Courting Chloe (Hudson Valley Heroes Book 1) (13 page)

Chloe slowly surfaced from frantic oblivion that had possessed her. She slumped against Ian’s chest, breathing slowly and deeply. His heart pounded beneath her ear, his breath came in short, shallow gasps.

She knew they should probably move. It was a bit awkward to stand totally naked—well, partially naked—in the middle of her living room, but she just couldn’t summon enough energy to care. She felt drowsy, safe, secure. Utterly drained and blissfully content.

He slowly traced his hands over her hips, lightly caressed her back. “Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“I’ve heard that some people actually try that in bed.”

She tilted back her head and looked at him. “Unimaginative types, obviously. Nothing that good ever happens in bed.”

“Is that right?” He kicked aside the shoes, clothing, and books that were tangled at their feet (Books, really? Had they actually knocked books off the shelves? Chloe bit her lip to stifle her giggle) as he swept her up into his arms.

She gave a half-shriek, half-laugh, and tightened her arms around his neck. He carried her down the hall toward her bedroom. “Ian, what are you doing?”

He gave her a small, seductive smile. A dimple appeared in his left cheek and her heart melted just a little. “You can’t expect me to let a statement like that go unchallenged.”

Chapter Thirteen

“Hey. You wanna see something?” Matt wheeled his chair to a stop beside Ian and cued Beastie into a Sit. It was Saturday morning, and the cloudless sky was a brilliant, burning blue. Ian was outside the training ring, standing in the shadow of a towering oak. Matt reached for his wallet, withdrew a laminated plastic card, and passed it over. “Cool, huh? What do you think?”

“Wow.” Ian gave a low whistle and shook his head. “I’ve seen a lot of fake IDs, but this one really sucks. It ever work for you?”

Matt’s face fell. “I just got it.”

“Where?”

“Ordered it online. Paid fifty bucks for it, too.”

“Fifty bucks too much, my friend.”

“Really? Shit.”

Matt tucked the ID back in his wallet. Then his gaze locked on the parking area near the kennels. Today marked the camp’s first official excursion. They’d reached the midpoint of training. After two weeks of intensive ring work, they were finally ready to take the show on the road, testing their canine training by venturing out into the real world. To that end, each counselor was readying his or her vehicle with the necessary gear and supplies. A lot going on. It looked to Ian like a military deployment, rather than a simple trip into town. Matt rocked his chair back and forth, cracked his knuckles, tossed his hair out of his eyes.

“Hey,” Ian said. “What’s up? You worried about today?”

“You mean the trip into town? Nah. Beastie’ll do just fine.”

“So what’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Still trying to figure things out, I guess.” Matt gave a loose shrug, chewed his lower lip. A smile flitted briefly across his mouth. “I’ve been reading about karma. I must have been a serious asshole in a past life. Stalin and Hitler and Genghis Khan all rolled into one. I’m thinking maybe I flame-torched an entire village or torpedoed a ship full of orphans. You know, did something really bad to deserve this.” 

Ian carefully considered his response. “Maybe,” he allowed. “Or maybe it just happened.”

Matt grunted, but Ian couldn’t tell whether the noise signified agreement or disagreement. He rocked his chair backward, causing the front to tilt in a precarious wheelie. “That’s what the counselor back at the hospital tried to tell me.”

“You saw a counselor at the hospital?”

“Uh-huh. When I found out I was going to be stuck in this chair for the rest of my life, I threatened to kill myself. I guess it totally freaked my parents out.”

“I’d imagine so.”

Matt shot him a curious glance. “You ever think about offing yourself?”

Ian shook his head. No. Never had. But he could understand. He could relate more than he wanted to. After Barb’s death, beyond the shock and horror of it, he’d felt nothing but all-consuming rage. Later, his grief and accompanying guilt had nearly broken him. If Barb and Preston had both died in the accident, no telling what he might have done. He’d been so crazy, so out of his mind. The only thing that had pulled him through those dark weeks was the fact that Preston had needed him.

“Chuck tried to OD on morphine,” Matt announced, tilting his chin toward the parking lot. “When he woke up in a field hospital and saw both of his legs had been blown off by a landmine, he decided it would have been better if he’d just been killed. He said that way his wife could get the insurance money and marry someone else, rather than spend the rest of her life taking care of a half a man.”

Jesus. Ian’s gaze shot across the parking lot. Luke was helping Chuck load his German shepherd—a handsome dog named Jagger—into the back of Chuck’s Jeep Cherokee. Chuck was only a few years older than Ian. He had a quiet demeanor, a precise, military style of speaking, and an awkward gait, due to the prosthetic limbs he wore. “He told you that?”

“Uh-huh. We talked about it a few days ago.”

Ian considered that. He wasn’t entirely surprised. Conversations were conspicuously candid here, often veering toward brutally honest. The night he’d arrived at the camp, Chloe had told him that over the course of their training their group would grow and support each other. She’d been right. Every person there understood what it was like to navigate a world that wasn’t set up to accommodate people without legs or arms, without sight or hearing, or whose bodies looked perfectly fine but might abruptly give out on them anyplace, anytime.

“How’d it happen?” he asked, nodding toward Matt’s wheelchair.

“What, my accident?”

“Yeah.”

“A friend and I were on a BMX course, taking jumps on our bikes. We got a little bored and decided to take the ramps with his dad’s ATV.” He worked his knuckles again. “We weren’t drunk or stoned or anything. Just, you know, screwing around. Having fun. It didn’t seem like that big a deal at the time.”

Ian nodded. Most of the time, it wasn’t a big deal. Life wasn’t always cruel. Sometimes you could mess around on an ATV. Drive through an intersection and not even notice it.

“My parents don’t mean to drive me crazy,” Matt continued. “They’re actually pretty decent, as far as parents go. It’s funny, you know? They did everything right, but this still happened. It must be pretty shitty for them, too.”

Ian couldn’t think of anything to add to that. Instead he said, “What’s with the fake ID?”

“Oh. That.” Matt looked away. He worked his jaw as a pink blush heated his cheeks. “Um… There’s this friend of mine coming out to see me on Tuesday.”

So that was it. Ian bit back a smile. “This friend wouldn’t happen to be female, would she?”

“What, you think you’re the only one allowed to have something going on?”

Chloe. At the moment she was with Preston, slipping Prince into a bright red vest that hugged the retriever’s chest and torso and sported the words ‘Service Dog In Training’ in bold lettering on both sides. Refusing to be pushed off topic, he continued, “So this friend asked you to buy alcohol for her?”

“Janelle? No. That’s not her style.”

“So what’s up? Why the ID?”

Matt studied his thumb, suddenly fascinated by a hangnail he found there. “It’s just… we used to be kind of a thing. Not really an official couple, just sort of together, you know?”

Ian didn’t know. The intricacies of high school dating were long behind him, thank God. He nodded anyway.

“But we haven’t seen each other since the accident. I haven’t seen any of my friends, really. I mean, not in person. Not since
this
.”  He banged his palm against the arm of his wheelchair, causing Beastie to start and wheel around. “Sorry, boy.” Matt pet the dog and cued him into a Sit. “I thought maybe it would be chill if I could get a six pack for us. You know, if things got awkward, she might not notice the chair as much. We could just hang out like we used to.”

Now Ian understood. The siren’s call of Before. The insatiable desire to go back to the way life was before the accident, before the illness, before whatever random, horrific event that had devastated and destroyed. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t possible. “I think,” he said, “she’ll probably notice the chair.”

“No shit.” Matt jerked his head, tossing the hair out of his eyes. He cracked his knuckles. “The whole thing fucking sucks. I’m thinking about telling her not to even come.”

“She wants to see you, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“So why not—”

“Look, I know what this is all about. I’m not an idiot, you know. My parents have been on my ass about going back to school. Starting my senior year and graduating with the rest of my friends. They probably set up the whole thing with Janelle. Well, fuck that. I’m not going back to school like some total freak. Things are fine just the way they are.”

He gave the wheels of his chair an angry shove and propelled himself forward, Beastie trotting alongside. Chloe had been walking toward them. Matt shot past her without a word. She frowned as she watched him go, and then looked up at Ian.

“He okay?”

Ian debated whether he should go after Matt, but ultimately decided to give the kid some space. Let him settle down, think things through, and then he’d talk to him. He looked at Chloe. “He has a friend coming to see him in a couple of days. He’s nervous about it.”

She nodded. “Right. Joe mentioned that at the staff meeting this morning.”

Oh, yeah? Ian battled a surge of annoyance as he considered that. He’d known the staff met regularly to discuss the progress of their clients, as well as other issues that were occurring at the camp. But until that moment it hadn’t occurred to him that Chloe might discuss him or Preston as though they were just another part of her job. He didn’t like it.

He and Chloe had been together for two weeks now. Two amazing, emotionally rich, sexually satisfying weeks. In his mind, their relationship had transcended basic client-trainer status. At the same time, he was aware that he had no right to feel that way. It was too soon to have ‘the talk.’ Issues of commitment, of how they might move forward—
if
they might move forward—had never been discussed.

“Something wrong?” she asked, picking up on his mood.

“No.”

Apparently his reply wasn’t convincing. She studied him a beat longer, then pursed her lips aggravation. “All right,” she said flatly. “In that case, let’s get to work.”

Turning slightly away from him, she called to Preston and Prince. She waited with uncharacteristic impatience as they meandered toward them, stopping to visit other dogs on the way. Ian bit back a sigh. It seemed to be that kind of a day. Too hot, too early, too much going on. Everyone was just a little on edge.

He lifted his arm and rested it atop her shoulders, gently massaging the muscles along the base of her neck. Softly he murmured, “Hey. Everything okay?”

Her gaze remained fastened on the rest of the group, on the activity occurring in the parking area. Then she let her head fall back and flexed her shoulders, leaning into his impromptu massage. “Ooh. That feels good.”

“What’s going on?”

She tilted her face toward his and gave a rueful smile. “My mom and I just had one of those calls.”

“One of what calls?”

“One of
those
calls.”

He must have looked totally blank. As he watched, one lovely chestnut brow arched slightly skyward. The movement fascinated him. Amazing the emotion she could convey with that single gesture: love, irritation, devotion.

“Obviously your mother is out of the managing your life from afar business,” she surmised.

Ian rarely heard from either of his parents unless they needed money. The last time he had seen them had been at Barbara’s funeral. They’d both been drinking heavily at the time. “No. That’s not her style.”

“Hmm. Well. Lucky you.” She shrugged. “My mom saw an ad for a pediatric nursing position at St. Mark’s—my former position, as a matter of fact. I guess the candidate who replaced me is moving on. My mom thought I should apply. Go back to the city, back to St. Mark’s.”

The spark of an idea lit within Ian. From a purely selfish perspective, that would be convenient as hell. If Chloe moved back to the city they could continue to see one another, see where things led. No commitment, no promises, no obligations. Just take things a day at a time.

“Jeff and his girlfriend called things off,” Chloe continued. “My mom interpreted that as a sign. She thinks I can rewind two years and go back to the way things were. Everything will just fall into place. My old job, my old relationship…”

Well fuck that. A surge of possessive intensity flooded him and Ian’s thoughts promptly swung the other way. He had no intention of handing Chloe back to someone who was idiot enough to let her go in the first place. Yet he couldn’t ignore the wistfulness in her voice, the way her gaze softened, her honey brown eyes filling with warm reminiscence as she spoke.

“Are you sure that’s not what you want? To give it another try?”

“What? Go back to Jeff? Oh, my God. No.” She gave a shocked laugh that sounded genuine. “Jeff is wonderful in concept, I suppose. Brilliant surgeon. Wealthy family. Handsome, highly educated, and well-traveled. Every mother’s dream. But in reality?” She gave a shudder, then her expression turned thoughtful. “I know relationships aren’t always easy, but in retrospect, I shouldn’t have had to work so hard, either. I was never…
enough
for him, if that makes sense. I’m much happier on my own.”

On her own. That answer didn’t entirely suit Ian. Neither did he like the fact that some entitled asshole made Chloe feel as though she wasn’t good enough. In fact, on a primitive, deeply male level, it royally pissed him off. If anyone dared to hurt Chloe, he deserved to have his smug face smashed in, and Ian richly enjoyed the fantasy of providing that service.

“Sometimes I do miss working the floor,” she admitted, unaware of the direction his thoughts had taken. “I liked it. I enjoyed being part of a great team. But this… I’m necessary here, in a way I never was back at St. Mark’s.” She gestured to the training rings, the kennels, the gear. “It’s funny. It’s hard to make people understand what this place is really about. People come here, see the facility and automatically assume our job is to work with dogs.”