Here Comes Trouble (14 page)

For a moment, he sat atop his motorcycle in the parking lot of the bank, contemplating where to go. Of course, he hadn’t forgotten about his earlier conversation with Lacy.
Leave the light on for me.
Why did he have to go and say such a stupid-ass line? His stupidity had been worth it after seeing her cheeks turn a tomato-red. Lacy was so easily riled. She liked her independence and wasn’t going to let someone like him order her around. She’d wait up for him if she damn well wanted to, not because he asked her to. Oh, but she wanted to. Last night had been too phenomenal for her not to. He’d watched her super-fine backside sway out of his house this morning knowing she’d be back for more.

With a smile of anticipation, he made a left turn out of the bank parking lot and headed toward the older part of town. A right turn down a side street took him to an older neighborhood where Lacy lived. Most the houses in this part of town were sadly dilapidated because the owners were older than dirt and couldn’t have any pride of ownership on their limited fixed income. There wasn’t one yard of weed-less, green grass to be seen. A few of the houses had shutters that hung off on one side and others had paint peeling forlornly off the shingles. Chase knew the only reason Lacy stayed here was because she couldn’t afford to move.

Actually, she could afford to move if she used some common sense and took the money her mother gave her.

He eased his bike in the driveway and turned off the engine before anyone could come out and complain about the ruckus. Out of all the houses in the neighborhood, Lacy’s was the least sorry looking. The grass was green and neatly trimmed. Bright, happy flowers sat in the planting bed at the base of the one and only tree. However, the milk chocolate-brown paint was faded and peeling from twenty years of wear and tear. And the street light on the sidewalk flickered like a bad strobe light.

He hooked the helmet on the handlebar and walked up the cracked, uneven walkway to the front door. Just as he asked, the faint, buttery glow of the living room lamp shone through the curtains covering the front window. The front door opened just as his fist was poised to knock.

“I wasn’t waiting up for you,” was Lacy’s greeting.

Yeah right, liar. She stayed up for him. The thought brought a satisfied smile to his mouth.

A few wispy tendrils of hair had escaped her sloppy bun and hung straight down around her face. She blinked at him out of huge green eyes as though surprised to see him, despite his earlier announcement. Her fair, even skin had a freshly-scrubbed glow. And she’d traded her work attire for gray cotton shorts and a baby pink t-shirt with a picture of a Care Bear on it. Bare feet completed her look.

The whole ensemble made his dick jerk awake.

“What were you doing, then?”

She twisted her hands in front of her. “I was just going to bed.”

He peered around her into the living room. “With a bottle of red wine?

She glanced over her shoulder, showing him the back of her slender neck. “It’s empty.” A few more strands of hair came loose when she whipped her head back around, eyes wide. “I mean it was almost empty when I opened it.” She continued when he lifted a brow. “Obviously, I didn’t go through an entire bottle of wine in one night.”

Miss Twiggy was flustered. The thought was nice boost to his ego.

After eons of staring at him, she stepped aside to let him enter. He walked by too close, purposely brushing her arm with his. The uneven breath she inhaled didn’t go unnoticed on his part.

 
“Everything okay at the restaurant tonight?” she asked, after closing the front door.

Playing dumb seemed like the best course of action. “What do you mean?”

She gestured lamely in front of her with her hands. “It just seemed like you and your father were…having a moment.”

Lacy had always been perceptive. Because she was an employee, he couldn’t tell her anything. “It was just business stuff.”

She nodded. “Why don’t I believe you?”

“Maybe it’s your suspicious nature.”

The comment earned him a soft giggle. “I have some more wine if you want it.”

He snorted. “I told you I don’t drink wine. If you have beer, I’ll take some of that.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Guess we’ll have to settle for staying sober. Which is a shame because it would be fun to get you drunk.”

Her fingers played with the end of her shirt. “I haven’t gotten drunk since college.”

“I’d say you’re overdue.”

One corner of her bare mouth turned up. “Maybe some other time.” She waltzed past him, bare feet shuffling along the scarred, wood floors. “Want to sit down? You look like you need to unwind.”

He had an entirely different way of unwinding that didn’t involve sitting on a couch. Good things came to those who waited. He could be patient.

Lacy folded her thin frame in the corner of the couch and picked up her half-empty glass of wine. The rim of the glass slid between her delectable lips when she took a slow, shallow sip. She drank like a woman who was on borrowed time and wanted to savor every last drop of what she had left. He’d never seen anyone drink a drink with such longing, with her eyes closed and slow swallows that worked the muscles of her delicate neck. It was almost like watching a piece of artwork come to life, like one of those pearly-white statues of a Greek goddess lounging in nothing more than a toga. Put her in a toga and Lacy would outshine any goddess.

A dew-drop size of moisture lingered on her lower lip before she smeared it away with her thumb. The gears in her head, which never took a days’ rest, looked to be in overdrive at the moment.

“Got something on your mind?” Chase toed off his boots and cross his ankles.

“My mother.” A half-hearted smile created shallow lines in her cheeks. “I haven’t spared the woman a thought in I don’t know how long. Now all of a sudden I can’t think about anything else.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you haven’t done anything with that check.”

She tossed back the last few sips of her wine and placed the glass on the end table. After a moment of silence her only answer was, “No.”

Geez, the woman brought new definition to stubborn. A check worth enough money to feed a small country was now in her possession and she couldn’t see passed decades old feelings. Okay, so she’d been hurt as a child and despised the woman who’d given her life. Knowing what it was like to lose a parent, Chase understood the emptiness that replaced parental love. However, he couldn’t fathom how someone who should love you unconditionally turned heel without so much of a backward glance. Lacy one-upped him on that one. The battle of guilt and conscience that raged inside her was something only she fully grasped. Maybe it was his ability not to lead with his emotions that made the choice so blaringly obvious. But he didn’t want to seem like an insensitive ass.

He tried to impose his opinion as gently as possible. “That money could solve a lot of your problems, Lace.”

“Nobody knows that more than me,” she replied in a matter-of-fact way.

And the problem is?
“Maybe,” he started slowly, “your mother wanted to right a very big wrong.”

A snort, followed by a bitter, humorless laugh escaped her. “My mother didn’t have a chivalrous bone in her body.”

All right, then
. “I hate to play devil’s advocate here, but do her reasons really matter?”

She turned her head to look at him and he saw the battle going on in her eyes. “It matters to me.”

He held his hands up in defense. “Okay.” Clearly a touchy subject so he tried a different route. Risking bodily harm, he placed a comforting hand on her small shoulder and dragged the tip of his index finger over the curve. “You should read the letter.”

“What I should do and what I can do are two different things. I’m not ready yet.” One of her velvety legs lifted and slid over the other one, effectively pulling her short shorts practically up to her butt crack. His eyes instantly zeroed in on them, bringing back memories of them spread wide around his hips. “I had an interesting conversation with Brody tonight,” she blurted out and destroyed the image in his head. “Apparently Kelly’s getting married.”

“No kidding? To that guy she’s been seeing?”

“Yeah, the one Brody refers to as a jackass.”

Chase chuckled and rested his left foot across his right knee. “Why does Brody call him that?”

Lacy lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “I think he’s jealous.”

 
He shifted on the couch to find her looking at him. “Jealous of the guy who’s marrying his ex-wife?” he asked with a trace of doubt. “I don’t think so. Brody’s not the jealous type.”

She tucked a few loose strands of hair behind one ear and didn’t deny his statement. “I think he still has feelings for her.”

This time he shook his head, knowing she was wrong. “No way. He was never in love with Kelly.”

She threw him a droll look. “They were married for seven years, Chase. He had
some
feelings for her.”

Her logic made sense, whether he wanted to admit it or not. He stretched his arm along the back of the couch. “What all did he say to you?”

“He didn’t have to say anything. His demeanor was a dead giveaway.” Her gaze briefly dropped to his lap. “He’s having a hard time.”

Even though he loved his brother, Chase’s concern for him was shoved to the back burner in light of Lacy’s appraisal. The way her fingers fidgeted and tapped an erratic rhythm against her bare thigh told Chase she was turned on. So was the way her chest lifted in deep breaths, pushing her breasts against the thin cotton of her old shirt, revealing her hardened nipples. The question was, did she plan on acting on it or call it a night and politely show him to the door?
 

“It’s late and I have to work tomorrow,” she said as if the realization had just hit her. She unfolded her slender frame from the couch and picked up the wineglass from the table. Chase was rewarded with a prime view of her spectacular ass as she was walked toward the kitchen. The confident, feminine sway of her hips spoke of a woman who knew how to use her curves. Although Lacy wasn’t a particularly curvy woman, the gentle back and forth motion accentuated what she did have. How did women learn how to walk like that? Was it something they taught each other in high school?
How to attract a man’s attention in five seconds or less?
However the technique came to them, women as a whole knew exactly what they did to a man’s libido when they sashayed like that. Women weren’t stupid creatures; a little swivel of the hips and they could set every man’s tongue wagging like a panting dog. Lacy was no different. She was fully aware of how he reacted to her.

Her green eyes connected with his when she peeked over her shoulder at him. “Are you coming?”

Hell, yeah
was about to force itself out of his mouth. Self-control had him tapping down his crude side for Lacy’s sake. Never say he couldn’t be a gentleman when he wanted to be.

Instead he remained on the couch, letting his eyes meander down her lithe body. “Are you sure?”

“Isn’t that why you came over here?”

When he stood from the couch, his six-foot-three length towered over her, with the top of her head reaching his collarbone. He stopped close enough to invade her personal space but didn’t touch. The edge of her cotton shirt kissed the front part of his slacks. The whisper of contact was minimal and hardly enough to start fireworks. Despite that, his dick leaped to life and pushed with all its strength against the inside of his boxers. Never one to miss anything, Lacy let her curious eyes drop to the action behind his pants. Chase knew she wanted him. But Lacy never wore her emotions on her sleeve. She masked the effect quite well when she lifted her eyes to his.

“Do you want me to stay?” Although he had all the confidence in the world, the words came out with an uncertain, uneven tone. With a mere lift of her long, black lashes, Lacy turned him into a quivering idiot.

Her soft breasts nudged his chest when she inhaled a deep breath. His hands twitched at his sides, eager to feel her nipples grow to little raspberries.

“Yes,” escaped on a whisper as if she’d read his thoughts. After replacing the wine glass back on the end table, Lacy grabbed his large palm in her smaller one and led him to her bedroom.

****

Sometime later, after even the moon had disappeared, leaving the sky an ominous coal-black, Lacy kicked the covers off her perspiration-dewy body. The lack of air-conditioning had grown from a minor inconvenience to downright annoying. In the aftermath of hers and Chase’s vigorous love-making, her bedroom had turned into a humid, muggy sauna. The sheets had felt like damp wash cloths against her already damp skin. Kicking them off served no other purpose than to transfer them to the end of the bed. The thick air around her still brushed over her skin like hot, putrid breath. Her one and only oscillating fan finally had bit the dust after about a thousand years of use.

Chase had thrown his covers off with a grumpy, “It’s too damn hot in here,” immediately after rolling off her. His ability to fall asleep in about three seconds struck a chord of envy in her. And he took up an enormous amount of the bed, which wasn’t that big to begin with. Having a six-foot-three and two-hundred-whatever-pounds taking up two-thirds of the bed, and pumping out buckets of body heat really cramped her sleeping style. Lacy was one of those sleepers who liked to spread out in the middle of the bed. She’d carved a nice little indentation for herself right in between her two pillows. But the man who’d so generously given her two orgasms currently resided in her favorite spot. The fact that she was bathing in a rather satisfying post-coital bliss was the only reason she forgave his invasion of space. There was also the fact that he outweighed her by a hundred pounds and she had absolutely no hopes scooting him even one inch.