Page 9 of Chasing Forever

Was this how it was going to be? If they didn’t want to engage in conversation, how were they supposed to get to know each other? But Kelsey and Tina seemed perfectly content to just lie there like he was a decoration or something.

He heard Eric’s voice in his head, yelling, “So what! Enjoy it! You’ll probably get laid tonight.”

He leaned back and crossed his arms behind his head, adopting a casual pose like he was used to being flanked by two bikini-clad women he didn’t even know. His eyes, though, stayed trained on Callie. Thank God she couldn’t see him behind his sunglasses.

What’s she doing now? Hmm. She pulled out a notepad and pen like she had the other day. Was she a reporter or something? Was she obsessed with journaling? Was she recording her vacation memories for posterity’s sake?

Why is this so fascinating to me? Why is she here? She didn’t seem like the type to travel alone. He’d noticed she didn’t wear a ring, but maybe her boyfriend was meeting her here. Maybe he was going to show up any minute. Now who was the lucky bastard?

Chapter 7

Chase and two women? That was NOT a romance novel she wanted to write! He was messing up her plot. Couldn’t he have been satisfied with just one?

Those were Callie’s thoughts when she first spotted Chase sitting between two young, attractive women in brightly colored bikinis. First, she was glad he was there, thinking he might spark some more material for her book. But she became irritated when she saw him rubbing suntan lotion on the brunette and the blonde.

Seriously? This stuff happened in real life? She’d always known it, but somehow it seemed more feasible in fiction. How did it work? Did they take turns? And perhaps the most pressing question of all, why would anyone want to share? She couldn’t imagine that. Well, she could, but she didn’t want to.

Chase was wearing sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his eyes, but she swore he was looking at her instead of what he was doing. While his hands moved on the brunette’s back, his head was angled in her direction. Rather than feeling flattered, she felt disconcerted. Why would he be looking at her when he had two half-naked women at his fingertips—literally? It didn’t make any sense.

Plus, she was wearing her “matronly” swimsuit (according to Quinn) that was designed for function over fashion. She liked that she could actually swim in it without anything coming loose and sliding up or down. It was practical, and since she wasn’t out to impress anyone, she’d been fine with it. She was dumbfounded that Chase would be looking at her instead of the eye candy on either side of him.

But since she was there, she might as well use the opportunity to take a few more notes. She’d spent the morning drafting an outline based on her middle-of-the-night epiphany, but she hadn’t written the first chapter yet. She’d decided to set her romance in Hawaii because, hello, it was the perfect location. The story would be about two strangers who met and eventually fell in love. The conflict was inherent. What would happen when the vacation ended and the characters had to return to their regular lives? To make it even more problematic, what if one of them lived on the East Coast and the other on the West? The possibilities were endless, and she’d still been fleshing it out when she’d realized it was mid-afternoon, and she’d wanted to take a swim.

She hadn’t even considered that Chase might be at the pool with two women, but maybe it was meant to be. If she kept running into him, she’d have plenty of fodder for her character. Not knowing Chase wasn’t a problem because she could assign him whatever traits she wanted to, though she hadn’t planned on making him polyamorous!

Leaning over, she took a pen and notepad out of her beach bag. But while she was thinking about what to write, she glanced across the pool and caught eyes with him. He smiled and gave her a brief wave. There was no doubt it was meant for her because the only other person on her side of the pool was an elderly lady sprawled out napping and snoring.

Not wanting to be rude, she gave him a brief wave in return, but then she averted her gaze to the notebook. The Barbies had to be dumb (no offense—she’d loved Barbies as a child), to be sitting next to him and not notice that he was flirting with someone else.

But the brunette seemed enthralled with something on her phone, and the blonde might have been sleeping. She was lying so still that the only evidence she was alive was the slight rise and fall of her bountiful breasts as she breathed.

Callie suppressed the urge to yell, “Boobs, Chase. Boobs! Right next to you. Why are you looking at me?”

After a few more minutes of pretending to concentrate on her work, she put the notepad aside in frustration. There were too many distractions between the snoring granny to her right and the confusing man across the pool, so she gave up.

Since she was in her swimsuit and the pool was gloriously empty now that the family of four had left, she decided to take a dip. After all, that’s what she’d come there for.

She stood up and removed her hat and sunglasses, carefully placing them in her tote and sliding it under the chair. Then she walked past snoring granny and over to the steps that led into the shallow end of the pool.

She dipped a toe in the water to test the temperature, and finding it cool but not cold, she decided to venture in. She slowly immersed herself, descending one step at a time and trying hard not to look in Chase’s direction.

At the shallowest point, the water barely came up to her knees, but a few more steps and she’d be at the four feet mark. After that, it plunged to six feet, which would be way over her head. Her choices were to splash around in the shallow end like a kid or dive under and swim like an adult. She chose the latter, pointing her hands out in front like an arrow and diving under.

After the initial shock to her system, she loosened up and swam underwater to the deep end. Then she popped up, turned around, and swam back to where she’d started.

This time, when she popped her head out of the water, Chase was sitting on one of the steps and smiling. “Hey,” he said as she wiped the water out of her eyes.

“Hey.”

“You made it look too tempting.”

“Tempting?” She tilted her head, thinking she might still have water in her ears.

He chuckled, the sound deep and soothing like his voice when he’d been singing last night. “The water. You made it look inviting.”

Is he flirting with me? Because this is NOT necessary for me to write my book. “Well, we are at the pool, so it makes sense that someone should swim in it.”

He nodded and eyed her quizzically.