Cathy Gillen - Her Bachelor Challenge

“Whatever.” Bridgett tugged the sleeves of her elegant silk-and-cotton cardigan down to cover her wrists. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

Like hell it didn’t, Chase thought, studying the wealth of emotion on her face.

“I’m late, anyway,” Bridgett continued.

“For what?” Chase asked curiously. And that was when he saw it. The big fat emerald ring.

Bridgett thought she was past the third degree when it came to Chase and her beaux. Apparently not. He still felt—wrongly so—that he had the right to comment on the men she chose to date. Not to mention the gifts they might have or have not chosen to give her.

“What,” Chase demanded, his handsome features sharpening in disapproval as he looked down at the emerald ring glittering on the ring finger of her right hand, “is that?”

Bridgett had an idea what he was going to say. She didn’t want to hear it. Deliberately misunderstanding where he was trying to go with this, she lifted her shoulders in an indifferent shrug. “I can’t buy myself a ring?”

Chase’s sexy slate-blue eyes narrowed even more. He took a step closer and said, very low, “I know you, Bridgett. You invest in real estate, growth stocks, a car that will go a couple hundred thousand miles before it quits. You don’t spend thousands of your hard-earned cash on baubles. Someone gave you that very pricey emerald-and-platinum ring.”

Someone he apparently already didn’t like, even though he had yet to find out who it was. “So what if it was a gift?” Bridgett shot back just as contentiously. Expensive as the ring was, she knew that to a man like Martin, it was just like penny change. Martin never did anything in a small or inconsequential way. When they dined out, it was at the very best restaurants. They drank the rarest, most expensive wines. He didn’t just send her roses. He gave her vases of the most exquisite orchids or lilies. Once, he’d flown her to Europe for the weekend, simply because he wanted her to see Paris in the springtime. Initially, of course, she’d tried to discourage such lavish gifts. Now she knew that was just the way Martin and everyone else in his family lived.

Chase braced a hand on the wall just beside her head. “I want to know who gave you that ring.”

Bridgett refused to let him intimidate her with his I’m-in-charge-here body language. Honestly, she didn’t know how Chase did it! She had been back in Charleston less than twenty-four hours and already Chase—the bad boy of the Deveraux clan—was already under her skin. Big time.

She angled her chin at him defiantly “I don’t have to answer you.”

“Darn it, Bridgett. You know how much I care about you.”

Cared, Bridgett thought, but didn’t love. Would never love. At least not in the way she had once wanted desperately for Chase to love her. Now she knew better, of course. Chase might have once considered her his very best buddy and partner in mischief, but when it had come to dating, he had always chosen others. At first she had thought—wrongly—it was just because he was romancing women from his own social class. That theory had been blown out of the water when he became engaged to Maggie Callaway, who was from the same working class background as Bridgett. Then she had known that social status was not the reason Chase didn’t pursue her. He simply wasn’t attracted to her. Not in that way. So she had put any lingering hope of a romance between them aside and kept her distance from Chase as much as possible. She had known then what she had to remind herself of now. Chase protected her and watched out for her in a familial sort of way. There was nothing the least bit romantic in his feelings toward her—and never would be.

Silence fell between them. “Your mother didn’t tell me you were engaged,” Chase said finally when she didn’t respond to him.

“That’s because I’m not yet,” Bridgett explained with a great deal more patience than she felt.

He dropped his arm, stepped back until he was once again leaning against the opposite wall of the first-floor powder room, his six-foot-two-inch frame dwarfing her own five-foot-seven one a little less. “But you’re close,” Chase asserted unhappily, still studying her face.

“I think we’re definitely headed that way. Yes.”

Abruptly Chase looked as if he had received a sucker punch to the gut. Again Bridgett warned herself not to take his reaction personally. Chase was probably just suffering the pangs any “brother” would have about seeing his “sister” married off.

“Who’s the lucky guy?” Chase asked finally in a rusty-sounding voice.

Bridgett tried not to notice how handsome Chase looked in the soft lighting of the room. After all, it wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to his stunning good looks. She had grown up looking into those long-lashed, slate-blue eyes of his and knew full well they were the color of the ocean on a stormy day. She had committed to heart the rugged planes of his face, the square jaw, the high cheekbones and wickedly sexy smile. Okay, maybe his shoulders did look a little broader and stronger, his abdomen a little flatter, since the last time she had seen him. Maybe he was a little more tan and rough around the edges. But the ensemble of pleated khaki shorts, loose-fitting short-sleeved shirt and sneakers was the same. Chase wanted people to see him as a slacker when she knew full well he was anything but. Deep down he was as ambitious and determined to succeed in business as she was, if not more so.

“The guy?” Chase prodded again when Bridgett failed to answer his query. “The ring giver does have a name, doesn’t he?”

Bridgett flushed. “Martin Morganstern.”

Chase shook his head and looked all the more disappointed and distressed. “Not the art-gallery guy over on King Street,” he said, groaning.

“One and the same,” Bridgett confirmed, unable to help the haughty edge that came into her voice. “And you needn’t speak of him with such derision.”

Chase rolled his eyes. “Man, Bridgett! That guy is old enough to be your father!”

Bridgett forced a droll smile as she allowed, “Only if I were sired when he was thirteen.”

“Which makes him…?”

Bridgett pushed aside her own lingering uneasiness that there was something just not right about her and Martin, despite the fact that on paper, anyway, when it came to all the relevant facts, they looked very good as a couple. “He’s forty-five.”

“To your thirty-two.” Chase blew out a gusty breath and slammed his hands on his hips. “The guy’s too old for you. Way too old.”

Bridgett shrugged. She didn’t know why, exactly, but Chase was making her want to punch him. “You’re welcome to your opinion,” she told him icily. “Fortunately,” she said as she tried to step past him once again, “I don’t have to abide by it.”

Chase smiled as if he had an ace up his sleeve and once again stepped to block her way. “What does your mother think about that ring?” he asked smugly.

Another alarm bell went off in Bridgett’s head. Ignoring the probing nature of Chase’s gaze, she said stiffly, “She hasn’t noticed it yet.” She’d been too busy in the kitchen.

Chase immediately had an “Aha!” look on his face.

Bridgett grimaced all the more. “I was about to show her when you and Gabe started brawling.”

Chase smirked. “Likely story.”

Not for the first time in her life, Bridgett wished Chase didn’t know her so well. “I’ll do it later,” she said.

Chase ran a hand along the light stubble on his jaw and continued to regard her smugly. “I think you’re stalling.”

Bridgett squared her shoulders as if for battle. “I am not.”

Chase lifted his dark brow in silent dissension. “Your mom won’t approve of you accepting such a lavish gift from him,” he predicted matter-of-factly.