Vi could almost start getting a vision there. It would be kind of fun to take her career international. Be crisscrossing the globe, building herself into…this heady glimpse of herself ten years down the road, one of the most influential female chefs in the world. Hell, drop the female. One of the most influential chefs.
“Balls,” Vi said, instead of admitting his pep talk was working. “Always has to be something inherently male to show you have nerve, doesn’t it?”
Chase sighed. “Are you ladies going to cut me any slack at all?”
“No,” Vi said. “It doesn’t matter how little rope we give you, you still manage to hang yourself. In fact, I’m starting to think that if the only rope you had was the one tying your wrists tight to something, you’d still manage to hang yourself.” Oops. Had she just let it slip that she had multiple times imagined tying his wrists to something so he’d be at her mercy?
Chase grinned, as if he’d read right into the depths of her dirty mind. “Not that I’ve never had a fantasy about three women tying me up, I admit, but she’s got a boyfriend in the Foreign Legion”—he nodded to Célie—“and I’m monogamous now.”
“Since when?” Vi said very, very dryly.
Chase gaped at her. “Since last night! You never listen to a word I say, do you?” He scowled. “If I dismissed everything you said, I’d be taking flack about sexism again.”
Vi pressed her splint and her bare hand to her face a long moment. “I think I need to go fix my hair,” she finally told Célie and Lina. “I really wasn’t expecting company.”
“I’ve got some aspirin, if you need it,” Lina said sympathetically.
“You know, I’ve got to give you credit, Vi,” Célie said, as Violette headed toward her shower. “I thought your last guy set the record, but you have finally found the most impossible guy in the universe.”
Chase beamed and patted himself on the back.
Vi slammed the bathroom door.
Chapter 11
Chase was having a hard time holding steady. Humor had gotten him through some tough shit in the past, so he clung to it, like he always did, but Vi was messing with his ability to compartmentalize, waking up emotions. And not fun, happy, adrenaline-charged, she’s-so-damn-hot emotions either. Those made him feel as if he’d finally fallen into one of those Hollywood action films about men like him.
No, these were the scary kind of emotions. They were vulnerable, and even though they seemed to reside in his middle and his head, he couldn’t figure out how to fit body armor and a helmet on them no matter what he did.
The swelling sense of failure—I didn’t protect her, a civilian hit by my own unit’s friendly fire—the powerful desire to fix it, this morass of other emotions that he didn’t even have names for but that swelled up at the sight of her in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, like someone who wasn’t a Bond girl right that minute but who needed a man who could sweep her up close and warm and hold her tight until all the bad went away.
He’d mentioned it, that he could try the cuddle. But she clearly realized that wasn’t in his normal skill set. She’d gone for the option he was good at—taking flack. It was such cute flack, too—slippers and pillows and a bouquet of flowers. Adorable, when compared to AK-47s.
After he’d fielded her friends’ probing questions for a while, she came back out, her straight blond hair silky dry, as if she was about to head out somewhere glamorous for the evening. She’d abandoned that fluffy bathrobe and slippers, but she hadn’t really gotten dressed, just put a bra on under her black camisole top, still wearing black pajama bottoms, barefoot.
The combination of that silky, pretty hair and the quieter intimacy of her attire hit him like a punch in the gut.
It troubled his stomach, this tumble of a fantasy a man like him never got to actually have. Women loved to date men like him, loved hot sex, loved, yes, the idea of marrying guys like him, but they never really lasted through the actual him. The man who was too tough, too impervious, too able to ride roughshod over almost everyone without even realizing it, and, of course, who was gone most of the year.
The knit camisole clung to a slim, athletic body that moved now not so much like a whip cracking, as it did when she was taking on the world, but like a dancer winding down from a long performance—the energy subdued, but all that grace and strength still obvious in the lines of her body and in every casual move.
To his surprise, she didn’t go back to sending verbal jabs his way, or throwing things at him, both things he could handle. Okay, that he enjoyed handling, except when he was too stupid and cocky a shit and his damn showing off made her end up with a boxer’s fracture.
She seemed…quieter now. Thinking. She took the bar seat across from him, pushing a couple of his makeshift vases to the side to rest her chin on her good hand.
He sliced a pat of butter, feeling weirdly self-conscious. He hadn’t felt self-conscious since he was a teenager. What the hell?
“Heat the pan first,” she said.
“What?”