Page 98 of How to Get Even

And not just from Chase.

Although Astrid knew – or at least, suspected – Bella hadn’t told the other girls yet and… and she was going to keep it that way too, she’d decided. Bad Bella ignored the unease Good Bella would have felt about it. Because being good had got her dumped and being bad apparently got her some incredibly good sex and Bad Bella wasnotcomplaining.

But deep down, she wrestled with it. She had come to terms with Paige and Olly because they had fallen in love with each other. But was it better or worse that she and Chase weren’t in love? Because she couldn’t be in love with Chase. And he certainly wasn’t in love with her.

But the girls had been so worried about her when it had come to Olly and Paige, and now Bella had gone and done the same thing to Astrid. Only itwasn’tthe same thing… and then Bella was back in the same circle of thoughts as she had been over the last few days, which made her just want to bury her head in the sand.

And for the first time in her life, she did. She stopped returning calls, saying that she was just busy in the run up to pre-opening and opening. And she was. It wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t the truth either. Because when she wasn’t working…

Chase walked past the office and she couldn’t help but track him with her eyes. He was dumping another coffee in the kitchen, because he wasstillfinding salt sachets in his sugar and she hadn’t swapped them out yet. She found herself smiling, until she felt Maurice’s gaze on her. She cleared her throat and returned to the report she’d been working on.

* * *

Chase ended the call with Sascha, surprised as well as relieved that she’d been able to finish the collection so soon. He promised to visit the studio tomorrow, but the list of things he had to do before the pre-opening and opening were growing and he couldn’t help but be frustrated by it. His hope to feel a sense of excitement or accomplishment as they neared the opening were beginning to fade. But Chase didn’t exactly have another option at this point and besides, pushing ahead with the gallery still felt a million times better than just the thought of his own art again.

‘It’s okay to grieve it,’Tej had told him at the very beginning. But Chase had shoved those words away. Because if he grieved, it meant he’d lost it. And he refused to even consider that. If he didn’t grieve, it wasn’t gone. He could always go back to it. But the further and further he got from his last painting, the more fear, the more anxiety, the more pain built up to a point so overwhelming, he could hardly breathe.

It wasn’t even about being a success. He’d set fire to all the money in his bank account if he could paint again. Hell, he’d go work in an office for the tax man, if it meant he could pick up a brush again.

He checked his watch. Just after five-thirty, and Bella wasn’t at her desk. They’d all started working late in the run up to opening. There was a sense of urgency, not panicked or rushed, but focused and driven. It was good to see what they were all accomplishing together, but a part of him felt separate from it. As if they’d have been perfectly capable of doing it without him.

He gave one last glance at the email he’d received that afternoon from Zadzisai’s agent who’d apparently had a change of heart and now wanted to headline the opening. He wasn’t ready to sort through his feelings about it yet, so he locked his computer and got up, stretching his arms above his head, cricking his neck, and surreptitiously trying to see if Bella was still in the office.

Ever since the gala dinner, they’d hardly been able to keep their hands off each other. Surely he should have got used to her by now. Surely at least familiarity should have made him less…hungry.

Christ, just the thought of it had him achingly hard. He grimaced, adjusting his trousers and left his office. He wanted to check on the latest layout they’d been testing around the life-sized photographs they had of Sascha’s work.

They’d been experimenting with a series of moveable walls that would create separate areas for different pieces. One was almost entirely enclosed where Chase was considering either the quadriptych from Lit Lake or the instillation from Itashi.

He found Bella in the far corner, her gaze flitting between one of the pieces from Lake and the enlarged photo of Sascha’s piece pinned up against the wall next to it.

Her hair was down, partly because every time she tried to put it up, he’d find a way to pull it loose again when no one was watching. She was wearing those jeans again, the ones that hugged her ass and made him damn near feral, but the open-knit cardigan she wore looked soft and innocent in a way that made him want to peek beneath it.

He came to stand behind her, aware that the rest of the staff were still upstairs for now, if not for much longer. She behaved as if she hadn’t noticed him, but peering over her shoulder where she had nestled her tablet to take notes from, he could see the way her skin pebbled. Goosebumps that trickled across his own arms.

Then he saw her notes.

‘You want to move it?’ he asked a little surprised.

She craned her neck to look back at him. ‘I’m not sure. But there’s something about it that’s bothering me and I can’t quite figure out what it is.’

He stared at the positioning of the pieces, trying to see what she saw, but couldn’t. He liked the pieces where they were.

She smiled, and rolled her eyes as if sensing that he was about to dig his heels in. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to argue about it. Not yet anyway,’ she warned.

And he was pleased. Because helikedarguing with her. It was a mental exercise that pushed and pulled and when it spilled over into their bed, it usually became something glorious.

With one ear on the staff upstairs, he dropped his mouth to the crook of her neck, pressing kisses against the flesh exposed by the loose neck of her cardigan.

Bella gasped, and he felt it shoot through him.

‘Chase.’ His name on her lips was half warning, half plea and it was like a red flag to a bull. Unable to stop himself, he wrapped his hands around her, drawing her back against his chest, hands slipping beneath the knit and meeting smooth cool skin.

Nought to sixty, every time he got his hands on her. That’s what it was like. The rush, that same heady feeling when he lost himself to a painting and looked back to see what he’d discovered. She was like that. A fresh painting, a surprise discovery, every single time.

She unfurled against his body, and he thrust one hand between her legs, and the sound she made was near indecent. Christ, he could barely contain himself. It didn’t seem to matter how much he got of her, he still wanted more.

He drew her backwards, slipping behind the screen wall set up in the corner of the gallery, turned her in his arms and claimed her mouth like a starving man. His tongue thrust boldly and she welcomed every bit of it, ofhim. Her fingers fisted his hair and he relished the difference between the near-glacial poise she maintained at work, and the incendiary wildness she met him with out of it.

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