Chase licked his finger and made a sizzling noise as he touched it to his shoulder.
“Oh, purée.” Vi strode back into the apartment, leaving the door open. Although it was really true about that sizzle. He fried her brain, that was the damn problem.
Chase strolled in behind her, his size and his presence immediately taking over the whole apartment. “Can I touch your jacket?”
“You’ve done it enough damage. I threw it away.” When she’d come home, she’d stuffed it into her trashcan so she could go ahead and get that wound over with and never think about it again.
Chase got the jacket out of the trashcan, and when she frowned at him, he pretended to stifle heavy sneezes, casting terrorized glances at her with each one.
“Quel imbécile,” Vi said. But already she was trying not to laugh.
Chase smiled and sat down on the floor in front of her coffee table with the jacket. Digging into his backpack, he began to pull out tools of some sort—things that looked like they could punch holes, and things that looked like they could pound and clamp and…were those sewing needles?
Lining them up, he pulled out an iPad and searched something. She peered, unable to contain her curiosity. Instructions for sewing leather.
Her jaw dropped.
He turned the slashed jacket sleeve inside out and began to run some kind of grooving device over a cut edge.
Vi stared.
“Might as well take your shower,” Chase said. “I’m not sure how long this is going to take, and you’re making me self-conscious.”
“You can get self-conscious?”
He shrugged.
She did want to wash off the scents of the bar. She went into the bathroom, keeping her shower quick, very aware of how safe she felt doing that with him in her apartment. She didn’t even feel as if she needed to lock the door.
Slipping into her yoga pajama bottoms and cami, she came back out to sit at the kitchen counter and watch him.
Like the night before, just having him here started to work on her. His presence slipped in, twining its way with the comfortable feeling of her pajama bottoms and the relaxation of her shower, as if not only could he feed her need for adrenaline rushes but he could be the way she eased off that adrenaline, too.
As if he was making himself part of her quiet. That time when she wasn’t ready to face the world, when she wasn’t ready to take on all comers. When she let her guard down, replacing a chef’s coat and knives or leather and boots with pajama pants and bare feet.
She couldn’t figure that out. This guy was hot sex on a stick and trouble all over, and he was obviously excellent material for a hook-up—if he didn’t ruin a woman’s life the next day, exactly what she should have expected from an arrogant male. But a woman clearly would be an idiot to let down her guard around him.
The last man on earth you’d want to have see you battered and tired and defeated. She ran her fingers through her hair, to try to make sure it didn’t look battered and tired and defeated.
He didn’t pay any attention to her, stubbornly setting up the two sliced edges of that sleeve in a clamp and now trying to thread a needle with his big fingers. It took her a while to realize that there was the faintest tinge of color on his cheeks.
“Do you want help?” she asked finally.
He shook his head.
“Do you want to eat?”
“It’s one o’clock, honey. I ate a while ago.”
She voice-activated a little music, her wind-down playlist. He tilted his head a second and then smiled a little. “Pink?”
Vi found herself grinning. “I’m still a rock star.”
“Yep.” He said it simply, giving her one flick of a glance that was like being licked with a flame. The heat of respect, admiration, attraction. “How did it go today?”
Not awesome.
“Fine.”
His smile faded. He looked at her a long moment, waiting.
“I mean…you know…great.”
His lips twisted. He waited.
“It was great to get out with my team. They needed it, and I needed it. But…” She shoved her toe against the counter. “I just can’t do anything. The restaurant is closed until the inspections are over. So I just have to sit there and take it. I can’t cook anything. I can’t make flavors come alive and send them out to all those would-be critics to tell them now say something else. I can’t focus on my work and my world, on doing what I love, and just forget all those damn yappy dogs out there exist. So I just get…torn down and torn down, while all I can think about is how my life is getting sucked down the drain. I hate it. God, I hate it.”
He gave a grimace of empathy.
“I talked to the owners, and…they’re not blaming me or anything. They’re trying to be supportive. But they took a huge risk on me, because they were excited about me, and…” She shrugged, no words to convey how much she hated to repay them with this.