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He walked down the hall, out the door, and into the lobby, expecting to see Drake, but he stopped in his tracks and stared at the woman who stood staring right back at him.
Her gaze swept over him from his head to his boots and back up, leaving a warm caress all over him. “Chase.”
His name on her lips would always be the sweetest sound. “Shelby.”
Just looking at her made him ache. He wanted to be what she wanted. But hell if he knew what that was, because they were still practically strangers.
Strangers who had seen each other naked and left not one centimeter of skin untouched.
He didn’t know Shelby before the night they got stupid drunk and had a one-night stand. He didn’t take the time to get to know her afterward either because he’d only been home on leave for ten days, and spent most of that in a bar, regretting spending those few days in his hometown where his family didn’t want him. He met her his last night home. She made those ten miserable days worth it.
She didn’t know what that night meant to him.
How he relived it over and over in his mind and that sometimes it was the only thing that kept him sane.
She didn’t know how much he appreciated her letting him into her life through Eliza. How that webcam and the pictures she sent while he was overseas, and now, meant everything to him.
When he returned the last time, wounded in body and mind, she’d let him visit Eliza. They’d played in thebackyard or at the park in town. But then she started shutting the door in his face when he showed up stoned out of his mind. He’d made an ass out of himself too many times to count, and Hunt showed up in his patrol car and dragged Chase back to the apartment that was dinky in size but felt like a huge empty black hole.
She’d known which days to send him on his way and which days, wasted and desperate, he needed Eliza or he wasn’t going to make it through the night.
Her actions spoke volumes.
She got him.
She never raged at him even when he’d given her good reason.
She never judged him.
In her quiet way, she showed him patience and understanding and compassion without pity.
She kept Eliza safe and made her happy and loved her when Chase wasn’t there and couldn’t do those things for her, too.
No, he didn’t know Shelby well, but God, he loved her.
Still, he couldn’t believe his eyes. “What are you doing here?” He glanced around the empty room. “Where’s Eliza?”
“Back home with the sitter. I took the bus up last night, stayed in a motel, and came here to drive home with you.”
That blew him back a step. “Why?”
She tilted her head, her soft green eyes filled with sympathy. “Because after all you’ve been through, I thought you might like the company.”
He loved the company. But she didn’t know that.
A month into counseling, he realized that somewhere between their one-night stand, them having ababy together, her holding down the fort and parenting duties the whole time he was overseas serving his country—and even when he came back—he’d fallen in love with her.
“You came all the way to Montana to drive home with me?” He really couldn’t believe it.
The last thing she’d said to him still rang in his head.Get help, or you will never see Eliza again.
He couldn’t wait to see Eliza.
Sheneeded him. She wanted him. She was the only person in his life who loved him. Because she didn’t know who her father really was deep down inside, or what he’d done, she accepted him as-is.
He had a chance to be the man she needed, because at two, she didn’t know that there were bad things in the world, and he was one of them.
He wished he could undo the past and make everything right.
