Chase Me (Paris Nights Book 2) Read online

  “Past tense top chef,” she said. “Thanks to you.”

  “Honey, nobody can make you a past tense but yourself. And you know it damn well. That’s part of what makes you so beautiful.” He blew her a kiss.

  “I need to buy more soft objects.” That kiss made her want to throw something at him, but somehow…she wanted the something to be soft and cuddly. A cute, fuzzy stuffed animal, maybe.

  Mentally she kicked herself.

  “Or a black lace thong,” he said out of the blue. “Possibly you could wake me up if you were wearing a black lace thong.” He examined her hips with a gimlet eye.

  “Oh, purée,” Vi muttered.

  “Or those black cotton things you were wearing the other night. Or maybe even plain white cotton. That would probably be okay.”

  She definitely needed to buy more soft objects to throw.

  “Or whatever you’re wearing now. Let me see it to make sure.”

  Vi struggled not to laugh or, even worse, drop her hands to play with her zipper. Stop it, Vi. “I’ve got to get to work.”

  Maybe she could climb in through that window before the inspection teams came back.

  Do something adventurous to claim her life back.

  Because after that she had to face the hotel owners. The two people who had hired her, who had supported her as she took the restaurant in a completely new direction, who had ignored all controversy in their firm belief she could do it. A flamboyant female chef in a field so dominated by males its sexism was its own legend, she could take Au-dessus all the way to the top. Three stars. Nothing to hold her down.

  “I could be quick,” Chase said plaintively.

  Vi snickered. “I’ve never had any doubt of that.”

  His eyes gleamed. Oops, she had challenged him. Scruffy and tousled, he straightened from the wall.

  “No,” Vi said.

  He scowled. “Damn it, hot sex was one of my primary motivations for getting involved with you, you know.”

  Vi started to laugh. It just bubbled out of her, far too much of it for his ridiculous sense of humor, but once it started, it felt too good to stop.

  “Later, I fell in love with you for your mind,” Chase said soulfully, trying to gaze deeply into her eyes.

  Vi doubled over.

  “Also your spirit,” Chase murmured. “So fine.”

  Vi waved his nonsense away with her splinted hand. “I’ve got to get to work.”

  “Half a sec.” Chase rubbed his hand over his hair to half-straighten it, yawned, and then, in that one blink of an eye, no longer looked sleepy at all. “I’ll drive you.”

  Vi stiffened. “I drive myself.”

  “Sorry, honey.” Chase crossed the room in a couple of strides and took her splinted hand. Lifting it, he kissed the visible tip of her constrained fingers. “Not for another three weeks you don’t.”

  Vi froze. She’d thought about all the challenges she’d have cooking. She’d actually cried—not that anyone better ever find that out—in the shower as she tried to wash her hair. But still, somehow, in her vision of herself, she was cutting through Paris on the back of a powerful motorbike, in charge of herself and her destination.

  She stomped her foot hard and began to curse. A long, colorful string.

  “Wow,” Chase said admiringly. “You’re better than some of those Legionnaires I’ve worked with. Do you want me to teach you some Spanish words to mix in?”

  “I want my life back!” Vi yelled.

  “You know, you might want to consider another place for hitting a man than his chin, if a little boxer’s fracture is going to throw you off your stride so much. I know the chin always attracts amateurs, but it’s a great way to break your pinky if you haven’t had training in how to properly throw a punch.”

  Vi made a sound like a growling dog and stomped off, grabbing her leather coat.

  She couldn’t pull it on over her splint, because the sleeves were too tight.

  She threw it on the floor and cursed some more.

  Chase smiled at her as if she was some vision from heaven. “You are just all energy, all the time, aren’t you? Here.” He held out his own leather jacket.

  “What are you going to wear?”

  He shrugged. “You?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “Well, you will wrap your arms around me and hold on tight to protect me, won’t you?” he asked, big-eyed and anxious.

  “You idiot. You know perfectly well that won’t help if we get in an accident. Your skin will get ripped right off if you’re not wearing leather.”

  “So will yours,” Chase said calmly, pushing the jacket at her.

  Vi folded her arms. “No.”

  He gazed at her a moment. His own eyes narrowed. Unstoppable force met immovable object.

  Chase picked her jacket up off the floor, produced a lethal folded knife out of nowhere and sprang the blade, then sliced up half the sleeve. Vi gasped. “Here.” He handed it to her. “Now your hand fits. Satisfied?”

  Vi grabbed the jacket to her like a wounded child. She loved that jacket. She loved it so damn much. It made her feel sexy and strong, able to handle anything. When she had it on and the handlebars of her bike under her hands, she felt as if she could go anywhere, be anyone, do anything—a limitless potential that made it clear that she was doing and being exactly what she had always dreamed of doing.

  Tears welled up in her eyes before she even knew they were coming. “You—damn—bastard!” she yelled to cover them.

  Chase looked at the way she was clutching her jacket, looked at his knife, looked at her face—and suddenly was absolutely horrified. “Honey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Just to get your way!” she yelled. “Just to win against me. You ruined it!” She needed that jacket to face this day. She needed it.

  This horrible, fucking day, where everyone would be talking about her, everyone bashing her, journalists hovering around her, inspectors blocking her out of her kitchens. She needed it.

  “I didn’t realize it meant so much to you,” Chase said hurriedly. “It’s your special gear, isn’t it? That you made sure was just perfect for you? Honey, I’m sorry.”

  “You would have known if you asked!” Vi yelled. “Before you did it! If you’d asked if it was okay if you destroyed something of mine!”

  He looked down at his knife, shamefaced.

  “I could have worn my damn denim jacket for a few days! I could probably have taken off the splint long enough to get my hand through! I could have bought another jacket to use for a while! I could have done all kinds of things that it was my choice to do or not do, but you’re the damn man, so obviously you got to ride right over me!”

  Like he’d ridden over her life, damn him. And wouldn’t even admit he’d done it.

  “Damn it.” All that stubborn will had folded into remorse. “I’ll buy you another one.”

  Oh, yeah, like she could just open up another restaurant in Texas or Washington? Since he’d smeared Au-dessus for some freaking operation he wouldn’t admit to?

  “What, do you think just any leather jacket will do? That you could find in a store in July? Do you think the problem is that I can’t afford to buy my own damn clothes?”

  “No,” Chase said, big shoulders sagging. “I’m sorry.”

  “I hate you,” Vi said. “And you’re not driving my motorcycle, and you can get the hell out of my apartment. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  ***

  Riding the Métro to the hotel was miserable. All of her strength and belief in herself got crushed down there, until she was reduced to one of the masses that crowded into the cars, no better or more special than any of the other eleven million people in the city. Some guy sang songs behind her about her butt, and she couldn’t even hit him, because she needed to have at least one functioning hand for the rest of the day.

  It was horrible to face her meeting with the owners feeling so small. A knot swelled in her thro
at like it was absorbing too much water, all those tears she couldn’t possibly let herself shed again. Not here. Not now.

  She fought down the sting in her nose and at the backs of her eyes. She swallowed down the knot.

  She took a hard breath.

  And then she lifted her head and just faked it—overdoing the aggression, overdoing the performance of confidence, overdoing everything. But at least doing it, as she made herself stride in.

  And down the street, hiding in a doorway, Chase’s heart squeezed tight and he kicked the wall because he couldn’t actually figure out how to kick himself.

  Chapter 13

  “Yeah, you screwed up.” Jake flexed his shoulders, balancing upright on a narrow chimney, gazing at the rooftops of Paris. The sun was angling down in the afternoon, and it was actually a pretty nice day. Maybe Paris in July wasn’t always rainy and cold?

  “Fuck, yeah.” Ian hauled himself through the skylight and found a balancing point on the narrow point of the roof, also pausing to take in the view. Elias was out ahead of them, moving like a black panther across the rooftops. A little light urban jungle training, since they still had no word to move on Al-Mofti.

  “I know,” Chase said. “I know. I can’t believe I fucking did that. What the hell?”

  “I would have kicked your ass so bad.” Jake shook his head, vicariously pissed off already. “If you’d ruined my gear like that.”

  “I know.” Chase winced into himself. “Fuck.”

  “I mean, seriously.” Jake grabbed the clay chimney tops, vaulted over them, and ran along the ridge of the roof to leap without pause across a narrow gap to the next one. He glanced back. “Seriously kicked it.”

  “I know!!” Chase leaped after him, slid down the zinc slope of the roof, landed on a flat rooftop below, rolled and came to his feet. A couple of pigeons scattered. Ian dropped beside him. In the distance, they could see the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame. Behind them the Sacré-Coeur. The sounds of the city echoed up from the street, the noise of cars amplified by the particular acoustics of the straight buildings.

  “And right when she needed it,” Chase said, low. “When she was facing the worst day of her life. I wish we didn’t have to delay the ‘test results’ for the salmonella so long.” Yeah, if they could just catch that bastard Al-Mofti, all kinds of things about the world would be better.

  “That’s the worst day of her life?” Jake’s freckled nose crinkled. “Having to deal with getting blamed for some bad eggs or something?"

  “She’s a civilian,” Chase reminded him. “Their lives are different.”

  “Yeah,” Ian muttered, heartfelt.

  “Plus, it’s her rep,” Chase said. “It’s like she lost a weapon or…I don’t know, was a coward or something. It’s bad. It’ll follow her for all her career. It could even end her career.” A pit opened in his stomach even saying it. Because she clearly loved her career.

  What if he had fallen that time he was hanging upside down and slipping in BUD/S and broken his arm? He would have been out, his whole life derailed, and he would never have become who he was.

  Knowing what was at stake, he’d been able to draw on one last desperate burst of strength to make it over the top.

  Making that moment the wrong analogy. Succeeding had, in the end, been under his control.

  So it was more like his old swim buddy from BUD/S, Kev, whose chutes had gotten tangled in a HAHO jump and who had gone into a spin, probably lost consciousness—God, Chase hoped so—and plunged twenty thousand feet to his death.

  Oh, fuck.

  Sometimes, it would be really, really nice if some of his personal analogies for a ruined life didn’t involve an actual ruined life.

  “I kind of like it,” he said low. “That this is the worst thing that could happen in her life. I’d like to keep it that way, you know? Makes me feel as if we’re fighting for a reason.”

  “Yeah.” Jake kicked the flat rooftop and slanted him a curious, envious glance, the kind of glance Chase sometimes slanted at married buddies when he saw them hugging their wives and playing with their kids.

  “Makes me feel strong,” Chase admitted, very, very low. “Like I screwed up about her jacket, but at least I got something else right.”

  Jake contemplated the street below, his shoulders hunching a little, his mouth rather grim.

  Christ, had Chase started talking about emotions? Jesus, even when she wasn’t around, this woman made Chase talk too much.

  He flung himself across the next gap, just catching the edge of the roof with his toes and throwing his hands up to grasp the ridge of the roof before he could slide off, hauling himself up and running along the narrow ridge. Ian and Jake caught up with him a couple of rooftops over.

  “Not a bad idea,” Ian said to Jake. “I’m not saying my idea, that we go see the Mona Lisa, was a bad one either, but I can see why this was on your short list.”

  “A lot less crowded up here,” said Jake, the mountain lion. “Mark’s gonna kill us for going when he was busy arguing with those CIA idiots at the embassy. We’ll have to come back out.”

  “Changes the whole dynamic when you don’t have to go shoot somebody,” Chase said. “And no gear.” Well, they probably all had guns on them somewhere, but no obvious gear that would get them arrested. “Kind of peaceful.”

  They considered that peace for a moment, and then, almost in unison, all focused on the largest nearby gap between roofs—over two meters and with a six-floor drop. Nobody even had to talk about it. They were all going crazy, spun up for this mission and stalled while the head shed dithered over information. Chase wasn’t the only one capable of breaking into restaurants just to add a little interest to his life in these circumstances.

  Elias dropped back beside them, with a rough sound of gravel, astonishingly light on his feet. “Having trouble keeping up?” he asked, green eyes glinting.

  Yes, there might be just a tiny bit of rivalry between the French elite counterterrorist units and the U.S. black ops with whom they were currently in wary cooperation.

  Ian took off immediately at the challenge, flying over the gap with efficient grace. Chase and Jake followed, and the four of them ran, jumped, rolled, slid, swung for a while, until the next flat rooftop invited a pause for breath. Damn, Paris looked beautiful up here. It looked exactly like all those movies, which was kind of amazing. Mostly by the time they got to go to beautiful places, those place were half-destroyed, often by their own side’s bombs.

  Paris looked…well, Paris looked like Paris.

  And we’re going to keep it that way, too. Fuck those bastards who want to destroy it.

  “You started doing this when you were a teenager?” he asked Elias. “Playing on the rooftops like this?” Parkour.

  Elias shrugged. “We didn’t have much money. It was kind of my way of owning the city.”

  It was a pretty nice city to own.

  We’ll always have Paris, some guy had once said. Chase was pretty sure it was a good thing for the world to always have.

  “We’ll get them,” he said, firmly. Conviction meant everything. There was no room for doubt. They got their targets, period.

  He believed it, the same way he had to believe in his ability to take that two-meter jump over a thirty-meter drop. No hesitation, no doubt, just do it.

  Elias said nothing for a long moment, gazing at the streets below. Then, without any of that sardonic edge, just low and firm: “Thanks.” He met Chase’s eyes. “It’s nice to have you guys on our side.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Chase said, meaning it. “Hey, I’ll catch up with you guys, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “I had a little visit I wanted to pay to that apartment over there.” Chase smiled and took a running leap to catch against a balcony.

  ***

  Vi’s team was the best. The life of them, raucous and heated on the terrace, relaxed Vi, and she grinned at them as she ordered them another round of drinks.

&nbs
p; That was right. Who the hell did care if their reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor were now down to an average of two stars out of five, thanks to all the trolls who had found it hilarious to go online and laugh at the “food poisons the president” thing? (Even though the American president was still sitting in Washington, DC, and hadn’t even boarded his stupid Air Force One for Paris yet.) Who cared what idiots thought?

  She took another sip of beer, just to help her not care what idiots thought.

  Her second, Adrien, a dynamic twenty-two year old with a passion for food and theater and art that blended well with hers, and a young man whose sense of command wasn’t predicated on sexism like Quentin’s had been, leaned forward, gesturing, his black hair flopping over a high forehead as he articulated every way the idiot trolls could go choke on their fast food burgers and die.

  Amar, chef de partie, scraggly beard and hair caught in a small ponytail but nevertheless escaping in frizz in all directions, gesticulated, forgetting his beer glass and then sipping the beer that spilled off the back of his hand while everybody laughed.

  Lina slouched back in her chair, amused at something Mikhail had said, but not quite as easily laughing. The pressure might not be as acutely on Lina’s name as it was on Vi’s, but nobody knew where the damn salmonella had come from yet—if it even existed, which Vi still refused to believe—and if it came from the pastry kitchen, the guilt would feel horrible.

  If there was salmonella, Vi would really rather it came from her part of the kitchens. Nobody else to blame. The buck stops here.

  She squared her shoulders. Because these shoulders could take it.

  Beyond Lina, Vi could glimpse the great statue of Marianne in the center of the Place de la République, where very, very recently she and everyone here had left flowers in memorial, weeping. Dozens of huge protests for all kinds of issues had filled République since then, of course, a sign of how the city pulsed with life no one could put out. Right now, a group in roller skates was dancing to a boom box from which, occasionally, a particularly loud sock hop refrain reached them.

  Lights played with the dark everywhere—the red lights of cars braking, the warm lights spilling out of cafés, bouncing off red awnings to pick up additional tones, gleaming in shades of warm and dark off paving stones, and glowing from street lamps against the great white marble base of Marianne and over the skaters, the people watching the skaters, the groups passing and crossing, heading toward home or stopping at the cafés and bars.