Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
VIOLET
“ C ome on. I’m buying you a drink.”
I was mid-conversation with one of Todd’s old friends, Grizz Grady, when Sierra hooked me by the elbow and started to whisk me away.
“You don’t mind if I steal her, do you, Grizz?” she asked quasi-politely. Not that she needed to. She was the honored guest.
“I can catch her later,” Grizz said in a way that proved he knew the score. One did not mess with Sierra Betts.
“Thank you!” Sierra said sweetly, then moved us along.
She kept our arms linked as we walked in the direction of the bar.
“Is everything alright?” I asked in alarm, the event manager in me wondering whether something had happened.
“Everything is literally perfect,” she said, somewhat dreamily, to my great relief. “And you,” she said with emphasis, “are a guest who is not supposed to be working tonight. And I want to toast a drink in your honor. This is absolutely amazing and I have you to thank for it.”
“Technically, you have Chase to thank.”
When Forrest and Sierra had arrived early to see the room for the party, Chase had asked me to deliver them the bill. On the line where it said “Amount Due,” Chase had simply had me write, “Congratulations!” He’d thrown the entire party on his dime.
“I’m telling you. All of this…” Sierra motioned around herself. “Is making me rethink our plan to have the wedding at our house on Bandit Lake. We’ve talked about having it there since the beginning, but being here now—seeing what you can do—I don’t know.”
I chuckled at the compliment. “Chase’ll host y’all any time. Just say the word and I’ll find you a date. There’s a couple I’m betting is gonna break up. Right now, they’ve got the best spot in June…”
Both of us had a giggle at my offer.
“Sierra. I’ll plan your wedding no matter where you have it. I’ll do it as a wedding gift. Actually, you could be one of my company’s first clients.”
Sierra’s eyes widened. “Your company? For real? You’re starting your own thing?”
I nodded. Apart from my Thursday night crew, Sierra was the first person I told.
“Why?” As ever, she said what she had to say bluntly.
“Because all of this.” Now it was me who motioned up and around us. “Was supposed to be a temporary thing.”
“Who cares what it was supposed to be? Forrest was supposed to be my nemesis. I wasn’t supposed to fall for his wily charms. We weren’t strictly supposed to have a workplace romance, but things happen.”
“It’s different,” I protested.
“What’s different?” she wanted to know.
“Chase upended everything for me and my kids. He has literally put the rest of his life on hold to fulfill an obligation. But you and Forrest…you met each other at the right time in your lives, and you fell in love. I’ve known that man ten years,” I told her. “But I’ve never seen so many sides of him as I’ve seen since he’s been with you. It’s a beautiful thing.”
I expected her to fire back another rapid protest because that’s how Sierra was—quick on her feet and smart as a whip. But she looked at me with sentimental eyes.
“Forrest says the same thing about you and Chase, you know.”
Her comment validated how confused I was. “That’s the other reason why I think I need to leave. I don’t know if there is a me and Chase.”
“Maybe there should be.”
I grasped for how to explain.
“Being all tied up the way we are…with me having feelings for him when he’s my work husband and he’s half-raising my kids...it’s getting kind of messy.”
Sierra gave me a sympathetic look. I picked up my drink and took a long swallow.
“Sometimes I think there’s a me and Chase,” I admitted. “But then I don’t know. Like if there is, why do I think he might be dating my friend? And if he’s interested in her, why did he kiss me last week? And oh my God, this is your engagement party and I’m venting to you by asking you unanswerable questions.” I put my face in my hands, then sighed into them, in embarrassment.
“Those questions aren’t unanswerable, you know.” Her voice was all compassion. “I know someone who could tell you the truth. He’s looking sexy in his suit and he’s coming right this way.”
“Party’s almost over,” Chase commented lightly once we were alone. Sierra had made a rather flimsy excuse for her retreat. She abandoned the bar mere seconds after Chase’s arrival.
“Seems like it was a success.” I handed him my drink so he could have a sip. “Forrest and Sierra are over the moon.”
“It’s not over yet,” he said casually. “And I was hoping to get a dance with the prettiest woman in the room.” He gazed at me with eyes he’d been giving me all night, the ones that took on a different look. It was dangerously close to the look he’d given me that night we’d fallen asleep on my love seat. The night that had proven how much between us stood to change.
I looked in the direction Sierra had taken when she walked away. “I think you just missed her.”
God, I was bad at this. I wanted Chase so badly. But it was still hard for me to lean in.
“I’m not talking about the guest of honor, Vi.” Chase set down the drink and stepped even closer. “The prettiest woman in the room…that’s you.”
All those times I’d been out with Rodney, I’d feared the dreaded kiss. But as Chase led me to the dance floor, my insides were trembling. It dawned on me how much more intimate than a kiss dancing could be. I’d been close to Chase before. We’d exchanged endless measures of comfort. But things between us had never been like this—so laden with intention—so far up against the line we were clearly about to cross.
Do all the reasons not to even matter?
We began to sway and I took in the friends around us. They seemed to be cheering us on. Courtesy of the Green Valley Fire Department, there were a couple of wolf whistles and even some shouts of “About time!” It gave me déjà vu for an era of my life when all the guys from the firehouse had been around a lot and in my business. The peanut gallery had its own charm.
I buried my face in Chase’s shoulder, tuning the other guys out, wanting the rest of this moment to belong to us. I plugged into the feeling of his solid body holding me, and the romance of the song. It was an old one by Ed Sheeran that I loved.
“So how does this stack up?” Chase murmured the question close to my ear as we danced.
“Stack up to what?”
“Your dream wedding. The one you never got to have.”
I remembered Sierra’s question from her tour of the farm. Chase had clearly been listening. The truth was, I had thought through my dream wedding. All the way through, in fact, in a way I hadn’t admitted to anybody. Having planned so many, I’d taken my inspiration. I could tell you down to the detail every feature, finish, and flower bloom I would want in the room should I ever decide to marry again.
“I want the same thing lots of girls want…a Saturday in June; all my family and friends; Bri and Trey happy; the right guy standing up front. And I’d want to do it right here.”
“Here on the farm?” he asked.
“Here in my favorite space.”
“You never told me this was your favorite space.”
“It is now,” I murmured into his neck. “It’s the place where me and the guy I have a crush on had our first dance.”
I tried to sound light when I said it, but I didn’t pull it off, not that I was fooling anyone.
“How long have you liked this guy?” Chase’s voice went lower.
“I think some part of me always did. But before…it wasn’t our time.”
Chase seemed to squeeze me tighter then, even though we felt so close.
“This is my favorite place, too. It’s the place where I gave my crush her first real kiss.”
“What’s a real kiss?” I tipped my chin up, whispering in his ear.
“The kind where no one’s halfway sleeping. The kind where you’re wide awake and no one in the world exists but you.”
The music went on, but we stopped dancing.
“Not here,” he said. “I want you all to myself.”
The dessert barn had a small annex out back, a place where horses had lived when Chase had been a boy. A wide center aisle bisected two short rows of stalls. The place had been empty for years until Chase literally stumbled upon a better use for it. One morning, he’d walked in to find a wayward partygoer who had gone in to sleep it off after hitting the whiskey too hard. After that, he’d set the stalls up for sleeping.
He’d filled them with meadow hay, which was softer than real straw. Heavy base blankets and warm shearlings had been folded over the cover of each and he kept a water cooler with paper cups at the far end. He’d offered the space up quite a few times. The event folks enforced it, holding on to the keys of guests who’d had too much to drink. We called it having a roll in the hay.
Chase took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders before he took me outside, keeping his arm around me to warm me as he walked us to the annex and closed the door behind. He made no move to turn the lights on, but he did fire up the heat. The barn was cold enough that warming it up would take time. He kept his jacket around my shoulders, but grabbed a shearling for good measure, throwing it over his own shoulders and making it into sort of a cape until he had both of us held in the warmth of the blanket and me held in his arms.
“Jules said we could take our time,” Chase reported. My eyes were adjusting to the darkness. I’d started to make out his face. “All night if we needed to. I’ll tell you, Violet—I wouldn’t mind just holding you.”
I wouldn’t mind doing more than holding him. He made me want to throw my “go slow” mantra away. Every second I touched him stoked the embers of my yearning. I’d neglected that part of myself for so long, but Chase turned up the heat, and my body longed to be set aflame.
“I wouldn’t mind that kiss you promised me,” I said instead.
He squeezed me even closer, then swooped down to capture my lips with an urgency and a confidence that buckled my knees. The cinch of his arms kept me upright. He kissed me deeply, drinking me in with unbridled thirst. It made the luscious kisses we’d shared on the couch feel like pecks on the cheek. It was redemption and revelation all rolled into one. Redemption because we had freed ourselves. Revelation because, hallelujah, Chase Greenleaf wanted me as fiercely as I wanted him.
I could feel it in his body, through every inch of us that touched; from the way he leaned further in, as if trying to get even closer; from the way he whispered my name when we came up for air. His hardness growing against me was a thrill. How long had it been since I’d held a man in the palm of my hand? But we were mutually possessed—him by me and me by him.
Chase was the first to pull away, but he kept his head bent and closed his eyes as he touched his forehead to mine.
“I’ve been waiting for you, girl.”
I let my eyes fall shut. “I’m sorry I took so long.”
But he shooshed me. “No apologies. No guilt. No regrets.”
The contrast between his warm breath fanning my face and the cool air on my neck made me shiver.
“I don’t want to mess this up,” I finally whispered. Maybe that was what I’d been afraid of all along.
He must have felt me shiver because he pulled the blanket tighter around us. “I’m not going anywhere, darlin’.”