Loving the Chase (Heart of the Storm #1) Read Online Free Page B

looked his way. Those damn blue eyes and all the history in them. Eyes that knew him.
    As he opened the door to the parking garage and continued the sprint to his bike, he was filled with trepidation and the need to push it away. This show—this project—couldn’t be about Maddi Hayes. She was ancient history. It was about his family and their business. About creating something that could help them grow and put what they do in everyone’s living room. That’s where his head needed to be, and where it needed to stay. He strapped on his helmet extra tight, as if that might help, and climbed on. He had a little over an hour to let the wind blow Blakely’s strong cologne off of him, and plan the approach with his brother. With his family, actually, but anyone who really knew the score knew that Eli was the gatekeeper.
    Now, if he could just manage that hour without old memories invading his thought process, it would be great. He cranked the motor and felt the rumble as the big machine thundered to life. Maddi Hayes.
    Shit.

    Maddi stood in the hallway as Zach said something to the receptionist and headed for the stairs. The second he was gone, she bolted the other direction, pushing open the door to the ladies room. Maddi went straight to the counter, pressing her palms against the cold black granite as two hot tears landed next to them.
    “Quit, quit, quit,” she whispered as she watched the drops puddle on the granite. It wasn’t the time to be a silly melodramatic girl.
    She didn’t know how the hell she’d pulled off sitting across from him so stoically. The way he’d looked at her when she’d sat down, it had almost done her in. It had taken all she had to walk away back then, on the day the tornado flattened their apartment building with her in it. To leave the area, even, because anything Chase was bigger than life in Cody. So she’d miraculously found the suitcase she had packed for their trip, and left that very day for her brother Monroe’s apartment in Dallas. He was out of the country serving in the military at the time, so she made herself at home until she was on solid ground again. And that ground never wandered far from the city. It certainly never wandered back to Cody.
    Maddi looked up at her reflection in the mirror and laughed bitterly as more tears blinked free. She was a hot mess. Eyeliner was bleeding south, mascara was dotted north, and a fine sheen of perspiration covered her from head to toe. Not the glowing dewy kind.
    Thank God the meeting had really just been a formality and the details had already been worked out, because she remembered nothing from the first ten minutes. All she could see was the absolutely shell-shocked look in Zach’s eyes and hear his voice crack a little as he tried to get his thoughts back on track.
    Why had that hit her like a bulldozer?
    “Shit,” she muttered, grabbing a paper towel from the dispenser and attempting repair. “You’re such an idiot. Such a—walking hormone—ugh!” She felt her eyes go hot again and tilted her head back, shoving the tip of her tongue against the roof of her mouth to stem the urge. “Stop!”
    She didn’t have time for this. She didn’t have time or available space in her brain to waste energy on Zach Chase. No matter what. It didn’t matter what they had once been, and what she had seen in his eyes just five minutes earlier. She’d walked away from that for a reason. She’d run away so she never had to see him and question that decision. And that was a hundred years ago. The thin white scar curving up from the right side of her top lip drew her eyes. Everything has a reason.
    She was better than this, and too old for the drama.
    “Come on Maddi, get it together,” she whispered.
    Blowing out a breath, she turned on the cold water, patted her face, and held her wrists under the stream. She closed her eyes and let the cold cool her blood, her nerves, her clammy skin.
    Maddi started when the door swung open, grabbing