Instead he said, “I’m still figurin’ that out. But we’ll hope we break through tomorrow. Yeah?”
She nodded.
Then she changed the subject.
“A professional?”
He shook his head and told her softly, “Police business, honey. Can’t talk about that.”
“The murder last night,” she guessed.
“Yeah,” he answered and she pressed in closer as her eyes went from holding his to studying him.
“That was unfun,” she whispered.
“It was but it’s also something I can’t talk about,” he replied.
“It brings up Misty,” she pushed and Chace sighed.
“Yeah, baby, it does.”
“You should –”
“No,” he cut her off.
She pressed in closer, opened those bubblegum lips of hers to say something and serious as f**k, she got closer, in his tee, with him on his couch, she pushed it, he’d give her anything she wanted.
So he had to shut this down.
“Give me this,” he said quietly and quickly she shut her mouth. “This day, with you after what you gave me last night. This one day, you and me and food and TV and champagne with the hamburgers I’m makin’ tonight and all of it good. All clean. All normal. All right. No Misty. No murder. No history. None of that garbage. Just us. You had what you had to give me last night to give once and I had it to get once. We shared that and it was beautiful. So let’s keep it beautiful, just us for a day. Tomorrow we can try to talk to abused kids and let the world back in. Today, tonight, give me,” he tightened his arm around her and finished, “this.”
“Okay,” she whispered immediately and he hadn’t even had to use the word “baby”.
Chace stared down into those blue eyes in that pretty face with those extraordinary cheekbones all of it surrounded by her fantastic hair looking up at him with warmth and understanding in her eyes and he knew in that instant he was falling in love.
Christ, he could have none of the beauty that met his eyes, her heart-shaped ass in his bed, the gift of her virginity and only have her giving in last night and just now when he needed her to and calling her folks to ream their asses about hassling him and it would have started happening.
But he had all of that and her being a geek, her imagination, her humor, her immense care for a kid she didn’t know and f**k him, he wasn’t teetering. He was halfway gone.
Ty and Tate had this. One was a brunette. One was a blonde. Neither of them were shy.
Both of them gave this.
Jesus. He got it.
And he had it in the curve of his arm.
Fuck, he wanted to make love to her.
Fuck.
He couldn’t without maybe causing her pain.
So he did what he could. He kissed her. He did it soft, he did it long, he got his hands up her shirt and she got her hands up his.
When he broke the kiss, he asked her softly if she wanted popcorn and to watch another episode of Psych. She grinned at him huge because she did.
Before they settled back in the couch with a bowl of microwave popcorn and cans of soda, he informed her she was again spending the night.