CHAPTER FOUR

Chase

THE EASY WAY SHE LAUGHED AS SHE spoke, telling him a story about Jim and Jack at the baseball park, said so much. Everything it showed was good, and damn, he liked it.

He more than liked it.

She was like summer after a long winter.

Relaxed and laughing along with her, he watched her, enjoying his time with her.

“I have been talking your ear off.” She shook her head, for some reason suddenly shy as she tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear.

“I like hearing you,” he admitted and didn’t miss the way her cheeks turned pink before she looked down at the napkin on the table beside her.

“Thank you.” She smiled up at him, and damn.

That smile of hers did things to him. Forty and never married hardly meant he was a player, but he was far from a saint. Yet the woman in front of him brought out emotions in him he had never felt for another woman. “Is that the time?” she asked when her eyes caught the clock on the wall behind him, and he turned to look at it. Half past ten. “I am so sorry. I didn’t even feel the time slip by,” she apologized, and he covered his hand with hers.

“I liked being here with you.”

“I know. I… I liked being here with you, too,” she admitted. He liked she could tell him that, even if he had already known it. She wasn’t lying when she said time slipped past them in a flash. When they had arrived to the diner, they had had to wait a little, but once they sat down in their booth in front of one another, time around them had stood still as they ate and talked. Enjoying great food and even better company.

“I hate that I have to say I don’t think I can go back to help you tonight,” she laid out, and he raised a brow.

“Tonight?” He imagined her in his home, his bed. He would have her pinned against a wall before they made it to his living room.

“Your classroom?”

“Right.” He cleared his throat and ran his hands through his short hair.

“Did you need help with anything?” she asked, and his lips quirked upward.

“Why, Miss Mason?” He leaned forward, keeping his voice low enough so only she could hear his dirty words. “Did you want to come into my class for a little one-on-one tutoring?” He winked, and she giggled nervously, but he could tell by the naughty gleam in her eye she liked it.

“Chase.” She playfully shook her head, dramatically glaring at him. “Shame on you.”

“I could always hand you a ruler, so you could punish me,” he offered jokingly and loved the way she laughed. Loud and without a care in the world, her face joyful. The sight of it and the way he felt only confirmed what he had realized a while ago.

Kenzie Mason was a whole other kind of woman.

His kind.

“I…” She shook her head and smiled before looking away. “I don’t know what to expect with you,” she admitted, and by the way she said it and took her time to meet his gaze, he could see she was having trouble with that.

“Is that a bad thing?” he asked even though he could see the answer in her eyes. She shrugged, lifting and dropping a delicate, sexy shoulder.

“Let me get some cash to help with the check.” She chose to ignore his question, and he grabbed her hand before she turned toward her purse.

“Kenzie—”

“Chase. I’m not sure what tonight or this is about,” she said to the white tablecloth between them. He didn’t like it. He wanted her eyes back on him.

“Look at me,” he gently ordered, and when she lifted her eyes to his, he saw so much he didn’t know where to start. “This was dinner.”

“Why me?”

“What?” He raised a brow.

“I don’t get it, Chase. Honestly. Look, I’m divorced,” she said, as if she was somehow enlightening him with new information, but before he could say he knew, she kept talking, “I have a pain-in-the-ass ex-husband, two boys who I might love with all my heart, but even I know they’re a hand full, a job that drives me nuts but keeps the lights on, and no time to work out or shop or put more makeup on other than mascara.”

“You don’t need it,” he cut through, done with listening to the list of excuses she had for them not taking wherever this was going. He knew where he could see it going, and before her, with any other woman, it would have scared the shit out of him. But with her, Kenzie and her boys, he could see it. He was hardly young, stupid, or naïve not to see the amazing woman in front of him and all the beauty she would bring into his life.

“What?” she asked. Clearly, the steam had run out of her rant.

“You don’t need more makeup than what you have time for, and honestly, babe, I gotta be real with you. I’ve seen you in the mornings without a shred of makeup on.” He smiled and stroked his thumb back and forth over the soft skin of the top of her hand. “And you are just as fucking gorgeous.”

“Chase,” she whispered his name, and he felt it in his dick. The image of her under him, her hair messily covering his pillow as he hovered over her was clear as day in his mind, and damn if it wasn’t a sight. He wanted that. He wanted so much more than he could tell her without scaring the shit out of her.

“I’m not clairvoyant, Kenzie, so I can’t tell you what the future holds.”

“I didn’t mean—” He shook his head and kept sharing.

“I know. But I get where you’re coming from.” It only proved how damn amazing she was. “It makes what I feel for you even better.”

“What you feel,” she whispered, and he kept going, taking his chance to lay things out for her.

“What I can tell you is, I’m forty-one. I know who I am. I’m the kind of man who knows what he wants and goes after it.” He watched, fascinated with the way she pressed her lips together as if searching for the right words.

“And you want?”

“More of this,” he laid out honestly.

“And this is a new development?” she asked almost as if challenging him, and he freaking liked it. “Something you just realized you would like to, umm, explore.”

“Hell, no,” he bit out honestly, about to rock her world with his truth. “I knew I wanted this August third of last year.”

“That was the first day of school.” Her pretty eyes opened wide, and he knew she was getting it.

His attraction to her.

The way he always tried to strike up a conversation no matter where they were. When Chase found out his nephew played on the same little league as Jim and Jack, he made it a point to go to every practice. Not that he wouldn’t have anyway, but he was searching her out around the park. Always keeping an eye out for her. Accidentally bumping into her at the snack bar. All with the excuse to spend a little time with her. To talk to her and make her smile and blush at him like she always did.

At the beginning, he had done it so he could find something about her he didn’t like. Something that would talk him out wanting anything with her. But the more he was around her, the more he heard her talk and laugh, the more he had wanted.

“Jack’s in my class,” he reminded her and saw the understanding in her eyes.

“School is still in session, Mr. Tucker.” Fuck, she was cute. Her brand of cute made him hard. Made him want to see how dirty he could get her to be.

“It is.” This would be where he would see if she would take a chance with him. A leap at the unknown together.

“Can’t we get in trouble if we, umm, explore this?”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”