Finder's Keeper (20 page)

“No? How about patronize? Condescend.
Disdain
. Like any of those words better?” Chase yanked off more of the sensors with each sharp, percussive word.

Her face felt hot and she realized she was breathing quickly, gripping the edge of the desk with one hand. “You don’t understand.” The arrogance was a defense mechanism. A reaction to the feeling of isolation and alienation she’d felt her entire life.
Every action will have an equal and opposite reaction.
Newton’s Laws in effect in her life.

Chase’s reaction was to launch himself out of the test chair and lean over her, bracing one fist past hers on the desk so their arms crossed like an X. Mia focused on that X. She couldn’t look at his face, so close and angry.

“You know what I understand, sweetheart? I
understand
you don’t have the first fucking clue how lucky you are to have them.”

The reminder of his loss stabbed into her brain like a white-hot poker and Mia felt a rush of shame, matched by an irrational anger—yes, he’d been through hell, but did that give him the right to bitch at her? “I do know—”

“No. You don’t.”

Mia forced herself to look into his eyes and instantly regretted it. She didn’t want to see the icy seriousness in his bright blue eyes because it came with pain. Pain she felt helpless to ease. She wanted to know the right answer, the right thing to say, but her mind was scrubbed blank. Moisture gathered in her eyes, like she’d been staring too long into the sun. “Chase… I…”

“You
don’t
,” he repeated and shoved himself away from her. He was out of the room, the heavy slap of his footsteps retreating down the hall before Mia’s brain jolted back into gear enough to realize he was leaving.

“Chase!”

She tripped over her desk chair in her haste, ricocheting off the far wall as she burst out of the exam room and raced after him down the hall. He hadn’t stopped, but he hadn’t accelerated either.

“Dammit, Chase. I’m sorry.” She caught the muscle of his upper arm with both hands, forcing him to slow. “I didn’t mean—”

She didn’t know exactly what she was going to say. Words were crowding her tongue—of condolence about his family, futile attempts at understanding or chewing him out for shutting her out—but she never got a chance to stammer through them.

He spun fast, catching her unawares, and suddenly she was pinned hard against the wall, the heady warmth of his body holding her there as all ten of his fingers dove into her hair and his mouth crashed down on hers.

Her brain cells melted under the heat, fusing together into one giant, useless blob of gray matter.

The kiss was desperate. Longing. Filled with achy loss and the frantic need to lose himself in her. Mia fell into the emotion of it. Helpless to even consider resistance, she clung to him and kissed him back for all she was worth.

The sensations were electric. His luscious, beachy smell swamped her as his hands held her steady for the demands of his mouth. The brush of stubble against her cheeks was almost as exotically enticing as the taste of him, but it was the needy rush of it that did her in.

For once he wasn’t hiding himself behind layers of fast talk and charm or a barrier of icy distance. He was
here
, overwhelming her, all but inside her, his soul bleeding into hers like osmosis in action. Her blood rushed hard and fast, making her body feel heavy but simultaneously impossibly light. As if her very cells had been excited, agitated to the point where solid matter became steam, the molecules frantic and light enough to float right off the ground. He was the only solid thing left in her dizzy, floating world.

Then he jerked back.

As quickly as it had begun, he put her away from him, staggering to brace himself on the opposite wall. Mia stayed plastered to the wall where he’d left her, her synapses too melted to command movement.

“I’m sorry,” he said without looking at her. He shook his head sharply and said it again. “I’m sorry. I can’t. It won’t happen again.”

“What?” It was the only semi-coherent thing she could think to say, but he didn’t hear it. He was already gone, the door to the lab clicking closed behind him.

Mia sank to the floor and tucked her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them in an attempt to find some warmth in the hallway that suddenly felt arctic. Her fingertips hovered over her lips. What had just happened? And why did she feel so hollow at the thought that it might never happen again?

Chapter Twenty

Groveling for Beginners

Chase stood on the sidewalk in front of the Lathrop Institute for the second time in as many weeks, wondering if he was going to be thrown out on his ass for daring to bring Dr. Mia Corregianni lunch. This time, lunch came with an apology. And strings.

Provided she let him in the door.

He hadn’t exactly been Mr. Smooth last night. He yelled at her, bailed on her, practically mauled her in the hallway, then freaked out because it was all too much, too fast, and ran like hell. Not exactly his finest hour.

He hadn’t slept. Chase tended to avoid self-analysis whenever possible, and after tossing and turning until three, he’d woken up, grabbed his board and headed to the beach. It was too ass-bitingly cold to surf—even feeling his most masochistic—so he’d sat down to let the icy sand freeze his butt as the black waves smashed against each other, creating frothy white tips.

Unlike most nights, his troubles hadn’t left him at the shore. The truth had followed him there. The unflattering truth that he’d pursued Mia for their fake relationship because he hadn’t thought either of them would really be caught by it. The fake relationship had seemed safe, and she had seemed safely emotionless. Almost robotic.

But she wasn’t an automaton. She was real, and suddenly their relationship was too real. He’d shown her pieces of himself he hadn’t let any other woman see and even though telling her about his past had freaked him the fuck out, he still liked her. He liked the way she tried to pierce through his evasions and wouldn’t just get swallowed in his usual bullshit. He liked the way her family had wrapped around him and even liked the fact that she was so prickly and uneasy with them because it gave him a job to do, smoothing her way with them. But mostly he just liked her, the way she made him feel when he was with her. She woke him up and made him want to tackle every challenge she threw at him, like he hadn’t in years.

Last night he’d liked her too much. Needed her too much. Wanted her so damn badly he’d been mindless with it.

And it had scared the shit out of him.

This morning, as the sun had begun to paint the waves, his shame over running out on Mia had been matched by a new shame. He’d treaded water for six years. Too chicken shit after being rolled by a bitch of a wave to try the next set. He’d dropped out, dropped back and waited.

His parents, his brother, Katie. They’d be so disappointed in him.

He needed to get back in there. Give life another chance to roll him hard and smash him against the coral because if he didn’t, he might as well have died with them.

He couldn’t do it without Mia. She was his catalyst. And she was probably justifiably pissed at him.

So here he stood, hat—and Chinese food—in hand, ready to implement Project Grovel. If he hadn’t been barred from the building.

Fifteen minutes later, Nasrin opened the door to the lab for him and blocked the entry, giving him a look that would have been friendlier if she’d caught him shooting puppies.

“What do you want?”

He lifted the take-out bag and smiled winningly. “I come bearing egg rolls. There’s enough here for you and Stephanie too.”

The bag smelled like the waiting room to heaven, but she didn’t budge. “Dr. C’s been distracted all day. I don’t suppose you have anything to do with that?”

“Isn’t she always distracted?”

“Distracted
by
her work, not
from
her work,” Nasrin explained, like he was one step above Cro-Magnon man on the evolutionary scale and it was barely worth her time to clarify. “And
not
in the dopey good way she was distracted last Thursday.”

Chase couldn’t help his grin. They’d gone out last Thursday night. “She was distracted in a dopey good way?”

Nasrin folded her arms, amping up her death glare until it almost reached Mia’s level of proficiency. “We know you were coming over after hours yesterday and this morning she’s upset. What did you do?”

Chase lost the grin and met her eyes squarely. “No offense, Nasrin, but that’s between Mia and me. But I will tell you that I’m bringing both fortune cookies and apologies, neither of which I can deliver if you don’t let me in.”

“I’m letting you in,” Nasrin informed him, still without budging, “but we love Dr. C and if you hurt her, I think it’s only fair to warn you that we have access to all kinds of nasty flesh-eating chemicals and no moral compunction against using them to pickle your gonads.”

Chase winced. “Duly noted.”

Nasrin swung the door open all the way. “She’s in her office.”

Chase made his way through the cubicles toward Mia’s office, feeling equal parts amused and intimidated when Stephanie looked up from her computer and cracked her knuckles as he passed. Then Mia was calling out an absent, “Come in” and he forgot all about her assistants as nervousness choked him. He hadn’t been this worried about talking to a girl since he was thirteen.

Mia looked up from her computer almost instantly when he entered, surprising him with the fact that he didn’t have to pry her away from it. Her gaze grew wary when she saw him hovering in her doorway.

“Chase. What can I do for you?” she asked, cautious and reserved.

“You can have lunch with me for a start. I’m sorry about last night. About the last few days. I’ve been…off.”

Her dark eyebrows arched. “But you’re better now?”

“I could be. I have a…proposition for you.”

He’d planned to ease her into it, bring it up after he’d fed her when she might be feeling more charitable thanks to the quasi-orgasmic Mongolian Beef, but he couldn’t stand to wait.

Mia looked down at her desk. “I don’t know, Chase. Our last proposition is getting complicated enough.”

“I’m hoping this will simplify things.” He cleared his throat. “I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me. On a real date. One that isn’t about showing off for my friends or your family. Just you and me. Us. To see where this goes. If you want.”
Very eloquent, Chase. Show her that trademark charm.

Mia frowned. “But last night…”

“I freaked out,” he admitted. “And I’m not gonna say I won’t ever freak again because I might, but I only freaked out because I really like you, Mia.”

Her frown grew more ferocious even as color rose to her cheeks. “You like me,” she repeated, as if confirming the unexpected results of an experiment.

“I do. And you like me too,” he said, trying for his stand-by cockiness.

She rewarded him with a flicker of a smile before her fierce frown returned. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

She glowered at him, tense and rigid and repressive. Miss Prim in full effect. “Yes, I will go out with you. When?”

“Tonight? About seven?”

“Fine.” She puckered her lips.

Chase couldn’t resist. He leaned across her desk and dropped a kiss on them. It was quick, a sneak attack, and when he drew back she blinked and frowned at him again.

“What was that for?”

He grinned. “I’m going to teach you to be impulsive. I’m going to make that cool, scientific heart of yours race.”

And in the process he was going to remember what a racing heart felt like himself.

Her eyes narrowed. “That sounds like a threat.”

“That’s a promise.”

“So who’s this Peter guy?”

Chase timed his question during her backswing, but Mia didn’t flinch. She thunked her putter against the fluorescent green golf ball with the perfect amount of force at the perfect trajectory to send it up the ramp, through the windmill, and around the spiral down to the hole, thwacking against Chase’s real-men-choose-pink golf ball and sending it rolling farther from the hole.

“You tried to distract me,” she accused, inordinately smug that he’d failed.

“I suppose I should have warned you,” he said without remorse. “I cheat.”

“Isn’t the purpose of cheating to win?” She was kicking his butt. Three strokes ahead after only four and a half holes.

“I’m lulling you into a false sense of superiority.” He approached his ball and gave it a tap. The hot pink ball dribbled slowly toward the hole, only to stop two inches short. “Do you feel lulled?”

Mia snorted. “Extremely.” She sank her ball with one perfectly executed stroke.

Chase sank his, then bent to fetch them both and led the way to the sixth hole. “If I’d known you were going to be so smug about being a putt-putt savant, I would have tried First Date Plan B.”

“Which was?”

“Bowling.”

Mia glanced down at the pencil skirt and heels her assistants had picked out for her romantic dinner date. “Those were the choices? Mini-golf and bowling? I should have dressed for gym class. And for the record, I hated gym class.”

“You’re having fun. Admit it.”

Mia adjusted her glasses to give herself a chance to smother her smile. She
was
having fun. More than she could remember ever having on a date. She’d half expected things to be awkward, especially after the strangeness between them recently, but easy, too-charming-to-live Chase was back in full force. Though there was something different tonight. The charm didn’t seem like a façade. He was still playful, but there was a newfound sincerity to him now.

“Besides,” he went on as she placed her ball on the sixth tee, “I figured mini-golf and bowling would be right up your alley. All velocities and angles and friction and drag. It was the most scientific pastime I could think of.”

She lined up her shot and drew back her putter.

“Besides sex, of course.”

She froze with her club drawn back. Her face flaming, she shot him a quelling look.