Jealousy flooded Chase’s blood like poison. He forced himself to breathe, to not react like an idiot.
“You didn’t have to follow me, Eric,” Lacy said. “I told you I was fine.”
Chase scowled. So this was the impatient vet who’d wanted to share sin with his woman. Maybe I should act like an idiot.
Eric brushed a hand up against Lacy’s arm. “What kind of guy would I be if I didn’t make sure you got home safely?”
A dead man if you touch her again. Chase doubled his fist when he saw the man lower his face. Lacy turned her head, and the man’s lips only landed on her cheek. Nevertheless, Chase didn’t want the man’s lips anywhere near her.
“Thanks for letting me hang out with you at the clinic.” Lacy put her hand on his chest to ward off another kiss. “I should go in. It’s been a long day.”
Chase decided to give the man two seconds to get Lacy’s send-off message before he offered his own send-off. Much to his disappointment, Eric shrugged and walked away. Lacy watched him drive off, then she turned to unlock her door.
She stepped inside and dropped her purse on the antique sewing machine. Standing a few feet inside the dining room, Chase didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. She must have sensed him, because she swung around.
“Oh, God! You scared the pee out of me!”
His gaze moved over her body, wrapped in red silk. The dress’s neckline dipped low, showing off the soft swells of her breasts. The waist hugged her figure, and the hem of the dress fell an inch above mid-thigh, leaving all that leg exposed. Chase didn’t know much about women’s fashions, but he knew when a woman dressed like that she was on the make.
“You went out with Eric?” he asked.
Her eyes squinted with what looked like anger. But he was too busy dealing with his own fury to worry about hers.
“How did you get in?” She crossed her arms over her middle, causing the scooped neckline to lower.
“You went out with him?” he asked again.
“What business is that of yours?”
“I’m making it my business!” He waved a hand up and down. “Do you know what that dress says?”
She looked down as if needing a reminder of what she wore. “It says, ‘get out of my house,’” she snapped. “No, wait. That’s what I’m saying. Get out, Chase.”
He ignored her. “It says, ‘Take me off.’ When a woman wears a dress like that she doesn’t intend to keep it on very long.”
“How would you know?” she said. “Does Jessie have one just like it?” Turning on her red-pump heels, she took one step then swung back around. “Call me selfish. Blame it on the fact that I’m an only child and I never learned to share. But I refused to share Brian with the professor, or Peter with his secretary, and I won’t share you with Jessie.”
Chase raked a hand over his face and stared at her. “Why are you bringing up Jessie?”
“You slept with her. I know I’m just a vanilla wafer. And that’s what happens to vanilla wafers. But someday I’ll find a guy who loves vanilla wafers so much that he won’t need to go sampling other cookies.”
Confusion filled Chase as he tried to decipher her meaning. “I was completely up front with you about Jessie.” He took two steps toward her and got a whiff of perfume. Delicious. “You can’t be mad about that now.”
“Oh, I see.” Her tone rang with fourteen-carat sarcasm. “You told me about her and so that makes it okay to sleep with her. Well, if that’s the way it works, you knew about Eric, too. So put the key back under the dog poop and leave.”
“You slept with Eric?” His emotions ping-ponged back and forth as he tried to make sense of the conversation.
“No,” she said. “But if I wasn’t such a lousy liar, I’d tell you I did.”
“Then why the hell did you wear that dress?” he asked.
She kicked off one of her shoes. The red pump swished by his leg, landing in the dining room, and then the other came whizzing by and hit the litter box. “Good kitty,” the litter box’s recorder played. “Now cover it up.”
“You’re right,” Lacy said. “I intended to get laid tonight. But it just didn’t work out. So tell me, did you have better luck than I did?”
He raked another hand over his face. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not understanding something here.”
She yanked a clip out of her hair. “Please, don’t play me for a fool. I saw you, Chase.” Her bare foot started tapping.
Her words sank in and he got his first clue to this puzzle. “You saw me where?”
She pushed her fingers through the dark curls, shaking them loose. Chase longed to step closer and help her. One or two runs of his fingers and he’d have her hair properly mussed for a night of serious lovemaking. A second or two more and he’d have that dress unzipped and puddling around her ankles. He wondered if she had on red underwear to match the dress. Damn, she looked sexy. Smelled great. But she’d dressed up for Eric; hadn’t she? Her foot continued to tap on the floor.
She pointed a finger at him. So, Lacy was a toe tapper and a pointer. Chase watched that small digit start to shake. His mother had been a pointer, and if he’d learned anything, it was that when the finger came out, hell was about to break loose. But Lacy wasn’t his mother and he could give her hell back.
He grabbed her by the wrist. Her blue eyes squinted tighter, and she started talking. “You had flowers and groceries. It was another . . . another cook-dinner-and-have-sex-with-Jessie night. Never mind that she doesn’t give a flip for you. Oh, but wait. That’s why you like her!”
Understanding hit like a cool breeze in mid-July, and damn if it didn’t feel good. “You came to my place tonight? You saw me knocking on Jessie’s door? You know, I smelled your perfume when I got in the elevator.”
“Congratulations, Columbo. You finally figured it out.” She jerked her hand free and propped it on her hip.
“So this . . .” He waved a hand up and down. “The dress and the perfume, it was all for me?” He smiled and reared back on his heels a little, and took some time to enjoy the view.
• • •
Lacy couldn’t believe Chase stood there all cocky and smiling. The nerve, the gall! How dare he find something humorous about this? She was definitely going to tell her mother to hire the hit man.
“What kind of flowers were they, Lacy?” He stepped closer. Fabio came barking into the room.
“You know what kind.” She walked backwards into her living room, nearly tripping over her own feet as Fabio danced in her path. Oh, Lordie, but Chase looked good tonight. Dressed in khaki Dockers and a button-down blue shirt, sex appeal oozed from him. But he’d already oozed it all over Jessie. Still, she longed to touch him. She’d missed him, missed his laughter, and the devilish gleam in his green eyes. But the green-eyed devil was going to have to go, because sharing just wasn’t her thing.
“Were they red roses?” He arched an eyebrow. “Like those?” He pointed behind her.
She swung around. Her mouth dropped open.
There, on her kitchen table, complete with candles and two plates, sat a vase of red roses. She heard him move behind her.
“Leonardo ate the baby’s breath,” he apologized, and his hands came around her. “I went to wish Jessie good luck with her husband and to tell her good-bye. Nothing else. Just good-bye.” He pressed his lips to the back of her neck. “So, you expected to get laid tonight, did you?”
She bit her lower lip and turned around. “You . . . you didn’t stay at Jessie’s?”
“No, I came here and cooked chicken cordon bleu, rice pilaf, and fresh green beans with pearl onions. And . . .” His gaze shifted to her neckline. “I was kind of hoping to get laid, too.”
He raised his gaze and frowned. “What were you doing all night while I was slaving away in your kitchen?”
“I watched Eric neuter a male cat.” She grinned. “He had the third shift at the clinic. It was actually very interesting.”
“Remind me to sleep wit
h one eye open if I ever make you mad.” He lowered his forehead to hers. “You didn’t play doctor or vet with him?”
“No! There wasn’t any spark.” Her breath caught when his hand moved down to her backside and held her against the hardness filling his pants.
“What about now?” he asked. “Feeling any sparks?” He wrapped his arms around her waist, cradled his arousal against her abdomen, and started them slow dancing.
There wasn’t any music, but it didn’t matter. With Chase this close, she heard music. They made their own music.
“Feeling sparks?” he repeated, and his right hand moved up to caress the swell of her breast.
“That depends.” She sucked on her bottom lip.
“On what?” His lips brushed across her cheek.
“Is this casual sex?” she asked.
He leaned his head back and stared into her eyes as if trying to read her. “You want it to be casual?”
“I asked you first.” She closed her mouth to keep from saying that she’d take him any way he came, temporary or permanent. But good Lord, she wanted permanent.
“Casual is okay,” he whispered, studying her eyes, then he tilted up her chin. “If I can casually tell FedEx Hunky, Impatient Eric, Peter and the plumber to go shoot themselves.” He lowered his hand to the hem of her dress and moved it up and up, until he cupped her silk-covered bottom in his palm. “Casual is fine if I can casually sleep with you every night. And hell, since we’re spending all our time together, I don’t see why we can’t just casually do the paperwork to make it legal.”
He slow-danced her around the room, his body brushing against hers in all the right places. He breathed into her mouth. His tongue slipped between her lips. “You know, sooner or later one of those condoms might fail us and you might have a little Chase or maybe a little Lacy growing inside you. Paperwork just makes things like that easier.” He pressed a palm against her lower abdomen, as if imagining her carrying his baby.
She ran her hands up to his shoulders. “And how would you feel about . . . about a little Chase or Lacy?”
“Ecstatic,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m thirty-two, so I figure I’d better get busy.” He ran his tongue along the curve of her ear. “What about you? Kids okay?”
She grinned. “I’m open,” she said, unable to hide her excitement.
“Um.” He pushed his thigh between her legs. “How open?”
She pushed against him. “Very open.”
“I love you,” he whispered, and his hand moved around her waist. “And for the record, I’m very fond of vanilla wafers. I don’t believe in sampling other cookies when I have the perfect one at home.”
She chuckled and pressed her face into the warmth of his chest. “I love you, too,” she said, and her zipper fell open with Chase’s help. The silk dress slid over her shoulders and down her body.
“Um.” His head dipped to get a better view. “I was hoping you were wearing all red.” He swayed against her.
“You really are a bad boy,” she said, and stepped out of the dress encircling her bare feet.
He waggled his eyebrows, pulled her close, and continued to dance. “I even brought my handcuffs.” His gaze lowered again to her body. “Wow, you look good.” His tongue traced his bottom lip. Then his gaze continued to feast on her matching red bra and panties. “Victoria’s Secret?” he asked.
She nodded, then cupped his face in her hands. “There’s a lot of things we need to talk about.”
His feet slowed and they finally stood frozen. “I should have told you about Sarah,” he said, somehow reading her mind. “I think I just needed to say good-bye first.”
“You loved her a lot,” Lacy said, trying to control her jealousy. “Are you sure—”
“I did love her. A lot. But she’s gone now, and she’d be happy for me. I love you. I don’t want to spend my life in the past. I’ve never been surer about anything.”
“Good.” She smiled, then rested her head on his chest.
“What about the Peter issue?” His hands moved to her upper arms.
Lacy raised her head from the warmth of his shoulder. “I’m not in love with him anymore. I haven’t been for a long time.”
“But I thought—”
She pressed a finger over his soft lips. “It was never about Peter. I mean, he hurt me, and I guess that didn’t help but . . . it was really about my mom, and my grandma.” She took a deep breath. “They have a history of marrying and getting divorced. I don’t want to wind up like them.”
“Is it the married or the divorced part that bothers you?” His hands moved down her forearms to rest on her waist again. And they felt good there. The kind of good that she could get used to.
“Definitely the divorced.”
“Good. Because when I get married—casually, of course—I don’t get divorced.” He kissed her, a soft touch of his lips to hers, a touch that spoke of commitment, of honesty, of forever. She knew she could trust him.
The phone rang. They ignored it. Her mother’s shrill voice echoed through the sound system: “Lace? Are you okay? Do I need to hire the hit man to take out that cop? We could kill him for ten thousand or wound him for two. What do you think?”
He ended the kiss. “Jeez!” he said. “This is going to be my mother-in-law?”
Lacy smiled. “I told you . . . she’s missing that filter thingamabob, and therefore she speaks before she thinks.”
“I think,” her mom continued, “we could choose if we wanted it to be an arm or leg.”
Chase rolled his eyes.
“She really wouldn’t hire a hit man.” Lacy giggled.
“Well, I hope the hell not.” He took a breath. “Tell me. Do they give thingamabob transplants? I’ll even pay for it. Find that woman a doctor for goodness’s sake.”
Lacy grinned. “She’s not all bad. She’s the one who told me not to give up on you. And the bra and panties . . . she gives me a five-hundred-dollar gift certificate to Victoria’s Secret every Valentine’s Day. I have a drawer full of . . . surprises.”
“Five hundred? I love her already,” Chase said, and moved to the kitchen to pick up the phone. “Hello, Mrs. Callahan.” He paused. “Yes, ma’am. I plan on that. No, ma’am. I would never do anything to hurt her. I remember. It was something about me and a meat grinder.” Chase held the phone to his ear, but his gaze moved up and down Lacy’s body with lusty appreciation. With a quick finger-wiggle, he motioned for her to come closer.
Lacy slid into him, running her hands up and over his chest. Slowly she undid his first shirt button, then the second. He folded his free hand around her back; then, lowering his head, he pressed his lips against the curve of her neck.
“Uh-huh,” he mumbled into the phone. “Mrs. Callahan, I hate to interrupt, but . . . your daughter is standing here and I’m in the mood for a vanilla wafer.” He paused. “Well, let me put it this way: She’s practically naked and all I can think about is banging a headboard against the wall. Can we discuss wedding dates another time?”
Lacy buried her face into Chase’s shoulder and tried not to laugh. She failed, and her laughter spilled out on his shirt.
“Yes, ma’am.” He hung up and met her gaze. “Your mother said for you to enjoy yourself.” He kissed the top of Lacy’s head.
Leaning back, she felt her laugh bubble up again. “I can’t believe you told her that!”
“Hey, there has to be some advantage to having that woman for a mother-in-law. If she speaks without using a thingamabob, then I can give my own thingamabob an occasional break.” He grinned and unhooked Lacy’s bra. “Now . . . what were we doing before the phone rang?”
Books by Christie Craig
Divorced and Desperate Series
Divorced, Desperate and Delicious
Divorced, Desperate and Dating
Divorced, Desperate and Deceived
Divorced, Desperate and Dangerous
(coming November 3, 2014)
Divorced, Des
perate and Dead
(coming November 17, 2014)
Hotter in Texas Series
Only in Texas
Blame It on Texas
Texas Hold ’Em
Tall, Hot & Texan
Gotcha!
The Cop Who Stole Christmas
Weddings Can Be Murder
Shut Up and Kiss Me
Murder, Mayhem and Mama
Love, Laughter and a Little Murder: 3 Novels by Christie Craig
(anthology containing Murder, Mayhem and Mama;
Weddings Can Be Murder; and Gotcha!)
For more information: www.Christie-Craig.com
YOUNG ADULT NOVELS BY
CHRISTIE CRAIG WRITING AS C. C. HUNTER
New York Times Bestselling Shadow Falls Series (Young Adult)
Born at Midnight
Turned at Dark (free novella)
Awake at Dawn
Taken at Dusk
Whispers at Moonrise
Saved at Sunrise (novella)
Chosen at Nightfall
Shadow Falls: After Dark Series (Young Adult)
Reborn
Unbreakable (novella)
Eternal
(coming October 28, 2014)
For more information: www.CCHunterBooks.com
Excerpt from Divorced, Desperate and Dangerous
Keep reading for an excerpt
from the new book in the
Divorced and Desperate series
by Christie Craig,
Divorced, Desperate and Dangerous!
Chapter 1