Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (39 page)

“My name’s Lindsay,” she tried.

“Well,
Lindsay,”
 
he
said,
 
“make sure you keep your
trash to yourself.”
 

He turned then, walking down her front steps,
stomping angrily back down to the driveway.
 
His sneakers made crunching sounds
against the leaves as he walked across her lawn instead of using the driveway
like any polite person would have done.
 
The fact should have made her mad, but she was too stunned.

Chace Davenport had been here.

And he hadn’t even known who she was.

The only man who’d ever broken her heart, who’d
ever caused her so much pain she’d been certain she was going to die, didn’t
even remember her name.

***

Chace walked across Lindsay’s lawn and back
toward his own house.
 
The cool fall
air nipped at his face, but he didn’t feel it.
 
He couldn’t feel anything.
 
His body had gone completely numb. Lindsay.
 
Lindsay was here.
 
Lindsay was his new neighbor.
 
He tried to process it, but he couldn’t.
 
All he felt was empty.

A year ago, right after everything had
happened, Chace had gone to a doctor who had prescribed him drugs, the kind of
anti-anxiety medicines that were supposed to make you forget.
 
Chace hadn’t wanted to go – in
fact, he’d only gone because his best friend Bo had made him -- but somehow, by
the time Chace had left the doctor’s office, he had a prescription in
hand.
 
But the pills had done
nothing to take his pain away, had only left him sluggish and tired and unable
to run his restaurant.

The feeling he had now, the cold detachment
that had taken over his body, was the feeling he’d hoped the pills would give
him.
 
But it was short-lived. By the
time he got back to his house, he was in the midst of a full-blown panic
attack.
 
He leaned his head against
the side of his truck and took deep breaths.

He decided to forget about going to the
gym.
 
After seeing Lindsay, he
needed something stronger than sweat.

***

Half an hour later, after feeding Maximilian
and changing into a fresh navy blue sweater, Chace pulled his truck into the parking
lot of The Gristmill Tavern.
 
It was
a Wednesday night, but the lot was littered with cars, mostly regulars who were
here to watch the baseball playoffs, to root for the Red Sox and boo the
Yankees while they drank watered down beer and ate free popcorn.

He walked inside, the darkness of the bar a
comfort after the bright lights of the parking lot.

Bo was behind the bar, charming the ladies and
chatting with the guys while he poured drinks.

“Hey,” he said when he saw Chace.
 
A shadow of worry slid across his face,
but he didn’t have anything to be nervous about.
 
Chace wasn’t here for alcohol.
 
Tonight he was looking for something
else.

“Hi.”
 
Chace slid onto the bar stool, and pushed the empty wooden bowl that was
sitting in front of him toward Bo.
 
Bo took it silently and filled it up with popcorn, then added more salt,
just the way Chace liked it.
 
Ever
since the accident, food hadn’t tasted the same, and Chace found he needed to
season things more than he usually would have.

“What’s going on?” Bo asked carefully.
 
He picked up a rag and began wiping down
the bar, even though it was already completely clean.
 

“Nothing.”
 
It was a lie, and of course Bo knew it.
 
Chace only came to The Gristmill when he
was on the prowl.
 
At first it had
been for alcohol, but that had ended about six months ago, after Bo had sat
Chace down and told him he was drinking too much.
 
Bo would never refer to it as an
intervention, but that’s essentially what it had been.
 
“Just thought I’d stop down and say hi.”

“Is that right?” Bo asked.

Chace nodded.
 
“I’ll take a Coke.”

Bo picked up the soda hose and poured the drink
while Chace surveyed his prospects.
 
He zeroed in on a blonde at the end of the bar.
 
She was sitting with her friend, a
brunette who was talking to a guy sitting on her other side.
 

“What’s the blonde drinking?” Chace asked.

Bo sighed.
 
But he knew better than to say anything.
 
He had gotten Chace off the alcohol, and
he realized he had to pick his battles.
 
If women were going to be Chace’s drug of choice, well, there were worse
things he could get himself into.

“Virgin daiquiri,” Bo said.

 
“Virgin
daiquiri?”
 
It
was enough to make Chace pause.
 
A
daiquiri was a ridiculous drink, all fruity and girly.
 
Someone who drank a daiquiri was
probably completely unbalanced.
 
And
a virgin daiquiri!
 
That was doubly
ridiculous.
 
A daiquiri was maybe
–
maybe
–forgivable if you were drinking it because you wanted to get drunk and
didn’t like the taste of alcohol.
 
But drinking it just for the hell of it?
 
Obviously the girl was completely
mental.

But a quick glance around the bar revealed
there wasn’t really anything more promising.
 
Beggars couldn’t be choosers, especially
when it was fall on the Cape and all of the summer tourists had gone home.

“Send her another daiquiri, would you?” he
asked Bo.

Bo hesitated.
 
“Chace, I don’t – ”

“Bo,” Chace said.
 
His tone was a warning, one he knew Bo
would respect.
 
They’d been friends
for ten years, ever since senior year of college at Boston University, where
they’d ended up at a frat party, trying to hit on the same girl. In the end,
she’d ended up going upstairs to make out with one of the guys who lived in the
fraternity house.

Chace and Bo, who had been competing all night,
throwing jabs at each other in an effort to impress the girl – a
dark-skinned brunette whose name Chace couldn’t remember – had looked at
each other in shock, neither one of them used to losing out when it came to
women.
 
They’d ended up leaving the
party and breaking into the campus basketball court to play a late night pick-up
game with a few other friends.

They’d been like brothers ever since.
 
Which is why Chace listened when Bo told
him he needed help.
 
But Bo knew
that there was only so far he could push, and after everything his friend had
been through, Bo conceded there were things Chace needed to do, and if that
involved random women in the bar, then so be it.

Bo started making the daiquiri, and Chace took
a sip of his soda and looked up at the TV. The Red Sox were in the playoffs, no
thanks to their pitching.
 
Chace
used to be a diehard fan, used to spend summer nights at Fenway Park, getting
up early on game days and looking online for last minute tickets.
 
He’d buy six or eight at a time,
rounding up his dad and a bunch of friends to go with him.
 

The thought of those days made the back of
throat burn, and he looked away from the television. He wasn’t going to think
about summers.
 
And he wasn’t going
to think about Lindsay Benson.

All he was going to think about was the blonde
at the end of the bar, the blonde who had gotten her drink and was now giving
him a big smile.

Chace picked up his soda and moved to go and sit
next to her.

C
hapter
T
wo

Lindsay was in the bedroom of her new house,
looking out the window and thinking about Chace Davenport.
 
About how he was living next door, and
how he apparently had no idea who she was.

Her first thought had been to move.
 
It would be easy.
 
She could put her house right back on
the market and could probably even get her old apartment back.
 
She knew for a fact that it hadn’t been
rented yet.
 
And all her things
would still be packed!
 
She’d load
them right back onto the truck, drive right back to Boston, and move right back
in.

But then she’d started to get angry.
 
Who the hell did he think he was, anyway?
 
Not even remembering who she was?
 
Coming over and yelling at her for
putting some garbage bags in his bin?
 
Who did that?
 
Assholes, that
was who.
 
Of course, she’d already
known he was an asshole.
 
But being
faced with it again, right there, on her front porch, caused her anger to flame
red hot.

She wasn’t going to leave this house!
 
She loved this house.
 
Or she would, once it was set up.
 
It had always been her dream to have a
little house on the Cape, doing her writing from the middle of nowhere, and now
she was going to have it!
 
And she
wasn’t going to let Chace Davenport screw it all up.
 
She’d wasted enough time on him.

Feeling strong, she set her laptop up on her
nightstand.
 
She had electricity,
but no internet or cable, so for now, her only entertainment was going to be
books and DVDs that she could play on her computer.
 
She decided she wanted to watch
something that was anti-men, something with a message about female empowerment,
like Waiting to Exhale.

She was looking through her box of DVDs, the
one box she’d made sure to keep track of, when she heard scratching at the back
door.
 
She froze with one hand on
Thelma and Louise, the other on Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
 
The scratching came again, this time
followed by a whine.

It sounded like a wild animal of some
sort.
 
A beast that had come to
break into the house.
 
She’d been warned
about mice and deer, had been expecting them even, but she hadn’t been told
about anything that might start scratching at her back door.
 
Could it be a raccoon?

She got up and moved to the back door, then
took a deep breath and peered out the window.
 
There, sitting on her porch, looking up
at her forlornly, was a dog.
 
He had
a tan coat and dark eyes, and he was whining.
 
When he saw her, he sat down and looked
at her hopefully, his tail swishing back and forth on the steps.

Lindsay hesitated, not sure what to do.
 
He looked harmless enough, but what did
he want?
 
What if he was a
stray?
 
What if he bit her and she
had to go to the hospital and get all kinds of different shots to keep from
getting rabies?
 

She looked at the dog, who rolled over on his
belly as if to say, “I’m harmless, please, let me in!”
 
She squinted at him, then reached for
the light switch.
 
But of course the
bulb outside was burnt out.
 

The dog was rolling around on its back, and
Lindsay thought she could make out a few ribs.
 
What if he was hungry?
 
What if he’d been traveling for miles
without a good meal, just living by his wits, and if Lindsay tossed him out,
he’d end up back on the road, not knowing when he’d be able to ravage up a few
scraps?
Or worse, what if he ended up at Chace’s house?
 
Chace would throw him out into the woods
for sure.
 
It was this thought that
finally made her open the door.

As soon as she did, the dog scampered in and ran
right by her and into the kitchen.
 
He got to work sniffing through her boxes.

“Oh,” she said.
 
“Um…”
 
Her instinct told her to tell him to
stop, but she wasn’t sure if she should.
 
He was a strange dog after all, and while he seemed nice enough –
his tail was wagging as he poked his nose around in her things – she
didn’t want to startle him.
 
“Hi,
dog.”