CHASE AWOKE the following morning with a headache of mammoth proportions and a vague sense of unease that rapidly became an enlarged balloon of dread. When the memories of the night before became sharp enough to pop it, the shame set in.
He’d hit on her.
Immediately following his father’s funeral.
Right after asking if they’d been lovers.
Smooth, Chase, he thought, wincing with regret. You really have a way with the ladies.
Too much alcohol in too small a time had no doubt been a very bad idea, but last night—or yesterday afternoon, more specifically—he’d needed something, anything, to dull the emotion. To quiet the noise in his head.
In the hard light of day, he realized he’d been a cold-hearted, selfish bastard. Regardless of how his father had treated him, he seemed to have genuinely cared about Rorie—he’d left her the house, after all—and that affection was reciprocated.
Furthermore, though it was completely self-serving, he couldn’t afford to piss her off. He did need her help. He hadn’t set foot in Harrison Construction since the day he’d told his father that he’d gotten the ROTC scholarship and his father had merely nodded, then gone about his business as usual. He’d only been to the house twice and both of those visits had coincided with funerals—his paternal grandparents. They’d died within six months of each other the year after he’d graduated.
He could find all the pertinent paperwork and had a general idea of what needed to be done for the business, but otherwise he was completely uninformed of his father’s life. Rorie definitely had the advantage there and the sooner he was finished with all of this, the sooner he could walk away. Back to the military, for sure. But permanently? He still didn’t know. He couldn’t imagine another life, another career. He was a soldier.
But knowing it and believing it were two entirely different things.
Though he’d been up since dawn, Chase waited until eight o’clock to knock on her door. He’d brought a couple of ham-and-cheese biscuits someone had brought over yesterday as a peace offering and hoped that she would provide the coffee. He desperately needed the caffeine.
Pillow creases still on her cheeks, a serious case of bed-head and her body covered in a worn chenille robe, Rorie finally opened the door. Her blue eyes widened in guarded surprise when she saw him standing there.
He lifted the tray and smiled, feeling a strange sort of release at seeing her—as though he could breathe properly now. Rattled, he shook the bizarre sensation off. “Breakfast?”
“What time is it?” Her voice was husky and clogged with sleep. Sexy. Another bolt of desire shot through him.
“Eight. Don’t you have to be at the office by nine?”
Rubbing her face wearily, she opened the door wider and gestured for him to come in. “I do.”
“I thought you would be up already.” Though he had to admit, this sleepy, sexy version of her worked just fine. Damn. The way the worn fabric draped over her ass was simply criminal. And the bed-head? Strangely attractive as well. Put him in mind of sex. The hot, depraved variety. His dick stirred just looking at her and he had the almost overwhelming urge to lick the side of her graceful neck.
“My clock would have gone off in fifteen minutes.”
“Do you want me to come back?”
Her face squinched up. “Why are you here?”
So she wasn’t a morning person. For reasons which escaped him, he found this utterly adorable. “I wanted to apologize for last night.”
She looked at him then, truly looked at him, and the floor seemed to shift beneath his feet. Her eyes weren’t just blue—they were aqua. Clear, heavily lashed and intelligent. “For being drunk?”
He smiled, chagrined. “And everything that it implies.”
She shrugged. “You were entitled. You’d just buried your father.”
She made it sound so simple, as though that were the only reason he hadn’t wanted to be in his own head. A snapshot of horror filled his mind, the pregnant woman, clutching her bleeding belly…
She snagged a biscuit off the tray, thankfully distracting him. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
Not his preference, but he’d take his caffeine where he could get it. “Sure.”
She headed toward the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on. Make yourself comfortable.”
Taking the opportunity to regroup and check out her space, Chase set the tray down on the coffee table and settled cautiously onto the couch. It was covered in some ghastly floral brocade that instantly put him on edge and made him afraid of getting it dirty. In fact, the room was packed full of flowers—fresh, fabric and painted. Little vases filled with daisies lined the mantel and a painting of this very house hung on the opposite wall. A large rug with cabbage roses lay against the floor. Needlepoint pillows—more flowers—sat against the chair backs and at either end of the sofa.
It was a veritable garden.
No pictures of people, Chase noted. Not a single personal photograph. How strange. Didn’t she have any family? Parents? Siblings? Friends?
Something small and furry attacked his shoes, startling the hell out of him.
“Daisy,” she chided, laughing softly as she came back into the room. He recognized the tea set—it had belonged to his mother. “Sorry about that,” she said, as the kitten continued to bat at his shoelaces. “She’s still a baby.”
He reached down to rub the little tabby between the brows.
“She’s pretty.”
“She’s a handful,” Rorie said indulgently. “But she’s good company. Your father got her for me a couple of weeks ago.”
He’d always begged for a pet, but had never been allowed to have one. Wait. Not true. Holland had permitted, albeit reluctantly, his turtle, Skip.
The cat had considerably more personality.
Trying to keep the bitter tone out of his voice, Chase took a sip of tea and then addressed the business at hand. “I thought I’d come with you to the office this morning. Start there and get things sorted.”
She added a teaspoon of sugar to her tea. “Shouldn’t you meet with Hank first?”
Hank was his father’s attorney. Come to think of it, he’d mentioned dropping by his office today, but Chase had been too preoccupied to give it any thought at the time.
“Er…yeah, I guess,” he said, dreading it. Hank and his father had been friends for years. No doubt Hank knew exactly what his father had thought of him, the disappointment he’d been. Rorie, too, for that matter, and somehow her knowing was worse. Geez, God, the sooner he was finished with this the better.
Rorie bent down and stroked the cat’s fur, inadvertently exposing the side of her breast in the process. His mouth actually watered.
“He says your father left a few instructions on how he wanted things handled,” Rorie said.
His mood blackened once more and he felt his lips twist into the familiar sardonic grin. “Of course. He would.”
Her gaze found his and the pity he saw there absolutely cut him to the quick. Pity? Pity?
Oh, hell, no.
“So did Hank tell you about the house or had my dad?” Chase asked.
She swallowed. “Hank told me,” she said. “He wanted me to know before you—”
“—came in and razed the place, I imagine,” he finished, trying unsuccessfully to quell the irritation rapidly pushing through his veins.
“That was not his concern,” she said, her eyes flashing. “He was afraid that you’d want to come in and immediately sell. He wanted me to know that I would still have a home, since I wouldn’t have a job.”
His conscience pricked. His father’s death was affecting her life much more directly than his own. After all, once everything was settled, he could walk right back into the life he’d left behind. Minus both parents now, which he would admit was mildly disconcerting. No siblings, no grandparents, no parents. He was essentially an orphan, but considering he’d purposely made himself one years ago, he was pretty well-equipped to deal with it.
Rorie was not and he had an obligation, as Holland’s son, to see this through. He would treat it like a mission, Chase decided. Would tackle it with methodical precision, one step at a time.
“I’m sorry about the job, Rorie, but I am going to sell the business,” he said, making an attempt to keep his voice level and kind. “Not out of spite, as you might think, but out of feasibility.” He took a sip of tea and was surprised when he liked it. His mother used to drink tea. He hadn’t thought of that in years. “I can’t run the construction company from Iraq.”
Her lips twisted, but the smile was more knowing than bitter. “You wouldn’t keep the business even if you weren’t in Iraq. Holland always said you hated it.”
“I had no interest in it,” he corrected. “Building, fixing and restoration was his passion. Being a soldier was mine.” He looked away. “He could never understand the difference and made absolutely no effort to try. It had to be his way, always.”
“He just wanted you here. You were his only family.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “I was his only whipping boy.”
She studied him thoughtfully. “You don’t believe that. You have to know that he loved you.”
“Inasmuch as he was capable, which was damned little,” Chase said with a strained smile. He stood. He didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. He’d buried his father yesterday and that meant burying the past and any feelings about it with him.
Rorie was looking at Holland Harrison through hero-glasses and, though Chase knew the truth, he figured she needed to cling to that image more than she needed to have an accurate account of his father. He made his way to the door, then turned back to look at her. Her mouth was turned down in a sad line and the pity was back in her eyes, making him want to punch something. Or replace the sentiment with a more productive one, like desire. “I’m going to see Hank. I’ll be by the office later.”
“I’ll arrange for the crews to finish current projects, then you’ll need to decide what to do about the future work.”
“Let me talk to Hank first.”
She nodded. “I’ll help you however I can,” she said, and, for whatever reason, he got the distinct impression that there was a double meaning to her words.
“I’ll make it worth your while. I’ve only got to the end of the week to get everything settled.”
Something shifted behind her eyes. Regret? “Then you return to Iraq?”
He nodded, suddenly certain of his path. He’d needed this break—this reality check—but, at the heart of it, after everything was said and done, even after the horror of Mosul, he was a soldier. He cast a glance around her small house, then looked toward the huge Victorian he’d grown up in and knew without a shadow of a doubt that he didn’t belong here. This had been his father’s path, not his. He sighed. This was Rorie’s future now.
The thought was ridiculously unsettling.