CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Derek knocked on the door right at seven p.m. Chloe was glad that Lexi was already gone. Her friend was already giving her a hard time because it was becoming more and more obvious that she had feelings for this guy. It wouldn’t be such a novelty for any other woman, but Lexi had known Chloe for two years, and Derek was the first man she had seen her friend show any interest in.

She took a deep breath and smoothed down her hair before pulling open the door.

God Damn he was gorgeous. He was wearing a white shirt that buttoned up the front. The sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and the top two buttons were undone, leaving just a tiny peek-a-boo look at his chest. His jeans probably cost as much as she makes in a month, but Chloe could plainly see by the way they fit his sexy hips and thighs that they were well worth it.

“Hi,” he said with a smile.

“Hey,” she said. She had her purse and keys in hand. He glanced down at them, getting the hint that he wasn’t invited in and said, “Are you ready?”

“Yep.” She locked the door behind them and then shivered as his hand once again found the small of her back, and he led her over to the SUV he had been driving earlier in the day. He opened her door and helped her up inside, and she took three deep breaths and let them out slowly before he made it around to his side and got in.

“At the risk of sounding like a nerd here, have you seen the new Planet of the Apes movie?” Chloe laughed, she couldn’t help it. This man was gorgeous; he was rich and successful and obviously intelligent. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was the last movie that she would have expected him to want to see.

“You’re laughing at me?” He said in a mock wounded voice.

“No, I’m not, really. I just…I mean I would never have imagined.”

“That I’m human?” he said.

He said it so seriously that Chloe wasn’t sure what to say. He was absolutely right, just as Lexi had been when she said it at the park. Him being human was not a good thing for Chloe; it made her want him that much more.

“Let’s start over,” she said. “I would love to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes, thank you.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” he said with another grin, “But I’m going to pretend you’re serious because I really want to see it.”

They drove through the city towards the movie theatre, and he said, “Just so you’re not surprised next time, I asked Liz to let me know when the next project day was happening. I really enjoyed that today.”

“Good, Liz can use all the help she can get. You did a good job.”

“Tell me something though, why is it called Hannah’s heart? Liz didn’t want her own name on it?”

“Hannah was her daughter,” Chloe said, sadly.

“Was? She died?”

“Yeah. She was killed three years ago. She was only twenty-three.”

“Awful, poor Liz. Did you know her?”

“No. It was before I came here. Liz talks about her a lot though. She sounds like someone I would have liked to know.”

“What happened to her?”

“Her husband killed her,”

Chloe said. Her stomach was suddenly churning, and she didn’t want to go on. If she didn’t though Derek would wonder why. “He beat her to death with his bare hands.” She looked at Derek when she said that. He winced and looked like he would be sick.

They were both quiet for a while after that, and when he finally spoke, he said, “I can’t even imagine how you could profess to love someone and then do that to them. It’s more criminal to me than a random beating. To hurt someone who trusts you not to is despicable.”

Chloe surprised them both by reaching over and taking his hand in hers. She wound her fingers through his and squeezed his hand. Without knowing it, he had said exactly what she needed him to.

Derek held her hand on the way into the movie, and instead of feeling nervous or tense about it, it made her feel safe, and that was a strange, new feeling for her. Her entire life, even before Jessie, she had feared men. When she was a teenager, she went out of her way to look frumpy and as unattractive as she possibly could, hoping that men wouldn’t notice her. Back then, they rarely did except for the one at home that she couldn’t get to leave her alone. The scars on her back were reminders of what a man who professed to love her would do as far as she had been concerned her entire life.

It was why she hadn’t left the first time Jesse hit her or the second. She wasn’t even aware that it could be any different. When the old man tired of picking on her, he would beat up her mother sometimes. He never touched Daphne though, and that made Chloe resent her. Neither Daphne nor her mother ever tried to stop him from hurting her, and that made her hate them. She glanced over at Derek while he waited for her to take her seat before he took his and she told herself for the first time in a very long time that maybe caring about someone and trusting someone didn’t have to hurt.

They watched the movie and when it was over Chloe had to admit that he had made a great choice. She had laughed and cried, and the whole time, even in the dark the only move that Derek had made was to hold her hand.

As they left the theatre, he asked, “Okay, so what did you think?”

“James Franco is really hot,” she said with a laugh. Derek laughed, and before he opened the car door for her, he took her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes, “Human,” he said, “I like that.” Chloe braced herself for a kiss, but it didn’t come. She hated to admit it, but she was disappointed.

When he went around and got in, he said, “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” she said.

“You like pizza?”

“Who doesn’t?”

He smiled again and started the car. He drove to a cute little pizza parlor downtown. The place was crowded, but they found a table in the back near the arcade games where a little girl and two boys that looked to be her older brothers were playing a shooting game.

“So what do you like on your pizza?” he asked her.

“Anchovies,” she said.

He wrinkled his nose and said, “Okay…”

Chloe laughed, “Not really. I just wanted to see if you would object.”

He surprised her, sliding into the booth next to her and slipping an arm around her waist. He pulled her in close and said, “If you don’t believe anything else about me, believe this…I would eat anchovies as long as it meant being able to spend the evening with you.” He kissed her on the forehead then and left her sitting there tingling all over and stunned.

When he came back to the table, he had a pitcher of beer and one of water with lemons floating on top. “I didn’t know what you wanted to drink,” he told her. She was so touched that he had gotten the water just for her that even had she wanted a beer, she would have drank it.

As she poured herself a glass of the water, she said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything,” he said.

“I never saw you at the club before that first night I danced for you, and you seem more than willing to never go back…what were you doing there that night?”

He smiled and scooted back in his seat.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I was just getting an arms-length away in case you construed what I was about to say as me being a stalker. I didn’t want to get slammed into the wall.”

“Ha ha smart ass, answer the question.”

“I have a colleague who is…I have no idea how to put this nicely…he’s a pervert, quite simply, I’m not going to make excuses for him. I will say that otherwise, he’s a nice guy.”

“Okay, no excuses for the pervert,” Chloe told him. “Go on.”

“Well, he managed to get a membership to Roxi’s club without his wife finding out…”

“Oh great, a married pervert.”

Derek looked embarrassed and said, “Please don’t judge me by the company I keep.”

“I’ll do my best. The rest of the story?”

“So, he would come into work and tell me about all these women he saw there, and he kept begging me to go with him. I declined for over a month.”

“But then you couldn’t resist?”

“Something like that,” he said. He took out his phone, and he pulled up a picture on the screen. He turned it in her direction, and she was looking at a photograph of herself. She was wearing a black, one piece lace leotard that pushed her boobs up really high. It was the first and last time she wore that outfit; it had been really uncomfortable. In the photo, she was standing with her back to the pole, maybe just getting ready to start her set. She had her eyes closed as she sometimes did. Undoubtedly wishing away the pervert at the table with his dick in his hand.

She shivered. Now she was wondering how many other freaks had photographs of her on their phones.

“Chloe?” Derek said her name softly, and she realized that she had been silent for a really long time. He put the phone down and said, “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

“Yeah…I’m…shit! What kind of freak takes a picture of a woman with her eyes closed? And you? What the hell are you doing with that on your phone?”

“He sent it to me one night. He was trying to get me to come out and party with him. He knew that once I got a look at you, I would agree. He assured me that it was the only picture he took.”

“Oh, I’m sure he wouldn’t lie, not an upstanding citizen like him!”

“You’re right. His morals are sketchy at best. I’m sorry. I’ll delete the picture right now.”

“I still don’t understand why you have it. What is it about me that is so different than the other women there that made him “know” seeing me would make you want to come to the club?”

“He and I have been friends since college. He knows my type. Obviously, he was right. It brought me into the club and once I saw you, Chloe, I had to know you.”

Chloe’s hands were shaking. She suddenly felt like she had been violated again. That wasn’t even to mention the fact that the last thing a woman hiding from a violent, homicidal ex-boyfriend needs is her picture floating around. She looked at Derek’s face. He looked genuinely remorseful, and the truth was none of it was really his fault. He didn’t take the picture; he didn’t know that she was hiding out and he had just told her the truth about something that he never had to admit.

“Do me a favor?” she asked him.

“Anything,” he said.

“Make sure your creepy friend deleted that picture too.”

“Already done,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Chloe?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask you a question now?”

“Sure.”

“Will you please not hold how we met against me? I would really like to see you again. Please don’t think I’m a creep because I met you in a strip club.”

Chloe was looking at him like he had two heads. Where on earth had this man come from? She was the one who worked in a strip club and therefore in her mind; she was the one who might have a reason to fear him holding where they met against her. He thought so differently than every other man she had ever known.

She smiled at him and said, “I’ll do my best.”

That night she did something that for her was huge. She gave him her phone number. He still didn’t assume anything had changed though and for that, he got, even more, points in her mind. When Derek dropped her off at home, it was once again obvious that he wasn’t going to be invited in. He didn’t act offended or try and twist her arm into letting him come inside. What he did do was take her face in his hands, and after seeing she wasn’t going to resist, he kissed her. He tipped her head up, and his down and their lips met, soft, full and warm. Chloe let her slips part and Derek slipped his tongue into her hot, willing mouth. He found her tongue, and they let them tangle, dancing in and out of each other’s mouths until neither of them were able to breathe.

When they finally broke the kiss and came up for air, Chloe’s head was spinning.

“Good night, Chloe,” he whispered in a husky voice. Chloe didn’t find hers until he was halfway back to his car.

When she finally did, she barely recognized it as she said, “Good night, Derek.”