kisses and caresses, a prelude of what was to come. It was a routine that was as comfortable as it was predictable; she knew exactly what to expect.
And in that moment, it had never felt so good.
“So are you all set?” Colin asked as Andie pulled the car up to the curb.
“Yeah, I just have to finish packing and then stop by the restaurant tonight.”
“What time are you heading out tomorrow?”
“Early. No later than six. If all goes according to plan, I should get down to you sometime Thursday afternoon.”
“Alright, be careful. I’ll call you when I land,” he said, leaning over to kiss her. It was quick and chaste, but then he leaned in again, this time kissing her fully.
“Mmm,” she hummed as he ended the kiss, leaning into him as he pulled away from her like they were magnets.
He smiled to himself as he got out of the car, reaching into the backseat to grab his bags before placing them on the curb. He turned, leaning into the passenger window.
“I’m really glad Chase is going with you.”
Her smile dropped, but he seemed not to notice as he blew her a kiss and turned to grab his bags, walking through the automatic doors.
She watched him go, the seed he had planted with that last sentence slowly growing into a lump of foreboding in her stomach.
CHAPTER TWO
Chase McGuire sat on his bed, leaning over in his sleepy haze to zip up the duffel bag at his feet. He needed coffee. It was too damn early to be up, but Colin had told him that Andie wanted to leave by six that morning.
He still didn’t know why he’d agreed to this.
He had no problem paying the extra money for a last-minute ticket to Florida, but Colin was insistent that he drive down with his girl instead. He had to admit, it was a little strange to have a guy practically beg him to spend forty-eight hours alone with his girlfriend, but he knew this was about Andie’s safety. Apparently, she was adamant about driving and could not be persuaded to fly down with him.
He hadn’t thought about Andie much in the past year or so, not since that night in Justin’s wine cellar, but considering what he remembered of her, it seemed fitting that she would stubbornly insist on driving all the way to Florida alone.
The cab arrived outside, announcing itself with a toot of its horn, and Chase pushed himself off the bed and grabbed his bags, hoisting them onto his shoulder.
Stubborn.
That’s what he remembered the most about her, he thought as he slid into the back of the cab and gave the driver Andie’s address, the one Colin had given him when they had solidified these plans.
But as the gentle rocking of the cab began to lull him, he closed his eyes, and he couldn’t help the other things he started to remember about her now that he was thinking of her again. How awestruck she looked wandering into the cellar that night, and how quickly those big brown eyes had changed from innocently captivated to utterly fierce. That zero-to-sixty, that fiery tenacity, had turned him on more than he liked to admit. He could even vaguely remember what she had been wearing, even though it hadn’t been a particularly sexy outfit.
At least, it wasn’t supposed to be.
He remembered the way her jeans fit her like a second skin, the way the low neckline of her shirt straddled the line between classy and painfully seductive.
His eyes flipped open as the cab came to a stop, bringing him back to the present and his senses.
He laughed to himself, paying the cab driver. Chase was fully aware that he had a tendency to exaggerate a woman’s appeal when he knew she was off limits, and that in this case, what he remembered of Andie would be even more overstated since he hadn’t seen her in over a year. Thankfully, he had enough self-awareness to know exactly what needed to happen. He needed to walk into her apartment and see that she was just like any other woman—just a pretty girl, not nearly as appealing as he built her up to be in his mind, and that would be that.
He walked up the steps to her apartment with a duffel bag in each hand and used his elbow to knock on the door. It was barely a minute before he heard shuffling, followed by the muted click of the dead bolt.