Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (54 page)

“I am loyal to you!” Bo shouted.
 
“I’m still here, aren’t I?
 
Even when you were passing out drunk on
my bar, never paying your tab because you were sinking every last penny you had
into that damn restaurant, I was here.
 
I was the
only
who was
here, Chace.
 
And you know why?
 
Because I’m the only one who realizes
what that hell it is you’re doing.”

“Oh, yeah?” Chace said, “and what’s that?”

“You’re punishing yourself.
 
You’re trying to push people away, Chace.
 
You don’t think you deserve anything
good because of what happened. That’s not true.
 
But it’s going to start being true if
you don’t get your shit together.”
 
Bo shook his head.
 
“Look at
you,” he said.
 
“You have a girl
that loves you.
 
And what are you
doing?
 
You’re down here, trying to
pick a fight with your best friend, because God forbid he gave her a little
insight into what’s going on in that fucked up head of yours.”

“Shut up,” Chace said quietly.
 
His hands were clenched into fists by
his side.
 
If Bo didn’t shut up, he
didn’t know what he would do.
 
The
words were hitting him like shards of glass, and all he could think about was
stopping it.

“I won’t shut up,” Bo said.
 
“Someone needs to tell you this.
 
You need to start getting your shit together,
Chace.
 
You need to stop spending
your nights prowling for women.
 
You
need to stop letting the staff at the restaurant run rampant over you because
you’re afraid they hate you for what happened to your dad.
 
That accident wasn’t your fault, man, but
what you’re doing now is.
 
You’re
fucking up your life, and I’m not going to stand around and watch it.”

And with that, Bo went back into the bar,
leaving Chace standing outside in the parking lot, alone.

***

The next morning, Lindsay’s phone rang at seven
am.

She groaned and rolled over on the couch, where
she’d fallen asleep.
 
After she’d
left the animal hospital, she’d come home and heated up some soup.
 
She’d realized she could pick up Chace’s
wireless signal, so she spent the rest of the evening on the computer,
navigating the mouse with her left hand as she caught up on the message boards
of her favorite writing websites.

When she started getting sleepy, she loaded up
her Netflix on demand and fell asleep watching movies on her laptop.
 
Hopefully Chace had some kind of limited
streaming plan, and he’d get a bunch of overage charges on his bill.

“Hello?” Lindsay croaked in the phone.

“Lindsay!” her mother shouted.
 
“What is going on? I’ve called you about
a million times!”

“I know, Mom.”
 
Lindsay sat up and pushed the hair out
of her face.
 
Why was her mother
talking so loud?
 
It was only seven
in the morning.
 
“Didn’t you get my
text?”

“Yes, you said you’d sprained your wrist and
you were resting, but that everything was fine.”

“Okay, so didn’t you take that to mean that I
sprained my wrist but I was resting and everything was fine?”

“No!
 
Because I needed to hear it directly from
you.
 
And you weren’t answering your phone, so I was going to drive up there
and check on you, but then your sister said no, I shouldn’t, that she’d talked
to you and that you were okay.”

Lindsay said a silent thanks to Jaime.
 
“I’m fine, Mom.
 
I’ve just been sleeping a lot,” she
lied.

“Well, you could have told me!” her mom
yelled.
 
“Here I am, sitting over
here by myself, completely in the dark about your condition! You just waltzed
out of that restaurant with a strange man, not even caring that I was worried
about you.”

As her mother made it all about herself, raging
on about how selfish Lindsay had been about her broken wrist, Lindsay leaned
back against the pillows.
 
She
drifted back to sleep for a moment, only to be jolted awake a moment later by a
knock on the door.

She looked out the window and saw a glimpse of
a Comcast truck in her driveway.

“Sorry, Mom,” she said quickly.
 
“I have to go.
 
The cable man’s here.”

“On a
Saturday?”
 

“Yes, Mom, on a Saturday.”

“Why would you schedule the cable man on a
Saturday?
 
You have all week to do
things like that.”

“No, I don’t,” Lindsay said. “I write during
the week, remember, Mom?”

“Well, yes, I know you write during the week,
Lindsay, but you can write anytime.
 
Do you know they charge a five dollar fee for connecting service on the
weekends?
 
It’s just another way to
– ”

“Gotta go, Mom,” Lindsay said.
 
“The man’s here and he really needs to
get started.”

She disconnected, feeling bad for hanging up on
her mother, but really.
 
Her
mom
 
needed to learn that she
couldn’t just call up yelling at her first thing in the morning like that.

“Hi,” she said when she opened the door to the
cable guy.

“Good morning,” he said, a smile on his face.

He pushed past her into the house.
 
She went to close the door, but before
she did, she caught a glimpse of Chace.
 
He was working on cutting down the last of the fence.
 
He’d reached the middle of the yard now,
and was making good progress. She watched him for a moment, the way the muscles
in his back flexed with each movement.

And then she shut the door and slipped back
inside before he could see her.

C
hapter
T
en

Over the next week, Maximilian’s wounds healed
wonderfully.
 
Dr. Felder removed his
stitches, but, much to Max’s dismay, left the cone on.
 
He was back to his old self, though,
running around in the yard, chasing rabbits, and causing mischief.

Every morning, Chace would get up and take him
for a long walk through the woods.
 
He wanted Max to be able to get his fill of the scents he loved, but
wasn’t going to take any more chances with letting Max wander around unleashed.
He’d made the mistake of thinking that just because Max was a dog, he should be
allowed to run free. But that wasn’t the case.
 

After their walk, the two of them would return
home and Chace would set out a bowl of food for Max, then head back outside to
finish working on the fence.
 
He
needed to finish it more than ever now that he was determined to keep Max in
the yard.

The following Monday, a week and a half after
he’d first started, Chace hammered in the last post.
 
He stood back, admiring his work.
 
The fence looked great.
 
One any man could be proud of.

His eyes flicked toward Lindsay’s house.
 
He hadn’t seen her since the day they’d
fought, the day she’d yelled at him in the vet’s office.
 
When he got home from the restaurant at night,
he’d hurry inside, his head down, determined not to accidentally run into her.

It was better that way.
 
And now that the fence was done, there
would be even less risk of having a chance encounter.

***

Lindsay watched as Chace finished the last post
of the fence, then gathered up his tools and walked back to his house.
 
Every morning for the past week he’d
been out there, working.
 
And every
morning, she’d sit here with her tea, telling herself she was working on her
book, when really, she was watching him.

She’d study his movements, mesmerized by the
rhythm of what he was doing.
 
She watched
his body language for any signs of what he was feeling, but of course there
were none.
 
It was silly to think
there would be.
 
You couldn’t tell
what was going on in a person’s head just by what they looked like as they
built a fence.

Well, she thought as he disappeared into his
house, that was it.
 
He was done
with the fence.
 
He wouldn’t be back
again tomorrow morning.
 
It was
better that way.
 
She was starting
to feel like a stalker, the way she was sitting here every day, watching him
without him knowing.

The fence was a symbol.
 
He’d built it around his house, and
around his heart.
 
It was a real
boundary that she knew couldn’t be broken.

She allowed herself one last moment of sadness,
one last squeeze of her heart.
 
And
then she started typing.
 
She had a
book to write, a house to fix up, and a life to live.
 
One that didn’t include Chace Davenport.

C
hapter
E
leven

Early autumn turned into late autumn, late
autumn turned into early winter, and Chace found a new bar.
 
He hadn’t talked to Bo since their
altercation a couple of months ago, and so he didn’t feel comfortable going
into The Gristmill.
 
It was just as
well – the new bar was a bit of a drive, but no one knew him there, and
it was busier.
 
Which meant there
were more women to choose from.

He’d order a Coke and a burger and shoot the
shit with some of the regulars while he watched the Celtics.
 
Some nights, he’d bring a girl
home.
 
Other nights, he’d go home
alone.

He’d done his best to push Lindsay out of his
mind, to forget about her and how she’d told him what happened to his father
wasn’t his fault.
 

He fell into a routine -- coming home late at
night from the bar, getting up at seven to take Max on his walk before heading
to the Trib.
 
He always kept his
head down, always avoided looking at her house.
 
He was dimly aware of the fact that
she’d been getting work done over there – he couldn’t help but notice the
steady stream of contractors and handymen that seemed to always be parked in
her driveway.

But he hadn’t seen her.

Until one night in early December, right after
Thanksgiving.
 
He was coming home
from the bar, alone.
 
There’d been a
blonde girl who had made her intentions quite clear, but Chace hadn’t
bitten.
 
It was starting to feel
like too much effort, and for what?
 
A few moments of pleasure, followed by an aching loneliness that was
getting harder and harder to ignore?

Because it
had
 
been getting harder and harder to ignore.
 
He missed Bo.
 
He missed his father.
 
Most of all, he missed Lindsay.
 
Missed talking to her, they way they
used to, a year and a half ago.
 
Missed what it had been like to kiss her, to take care of her -- hell,
just to
see
her.