Read Crazy Love - Krista & Chase Online

Authors: Melanie Shawn

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romantic Comedy, #Literary Fiction, #Series, #Romance, #Contemporary

Crazy Love - Krista & Chase (10 page)

BOOK: Crazy Love - Krista & Chase
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“Let me rephrase. I don’t want to have dinner with
you
.”

Feigning innocence, Chase nodded with mock understanding, “Ooh, is that what you meant?”

“You enjoying yourself, rock star?” she asked flatly but through gritted teeth.

She might have been determined to seem totally unaffected by him, but her eyes, her body, and her breathing betrayed her attempts.

“I am, actually,” Chase said, his voice growing gravelly. As much as he was trying to keep this exchange light and flirtatious, things were heating up hotter than a jalapeño pepper. “More than I have in years.”

“I seriously doubt that.” Disbelief at his statement shone through her catlike eyes.

He could try to convince her. Tell the truth, that being with her was the only time, besides when he was onstage playing music, that he felt truly alive. Not just physically or mentally either. She awakened his soul. But he knew that they weren’t there. Yet. She would roll her eyes at him and come back with, “
Nice try, sport,
”—or “
rock star,
” which seemed to be her new preferred name for him—or some other snippy reply to diminish his heartfelt sentiment.

So instead, he looked her dead in the eyes and asked, “Are you calling me a liar?”

Something of significance flashed in her eyes. It was there for less than a second, but he’d seen it. He didn’t know what it’d meant or why she’d covered it up so quickly, but it had definitely been there.

Before he could even begin to decipher its appearance, she said, “No. You are a lot of things. A liar is not one of them.” Her last sentence was spoken almost begrudgingly.

“Really. A lot of things,” Chase repeated.

His head moved just a millimeter closer to her, being drawn like a magnet. At his small shift, her almond-shaped eyes widened with awareness. He couldn’t stop himself from brushing a stray red strand of silky hair that was lying across her forehead.

His hand fell to his side as his lips burned to taste hers, but instead of kissing her, he asked, “Care to share what things exactly?”

Her pink tongue made another appearance, sweeping across her lips. His body responded to the seductive gesture by tensing with need. He was strung tighter than he’d ever been in his life. He didn’t push her. Didn’t move. Just waited.

A war was going on behind those green-blue eyes of hers. He couldn’t be sure
exactly
what she was thinking, but if he were a betting man, he would say it had to do with him and continuing this conversation.

All of his senses became heightened to everything around him. The feel of the cold tile beneath his bare feet. The sweet scent of her shampoo and body lotion combined with the lemony smell of the Pine Sol he’d doused the house in. As a ‘rock star,’ he’d been offered a lot of drugs. Most of them he’d stayed away from, but years ago he had tried ecstasy, and right now, his skin felt just as sensitized as when he’d been under the influence of the drug. That’s exactly what Krista felt like to him—a drug.

He found himself holding his breath, wondering which side would win. He was hoping that whatever internal battle she was fighting would ultimately go in his favor.

Her eyes cleared and he saw that a victor had been crowned. No longer did she looked torn or unsure. “Nope,” she said simply.

Then, taking advantage of the fact that he’d removed his hand to sweep her stray strand of hair from her forehead, she turned the knob behind her back and was out the door in a flash.

“Kris—” The door shut in his face before he could even get out the first syllable of her name.

He thought about going after her, but there was no point. This was a marathon, not a sprint. His mom being in the hospital might have been what had prompted him to return to Harper’s Crossing. But now that he was here, now that he’d seen Krista again, it was not the
only
reason he planned on staying.

Chase knew now, more than ever before, that what Krista and he shared was not puppy love, young love, or even just first love. It was real love.

Krista might not like it. She might fight it. She might deny it. But he knew she felt it. He’d seen it in her eyes. Heard it in her voice. Felt it in her body language.

As he walked into the kitchen to get himself a drink of water, he adjusted his rock-hard length in his sweats. He knew he could take care of it on his own, but he also knew that it wouldn’t even come close to satisfying him. He sighed as he pulled a clean glass from the cupboard. He might as well get used to this. He had a feeling he was going to be living in a perpetual state of sexual frustration for the foreseeable future.

Still, a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. If that was the price he had to pay to get a chance at being with Krista again, for good this time, he was more than happy to pay it.

Chapter Seven

T
hree nights in a row with no sleep sucked lemons. To say that Krista was running on fumes would imply that she was actually running, which was not true. She was barely moving.

With each step she took up the stairwell, she felt like she was swimming upstream. Going up from the first floor to the fourth to check on Abby, Krista had made it only halfway up the first flight of stairs before seriously regretting her misguided choice to not take the elevator.

This poor decision stemmed from her new get-in-better-shape plan. She hadn’t made it to the track this morning for her run. Sadly, it wasn’t because she had been sleeping, cozily tucked in her bed. Nope. She’d been wide awake, staring at the red illuminated numbers on her bedside clock that mocked her each time they changed, all the while listening to the melodic sounds of Bear sawing logs.

After returning home with the beloved Teddy, Bear had hopped up on her bed—Teddy hanging from his mouth—circled three times, and plopped down, and he hadn’t moved until Krista had forced him to go out to the bathroom before she’d left for work. She’d barely been able to get the door open and then closed again, which she attributed to her lack of sleep.

Her unexpected reunion with Chase last night had stricken her wide a-freakin’-wake. Krista wasn’t sure if it was due to the adrenaline or lust that had been racing through her system after she left Abby’s house. It was most likely both.

For hours, she’d tossed and turned in her bed, trying to convince herself that she hadn’t really been all
that
affected by Chase’s return. She’d applied all of her persuasive efforts into trying to plead the case that she hadn’t almost spontaneously combusted at the sight of Chase shirtless in his low-slung sweats that hung in just the right spot on his hips to accentuate the sexy, defined lines of his abs. Or that when he’d had her trapped against the front door she hadn’t crossed her fingers and toes hoping, wishing, silently pleading for him to lean down and press his full lips to hers, pick her up, and take her against the wall.

She’d tried everything in her power to deny, deny, deny. But it was no use. Which was frustrating beyond belief. Krista had always prided herself on being a mind-over-matter girl. Then, on the rare occasions that failed her, she usually moved on to the fake-it-‘til-you-make-it mindset. Unfortunately, neither of those mental tricks had worked while lying in her bed, tossing and turning with visions of Chase, memories of Chase, fantasies of Chase.

Krista was a practical girl. Although she’d spent the greater part of last night floating down the River of Denial, she knew the cold, hard truth. She
was
affected by Chase’s return. Her heart, soul, and hormones were firmly in the “Team Chase” camp. They were rooting for her to spend time with him; catch up with him in and out of bed. Her body had been reminding her of how good things had been with Chase, even their first time—which had happened to be both of their first times.

After having seen his physical reaction to her, Krista knew Chase would be more than willing to take a little stroll down sexual memory lane. She wasn’t just going off of the all-systems-go, how-you-doin’ sweat tent he had been rocking last night either. All she’d had to do was look in his eyes and she’d seen how much he wanted her. Even in the hospital room yesterday, without the visual exhibit A in his pants, she’d felt the chemistry sizzling between them like bacon in a frying pan. There had been so much heat exploding between them it was like Pop Rocks if you drank them with Coke.

But her mind was the one that was in charge. It was the sole member of the “Team Krista” camp. It knew better than to listen to her heart, soul, and definitely her hormones. Luckily, as she had just reminded herself last night, her mind was running things. Always had been. Always would be.

Reconnecting with Chase, physically or emotionally, was not a good idea. Nothing good could come from it. Actually, that’s not true.
She
could
come
from it, and God, she knew it would be more than
good
.

But what then? What happened when he left again? What happened when he continued his life? What happened when the front pages of every magazine was splashed with pictures of him hooking up with groupies, models, actresses? What happened when her heart—which was still broken from the first time he left—broke into a million more pieces?

Exhaustion swept through her. Pausing for a moment, she looked at the final flight of stairs she needed to climb to reach her destination. She felt like Sylvester Stallone in
Rocky
. The soundtrack played in her head as she took each step.
Dun-dun-da-dun-dun-da.

Finally, she made it to the top of the staircase. She was slightly out of breath. Krista was hoping that was due to the fatigue brought on by sleep deprivation and not a true barometer of how out of shape she was. Either way, her mind was made up. Sleep or no sleep, tomorrow was her day off and she was going to start it with a run on the track.

When she opened the door to the fourth floor, the first thing she saw was Jamie walking towards her.

“Hi.” Krista’s voice sounded weak even to her own ears.

“Hey. You just missed your cousin.” Jamie smiled from ear to ear and was positively glowing, Alex had that effect on her. Actually, he had that effect on a lot of women, but to the dismay of most of the female population in Harper’s Crossing, the only woman who had ever had the same effect on him was Jamie.

Krista had been in the room the first time they’d met. Jamie had just moved to town when Alex had been hurt after a beam had fallen on him while he was evacuating people from a building that was on fire. Krista’s whole family—and there were a lot of them—had gathered in Alex’s hospital room, waiting for him to wake up. When he did, the first person he saw was Jamie. She was checking his vitals. Before he was out like a light again, he’d asked Jamie to marry him. True, he didn’t know her and he’d been hopped up on pain medicine, but it was still one of the most romantic things Krista had ever witnessed.

Now, as Krista walked towards her, Jamie ducked into a room, waving her hand for Krista to follow. Jamie wasn’t really one for dramatics, so Krista hoped everything was okay. A thought occurred to her as she followed her cousin-in-law. Maybe Jamie was pregnant. A little burst of energy spread through Krista’s weary bones. She would be so happy if that was the news she was about to hear.

Alex had adopted Jamie’s son, whose father had died in an automobile accident the same night Jamie had told him she was pregnant when she was seventeen years old. Jamie hadn’t let the fact that she’d been a single teen mom slow her down. She’d put herself through college, working and going to school at the same time, and done a great job with Joey. Jamie never talked about how difficult those years must have been, but Krista knew they had to have been
extremely
hard. This time, she would not only have Alex, but also the whole Sloan family to help and support her.

Before they were even inside the empty hospital room and Jamie turned around, Krista was already smiling in anticipation of hearing the words “I’m pregnant!” come out of Jamie’s mouth.

“Why didn’t you tell me?!” Jamie whisper-yelled, her eyes so big they looked like they were going to pop out of her head.

So…not pregnant.

“Tell you what?” Krista whispered back.

Jamie’s hands flew up in exasperation. “You and
Chase Malone
.”

“Oh.” Of course. Chase. Krista should have known. All roads led to Chase. Krista and Jamie had gotten close over the past year since they both worked at the hospital, and Krista totally understood why she would feel left in the dark. She answered honestly, “I didn’t even think about it. I guess I just assumed you already knew.”

Jamie shook her head. “Alex mentioned something about Chase growing up here once. He said that they were friends, but I found out from Vickey that you two used to be a couple. When I asked Alex about it, he said that you guys were together for
years
.”

“Off and on. We broke up a lot.”

“Are you okay? With him being here?” Jamie asked, concern filled her eyes.

Krista nodded. “I’m the one who called him.”

BOOK: Crazy Love - Krista & Chase
13.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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