Chapter Thirteen
Chase returned tothe reception after walking around outside for a while trying to understand what had just happened.Simple, dumbass. Ella rejected you. She doesn’t want a relationship with you.
He’d been almost as surprised as she was when he’d said it. He wasn’t in love with Ella. He simply wanted to be with her all the time and make love to her all the time. But he wasn’t in love. Wanting to have a relationship didn’t mean it was forever. So it shouldn’t bother him so much that she’d turned him down.
Except that it did. Hell, she’d all but melted in his arms in the carriage house. The sight of Ella coming apart in his arms was a huge turn-on. So, great. She obviously liked the sex. But that’s all she wanted. And she didn’twantto want that.
Ella was still at the reception. Talking to that ass Nate again. Why couldn’t he go the hell away?
Screw this. Have some pride.
He spent the rest of the evening flirting with every woman he knew, and a few he didn’t. His heart wasn’t in it but hopefully Ella didn’t know that. He was dancing with a beautiful redhead when he glanced at Ella. She was giving him a death-ray look. That cheered him up.
He took a break to drink a beer but didn’t see Ella. He did see Nate, however, so at least there was that.
“She went home,” Marshall said, walking up to him, and taking a swig of beer.
“Who?”
Marshall rolled his eyes. “Give me a break. I’m not blind. You and Ella left earlier as cozy as could be. You come back separately and you’re both watching each other as you each flirt with any member of the opposite sex.”
“If it wasn’t Gabe’s wedding reception I’d punch you in the mouth.”
“You could try.”
Marshall was pretty hard to get the best of in a fight. He should know, having lost damn near every fight he’d ever had with Marshall. All three of his brothers were older than him, so it was a natural consequence of his childhood that they could pound on him. But let anyone else try and they all stood together.
As for when they got older, you wouldn’t know it to look at him but Marshall was a street fighter and knew every dirty trick in the book. Didn’t mind using them, either. Chase figured he’d learned during the year he’d left home and no one knew where he was. When he returned, he settled down to running the ranch and raising paints. As if he’d never left. And forget trying to talk to him about where he’d been and what he’d done during that time.
Chase shrugged, happy to find that the motion no longer hurt. Or not much. He guzzled his beer. This was only his second one for the night so he could afford to. “Ella rejected me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I told her I wanted to have a relationship with her and she blew me off.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a rodeo cowboy,” he said making air quotes for the last two words. “She didn’t say it, but I know that’s what it is. Her ex-fiancé is one. So now all rodeo cowboys are off her list of possible boyfriends.”
Marshall took another drink and thought for a moment. “Change her mind.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
“Prove to her you’re not like this other dipshit.”
“Oh, well, that should be easy. How?”
“Good God, Chase. Do I have to figure out everything? Find out what the guy did that really frosted her and show her you’re not like that.”
The guy had cheated on her. It followed that Chase had to prove to her he’d stay true. But he wasn’t sure that was the only problem. And until he knew that, how was he supposed to fix it?
In five days he was leaving for his first rodeo since the accident. It was in Fort Worth, not too far away. He needed to focus on getting back in the saddle, not on his love life, or lack thereof. He knew he could do it. But it wouldn’t be easy.
*
Ella spent thenext few days thinking about what she wanted to do versus what was likely to be the best thing for her to do. There was no clear-cut answer. Well, that wasn’t quite true. The best thing would undoubtedly be to put that night with Chase and any subsequent physical intimacy firmly in the past and forget it. But she couldn’t. These feelings they had for each other, the sexual pull, weren’t going away. It hadn’t in all the weeks since they first met. The night of Gabe and Chantel’s wedding reception had proved that beyond doubt. They’d both tried dating others. That hadn’t worked either. Maybe they just needed to give in to the desire. It would either burn itself out or it wouldn’t.
Could she have a relationship with another rodeo cowboy? Or honestly, with a cowboy period? Did she trust Chase not to break her heart? Chase wasn’t Phil—that was clear. She wanted to trust him. But she was scared, and she hated that about herself. She wasn’t a wimp, hiding behind a fear of experiencing life because she was too weak to take a chance.
