Here Comes Trouble (36 page)

She placed the pink paper down on top of the A/C unit and shuffled toward her front door. Chase had to know that she wouldn’t sit back and let him do this without demanding an explanation.

Boris lifted his enormous head when she shut the front door. His droopy brown eyes gave her a once over then drifted closed again. Lacy tossed her purse on the kitchen counter, dug her cell phone out and punched in Chase’s number.

“Hello.” His deep baritone voice sent a tidal wave of goose bumps from her hairline all the way down to her toenails.

She inhaled a deep breath to steady her uneven heart. “There’s a man outside installing a new air conditioner. Care to explain that?”

“Think of it as a baby present.”

A sigh flowed out of her. “Chase, you didn’t have to do that. I can afford my own air conditioning.”

“I know I didn’t have to. I wanted to. And before you starting arguing with me and giving me your ‘I’m used to being independent’ speech let me say one thing.”

He paused and Lacy walked down the hallway to her bedroom. “All right,” she said after a moment.

His voice dropped a notch when he spoke again. “First, I need to apologize for last week. I didn’t handle the baby news very well.”

She sank to the edge of her bed. “You handled it just fine.”

“No, I didn’t. I was shocked, to say the least. And you were right, I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“I had just dropped a huge bombshell on you. You’re allowed to be a little frazzled. And I wasn’t exactly sympathetic, either. I was sort of still getting used to the idea myself.”

“I think it’s safe to say neither one of us got an A plus for our efforts. But I appreciate you being honest with me from the beginning.” He paused. “That really means a lot to me.”

Her fingers wrapped tighter around her phone. “I won’t do to you what she did.”

More silence. “I know.”

Lacy dropped her gaze to the chocolate-brown shag carpet. “So, back to the subject at hand…”

His soft chuckle was like a warm caress down her back. “I would love to give you an opportunity to demand an explanation from me but the restaurant is crazy and I need to get back on the floor. I’ll stop by after work and we can talk then.”

He ended the call before she had a chance to reply. Well,
that
hadn’t gone as planned. Then again, nothing during the past several months had gone according to any sort of plan.

She’d gained a sister, gotten her father thrown back into jail, had an affair with a man she liked but could barely tolerate, became a millionaire, lost a mother, got pregnant…what else was there? Oh, yeah. She’d tumbled head over heels in love with the same man who inspired both feelings of love and hate.

If that wasn’t the picture of a life in chaos, she didn’t know what was.

A knock on her front door interrupted her thoughts. Lacy strolled out of the bedroom and opened the door to Mrs. Pratt. Lacy allowed the woman to enter, so she could get some reprieve from the heat.

“Hi, hon,” she said in a breathy voice. “I was just going door to door to let all the homeowners know the good news.”

“What’s that?” Lacy asked.

Mrs. Pratt ran a weathered hand through her thin, gray hair. “The blond man seen lurking around the neighborhood was arrested and thrown in jail. Turns out he was also wanted for some robberies too. And, I saw something funny in the paper. The man they arrested looked suspiciously like your daddy.”

Lacy knew precisely which article Mrs. Pratt referred to because she’d read the same one earlier that morning. Dennis had pleaded guilty to his charges, and they’d skipped a trial. Given it wasn’t Dennis’s first offense, the judge had slapped her father with the maximum sentence; fifteen years, without parole. Turns out their neighborhood lurker had also been her father.

“Yes, that was him.” Lacy had learned long ago to curb her embarrassment for having such a father.

Mrs. Pratt cupped a paper-thin, soft hand over Lacy’s cheek. “Poor child. I never thought that man deserved you. Now you don’t have to worry about him for a long time. Focus on taking care of that baby.”

All the blood drained from Lacy’s head. “What do you mean…?”

The old woman made a
tsking
sound. “You think I don’t know a pregnant woman when I see one? You have that look about you.”

Lacy could only stand there, completely stunned, as Mrs. Pratt let herself out of the house. So much for keeping her condition a secret. The whole town would know by next week.

Later that night, as Boris settled back down on the floor and Lacy slathered on the last of her moisturizer, a soft knocking came from her front door. Her heartbeat picked up with each step she took down the hall until the organ was practically up in her throat. Would she ever be able to react normally when Chase was around? He sucked the oxygen out of her lungs and left her dizzy and disoriented. It was like being a teenager with a crush all over again.

Her porch light never got turned on, which left Chase’s devilishly handsome face in shadow.
 
His tall frame and thick, wide shoulders filled the doorway the same way thoughts of him filled her head. He stepped inside when she stood back to let him enter.

“Feels good in here,” he said as cool air from her brand new unit pumped in through the vents on the floor.

“Definitely better than before.” She closed the front door and let her eyes roam down his deliciously hard derriere and powerful thighs. Wicked images of those same thighs pinning her to the mattress as he thrust her higher up the bed flew around her brain. The new air conditioning was much welcome right now. “About what you did…”

“How about you just say ‘thank you’?”

She narrowed her eyes at his backside. “It would have been nice to have some warning.”

He stopped in the living room and faced her. “Then you would have said ‘no’.”

Did he really know her that well? “Then at least let me --”

“I don’t want you paying me back either.”

She inhaled a clarifying breath into her lungs and reined in her instinct to argue with him about intruding on her independence.

He took a step toward her and tucked a long, free strand of hair behind her ear. “When was the last time someone gave you something?”

His thumb circled her ear and ran down the column of her throat. The contact had her eyelids fluttering and goose bumps trailing in the wake of his thumb.

“I’m not trying to encroach on your independence or using this to manipulate you. I wanted to do something nice for you.”

Her mouth grew dry and she touched her bottom lip with her tongue. “There has to be something I can do to thank you.”

“Say ‘thank you’.”

Lacy considered herself an articulate person. Speaking her mind had always been something that came naturally to her. But when Chase was around all those instincts flew out the window. Words tumbled over themselves in her brain and eventually found their way around her twisted tongue. Even as a teenager Chase had had the ability make her lose all logical thinking and it was part of the reason she’d disliked him as much as she craved him. At twenty-eight things were no different. Except for suffering from unrequited lust, she had an especially bad case of undying love.

“Thank you,” she finally managed to say. Then her eyes dropped down to his mouth. There on his bottom lip was a partially healed, crescent-shaped cut. Her index finger glided over the wound. “What happened?”

“Brody punched me.”

She dropped her hand from his mouth. “He did what?”

Chase stepped away from her and walked around the room. “Let’s just say Brody and I aren’t too happy with each other right now.”

Lacy held up one hand and stepped over Boris. “Wait a minute. Brody punched you because of me?”

“I guess you could say that.”

She tossed her hands up in the air. “You men and your stupid cave man tendencies.”

“You’re the one who told him. I thought you didn’t want anyone knowing?”

“I didn’t. But then he saw the ultrasound picture on the fridge and I couldn’t lie to him.” It’d been four days since she’s seen Brody and she missed him like crazy. Was he still mad at her? Would he talk to her if she called him? She sank down on Ray’s battered recliner. “What does it matter now? Everyone’s going to find out eventually.”

“Have you told anyone else?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t actually plan on telling Brody. It just happened like that.” She lifted her eyes up to his. He’d stopped his pacing to lean one shoulder against the fireplace mantle. “He really hit you?”

“Took me by complete surprise. He didn’t mention our encounter to you?”

“I haven’t seen him since I told him. I think he’s mad at me.”

Chase touched his jaw. “Trust me, it’s not you he’s mad at.”

Her eyebrows tugged together. “Why would he be mad at you? It’s not like you tied me up and put a gun to my head.”

“That’s not why he’s mad.”

She remained in the chair and waited for him to explain.

“He accused me of letting you push me away.”

How in the world had Brody gotten that impression? Okay, she’d admitted to Brody she loved Chase and she told him about turning down Chase’s marriage proposal. Had Brody come to his own conclusion or had he realized something she didn’t realize herself? “That’s not what I --”

“He’s right.” Chase straightened from the mantle and squatted on his heels in front of her. “It took a hit in the face from my little brother to make me realize it. I’m not going to let you keep me at arm’s length because you have this instinct to protect yourself from getting hurt.” She opened her mouth but he placed a hand on her bare knee to stop her. His palm was warm and sent a tingling sensation to her toes.

“I completely understand why you do that. It’s a defense mechanism you built for yourself because everyone in your life, who you were supposed to be able to trust, has left you in some way. That big heart of yours has some pretty deep scars in it.”

Chase’s words made something inside her shift. That place deep in her soul she’d kept hidden from people was found by the man she’d fallen in love. But had she really kept it so hidden? Or had other people in her life simply not bothered to look deeper than necessary? Her own parents or even Ray? Sometime in the past several months, Chase had managed to worm his way inside and get a glimpse of the real Lacy Taylor. When had that happened? How had she not seen that coming? Or maybe Chase was the one person she’d been waiting to show herself to. She felt tears welling in her eyes and trickling, uncontrolled, down her cheeks.

“You may not want to marry me,” he continued. “But I’m not going to let you write me off like you have everyone else in your life. I’m not going to abandon you the way your mother did and I won’t disappoint you the way your father has. I know that’s what you’re expecting and that’s probably why you didn’t want anyone to know about us.” He swiped a tear away from her cheek with his thumb. “Like I said before, you don’t have to marry me. But I’m not going anywhere.”

Another tear followed the one Chase had blotted away with his thumb. How could he be the only person in her life who got her? Lacy wasn’t used to people making promises, much less actually keeping them. She’d learned long ago not to hold the people in her life to such high standards. Did this mean he loved her the same way she loved him? While they were certainly nice words, nicer than anything she’d ever heard, they didn’t exactly hint at a declaration of love. Oh, she knew he cared about her. But how deep that caring went, Lacy could only guess.

What if he didn’t really love her and someday he went on to marry someone else? And have kids with them? Lacy didn’t think she’d survive that.

You’re doing it again. Always expecting the worst to happen.

For once in her life, Lacy forced the worst-case scenario out of her mind.

“Just think about that for a little while before you respond. And I thought of a way you can thank me.”

She narrowed her eyes at him when the corners of his mouth turned up. “No sex.”

His smirk turned into a full blown, melt-your-bones grin. “Although that would be nice, that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Twenty

“I think I would rather have sex.”

Chase wrapped one large, rough hand around hers and guided her toward the bed. With a gentle nudge, he sat her down and placed her mother’s letter in her hand. “Nice try, but you’re not getting out of this.”

Her scrawled in loopy, blue ink on the white envelope stared back at her. “Do I have to do this now?”

“Yes. You’ve been putting this off long enough. You’ll thank me later.”

She lifted her eyes to his. “I don’t think I will.”

He crossed his arms over his wide chest. “You will.” When she only stared at him, he took the letter from her, opened it up and placed it back in her hands. “Here.”

Her eyes ran down the page filled with words. “You’ll stay with me?”

His blue eyes softened. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Okay, it’s only one page. Just do it, like ripping off a Band-Aid.