“I’ve never heard of him.”
“But he’s a prince.” Tory taps the air.
“What if I already found my princess?” Chase’s gaze, filled with blue flame, lands on me.
I check to see if I’m on fire because his smolder threatens to incinerate me.
Tory fans herself. “Yeow. Bring that to the show and I can see the ratings coming in hot. Hold up. If you found your princess, then why’d you agree to do the show? Unrequited love?”
“Something like that,” Chase mutters.
Tory presses her hand to her chest as though relieved. “I was afraid you were going to say it was a favor to your sister. Trust me, business and family don’t mix.”
“Neither does business and pleasure,” I add. Everyone knows that, which is exactly why I have to keep my distance from Chase.
“Pippa here has been incredibly helpful. We’ve briefed her on everything and she’ll be with you every step of the way as per the rules of your etiquette training, but it’s great for us because she knows you better than one of our assistants and can give you direction. Pippa is your number-one fan. Don’t let her go,” Tory says.
“I wasn’t planning to.” A surprising weight drops into Chase’s tone and his dimple appears with a tease of what I know I can’t have.
We’redeep intoCrush or Cupidand have another date on the docket. Chase exits the brownstone wearing a pair of jeans and a button-up shirt left casually untucked. “How’d you sleep?”
With Elvis in my ear. I haven’t had to hear him croon in order to fall asleep in a long time, but it did the trick, mostly because I couldn’t turn off my thoughts...about Chase on the other side of the wall.
“I slept,” I say, trying to infuse my voice with sunshine when all I feel is gloom, especially after watching him go on a date with a chipper web designer with a penchant for cosplay. She was great, no complaints, but it’s agonizing to watch.
“Lucky for you, the previous tenants moved out earlier this month and I’m still vetting new ones, so the space is open.”
More like unlucky, if he had a view into my thoughts. “It’s lovely. Furnished and everything.”
“Quite the project, let me tell you,” he says as we start down the sidewalk.
...so is this, chaperoning my crush on dates with other women.
Every fiber of my being tells me not to do it, but if we don’t find him someone else, I’ll fall...and keep falling.
I don’t know where rock bottom is, but I imagine it’s a long way down. I’d never let myself want a married man or someone in a relationship, so the sooner Chase is off the market, the better.
While we walk, Chase points out various aspects of the properties he purchased along with project details. He speaks with purposeful passion like his greatest pleasure comes from creating a home.
“We should get a move on. You have to meet date number six.”
“Is this revenge for the sponge thing?” Chase asks. “Did the guys on the team put you up to this?”
“What? No. If anything, they’d be concerned this jeopardizes the rules set forth in the playbook, but the contract was signed before the #BruiserButt scandal and your coach backed you on this.”
We stop under the glow of a neon sign. “I need pizza.” He looks at me like a starved man, half-deranged with hunger.
“But your date?—”
Once inside the pizza shop, Chase plants me at a table. Hardly taking his eyes off me, he returns with slices for each of us. The sight and smell of wood fired dough carry me back in time to the spring fair in Concordia when, for a couple of hours, I wasn’t Chase’s coach. He wasn’t my client. We stepped outside our roles. Outside time. It was just us.
Tears work their way toward my eyes. Now is not the time to cry. I have to get through the next eleven days. Keep my job. Help him find love.
Chase appears with a tray of pizza and drinks.
Taking a long sip of orange soda, I keep my mouth busy so I don’t point out that it’s just us right now. NoCrush or Cupid. Okay, a crush, a big, fat, aching one. But also, no arranged marriage, nothing else except pizza. Except each other.
My phone beeps with a series of messages. “Tory is wondering where we are.”
