The Agreement (An Indecent Proposal) (18 page)

And then it
was over.

Too quickly.
Too fast. And I couldn’t avoid the strange nostalgia washing over me, until
Chase kissed me and pulled me to his chest. I closed my eyes and gave in to the
sudden need to sleep, his words no longer penetrating the wall of exhaustion
settling around my mind.

I woke up with a gasp, my brain fighting with the demons
occupying my dreams as my eyes adjusted to the light seeping through the drawn
curtains. Chase had been in them. And my mother. Somewhere, in the periphery of
my vision, I had thought I saw Clint and Shannon, their smiles reserved but
wicked, like they knew something I didn’t. It had made me angry, not because
they were laughing, but because they knew something I didn’t.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, not yet ready to
look at the other side of the bed.

A turning point in my life.

Breathe in, breathe
out.

We had done it. And now I was Mrs. Chase Wright. Granted, we
hadn’t married out of love but it still counted. Married was married, be it out
of love or out of necessity.

Breathe in, hold it,
and then breathe out.

But the wedding wasn’t even the biggest and most shocking
part. I had slept with him and it had been more amazing than I ever envisioned.
Strange but amazing nonetheless.

As the air whooshed out of my lungs, I turned to look at the
man sleeping on the other side of the bed. In the morning light, Chase was so
beautiful I couldn’t help but stare, praying in my thoughts that he wouldn’t
wake and catch me. Because, I knew, if he did I still couldn’t pry my eyes off
him. His torso was turned away from me, which gave me enough privacy to admire
his half naked body.

His features were relaxed, the dark lashes casting shadows
across his perfect skin. The thin covers barely hid the perfection of his
sculpted chest and abdomen. My gaze lingered on the clearly defined bulge
beneath the sheet and my breath hitched in my throat from shame. I had seen
naked men before, on television, in magazines and commercials. But none of them
had had this effect on me. None of them had made me want to trail my fingertips
down his body. Or to sleep with them even though my core felt sore and my body
depleted of energy.

My shameful brain began to conjure vivid pictures of last
night’s events before my eyes and a soft tingle gathered in my breasts. My
nipples hardened, begging for Chase’s touch. As if he could sense my increasing
arousal, Chase stirred but didn’t wake.

Oh, God.

I had to get away before he woke up and realized I was
getting ready for round two. Whatever I experienced that night with Chase, I
wanted it again. I wanted to take charge. I wanted to learn more, but first I
had to spruce up, because there was no way in hell I would let a sexy man like
him see me naked, all sweaty from last night’s action between the sheets, and
without make-up.

Gingerly I got out of his bed and pulled my crumpled
nightdress over my head, then tiptoed out of the room and closed the door
behind me. The hall was bathed in bright, glorious light, reflecting the way I felt
inside.

I had almost reached the door to my bedroom to grab my
make-up bag when a phone rang. It took me barely a second to spy it on the
hardwood floor under the table in the hallway, where I must have dropped it too
drunk to notice.

It was most certainly Jude calling.

I squatted quickly to pick it up and pressed it to my ear
without checking the caller ID.

I got the chance to answer because a male voice beat me to
it.

“You need to get back to me,” he barked down the line. “I
swear if you lose more money, the deal’s gone. Do you hear me? It’ll be gone,
so you’d better get your ass moving and do what we talked about. You’d better
not fuck this up.”

The words were harsh—like whiplashes against my bare
soul.

I opened my mouth to explain that he had dialed the wrong
number when tires screeched, followed by the sound of scraping metal and a
crash, ending in a string of cuss words.

“I got to go, bro,” the voice said. “The stupid fucker can’t
drive worth shit. And before I forget, the folder’s in the top left drawer of
the coffee table beneath the blue painting. Get your fucking shit together or
we’ll have a real problem on our hands.”

He hung up—just like that.

Confused, I stood frozen to the spot, unable to make any
sense of the bizarre conversation.

What a creep.

I swiped at the screen to block his number when I was
prompted for the password. I frowned.

It was then that I noticed the cell phone was a sleek little
iPhone, all shiny and new—probably the newest gadget on the market.
Except for the color black, it looked nothing like the second hand phone I
bought after my handbag was stolen.

It had to be Chase’s cell.

Oh, shit. I didn’t want him to think I might be snooping
through his stuff.

I peered at Chase’s bedroom door out of fear that he might
have caught me in the act.

Except for the loud drumming of my heart, everything
remained silent.

Letting out a shaky breath to compose myself, I placed the
cell phone on the table.

“Don’t, Laurie. Just drop it,” I murmured to myself. They
were supposed to be words of inspiration as I headed for my room.

The curtains were closed, the bed in its previous,
dishevelled state. I pulled the curtains aside.

Would Chase know that I had taken his call?

Most likely.

Maybe he won’t look.
And you can pretend you didn’t hear anything.

I’d deal with a confrontation when it happened.

But, for some reason, the call just wouldn’t stop pestering
me in my mind.

There had been something about the voice—an urgency in
the brisk tone, some kind of control it exerted—that worried me.

Suddenly, I felt anxious for Chase. He had been eager to
help me, and in all that time, I never really asked questions about his life.
For all I knew, he could be drowning in debt. Or maybe he was addicted to
drugs—though, from the looks of his place, I doubted it. He seemed to
have his life figured out, or maybe I wanted to see him that way.

There was a real possibility that he was involved with a bad
crowd.

Fuck it, Laurie.

My imagination was running wild again—and not in a
good way.

The caller must have dialed the wrong number because there
was no blue painting in the executive suite.

Or was there?

My heart began to flutter hard against the current of
nervous energy engulfing me. I slowed down as new thoughts began to permeate my
mind.

It had been in the middle of the night that I heard steps. I
had placed them outside my bedroom, in the hall, near the entrance. Was it
possible that a visitor had entered to leave the folder?

My mind began to reel at the possibility. Before I knew what
came over me, I retraced my steps to the living room and stopped in the
doorway. My gaze fell on the painting above the coffee table.

It wasn’t blue, per se.

However, the sky and the blue clothes of a pale woman were prevalent
enough to catch my attention. Could it be it?

I dashed for it, for some reason afraid that Chase might
catch me if I didn’t hurry, but there was no movement, no one to stop me.

I stopped right in front of it. Above the painting, the
inscription read ‘The Sacrifice of Polyxena.’

But it wasn’t the painting or the title that persuaded me to
pull open the drawer. I just had to know, even though I expected to find
nothing.

The drawer was stuck halfway so I tugged harder, without
much success.

I squeezed my arm inside to check the back, and my
fingertips brushed something coarse.

The folder was there.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

A rush of excitement flooded me but stopped abruptly,
replaced by guilt. I clapped my hand in front of the mouth, thinking.

What are you doing,
Laurie?

Technically, we were married, but Chase and I hadn’t defined
our relationship status just yet. Whatever Chase was doing was his business,
and yet, somewhere, somehow deep down, I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of
trouble he was in. Maybe I could help him. I shouldn’t have listened to the guy
on the phone because now I was curious.

Shit.

I should never have picked up the phone in the first place.

Shouldn’t even have touched it.

But I did, and now what?

Guilt gnawed at me for wanting to find out everything about
Chase.

I took a deep breath. “It’s not your business,” I repeated
over and over again, like a mantra. “It’s not your business.”

It wasn’t.

It really wasn’t.

Of course, I’d never look.

“What kind of person would I be?” I grimaced and turned my
back on the painting.

Exert self-control,
Laurie. You can do it.

The trouble was I had the feeling that whatever that folder
contained, Chase would probably not tell me, and I wasn’t the sort of person
who could easily forget the call. Now that I had found the folder, I couldn’t
move on without looking.

No one would ever hide
something, unless they didn’t want you to stumble upon it.

I pulled out the brown folder.

It looked plain and harmless. Maybe it was a message from
Clint.

My stepfather had been psycho enough to warn us. Maybe he
had tried to scare Chase, and Chase being Chase didn’t want to worry me.

My fingers traced the contours of the coarse paper, fighting
with my self. In the end I decided to peer inside.

You’d better be right
about Clint—because anything else was a violation of Chase’s privacy.

My hands shook as I opened the folder, frowning ever so
lightly when I noticed how heavy it was. The first thing that stood out was
that most of the papers were stapled together, and how used they
looked—as if someone had worked with them for a long time.

I read the sticky note attached to the first page where
someone had written a message in hurried cursive:

Kade,

You said this was
urgent. Have a look and tell me what you want me to do, then return this.

My brows knit in confusion.

Kade?

I knew no one by that name, and Chase had never mentioned
him. Maybe someone dropped off the envelope by mistake because that Kade person
wasn’t staying in our suite.

I should have pushed the papers back inside the folder and
returned it to its place, but for some reason I didn’t.

After another peek behind me, I began flicking through the
papers. There were thirty at least, and two photos of me. One was a headshot
and the other seemed to have been taken through a window of a public place I
recognized as the coffee shop around the block from where I sometimes grabbed a
cup on my way out.
 
Somewhere at the
back of my mind alarm bells went off.

“What the hell,” I muttered staring at my own face.

I could feel the onset of panic and helplessness.

Was Clint harassing Chase?

That would be so much like him.

I began to read through the pages in the hope of finding a
reasonable explanation.

When I reached the third page, my heart stopped in my chest,
and cold sweat coated my back. It was a printout of a forwarded email
application to LiveInvent Designs and the personal assistant’s invitation to
come in for an interview with the exact time and date he’d expect me.

It was the day I got stuck in an elevator.

It was the day the floor collapsed; the day I met Mystery
Guy.

Somewhere in the distant back of my mind, Chase’s voice
echoed:

You don’t look okay.
Do you want to take the stairs?

You’re
hyperventilating, Laurie.

Breathe, Laurie. You
need to breathe.

And just recently:

Being afraid of a lift
or of darkness is just human.

A shaky breath escaped my trembling lips as realization
slowly dawned on me.

I had never told Chase about my fear of darkness. I was
pretty sure about that.

It was as if he somehow knew that I was afraid of all tight
places, especially those devoid of light. His voice had seemed familiar, but I
could never quite place it.

It was as if he had been inside that building with me,
experiencing that dreadful day.

Maybe he had been.

For the past three months, I had been obsessed with
him—the man who had saved my life. I had scanned newspapers, but found no
clues, no missing person reports—nothing to indicate he had ever existed,
or that he might be missed. It turned out I never had to look very far. Turned
out he had been right beside me for a while.

Sure I had noticed some similarities, but with each passing
day, the shock, the fear, the trauma, my memories became a blurry mess with
just that one kiss vivid in my mind.

I had no idea what to make of the folder in my hands.

Could it still be a big, fat coincidence?

Are you for real?

Obviously, I could ask Chase if he was Mystery Guy but even
if I wanted to, that wasn’t an option. Not when I sensed he’d be lying.

I closed my eyes and took deep breaths to calm the nausea
rising in my stomach.

Something was wrong. Very wrong. I could feel it in my
bones.

I knew that feeling. It was the same one I had felt before
my mother’s mental breakdown.

That same dark energy was here, beckoning to me to get to
the truth of the matter, while pushing me away at the same.

Don’t go there.

Keep on the blindfold.

Stay in the dark.

Opening my eyes, I took a deep breath and released it slowly
when I noticed that one sheet of paper had slipped out. I lifted it off the
floor and began to read. Even though it was only a four-line paragraph
printout, my world stopped spinning.