The Look of Love (The Sullivans) - Chapter 7 + Audiobook + Exclusive Commentary from Bella
I hope you loved Chapter 6 of The Look of Love (The Sullivans)! We met Marcus Sullivan (the oldest San Francisco Sullivan hero) in this chapter and his romance is the focus of Book 2 in the Sullivans series (From This Moment On). I can’t wait for you to find out more about Marcus, but for now let’s return to Chloe and Chase’s romance!
If you’ve missed any of the previous chapters you can find them here:
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6
Enjoy Chapter 7!
Note: You can also listen to THE LOOK OF LOVE for free!
AUDIOBOOK:
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
copyright 2022 Bella Andre / Oak Press, LLC
Please Note: My books are sexy and emotional love stories. Which is to say there will be lots of scenes where the hero and heroine are smooching (and doing much, much more!) in nearly all of my posts. 😍
Chloe wasn’t used to sitting still. Especially not after the past year, when she’d had to keep working odd jobs just to pay the rent and eat and be able to buy some fabric to quilt together. She was happy to be back on set, but every time she asked Jeremy if there was something she could do to help, some task that would make their jobs easier, he held firm about her being Chase’s special guest.
Worse still, all that staring at Chase was doing really funny things to her insides. To her outsides, too. Her skin felt sensitive all over beneath her clothes. Warmer than the weather warranted. Similar to the way she’d felt in the tub as the water had slid across her skin, and she’d ended up flying apart with his name on her lips.
Chloe’s uncomfortable musings were interrupted by a loud squeal that was followed by female cursing. Chloe craned her neck and saw that Amanda had tripped over a rock and her dress had a long, jagged rip across the front.
Chase called out, “Jeremy, we need a new dress. The same one.”
Jeremy’s face had gone even paler than it already was. “I don’t think the designer sent more than one of that dress, but I’ll look again to make absolutely sure.” He scurried off to look through the huge containers of clothes.
Chloe spoke up without thinking. “I can fix it.”
Chase turned his green-eyed gaze to her, and at the question in his eyes, she said, “I’ve worked with some pretty similar fabrics in my quilts. If Jeremy can’t find a second dress, I can at least try.”
“Amanda, take off the dress.”
The model pulled it off without giving so much as a thought to the fact that she was wearing only very sheer panties beneath the gauzy fabric.
At first it had been a bit of a shock to see how comfortable these young girls were with their near-nudity, but then, Chloe figured if she’d had a figure like that when she was nineteen, she would have been smart to flaunt it, too.
More glad than she should have been that Chase didn’t so much as glance at Amanda’s perfect naked breasts, Chloe got up out of her seat and came to get the dress.
“Can you give me ten minutes?”
He looked down at the large tear and then back up at her in clear surprise. “You can have this fixed in ten minutes?”
She looked at it more closely, running her fingers along the tear. “I think so.” Satins and silks were always harder to work with because every hole the needle made showed through, but she’d been eyeing the enormous sewing box all day. Now she finally had a reason to dig into it.
Chase called out for a break. She quickly threaded a needle with thin, transparent filament and began to work on the dress. She was so entranced by the soft fabric beneath her fingertips that it took her a few moments to realize Chase was sitting beside her.
“I’m so glad you decided to stay. What would I do without you?”
She almost stabbed herself with the needle. Thankfully, he clearly believed she was concentrating too hard to give him a reply.
Actually, she had to silently admit, she really wasn’t concentrating all that hard. After the past year of doing side jobs for the local tailor for what amounted to little more than slave wages, she could sew up things like this in her sleep.
Only, it was more than a little unnerving to have Chase’s full attention like this.
“Don’t you have something else you need to be doing?” she asked him.
She could feel his grin without needing to see it. “Just keeping my friend company while she does me a favor.”
Friends. He’d agreed to be her friend. And it had filled her with a delicious, forbidden warmth.
So then, why was she also just a teeny bit disappointed that he hadn’t pushed her for more up on the hill? That he hadn’t tried to charm her into believing that it was perfectly natural for friends to also touch and kiss and—
No. That was crazy thinking. And she knew exactly where that kind of crazy would lead.
Straight to a bed…with Chase in it.
“I’d like to help more,” she told him as she worked to fight back the heat that coursed through her at nothing more than his nearness and the vision she’d just had of the two of them in bed together. “You’ve been so kind to me, and I wish there was something more I could do to repay you.”
“Chloe.” The serious way he said her name had her looking up at him. “I wanted to help. You don’t need to repay me for anything. Ever.”
The intensity of his gaze—along with his utter dedication and focus on her—nearly had her stabbing herself again with the needle.
“I need to concentrate on this,” she lied.
Because what she really needed was some breathing room from her budding feelings for him.
“Go check on something else,” she told him in her best no-nonsense voice. “Please.”
Before she looked back down at the dress, she caught a flash of his gorgeous grin. A grin that told her he knew exactly why she was sending him away, darn it.
Ten minutes later, she helped Amanda put the dress back on and found herself blushing as everyone on Chase’s crew started clapping and telling her how great she was to have repaired it so quickly and so well.
“You are totally the bomb, girl,” Jeremy said. He turned to Chase and asked, “Isn’t she fabulous?”
Chase nodded, his eyes heating when he smiled at her. “She really is, Jeremy.”
It wasn’t long until the sun set and the models were beginning to fade fast with fatigue, their tall, slim frames slumping slightly beneath the weight of the magnificent dresses they were wearing.
“Let’s call it a day,” Chase said. “Great work, everyone.” He made sure to include Chloe with his eyes, even though she knew she’d barely done anything to help. “Really, really great.”
Chloe could see how much his praise meant to everyone. Including her.
“My brother Marcus is hosting all of us for dinner and drinks at his place tonight.” He pointed to the big house across the vineyard. “Jeremy, why don’t you take everyone over?”
Without being asked, Chloe helped the models out of their dresses, making sure to tell each one of them how impressed she was with the work they’d done before asking, “How do you hold those poses for so long?”
Amanda was already on her cell phone, but Jackie, a shy “older” girl (who was barely twenty-one, but Chloe had already learned that was borderline ancient in their business), explained, “I do a lot of yoga.”
The girl’s smile was beautiful, and Chloe immediately grinned back at her.
“It was nice to have you on set,” Jackie said. “Kind of like having my mom here to take care of us.”
Chloe somehow managed to keep her grin in place.
She was only nine years older than Jackie. And yet, she supposed the model was right. If life experience was anything to go by, they were a century apart.
Jeremy loaded the huge van with trunks and racks of clothes and camera equipment, then called everyone together. “Are you coming, Chloe?”
She was tempted to go with the group, rather than stay behind with Chase. But she felt grimy. Even if she didn’t have nicer clothes to wear to Marcus’s house, the least she could do was smell better than this. A shower was definitely necessary.
“I’m going to freshen up a bit. I’ll see you all there soon.”
Freshen up a bit. Seriously, she even sounded like she was Jackie’s mom.
After everyone left, she turned to look for Chase. Thinking of him made her insides go soft and warm.
At first she couldn’t find him, and then she realized he was standing behind one of his big cameras…and it was pointed straight at her.
She instinctively put her hand over her cheek. Oh, God, what was he doing? And what would he see? Would he be able to look beyond the ugly bruise and see that she was a quivering mess of jelly on the inside? Would he see what a coward she felt like for not having called the police yet to report what her ex had done to her, for just hiding out here with him and the models and his crew?
And would he see the feelings for him that had grown inside of her all day, despite the fact that she knew better than to feel anything at all?
Angry at him—and at herself for even caring in the first place—she started toward him. He’d already lowered the camera by the time she said, “I thought you put all your equipment away.”
“I always feel better if I’ve got at least one on me. Just in case there’s something I need to take a picture of.”
“You don’t need to take pictures of me.”
“I’ve never been able to resist photographing beauty,” he said softly, before tucking the camera inside his bag. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
The look he gave her—warm and soft, yet full of a desire he didn’t bother to hide—had her realizing just how ridiculous she was being.
“It’s just with this bruise…” she began, lifting her hand to cover it again.
“Are you ready to talk about what happened yet?” His words were gentle, and clearly concerned.
She swallowed hard before shaking her head. “No.” She took a shaky breath. “Not yet.”
Before she could say anything more, he reached for her hand and moved it away from her face. “You’re lovely, Chloe. You don’t need to hide yourself from me. Or from anyone.”
She was amazed that he didn’t seem to think the bruise made her look ugly. And he didn’t seem to think it made her look weak, either.
Their slow walk back to the guesthouse through the darkness with only the moonlight to light their way felt impossibly romantic. Far more romantic than she could allow it to be.
“So, when did you start taking pictures?”
He gave her a look in the near-dark, one that said he knew what she was after with her small talk. Or, rather, what she was avoiding.
“I used to steal my father’s Polaroid camera and annoy everyone with it. When I was eight years old, he gave me a camera of my own. Not one for kids, but a real one that I had to work hard to figure out how to use. I still have that camera and use it on special occasions, even though it’s a classic now.”
She grinned at the vision of a mini-Chase documenting the world around him, just as determined and focused then as he was now.
“Did you always concentrate on photographing people?”
“I’ve tried it all, landscapes and abstracts and still lifes, but in the end I’ve always found people—and their emotions—to be more interesting than anything else.”
All day she’d been trying to put her finger on Chase’s magic. “That’s what you were after today,” Chloe said with a sudden hit of awareness. “Emotion.” She met his gaze and knew that even though she wasn’t one of his models, it was exactly what he was tapping into with her, too.
“You were a great help today, Chloe.”
She flushed at his praise. “I’m glad I could help in some way.” She gestured to the property. “Getting to be here today was wonderful. Like being inside a Napa Valley fantasy world where everyone wears couture,” she said with a grin.
They stepped up on to the porch, and Chase opened the door for her. Always the gentleman.
She stopped short in the living room, causing him to bump into her. His heat seared her, and she jumped away.
“What’s all this?”
A clothing rack, just like the ones the models’ outfits had been hanging on at the shoot, was standing in the middle of the room. It was packed full of clothes that looked as if they would fit her, rather than size-zero, six-foot, nineteen- and twenty-one-year-old girls.
“I had a few things delivered for you.”
She turned to him in surprise. “How did you even do this? You were working the whole time, harder than anyone else.”
She couldn’t remember ever seeing him take a break, beyond having lunch with her. Even when the rest of the crew was relaxing between shots, he was busy setting things up or reviewing the day’s work.
“You look great in your jeans,” he told her, “really great, but I know you weren’t crazy about heading over to Marcus’s tonight wearing them. If there’s one thing I can do, it’s get nice clothes delivered fast.”
My God, he was so sweet. And modest. But…
“I don’t have the money to pay you back for these clothes, Chase,” she told him in a voice she tried to hold steady. How she wished she could wear these clothes, even for one night, just to feel pretty again. But she couldn’t. “It was a lovely thought, but I can’t wear them tonight.”
“Let me do this for you,” he said softly.
“I can’t.”
But, oh, how she wanted to. Even in her previous life with her ex-husband when she’d had money, she’d never worn clothes this gorgeous.
“You can.” Chase didn’t move closer, but the warmth of his words moved over her skin like a caress as he said, “I’m not going to come back later and demand anything from you. But I would very much like to see you in one of these dresses tonight.”
Instinctively, she knew he was telling her the truth. He would never hold anything over her. So then why did that almost scare her more?
Chase was great. Beyond great. She should stop acting like a nervous cat already, claws popping out at the slightest noise.
Feeling like an ungrateful jerk over the clothes, she asked, “Can we start over and pretend we just walked in?”
“Sure.”
He was so cute about it that he actually walked to the door and held it open for her. Clearly, his sisters had trained him well on how to respond to women’s careering emotional states.
Following his lead, she walked outside on the porch and let him open the door for her again. “Wow, Chase,” she said as she smiled at him. “These are such pretty clothes. Thanks so much.”
He smiled right back. “You’re welcome.”
It took every bit of control Chloe had to force herself to step away from him, rather than move closer. Yet again, she wanted to put her arms around him and kiss him. She’d never been like this before, vacillating from one extreme to the other…from wanting to run away one second, then wanting to run straight into his arms the next.
Chase walked over to the rack of clothes. “This one.”
He was holding up an amazing dress with a long, flowing skirt and a fitted bodice. It was midnight blue—her favorite color—and she already knew it would fit like a glove. She doubted he would mind if she picked a different dress to wear tonight, but she wanted to please him…just as he’d pleased her by surprising her with such generosity and thoughtfulness.
“I just need a few minutes to shower and get dressed,” she told him, then took the dress from him as she walked past. She felt his eyes on her back all the way down the hall until she closed the bedroom door behind her.
The shower felt like heaven, but she knew Chase was waiting for her so she didn’t linger. The tub had beckoned, of course, but she wasn’t sure she could face Chase again if she accidentally set off the jets and he heard them go on. Instead of making her blush, the thought actually made her smile, even as her body heated up another couple degrees at the memory of being naked in this bathroom with Chase just twenty-four hours ago.
She dried off, then opened the toiletry and makeup bag she was amazed that he’d had set out for her, as well. She was most grateful for the makeup, because it meant she could cover up her bruise a little. True, everyone had already seen it, but that didn’t mean she liked looking at it every time she looked in the mirror.
Chase had thought of everything. How on earth was a girl supposed to not fall for a guy like this?
Forget his looks. He was amazing on the inside, too.
Then again, hadn’t she thought her ex was great at first, too? Wasn’t that why she’d married him…only to end up living a nightmare instead of a fairy tale?
Forcing the icky thought away, she finished blowing her hair dry, then slipped into the beautiful dress and picked a pair of heels out of the half-dozen pairs of amazing shoes that had been placed in her bedroom while she showered.
A shiver ran through her at the knowledge that Chase had been just beyond the bathroom door while she was naked. Had he been tempted to break in again like he had last night?
And what would she have done this time? Would she have acted like she hadn’t wanted him in there?
Or would she have opened up the shower door and invited him in?
She tried as hard as she could to put herself back in her mind-set from earlier in the day, when she’d first seen the models and had been able to convince herself that there was no way Chase would be interested in her with them around.
But after a full day with them, she knew without even the slightest doubt that there was nothing going on between Chase and any of those young women. Nor would there ever be. They looked at him with stars in their eyes, while he looked at them like they were his younger sisters.
Chloe could no longer deny that he didn’t look at her like that.
He looked at her like a man looked at a woman he desired.
Only, she found herself thinking before she could stop herself from going there, there was more behind his gaze than just desire.
Her heart fluttering wildly, she stepped out of the bedroom into the sitting room. Chase was silent for a long moment, which only made her heart beat faster.
Finally, he said, “You’re lovely.”
Lovely.
Did he know the effect that one word had on her? Did he know how special he made her feel, again and again?
Desperate to cut the sensual—and emotional—tension between them, she said, “Whoever picked out this dress has a great eye.”
But he didn’t let her break their connection as he replied, “It’s not the dress. It’s you.”
She worked not to deflect his compliment again. Once upon a time she’d known how to say thank you.
“Thank you,” she said, taking in his dark jeans and the white button-down shirt that he’d rolled up a couple of times at the sleeves. “You look nice, too.”
“I thought we’d walk over to Marcus’s house.” He looked down at her shoes. “Will that work?”
“Are you kidding? I used to practically live in heels like these.”
He gave her a questioning look, and she silently cursed herself. Fortunately, though, just as he’d been so nice about not pushing her about her bruise earlier, he didn’t push her on this statement or ask her any questions about her past.
But she knew that if she stayed much longer, he would ask again…and she’d find it harder and harder not to tell him everything.
Thanks for reading and keep an eye out for Chapter 8!
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