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When she responds, her eyes darting toward his stomach as if she can’t help herself, his cheeks start to turn pink. To be a fly on the wall in that conversation.
I pull my gaze from those stubborn two and let my eyes work back through the crowd, once again doing my best not to look in Chase’s direction. It lasts all of two minutes before I’m drawn right back to where Chase had been, only he’s gone.
My heart rate kicks up, panic threatening, before I can realize that he’s not a lost child. He’s a grown man who makes his own choices.
It doesn’t stop me from scanning every face looking for him.
“Looking for me?” his familiar voice asks.
Chapter 25
Chase
The thrill I get from watching her scan the crowd is stronger than it should be.
It’s the same way I felt when I glanced over and saw her talking to Adalynn, both of their gazes locked on me.
As it always does, the sight of her thrilled me, but then when Madison’s eyes darted away guiltily upon noticing me spotting her, I had to wonder if they were gossiping about me. In that moment, I was hit with more than one thing at the same time.
First, I was ecstatic that I was worthy of gossiping with her best friend about, but secondly, I wasn’t very impressed that she’d share private, and very intimate details about what we’ve been doing all week after the boys have gone to bed.
“I wasn’t looking at you,” she snaps, her voice full of indignant ire, but I don’t miss that hint of something else that tells me she’s not being completely truthful.
Instead of settling on one lie, she doubles down.
“And I wasn’t lookingforyou either.”
I nod, trying my best not to grin at her because I know it will only piss her off. Making this woman mad when I’m in public with no ability to beg for her forgiveness in ways that would get us arrested isn’t an option.
“Then who?”
“What?”
“Who were you looking for?”
She shakes her head. “No one.”
“So, you didn’t need lemon water because you got jealous when you saw me speaking with Hailey?”
“Wh-what?” she stammers, her free hand lifting to her mouth to chew on the corner of hercuticle.
I don’t think this woman even realizes what her tell is until she sees me watching her teeth work on that little area of skin.
She drops her hand when I lift an eyebrow.
“She’s looking for a job,” I explain, not wanting her to get the wrong idea from what she witnessed from fifty yards away.
“Where are the boys?” she asks, a weak attempt to change the subject.
“I took her number because we need help at the store, and I think hiring a woman who can’t find work would make it easier for my dad to accept someone invading his space,” I say, not allowing her to derail this conversation.
“The boys?” she asks, her eyes moving from me to scanning the crowd. “Did you forget about them while talking to all those women?”
I don’t know which part of her accusation to settle on. She just insulted my parenting and indirectly accused me of what? Cheating?
“The boys are with my dad,” I tell her, ready to get mad about the parenting insult because the other thing is a nonissue. I’m not the type of guy to get involved with more than one woman at a time, not counting the times Emily wanted to bring a third person into our bed.
I see the fear drain from her eyes, making me realize she was truly worried about my boys. It’s an emotion I never saw in their own mother, not even the day Cole told me he had to help Cale out of the pool when he went too deep. I did my best that day not to jump to conclusions. Little boys can be very dramatic, but the camera playback was traumatizing to watch. If anything, the boys downplayed what happened. We could’ve easily lost Cale that day or even both boys if Cole hadn’t been able to get both of them back into the shallow end of the pool. I shudder at the image my brain refuses to release of coming home and finding them floating in the pool. I swallow down the ball of sickness threatening to come up my throat. Emily was full of excuses even after it happened. Madison is pre-worried before something can even take place.
