Page 51 of Things Good Girls Don't Do (Rock Canyon, Idaho 1)

Katie heard the rustling of bags and Chase said, “So I got you a caramel mocha and a chocolate chip muffin, since Gracie said that’s your usual. And I was actually thinking we could take a drive to Hailey instead of Boise . . .” He was standing by the couch and she tried to hide her red eyes, but he’d already seen them. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she answered, wishing her voice didn’t sound so nasal.

Setting the food down on the end table, he sat next to her and turned her face toward him. “Why are you crying, Firecracker?”

She shook her head. “That’s a stupid nickname.”

He tilted up her chin, studying her. “Maybe so, but I don’t think me calling you Firecracker really bothers you; you’re just changing the subject.”

“I’m fine. I just had a fight with Steph is all.”

“Already? What happened?” he asked.

She stood up and said, “I don’t really want to talk about it, okay? I want to get my hands on this mocha you promised me.” She grabbed the mocha off the end table and walked away from his penetrating gray eyes and his questions. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with either of them right now.

CHASE LET THE fight go, but he knew that something was really bugging her. They ate their muffins in the kitchen in relative silence, though he was afraid he knew why Steph and Katie had been fighting.

“Please, Chase, you can barely afford lunch. How are you going to pay for prom?”

Emily Wilson had said that after having sex with him in the back of his mother’s van. They had hung out for a little over a month senior year before he’d found out exactly what she really thought about him.

“You’re a hot guy, but I could never really date you. I mean, you live in that run-down trailer and you have no ambition. You’re going to end up stuck in this town with the rest of the losers.”

He came back to the present with clenched fists. Emily had spent a month with him and never knew a thing about

him. She’d seen a boy her daddy would hate and a way to make him squirm. She hadn’t even known he was leaving for Berkeley at the end of the summer.

But Katie wasn’t like Emily. She was sweet and she was interested in him, in who he really was. When she wasn’t constantly worried about what everyone in this pissant town thought, she was fun.

More than fun.

But whatever Steph had said had to have been about him, and about the way Katie had changed. If Steph had thought warning him off wouldn’t work, going to the source would have been her next stop. It wasn’t like he didn’t know Katie was just experimenting. He knew she was going to wash the streaks out of her hair and always keep her tattoo hidden from view, and when it was all over, she’d move on with her life.

Without him.

Chase knew this was all temporary. He just got to be the lucky guy in the right place at the right time, but he didn’t like thinking about Katie not being around for him to touch. That she wouldn’t be there to laugh at his outrageous comments or run her hands over his scruffy face.

He liked Katie. Maybe someday it could be more than like, but he would never know.

“All you are is trailer trash, Chase, and that’s all you’ll ever be,” Emily’s voice said, taunting him from the past.

Katie wrapped her arms around his waist and nuzzled his chest. “I’m sorry that I’ve been such a bummer this morning. You want to back out? Find something else to do?”

He looked down into those clear blue eyes and slid his hands into her hair, kissing her softly. “Nope. Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

She snuggled closer. “You say the sweetest things.”

Only to you.

That thought brought with it a rush of panic. He had to stop entertaining these serious thoughts about Katie. Adventurous and ballsy he might be, but he wasn’t stupid. Especially when it came to women, and to putting himself out there. Which is how he had lived thirty-three years without a single broken heart. A few dents to his ego, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a couple of beers and a warm, feminine body. But if he let Katie become special to him, he was setting himself up for a whole world of pain.

Come on, man, you’re just fooling yourself. She’s already special.

Breaking the moment, he slapped her ass playfully and said, “All right, since it is already close to ten and I have to open the shop at five, what do you want to do?”

She rubbed her injured posterior with a grumble, “Wow, I cancel my appointments for the day and you can’t even close your shop for a few hours? Nice.”

He saw the challenging look on her face and conceded. “Fine. We’ll put a note on the door as we head out of town.”

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