By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс
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hope for your own sake that’s not true,” Chase growled.
“Be quiet, Doug,” Tenley snapped. “Let me handle this.”
Doug. Kate refocused her attention on the young man, recognition flooding back. He was the same young soldier that Tenley had eloped with.
“You,” she said, advancing slowly on him. “It was bad enough that you seduced my sister, but to have the nerve to—”
“Stop it!” Tenley shouted, and stepped between Kate and the young soldier. “I love him!”
“Love him?” Kate exclaimed in disbelief. “You hardly know him!” She directed her gaze to the man who stood behind Tenley. “It wasn’t enough that you nearly ruined her life. Now you just can’t leave her alone. How did you know she was going to be here?”
“I’ve never stopped loving her,” he said fiercely. “I had no idea she was going to be here until I saw her up on that stage. You may have succeeded in having our marriage annulled, but you can’t stop us from being together.”
Kate turned to Chase. “I want this man arrested.”
Chase was looking at Kate as though he had no idea who she was. “You had their marriage annulled?”
“We met during one of my concerts in Las Vegas,” Tenley said. “Doug had scored a backstage pass, and as soon as I met him, something clicked. I knew he was the one.”
Kate made a scoffing noise. “How could you possibly know that after thirty minutes with him?”
“It was an entire night, Kate!” Tenley shouted. “You were too busy talking on the phone and promoting my next tour to even know what I was doing. You didn’t even know I was gone until the next morning.” She turned to Chase. “Why don’t you ask Kate what happened after she tracked us down and had our marriage annulled?”
“Tenley,” Kate protested, her voice weak. “Don’t.”
Ignoring her, Tenley leaned forward until her face was mere inches from Kate’s. “The military shipped him off to Afghanistan! We were in love, Kate, and you tore us apart without a second thought. You didn’t even ask me how I felt! They shipped him off to the other side of the world, and because of your restraining order, I couldn’t even find out where he was sent.”
“You’re little more than a child!” Kate argued. “You barely know him! And it’s impossible to fall in love that quickly. This isn’t some romantic remake of Romeo and Juliet, this is real life!”
“I’m not a child,” Tenley asserted, drawing herself up. Stepping back, she put her arms around Doug. “I love him, and I’m going to marry him. Again.”
Kate put a hand to her forehead. “I don’t believe this. Tenley, think about what you’re doing. Come back with me now and we can at least talk about it. I mean, what do you really know about him? You haven’t been with him long enough to know if you love him.”
Tenley’s glance flicked between Kate and Chase. “Maybe you need more than a few days to decide if you love someone,” she said, “but not me.”
“Tenley—”
“I can’t do this anymore, Kate.” Tenley looked at her imploringly. “I need to make my own decisions, not have you make them for me.”
“Please—”
“You’re fired, Kate. I don’t want you as my publicist or my personal assistant. In fact, as soon as we get home, I’m finding my own place to live.”
Kate stared at her, unable to comprehend what was happening. “What? No! Don’t do this, Tenley.”
“Don’t you see?” Tenley asked, her voice softening. “I have to. I can’t let you make all my decisions for me. Not anymore. What’s right for you isn’t necessarily right for me. That’s why I have to do this, Kate.”
Kate took a step back, stunned. She would have stumbled if not for Chase’s strong arm supporting her.
“C’mon,” he said quietly. “I’ll walk you back.” He pinioned the young soldier with a hard look. “I want Tenley returned to her housing unit within thirty minutes, Corporal. If she’s not there, you’ll answer to me. Are we clear?”
Doug nodded. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“C’mon, Kate,” Chase said, putting an arm around her shoulders and leading her out of the building. “I’ll make sure she gets back safely. Let’s get you some coffee and then we can figure this thing out.”
She nodded and let him hug her as they walked, too stunned to argue. Surely she was still asleep and this was all just a bad dream. Right now, Chase was the only sure thing in her life, but if Tenley had really meant what she said, then he was also the next person she would need to say goodbye to. Because if Tenley didn’t want to work with her, then she would not be traveling to the other bases; she would be on the next flight back to the States.
Her chest ached at the thought of leaving Chase, but she recalled what she had said to Tenley with such great authority: You only knew him for a few days! It’s impossible to fall in love that quickly.
Did she love Chase? She didn’t know. But she did know one thing; she wasn’t going to make the same mistake her sister had.
CHASE COULDN’T EVER RECALL feeling such a strong protective instinct toward anyone as he did now with Kate. He’d seen the stricken expression on her face when Tenley had told her she was fired. Knowing how much Kate had sacrificed for her sister, he could only imagine what she was going through.
He took her back to Captain Larson’s housing unit and made her a strong cup of coffee in an effort to combat the residual effects of the sleeping pills. She sat curled up on the small sofa, her hands cupped around the mug as she told him stories of how she had raised Tenley after she was orphaned. Kate had been little more than a child herself at the time, barely the same age as Tenley was now. His heart ached for her. It had to have been difficult, no matter how perfect she tried to make it sound. Knowing Kate, she’d tried to provide Tenley with the perfect childhood that she herself had been denied, even at the cost of her own dreams.
For the first time, Chase understood the enormity of what Kate had sacrificed for her sister, and also what she had just lost. He crouched in front of her and gently took the cup of coffee from her hands and set it down, curling his own hands around hers.
“Listen, Kate,” he began, “I think if you give Tenley some time, she’ll come around. She loves you, and I know she doesn’t want to hurt you. But maybe some space between the two of you isn’t such a bad thing.”
Kate smiled ruefully. “I guess I didn’t want to admit that she was all grown up. I wanted to hang on to her for as long as I could. But still, to fire me?”
“Maybe she’ll reconsider.”
To his surprise, Kate laughed. “That’s not possible. You see, I didn’t get paid for what I did. She never actually hired me. I just sort of assumed the role of personal assistant because we didn’t want to publicize the fact that she was being raised by a sibling, and not some court-appointed guardian, like the media believed. So technically, I never actually worked for her.”
Chase frowned. “You did all that for her without getting paid? How do you get by? Pay your bills?”
“I have a small trust fund that I use for expenses.” She shrugged. “But I do a little web-design work on the side that provides me with pin money.”
“You’re a web designer?” He couldn’t keep the astonishment out of his voice.
“Well, I wanted