Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (42 page)

“’Never fix something when you have the
knowledge and wherewithal to build something new,’” Chace recited.
 
He took a bottle of water out of her
hand and unscrewed the top.
 
“I just
came up with that right now.”
 
He
tilted his head, thinking about it.
 
“But feel free to use it in one of your books.
 
I won’t be mad.”

“How generous of you,” Lindsay said, rolling
her eyes and wondering how much a whole new fence was going to cost. The
closing costs and down payment for this house had pretty much wiped out her
savings.
 
Her plan had been to do
the repairs and renovations little by little.
 
But a fence seemed like a big purchase
to be making right off the bat.

“How much does a new fence cost?” she asked.

He took his time answering, taking a long sip of
water from the bottle. The leather jacket had been tossed over one of the fence
posts, and sweat clung to his thin white t-shirt.
 
Every muscle, every line of his chest
was outlined.

A second later, Chace grabbed the bottom of his
shirt and pulled it off.
 
He rolled
it into a ball, then used it to mop his forehead.

Lindsay looked away, embarrassed.
 
But not before she got an eyeful of
shirtless man.
 
His biceps were cut
and defined, his chest smooth and tan with just the right amount of hair.
 
A six pack completed the package, and
she started to feel slightly dizzy.“So?” she asked, “how much is this going to
cost?”

“Why?
 
You worried about money?”

“No,” she lied.
 
“Just wondering how much it’s going to
cost.”

He cocked his head, thought about it.
 
She forced herself to keep her eyes on
his face, to not let her gaze slide down his body.
 
The cool air was doing nothing to keep
her body temperature down, and she hoped her cheeks weren’t red.

“I’m sure we can work out something out,” he
said.
 
He took a step closer to
her.
 
“A payment plan, a barter
system, something.”

“A barter system?”

He moved closer still, until he was so close
she could see the tiny scar he had on his chin.
 

“Your hair,” he said.
 
“It’s different.”
 
He reached up and touched her
ponytail.
 

The gesture was so intimate, so soft, that her
breath caught.
 
“Yeah,” she
said.
 
“I put it up.”

“I like it down.”
 
Before she knew what was happening, he’d
loosened her ponytail, letting her hair spill down around her shoulders.
 
His hands brushed out the strands, his
fingers running through the tangles.
 
There was a hunger in his eyes, lust mixed with something else.
 
Something dark.

“Chace,” she whispered.
 
She was screwing up the courage to ask
him what had happened last year, why he’d disappeared like that, why he’d
kissed her last night if he wanted nothing to do with her that way she’d been
telling herself.

But something in her tone must have alerted him
to the fact that she was about to ask a question he didn’t want to deal
with.
 
And so he stepped away from
her.

“I’ll be working for a couple more hours,” he
said, “and then I’ll start again tomorrow.”
 
He turned his back to her, began
loosening another fence post.

She watched him work for a moment, swallowing
her disappointment and hoping he would turn around again.
 
But he didn’t.

 
“That sounds fine,” she said finally.
 

And then she walked back to the house.

***

By the time Chace was done clearing one side of
the old, broken down fence, he had just enough time to shower before it was
time to head to work at his restaurant.
 

He tossed his t-shirt over his shoulder and
headed for home.
 
The physical labor
had given his body something to focus on, but now that he was slowing down, he
couldn’t stop thinking about Lindsay.
 
The way her curves had felt under his hands last night, how soft her
hair had been in his fingers as he undid her ponytail.

He knew she was confused by what he was
doing.
 
Hell, it confused him,
too.
 
But when he’d woken up this
morning, he needed to see her.

The girl from last night had been a
mistake.
 
He hadn’t been able to
concentrate on what he was doing, hadn’t even been excited by the fact that she
was in his bed.
 
They’d made out a
little before just falling asleep.
 
The whole time he’d been with Michelle, all he could think about was
seeing Lindsay.
 
And the fence had
been as convenient an excuse as any.

He stripped for the shower, doing his best to
ignore his erection, cursing his stupidity for bringing that girl home with him
last night.
 
If it hadn’t been for
her, he would have had Lindsay last night, right there on her kitchen
table.
 
The thought got him going again,
his cock hardening even more.
 
He
turned the shower spray to cold.

It had been an error in judgment, him going
over there today.
 
All it did was
serve to confuse her, and to get him all worked up.
 
He would never be able to get close to
her again without explaining what had happened last year, and that’s something
he wasn’t going to talk about.
 
Ever.

He would finish the fence – he owed her
that much -- and then he would stay far, far away from her.
 
No matter how hard it was.

This settled, he turned off the shower, then
dressed and got ready to head into town.

***

The thing Chace hated the most about going into
town was the stares.
 
He hated the
way people looked at him, hated the way they would give him sympathetic smiles
before turning away because they didn’t know what to say.
 
He didn’t want their pity, or their
questions about how he was doing, or their home-baked casseroles that they’d
force into his hands or leave on his doorstep.

What he wanted was their business.
 
And at first, they’d come.
 
They’d come to the restaurant because of
his dad, and because it was the only place in town.
 
But over the past few months, business
had started to dry up.
 
Chace knew
nothing about running a restaurant, knew nothing about ordering food or managing
staff or tailoring a menu.

It had been a disaster pretty much from the
beginning, and at one point, Bo had taken him aside and asked Chace if it might
not be better to sell the place.
 
That was the first and only time in their fifteen-year friendship that Chace
had thought he actually might hit Bo.
 
The intervention had been one thing, but to insinuate Chace should give
up The Trib was another thing all together.

The Trib had been his father’s life.
 
And after what Chace had done, he didn’t
care if he needed to mortgage his house or work here twenty-four hours a day, seven
days a week.
 
He was going to make
the restaurant a success.

“Hey, man,” Chace said to the cook, Chuck, as
he walked into the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

“Same old,” Chuck said.
 
He was wiping down the grill, getting
ready for what would hopefully be a busy lunch session.

“Where’s Dolores?” Chace asked.
 

Dolores was the lunch waitress, a woman in her
sixties with bleached blonde hair and a horrible attitude.
 
Dolores been loyal to Chace’s father,
had worked there since before Chace had even been born, a fact she liked to
throw in his face any chance she could get.

Chuck shrugged.
 
“Dunno.
 
She’s not here yet.”

Chace glanced at the clock.
 
It was ten o’clock, an hour until
lunch.
 
Dolores would need that time
to set the tables, wipe down the menus, and make sure the salt and pepper
shakers were filled.
 

Technically all those things were supposed to
be taken care of at night, but the night waitress, a bratty eighteen-year-old
named Marcela, had begged off early last night.
 
She said it was because she had studying
to do, but Chace had seen her later outside Bo’s bar, dressed in a short dress
and heels so high she could hardly walk, getting into Garrett McGillicutty’s
truck.
 
So unless her schoolwork had
to do with blow jobs, she’d been lying.

Chace sighed and got to work filling the salt
and pepper shakers himself.
 
He’d
gotten through most of the big tables and was just about to start on the booths
when Chuck poked his head out of the kitchen.

“Hey, boss,” he said.
 
“You got a phone call.”

“Who is it?”

“Some lady.”

Well, that narrowed it down.
 
It was probably the produce vendor,
expecting payment.
 
He followed
Chuck back into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

“Hello?” he barked.
 
Being rude to vendors probably wasn’t a
good idea, but Chace was cranky.
 
Dolores still wasn’t here and he needed to get back out to the dining
room.

“Hello?” the woman on the other end of the line
said.
 
“Hello, yes, is this the
person in charge of The Tributary restaurant?”

“Supposedly.”

“Oh, wonderful!” the caller said, obviously not
getting the sarcasm.
 
“My name is
Martha Miller, and I am wondering if you would be willing to host the luncheon
for The Boston Ladies for the Preservation of Cape Cod today at one o’clock.”

“We don’t take reservations,” Chace said.
 

“Yes, I see that right here on your website,”
Martha said, her tone clipped.
 
“But
we have a party of fifty, and I wanted to make sure that would be okay.
 
We’ve just decided to add a once a month
luncheon to our roster of activities.”

Now she had his attention.
 
A monthly luncheon of fifty people would
add a lot to their bottom line.
 
And
maybe word would get around that The Trib was the place to be for… what did she
say they were?
 
The Ladies for the
Preservation of something?
 
Being
the hot spot for conservation groups wasn’t something that necessarily appealed
to him, but maybe people would see that the parking lot was full again and
infer that The Trib was being restored to its former glory.

“That should be fine,” he said.
 
“I can give you my email address if
you’d like to pick your entrees beforehand and send me your selections.”

“That would be lovely!” Martha exclaimed.
 
“We had another restaurant all lined up,
but at the last minute we found out they didn’t offer any gluten free
options.
 
You offer some wonderful
gluten free options, I see here on your menu.”

“Yes,”
 
Chace said.
 
“I had.. I have…
my stepmother doesn’t eat gluten, so we wanted to make sure there were things here
she could eat.”
 
Saying the words
out loud made his throat close, but he hid the emotion down where all the other
emotions about his family resided --
 
in some dark, poisonous box deep in his
soul.

“Gluten is a real nasty character,” Martha
said, as if it were a live being, instead of just a food protein.
 
“I look forward to seeing you at
one.
 
Now, let me write down your
email address, Mr….”

“Davenport.
 
Chace Davenport.”

“Chace Davenport,” she mumbled.
 
“You wouldn’t be any relation to Cole
Davenport, would you?”

“He’s my father,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t
press further.
 
Out of the corner of
his eye, he could see Chuck watching him.

“Oh!” Martha exclaimed.
 
“How wonderful!
 
I knew your father at Yale!”

“Yes,” Chace said.
 
“Yes, he was at Yale.”
 
He wasn’t surprised that she remembered
his father.
 
That’s how Cole
Davenport had been – even if you’d had only a slight interaction with
him, no matter how long ago, you remembered.
 
His father could work a room like nobody
else.
 
“Now if you want to grab a
pen and take down my email address…”