Bad Boy (An Indecent Proposal) - J.C. Reed Page 0,63
quite manage to calm the raging storm inside me. “I know. I talked with him earlier.”
“And?”
“I told him it’s on. That’s why I’m here.” He looked at me surprised, and I felt the need to clarify. “I want you to go ahead and do what needs to be done.”
“That means a lot to me.” He grabbed my hand, his eyes meeting mine. “I promise you as soon as Clint loses his money, it’ll all be transferred to you. No harm done.”
I chuckled darkly. “No harm done, huh? What about my feelings, Chase? I thought we had a real thing going on.” I turned to him and caught the imploring glint in his eyes. “You really think I came here because I might be afraid of losing money? Honestly, I don’t care about that at all. It’s the other matter that bothers me.”
His expression changed from surprise to disbelief.
“Are you saying you feel more?” he asked quietly.
“More?” I laughed through the curtain of tears clouding my vision. “I feel everything. I feel the sun in my eyes when I look at you. I smell the sky when you breathe. I don’t call this nothing. I call it everything.”
“Then leave with me.” His plea surprised me, his intensity made me want to pack my bags and follow him to the end of the world and back. “I can arrange a seat for you.”
“I can’t,” I whispered. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t. What I said earlier, I meant it.”
His eyes widened. “You want—”
I nodded. “I still want a divorce.”
“Why?” There was so much sadness in his eyes, my heart felt like it was going to burst from the weight of my pain. “Why would you give us up? You know that I want to give us a try.”
“Because I can’t deal with it.” I looked at him. “You got what you wanted. Me. And your revenge. But now I need to move on. For my sake, for our sake. Because what we have is not real. It’s—”
His hand touched my face. I didn’t even have time to take a breath before his lips came crashing down. They ripped open a hole in my heart, filling it with the sweet promise of something I knew would be gone in the blink of an eye.
Not with desire, not with anger, not with hope, but love.
Love for this man I barely knew.
Love for someone who couldn’t love me as much as I did him.
Or at least that was what I thought.
“It feels pretty real to me,” Chase whispered against my lips.
“It’s unrealistic,” I whispered. “You fell in love with your target. You honestly believe it’d ever work out?” I inched closer, barely able to stifle the need to throw myself into his arms and trust him with my heart I knew I could never give him. “I want things to be different. I want there to be an us, but life doesn’t work that way. I hate to say it, but your brother’s right.”
His mouth tightened. My answer didn’t please him.
“I care about you, Laurie,” he whispered. “I really do. But—”
“But what?”
“I’ve never let anybody be this close to me. My brother says I’m incapable of love. That’s what everyone told me, and I believed them. That’s why it was easy to go on with my plans, and why I suggested that I do it rather than Kade. But after meeting you, something inside me changed.” My breath hitched at his words. “It was easy to make myself believe that it was only a job, that I could move on after the deed was done, but now—” His glance searched mine in a long, tender moment. “—now I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to stay away from you. I don’t think I want to. You have come to mean so much to me.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “What are you saying, Chase?”
“I’m a lawyer. I’ve been taught not to let my feelings interfere and all that bullshit. But with you I feel that I can be myself. I feel that something is happening between us. I think that’s why I can’t stay away from you.”
“Why?”
His hands cupped my face and his thumbs brushed my cheeks. “You know the answer.”
“I want to hear it.”
He sighed. “I’m falling in love with you, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
The falling in love part again. The first time he had said it I made myself believe it