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Chapter 7
If Chase had disliked how Tori easily kept her distance from him for the first two weeks of their nuptials, he wasn’t sure he liked the new scenario that had popped up for the past two days since the incident in the barn either. Tori was constantly under foot, never asking for anything but neither would she take the initiative to leave his sight. It was like having a little shadow on his heels and once or twice he’d even stepped on her as he’d gone about his business around the house.
For two days he’d tried not to hover while at the same time trying to comfort her when she needed it. She slept in his bed, fitfully, but there was nothing sensual or sexual about it. He almost felt as if he had a kid in his bed who needed daddy to chase away the nightmares and that worried Chase more than he was willing to let on.
Tori had gone from hating him, to idolizing him as some white knight. He was her superhero now and he wouldn’t be surprised if she started writing him cute little notes and passing them to him during lunch!
He sat back in his office chair, shook his head and sighed. He wasn’t being fair to her. She’d gone through one hell of a trauma and he himself was still angry. He was positive that if he ever laid eyes on Seth Majors in this county again, he’d do more than simply beat the snot out of the boy.
“What’s wrong?” Tori immediately asked him as she put down the book she’d been reading while curled up on his leather couch. It was her usual perch these days while he worked and he felt somewhat self-conscious with her constantly there on vigil.
Chase looked at her, studied her critically, and saw that the bruise on her cheek had yet to fade any. It was bright blue now and the size of a man’s thumb. His temper flared briefly until he forced it back down.
“Aren’t you bored?” he asked her. “You’ve been cooped up in this house for two days.”
“No, I’m fine,” she replied and went back to her book.
“Tori,” Chase said firmly, “go to the pool or something. You need some sun.”
“Funny, the other day you told me I had gotten too much sun. Now I need sun?”
“You need to get out,” he insisted.
Tori looked at him, a brief flicker of anxiety flashing through her eyes, and he never thought he’d see the day that her fighting spirit had waned. He prayed it was only temporary. The thing about her that had instantly attracted him when they’d first met had been her passion, her fire. He wanted to see that in her eyes again, no matter how many arguments that intensity may create between the two of them.
“Just go to the pool,” he said reasonably. “Take an hour, soak up the sun and…” He looked down at his calendar book. He had things to do, but… “and I’ll meet you out there soon.”
Tori closed her book and put her bare feet on the floor.
“You know, I’ve noticed that you work an awful lot yourself, Chase,” Tori pointed out. “Have you always been so driven?”
“Mostly,” he remarked.
“And when we have…” she visibly cringed and then blurted out, “kids…will you be so driven?”
Chase raised an eyebrow and she felt a taunt coming on. She’d learned a lot about him these past two days. And, she’d learned a lot about herself too. She’d discovered that Chase could be very comforting when he wanted to be and easily turn off that sexuality that he naturally oozed just to make her feel more at ease. She also knew not to cross him. She could still feel that anger inside of him from the scene in the barn with Seth. He wasn’t over it, not by a long shot and she knew if he ever saw that cowboy again it would be big trouble.
As for herself, she’d discovered for the first time in her life that she could fear something. Her life had been easy, it still was, but what had almost happened to her in that barn proved to her that she was not immortal. She’d always thought she could fight against anything and win. For two weeks she’d been sure if she just fought Chase hard enough, he’d give up and send her on her way. Now, suddenly, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to fight him. He had saved her, he had comforted her and he hadn’t blamed her for a moment when she’d been too weak to beat off Seth Majors herself.
“Kids?” Chase inquired with humor. “Well, that’s a change in your thinking.”
Tori lifted an indifferent shoulder.
“But before we have kids, Tori, we’re going to have to have sex,” he then teased and she blushed something awful. “And I do believe you have professed more than once that that would never happen.”
Standing abruptly, her book tumbling from her lap and some of that old spunk in her eyes again, Tori retorted, “Well, if that’s how you’re going to be about it, I suppose it won’t happen then. I’ll be at the pool.”
“Good,” he called after her. “I knew that was one way to get you out of the house!”
He smiled to himself and worked in peace for a good half-hour, that is until he heard the patter of bare feet on the marble tile outside his office and then the unmistakable beach bum drawl of Colby White their pool man. Not a moment later, a knock sounded off his door.
“Come in,” Chase said as he looked away from his email and locked eyes with his pool man.
The boy was a
Now, he was standing before him, looking rather contrite with his hands in his baggy shorts’ pockets and shuffling his feet.
“What is it, Colby?” Chase inquired.
“Dude, Mr. McNamara, I think I scared that girl out by the pool. She just ran upstairs,” Colby explained.
“That’s Tori, my wife,” Chase informed him.
Colby immediately turned red. “Oh, man, sorry, dude. I didn’t mean to. I was just, like, coming through the gate to do my weekly cleaning for you, you know, and all of a sudden she screams and jumps up from the lounge chair then shoots into the house. I was, like, loaded down with all my equipment, I didn’t even see who it was. I tried to follow her to tell her I was, you know, just the lowly pool dude but…” Colby shook his head sadly. “Dude…man, sorry.”
Chase was pretty certain he understood what had happened and he stood, reassuring the young man that all was fine.
“Colby, don’t worry about it. I forgot to remind Tori you were coming weekly now that it’s getting warm. She probably wasn’t expecting anyone.” Chase led the boy out of the office and back toward the kitchen. “I’ll check on her and why don’t you just grab a drink out of the refrigerator before you start your work.”
“Sure,” Colby answered, immediately perking up. “Cool! Thanks, dude.”
He waved and walked off and Chase shook his head with wonder as he ascended the stairs. How did anyone communicate effectively in life with such a vocabulary that centered around the word “dude?”
When he reached the top of the stairs, he looked in his room first. Not finding Tori there, he walked next door to hers and found her lying on the bed, her beach towel wrapped around her and crying.
He knocked on the opened door so as not to startle her and she quickly sat up and wiped the tears from her face.
“What’s wrong?” Chase asked.
Tori shook her head and pulled her knees up in front of her, hugging them tightly. With sad eyes and an even sadder tone she asked, “Chase, can I go home now?”
He waited a beat before answering. He didn’t want to sound domineering, but he knew she was simply going through a phase she would have to work out and not run from.
“Darlin’, you are home,” he told her.
“No, I mean…”
“I know what you mean,” he interrupted. “And you need to start thinking of this as your home, not your parents’ house as your home.”
“Yes, but I’m not afraid to live at my parents’ house. I’m…afraid here.” She blew out a breath and bit off a sob.
Chase walked to the bed and sat down beside her. He could smell the scent of sun and chlorine on her skin. She wore a simple string bikini in pink and orange Hawaiian print and he admired the way the bright colors complimented the light tan of her skin. Her shoulders were bare and smooth and he wanted to touch them, but he had the self-control of a monk when he needed it and he forced back the desire that had sprung to his gut.
“You’re only afraid,” Chase explained calmly, “because you’ve locked yourself away in this house and not faced your fears.”
As Tori shook her head and Chase grabbed her face in his hand he argued, “Yes, you have. You haven’t been to see Dream or that damned calf you named since this all happened. Aren’t you worried about what’s come of that cow?”
“Ellie,” Tori corrected. “Her name’s Ellie.”
“Yeah, her,” Chase drawled. “And if my harmless pool man is scaring you, we need to do something about it.”
“Like what?” Tori asked as she lifted her eyes to him.
She was so close, so tempting. Again, he bit back his desire and thought about what answer he could give her. But before she allowed him to come up with a solution, her fingers reached out and traced the strong line of his jaw and the outline of his facial hair. She touched his lips and smiled. It was one of the first smiles she’d volunteered in a while.
“Don’t answer that, let me think up something, Chase,” she suddenly insisted and gently pressed her lips to his.
The kiss lasted only an instant but it was enough to begin eroding his resolve.
“I don’t believe you’re thinking, sweetheart,” Chase drawled and Tori giggled.
“No, I’m acting. Acting on my attraction that is.”
“So, you’re attracted to barbarian ranchers now-a-days, are you?”
She kissed him again and shook her head. “No, only to heathen ranchers who force unsuspecting women into arranged marriages. There is a difference there, you know.”
Chase paused for a moment, wondering if she was trying to start an argument again about their marriage when he caught the glint of teasing in her eyes. She wasn’t trying to start anything but romance now and he was relieved.
“It doesn’t have to feel like an arranged marriage,” he argued gently, taking the initiative to kiss her cheek then trail his tongue down to her neck. “It could feel and be very, very real.”
Yes, it could be, if she allowed it. Tori relished in the feel of his lips on her sensitive skin and sighed with contentment. She’d been feeling nothing but stress since that day in the barn and kissing Chase, being close to the man who had saved her, made her feel at peace. They could kiss and hold one another for a while and she knew she’d feel so much better in the end. They could take it slow. She was, after all, beginning to like him more and more each day. She had been attracted from the start, but now…well, now that he was kissing her and his powerful hand was on her bare shoulder and slipping down her back, she was starting to wonder if maybe she didn’t care just a little.
Tilting her head, Tori regained his mouth and kissed him with a mix of wonder, curiosity and desire. It really had been a long time since she’d been attracted to a man and even longer since she’d made-out with one in any serious way. And the men before Chase had all been more like her; liberal, cause-oriented and much younger. Chase wasn’t exactly any of that. He was settled and determined to have his own way and mature in his ways. He wasn’t old by any means, but sometimes he certainly made her feel like a child. Even now, as she felt his hand untie the back of her bikini top, she knew he had a world of experience that she just hadn’t yet cultivated.
She turned her head slightly and sucked in a deep breath of air. His lips continued down her neck and further down toward her collar bone as his hand slipped under her top. When she felt her bikini top go slack, she panicked slightly, remembering the other day. But she steeled her nerves and told herself this was Chase, this was the man she had married and if she wasn’t safe with him then she wasn’t safe with anyone.
He possessed a prowess few men did, but still, she was safe. Right?
She repeated that mantra over and over in her brain and as Chase gently pushed her back on the bed, she tried to remind herself that this had all been her idea. She’d started it with him and she should have known he would finish it.
Tori reached up and tentatively placed her hands over his. His touch halted but his mouth didn’t. He kissed a line down her belly and she almost giggled from the tickling scrape of his goatee. At the tiny chuckle that did escape, Chase turned his eyes up to look at her with curiosity.
“That tickles,” she told him and he smiled for a moment, a devious smile, and continued his work.
He pulled his hands out from under hers and once again Tori felt a slight panic coming on. She felt out of control despite how gentle, how slow Chase was going. He wasn’t being rough like Seth had been in the barn, ripping at her clothes and grabbing as he liked. He wasn’t being hurtful or demanding. He was being everything she had always wanted in a lover and yet as his hands began to pull down her bottoms and his lips landed on her pelvis, her heart stopped and her breath froze in her lungs.
“Chase,” she said and she knew she sounded breathless instead of firm.
“Hmmm?” he asked as he kissed his way back up her stomach, slipping his hand under the bikini bottoms he’d partially pulled down and then claiming one very aroused breast in his mouth.
Suddenly, Tori was assaulted with a host of sensations, many of which were very nice ones. Chase’s mouth, his touch, were amazingly provocative and she gasped instead of saying the words she had wanted to say. She reached out to halt him but her hands only curled in the fabric of his shirt as she felt wave after wave of pleasure build in her gut.
Obviously taking her reaction to mean she wanted to go further, Chase increased the pressure of his touch, moved his mouth to tend to her other breast and then grabbed both her wrists in one hand and carefully pulled them from his shirt. He moved her arms over her head, kissed his way toward her neck again and that’s when Tori lost it.
“Let me please you first, darlin’,” he told her and despite his passion-filled words, Tori felt trapped. Her mind rewound to two days earlier and she croaked out a small, “No.”
Chase, apparently interpreting her “no” to mean something else, removed his hand from its southern assault and replied, “All right, we’ll slow it down. Why don’t you do a little something then, honey?”
Oh that smooth drawl of his could have melted her heart had it been another day when she’d been feeling braver! And as he guided one of her hands to his chest, his long fingers encircling her tiny wrist, she again found the courage to say with more resolve, “No. No. Just…no!”
Chase immediately halted his kisses and she saw his dark eyes burrow into her face with concern and confusion. His hands, however, stilled on her body.
“Don’t touch me, don’t kiss me!” she added. “Just…don’t.”
Chase was hovering over her and she could feel that intense body heat radiating off of him. He was so warm and he smelled wonderful--a mix of maleness and fragrant soap. She had been admiring that scent for the two days she’d been in his bed but her mind forced that smell away and she was overpowered with the scent of straw. And as her mind played a cruel trick on her instead of feeling the soft fabric of her comforter on her skin, she itched all over from the straw she was lying in.
“Tori,” Chase said slowly and firmly, “I’m not doing anything you weren’t responding to not two seconds ago.”
“Yeah, sure, but I’ve changed my mind,” she snapped in an accusing tone. “A girl has a right to change her mind.”
It was her tone and not her words that smacked Chase the hardest in his heart and as Tori glared at him with eyes that said she feared him, he wondered just what he had done wrong.
“Yes, but just remember, you started this,” Chase reminded her and from out of nowhere her palm collided with his cheek.
“Get away! Just get away and don’t sit there and tell me I asked for this! Don’t tell me I wanted this! I don’t want you! I could never want you!” Her voice was screaming at him and she scurried away and grabbed for her beach towel from next to her on the bed, covering her bare chest.
Chase slowly stood, his anger almost overriding his confusion and he didn’t want to be anywhere near her so she could continue to accuse him of further wrong-doing. One moment she’d been kissing him, giving him the green light to further this so-called marriage of theirs and then suddenly, she was slapping him and screaming at him like he was some kind of lecherous monster.
Then he saw that frightened look in her eyes. That same look she’d harbored in the barn that day and he realized what had happened. She’d projected her experience from that day onto this scene and as far as she was concerned, he wasn’t her husband, he wasn’t pleasuring her. He was merely doing the same harm to her that that young cowhand had done.
“Get dressed,” Chase said roughly, his anger and frustration still clouding his mind and though he understood exactly what was going through her head, he had little patience to allow her to continue to hide from it.
“What?” Tori asked.
Chase yanked a pair of tattered denim shorts from the top of her dresser then rifled through a few drawers until he found her T-shirts. He pulled the first one he found out of the drawer and then threw the clothes her way.
“I said, get dressed. We’re going on a little field trip, honey,” he informed her.
Tori reached for the clothes and held them against her chest along with her towel and her eyes shuttered away from him. In a tiny voice, she said, “Chase, I’m…sorry. I….God, I never hit people. I was just…”
“I know what you were thinking,” he told her. “I know exactly who you thought I was for a moment there and we’re dealing with this now.”
Dark clouds dominated Chase’s features and Tori realized she had little choice but to get dressed and follow him. She couldn’t blame him for being angry. She’d lost her head there for a moment and the way she had suddenly screamed at him and pushed him away probably had him reeling with all kinds of emotions. One moment she’d been responsive and receptive, the next, she was practically accusing him of trying to take advantage of her and if she was him, she’d be upset too.
She pulled on her shorts, retied her top and then slipped on the white T-shirt. Then she found her tennis shoes on the floor and put them on without any socks. When she was ready, she walked out the door Chase was holding open and then allowed him to take her elbow and guide her outside.
She knew where he was taking her and as they neared the barn, she balked and spun around, clutching at Chase’s shirt.
“No, Chase, please, don’t do this,” she pleaded with him. “Don’t make me go in there.”
“Tori,” he said firmly, “you’re going. You need to face what happened, put it behind you and realize that this ranch is just as safe as any home. What happened to you was a crime and we should have called the sheriff…”
“No,” she protested like she had two days ago. She didn’t want the law involved.
“And that’s why I didn’t,” he said. “But you’ve neglected that damn cow you’ve turned into a pet and you’ve been following me around for two days like a lost puppy and I refuse to have a marriage based on fear. I’m not Seth Majors.”
“I know you’re not. I apologized for what happened up there in my room, Chase. It was…it was just too soon. It’s my fault. I’ll take all the blame and make it up to you when I’m feeling stronger if you just don’t…” She turned her head and looked at the barn. “Just don’t make me go in there.”
“I never thought the day would come when Tori Ambrose would be fearful of anything,” he drawled with surprise. “I thought you were tough enough to save the world, young lady? But apparently, you aren’t even tough enough to save yourself.”
He let go of her arm in disgust and glared down at her. His words and disappointment stung. Odd, she hadn’t known the man long enough for that to happen, and yet, she was feeling the rebuff just the same. She had disappointed him same as she had disappointed her parents all her life. And as was typical behavior for her, when she felt like she was in a no-win situation, when she felt like she just couldn’t measure up, she rebelled.
“Then if I’m such a wimp, Chase, why in the hell did you want to marry me?” she challenged.
“Because I thought you were a woman with some backbone. I thought you could handle living on my ranch. I thought you had passion for life,” he told her and Tori was momentarily surprised that he had seen all that in her. Had he seen those qualities from the start? From the day they first met?
She balked at retorting and glanced over her shoulder at the barn again. If she walked in there and faced everything, Chase wouldn’t be so disappointed in her. But could she? Could she today?
No, she couldn’t. It was still too fresh in her mind and she shivered.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Chase,” she said quietly. “I guess you married a dud, a coward. I guess I just can’t measure up to your ideal. Good thing we didn’t go all the way today, because I’d probably have just disappointed you in that regard too.”
“Tori, damn it!” he snapped. “Quit talking like…”
“Like what? Like a woman who has no backbone?” she replied. “Well, I suppose that’s exactly what I am. Because if you expect me to go into that barn today then I’m afraid I’m going to seriously disappoint you.”
“Fine,” he snapped and he looked menacing as he glared at her with fury. “Then just go home, Tori. Go running back to mom and dad because that’s what you’ve wanted to do all along. You’ve never wanted anything to do with me or my life, you only wanted your money.”
“And I told you that from the start, Chase! Just remember it’s your fault we’re married now! It’s your fault we’re in this ridiculous situation.”
Chase turned his back on her and she heard him say softly, “I’m sorry I thought this could ever work.” Then he walked away and Tori stormed back to the house where she was bound and determined to follow his advice. If he wanted her to go back home, that’s exactly what she would do.
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Reluctant Bride – Chapter 8