Page 77 of How to Get Even

When she went back to refill her glass, she realised that her phone was buzzing again and, ignoring the screen, she put it on silent. She tipped the bottle to the glass but nothing came out. She shook it, but only a drop clung to the mouth of the bottle.

It wasn’t enough. She wasn’t nearly drunk enough.

She spun on her heel and left her apartment, crossed the hallway and knocked.

She knocked and kept knocking.

‘Hold on,’ she heard from the other side of the door. ‘Christ, hold on!’ the angry shout came again, making Bella realise that she hadn’t actually stopped knocking.

She frowned at her knuckles. They hurt a little.

Chase yanked open the door with one hand, the other clutching the edge of a towel hung low around his waist.

She blinked at him, seeing him, not really seeing him, but knowing that sheshouldbe seeing him because in her mind she flashed to a scene from Delia’s book where the heroine walked in on the hero in the shower.

‘I don’t need that right now,’ she said to herself more than him, and pushed past him into where she knew the main area would be.

‘Bella? Are you okay?’ he asked, not yet closing the door, as if he hoped to get rid of her as soon as possible.

‘Yup, I just need…’ she said, peering around the room and locating the wet bar she knew he’d have well stocked, ‘this.’

She searched the bottles: vodka, gin, Jack Daniels, and… scotch. She wouldn’t be able to stomach the taste of gin, JD was too sweet and vodka, tasteless. She wanted to feel this as she drank it.

Relentlessly physical.

She snapped her mouth shut and grabbed the bottle and turned to leave, pulling up short just before she crashed into Chase’s very wet, very naked chest.

He eyed the bottle in her hand and the look on her face and shut the door behind him to stop her from leaving. He scanned her from head to toe, quickly and efficiently as if he were checking for injuries.

‘Are you drunk?’ he demanded.

‘Why do you keep asking me that?’

‘You didn’t answer the question. Are you drunk?’

‘No,’ she replied. Not enough, anyway.

He stared at her in that way of his. As if he wanted to see more, when most people were only happy with what she showed them. And while she longed for that, needed it in a way she could barely put into words, she didn’t want that now. Not tonight.

‘I’m not quite sure what’s going on, but if you’re planning to drink that? You’re not leaving,’ he informed her.

‘I’m not a child, Chase. You can’t keep me here,’ she said in a tone that even to her own ears sounded frankly childish.

‘It’s my alcohol, Bella. If you want to go and buy your own, by all means,’ he offered.

His sudden attachment to a bottle of scotch was strange but now that it was so late she wouldn’t be able to buy any. If she wanted alcohol, this was the only way.

She glared up at him, trying not to look at the way his body looked in just a towel, his hair still wet from the shower he’d been taking, swept back and sleek against his head. The hair dusting his chest, dark swirls across his pecs and down the centre of his torso, sweeping around toned muscles. Lean. He was lean rather than muscular, but she couldn’t help herself from following the trail of hair to the edge of the towel around his hips and?—

‘Bella.’

‘Yes?’ she said, finally drawing her attention back to his face.

He frowned at her as if he was worried. Then narrowed his eyes.

‘If you leave, I’m coming after you,’ he warned as he finally moved away from the door. ‘Stay there,’ he commanded.

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