Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2)(7)
“My company has men checking out some of his other top choices tonight, too, so that we can give a preliminary security assessment.” For a moment, Chase Smith was inscrutable. Unyielding. Serious.
Suggesting that she’d better cooperate, if she wanted to have her moment of glory next week.
She called the number. A male voice with an awkward French accent on the other end confirmed.
Oh.
“Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” she demanded, exasperated.
“I was having too much fun, to be honest.”
Fun at her expense.
“You’re really very hot,” he confessed.
She glared at him. “If I don’t get to kill you, you don’t get to sexually harass me.”
He considered. “But the reverse is fine? I can keep sexually harassing you if you can keep trying to kill me? I can take that deal.”
She kind of liked it, too, to be honest. She had to put her fists on her hips to keep from thumping herself in the head.
“But it will take me a while to finish my inspections of the place,” he said. “You’re welcome to go home.”
Okay, maybe he wasn’t a burglar, but he was still crazy. Her eyebrows went up incredulously. “Nobody gets to wander around my kitchens unsupervised. Not even for a president. There are all kinds of things you could mess up.”
Chase hesitated, his eyes narrowing just the tiniest fraction.
“I’m sticking to you like glue,” she said firmly.
The narrowing of his eyes vanished. Chase gave a great, dramatic sigh of relief and clasped his hands to his heart in gratitude. “Honey,” he said ecstatically. “I knew I’d start to grow on you.”
Chapter 4
“You’re touching my ass.”
Vi jerked back a step, caught herself, and glared. No, she had not been.
And it had taken a lot of self-discipline, too.
Chase gave her a smile over his shoulder that invited true confessions. “It’s a great ass, isn’t it?” He was going through the kitchen at a brisk, thorough pace, opening everything—lowboys, drawers, cabinets—scanning everything, with the efficiency of an entire security team. “I tried to get it insured, but the premiums were too high.” He sighed woefully.
“All the women wanting to smack it?” Wait, that sounded a lot more erotic and a lot less like a cool putdown than she had meant it to.
It was just…it would be such a great ass to smack.
“Also.” He stopped in front of wire shelves filled with martini glasses, each with a small amount of liquid caramel in the bottom, all prepped for tomorrow when the last-minute components would be added. He was a really big guy. Vi herself was pretty tall, and her boots had six-centimeter heels on top of that, but this man just filled the space. Not only was he big, but his presence was big, as if he had an invisible extension of himself that just stretched out to every corner of the room and took charge of it.
His ass, on the other hand, was a tight, fine ass. Not big at all. But it still managed to keep dominating her attention as she followed close on his heels to make sure he didn’t mess with anything in her kitchens.
“Put that glass down! You’re getting fingerprints on it!”
“You won’t even let me have a little taste?” he asked wistfully. “That caramel looks good. I’d let you taste anything you want.” He pursed his lips near the edge of the glass in a very…tastable position.
She grabbed the glass and replaced it on the shelves. “Don’t touch anything! Don’t breathe on anything! If you sneeze, I’m killing you.”
“I’d better take care of the kids when they get sick,” he decided and moved to the walk-in. “Poor little tykes. You’re going to scare them into pneumonia with that attitude.”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone always told me. Twenty-eight, just stepping into my first starred kitchen, would be a perfect time to get pregnant and start a family.”
He eyed her a moment and then nodded decisively. “You’re right. We’d better wait on the kids. I’ll warn my grandma so she doesn’t harass you.”
She sighed very heavily.
“She’s not, like, obsessed or anything,” he hastened to reassure her. “She’s got plenty of great-grandchildren. It’s more my mother you have to worry about.”
“Did any of your commanding officers ever try to beat you over the head with a sledgehammer?”
He smiled and opened the walk-in. “Brr. I don’t suppose you’d consider coming closer to keep me warm?”
“I thought your hot body temperature was supposed to be one of your few attributes.”
“I think it’s like having a fever. I’m so hot that the slightest chill in the air makes me shiver.”
“The sledgehammer probably bounced off,” she decided grimly. She braced herself at the walk-in door and folded her arms. “I don’t care how obnoxious you are, you are not getting me to stalk off and leave you a chance to do something in my kitchens I can’t see.”
“Obnoxious,” Chase said in a very sad, small voice. He gazed woefully at the crates of cream as if about to ask them for sympathy, and then his gaze changed, and for a second that narrow, dangerous look was back on his face. “This where he cornered you?”