Page 78 of How to Get Even

Sun Tzu doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

BELLA, DRUNK.

He shouldn’t have let her in the damn door, he thought as he hastily pulled on a pair of jeans and a tee. Though, to be fair, once he had even the slightest inkling of her determination to get blind drunk, there was no way he’d been remotely willing to let her loose without a chaperone either. So, that was where he found himself: hurrying to play chaperone to a wannabe wayward socialite.

Not that she was a socialite in the way he’d once meant. Their conversation from the gallery came back to him. He frowned. What on earth had happened between then and now, that she turned up like this on his doorstep? And thank God it had been his doorstep, he thought with relief.

Until he returned to the living room to find Bella pacing in front of the window. The restless energy was new on her. It drew her body in different lines and colours. Chase passed a hand over his mouth, watching her as she walked back and forth unseeing of the view beyond the window, the sight of which made him clench his other fist.

It was getting harder and harder to deny his attraction to her, but that didn’t mean a thing right now. Because the woman who hated being out of control was currently doing her very best to get completely shitfaced.

‘Bella, do you want to tell me what’s going on?’ he asked, with a sigh.

She bit the inside of her cheek, considering his question. Eventually she shook her head, her hair swinging across her face as she spun elegantly back to the view.

He opened his mouth to argue, but stopped when she spun back to him, only slightly off balance.

‘I’m a good person,’ she said, as if he’d accused her of not being one.

‘I know.’

‘Iamgood,’ she stressed. ‘I’m a good daughter, a good friend, a good colleague. Mostly.’

He wasn’t sure about the mostly, but he was fairly confident about the rest. And couldn’t even remotely imagine her being a bad daughter.

‘I’m good even when I’m being bad,’ she announced.

Chase didn’t mean to intentionally scoff out loud, but when he looked up at her staring mutinously at him, he realised she’d heard.

‘I’ve been bad,’ she said, swinging her glass towards him, rather recklessly as far as the carpet was concerned, and he couldn’t help but laugh.

‘I’ve been bad!’ she insisted over his chuckle. ‘I’ve done things,’ she said, and he supposed it was supposed to sound ominous, but it just made him laugh harder.

‘Bella, your definition of bad is not making the bed in the morning,’ he stated, leaning back on the sofa and enjoying the flush of indignation rising on her cheeks.

She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t seem to find the words.

‘That’s okay, Bella,’ he said. ‘It’s okay if that’s who you are.’

‘But it’s not okay. Because… because…’

He watched her grapple for an answer and slowly the humour of the moment twisted and changed. Because she was reaching for something he could damn near see written on the air between them, but that she couldn’t quite bring herself to say.

‘Because it doesn’t get you what you want,’ he read in her gaze.

Grey eyes glittered like snowflakes in the setting sun. The idea that Bella’s wants had been discarded… not with her asshat ex who had left her alone to confront a mess of his making. The way she was, the person she was… he could see it. Could see why she moved through the world trying not to make ripples. Christ, given what happened when she was younger, her sister’s illness, he could see how wanting anything for herself would have been hard.

And suddenly he wanted to see what Bella was like when she made ripples. When shetriedto. Now, that would be something.

‘So, what is it that you want?’ he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

She looked at him, confusion in her eyes, morphing to sadness.

The only people who didn’t know the answer to that question either never allowed themselves to stop and ask, or had never expected their wants to be met. And with a sucker punch, Chase realised that Bella was the latter.

‘I want my friend to be happy.’

He wasn’t sure who this friend was, but Bella was missing the point. ‘What doyouwant? For yourself.’

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