Read Online Can't Buy Me Love by Elizabeth Powers - Free Book Online Page A

all. If he did. Oh hell , she thought again.
    Chase
gave her a half smile then. “Are you ending our relationship, Charlene?” he
asked, unable to completely hide the amusement in his voice.
    Lena
regained her composure. “ What relationship?” she asked. “Be honest with
me. Seriously. Are you really interested in me?”
    But
Chase’s expression, when he looked at her, was dead serious, and when he spoke,
it was with some sense of gravity. “In the Charlene that I’ve known for the
past few months? No. Not really. But there’s a hell of a lot more to you than what
you’ve shown me. I don’t know yet if I’m interested in who you really are, but
I’m certainly intrigued.”
    Leaning
back against the railing, Lena studied the face of her companion. He stood in
front of her, his hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers as he focused
his attention on her.
    “Lena,
nobody can possibly be as full of fluff as the person you’ve been over the past
few months. Not if they are simultaneously running a very large non-profit
organization in a not-so-great part of town. So no. I’m not all that interested
in the non-existent woman that you’ve tried to pass off as your true
personality since I first met you. But I would like to get to know the
real you.”
    Lena
had no idea what to say.
    “Oh
hell. But if you felt that way, why didn’t you break things off with me months
ago?” she finally asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking up
at him with challenge in her eyes.
    “It
was coming soon,” he confessed. “Probably after one more question about my
opinion on what someone was wearing.”
    Lena
paused, then smiled slightly. “Probably next week then,” she said. “I was
planning to meet all of your news quizzes with inane conversation about the
Kardashians. Or something equally awful.”
    Chase
groaned. “Oh Lord. Gardening wasn’t bad enough?”
    “I
should have tried bird-watching. That’s always a winner.”
    “Yeah.
I would have caved. Have you ever been cornered by Mrs. Wellesby?” he
laughingly asked, referring to an avid birdwatcher who frequently attended
these events, and happily talked about her passion to anyone who would listen. His
smile slowly died as he looked down intently at Lena. “So, Lena. Why all the
games? And more importantly, why are you breaking up with me now?”
    “I
don’t even know you,” she responded. “And I’m not sure that it’s technically
breaking up with someone that you never really dated.”
    “We
dated,” Chase said firmly.
    Lena
shrugged. “Not really.”
    “Because
we didn’t sleep together?” Chase asked.
    Lena’s
eyes narrowed as she put her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “I do not
sleep with every man I date, Mr. Moral Police Officer. Geez. What do you think
I am?”
    “Way
different than I’d thought last week,” Chase confessed.
    Dropping
her hands from her hips to her side, Lena turned her face back toward the view
of the Rockies. “Oh hell ,” she said again.
    Chase
grinned, even though Lena wasn’t watching him. Cautious as he was about relationships
in general, and this woman in particular, he really was starting to like Lena. In
a short space of time, she had made him laugh, something he wouldn’t have
thought possible a week ago.
    Looking
down at Lena, Chase saw the woman he’d met at the shelter yesterday. He knew he’d
missed it before, but now he was seeing glimpses of that woman in the society
beauty that was standing in front of him.
    “Lena,
I’m not interested in pushing you into anything that you don’t want,” he said
quietly. “And you’re right – I wouldn’t call what we’ve had for the past few
months a relationship. But I’m not quitting at the shelter. And we’re still
going to run into each other at events like this. And, if what I’ve seen of
your personality at the shelter is the real you, I think I might
actually like you. So let’s take things as they