Dana Marton - Broslin Creek 05 - Broslin Bride (17 page)

“Not the type to sit around.” Chase needed to keep moving. His hands were itching for Luanne. Better occupy them with something else, he decided, and began loading the SUV with boxes Hilda had already designated for charity.

Luanne went to the kitchen and opened the first cabinet door, looked back to her aunt. “All right. Just tell me what goes and what stays.”

They worked all afternoon, Hilda taking the girls out back after they woke. Chase carried several large boxes of antique toys out for them.

Luanne vacuumed and mopped again when they were done for the day, while Chase took down the curtains she insisted on washing.

“I’m taking you all out to dinner,” he announced as the girls and Hilda came in. They’d all been stuck at home all day. Time to get out of the house.

Of course, the girls squealed with glee.

Luanne shook her head. “Do you eat out all the time?”

“Just when I’m hungry.” He shrugged, then grinned. “It’s my prerogative as a bachelor.”

“Oh dear. I better get dressed.” Aunt Hilda patted her hair, suddenly energized. “Come on, girls, let’s pretty up. A handsome man is taking us out to dinner.” She winked at Luanne.

Was Luanne blushing?

They were all suddenly in such an excited female tizzy, Chase decided he was going to take them out again tomorrow.

They ended up at Chuck E. Cheese, at the girls’ request. He had more fun than he ever remembered having. Every once in a while, he caught Luanne watching him. Every once in a while, he caught himself watching Luanne.

She thanked him a hundred times while there, then again when they ran into each other in the hallway upstairs as they got ready for bed, finally at midnight. The girls and Aunt Hilda had been long asleep. Luanne had decided not to go to bed until she’d cleaned out the decade-old ashes and cobwebs from the living room fireplace, and he’d stayed up to help her. Luanne was leaving the bathroom from her shower; he was heading in.

“Thanks again for dinner. That was a real treat for all of us.” She flashed him that smile he was getting familiar with, half-grateful, half-worried. Because he’d done something for them, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to pay him back. He had a suspicion she was keeping some kind of tally in the back of her mind.

He was proven right when she said, “As soon as I get a new job, we’re taking you out.”

He didn’t protest. One, it would have been futile. Two, he wanted to go to dinner with Luanne and the girls again. “I’ll ask around for job openings when we get back home. But first, let’s figure out who’s trying to hurt you, so your life can go back to normal as soon as possible.”

She was standing too close to him in the narrow hallway, her face freshly scrubbed, her blond hair pushed back, still wet from the shower. She wore a sleeveless pink cotton nightgown that ended an inch above her knees.

Suddenly the air thickened between them. Tension built. He was painfully aware that they were the only two people still awake in the house, alone in the hallway, only the night around them.

He wanted her. Who wouldn’t? She was sunshine. She was sweet but strong. She could be shy about some things, but funny. Enough contradiction to be interesting. She had a heart that kept stretching to include everyone who needed her.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He blinked. “About what?”

“You know.” She looked down at her toes, then looked up again, her cheeks coloring. “After high school. For telling people you were bad in bed.”

They were talking about sex? He felt his body harden. “And that I was a bad kisser.” As long as they were on the subject…

“That too.” She looked genuinely chagrined. “I only told Jen. She was supposed to keep it a secret.”

He watched her as she shifted from one foot to the other. “Don’t worry about it. I forgive you.” It had been a major pain in his behind at the time, all the guys ribbing him. They hadn’t let him live that down for years. But faced with Luanne practically naked and just a short foot from him in the hallway, he found it surprisingly easy to forgive.

He flashed a teasing smile. “You were just too inexperienced to appreciate what I had to offer. You shouldn’t blame yourself for finding my high school charms overwhelming. Could have happened to anyone.”

He’d been her first. She’d been his second. He’d had no idea what he was doing. He only knew that it was considered bad if it ended in three minutes. So he’d tried his best to make it last for her.

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t think—”

He was
not
going to discuss his single worst sexual failure. He dipped his head and sealed his lips over hers.
 

Need exploded inside him as soon as they touched. Last time, he’d gone slow and gentle—she’d been a virgin—and left her disappointed. This time, he let her have all the heat and passion that had built up inside him since he’d gotten here. He sneaked one hand around her waist and pulled her flush against him, and as she opened her mouth—maybe to say something—he deepened the kiss.

Suddenly, she was clinging to him.

All right, then. He really liked that.

Now that he’d convinced her that he was
not
, in fact, a bad kisser, he would have dearly liked to set her memory straight on a few other things. He wanted her, right then and there, against the wall, with her long legs wrapped around his waist, his erection buried to the hilt inside her. Which wasn’t going to happen, for various reasons. For one, the girls could wake up and come out of their room. And he was dirty from the day’s work.
 

Kissing was it, for the time being. He made sure he did a thorough job of that, paying special attention to that maddening crease in her bottom lip.

Technically, now that she was no longer a suspect, the possibilities were endless. She
was
a person under his protection, but the guidelines there were fuzzier and more lenient.
 

He kissed her again and again, then, as he pulled back, he let himself get lost in her eyes for a moment.

“I love your lips. I love those whiskey-color eyes of yours,” he murmured. “They remind me of my father.”

Her eyebrows shot up, a teasing smile hovering over her lips. “You like kissing me because I remind you of your father? That’s just so wrong.”

Yeah, said that way…
He smiled back. “Once a year, after Christmas dinner, my father would let me drink one sip of his treasured aged whiskey and take one puff of his cigar. You remind me of something special that made me feel like a man, something I was excited about, looked forward to all year.”
 

Her eyes softened. She lifted her lips back to his.

She tasted like mint and smelled like Irish Spring, the soap Aunt Hilda gave them. She felt right in his arms, if on the skinny side. Her boobs really were as perfect as he’d remembered.

His hands were clean enough, he reasoned, and went for second base.

* * *

How could she have been so incredibly, utterly wrong?

Luanne’s head was spinning as she held on to Chase’s shoulders for support. Dear Lord, the man could kiss. He could kiss every coherent thought out of her mind, in fact.

His warm hands cupped her breasts, and her nipples immediately drew into tight buds, poking against his palms.

He shifted her, trapped her between the wall and his great body. He took her like a man who expected full capitulation. Where was sweet, hesitant Chase? Left behind in high school, apparently.

He felt like a man, and he smelled like a man, and he sure as anything kissed like a man. And then some.

All the good-night kisses and necking in cars she’d missed because of the twins, this kiss made up for them within the first minute.

He completely filled her senses and mastered her body, and they still had all their clothes on. She was melting from the inside out.

Chase.

She wanted him to lift her up so she could wrap her legs around him. She couldn’t have cared less that his clothes were dirty. A little dirt never hurt anybody.

She’d never been a sex-crazed teenager. Or a lusty adult. After a full-time job, plus a part-time job, and the twins, she didn’t have the energy. She shouldn’t have had the energy now, after a full day of cleaning. But desire buzzed through her, and she wanted more, desperately.

Of course, they couldn’t. This was crazy. The twins were just a few steps away. They were in Aunt Hilda’s house. Yet she hung on to him until finally he drew back, breathing hard, his dark gaze raking her face.

An amused smile twisted his lips, and he raised an eyebrow, as if asking,
Now, was that terrible?
 

She gathered herself. Cleared her throat. “I’m not going to feed your ego.”

He laughed as he stepped away from her.

Chapter Nine

He shouldn’t have kissed Luanne. At least not until the case was closed and she was safe. But Chase couldn’t regret it.

The following day, as they worked upstairs, he wanted to kiss her again. While she made lunch, he drove another carload of garbage to the dump. He called the captain on his way back.

“I’d like to take some time off.”

“In the middle of a murder investigation?” Bing didn’t sound angry, just caught off guard.

“Maybe Harper could step in. His parents and the employees at the bar have been cleared.” The murder had to be investigated in Broslin. Luanne had to be protected here in Petersburg. Chase couldn’t do both at the same time, and he chose Luanne.

Yeah, he wanted to see the case to the end. He wanted to be the one to snap the handcuffs on. But he didn’t want it to the exclusion of everything else. He didn’t have that kind of relentless drive to always win. Or maybe he defined winning differently. His priority was Luanne. If she and the girls were safe, that was enough of a win for him.

Bing asked, “You sure?”

“Sure.”

“I take it you’ll be staying in Virginia?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. I’ll let Harper know. You better call him and brief him.”

* * *

“I can handle the rest,” Luanne told Chase over the dishes after lunch, mostly because she couldn’t handle being so close to him that their arms brushed together.

Hilda rested in her room while the girls were napping in theirs, not a peep so far.

Sometimes Daisy had fears when she slept and she called for Luanne. She often woke at night and at nap time. As soon as Luanne went in and gave her a kiss, the little girl would go right back to sleep. But Daisy had been sleeping like a log at Aunt Hilda’s place.

What was the difference? And it suddenly occurred to Luanne that maybe Daisy was scared of losing her, of her disappearing like their mother, and then the girls would be all alone. But the extra adults here made her feel safer, more protected.

Chase’s quiet “What is it?” interrupted Luanne’s thoughts, and she realized that she’d stopped washing and gotten lost in her thoughts for a second, dripping water on the floor.

He was searching her face. “Did you remember something?”

She shook her head. “Just thinking about the girls. I don’t want them to be all alone.”

“You’re not all alone,” he said firmly. “Harper’s taking over the case. I’m staying.” He set down the dishcloth he’d used to dry the plates.

She stared at him. “Why?”

“To make sure you’re safe. If I figured out that you came here, so can the killer.”

Her heart thumped. He was right. And beyond herself, she had the girls to worry about too, and Aunt Hilda now. So even though she already owed Chase more than she could ever repay, which made her uncomfortable, she didn’t try to talk him out of his decision. “Thank you.”

He held her gaze for a moment and nodded. “I’m going to clean up the front garden. I don’t want to go back upstairs to work and wake up the girls.”

He didn’t have kids, hadn’t been around kids a lot, as far as she knew, yet he considered Mia and Daisy in everything before acting. Her heart softened. “I’ll come and help when I’m done here.”

The rest of the day went like that, the two of them working together, mostly in companionable silence, like a well-oiled team. When the girls woke, they watched the kiddie shows on PBS in the living room with Aunt Hilda while Luanne and Chase finished up upstairs.

By that night, the bedrooms and the bathroom up there were purged of all piles and old dust. The upstairs looked light and spacious again. The house gleamed.

Chase took them back to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner, spent most of his time playing with the girls. Even Hilda played a few games. She was laughing, downright energized, looking ten years younger than when Luanne had arrived in town with the twins.

Luanne watched them fool around with a smile on her face. She felt happier too, lighter, safer. Being surrounded by two supportive adults was wonderful, the first time in a long time that every decision didn’t fall on her shoulders alone, the first time she had somebody to share the work with.

She liked that. A lot. And she liked having fun as a big family. She liked the way Chase would forget his gaze on her, a sexy half smile on his face as if he was remembering last night’s kiss rather fondly. The evening was perfect in every way.

When they were at the car outside in the parking lot a while later and Daisy remembered that she’d left one of her prizes on her chair, Chase had Mia on his neck, so Luanne ran back to retrieve the plush rabbit.

She hurried into the squat building, passing a man standing by the bushes next to the entrance with his back to her, smoking a cigarette. She walked inside, found the bunny, and hurried back out.

But the man was suddenly right there, next to her, grabbing her arm. Brown hair, brown eyes. Panic slammed into her as the guy flipped her around. Gregory? She didn’t catch enough of a glimpse of him to tell. Cold fear raced through her, freezing her immobile.

She expected… What? A knife in the ribs?

Then adrenaline rushed her, and she finally had the presence of mind to jab back hard with her elbow, but didn’t have time for anything else because the next she knew, Chase was at her back, sending the guy flying. After one thorough, dark look to make sure she was all right, Chase stepped over to the jerk and hauled him up, then secured him by twisting his right arm behind his back, moving quickly and smoothly. The whole time, he used his body to shield most of what was going on from the girls.