Crazy Love - Krista & Chase (16 page)

“S
o what’s he like now?” Becca asked as she sat beside Krista in a beige pleather salon chair while they received pedicures.

The bubbling water and massaging chair had been doing a mighty fine job in the relaxing area until the subject had inevitably turned to Chase. Krista did not open her eyes in hopes that her little sister would get the hint and drop it.

“I don’t know. The same, I guess.”

“It’s so weird. So many girls, and guys for that matter, have posters of him at my dorm. I always hear his songs as ringtones around the campus. Every time someone brings him up because they love his music or just think he’s so hot, I want to be like, ‘Yeah, he taught me how to ride a bike’. It’s just so…bizarre.”

Becca kept talking about different memories she had of Chase growing up, but Krista tuned her out. She didn’t want to think about how amazing he’d been with her sisters or how well he’d gotten along with her very overprotective cousins. Or the fact that her dad had always said that he’d thought of him like a son. None of those things were going to help her campaign to keep Chase at arm’s length.

Krista scooted up in the chair as the massager hit a rather tender area on the back of her thigh. She
might
have overdone it this morning…a little. It’s not that she’d been trying to show off. That really wasn’t the case. It was just that Chase had always known how to push her buttons—all of her buttons. His cocky attitude had seriously pissed her off. Since she was young, whenever she got mad, she did things fast.

Her dad used to irritate her on purpose when the family would be swimming in the pool just because it amused him to see how fast she would make it from the deep end to the shallow end. Her sister Jessie used to intentionally frustrate her whenever they were doing chores because she knew that Krista wouldn’t stop when she’d finished her own—she would keep cleaning until the entire house was spotless.

So true to form, this morning she’d run around the track like her sweats were on fire. Which was not a total stretch in the analogy department, considering that the entire time she’d been on the track she’d felt the heat of Chase’s stare as she ran. Krista hated to admit it, but she’d liked knowing that he was behind her, watching her as she ran like the wind. When they’d finished their laps and walked over to stretch, she’d seen just how much he’d enjoyed the view straining against his shorts.

She’d be lying if she said that it didn’t give her a thrill knowing how she’d affected him more than once since his return. In fact, practically every time they’d seen each other, his pants had gotten snug below the belt. Krista knew that she’d been just as turned on as Chase all of those times, but he didn’t. He might suspect it. But there was no indisputable proof as was the case in his lower region.

“Krista?” The questioning sound in Becca’s voice forced her to open her eyes.

“Huh?” Krista turned and saw that not only was Becca staring at her, but Haley and Jamie seemed to be all ears as well. Thankfully Amber, Chelle, and Katie were all in getting massages. Otherwise this would have been a tad bit too much.

Becca’s brow furrowed in concern. “I asked if you were going with Chris to the engagement party tonight.”

Chris!

Holy shit. She’d completely forgotten about Chris. Not that they were
really
a couple, but they had definitely moved past the booty-call-slash-friends-with-benefits stage of their relationship.

Hoping to cover up her shock at hearing his name, Krista smoothly (she hoped!) answered her sister. “Nope. He’s working tonight. So I’ll probably see him there.”

Her sisters and Jamie nodded their heads, all with varying degrees of ‘knowing’ looks in their eyes.

“Does he know that Chase is back in town?” Jessie asked.

“I don’t know,” Krista snapped.

Jessie’s brows rose. “Oookay.” Her sister sat back against the chair.

“I just mean, it doesn’t matter if he does or doesn’t know that Chase is back. It has nothing to do with us,” Krista said, softening her tone.

“Umm…” Jamie was nervously biting her lip. “I’m not sure if I should tell you this. I thought maybe I should, but then I thought, ‘No, it’s none of my business.’ Then I thought, ‘If it were me, I’d want to know,’ but then I thought—”

“Jamie.” Krista interrupted her ramblings. “Just say it.”

“Alex invited Chase to the engagement party tonight,” Jamie blurted, all of the words coming out so fast it sounded like one very
long
word… AlexinvitedChasetotheengagementpartytonight.

“What?!” Krista sat straight up in her chair.

Jamie nodded, wide-eyed, as Becca’s hand flew over her mouth in shock and a small smile lifted on Jessie’s face.

“Why did he do that?” Krista wanted to
kill
her cousin. What could have possibly possessed him to invite her
ex-boyfriend
to her sister’s engagement party?

Jamie’s left shoulder lifted as an apologetic expression fell over her face. “I don’t think he meant to upset you. He said he ran into him at the hospital. He was happy to see him again, and I guess thought his brothers would be too. He said that he specifically asked Chase about you and Chase told him that you guys were good. He said that you were the one who called him about his mom.”

Krista flopped back in the chair as all of her energy drained from her body. She’d been so looking forward to this party. A time to let her hair down. Dance. Drink. Be merry. Well, bully on that. None of that was going to happen if Chase was in attendance. Not only would Krista have to fight the inner battle that she faced every time she and Chase were within one hundred yards of each other, she was also going to have to do it amongst a very interested audience. Most of which were her family members. She knew that they would all be watching to see what would happen between them. It was going to be like a juicy soap opera and Krista had unwittingly just been cast as the lead role.

Then a thought hit her. Jamie had said that Alex had invited Chase. She hadn’t said if he’d accepted. Maybe he would respect the fact that this was Krista’s family, not his, and keep his distance.

Yeah, and maybe pigs would fly.

“Did he say if he was coming?” Krista tried to modulate her tone, not allowing any of the panic that was bubbling up inside of her at the thought of his being there to bleed through as she sliced her eyes to look at Jamie.

Jamie nodded once again. “Yeah, he did. I’m sorry, sweetie. He said he’s coming.”

Of course he is.

Krista shut her eyes, took in a deep, cleansing breath through her nose, and blew it out through her mouth. As the water bubbled around her ankles and the massaging chair did its thing, getting out all of her body’s kinks and working on her sore muscles, she tried to let her mind go blank. It might sound strange, but sometimes Krista did her best thinking when she
stopped
trying to figure everything out.

After several moments of concentrating on relaxing her entire body, letting the soft sounds of jazz softly playing over the speakers wash through her and clearing her mind, genius struck. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration. A new plan did pop into her mind though, and to her, it sounded brilliant.

It occurred to her that she had been going about this whole Chase thing all wrong. Part of his appeal was their sparks, their fireworks, which were fueled by passion and intensity. Since he’d been back in town, she’d let him goad her into getting riled up. Really, her behavior had left her wide open for it. But if she was nice to him, then he wouldn’t have the openings to push her buttons. Therefore, the intensity level would drop, thereby dropping the fireworks-slash-sparks level.

The second part of her inspired plan was the realization that her strategy to stay away from him, keep her distance, was backfiring. Big time. What that plan was in fact doing was making Chase seem more appealing.

All her life, Krista had always loved a challenge and wanted things more when she was told she couldn’t have them. That was exactly what she was doing with Chase. It was self-inflicted, but the only thing her subconscious, hormones, and heart knew was that he was off-limits.

Well, she was about to flip that script. Her mind had been trying to protect her heart and soul. Maybe the way to protect them was to let them have what they wanted. It was the same philosophy that their dad had had when Becca had been obsessed with touching the light sockets as a toddler. Her mom had run herself ragged trying to keep her away from them, but her dad had just said, “She’ll only do it once.” If her body, heart, and soul wanted to touch the light socket—aka Chase—well, so be it.

She was sixteen when he’d walked out of her life the first time and she’d survived. Thrived even. Now she was a grown woman, not a lovesick teen.

Time to act like one.

* * *

“Listen, it’s only two dates. I couldn’t get ahold of you and the offers were just too good to pass up,” Marcus’s voice came over the phone’s speaker.

Chase stood in the deserted hallway of the hospital and still had to cover his ear to hear his manager’s voice. There was so much wind in the background that it was hard to make out. Marcus liked to make his phone calls on speaker…while he drove with his convertible top down.

That habit had always irritated the shit out of Chase.

“I never authorized you to commit to dates. I’ll do the shows this time, but don’t let it happen again.” Chase hung up the phone and pushed it back into his jean’s pocket. He was really close to being done with his idiot of a manager. All managers tended to overstep their boundaries from time to time, but this was the fifth incident this week.

Chase had been working with Marcus since he’d been with Midnight Rush. During his manager’s six years with the band, he’d done a decent job and always respected the wishes of the four members, both individually and collectively. Now, Chase was beginning to think that it had less to do with ‘respect’ and more to do with the fact that he hadn’t had the balls to step to all four members of the band. Now that it was just Chase, Marcus seemed to be flexing his manager muscle like he was in a bodybuilding competition, and if he continued to do so, Marcus Willoughby would be down one client.

Trying not to let his frustration ruin the time he had while his mom was awake, he stepped back into the bright hospital room. His mom was sitting up in the bed, eating the lunch Jamie had just dropped off for her. She had good color and her face was a little more filled out than it had been the day he arrived. This morning, Dr. Corbin said that if things kept going like they were, then she was on the road to a full recovery.

“Everything okay?” she asked as she scooped some of the red Jell-O out of the small plastic container.

“Yep. Everything’s fine.”

He’d have to leave next month for two shows in Cincinnati, but he’d only be gone for a couple of days. Still, the thought of leaving, even for a short time, held zero appeal to him.

There were several reasons a trip was the last thing he wanted to do. Of course, he didn’t want to leave while his mom was still recovering. Then there was Krista. The bottom line was that he wanted to be wherever she was. And the icing on the not-wanting-to-leave-Harper’s-Crossing cake was that he could be himself here. Sure, he’d only been out in town a few times, but when he had, he’d been treated just like Chase, a kid who had grown up here and had now returned home. He hadn’t been treated like Chase Malone, rock and roll god. He felt like he could just be. He could breathe and enjoy life here.

His mom’s voice invaded his thoughts. “Krista came by earlier. She said that she was going to that new spa with her sisters to get ready for Haley’s engagement party.” There was an expectancy in both his mom’s tone and her facial expression.

He knew what his mom wanted to hear—that he and Krista were getting back together. Hell, he wanted to tell her that very thing. The only problem was that she was in a very fragile state and he didn’t want to give her any false hope. It wasn’t just her physical state and the aftereffects of the stroke that worried Chase. Her emotional state gave him just as much if not more cause for concern.

If it were up to him, he and Krista would work everything out and find their way back to each other. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only person who got a vote in that scenario. He couldn’t even say that the ball was in Krista’s court since she wasn’t even playing the game. No racket. No cute tennis shorts. Nada.

“Have you seen much of her?” his mom asked. It was the same question she’d asked yesterday.

“A little bit. I saw her this morning on the track.”

“You two went on a run together?” His mom’s eyes lit up. “Just like high school.”

“Not really. I was already at the track when she showed up. She wasn’t really happy to see me.” There was a fine line between sugarcoating things, which would give her false hope, and crushing her spirit with blunt truths. He was trying his best to walk it.

“Oh, I’m sure she was just tired. She’s not a morning person, you know,” his mom said, acting like she was the authority on Krista.