The Bachelor, the Baby and the Beauty. Victoria Pade

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СКАЧАТЬ course she’d taken extra-special pains with it today, knowing that Chase was coming. She was wearing her tightest jeans and a body-hugging camisole that outlined every inch of her reduced body. After years in the fashion industry, she’d picked up more than one hair and makeup trick and she’d used them all today. Her smoky green eyes were accentuated to their best effect and the high cheekbones that had emerged from beneath the extra weight were highlighted. Not a single pore marred her skin. Her mauve lipgloss looked perfectly natural and her russet-brown, chin-length hair glistened as it fell around her face and showed off her new highlights.

      No one who remembered her from her youth in Northbridge hadn’t dropped a jaw when they’d seen the transformation in her. She’d taken it in stride—she’d lost the weight so long ago that, to her, it had stopped being the most monumental part of her life. But knowing that this would be the first time Chase Mackey would see her this way? Okay, yes, she wanted his jaw to drop.

      It was just human nature to want the object of an old crush to notice a thing like that. It didn’t mean that the old crush was still in effect in any way, she assured herself.

      The muted sound of a car coming nearer on the road that led to the house alerted Hadley. There were only two possibilities for who it could be: Logan’s fiancée Meg, with his three-year-old daughter, Tia, or Logan bringing Chase back from the stalled moving truck.

      It was that second possibility that gave Hadley jitters and made her feel as if she was sixteen again.

      But she wasn’t sixteen, she lectured herself. She was thirty-three. She’d been married. Divorced. She’d lived in Europe for the past ten years. It was ridiculous to be nervous about seeing someone who, ultimately, had only been a fringe part of her youth.

      Even if she’d used that fringe part to fuel fantasies galore and an adoration that most teenage girls had reserved for rock stars.

      But that was ancient history. She and Logan and Chase were going to work together and live in close proximity. She was going to behave the same way she would with anyone else who might be a friend of her brother’s and a business associate of them both. Friendly. Professional. Detached.

      So there was no cause for her to be nervous or jittery or uncomfortable. Logan had said that Chase had never given any indication that he had the slightest clue as to how she’d felt about him. Which meant that she didn’t have to worry.

      Hadley took a deep, cleansing breath, feeling better. It shouldn’t be so hard to face him. It should be fine.

      Then she heard the sound of deep male voices coming in the back door and she knew it wasn’t Meg and Tia who were home. It was Logan and Chase.

      “He never knew,” she whispered to herself to bolster her courage. “He doesn’t ever need to know.”

      Another deep breath—this one to give her strength—and Hadley opened the bathroom door, stepping out into the hallway just as Chase Mackey appeared at the other end near the kitchen.

      His sharply-edged jaw didn’t drop when he saw her. But his eyebrows arched over sky-blue eyes that were more remarkable than she remembered.

      “Had-Had-Hadley? Is that you?” he asked in enough shock and awe to please her, using the silly version of her name that he’d made up when they were kids. That only he had ever used.

      “It’s me,” she confirmed, wondering how it was possible for him to have gotten even better looking.

      But he had.

      Not that he was picture-perfect the way the male models she’d worked with were. Chase had a less refined, rugged, masculine handsomeness built around those eyes. His nose was slightly long, his lower lip was fuller than his upper, and his forehead was probably wider than a photographer would have wanted.

      But he also had wavy, golden-brown hair cut short on the sides and left just a touch longer on top. There was a slight crease in the very center of his chin that added to his appeal. Over six feet tall, he had a lean, muscular body lurking behind his jeans and T-shirt. There was no denying that Chase Mackey was still a jaw-dropper himself.

      “You look amazing,” he exclaimed—saying to her what she was thinking about him. “I don’t think I would have known you if we’d met on the street.”

      “I’m half the woman I was,” Hadley joked.

      “It’s more than the weight—”

      But years of carrying the weight had caused her to be very self-conscious, and while she was thrilled with his reaction, she couldn’t be comfortable under his scrutiny for long. And Neily was a built-in way out. So before he could go on with what he was about to say, Hadley interrupted him.

      “We can catch up later. I don’t know if you remember Neily Pratt or not, but she’s waiting in the living room to see you.”

      “Neily is here?” Logan said, stepping up behind Chase just then.

      “I remember the Pratt family,” Chase said, “but not specifically Neily… .”

      “She needs to see you,” Hadley repeated.

      “Hi,” Neily said, suddenly appearing from the living room to join them.

      Logan greeted Neily warmly and after some further back-and-forth that helped Chase place who she was, she said, “I apologize for being here the minute you walk in the door, Chase, and on the day before your wedding, Logan, but I’m afraid I’m here on business that couldn’t wait.”

      “Furniture business?” Logan asked.

      “Social-worker business. With Chase.”

      Chase and Logan looked as confused by that as Hadley was.

      “Maybe you and Chase should talk alone,” Hadley suggested out of courtesy, despite her own curiosity.

      “That’s okay,” Chase said. “I can’t imagine what business I could have with a social worker, but I’m probably gonna end up talking about it with you after the fact anyway, so we might as well skip a step.”

      Neily pointed over her shoulder in the direction from which she’d just come. “I have a file …”

      “Let’s all go in the living room, then,” Logan suggested.

      They did, with Neily returning to her spot on the sofa and Hadley taking the easy chair again while Chase and Logan remained standing, facing them.

      “I don’t know how much of your background you know, Chase,” Neily began.

      “I was orphaned at three when my folks were killed in a car accident—about six months after we moved to Northbridge,” Chase supplied.

      “And did you know that you had siblings? “

      That was not anything Hadley had ever heard, and from the look on Chase’s face, it was news to him, too.

      “There was just me,” he claimed.

      “Actually, there was also an older half sister, a younger sister and two younger brothers—twins,” Neily said, opening the file that she’d taken onto her lap.

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