Steel Resolve. B.J. Daniels

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       Chapter Two

      “I feel terrible that I didn’t warn you about Fiona,” his boss said on Chase’s last day of work. Rick had insisted on buying him a beer after quitting time.

      Now in the cool dark of the bar, Chase looked at the man and said, “So she’s done this before?”

      Rick sighed. “She gets attached if a man pays any attention to her in the least and can’t let go, but don’t worry, she’ll meet some other guy and get crazy over him. It’s a pattern with her. She and my wife went to high school together. Patty feels sorry for her and keeps hoping she’ll meet someone and settle down.”

      Chase shook his head, remembering his first impression of the woman. Fiona had seemed so together, so...normal. She sold real estate, dressed like a polished professional and acted like one. She’d come up to him at a barbecue at Rick’s house. Chase hadn’t wanted to go, but his boss had insisted, saying it would do him good to get out more.

      He’d just lost his mother. His mother, Muriel, had been sick for some time. It was one of the reasons he’d come to Arizona in the first place. The other was that he knew he could find work here as a carpenter. Muriel had made him promise that when she died, he would take her ashes back to Montana. He’d been with her at the end, hoping that she would finally tell him the one thing she’d kept from him all these years. But she hadn’t. She’d taken her secret to the grave and left him with more questions than answers—and an urn full of her ashes.

      “You need to get out occasionally,” Rick had said when Chase left work to go pick up the urn from the mortuary. It was in a velvet bag. He’d stuffed it behind the seat of his pickup on the way to the barbecue.

      “All you do is work, then hide out in your apartment not to be seen again until you do the same thing the next day,” Rick had argued. “You might just have fun and I cook damned good barbecue. Come on, it’s just a few friends.”

      He’d gone, planning not to stay longer than it took to drink a couple of beers and have some barbecued ribs. He’d been on his second beer when he’d seen her. Fiona stood out among the working-class men and women at the party because she’d come straight from her job at a local real estate company.

      She wore high heels that made her long legs look even longer. Her curvaceous body was molded into a dark suit with a white blouse and gold jewelry. Her long blond hair was pulled up, accentuating her tanned throat against the white of her blouse.

      He’d become intensely aware of how long it had been since he’d felt anything but anguish over his breakup with Mary and his mother’s sickness, and the secret that she’d taken with her.

      “Fiona Barkley,” she’d said, extending her hand.

      Her hand had been cool and dry, her grip strong. “Chase Steele.”

      She’d chuckled, her green eyes sparking with humor. “For real? A cowboy named Chase Steele?”

      “My father was an extra in a bunch of Western movies,” he lied since he had no idea who his father had been.

      She cocked a brow at him. “Really?”

      He shook his head. “I grew up on a ranch in Montana.” He shrugged. “Cowboying is in my blood.”

      Fiona had taken his almost empty beer can from him and handed him her untouched drink. “Try that. I can tell that you need it.” The drink had been strong and buzzed through his bloodstream.

      Normally she wasn’t the type of woman he gravitated toward. But she was so different from Mary, and it had been so long since he’d even thought about another woman. The party atmosphere, СКАЧАТЬ