"You came in late last night," he commented as Chase unclipped his cell phone from his belt and slapped it on the desk.
That was another thing, Chase had worn jeans into the office. Something he very rarely did. Jeans meant he was pissed off and ready to kick ass. Either figuratively or literally. Cameron was hoping for figuratively.
"I don't have a curfew." Chase sat down and glared at the computer for a second before turning it on.
Cameron blew out a soundless breath. He only did that when he was afraid Courtney had sent out e-mails. Or perhaps more cell phone photos of Kia Rutherford buying lingerie.
Cam grinned.
"How are you and Kia doing?"
Chase froze. "There is no me and Kia," he snapped. "There never was."
"Oh yeah." Cam nodded as though remembering. "That's right. Your old motto, huh? Only for the pleasure?"
Chase's shoulders were tight. "Whatever."
"She's getting possessive, I bet?" Cam asked. "Yeah, women, they get stuff in their heads and the next thing you know, they think they own us. What's up with that?"
Personally, Cam kind of liked being owned, but the effort was pissing Chase off, and it was the best morning's entertainment he'd had outside of his apartment in a while.
"What's up with you?" Chase fired back, glancing over at him. "Nobody's getting possessive but you."
Cameron reined in his amusement until his brother turned back to the computer, then he smiled. Yeah, he was kind of possessive now. But when a man found a woman who brought out the beast, it was always better to go along for the ride. It was a hell of a lot more fun that way.
"Broke it off with her, did you?" Cameron asked, though he knew better. A man couldn't break off a relationship he refused to admit he was in.
"There was nothing to break off," Chase snapped.
"True." Cam nodded thoughtfully, as though his brother were actually looking at him. "You're better off without her anyway, probably. I mean, just think of all the complications."
Chase flipped around in his chair, glaring at him. "What complications? There are no complications."
Cam could feel said complications pouring off his brother, and it was both amusing and sobering. Hell, had he been like mat when he was fighting what he felt for Jaci? He'd have to be sure to make it up to her tonight when he got home.
"Well," Cam drawled, "there's always those little 'honey do' projects they have going on, like putting up Christmas trees, that take most of the night."
Chase frowned, his brows lowering over his eyes broodingly.
"Of course, there's the compensation later." Cam cleared his throat and let a little half smile tug at his lips. "But not all men would think that payment is worth it."
If Chase's expression could have gotten darker, it did.
"And that habit they have of wanting to chat after sex when all a man wants to do is sleep." He leaned forward as if the thought was irksome, then arched his brows and grinned. "Of course, you can learn some good secrets about them then. They like to get things off their minds so they can go to sleep." Cam made certain he had a suitably mysterious look on his face.
He was pleased to see that little flash of concern on Chase's face, as though his brother wondered if either Jaci or Kia had been discussing them at that little lunch yesterday.
Of course, Cam was betting they had. Jaci just hadn't said anything.
"What kind of secrets?" Chase asked, his voice dark, and impressively worried.
"Just girl stuff, I think." Cameron frowned. "I think it's girl stuff. I'm usually pretty close to sleep about then."
Bullshit. If Jaci was talking, Cameron was listening, simply because he was fucking mesmerized by her.
"They definitely come with a few problems." Cameron sighed and shook his head.
"Like what?" Chase growled. "Kia's not a problem."
"Well, that's true. I guess if you're just there for the fuck, then it's not that big a deal." He shrugged. "Now me, for instance. There's all the cuddling Jaci wants to do at night." He tapped his fingers against his desk thoughtfully. "But she does keep a man warm. Sharing bathroom space gets tight sometimes—all that girly stuff lying around. But she'll wash my back in the shower." He grinned. She did a hell of a lot more than that in the shower.
Chase glared at him.
"Man, monogamy can suck, I guess, and women just insist on it." He'd kill any man who tried to touch Jaci.
Despite the fact that the first part of their relationship had been spent with Chase as a third, it wasn't a relationship that had continued.
Chase's look grew yet darker.
"There's no relationship," he snapped again. "It wasn't love, it wasn't commitment, it was pleasure. That was all. Simple. Clean. Period."
Yeah, that was what he felt pouring from Chase, pure damned mad and messed-up male emotions. Simple. Clean. Period.
"Eh, count yourself lucky." Cameron shrugged and grinned again. "I guess I just got all the monogamy genes in the family. Damn. I'm a lucky bastard."
"You're definitely a bastard," he heard Chase mutter as he turned back to his computer.
Cameron had to keep his chuckle to himself. He cleared his throat, covered his mouth with his hand as he bent over the files on his desk and let a smile pull at his lips.
Man, Chase was a goner.
Maybe he should feel sorry for his brother, after all, falling in love wasn't an easy thing to do. There were all those messed-up emotions, sensations you just didn't know what the hell to do with, and the fact that a man knew, balls deep and in his gut, that he was never going to feel as much pleasure as he did with that one woman.
Chase was fighting that now. All the possessive, instinctual emotions that assailed a man when he finally touched that one woman who fascinated him were coming off Chase in waves.
Whatever the hell his brother had done, whatever he was denying, it wasn't sitting well with him. And despite his apparent fascination with e-mail, his mind wasn't really on it.
"Did we manage to get the report in on John Haggard's application?" Cam asked his brother several minutes later.
"No."
Cameron almost laughed. Bullshit. He'd seen it on Chase's desk that morning and just hadn't picked it up.
"He's going to be anxious to get his application through," Cam stated. "He's had his deposit in for a year now while we put him through the wringer. Do you think we could rush it?"
"I'm on it."
Cameron craned his neck, checked to see what Chase was so absorbed in, then shook his head pitifully.
Those damned cell phone pictures Courtney had taken of Kia going through the lingerie.
Yeah, Chase had it pretty damned bad.
He rose to his feet and moved to his brother's desk, almost grinning again as Chase minimized the screen.
"What the hell do you want?" Chase asked.
Cameron reached down to the desk slowly and grinned knowingly. "The Haggard file." He picked it up, then chuckled as his brother scowled. "She'll be at the Edgewood ball next week, I bet. Maybe you should come with us."
Chase lifted his lip in a snarl and Cameron had to snicker. Poor Chase. A goner, for sure.
Chapter 11
Two days later Kia entered her parents' three-story mansion, strolling into a marble foyer that was nearly the size of her apartment. Sunday brunch with her parents was not to be missed. If she missed it, her mother would pout at her, but her father would make a habit of dropping by her apartment, spur of the moment, for weeks, just to check on her. It was as bad as missing holiday dinners. Something else Kia didn't dare attempt.
They worried about her, she knew, and no amount of arguing against it would ever change the fact that, in their eyes, she was still their baby.
Her parents were older when they had her. Her father was already in his late thirties, her mother nearly thirty-five herself. Now, twenty-seven years later, they still wanted to treat her like the twenty-one-year-old who had left their home on her husband's arm.
Brunch on Sundays and holidays was a big thing for her mother. The one day when her husband and child were both at the table with her. Cecilia Rutherford insisted they dress up for the event. Kia wore sedate pearls at her ears and neck. A plain gold wristwatch, black wool slacks, and a gray sweater complemented the leather jacket her father had gotten her last Christmas.
Kia was dreading this particular brunch. She knew her parents. They were constantly trying to fix her up with someone, always worried about her unmarried state and her lack of babies. As though all she needed to be happy was a husband and a couple of children.
"There you are, dear." Her mother, Celia, refused to go gray. Even at sixty-two her hair was still the same champagne blond it had been when she married, with a little help from her beautician.
Her father on the other hand, Timothy Rutherford, had aged like fine whiskey. He wasn't overly tall, just right at five feet eleven inches, against his wife's five-foot-four frame.
Unfortunately, Kia had inherited that small delicate body. She would have much preferred to be tall, slender, and svelte.
"Hi, Daddy." She reached up and kissed his cheek as he rose from the round glass table in the now heated sun room.
He was dressed in Sunday casual. Sharply creased dress slacks and a white dress shirt. Her mother wore her pearls as well, and a silk dress.
All for Sunday brunch.
Kia remembered her years growing up when she hated dressing for dinner. Sometimes she'd longed to order pizza and watch television as she ate. Strictly forbidden in the Rutherford household.
It had been a good place to grow up, though. She had been sheltered and protected. She went to the right schools, and all her friends were from the right families, and the Rutherford princess had never known a moment's pain.
Until she married the reigning prince of her father's offices. And what a disaster that had been.
"You're looking beautiful, sweetheart." Her mother turned her cheek up for a kiss. "Isn't she beautiful today, Timothy?"
Her father grunted in a no-response tone while sneaking Kia an amused wink.
"He's no help whatsoever," her mother fussed as they sat down.
"I was supposed to be helping?" Her father's lined face wrinkled into a pretend scowl.
Her mother shooed at him before turning back to Kia.
"I saw you leave the ball the other night with Chase Falladay. Are you two seeing each other now?"
That was her mother. She never put off to tomorrow what she could be nosy about today.
"Chase and I are just friends, Mom," she told her firmly, but it hurt. Oh how it hurt. Deep inside, in a place that had never known pain until Chase.
"Just friends?" Her father's voice rumbled in that fatherly, warning way. "I'm not so old I don't remember what that means."
Kia leaned back in her chair as the maid placed coffee and water in front of her before her assistant came bearing food.
"Just simply friends, Daddy." She gave him a firm look of her own. "Chase is a very nice gentleman."
God was going to strike her dead for that one.
"Hmphf." Her father grunted again and gave her a knowing look, though he dropped the subject.
"Well, that's too bad," her mother said. "We're not getting any younger, Kia. Grandbabies would be nice."
"A husband would be nice first," her father growled. "The other fathers are carting their sons-in-law around like extra baggage. Where's mine?"
"And the other mothers in my bridge club have grandbabies," her mother told her. "They babysit." Her mother sighed. "I would make an excellent babysitter, Kia."
