Finder's Keeper (14 page)

The third time Brody called, Chase flipped open his phone with a casual, “Yo.”

“Dude, I’m on my way over to pick you up. You aren’t spending your birthday alone. Molly and I won’t stand for it.”

Chase had been idly pacing, but he stopped in his tracks. He’d forgotten his own birthday. And it was the best one he’d had in six years.

“My best friend doesn’t turn twenty-eight moping by himself in his apartment,” Brody continued. “Be ready to go in fifteen minutes.”

“Sorry, man. Can’t do it.”

“Molly said you’d say that. But we’re not taking no for an answer—”

“I’m not at home.”

“You’re coming with—what?”

“And I’m not alone.”

Brody’s planned monologue sputtered to a stop. “You aren’t?”

“Actually I’m at my girlfriend’s place. Big family thing. We couldn’t get out of it.”

“You’re shitting me.”

Chase grinned, enjoying this far more than he should be. “I shit you not. In fact, things are kinda busy here. I’ve gotta call you back later.”

“I don’t believe you. Put her on the phone.”

“Who, Mia?”

“Oh, so the imaginary girlfriend has a name now, does she?”

“What makes you think she’s imaginary?” Other than the fact that as far as Chase was concerned she had been until yesterday.

“Molly thought you might’ve made her up.”

Smart Molly
. “Have I ever lied to you?”

“Constantly.”

Smart Brody
. Chase laughed. “I swear to you Mia Corregianni exists. And I was making out with her in a pantry earlier today because it was the only private place we could find in her parents’ house.”

“Now I know you’re lying.”

Mia chose that moment to march into the living room, a woman on a mission to get him the hell away from her family before he could flirt her into submission again. “There she is,” he said loudly, beckoning her over. “Come on over here, honey, and talk to Brody for a minute. He’s convinced I made you up.”

She shot him a death glare, but came to his side and extended her hand palm up for the phone, still glaring.

“Be nice,” he commanded, unsure whether he was telling Brody or Mia, as he passed the phone over.

Mia stuck out her tongue, then cooed, “Brody, it’s so good to finally talk to you” in the warmest, most welcoming tone he’d ever heard from her, for all the world like she’d been hearing about him for months.

Chase listened, trying to glean the gist of the conversation from her “Mm-hms” and exclamations of “He did, did he?”

Until one of her brothers rushed into the room. “Chase. Bro. Tyler hid Marley’s binky thingy and she’s freaking out. Can you do your finder thing on her?”

“On an infant?” He laughed. “Sure. I love a challenge.”

He brushed Mia’s arm and nodded toward the side yard, then headed out after her linebacker brother to save Marley from a fate worse than death—at least as far as the baby was concerned.

Mia was vaguely aware of Chase leaving the room, her attention focused on trying to sound suitably fake-girlfriend-like on the phone.

“You’ll have to meet Molly,” Brody gushed. “You’ll love each other,” he declared, and Mia bit her tongue on the urge to tell him he had no basis for his hypothesis since he didn’t even know her.

“Chase talks about you guys all the time,” she lied.

“I’m just so glad he’s not alone on his birthday. Wait till I tell Molly. After everything that happened with Katie and his folks… You’re a godsend, Mia.”

“Um…” Mia’s brain had shut off with the word
birthday
. It was Chase’s birthday. And he hadn’t told her. He’d let her drag him to her family thing and never once mentioned that he might have other plans. What kind of man did that? And who the hell was Katie? Some bitch of a maneater ex who ripped out his heart and stomped on it?

“Hey, no pressure!” Brody said with a laugh. “I don’t want you to think we’re pushing you guys into anything.”

“Don’t worry. My family has the pushing covered.”

Brody’s laugh was even more booming, almost hysterically overjoyed. “You’ve got to come have drinks with us this week. How’s Thursday? We’ll get a sitter. Do you like O’Flannigans? That pub on Second?”

“Oh, well, I, um, I should really check with Chase. He’s been working a lot…” He was certainly working this weekend with her.

“Chase?” Brody gave a disbelieving bark of laughter. “He’ll be free. Thursday. Don’t let him back out, Mia. He needs a good woman to ride herd on his lazy ass and you’re just the girl to do it.”

Again, how could he know that? Was Chase really so hard up that
any
woman was a great sign? He seemed so sexy. So sexually confident. Hardly the kind of guy who would be talked about like he was a romantic charity case. Though Brody seemed pretty macho. Maybe it was a sexuality thing. If Chase was gay…

The kiss in the pantry came back to her. Vividly.

Chase wasn’t gay. Either that or he could fake heterosexuality with the best of them.

“See you Thursday, Mia!”

“Oh! Brody—about Thursday…” But the phone was already dead. “Crap.”

Flipping Chase’s phone closed, she stepped out the side door and froze at the top of the steps leading down to the yard.

He was standing in the center of her family like the nucleus of an atom, all of them orbiting him like excited electrons. Marley cuddled in his arms, contentedly slurping at her pacifier.

Mia waited to feel that same flare of irritation she’d felt at dinner over how at home he was with them, but it just didn’t come. Instead, her stomach tightened and something warm and wanting unfurled in her chest. Something she refused to acknowledge. He wasn’t here for real. She needed to keep reminding herself of that. The kiss was an act, best to just forget it happened, wipe the slate clean and act accordingly.

She strode down the steps and cut through the crowd around Chase, keeping her expression businesslike. “Ready to go?” she asked briskly.

A cacophony of protests rose up around them. Mia snatched her niece for a few extra cuddles before handing her back to Gina while Chase bid farewell to his fan club.

“You have to come to Nonna’s marinara competition next week,” Joey insisted as he slapped Chase on the back. “It’s a family tradition. Everyone competes and everyone eats.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

Mia shot Chase a horrified look, but he just winked, crowding close to her to whisper, “I guess I’m just not very good at staying in the Friend Zone.”

He took her hand and guided her around the house. She glanced back to see her entire family lined up to watch them walk away, arms around one another, heads resting on shoulders. She could almost feel the wind of their collective sigh as Mia and their new favorite person disappeared from sight.

“That went well,” Chase commented as they wandered down the sidewalk—probably still watched from every front-facing window on her parents’ house.

Mia did not want to discuss the subtle train wreck that was the last three hours of her family congratulating themselves for giving her the magic watch. Instead, she went on the attack. “I hear it’s your birthday.”

“Brody was feeling chatty, was he?”

“He expects me to drag you to O’Flannigans on Thursday so I can meet Molly and become her best friend.”

They reached her car—Teresa and Martin must have snuck out already because the Mercedes was missing from the space behind them. Mia thumbed the lock and rounded the hood to climb in. Chase didn’t bother with the holding-the-door nonsense this time, thank goodness. He was already seated by the time she slid behind the wheel.

“Are you free Thursday?” he asked. “That would square us.”

“It would have squared us. If you hadn’t promised to come to Nonna’s marinara competition next week.”

“I promised that on my own. It’s not part of the deal.”

“
Why
did you promise that?” Mia threw the car into gear with more force than necessary. “I was trying to keep them from getting attached to you. They’re back there engraving wedding invitations, Chase. That wasn’t the plan.”

“You still don’t have the watch. I wasn’t sure if we’d need to try to find it again next week. You didn’t ask me to try tonight…”

“I never wanted the damn watch tonight. This was not the right approach. We need to think of another way.”

“We could still use someone else as the anchor. Your entire family will want that watch back. Your sister Gina, maybe. She seemed pretty trustworthy.”

“She isn’t rational about that stupid watch. She won’t be trustworthy about that.”

“So we’re back to relying on you. And you hate it.”

“I don’t hate it.”

“Is it because of the love spell?”

Mia’s knuckles tightened on the wheel. “Nonna told you.”

“That the watch is supposed to find your true love for you? Half your family found some way to tell me. So what do you have against love, Mia?”

She stared straight ahead out the windshield. “I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“Who’s Peter?”

“None of your business.”

“Aw, come on, Mia. As your pseudo-boyfriend, don’t I deserve to know—”

“Who’s Katie?”

Silence hit the car hard.

“Chase?”

“Do you want to try to find the watch again tonight?”

Apparently Katie, whoever she was, was off the table. Fine. “No. We’ll try again when I pick you up on Thursday. Or would you rather meet me there? He didn’t say what time.”

“Seven thirty. We always meet at seven thirty. And I’ll pick you up.”

“I’ll be working.”

“So I’ll pick you up at work.”

She wanted to argue, then realized she would only be arguing for argument’s sake and she was
tired
of trying to get her way today, exhausted by three hours in the loving bosom of her family and her restless night last night.

She’d never been more relieved to see her townhome than she was as she pulled into the parking lot alongside Chase’s beat-up station wagon. She climbed out quickly, needing to avoid the intimacy of having a conversation with him in the darkened interior of the car—like a teenager at a drive-in.

The cool air in the parking lot hit her skin. It was a deliciously crisp night, one on which she might have enjoyed taking a long walk, holding hands, pretending she was sappily romantic, but all she wanted tonight was to crawl into bed and try to forget the day.

“Thank you,” she said, not entirely sure he deserved her thanks for making her family adore him. “I’ll see you Thursday.”

“Don’t I get a kiss good night?” He grinned at her, too gorgeous and too cocky.

“Good night, Chase,” she said at her most repressive. She began to march across the parking lot, every joint stiff and rigid.

“I programmed my number into your phone,” he called after her. “Call me if you want to find anything.”

Of course he’d stolen her phone at some point to infiltrate her life even further. Why was she even surprised? Mia kept marching toward the door, refusing to turn back. Then his voice sing-songed across the parking lot.

“G’night, sweet lips.”

Mia practically growled. So much for pretending the kiss hadn’t happened.

Chapter Fifteen

Romantic Experimentation

Forty hours. Chase managed to stay away that long, but by noon on Tuesday he found himself standing outside the Lathrop Research Institute, jonesing for another Mia fix.

He hadn’t realized until he’d watched her stomp away on Sunday night, spine rigid and head held high, how different he felt when he was with her. More alert somehow.

It wasn’t at all like what he felt when he was on the waves, the water clearing his head and only the whims of the surf dictating his next thought. No, this was different. This wasn’t that smooth, even calm. This was active. A spark inside him. She woke the devil in his nature, making him want to bait her and prod her until Miss Prim rolled her eyes or gave him an exasperated smack.

But then she’d walked off and taken the spark with her.

He’d worked a full day Monday—finding a missing engagement ring for a freaked-out newlywed, locating the sole remaining copy of a grandfather’s will for an overworked estate lawyer whose office had burned down the month before, and tracking down the secret hiding place of a client’s great-great-uncle’s secret stash—rumored to be filled with carpetbagger riches which had turned out to be nothing but an antique version of
Playboy
and a case of rotted cigars.

None of it had made him feel the way five minutes with Mia did. He’d been back in his fog.

He
needed
to see her. And he needed to come clean about his past before Brody told her any more about Katie and his family than he already had. It was the perfect excuse.

The Lathrop Research Institute was housed in a modern, six-story structure composed of odd angles, blue glass and geometric slabs of concrete. Somewhere inside that blocky mass was Mia’s lab.

He figured she’d refuse to see him if he called ahead and he figured she’d chase him out of her lab with a Bunsen burner if he tried to get her to leave for lunch, but even Mia had to eat—and from the look of her she worked through lunch more often than she should. An overflowing take-out bag from Zorba’s, his favorite Greek restaurant, was his peace offering of choice. Surely she wouldn’t turn him away if he came bearing calories to fuel her genius.

Provided he could get past the front desk security…

Ten minutes and a lot of fast-talking later, Chase knocked on a door on the fourth floor with
Dr. M. Corregianni
etched into the frosted glass. He was about to knock a second time when the door flew open and two girls who were definitely not Mia gaped at him.

“Well,
hello
.”

Behind them, the lab wasn’t at all what he expected. No beakers, no bubbling test tubes, just cubicles with computers and a series of closed doors. It could have been any office in America.

The girls barring the door both wore lab coats and identical, rapt expressions, though physically they could not have been more different. One was a curvy girl of Middle-Eastern descent in a gray blouse and slacks, the other a gangly Scandinavian blonde who wore an explosion of neon colors beneath the white coat.