Score (Gina Watson) (7 page)

Cal snarled at Cory and reared back to punch him, but Cory ducked.

“Fuck off, Cal,” Cory said.

“Cory, I need to speak to you in private.” Cal grabbed his brother by his upper arm.

Cory sighed heavily. “Whatever.”

Cal looked to Chloe. “Will you be all right out here for a few minutes?”

“Sure. I’m just gonna walk over to my house and say hey to my folks.”

A great idea. She’d be out of the way for a while. “You can take dad’s LSU golf cart,” Cal offered.

Cal retrieved the keys from his father, but he withheld them from Chloe until she returned his kiss.

As she drove off in the direction of her childhood home, Cal whirled to Cory. He looked around and then lifted his chin, indicating a spot away from other ears. When they were alone, Cal said, “What the fuck is going on? Why is Alyssa here looking as if she could spit nails?”

“Well, brother mine, it turns out Alyssa is bat-shit crazy. I’m talking
Fatal Attraction
crazy.”

“And yet you let her get her hooks into Logan.”

Cory looked to where Logan was currently setting up beer kegs at the bar area. “Poor bastard never saw it coming. I’m just as shocked as you to see her here. I’d no idea she’d been getting boned by Logan.”

Cal started rubbing his brow with his thumb and forefinger. “Shit, it’s only a matter of time before she tells Chloe about the bet in Vegas.”

“Dude, if I can make a suggestion… ” Cory rubbed his index finger across his upper lip and then snapped his fingers. “…Tell Chloe before Alyssa can get to her.”

Cal shook his head. “Gee, thanks, Cory, that’s profound.” He left Cory sniggering at him and wandered around, studying the setup his dad had commissioned for the party. He greeted Logan, but there was nothing for him to do. And he was only delaying the inevitable.

Cal took off to walk across the property. He stopped to play with a couple of puppies that ran after him, not wanting to rush Chloe’s time with her family, but he eventually ended up on Mills land. He planned to speak with Chloe regarding the night they hooked up in Vegas. It was time he came clean about the bet. He just hoped their relationship had come far enough that it could see them through this snag.

The obscenely decorated golf cart caught his eye as Chloe was heading back on the path toward St. Martin land. He waved to her and she turned in his direction.

“Hey, stranger.” She greeted him with a big smile.

“Mind if I join you?” Cal boarded the golf cart and told her to take them down to the lake.

Feet up and relaxed, they sat for a while looking out across the large lake that bordered both properties. It was like looking over the past and peering into their shared connections. They’d always been connected and now that he thought he was falling in love with Chloe, Cal longed to move forward in their relationship, forging new connections and making new memories. Hell, he thought he might be ready to talk marriage with her. Encroaching into his thoughts was Chloe’s soft voice, asking what was on his mind.

He turned to her and lifted her hand. “I need to tell you something about the night we hooked up in Vegas.”

Chloe tilted her head that way she had, the way that told him she was listening with her heart as well as her ears. “Okay, shoot.”

“Babe, I was quite intoxicated. You were intoxicated. I can’t say I’m sorry about any of it because I’ve grown to not only want you, but need you. You’re all I think about these days. I would never knowingly hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

Chloe sat up straighter. “Cal, you’re scaring me. What’s this about?”

“It’s nothing for you to worry about, but I wanted you to know there was a bet… a bet that had been made.”

Her forehead furrowed. “What kind of bet?”

“A bet involving you.”

Chloe pulled her hands from Cal’s grip. “Okay, I figured that, but just how does it involve
you
?”

Cal looked out across the lake. “I inadvertently bet Cory, Dean, and Bradley that I could get you in the sack that night.”

Chloe’s eyes narrowed and her luscious lips tightened into a thin line. “The word
inadvertently
is a nice touch.” She angled herself toward the water and he could no longer see her eyes. “Then I’d say you won that one quite a few times over. Tell me, how much is my body worth?”

Cal leaned forward and searched Chloe’s face. Her eyes were filled with tears. He reached for her, but she pulled away. “Chloe, I didn’t collect.” Thank God he hadn’t.

“How much Cal?” Her voice was getting louder.

“Five hundred dollars, but as I said, of course I didn’t collect. I put a stop to it immediately.”

“Is that supposed to make it all better?”

“No.” What else could he say?

Chloe shook her head. “I
knew
it was too good to be true. I knew it. My sister said I was crazy for dating you after all the shit you did to me when we were young, but I told her it was different now. I said we really cared for each other, but obviously I was wrong.”

Chloe was on her feet and walking back toward her parents’ home. Cal leaped from the cart and ran after her. He wrapped one arm around her waist, and she immediately fought him with her fists. “Put me down, you bastard!”

“Not a chance. I need you to hear what I have to say.” He threw her over his shoulder caveman style and walked her back to the cart, setting her gingerly on the back seat. “I can understand why you are hurt, and I was wrong to do what I did, but you were right to tell your sister that things are different now. They are different. I’m different. I think I may have actually fallen in love with you. I think I want to build a life with you. You have to admit that you feel our connection too.”

He removed his hands from her shoulders and waited for her response. When she didn’t speak, he started to pace on the patch of grass directly in front of her. “Say something.”

Cal ducked just in time to avoid the nine iron that came at his head. It caught the fiberglass roof of the golf cart instead. Chloe didn’t stop there. She swung several more times at the cart. Or maybe at him. She was erratic, so it was difficult to know her intent.

She yelled, “Caleb Dean St. Martin, I’ll never let you touch me again! You
think
you want to build a life with me, you
think
you might love me! You don’t have sex with someone the way we do unless you
know
, know for sure.” She took another swing at his head. “I
knew
I fucking loved you, I
knew
I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, and now I
know
I never want to see you again!”

“Chloe, don’t do this!”

Her fists clenched and her eyes grew to narrow slits, as if she were looking out through a helmet. As if they were at war. “I didn’t fucking do it, you did. Tell me, Cal, why are you telling me about the bet now?”

“I wanted to tell you before you heard it from the others.”

“Right, but if you put a stop to it so immediately, why is it that you need to tell me before I hear it from someone else? Why does everybody know that you won the bet? Why would you even need to explain the reason you aren’t collecting unless you boasted about it at some point?”

Cal winced at her questions. God, he hated to think what she would do when he told her he actually did boast about it, drunk-texting the guys that they owed him five hundred dollars.

Chloe sneered. “Not so talkative now, are you?” Chloe threw his father’s prized Honma nine iron, now a mangled mess, into the lake and started to walk home.

“Please don’t walk away from me.” She didn’t stop. “Chloe.” He took one step after her. “Don’t go.”

She stopped and turned, her face red and angry. “Tell me how the guys knew you succeeded in your conquest.”

He dropped his head, knowing that at his admission, Chloe would be gone from his life forever, casting him into darkness. “I texted them sometime during the night.”

Gasping on a harsh breath and pulling herself up to her full height, she looked him square in the eye. “I hate you, Caleb Dean St. Martin, and I’ll hate you till the day I die.”

At those words, at her admission, Chloe turned and ran. The beauty of the landscape with its green and lush grasses, still lake, and ducks flying overhead was a stark juxtaposition to the events playing out in front of them. With Chloe gone, emptiness wrapped around Cal like a cloak. He dropped to his knees and scrubbed his hands over his face then tugged his hair as hard as he could. Through his own stupidity, he’d lost the only woman he had ever loved.

5

C
HLOE SPENT THE rest of the weekend at her condo in her pajamas. She ordered a large brick oven pizza and in two days, managed to eat it all. She caught up on all her reality shows, what her mother referred to as trash TV. She cried until she thought she’d get dehydrated, and her head was so stuffy it hurt like hell.

She was mad. Not just heartbroken, but angry.

She knew the moment she’d seen forever in Cal’s eyes. It was when he’d said,
“Where you stand is next to me.”
In that moment she had sensed a change in him. A meaningful change. Unfortunately she’d been mistaken, and he hadn’t changed at all. She’d seen only a lie. She was still a source of amusement and entertainment. He didn’t care one bit about her.

When the doorbell rang Sunday evening, she was tempted to ignore it, but she needed a break from herself and her thoughts. She looked through the peephole and into familiar ice-blue eyes. Shit. What was he doing here? She pulled the clip out of her hair and ran to her room to slide on a pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt. She ran a brush through her hair.

Another knock sounded at the door.

“Chloe, I know you’re in there; I can see your car. Plus I can hear the TV.”

Chloe clicked the television off and grabbed all the tissues from the coffee table and those peppering the floor around the couch. “Just a minute,” she yelled at the door. She took the pizza box to the kitchen trash and wrangled it down using her fists and feet to bend it into submission. She glanced around and was satisfied she’d gotten rid of the evidence of her pity party and crying jags. Except her eyes still felt puffy. She grabbed the frozen spoon she kept in the freezer for that very thing and laid the cool metal delicately under her eyes as she walked toward the door. When she was content with how her eyes felt, she twisted the lock and turned the knob.

“Damn, woman, what the hell? It’s hot as fuck out here.”

She offered him a sickeningly sweet smile. “My apologies, but I don’t remember inviting you here. What do you want?”

“What I want is for you to be reasonable and—” She tried to close the door, but Cal had wedged his food in the doorway. “Dammit, Chloe, I just came for the tapes.”

Chloe froze as she thought about their project. Of course he would still complete it; he’d known the LeBlancs too. That made sense to Chloe, and she was happy he was going to complete the video. “Okay, come in.”

He went to her desk and sat down. He looked like he planned to stay a while. Was he playing her again? She had to admit that he’d fooled her well and she no longer trusted her instincts when it came to him.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’ve got to transfer the video footage I’ve already cut from your laptop to mine. It’s going to take a while.”

“Take it; I’ve got another laptop. You can get it back to me later.”

His scent of expensive cologne and starch assaulted her senses, conjuring unwelcome memories. She needed him to leave now, before she became too weak to fight him off.

Too weak to fight herself.

“Chloe, it’s not a big deal. I’ll just transfer them to my hard drive.”

Chloe’s hands clenched at her sides, and her shoulders hunched. “I said take my laptop and get out.”

Cal’s shoulders tensed. A tic jumped in his jaw and he opened his mouth, but he said nothing. He sighed instead and pulled a box from his pocket, placing it on the kitchen counter. “I’m truly sorry I ever hurt you.” He hoisted the box of tapes onto his shoulder and picked up Chloe’s laptop. He started to walk out.