He could see the shock on her face at what she had seen, and knew that it was definitely never going to happen between them. He had not wanted her to find out this way about him.
“Chantal,” he said.
Shaking her head, she turned and ran out the door.
“Chantal!” Dom yelled again.
Dom chased her down the hallway and into the kitchen. He had to stop her before she got outside, and he had to find out why she was here. He grabbed her around her waist and pulled her against his chest. Breathing heavily, he asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Let me go.”
“Why are you here, Chantal?” he asked, again. Dom dropped his arm from around her waist, but held onto her arm. When she turned around, he got a good look at her clothing. “What the hell are you wearing?” he growled. That outfit was the sexiest thing he had ever seen her wear. The whole thing was see-through, and she wasn’t wearing any underwear.
Damn it
. For a minute, he was glad that she had made it there in that outfit, but quickly decided that, no; she shouldn’t have arrived in it. Someone could've stopped her, and God only knows what would have happened then.
“I came to drop off your Christmas present. I didn’t get a chance to give it to you that day because you left before I got there,” she whispered.
“What is that you’re wearing?” he growled. He could not understand why she was here in his house, wearing the red lingerie.
“What was going on in there? Who is that girl?” she whispered.
Fuck
. He forgot all about Elisa tied to his bed, waiting for him. That is what she did to him; every time she was around he couldn’t think of anything but her. She had to go. She couldn’t be there at all. Dom started pulling her towards the door. “You shouldn’t be here.”
She stopped. “What’s going on, Dom?” she asked him.
He shook his head. He didn’t want to explain what was going on in his room. Pulling her to the door, he opened it, and started to push her out. “I came to give you your present, and other things,” she said.
Dom pulled up short. “What other things?” he asked.
He watched as she stood tall and flashed her hand over her body.
“Me,” she whispered.
Dom groaned. Why was she doing this now? Any other time he would have jumped at the opportunity, but he couldn’t. What he was into would make her run far, far away from him.
“Dom,” Elisa called from the room.
He shook his head. “I need to go, Chantal.” As he started to close the door, she placed her hand on it to stop him.
“I came here to spend New Year’s Eve with you,” she said. “Are you with that girl?”
He had to break it to her gently, knowing full well it would probably hurt her, but that it was the only way. “Chantal, I like you as a friend, but nothing is going to happen past that, okay? Do you understand? You can’t give me what I want,” he growled.
“What does that mean?” she asked him.
“This between us,” he said, moving his hand between them. “Stays this way. Nothing more. You’re not my type,” he told her.
He watched as the words sunk in, and then and there, he knew he made the wrong choice with what he said. Chantal pushed past him and back into the house.
Dom grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?”
“I’m grabbing my coat, Dom. Then I’ll be out of here and your life,” she sobbed. Pulling it on, Chantal stomped away from him and back towards the front door.
“I don’t want you out of my life, Chan,” he said.
“Too bad. You made it pretty clear you don’t want me, and that’s fine with me. I’m sorry I wasted your time, and mine.” He watched as she stormed out of his house towards her car, and he couldn’t get there quick enough before she was inside.
Dom tapped on the window. “That’s not what I meant,” he growled.
“It doesn’t matter anymore, Dom. I’m sick and tired of wasting my time on you, trying to get your attention, or anything out of you. Don’t worry. I won’t bother you again. Goodbye, Dominic.” She started the car, reversed out, and screeched off.
He couldn’t do anything but stand there, dumbfounded at what she had said. He had pushed her too far. He knew she had tried to get his attention on more than one occasion, but thought it was just a fascination with him, not something more.
Why couldn’t he have just told her at the beginning what he wanted from her, and for himself? Instead
,
he had kept his thoughts to himself, and now he had royally fucked it up with her. There was also the matter of his second job that only a bunch of his close friends knew of, and exactly what he did there. That was always the killer in his relationships. It did not matter if he revealed it in the beginning as to what he did in that job; it always seemed to ruin the relationship. No trust was involved on their part, no matter what he said. That was why he had not had a relationship with anyone in a long time. The only kind of relationship he had now was with his clients. He had no problem in the sex department; there were plenty of ladies willing to give themselves up to him, but they weren’t the one he truthfully wanted.
Shaking his thoughts away, he knew didn’t want to lose her friendship over something stupid that he had said. “Fuck.” He jogged inside to grab his keys and a shirt, and started towards the front door, ready to go after her and explain.
“Dom?”
He groaned, realizing he had forgotten all about Elisa, again. “Shit.”
There was no way he could go after Chantal. He should let her cool down, and then they would talk about what she saw and what he said to her. He threw his keys and shirt back onto the couch, and moved towards the room again. He would do what he had to with Elisa and get all the frustration out of his system, then come tomorrow morning he would track Chantal down and explain everything to her. He hoped he actually had the guts to tell her the truth behind everything, and she was going to listen to all he had to say, whether she liked it or not.
******
C
hantal couldn’t believe what she had seen at Dominic’s house, or more so, what he had told her. She thought they had chemistry between them, but obviously, she was wrong. How could she have been so mistaken? With how he acted around her, it appeared that he wanted her as much as she wanted him, but it was possible that was just how he acted around every female. He never acted like that around Skylar that she knew of, but maybe that was just because Sky had been with Nate. What was wrong with her that he couldn’t even sleep with her? Although she wasn’t model material, she knew she could turn heads when she walked into a room. She took care of her appearance the best she could. She had platinum blonde hair, curled down to the middle of her back, violet eyes that always captivated everyone, and an hourglass figure that even she loved. She never wanted to be one of those skinny girls that only ended up full figured at middle age, anyway. She had the body she wanted, and wouldn’t change a thing about it.
She had never really used her appearance to get what she wanted. The majority of the time it was her brains that did the job. She hated when girls would sell themselves short, using their body to get everything they wanted. It wasn’t the way to go, small things occasionally she could understand, but not every day. Although, you would never hear her complain about getting attention from guys. If they offered to buy her a drink or dinner, she would not say no, but she would never flaunt her body in an attempt to get something more than that. It was just for a bit of fun, and she would never mislead a guy. If she did not want to be with them in a sexual way, she would say so up front.
Driving down the highway, she had no clue as to where she was going, so long as it wasn’t anywhere near Dominic. How could he have been said such cruel words to her? He had told her to give him time, and she had done that, but she couldn’t hold back how she felt for him anymore, and now she knew exactly how he felt. There was nothing there between them. He had led her on this whole time, thinking that something more would come out of this friendship, and the only thing she received was a broken heart. She was so stupid for being in love with him for the last five years. She had wasted so much time on that, trying to get his attention, and it only resulted in her being turned down by him, every time. How long could one person wait for the one they loved, when it was always one sided? She couldn’t do it anymore, have her heart broken when he rejected her at every opportunity. She needed to find someone that wanted to be with her, and have the relationship not be one sided.
Shoving that thought aside, she decided she should go over and see Skylar. She had only spent a short amount of time with her at the party, and before that, not much at all. Ever since Cody had been in town for business, Chantal had spent a fair bit of time with him, catching up on the good old days. Thinking that maybe Skylar was the way to go, she turned down Fern Grove Drive and made a U-turn. She should stop off and grab some of her favorite Ben n’ Jerry’s ice cream. Since she got pregnant, Skylar always had a bad craving for it. Before she turned into the store’s parking lot, her phone rang. She leaned over and pulled it out of her bag.
“Hello.”
“Hey, Chantal.”
“Joey. What’s up?” she replied.
“Not much. Wanted to see if you wanted to come down to the bar and have a drink with me.”
She smiled to herself; she had a thing for him. He was absolutely gorgeous, great to be around, and had a great personality. He would be the one to get Dominic off her mind.
“I can do that. I’ll be there soon. Save me a seat near the bar.”
“Will do, sweetie.”
Throwing her phone back in her bag, she opted to leave the ice cream for later. She needed a distraction, and Joey was the perfect thing to keep her thoughts off Dominic. She wasn’t going to worry about him anymore; instead she would find out if Joey was seeing anyone and go from there. She had always flirted with him and he did the same with her, but it never went farther than that. The time had come for her to move on from Dom and onto the next part of her life.
I
t had been two weeks after the run in with Nate at the New Year’s Eve party.
Why did he take that girl he slept with, were they together now
? Skylar didn’t want to think that they were. How could he move on so fast? Obviously, she did not mean that much to him, even though he had told her that he loved her. Shaking her head, she knew she had to think of her appointment scheduled for today, and find out if Chantal was coming. She rubbed her bump, thinking that this was all still so unreal to her—that she was carrying a child, someone that would depend on her.
Nate was insistent upon being there for every appointment, or anything at all to do with his child. She wasn’t going to rely on him for anything to do with their baby, but if he wanted to be there, she could deal with it. She had said no to the last appointment, but he kept pushing that she allow him to be at the next. Maybe she should let him be there. He was the father after all, and deserved to know everything that was going on.
Walking towards the kitchen, she called out, “Alex.”
“In here.”
She continued into the kitchen, following the direction of his voice. She reached out and grabbed an apple off the bench, and sat down at the table.
“Don’t you have an appointment today?” Alex asked.
Looking at the clock on the wall, she replied, “Yeah. It’s in an hour.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I was thinking of letting Nate come to this one, since he has been so persistent in wanting to be there for all of them,” she groaned.
How was she going to handle being alone in a room with him? Even though she didn’t trust him after what happened at the party, she was still in love with him. Not trusting him didn’t mean that she should stop loving him, did it? No matter, she had to see if he would keep his word that he wanted to experience every part of this pregnancy.
“Are you sure about that, babe?” Alex said.
“No, but he’s the father, if he wants to be there I have to deal with that. The only thing that is going to be hard is being alone in the same room as him.”
Alex sat beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I know it’s hard, sweetie. But it is
your
choice if you want him there, or not.”
“If he really wants to be there for his child through all these appointments, I really can’t stop him. I’ll give him a ring and see.” Reaching across the table for the phone, Skylar dialed his number.
“Jackson’s Mechanics.”
God, his voice still made her heartbeats quicken. She couldn’t think straight, and that was just from having heard him through the phone.
“Hello?”
“Nate,” she whispered.
“Skylar. What’s wrong?”
She cleared her throat. “Nothing is wrong. Do you still want to be involved with this pregnancy?”
“You know I do, but you keep telling me no.”
She had not wanted to argue with him. “I have an appointment in an hour, if you want to be there.”
“Thank you, Skylar. You won’t regret it. I’ll pick you up in forty-five minutes for it.”
She could not tell him that she wanted him to meet her there, so she would be alone with him in his truck, as well.
This is going to kill me
, she thought.
Glancing over at Alex, she announced, “He’ll be here in forty-five minutes.”
“It will all work out, Sky. You’re doing the right thing.”
She had a feeling that was not true. For her baby, yeah she was, but not for her. She needed to see if he would continue with all the appointments as promised, before she thought anything more about it.
******
S
kylar was grabbing her bag from her room when she heard the doorbell ring. She knew exactly who it was, but couldn’t bring herself to move out of her room, just then.
Sitting on her bed, she had to suppress all her feelings for him. She was not going to let him know that he still affected her in any way. “Sky, Nate is in the lounge room, waiting,” Alex said from the door.
“I don’t think I can do this, Alex.”