Читать книгу Her Bachelor Challenge - Cathy Gillen Thacker - Страница 11

Chase stared at his mother, barely able to believe what he was hearing. “What do you mean, you’ve been fired!”

“They can’t fire you!” Mitch cried, incensed, as the entire Deveraux family closed rank around Grace. “You’re the a.m. Sweetheart!”

Looking even more upset than their mother, Amy argued emotionally, “The American public loves you! They said so at last year’s Favorite Celebrity awards!”

Grace sighed and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Since when?” Chase asked, incredulous, unable to understand how his mother could remain so resigned in the face of such a professional catastrophe. For the past fifteen years, her whole world had revolved around that job. She had given up her life in Charleston, sacrificed her marriage and what little happy family life they’d had, at that point, for that job. “Amy’s right, Mom. The morning news shows sink or swim on the personality of their cohosts.”

Grace sat down, looking unbearably weary. Her skin was pale against her cheerful yellow tunic and matching trousers. “The show’s ratings have been sinking for some time now.”

Gabe picked up an overturned chair and set it to rights. He looked their mother square in the eye. “You’re sure you can’t do anything to change the network’s decision?”

Again, Grace shook her head. “It’s not just me,” she said softly. “They’re replacing my cohost, too. And going with a younger couple.”

The family gave a collective sigh as Tom went over to the bar and fixed a tall glass of diet soda and ice. He brought it back to Grace and sat down next to her.

“When is all this going to happen?” Chase asked. He caught Bridgett’s gaze and saw she was just as concerned about his mother as he was. That was no surprise. He knew Bridgett loved his mother, too.

Grace cupped the glass in both her hands and ducked her head. “The network is going to announce my replacement later today. It’ll probably be on the evening news tonight. It may make the Internet before then.”

“You’re not going to hold a press conference?” Mitch, ever the businessman, asked.

Grace shook her head. “I’m letting my publicist handle it. We crafted a statement together before I left New York. She’ll release it.”

“And then what?” Gabe asked. “Will you be going back to finish up?”

“Surely the network is going to give you a big send-off,” Amy said.

Grace sipped her soda. “The network wanted to make a big deal about my leaving, but I told them I didn’t want it. Those things are always maudlin. I’d rather viewers remember me just as I was this morning, when I taped my last show. Besides, it’s not the last time I’ll ever be on television. My agent is already fielding offers. They began coming in last month when there were rumors a change was going to be made.”

Silence fell. Chase noted with no small amount of admiration that his mother seemed to be handling this catastrophe better than the rest of them. “So what are you going to do now?” he asked casually after a moment.

“Your mother is going to be staying here at the mansion,” Tom said. “I’ll be staying at a hotel.”

Chase wasn’t surprised. That had been the case ever since his parents’ divorce. Whenever his mother came to Charleston, she stayed at the family mansion, and his father moved—temporarily—to the Mills House Hotel. It was the only way his mother could get any privacy, she was so well-known. She was besieged by autograph hounds if she checked into a hotel. And staying at the mansion made it easier for her to see all four of her children.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” Grace said, suddenly looking as if she was going to burst into tears, after all, “it’s been a very long day and I think I’ll go upstairs and lie down. That is, if you boys think you can stop fighting long enough to give us all some peace.”

“They had better—” Tom Deveraux cast a warning look at his sons “—or they aren’t half the men I thought they were.”

“WELL, I GUESS he told us,” Chase murmured after his father and mother had disappeared up the wide sweeping staircase.

Bridget looked at Chase. “It’s not as if you didn’t deserve it,” she said, clearly exasperated. “You and Gabe are far too old to be rolling around on the floor.”

“I’ll certainly second that!” Theresa Owens fumed, like the second mother she was to them all. “Chase, you’re bleeding. And Gabe, you need some ice on that eye.”

“You take care of Gabe. I’ll take care of Chase,” Bridgett told her mother. Before Chase could reply, Bridgett had him by the sleeve of his loose fitting linen shirt and was tugging him toward the powder room tucked beneath the stairs. She shut the door behind them, pushed him down on the closed commode and began rummaging through the medicine cabinet for supplies.

“Just like old times, huh?” Chase said. Glad Bridgett had volunteered to act as his nurse, but sorry she had witnessed his humiliation and juvenile behavior, he began unbuttoning his ripped shirt to get a look at the stinging skin underneath.

Bridgett set the antiseptic, antibiotic cream and bandages on the rim of the pedestal sink. She turned back to him, pushed up her cardigan sleeves and prepared to get to work. “You haven’t punched out Gabe since the wedding that wasn’t, have you?”

“No.” Chase peeled off his shirt and stared at the nasty-looking scrape that ran from his left shoulder to midchest and down his arm. He was pretty sure it had happened when he slammed into the mantel and slid to the floor. “Although maybe I should have,” Chase added as he touched his lip and found that it, too, was still bleeding, just a little bit. “Gabe still doesn’t seem to have learned his lesson about stealing someone else’s woman.” Chase grimaced as he checked out a rug burn beneath his right elbow.

“He stole another of your girlfriends?” Bridgett frowned at the scrape on his forearm.

Chase scowled, recalling. “I saw him and Maggie at her beach house a few hours ago. They were kissing.”

Bridgett wet a sterile pad with warm water, doused it liberally with soap, and began washing the scraped skin. “You and Maggie are back together?”

“Hell, no!” Chase clamped his teeth together. Damn, that stung! And damned if Bridgett didn’t seem to enjoy making it sting, too!

“Then why does it matter if Gabe kisses her?” Bridgett added more soap and moved on to his shoulder.

Chase tried not to think about how good it felt to have her hands moving across his skin in such a gentle, womanly way. Bridgett was and had always been his friend, not an object of lust. “Because she was my woman and I was there first!” Chase hissed again as Bridgett dampened another sterile pad and rinsed away the soap on his skin.

Bridgett shrugged. “If that’s your only objection, she was right not to marry you.”

Chase shot her a look. He didn’t care if the two of them had been as telepathic as twins since the moment they were born. He didn’t like the censure in Bridgett’s low tone. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded, turning toward her.

“I mean,” Bridgett enunciated as if speaking to a total dunce, “I understand your not wanting him to kiss her if you were in love with her, but if you’re not—”

“I’m not,” Chase interrupted firmly.

“Then it shouldn’t matter to you. Period.”

“Well, it does.” Chase bristled under her watchful gaze.

“Why?” Bridgett dabbed antibiotic cream across his shoulder.

“Because it’s like pouring salt in a wound,” Chase explained in frustration, wishing she would hurry up and get this over with.

“One that obviously has yet to heal,” Bridgett countered, moving close enough to Chase that he could see the barest hint of cleavage revealed by the décolletage of her form-fitting sweater set. He swallowed around the knowledge that Bridgett’s breasts were fuller and rounder than he had ever realized. Or wanted to realize.

“I’m over her,” Chase said, struggling to keep his mind on Maggie, instead of Bridgett and what her closeness, her sheer femininity, were doing to him.

“Just not over the humiliation of being dumped by her,” Bridget guessed, apparently oblivious to the discomfort she was causing him.

Chase shifted his weight to relieve the unexpected pressure at the front of his khaki beach shorts. “You got it.”

Bridgett unrolled sterile gauze across his shoulder. “Well, then, I suggest you get over it,” she advised, her warm hands brushing across his even warmer skin as she taped the bandage into place.

“And why would that be?” Chase asked, feeling as if he was going to explode if he had to sit there for one more second.

Bridgett looked at him sternly. “Because if Gabe was kissing her today, Chase, that can mean only one thing. Gabe still has the hots for Maggie. Even after all this time. And he doesn’t care who knows it.”

Chase vaulted to his feet, grabbed his shirt and shrugged it on. “I’m tired of talking about me and my unconscionable behavior. Let’s talk about you and yours,” he said, leaning back against the closed bathroom door.

Bridgett squared her slender shoulders and shot him a stern look. “I don’t behave unconscionably.”

Chase quirked a brow, wondering if she had missed seeing him as much as he had missed seeing her. And how was it the two of them had grown so far apart, anyway? Was it just because they were older with different personal and career agendas to pursue? Or was there more to it than that? “You used to get into trouble right along with me,” he said softly, thinking about the fun the two of them had had during their childhood and teen years. It had only been later, after college, that they’d begun to drift apart. To the point that these days they rarely saw each other at all. And then, only by chance.

The picture of efficiency, Bridgett put the first-aid kit back in the medicine cabinet. “I’ve grown up,” she told him plainly.

Too much, Chase thought, wondering when it was, exactly, that Bridgett had gotten so serious. “So I see.” he shot her a teasing leer, meant to make her laugh.

“Cut it out, Chase,” she ordered. Frowning, she gathered up the paper bandage wrappers and excess bits of tape and tossed them into the trash.

Chase could see he had offended her, when that was the last thing he’d wanted. “You used to have a sense of humor.”

Bridgett shrugged and continued to avoid looking at him. “I used to be immature.”

“And now you’re not.”

“No.” Bridgett lifted her head and looked at him coolly. “I’m not.”

Silence fell between them. Chase knew she was ready to leave the intimate confines of the guest bath, but he didn’t want to let her go. Not yet. Not with the mood between them so unexpectedly tense and distant. He folded his arms in front of him and asked seriously, “How was your book tour? I assume you just got back.”

Finally the sun broke out across her face. “Last night,” Bridgett confirmed happily. “And the experience was wonderful, if grueling, and very satisfying, economically and personally. Just the way every three-month book tour should be.”

Chase found himself warming to the deep satisfaction he saw on her face. He had always wanted the very best for her. Always known she would get it. “Did you really cover every region across the country?”

Bridgett nodded, the depth of her devotion to her work apparent. “And I helped more women than I can say,” she confided, leaning back against the sink.

Maybe it was because he had grown up wealthy as sin and knew firsthand how little real joy a hefty bank account could bring a person, but it bothered Chase to know that Bridgett valued money more than just about anything these days. She used to treasure more than that. She used to treasure her friends—especially him. “Just what this world needs.” Chase sighed, ready to goad her back to sanity, if need be. “Even more women who think money is the route to happiness.”

Bridgett scowled at the sarcastic note in his low tone. “It is.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts defiantly.

Chase kept his eyes on hers. “If you say so.” He inclined his head indifferently.

The fire in Bridgett’s eyes sparked all the hotter. “Don’t belittle what I do for a living, Chase.”

“Why not?” Chase pushed away from the closed door and stood straight, legs braced apart, once again. “You certainly belittle what I do,” he reminded her as he narrowed the distance between them to just a few inches.

Bridgett straightened, too. “That’s because your magazine—”

“Modern Man,” Chase helpfully supplied the publication’s name, in case she’d forgotten.

“—does nothing but teach guys how to get what they want from women!”

“What’s wrong with that?” Chase demanded. Clueless for as long as he could remember about what women really wanted or needed in this life, he had started his magazine as a way of collecting data from other men, about what worked and what didn’t with the women in their lives. As far as Chase was concerned, he was providing a public service, making both men and women a little happier, while doing his part to tamp down the battle of the sexes and reduce the number of unhappy relationships overall.

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that.” Bridgett planted her hands on her hips. “It makes guys think that women are ‘a problem to be handled’ and that there is something fundamentally wrong with marriage.”

“There is something fundamentally wrong with marriage,” Chase shot back flatly, not about to sugarcoat his opinion on the subject on her account. “Or hadn’t you noticed the soaring divorce rate in this country?”

Bridgett released a long slow breath. She looked as if she was fighting for patience. “Lately the divorce rate has actually been going down. No thanks to you!”

Chase brought his brows together in consternation. “You don’t know that,” he argued back. He was tired of taking the blame for things that were way beyond his control. “Maybe I’m the one to credit for that.” He knew for a fact, from reader mail, that there were a lot of guys who had really appreciated his series on how to get their women not to just tolerate, but love the sports they followed. The same went for his series on cooking in, instead of eating out.

Bridgett rolled her eyes. She stared at him, making no effort to hide her exasperation. “And how do you figure that?” she asked drolly.

“Because,” Chase said, thinking how much he had always enjoyed a spirited argument with Bridgett and how much he had missed having them with her since she’d been away, “I also run articles that convince guys not to get married when they’re not ready.”

Bridgett’s eyes turned even stormier. And worse, looked hurt. “Exactly.”

Too late Chase realized he had hit a real sore point with Bridgett. The fact that her own parents had never married, even when Theresa Owens had gotten pregnant. “I’m sorry,” he said swiftly, seriously. “I know your, uh—”

“Illegitimacy?” she provided when he seemed unable to blurt it out.

“—is a real sticking point with you,” Chase continued, with some difficulty. It was, he knew, probably the biggest hurt of her childhood, though she rarely talked about it.

Bridgett waved him off, already done talking about it, and ready to move on. “I just think you’re doing a disservice to men with that whole marriage-isn’t-really-all-that-necessary attitude you and your magazine perpetuate.”

“Yeah, well, I think I’m helping my readers,” Chase said stubbornly. He was making them see that marriage was a serious step. And if they weren’t serious about a lifetime commitment, or the women they were chasing weren’t serious about the same, marriage was not the path to take. He certainly didn’t want them to end up a public laughingstock, the way he had, when his bride had ditched him just days before they were to marry.

“Whatever.” Bridgett tugged the sleeves of her elegant silk-and-cotton cardigan down to cover her wrists. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

Like hell it didn’t, Chase thought, studying the wealth of emotion on her face.

“I’m late, anyway,” Bridgett continued.

“For what?” Chase asked curiously. And that was when he saw it. The big fat emerald ring.