Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2)(29)

“Oh, yeah.” Both other women folded their arms to gaze at him, and Vi felt an instant’s relief.

Because Célie and Lina got it. They had worked their way up through macho kitchens just like she had. They’d fought for the junior international title together, three women on a team who’d had to prove they weren’t some symbolic gesture to appease the media, that they hadn’t been “given” the place on the team at the expense of inherently more qualified men. Lina, with a double whammy, had had to face down the belief that she was symbolic diversity and a symbolic female and in no way a real, high-achieving person who could kick ass.

Lina and Célie knew exactly how infuriating it was to literally hit a man to try to get revenge for his destruction of your life…and end up with your own hand broken while he patted you gently on the head and tried to look after you.

And pretended all of this was too much for your pretty little head and wouldn’t even tell you what the hell was going on.

“How am I patronizing?” Chase asked incredulously.

Célie and Lina rolled their eyes and looked empathetically pissed off.

“Nothing I do can even hurt you,” Vi said. “The little woman.”

Chase gazed at her a moment, and then walked over to her, a white flower still in his fingers. With her on the floor and him standing straight, his size loomed over her.

“That hurts me,” he said quietly, gesturing to her position on the floor and finishing with her splint. “That hurts me a lot.” He crouched, slipped her bunny slipper back on her foot with a gentle, callused touch of her ankle, laid the white flower carefully over her knees, and then straightened and moved away from her again.

Vi sighed and scrubbed her forehead with her good hand. What he had just done did not change the sexism here at all—in fact, it just underlined his inherent belief in his own strength versus her fragility—but…there was a sweetness to it, too, that just kind of wormed its way inside her anger and wiggled in there, in a troubling way.

“Also, this is kind of sore,” Chase said, from the counter, rubbing his jaw where her punch had landed. “How bad is the bruise?” He angled his jaw toward nearby Lina with a pitiful, anxious look.

Vi rolled her eyes, but in there with that wiggly, annoying sweetness there slipped his damn humor again, making her want to laugh.

And her life was shattered around her in utter ruins.

He was so annoying.

“So what’s the deal?” Célie put her hands on her hips and stood, braced in a position so that Chase would have to get through her or jump over the coffee table if he wanted to touch Vi again. “Do you want me to hit him?”

“I’ve been doing that. He enjoys it.”

“I can call Joss if you want me to,” Célie said.

Lina and Vi frowned at her.

Célie held up her hands. “You’re right. You’re right. We can handle him ourselves.”

Damn straight they could.

“Who’s Joss?” Chase asked.

“My boyfriend,” Célie said.

Chase nodded politely. Like a man who might be willing to let another man get in a punch in order not to make him look bad in front of his girlfriend.

Célie frowned. “Foreign Legion,” she said menacingly.

Chase cocked his head. “Really? Some of those Foreign Legion guys…what regiment?”

“2e REP.” Célie held his eyes. “Commando.”

Chase’s eyes lit. “Real-ly. Now that might be fun.”

Vi sighed.

“Not that you aren’t fun, honey,” Chase said quickly. “It’s just a…different kind of challenge.”

“Will you go away?” Vi said.

“No,” Chase said indignantly. “When I got here, your eyes were red and puffy. Now look at you. You’re breathing fire again. I barely know your friends. How do I know they’re not going to coddle you and cry over you and let you sink back into despair again?”

Célie and Lina stared at him, outraged.

Vi wanted to kill him. He’d seen she had been crying? And he’d had to go and tell the whole world about it?

He hid behind upraised arms. “Okay, don’t everyone start throwing things at me at once. I might not be able to duck all of it.”

Célie pointed a finger at him. “You need to be quiet.”

“Good luck with that,” Vi muttered.

“And you need to tell me all the details.” Célie pointed at Vi.

“He broke into my kitchens, I threw a few knives at him to teach him the error of his ways, he got scared—”

“I what?”

“—and asked me to call the embassy. They swore he was just part of their advanced security check, and you know…I really wanted the president to come next week, so I…well, I fell for it. Like an idiot. But I did watch him like a hawk the entire time. And made sure he couldn’t go back to the kitchens after I got him out of there.”

“Oh, is that what you were doing,” Chase murmured idly. “Watching me like a hawk.” A little smile curved his mouth as he inspected a long lily and finally gave it a glass by itself.

Vi shot him a bird. He slipped his middle finger into his mouth and sucked the tip of it absently, studying the flower.