“I’m sure she is.”
She started at Chase’s words. Had she really just said all of that to him? Somehow he had gotten her to talk about her passion for quilting—a subject that would have put nearly every guy on the planet to sleep.
She wasn’t at all comfortable acknowledging that Chase had just become the exception. And that it had felt so good to share herself with someone who was really listening.
She was being stupid, letting herself think that this fantasy of sitting with a gorgeous guy on a hilltop in Napa Valley had anything to do with her real life.
It didn’t.
She put down her sandwich and made herself face him, but before she could say anything, he said, “Uh-oh. That’s not a good look.”
She wasn’t going to smile. There was no place for grinning when she was about to set him straight, when she was about to make her position on the two of them perfectly clear. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“I like you.”
The glow his words caused was too bright. Too warm. Forcing herself to blot it out, she said, “You don’t know me.”
“I’m starting to.”
No pauses. No smooth words. No trying to charm her into agreeing with him. Didn’t he realize just how much harder his honest responses were making this for her?
“Is this what you do?”
“What am I doing?”
“You keep helping me, making me breakfast, asking Jeremy to be nice to me all day.”
He frowned and she could see that he was confused. “Is there something wrong with wanting to make you smile?”
Oh. Wow. Why did he have to say that?
She couldn’t think of any other man who’d simply wanted to make her smile. Not even the man she’d married.
Frustrated with herself for being so soft—so easy to turn to goo—she made herself come at him one more time with, “I get it if you’re into saving people, but—”
“I’m not a saint, Chloe. I’ll always take care of my family, but I’ve never gone out looking for women who need to be saved. And it’s not why I asked you to stay.”
His low voice cut her accusation off in mid-stream and she found herself unable to look away from his serious expression. Feeling like a big jerk for doing anything and everything she could think of to try and keep herself from doing something really, really stupid like falling for him, she said, “Look, Chase, you really have been nice.” Despite having been slow to hand her a towel last night, she silently amended with a flush. “But, we’re not going to do…well…you know.”
Ugh. She wasn’t used to having conversations like this.
She half-expected—half-wanted—him to tell her she was wrong. That they were, in fact, going to end up doing well-you-know if she stuck around much longer.
Instead, his expression grew perfectly serious. “Earlier, when we were out in the vineyard, when I asked you to stay, you didn’t want to. But I didn’t let up until you finally gave in.” He ran a hand through his hair, clearly upset with himself. “I would never want to force you to do something you don’t want to do, Chloe. I don’t ever want to take something from you that you don’t want to give me.”
This was the perfect opening. Her chance to tell him she’d never had any intention of staying, to make it clear that there was no connection between them, and that it was time for her to be moving on.
So then, why did she find herself saying, “I wanted to stay.”
The pure truth of that statement resonated within her solar plexus. Turned out the truth didn’t care if she wanted it to be true, or not.
“I want to stay,” she said again in a firmer voice. She wanted to spend more time with Chase. She shouldn’t. But she did.
His grin came back, softer this time, and somehow even more potent. “Good.” And then, “You were saying something about how you and I aren’t going to do…?” He paused, letting the unsaid words hang in the air between them.
She should have come back with a quick retort, something to put him in his place. But right at that moment, with the Napa Valley sun shining down on her and grapevines budding to life across rolling hills as far as the eye could see, there was nothing left but honesty.
“I haven’t had a male friend in a very long time.”
He was silent for a long moment, and even though the butterflies in her stomach had her keeping her eyes on the horizon, she could feel his gaze on her.
“I’d be honored to be your friend, Chloe.”
Her breath caught in her throat, then, and she liked him so much it was almost impossible not to grab him and kiss him.
Sure that he could hear her heart beating in her chest, it was so loud to her own ears, instead of kissing him she had to be content with whispering, “I like you, too.”
Chapter Six
Chloe wasn’t used to sitting still. Especially not after the past year, when she’d had to keep working odd jobs just to pay the rent and eat and be able to buy some fabric to quilt together. She kept asking Jeremy if there was something she could do to help, but he was firm about her being Chase’s guest.
Worse still, all that staring at Chase was doing really funny things to her insides. To her outsides, too. Her skin felt sensitive all over beneath her clothes. Warmer than the weather warranted. Similar to the way she’d felt in the tub as the water had slid across her skin and she’d ended up coming apart with his name on her lips.
Chloe’s uncomfortable musings were interrupted by a loud squeal that was followed by female cursing. Chloe craned her neck and saw that Amanda had tripped over a rock and her dress had a long, jagged rip across the front.
Chase called, “Jeremy, we need a new dress. The same one.”
Jeremy’s face had gone even paler than it already was. “I don’t think they sent more than one of this dress. I’ll look again to make absolutely sure.” He scurried off to look through the huge containers of clothes.
Chloe spoke without thinking. “I’ll fix it.”
Chase turned his green-eyed gaze to her and at the question in his eyes, she said, “I’ve worked with some pretty similar fabrics in my quilts. I can at least try.”
“Amanda, take off the dress.”
The model pulled it off without giving so much as a thought to the fact that she was wearing only very sheer panties beneath the gauzy fabric.
At first it had been a bit of a shock to see how comfortable these young girls were with their near nudity, but then, Chloe figured if she’d had a figure like that when she was nineteen, she would have been smart to flaunt it, too.