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So, not ready for a kiss, Chase thought, and decided to change tactics. “Hey, I want you to meet a couple of people. They slipped in during the second course, and I don’t think you’ve had the opportunity to speak with them.”
Stepping away from the other dancers, he took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his elbow. He scanned the room and found the Sargeants just turning from the bar, each of them with a glass of ruby wine. With a smile, he drew her in their direction.
“Arch.” He moved from Ashley to give his old friend a back-thumping half hug. “June, beautiful as ever.” She got a kiss on the cheek.
“We’re so sorry we were late,” June said, her curious glance sliding to Ashley and then back to his face.
“She had to go back to her parents’ house twice in order to say more goodbyes to the twins,” Arch said.
His wife bumped her elbow against his ribs. “If I recall correctly, it was you who needed to make sure that my dad knew how to install the car seats in his SUV.”
Grinning, Arch rubbed his side. “We’re disgustingly besotted with our offspring,” he confessed, his eyes bright with good humor and fixed on Ashley’s face. “I’m Arch Sargeant,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Ashley Walker. And anything I can do to make your stay more pleasant, please let me know.”
His friend’s wife looked ready to burst with curiosity. “I’m June.” Her glance shifted to Chase. “So...I thought Brianna was going to be here. Glad to see she isn’t.”
Arch groaned. “So much for subtle, sweetheart.”
“Brianna had to leave unexpectedly,” Ashley put in smoothly. “Chase hired me to take over as hostess.”
“Hired you?” Her eyebrows climbed high on her forehead, and her gaze darted between Chase and Ashley.
“I work for a local florist,” Ashley explained. “And I happened to be at the right place at the right time—meaning here at the house—when Chase found a need for someone to help out.”
“Found a need,” Arch echoed.
At the smirk in his voice, Chase sent him a quelling look. “Ashley, Arch is my former college roommate. And June—”
“Has this sudden need for some girl talk.”
Ashley looked alarmed. “Oh, I—”
“Actually, I need help pinning a strap,” June said, plucking at the silk of her slinky red dress. Her smile beamed wide and guileless. “You’ll help, won’t you?”
And with that, Chase saw his hostess head off into the metaphorical sunset with his best friend’s wife. Frowning, he glanced over at Arch. “I don’t want her scaring Ashley away.”
“She’ll just pump her for all her personal information,” Arch said in a cheery tone.
Chase groaned. “That’s what I mean.”
“What else do you mean?” his friend asked. “Brianna takes off and an hour later you’ve got Ashley moved in?”
In less than an hour, Chase thought. “Just for the week,” he assured himself and his best buddy. He shrugged one shoulder. “I saw her and it...it seemed like a simple solution.”
Arch was gazing at him.
“What’s with the pitying expression?” Chase demanded.
“Nothing’s simple when it comes to women, you should know that.”
“Hell,” Chase said. “Don’t go there, please? Sure, she’s pretty and all.” Beautiful. “But I asked her because I needed the assistance.”
Not true. What he needed was that midnight kiss he was planning, just to satisfy his curiosity and so he could neutralize this odd fascination she held for him. Once that was out of the way, he could devote his attention to the important business of the rest of the week.
He managed to get Arch onto other topics and then included some others in their light conversation as the musician continued to play. It was when the servers began circulating with trays of crystal flutes filled with liquid bubbles that Chase realized midnight was nearly upon them. June was standing near her husband, her arm around his waist as they swayed to the music.
Ashley was nowhere in sight.
As the countdown began, he was torn. Leave his guests or seek out his hostess? It would be better to stick with the crowd, he decided, ignoring a spurt of disappointment. Foolish to feel it, especially when the last time he’d been so eager for a New Year’s kiss he’d been thirteen years old. At Tammy Martin’s house, he remembered. Her parents were out for the evening and she’d been babysitting her little brother and sister.
“Ten,” the people on the dance floor chanted, arranging themselves in a circle.
Ridiculous to want to look into Ashley’s upturned face as the clock struck twelve.
“Nine.”
No, it wasn’t imperative that he dive his fingers into her flowing hair.
“Eight.”
Would her breath hitch as his mouth neared?
“Seven.”
He’d trace his nose across her warm cheek, drawing in her crushed-petal scent.
The voices of the people surrounding him rose. “Six.”
Shoving his hands into his pockets, he rooted his feet to the ground, even though his gaze wandered, looking for any sign of her.
“Five.”
He recalled Tammy’s kiss—his first—and hadn’t that changed his life? A boy taking his first step to becoming a man.
“Four.”
Move, his gut piped up. Find out where Ashley’s been all our life.
On the crowd’s roar of “three,” he bolted from the great hall.
At “two” he saw movement in the library at the end of the passage.
“One” sounded in the distance when he breached the doorway. Ashley, who had been standing contemplating the small fire burning in the grate, whirled. The notes of “Auld Lang Syne” drifted into the room, wrapping around them like ribbons, he thought, then instantly shoved away the fancy.
Still, her big eyes and her tense posture drew him forward. Her fingers clutched the lace overlaying her skirt. Chase hauled in a slow breath as he came to a halt before her. “You’re missing midnight,” he said softly as if his voice might spook her.
She smiled a little. “The clock ticks on without me.”
It seemed to come to a standstill to Chase as he stared down at her upturned face, her sooty lashes a perfect frame for her expressive eyes. There was wariness in them.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” he whispered.
Her gaze slid to the side. “Of course not,” she scoffed.
“Or shy.”
Her gaze flicked back to his for a moment. “I’m not.”
Only with him, he thought, and for some reason he liked the idea of that.
The last notes of the song died out. The guests’ voices stopped singing and they went back to chatting. In the background, the pianist continued playing the traditional song, embellishing the original melody. Chase stepped closer to Ashley and cupped her bare shoulders in his hands. “Happy New Year,” he said, and, bending his head, placed his lips on hers.
She tasted like champagne and roses. But it wasn’t that which got him. It was the tremble that racked her frame. Something moved in his belly, lust and another emotion that reached up to clutch his heart like a fist. His tongue touched her bottom lip, and even as she trembled again, she opened her mouth. He took a tender foray inside, not pressing but trying to please instead.
When her hand came up to wrap around his wrist as if she had to hang on for dear life, it was Chase who shuddered. Sweet, he thought. So damn heady and sweet.
Because he was desperate, suddenly, to move closer, he drew back. She stared at him with those big eyes, her mouth still damp from his. That fist around his heart tightened.
His curiosity was not sated, Chase knew. His fascination with her not put to rest. It would take more than a kiss to do that. Much more.
Chase Bradley wanted Ashley Walker in his bed.
CHAPTER THREE
WALKERS WERE NOT COWARDS, Ashley reminded herself, sitting in the back of a limo that was taking her from the florist to her own small house. She’d dropped the van in the parking lot behind the business. Now, once again in her New Year’s Eve dress but sans the stockings, she was headed home to pack a bag for her week at the Bradley estate.
She could do this, she assured herself again, despite that midnight kiss.
Her gaze slid toward the man sprawled on the seat beside hers. “You didn’t need to escort me, you know,” she said.
He’d been looking out the window and now turned his head. “Maybe I was afraid you’d change your mind.”
“We made a deal.”
“Right.” He crossed his legs at the ankle. Today he wore a pair of black boots, black jeans and a cashmere sweater the same gray as his eyes. At least she thought it was cashmere. She’d have to touch it to be positive about that, and she sure as heck wasn’t going to be reaching out and fondling him anytime soon.
Last night she’d squeezed his hard arm as he’d taken her mouth in the softest, yet most carnal kiss she could imagine. Her toes curled just thinking about it, and she quivered.
Chase’s hand went to the climate controls. “Cold? I’ll edge up the heat.”
Exactly what he’d done the night before. Edged up the heat.
But she said nothing as warmer air blew through the vents. “Over there.” She leaned forward to speak to the driver. A driver! “The bungalow with the wreath on the door.”
The man pulled into the rutted driveway alongside her little house. She didn’t have a garage, but the one-bedroom was spacious, and she didn’t cringe too much when Chase followed her inside. Sure, it wasn’t a fancy home like he was used to, but it was hers.
He looked around as he stood in the tiny foyer, taking in the living room that opened to the updated kitchen. “I like this,” he said, and walked toward her fireplace, his gaze trained on the photos sitting on the mantel. None of Stu or of Stu and her. She’d put those away years ago in a fit of self-preservation. These were black-and-whites of the Walker ancestors, posing with shotguns, wearing low-slung hats and the wooden expressions typical of the times.
“They seem nice,” Chase commented, glancing over his shoulder with a small smile.
Even that quick flash of white teeth made her knees soft. She slipped out of her shoes to pad toward her bedroom at the back of the house. “The Walkers came to the mountains a hundred and fifty years ago, traveling up the hill with oxen and wills of iron.”
Behind her bedroom door, she quickly slipped out of her dress and hung it in her closet. In seconds she was in jeans, a sweater and a pair of suede boots. Chase’s mother had taken her themes for the house party from the designated “holidays” of the month. Besides being New Year’s Day, Ashley had been told, January 1 was “Daydreamer’s Day.” Before they’d left the Bradley estate that morning, Chase had led her to a room on the third floor, an immense space she hadn’t been instructed to fill with flowers. Instead, table after table held buckets of plastic bricks, wooden blocks and hundreds of pieces of railroad systems, including houses, trees, people and locomotives. The plan was to encourage the guests to “play” to their heart’s content by creating worlds from their imaginations.
As Ashley gathered clothes and toiletries in stacks on her bed, she smiled at the idea of it. Where one would find all those toys for a temporary period she didn’t know, but she knew she’d enjoy experimenting with them. Wasn’t that what she did with flowers every day? Creating things from the pictures in her head was a delightful way, she’d found, to make a living.
And to escape.
She ventured back to the kitchen and the utility closet there. “I won’t be much longer,” she called to Chase. “Just have to get my suitcase and fill it.”
He strolled into the room, distracting her. How could he look so good? A quarter-inch of the ribbed neckline of a blinding white T-shirt showed at his throat. The sleeves of his sweater were pushed up to expose powerful forearms she didn’t think he’d achieved by merely working a calculator on a daily basis. His attention was on the framed photo in his hand.
She stared at him, noting the bristle of whiskers on his jaw. He hadn’t shaved that morning. If he kissed her now, the small, scratchy hairs would leave a telltale trail of reddened skin in their wake. Then she’d be able to see proof of the meeting of their lips. When she’d been in her assigned bedroom the night before, she’d studied herself in the mirror.
There’d been no overt sign of the first kiss she’d experienced in more than four years. But she’d touched her mouth with her fingertips, aware her lips felt puffy and oversensitized. Thinking of that, it had taken her a long time to fall asleep in the nightshirt that Chase had unearthed from somewhere. His sister’s, he’d said of the utilitarian flannel. Thank goodness it hadn’t been something silky or sheer she’d have to assume was left behind by an old girlfriend.
He looked up now and almost caught her staring. She let her gaze drop to the frame he held and she drifted closer to glance at it. “Uncle Handlebar,” she said. “Aunt Clunky Shoes.”
“Not their real names, I take it,” he said, grinning.
“Mustache,” she said. “Clunky Shoes is obvious.”
“They’re really part of your family?”
“Oh, yeah. We go way back at Blue Arrow Lake. Came early, have scrambled for years to keep our toeholds in the mountains.”
“Something we have in common,” Chase said. “You have a family history in a place. I have a family history in a business.”
“Oh?”
“Bradley Financial was established by my great-grandfather.” He narrowed his eyes as if thinking. “Based on photos I’ve seen, I think we can call him Grandpa Potbelly.”
“A fan of beer?” she guessed.
“No idea. More likely he enjoyed whiskey and cigars. But he definitely had the expansive midsection.”
Ashley couldn’t help but take a quick glance at Chase’s lean hips and flat abs. “You’re not carrying on the family tradition.”
His slow smile appeared gratified. “Not in that particular way, I hope.”
With a quick turn, Ashley directed herself away from him and his ever-so-attractive features. “Did you feel pressure to take that on?” she asked, pulling open the pantry door. “Your position in the company, I mean.”
“No.” She could feel him coming up behind her. “I have a head for numbers. I like the game of finance.”
Frowning, she glanced at him. “Surely it’s not a game. In your business I’d think you have to take it all quite seriously. Be levelheaded at every moment. Ponder all the possibilities before making your decisions.”
“Whatever you say,” he murmured. “Here, let me get that.”
On tiptoe, she was reaching for the suitcase hanging from a heavy utility hook overhead. “No, I can...”
But he was already crowding her farther into the corner closet, his chest brushing her back. As she turned to protest again, he shoved the picture frame into her hand and stretched to lift the piece of luggage down. “Where should I take this?” he asked.
He was so close she could smell his skin, his toothpaste, a hint of laundry detergent. The T-shirt, she figured, because the cashmere sweater was too refined to have any kind of odor at all. With the photograph against her breasts like a shield, she just gaped up at him. The quarters were too close...but deliciously so.
Chase’s eyes heated. “Ashley...”
The note of desire in his voice snapped her out of her trance. “I’ll take it to my room,” she said. “The suitcase.”
“I’ll carry it.” He strode across the kitchen with her following behind. “This way, right?”
“Mmm,” she said, distracted again by the wide pair of shoulders that made the narrow hall that much more constricted. Come to think of it, no man had ever been in the passage leading to her bedroom. She’d had Jackson and Suze and a few others over for dinner sometimes, but no male had gotten so close to her inner sanctum. She’d moved to this house after Stu’s accident. The room Chase just stepped into had always been her private place.
Her retreat.
It would never be the same, she thought with a sudden clutch to her stomach, now that he’d brought his tall and broad presence into her feminine space. Feigning calm, she gestured toward the bed. “You can set it there. Then maybe you can go, um, wait in the living room. I’ll bring it out when I’m done packing.”
His brows came together. “I’ll wait here. Take it for you once you’re finished.”
No one had ever carried her luggage for her, she realized. Well, maybe her dad when she was a little girl. But Stu hadn’t. He’d considered her perfectly capable of carting things around, whether it was when she was hauling in groceries or lugging her snowboarding gear about. “I’m not a weakling,” she told Chase now, thinking of how he’d grabbed the flower arrangement from her yesterday afternoon.
“It’s not a question of muscles, Xena.”
She shook her head at the reference to the warrior princess.
“I don’t mind doing things for you,” he continued. “I like doing things for you.”
What to say to that? Ashley didn’t try to come up with anything. Instead, she wished she hadn’t spent the past four years home alone nearly every night. If she’d gone on a date or two, maybe she’d be able to handle Chase’s smoothness, his charm, his sophistication with a bit more aplomb. As it was, he just bowled her over in every way.
Or maybe no experience could provide her with the skills to manage the way this man made her feel.
“Ashley,” he said now, his voice quiet. “Will you look at me?”
See? Even now he overcame her reluctance. Though she didn’t want to, she found herself turning to face him. “What?”
“You don’t have to come back to the estate,” he said. “If you don’t want to go through with our deal, I won’t hold it against you.”
But it would go against her resolution! She couldn’t say no to the first thing that came along during her year of yes, right? Walkers weren’t cowards. “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m fine. I’m not afraid or anything. A deal’s a deal. Walkers don’t renege.”
Her face heated. She was babbling, right? He had to realize she was babbling.
His eyes were doing that binocular/dual microscope thing again, giving her the feeling he was watching every doubt flash through her brain, every desire cross her heart. “Ashley?” he said, his voice so soft it was almost tender. “Should we talk about last night’s kiss?”
She jolted, the backs of her knees hitting the end of the bed. “Oh, no. Not necessary. Not at all. New Year’s. Just a midnight kiss.” Then she whirled to toss her clothes into the case.
Her palms were sweating and her heart was hammering, as they used to do when she was poised at the top of a black diamond run. It was then Ashley realized that though the Walkers might be brave, it didn’t mitigate the bad feeling she had that all the courage in the world wouldn’t keep her free from danger.
* * *
CHASE DESCENDED ON the breakfast buffet the next morning in a cheerful mood. His guests had enjoyed themselves the day before, settling in and then venturing to the third floor to check out the goings-on in the playroom. Even the most reserved of them had ended up devising elaborate communities from the bricks, blocks and railroad parts. A contemporary of his father’s, Declan Hart, had talked another man into a joint development, and Chase couldn’t help but laugh when they decided to charge a fee to anyone wanting access to the amusement park they’d built.
The fourteen dollars that had been collected was promised to charity, but Chase wouldn’t be surprised if Declan didn’t consider his pocket a legitimate 501(c)(3).
Ashley had seemed to have a good time, too. She’d constructed a fantastical skyscraper upon which butterflies built of plastic blocks had decided to roost. It reminded him of her flower arrangements: colorful, eye-pleasing and worth a second look.
As was she, of course. He hadn’t dropped his intention of getting her into bed.
But yesterday he’d left her mostly alone, allowing her a chance to catch her breath. He’d known she was nervous after their New Year’s kiss, so his strategy was to back off. Just a little.
His conscience wasn’t bothered in the least by making this play. At her house, he’d given her ample opportunity to back out of the hostess deal. She could even have lied and expressed distaste of his kiss. He wouldn’t have pushed any further then.
But he remembered her taste and her trembling body at midnight. And he’d watched her pack her bag and come with him anyway. This attraction wasn’t one-sided.
As if to underscore that fact, when he entered the dining room, his gaze went directly to her, standing by the sideboard. Her eyes hit his, too, and he saw her twitch at the same time that becoming color flushed her face. She was dressed in tight dark jeans and brown boots. A long, oatmeal-colored thin-knit sweater covered her torso, but when she turned back to continue filling her plate, he saw that the loose garment buttoned up the back. It was half sliding off one shoulder, revealing more creamy skin and parts of a skinny-strapped tank top.
“Good morning,” he said, strolling up to her side. As yet, they were the only two in the room.
“Morning.” She kept her head down as she scooped up Mrs. Erwin’s famous egg-and-potato scramble.
“Again, great job last night. Thanks for getting the washer and dryer going when Lynn wanted to take care of that spill on her corduroys.”
“No problem.” As she sidestepped to get to the next chafing tray, the ends of her hair swept across her shoulder blades and he wondered what they would feel like tickling his naked chest.
Then he wished he hadn’t wondered, because the idea of nakedness and him and her was leading to other thoughts. Before breakfast. When they were in the dining room and both fully clothed.
Damn, but she got to him.
He cleared his throat. “Still, I didn’t expect you to take on laundress duties.”
She peeked at him through her thick lashes. Her eyes were still that winter-water blue. “No problem.”
“So accommodating,” he murmured, and smiled at her with a wiggle of his brows.
A dimple poked a little dent in her cheek. Triumph! he thought. His small foray into flirtation didn’t immediately turn her shy.
“What’s the agenda for today?” she asked.
He followed her to the table, where he placed his plate beside hers. Then he reached for the nearby carafe and poured her a cup of coffee. “Did you know it’s National Science Fiction Day?”
There was that dimple again. “I had no idea.”
Seated, she unfolded her napkin and spread it across her lap. He liked how she moved, precise and controlled. The man in him wanted to destroy that precision, wreak havoc on that control. If he brushed aside her hair and nuzzled her neck, would she drop her fork? Would he taste the heat on her skin?
“...Chase?”
Taking the chair beside hers, he forced his mind away from fantasy. Take it easy, Bradley. You’ve got hours before you can get her alone to do what you’ve been dreaming of. “Sorry. Say again?”
“What are we doing on National Science Fiction Day?”
Lifting his coffee, he blew across the top, hoping it would cool him down some, too. “Not that much, really. The library has been raided for all the Ray Bradburys and Ursula K. Le Guins, etcetera. They’re upstairs, along with an easel and an oversize pad of paper. For those to whom inspiration strikes, we’re to try our own fiction story, one sentence at a time.”
“How?” She frowned, putting a crease between her brows.
He rubbed at the little line with his forefinger, and a jolt transferred from her flesh to his and back again. When she gasped, he just said, “Yeah,” and dropped his hand.
“Chase...”
His steady gaze met her anxious one. “Yeah,” he repeated with a little more force. “I felt it, too.”
When she shifted her glance to her plate, he continued on as if the moment hadn’t happened. “To answer your question,” he said, “one person writes a sentence, then a second person picks up the pen. I think there’s a rule that there must be three additional sentences before the first author can write another, but I’m not going to count.”