Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2)(31)

“Why is he still alive?” Lina asked Vi curiously. She shook her head in some wonder. “Either this whole food poisoning thing is slowing your reflexes, or you must really like him.”

Hey! Shut up, Lina.

Chase perked up, giving Lina a hopeful look and then eyeing Vi again, like a puppy starved for affection.

“I feel sorry for him,” Vi said. “He’s a civilian. Easily scared by a few thrown pots.”

A little crease showed in Chase’s left cheek. He smoothed it out. “I should have tucked my tail between my legs and run right then.” He met Vi’s eyes. “But I didn’t have it in me.”

Vi’s teeth snapped. “If you don’t quit implying that I might have it in me if you don’t give me this little pep talk, I might have to kill you.”

“Seriously, you hooked up with this guy?” Lina said.

Vi flushed. She hadn’t realized it was quite that obvious that she’d actually hooked up with him.

“He’s worse than Joss!” Célie said. “About deciding he knows all about your life and what’s good for you. How is that even possible?”

“Do you have some kind of radar that pings the most arrogant guy in the city for you, every time?” Lina said. “How do you even find these guys? Now you know why I like geeky, shy guys.”

A tiny flicker of Chase’s blue eyes toward Lina, just this hint of a narrowing of his eyes as if he was filing away information. But it was over so quickly Vi might have imagined it.

“I’m shy,” he said to Vi.

Oh, for God’s sake.

Chase tried to look bashful.

Vi clapped her hand to her forehead, and, once again forgetting her splint, bonked herself in her own eye. A?e.

“Have you ever thought about opening a restaurant in Texas?” Chase asked hopefully.

“Texas?” Vi recoiled. “Nobody can catch stars in Texas.”

“Okay, you know what? I’m going to take you out on my grandparents’ ranch in the middle of the night, and then you try to tell me that again.”

Vi rolled her eyes. She’d seen real stars once in a while. Weak things in a gray sky. They weren’t that impressive. “What do they eat there, rattlesnake?”

Actually, what if she did a dish with rattlesnake and—

“We eat good beef,” Chase told her, eyes narrowing. “And I don’t think someone who thinks snails and frogs are food has room to cast aspersions.”

“Do they eat cactus?” Vi’s head tilted. “What does that taste like? You could do something kind of fun with cactus and—” She broke off.

Chase grinned, looking very pleased with himself. “And if these idiots in Paris don’t know how to appreciate you, people in Texas would find it hilarious that you food poisoned the President.”

“I did not—damn it, he hadn’t even arrived yet!”

Chase continued as if she hadn’t spoken. Kind of like the Internet. “Don’t chefs of your standing usually start opening second and third restaurants about now? No, seriously, this is a good idea, Vi. You could spin this in your favor. In fact, if you named the restaurant something like Potus’ Last Meal, you’d probably draw a crowd just because they’d respect your balls.” He paused, and his eyes lit with fervor. “Actually, you need to open it with that name in Washington. Oh, hell, that would be hilarious. People would love you. Plus, it’s a lot shorter commute to where I’m stati—where my house is, in the U.S.”

Vi could almost start getting a vision there. It would be kind of fun to take her career international. Be crisscrossing the globe, building herself into…this heady glimpse of herself ten years down the road, one of the most influential female chefs in the world. Hell, drop the female. One of the most influential chefs.

“Balls,” Vi said, instead of admitting his pep talk was working. “Always has to be something inherently male to show you have nerve, doesn’t it?”

Chase sighed. “Are you ladies going to cut me any slack at all?”

“No,” Vi said. “It doesn’t matter how little rope we give you, you still manage to hang yourself. In fact, I’m starting to think that if the only rope you had was the one tying your wrists tight to something, you’d still manage to hang yourself.” Oops. Had she just let it slip that she had multiple times imagined tying his wrists to something so he’d be at her mercy?

Chase grinned, as if he’d read right into the depths of her dirty mind. “Not that I’ve never had a fantasy about three women tying me up, I admit, but she’s got a boyfriend in the Foreign Legion”—he nodded to Célie—“and I’m monogamous now.”

“Since when?” Vi said very, very dryly.

Chase gaped at her. “Since last night! You never listen to a word I say, do you?” He scowled. “If I dismissed everything you said, I’d be taking flack about sexism again.”

Vi pressed her splint and her bare hand to her face a long moment. “I think I need to go fix my hair,” she finally told Célie and Lina. “I really wasn’t expecting company.”

“I’ve got some aspirin, if you need it,” Lina said sympathetically.

“You know, I’ve got to give you credit, Vi,” Célie said, as Violette headed toward her shower. “I thought your last guy set the record, but you have finally found the most impossible guy in the universe.”