Page 6 of The Chase
“Okay, young lady, what happened?”
Greeralmostspilled everything, but Hala and Ayla were right there, and Ayla’s sister Aubrey had shown up with Genny, and Chantal was with Gia—and Greer just wasn’t ready to share what he’d done.
She knew what would happen if she did.
Gia and Chantal especially—probably with Hala trailing after them—would go find Kurt and demand explanations for why he had been such a butt. Then her brothers would get involved. Then…there would be so much chaos. She didn’t want that. “I just…a guy did something that hurt, that’s all. Aren’t there anygoodmen left around here?”
“If there are, I’d like to get in line,” Chantal said drily. She looked a little flushed, and Genny was hovering. Greer was starting to suspect something had been going on with Chantal lately. She just couldn’t figure out what it was. Aubrey, too, was watching Chantal closely.
“I have only met a handful of good ones at the hospital, and they seem to all be taken,” Aubrey said. Aubrey was the head of the ER where Genny worked. She was really kind and shy and Greer thought she was one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen.
She hated that Mandy Kirby was causing Aubrey so much trouble. Apparently, Mandy had started rumors that Aubrey was shacking up with a married man in Finley Creek now. Greer suspected Aubrey was more bothered by it than she was letting on.
Genny was practically breathing fire—and Chantal was threatening to find Mandy and have Gia rearrange her face again. Apparently, there was a story there Greer was not aware of. Gia had broken Mandy’s nose or something, when they’d been girls?
Her sisters could be so wild sometimes.
“Not that you’d date them even if they weren’t,” Genny added. “Aubs has a strict ‘no dating guys she works with policy’.”
“With good reason,” Aubrey said. “Although, if Caine had another brother…maybe I would change my mind. That man…”
“One of a kind. He’s also just as hot as a Davis brother. He even looks like them—like, a lot like them. Enough to get a girl really…hyperventilating sometimes,” Genny said. “Ayla…have you ever seen him?”
“I’ve met him and his wife at the library a few times.” Ayla was almost teetering on the bar stool. Greer steadied her gently. Ayla struggled to keep her balance sometimes when she was really tired. Greer remembered what those days had been like.Shehad made a nearly complete recovery by the time she was fifteen. But Ayla had told her once how close it had been for her. She freely admitted she was lucky to even walk at all. “He is as beautiful as Royal Davis. But what is truly amazing is how he and his wife look at each other sometimes. I want to be loved like thatsomeday. You know…when I’m really old. Like Aubrey. She’ll be thirty soon.”
“Very, very old,” Gia said. “I feel your pain, Aubrey. I do. And…there really aren’t that many guys in Value. Not that I am looking or anything.”
Gia was going to be thirty soon, too. She was focused on her career—she’d said that a dozen times before.
“If you two—two successful, beautiful,amazingwomen—a lawyer and a doctor—can’t find decent guys around here…” Hala just stared at them all. “That really doesn’t leave the rest of us much hope, you know.”
Well, Greer agreed there. If those two couldn’t find decent guys to be with…probably none of them could. Great.
Greer’s mom hugged Hala. She and Hala had always been close, especially since Hala’s parents and sister had been killed in an accident when Greer and Hala had been almost eighteen. “Sweetie, well…all of you girls, listen. When therightman comes along, you’ll just know. It’ll feel perfect and right and the first time he holds you…beautiful. Amazing. That’s what I want for all of my girls. All of my boys, too. You girls—not my daughters, that is—you all know that I have four beautiful sons still going to waste, right? Yours for the taking—handsome, strong, reasonably wealthy, intelligent and successful. And I raised them to be gentlemen. Just take your pick.”
“There are a few who I would consider,” Chantal said. “But they’d need seriously proper training first.”
“Yeah, probably not,” Hala said. “No offense, or anything. I think I know those boys a bittoo wellfor romance to ever happen.”
Well, Greer actually didn’t think that was such a bad idea. “You could marry one of my brothers, Hal. Then we’d be sisters forever.”
“We’re sisters foreveranyway.Although…Guthrie or Gunn, once properly trained…maybe. Just maybe.”
Aubrey made a bit of a strangling sound at that. From what Genny had told Greer, Aubrey and Guthrie weren’t getting along too well.
“Sweetie, there is always Grady,” Greer’s mother said. “He’d be perfect for you. If…you just didn’t think he was a troll, anyway.”
Greer laughed out loud at that one. Grady andHala?That would definitely be a grumpy-sunshine thing there. And it would never happen. “Thatis never going to happen, Mom. Never going to happen.”
As Genny and Chantal and Aubrey grabbed Ayla’s things and helped her get out of the chair and balanced on her crutches, Greer couldn’t help but feel a rush of emotion for the people surrounding her.
She hugged her mom one more time. Her mom was going to head back to Greer’s dad for a date night. She’d been super-excited to tell them all about it. Greer and Genny had fixed her hair.
Greer was lucky. She had people who loved her.
She’d get through this. And put Kurtland Chase behind her forever.
When he called an hour after Hala had crashed out on Greer’s couch,thistime she didn’t have a single guilty moment for hitting decline.
