Well, maybe there was.
“Love.” He whispered it against her cheek, felt her stir slightly, even though she was almost out.
He would have been perfectly happy if the only place they ever had sex was in bed. Well, not perfectly happy, but the fact was, regular sex with Chloe was a million times better than crazy sex with anyone else.
Only, the truth was that Chloe was a woman who liked—who needed, who craved—adventure. He wasn’t sure she realized it yet. But he did. And he wanted to live those adventures with her. Beside her. Within her.
He laid her down on the bed, her head upon the pillow, and when she didn’t loosen her hold on him—even half-asleep, she couldn’t fight what they had together—he slid beneath the soft sheets with her. She immediately shifted to curl against him in the way they’d slept the past two nights: her back to his front, her hips cradled against his perpetual erection. She pulled his arms around her like a blanket and settled deeper into his arms with a contented sigh.
Lovely.
His.
Chapter Thirteen
One more day.
One more night.
Chloe had twenty-four hours left to be with Chase in this fairy tale. She wanted each of those hours, those precious minutes, to last forever, knew that she would be counting them down until the buzzer rang and she left.
She needed to leave. Because, as she’d told him last night, she needed to do this on her own.
Didn’t she?
All day, as she’d worked with everyone, as she’d gone to check on Alice and found her much improved in her hotel room, Chloe had gone around and around with it in her head.
At first, it had been easy to tell herself she needed to keep her distance from Chase because men were all evil.
Which had turned out to be completely laughable. Because while her ex was certainly unhinged, Chase didn’t have an evil bone in his body. In a million years, she’d never have thought she’d find a guy like him on the side of the road in the middle of a hailstorm, on what she’d thought was the worst night of her life.
She shouldn’t believe he could have fallen in love with her. Not in only three days.
She shouldn’t be replaying that moment when he’d said, “I love you. Always. Forever,” over and over.
Lost in her troubled thoughts, her hands stilled on the lace of the corset she was tying for Amanda.
“Do you need me to suck in tighter?”
Chloe frowned. Suck in tighter? What could Amanda possibly have to suck in? “No. You’re perfect just like that.”
Amanda looked down at herself. “I’m getting fat.”
“No!” In the back of her mind she knew she needed to back off, calm down. But she’d spent too many years listening to Dean say that to her. She couldn’t stand to hear Amanda say it about herself. “You’re beautiful, Amanda.”
But although she could see that the girl enjoyed the compliment, she didn’t truly believe it.
As the model walked away, Chloe wanted so badly for her to believe in her own beauty. In her own worth. She wanted to save her from years of self-hatred. From bad relationships. From men who weren’t worthy of even a minute of her time...let alone years.
She felt her lover’s eyes on her and his pull was so strong that she couldn’t stop herself from staring back and suddenly wondering, yet again, was that what she was to him? Was she simply a woman he was desperate to save because he was a protector to his core?
No. She knew better than to think that. Especially when he’d never done one single thing to try and take her power away.
Instead, hadn’t he given her the tools to empower herself? Hadn’t he asked her to use her talents, her skills, to create beauty? To grow stronger?
And then, like a ton of bricks raining down from the perfectly blue sky, the real truth of the matter hit her: It wasn’t Chase that thought he needed to save her, to coddle her so that she never had to face danger again.
She’d been doing that all by herself.
Hiding out here at the winery, not picking up the damn phone and calling the police, not forcing herself to face the fact that she was going to have to find a way to protect herself from Dean once she was out on her own again.
It was just what she’d done in her marriage. She’d hidden from the truth of how bad it was because it had seemed so much more painful to deal with the truth.
Standing in the middle of the vineyard with Chase’s eyes still on her, she knew he didn’t deserve to be dragged into her mess. And until she could be worthy of him by knowing how to stand on her own two feet, she couldn’t be with him.
Just then, Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” started blaring from the portable MP3 player and Amanda dragged her over to the group, who had all started dancing in their beautiful silk dresses.
Chloe had always loved to dance, loved to feel her limbs, her muscles, grow loose and warm. The sun was still in the sky, pouring down over them, and when the rubber band around her hair fell out she let it go, shaking her hair to let it move around her face.
As she danced, as Sara grabbed her hips and shimmied into her, Chloe could almost pretend again that the past ten years had never happened. Yes, she’d been hiding out from reality, but getting to be with Chase and the models and his crew these past few days had done so much to strip away the layers she’d never wanted to be there in the first place.
Yes, she knew this feeling of freedom, of joy, was only temporary, knew that trouble was waiting for her outside of the fantasy of this vine-covered world, but she still had a few more hours of joy left, didn’t she?
* * *
“She really is pretty.”
Chase turned to see Ellen standing beside him. He’d been utterly enraptured watching Chloe dance with the models.
But it was more than beauty that made it impossible for him to take his eyes off her.
Day by day, minute by minute, she was transforming. She’d already been a butterfly, even standing on the side of the road, dripping wet with that horrible bruise marring her soft skin. So it wasn’t that she was emerging from her cocoon.
Rather, the colors on her wings were growing brighter, more magnificent, as the burdens, the fears she’d been carrying, fell away piece by piece.
“Inside and out,” he agreed.
Ellen remained by his side, both of them watching the dancing. Surprisingly, this was the first time he’d run into her during the shoot. Almost as if she’d made sure to stay out of his way.
Feeling bad about the way he’d stood her up that first night, he said, “I really am sorry about—”