No Good For Anyone (3 page)

“I didn’t steal him,” Lindsay said. “He came over.”

“Whatever.” Chace gave Maximilian’s head a pat, but his eyes were still on her body. She pulled the thin sweater she was wearing tighter around herself. He grinned at her, as if he knew exactly why she was doing it. She felt her face flush. Why had she answered the door wearing her nightgown? She’d forgotten she was wearing it, hadn’t thought to put something on.

Her breathing accelerated and her nipples hardened. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and she prayed he couldn’t see the affect he was having on her.

But from the way he was looking at her, with an amused look on his face, she was almost sure he could.

He crossed the room in one fluid motion until he was right in front of her, so close she could feel his body heat. She was so shocked by his sudden nearness that for a moment, she couldn’t speak.

He reached up and put his hands on her shoulders, and she went to move away, but he held her tight, not letting her.

“Lindsay Benson,” he said, shaking his head as he trailed a finger down over her collarbone.

So he did remember who she was. Why had he pretended he didn’t? His touch was like an electric shock, his fingertips setting her skin on fire. Cold shivers slid up her spine, and she went to pull her sweater tighter again, but he gripped the thin material and pushed it down her shoulders, letting his fingertips skim her arms as he dropped the sweater to the floor.

And then he kissed her.

The kiss was deep and hard, its intent clear. His hands encircled her waist, making her feel tiny against the width of his body, and his tongue slipped into her mouth, exploring.

She told herself to push him away, and her mind screamed that this was a terrible idea, tried to remind her of the heartbreak and sleepless nights this man had caused her.

But her body screamed back, louder than her mind, telling her this felt right, telling her to let him take her, to give him whatever he wanted.

And then, just as her resolve was all but gone, there was a knock on the door.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice called. “Chace? Are you in there? It’s me, Michelle.”

Chace froze.

Lindsay took a step back, then grabbed the sweater that was lying on the floor and quickly slid her arms through it. “Who the hell is
Michelle?”
she asked.

The knock came again. “Chace?” the voice whined. “I’m cold! Are we going to go inside or not?”

Lindsay looked at him incredulously. “You have a
girl
with you?”

He didn’t say anything, just crossed the room in his easy gait and swung open the door. The girl standing on the porch had long blonde hair, blue eyes, and couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. “Hey!” she said brightly.

Maximilian ran up to her, his tail wagging.
Traitor,
Lindsay thought.

“Oooh, a doggie!” Michelle giggled. “I love dogs. Hi, doggie, dog, dog!”

“Yes, well,” Lindsay said, “thanks so much for stopping by to pick up your dog.

You can go now.”

“Okay,” Michelle said happily. She was apparently too stupid to figure out there was something more going on here.

Chace slid by Lindsay and out the door. But before he did, he leaned down and whispered in her ear, “This isn’t over.”

Her nipples tightened and excitement surged through her body. But she was done with Chace Davenport. And this time, she really meant it.

***

But when Lindsay got back into bed, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. His smile. His body. His face. The way she could feel his stubble against her skin when he kissed her. She put her hands up to her face, slid her finger over her lip, remembering.

She wasn’t used to sleeping in the new house, and she tossed and turned restlessly, kicking at the sheets. Finally, she drifted off into an uneasy slumber.

When the first trace of light slipped over the trees, she decided to give up on getting any more sleep. The wood floors of the house were cold, and she rummaged through some boxes before finding a pair of purple-and-white striped fleece socks. She dressed in a pair of black yoga pants and her favorite sweatshirt, a soft grey one with the Temple University logo on the front.

By some miracle, she was able to find the coffeepot, and as the aroma of French roast filled the kitchen, the house started to feel more like home. She would get some work done on the book she was writing, she decided, and then spend the afternoon in town, poking around and picking up some area rugs. This was her new house, the house of her dreams, and she wasn’t going to let the fact that she had a womanizing asshole for a neighbor detract from that.

Feeling determined, she took a long sip of her coffee and gazed out the kitchen window. The early autumn sunlight brushed against the leaves, making the golds, reds, and coppers appear brighter.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash movement on the driveway next door. Chace. Coming out of his house with that blonde girl from last night.

He was wearing a pair of dark jeans, a white t-shirt, and a leather jacket. The girl (Michelle?) was wearing the same thing she had on last night, a ridiculously short skirt that was completely inappropriate for this time of year. She was hunched over in the cold, looking miserable as she climbed into Chace’s truck.

Better you than me, honey,
Lindsay thought. A stab of sadness pierced her heart as she remembered how it had been last year. It was exactly this time of year when she’d met Chace for the first time. She closed her eyes, letting herself remember that night.

Then she forced herself to stop. It was nothing. What they had was nothing.

Besides, she’d worked too hard to forget him to let herself relapse.

She brought her coffee over to the table and booted up her computer.

***

An hour or so later, she was happily ensconced in a scene, when there was a knock on her door. She stopped with her coffee halfway to her lips, then crossed the kitchen and looked out the front window.

Oh, for the love of God. It was Chace. He was standing there on the front porch, a toolbox in hand. He was wearing the same outfit she’d seen him in his morning– the tight jeans, the crisp white t-shirt, the beat-up leather jacket. She looked around for a place to hide, wondering if she could slip back to the bedroom without him hearing.

He knocked again. “I know you’re in there,” he said. “Your car’s here.”

“So?” she said. “Maybe I got a ride somewhere. You don’t know.”

“Open the door.”

“What do you want?” she asked, trying to make her voice sound annoyed, like she was in the middle of something very important. Which she was – her book was very important. If she didn’t get it done, she didn’t get paid. And if she didn’t get paid, she didn’t have money. And if she didn’t have money, she didn’t eat. Eating was very important. So obviously she didn’t have time to just be answering random knocks on the door in the middle of the morning.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to talk.” She knew she sounded like a baby, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to let him in. Just because he lived next door didn’t mean he could just come waltzing over here any time he wanted. She wondered briefly if she should look into getting some kind of restraining order against him. Her sister Jamie had gotten one once, when an ex-boyfriend wouldn’t stop calling her. Apparently it was super easy, you just went down to the courthouse and filled out a form and voila, the person had to stay away from you. Easier than going to the DMV, even.

“We need to figure out what we’re going to do about that fence,” Chace said, and knocked again.

“What fence?” She peeked out the window.

“The broken down fence that Maximilian got through.” He was looking up at the sky in exasperation. His eyes shifted over to the window, and she quickly stepped back.

Damn. Had he seen her?

“Of course,” he went on, “if you want Maximilian to get hurt, we can just leave it the way it is. Or, better yet, I can get the county inspector down here to look at it, and then we’ll have to pay all sorts of fees and processing. Plus, once he gets down here, he’ll probably start poking around into all sorts of things that aren’t up to code.”

Lindsay thought about it. Obviously she didn’t want Maximilian to get hurt. But she also didn’t believe for a second that Chace was going to get an inspector down here.

That smacked of bullshit. It might be her first house, but she was pretty sure the county couldn’t
order
you to have a fence.

On the other hand, the fence
was
kind of an eyesore, and if Chace wanted to fix it, who was she to say no?

She sighed, then went to the door and opened it.

“Fine,” she said, glaring at him. “Knock yourself out.”

He cocked his head, giving her a smile. “That’s all I get?”

She stared at him. “What?”

“I come over here, offer to repair your fence out of the goodness of my heart, and you don’t even invite me in? That’s not very neighborly.”

He moved forward so that he was dangerously close to stepping into the house.

She stood in front of the doorway, blocking him. He was so close she could feel the heat coming off his body. He smelled like a delicious mixture of outdoors and hot man.

“Yeah, well, it’s not very neighborly to bring someone’s garbage back over, either.”

“That was yesterday,” he said, like it was ten years ago. He moved even closer.

“No way. You can fix the fence, but you’re not coming in.”

“Why not?” He looked her up and down, his eyes lingering over her body. She was thankful that this time, he wasn’t getting much of a show. Her yoga pants and sweatshirt weren’t exactly made for ogling.

“Because.”

“Because you’re afraid of what’s going to happen.” It was a statement, not a question.

Lindsay shook her head and opened her mouth to protest, but he put a finger to her lips. His gaze locked on hers, and he shook his head like he was amused. “Oh, Lindsay,” he said, sighing like he didn’t know what to do with her. “Always afraid of something.”

It was the first indication he’d given that they had a history.

He moved his lips toward hers, and she held her breath, waiting for the kiss. But at the last moment, he turned around and hopped down the stairs. “If you’re not going to let me in,” he called over his shoulder as he headed for the yard, “at least bring me a lemonade.”

C
hapter
T
hree

Lindsay didn’t have any lemonade. It had too many calories, and besides, lemonade was a summer drink. All she had was a few bottles of water, and so after she’d forced herself to write for an hour, she grabbed two and headed out to the backyard. This time, she was dressed in jeans and a cream-colored cable knit sweater, her hair brushed and pulled back into a ponytail. Her boots crunched through the leaves as she made her way over to the fence.

Chace was dismantling the old fence, taking the huge pieces of rotting wood and stacking them up against the side of the house.

“Oh,” Lindsay said as she got closer. “I thought you were just going to make some repairs. I didn’t know you were going to build a whole new one.”

“’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 tshirt. 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.