He stared down at her face. If she wouldn’t grant his request, she’d have to obey a judge. And if it didn’t work, if the judge wouldn’t help, well, he’d have to take matters into his own hands like he did with Rebecca. “I will put my family back together.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Shelby woke up happy, warm, and naked in Chase’s arms and thinking about their wonderful dinner date last night. The food was amazing. The company even better. Chase had no trouble distracting her from Kyle’s unexpected intrusion into her life again and the threat he posed. And as distractions went, Chase was the best one she could have in her life.
He opened up last night about the good things he remembered about serving overseas, giving her a glimpse of his life and his experiences of other countries. He was sweet with his many compliments and the way he flirted with her all through dinner. She’d never seen him that relaxed and unguarded. It was in the way he spoke and how he treated her. Everyone in the restaurant surely saw what she did. He never took his eyes off her. He touched her constantly, holding her hand, brushing his fingers along her arm, his hand at her waist when they walked in and out of the restaurant. He gave her a sedate but sexy kiss when they brought out dessert and sang happy birthday to her.
She owed him a sock in the shoulder for embarrassing her like that. But she loved it. All of it.
It had been one of the best nights of her life.
All because Chase cared enough to make it a great night.
And he hadn’t stopped at dinner. As promised, he’d brought her home to an astonished Max, who gasped with surprise when he saw her in her new dress with her cute haircut. Chase actually ordered him to stop staring.
She was seriously considering never putting her drab work clothes on again.
Max left after telling them how much fun he’d had with Eliza and that they’d played hide-and-seek and topple-the-block-castles, which Max built and Eliza relished knocking down.
She and Chase checked on Eliza to be sure she was sound asleep. Then Chase took her by the hips and nudged her to follow Remmy to their room, where he closed the door and proceeded to get her naked and worship her for God knows how long before they both collapsed in exhaustion and fell asleep entwined together.
But the contentment from last night faded as her birthday-slash-anniversary high wore off and reality set in.
Kyle wanted to spend time with Eliza. He wanted to get to know Shelby.
She didn’t want anything to do with him.
She didn’t want a man like him around her daughter.
And he planned to make her fight to keep him away.
She hated him for what he’d done to her mother. That hate only grew as he forced his way into her life.
She let out a frustrated sigh that had Remmy standing up and putting his front paws on the bed. He stared at her over Chase’s chest where she was snuggled up against him, her head on his shoulder as he slept.
She didn’t want her tension to cause Remmy to wake Chase, so she slowly slipped out of bed.
She spotted their clothes strewn across the floor and smiled. They went at each other last night, tearing off clothes as if their lives depended on it. But like always, there’d been a moment when everything paused and they just stared at each other as if they couldn’t believe the person in front of them wanted them so badly.
But they did. It still made her weak in the knees to see Chase look at her the way he always did. His body did the same to her. All those strong muscles covered in tan skin, his strength so evident but controlled when he touched her. The scars still took her aback sometimes and made her throat tight. She hated how much and how often he’d been hurt.
He survived.
And she was so grateful he came back to her.
Smiling at the memories of them tossing clothes last night, she reached down to pick them up, but stilled when she held Chase’s black jeans and found the white envelope Kyle left for her last night.
She pulled the envelope free, dropped the clothes, found one of Chase’s thermals he’d tossed on the dresser, pulled it on along with her leggings, and walked out of the room. She walked to the kitchen, poured herself a mug of coffee, then sat at the table and stared at the innocuous envelope, mustering the courage to look inside and see a past she didn’t know enough, and too much, about.
Kyle said he left her pictures of her mom.
She’d only ever seen a few. Her grandparents had tucked them all away because they were too painful to look at.
They couldn’t tuck Shelby away, though she was toomuch for them to look at some days, so they ignored and avoided her sometimes. Often enough that Shelby still felt the pain of not understanding what she’d done.
Chase and Eliza chased those feelings away with their love.
Shelby left her coffee cooling and stared at the envelope, lost in her hurt and loneliness.