before you kissed me back at the apartment?” I blurted in a whisper, his odd
“I’m sorry
” comment just before he kissed me, bugging me since he said it.

A sneaky grin spread across his face. “Oh, you want me to explain that?”

“Duh,” was the only witty retort my weary mind could come up with.

“I knew that if I said sorry afterward, you would think it was a reflex. So, by saying it before, I was letting you know that I knew I was crossing the lines, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted the apology to be from me, not a reaction.”

What?

Chase leaned in further, so close that I could feel the heat from his body, and smell the mix of the cologne, gunpowder from the shootout, and that lingering spice of Good & Plenty. All of these senses, what I saw, felt and smelled were waking me up in ways I shouldn’t be waking up. As much as I had spent the past few hours watching Chase on set, I was still convincing myself that I had to keep things professional with this live cannon of a man.

“And if you knew my apology were genuine, you might let me kiss you again,” he said.

Double what?

His lips softly pressed on mine and lingered. When he pulled back only an inch, I instantly missed the warmth. No sooner was I craving his touch again, when his sweet, Good & Plenty breath washed over my senses. I gently closed my eyes as I breathed it in, my body tingling with energy. I was trying to remind myself to keep professional. I needed to find my voice and remind Chase that we were supposed to keep professional. But when his lips brushed on my jaw, my head fell to the side to give him more access, his lips waking up my skin in their wake. He nibbled and sucked his way down to my neck and my body was again not listening to my brain.

I brought my hands to his shoulders with the intention of pushing him away, but his strong muscular build under my fingers sent off a spark between the two of us that derailed my intention. His body leaned into mine and his lips sought that soft spot at the base of my neck. My breathing picked up as I wove the fingers of one hand through his thick, blonde hair; delighting in the fluttering in my chest that matched the flames on my neck. His lips felt so good and, in my tired, foggy brain, I couldn’t resist. When his lips moved up and sucked on that soft spot behind my right ear as his hand cupped my breast, I heard myself whimper over the pounding in my chest. I wanted him. Right then, I wanted him.

Through the heat and haze I heard my phone whistle signaling a tweet. Tweets. Multiple whistles were making my phone sound like the aviary at a zoo. “Stop!” I groaned, not really wanting the tender and hot kisses to stop, but suddenly I was terrified at what was going on with my Twitter account. I pulled away from Chase and took my phone from my pocket and saw that there were several tweets with my handle, and the hashtag #ChaseSmythesGirl. Quickly, I opened the app and saw pictures that must have been snapped only fifteen minutes ago with Chase holding me up and spinning me as he came off set, thrilled with the shootout scene.

“Shit!” I muttered.

Chase grabbed the phone from my hand and looked at the picture. “You look good in this one,” he said, his boyish grin looking mighty smug. That smug smile pissed me off. It was the smug smile on Dickwad’s face when he invited me in to the bed with the two bimbos.
Fuck!

“That’s not the point, Chase. I’m your PA, not your girlfriend. And we cannot kiss again. This cannot happen. I’m not on the market. I’m not interested.”

“Oh really? That kiss said you’re interested. So did those little noises.”

Shit!
Of course he was right. I did like what he was doing. I was interested. I would be interested if he wasn’t playing me. I was seriously starting to think this was all just a way for Chase to be “trending” on social media.