Loving the Chase (Heart of the Storm #1), Page 3

  Zach smiled. Old. Any other time, he would rise to that bait, turn on the charm, and go show this cocky little girl exactly what being old and experienced was all about. She was Zach’s kind of woman. High chemistry, low maintenance, no strings, no emotional attachments, just out for a good time. No judgment, opinions, or history.

  No Madison Hayes.

  That thought physically pushed him back a step. “Not today. Think I’ll take the stairs,” he said with the most charming smile he could come up with. “Nice to meet you.”

  Zach turned and headed for a door with a neon “Exit” glowing above it, thinking a jog down eleven flights of steps might be just what he needed to clear his head. He’d made it down one set when he heard the door open again overhead.

  “Hey.”

  He stopped. “Yeah?”

  Blonde Girl took the stairs slowly on the precarious heels, and from his angle, Zach could just about see all the goods. When she reached him, she wasted no time breaking personal space. She cozied right on up, and knew exactly how to fit her body against a man.

  “I wasn’t actually talking about eating,” she said, her soft honeyed voice dripping with all kinds of promises.

  “I know,” Zach said.

  “Then why are you leaving?” she whispered, pulling him closer still.

  Why was he leaving? Here he had a hot woman nearly humping his leg. But his head was still—

  Zach pulled her hands free and backed up, bringing them to his lips. He kept his eyes on hers and maintained the fantasy. He knew how to leave a woman breathless. Except in this particular case, he was much more focused on getting down those stairs than he was on Blonde Girl’s breathing.

  “I have to go,” he said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Sorry,” he said with a wink and two steps down.

  “Facebook me,” she said, covering her disappointment with a fresh new seductive look. “Blakely Ash.”

  “I don’t do Facebook,” he said, holding up his hands.

  “Who doesn’t do Facebook?” Blakely scoffed. “How do you keep up with everyone?”

  Zach’s everyone fit in his phone, and probably sadly also fit at his mother’s dinner table. He didn’t have time to be much more social than that. At least, the kind of social that required keeping up.

  He was down another flight of stairs, however, before the entire sentence was even out of her mouth. But it wasn’t the woman in red he was trying to escape.

  It was the woman in white and the ice daggers she’d thrown at him every time she looked his way. Those damn blue eyes and all the history in them. Eyes that knew him.

  As he opened the door to the parking garage and continued the sprint to his bike, he was filled with trepidation and the need to push it away. This show—this project—couldn’t be about Maddi Hayes. She was ancient history. It was about his family and their business. About creating something that could help them grow and put what they do in everyone’s living room. That’s where his head needed to be, and where it needed to stay. He strapped on his helmet extra tight, as if that might help, and climbed on. He had a little over an hour to let the wind blow Blakely’s strong cologne off of him, and plan the approach with his brother. With his family, actually, but anyone who really knew the score knew that Eli was the gatekeeper.

  Now, if he could just manage that hour without old memories invading his thought process, it would be great. He cranked the motor and felt the rumble as the big machine thundered to life. Maddi Hayes.

  Shit.

  Maddi stood in the hallway as Zach said something to the receptionist and headed for the stairs. The second he was gone, she bolted the other direction, pushing open the door to the ladies room. Maddi went straight to the counter, pressing her palms against the cold black granite as two hot tears landed next to them.

  “Quit, quit, quit,” she whispered as she watched the drops puddle on the granite. It wasn’t the time to be a silly melodramatic girl.

  She didn’t know how the hell she’d pulled off sitting across from him so stoically. The way he’d looked at her when she’d sat down, it had almost done her in. It had taken all she had to walk away back then, on the day the tornado flattened their apartment building with her in it. To leave the area, even, because anything Chase was bigger than life in Cody. So she’d miraculously found the suitcase she had packed for their trip, and left that very day for her brother Monroe’s apartment in Dallas. He was out of the country serving in the military at the time, so she made herself at home until she was on solid ground again. And that ground never wandered far from the city. It certainly never wandered back to Cody.

  Maddi looked up at her reflection in the mirror and laughed bitterly as more tears blinked free. She was a hot mess. Eyeliner was bleeding south, mascara was dotted north, and a fine sheen of perspiration covered her from head to toe. Not the glowing dewy kind.

  Thank God the meeting had really just been a formality and the details had already been worked out, because she remembered nothing from the first ten minutes. All she could see was the absolutely shell-shocked look in Zach’s eyes and hear his voice crack a little as he tried to get his thoughts back on track.

  Why had that hit her like a bulldozer?

  “Shit,” she muttered, grabbing a paper towel from the dispenser and attempting repair. “You’re such an idiot. Such a—walking hormone—ugh!” She felt her eyes go hot again and tilted her head back, shoving the tip of her tongue against the roof of her mouth to stem the urge. “Stop!”

  She didn’t have time for this. She didn’t have time or available space in her brain to waste energy on Zach Chase. No matter what. It didn’t matter what they had once been, and what she had seen in his eyes just five minutes earlier. She’d walked away from that for a reason. She’d run away so she never had to see him and question that decision. And that was a hundred years ago. The thin white scar curving up from the right side of her top lip drew her eyes. Everything has a reason.

  She was better than this, and too old for the drama.

  “Come on Maddi, get it together,” she whispered.

  Blowing out a breath, she turned on the cold water, patted her face, and held her wrists under the stream. She closed her eyes and let the cold cool her blood, her nerves, her clammy skin.

  Maddi started when the door swung open, grabbing more paper towels to blot her face dry and appear normal as two twenty-somethings chatted their way in. She made for a stall to get herself together, locked the door, and leaned her head against the partition as they babbled.

  Why were they all so stupid now? When she was their age—not that long ago—she worked hard to be taken seriously. To not be looked at as just an ass and tits. But God, to listen to these two talk about what they wore to what meeting and how they sat or leaned or moved their hair and who could get who faster—Maddi wanted to go bang their heads together until their teeth—

  “I’m telling you, they’re getting it on in the back stairwell right now,” one of the airheads said, interrupting Maddi’s thoughts. “I saw her smile and do that hair thing and follow him.”

  “She’s such a tease,” Airhead Number Two said.

  “No, she’s told me about some of the crazy-ass shit she’s done with some of the middle management guys,” Airhead Number One said, laughing. “I promise you, there’s no teasing. She delivers.”

  “Whatever, that’s gross,” Number Two said, her words mumbled as if she was putting on lipstick. “They’re old. Blakely has no standards.”

  Blakely was the receptionist. Maddi tried hard not to recall seeing Zach talk to her, see her smile, or see him head for the stairs. No, no, no . . .

  “Well, she stepped up today,” Number One said as their voices moved toward the door. “Did you see that guy? He wasn’t old. Well, maybe like in his thirties. Holy shit, I don’t care how old he is, I’d do him upside d
own in a tree if he asked. And rumor has it that he’s the next reality show they’re—”

  And the door closed.

  Maddi felt every nerve ending in her body light up like a million tiny fires. Drying her eyes and no longer caring what she looked like, she pushed open the stall door and the bathroom door, walking into the busy mecca of the station. Just in time to see Blakely, the perky young receptionist with Rapunzel hair and Viking boobs, enter discreetly from the stairwell door and fidget with her hair on her way to the bathroom.

  Maddi forced a smile as she passed her, letting out her breath when she heard the door swing shut behind her. There was a weird ringing in her ears. Something like rage. Not at him. She had no claims on him.

  It was herself she wanted to throttle. She had just had a meltdown over the love of her life, a man she said good-bye to seven years ago, who evidently just fucked the company receptionist on the back stairs five minutes after seeing her again.

  She had even cried over him.

  For the last damn time.

  Zach walked through the front door of his mom’s house without knocking, heading past the living room, past the hall that would lead to his mother’s room and all her various hobby rooms that used to be their bedrooms, into the big open kitchen where he snatched a chip and dunked it into a bowl of nearly-gone picante and cream cheese dip. He could hear the voices in the next room—the family room, as Louella Chase liked to call it. The giant room that Zach loved the most, even as a kid, because it was the one room that fit them all. A long, handmade solid-wood table that he and his dad had made together filled the front of it, where everyone ate, and the rest was random comfortable furniture and soft rugs over the original wood floor. A stone fireplace took up the middle of the back wall, flanked with huge windows on either side that looked out on twin giant oak trees.

  His mom’s house wasn’t big or fancy, but sitting in that room, he’d always felt like they were living large. There was a large flat-screen television on one side now, and a generous selection of movies to watch, but it was the quiet chaos of that room that Zach loved so much. Life happened there. He and Maddi had happened there. He could still remember her favorite place to curl up by the fireplace and look out the window, even when they were still kids. She and her brother had spent more time there than at their own house, and every room had memories of Maddi in it. But the family room—Zach’s mind traveled without even seeing it to a spot of carpet in front of one of the windows. That had been hers, right next to the fireplace. Where she’d always landed. It had also been the first place they’d ever done the deed, on one of the rare times no one was home.

  And damn close to where she’d stood the last time he’d seen her. Until today. She’d been wearing white then, too. Covered in mud and bloodstains.

  Maddi Hayes. Shit. He shook the memory free as he shoved the dip-laden chip into his mouth and walked around the corner and five sets of eyes turned his way.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he mumbled around the food.

  As expected, everyone started talking at one time. Including Cracker, his mother’s thirteen-year-old half-deaf beagle, who sprung up from his near-comatose state on the couch with a yip at the sound of another voice in the room.

  “I could have been a serial killer,” Zach said to Cracker as the dog wagged his way over to him. He didn’t care. He was too busy sniffing Zach’s hand for remnants of the chip he smelled.

  “Let me go fix you a bowl,” Lou said, rising and halfway to the kitchen before the sentence was all the way out of her mouth.

  “I can get it, Mom,” he said. “Go finish eating.”

  “Sit,” she said, already pulling a bowl from the cabinet.

  “Zachariah,” said the beautifully coiffed, tiny ancient woman in the wheelchair and yoga outfit at the far end of the table. “Louella, can you bring me some more napkins while you’re in there?” she called out as she winked at him and crumbled cornbread into her small bowl of chili, her gnarled fingers sparkling with bling.

  “Where’d you go today?” asked Hannah, although her full attention was on the cell phone she’d pulled from her lap the second their mom was out of sight, like she was fourteen instead of thirty. Phones weren’t allowed at the table during their weekly Thursday night suppers—it was their mother’s rule. One night a week to eat a meal together without interruption or distraction was all she asked. Given the smile that Hannah was trying to stifle, there was evidently a new man in the picture worth the risk.

  “No place too important,” said Simon around a mouthful of buttered cornbread, his table manners in direct contrast to his starched shirt and slacks. He gestured to Zach’s feet. “The boots.”

  Only Eli steadily kept eating his chili, methodically cutting his cornbread with his spoon every few bites. He wasn’t interested in why Zach was late, or how he was dressed, or whether or not anything was out of the ordinary. He just raised an eyebrow in greeting and focused on his meal as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d ever experienced. That’s what made him Eli.

  Zach intercepted his mother’s steaming bowl of chili and plate of thick, buttered cornbread as she came in, and kissed her cheek.

  “Thanks, Mom,” he said.

  “I told you to sit,” she said. “Eat.”

  “I’m working on it,” Zach said. “Cracker had things to talk about.”

  She handed Annabelle a stack of napkins.

  “I didn’t say a whole pack, Louella, I’m not that messy,” Annabelle said, setting the stack in front of her and plucking the top one off. “Can you pass me that salt, please?” she added. “Needs something.”

  Zach watched his mother smile as she placated her mother-in-law. He eyed his grandmother as he kissed her cheek—who, at eighty-seven years old and shriveling into a raisin, still commanded a presence. He still wasn’t convinced she hadn’t poked her well-connected nose into things at the network. She’d been the only one he’d told about Nicole Brian’s phone call, and he’d regretted it almost instantly. Not that he didn’t love her fiercely, and not that she didn’t have a huge heart with lots of love to dole out in every possible way—but Annabelle Chase’s love frequently came with strings.

  Hannah slid her phone back under the table as Zach leaned down and head-hugged her on his way around.

  “Nice perfume,” she said, garnering an amused smirk from Eli. “So? You didn’t answer me.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Zach said, sitting down with his food. “Mom said to eat.”

  “Oh, don’t go putting that off on me,” Lou said, pointing her spoon at him and bringing a small grin to Eli’s normally pensive expression. “Nothing I do or say ever stopped you from speaking your mind before.”

  Zach stirred his chili, letting the steam hit his face. “I met with a TV network in Dallas.”

  And Eli’s attempt at a grin dissolved.

  Even Simon looked up, interested. “What?”

  Zach didn’t look Eli’s way, focusing on his mom instead. Her eyebrows were lifted in curiosity. Curious was better than what he knew lived on Eli’s side of the table.

  “The Infinity Network wants to do a reality show with us,” Zach said, spooning a mouthful of chili into his mouth so he’d have a reason to not speak for a few long, drawn-out seconds.

  “Are you serious?” Simon asked.

  “Afraid so,” Zach said.

  “I don’t know if I—” Simon began, the wheels turning behind his blue eyes. “If I can,” he continued. “I mean, I’m under contract with Channel Four.”

  “Is that a conflict?” Zach asked.

  “I have no idea,” Simon said, sitting back. “I’m on my way in to work tonight, I’ll talk to—”

  “Don’t talk to anybody just yet,” Elijah said, his voice landing on the table like the fist of doom. “Did you sign anything?” he asked, his eyes drilling into Zach. The scar that curve
d from Eli’s forehead to just between his eyes made him look more menacing when he was angry.

  “Not just yet,” Zach said, the usual irritant working under his skin when it came to Eli and his control-freak personality. “They need all our signatures. But I told them we would go over all the details.” Zach pulled a tightly folded-up packet of paper from his jeans pocket and tossed it onto the middle of the table. “And that we’d take a couple of them on a ride-along the next time out.”

  “Absolutely not,” Eli said.

  “That part I didn’t need your permission for, bro,” Zach said. “They’ll sign the waivers, don’t worry.”

  “It’s not them I’m worried about,” Eli said, dropping his spoon loudly against the stoneware bowl. “It’s us when they get in the way.”

  “They won’t get in the way.”

  “You don’t—” Eli stopped and leaned his head back, eyes closed, hands moving up his face into his short dark hair. He let a few beats pass, probably counting backwards in his head to calm down. “You don’t know that, Zach,” he continued. “You don’t know that and you don’t think that far ahead to see that possibility. All you see is glamour.”

  “No, actually what I see is notoriety, Eli,” Zach said, forcing himself to remain neutral and calm and take another spoonful of chili. Damn, he wished he’d recorded his spiel to Woodbriar. “Recognition, sponsors, money. Expanding the business.”

  “We aren’t there for that,” Eli said. “Dad always said that if we could save one life—”

  “—by what we do, then it’s worth it, yes, I know,” Zach finished. “And how much more could we do that if we were on TV reaching thousands of people? How many more could learn from Simon’s forecasting? From your tips on riding out a tornado? Think about it!”

  Eli got up, scraping his chair back. “Don’t play me that you’re interested in safety. You want the spotlight.”

  “I want a vehicle that can be hit by a tree and keep on ticking,” Zach threw back.

  “And there you go,” Eli said. He bent down to kiss Lou’s head, as if that act would keep him from strangling Zach. “You want flashing lights and a sexy TV image. Buffed-out cars with sponsor names all over them—” He looked up, meeting Zach’s eyes. “Is there a woman in this deal?”