Through the Night (27 page)

She heard the thread of bitterness in his tone, and knew there was so much more to the story. He’d given her bits and pieces during their time together, and up to this point he’d shrugged off any conversation about his family as inconsequential. But she’d always known there was underlying tension and issues, and now she had a strong compulsion to hear the entire tale from beginning to end. “Did your father grow up here, in this town and in this house?”

“Yes, and he was an only child,” he said as he opened the sheers covering the windows, giving her view of a lovely backyard with a bird bath and trellises of blooming flowers. “From everything my father has ever told me, he hated living out here in the ‘middle of nowhere,’ as he put it. And he couldn’t wait to leave. The day after he graduated high school, he left for Georgetown University Law Center in D.C. on a full-ride academic scholarship and literally never looked back.”

She cocked her head at him, certain he was exaggerating. “Didn’t he come back home to visit?”

“No.
Never,
” he said, his tone adamant—and disgusted, too. “He pretty much blew off his own parents in pursuit of what he considered a better life. He married my mother, who was a socialite, and her father had all the right connections to put my dad on the fast track to becoming partner in a prestigious law office in Washington, and then eventually he went on to open his own firm.”

“Your father was very … ambitious,” she said, trying to find a polite phrase for the word
ruthless
as she strolled around the living room, taking in the simple décor. The framed photos above the mantel drew her attention and her curiosity, and she moved closer to take a look at them.

“Most times, he was ambitious to the exclusion of anything else,” Chase said, and beneath the surface of resentment there was an unmistakable layer of hurt, too. “Including having a kid that was less than perfect and wasn’t willing to bend to his ideals and expectations.”

“So you’re saying your brother and sister were perfect?” she asked drolly.

He came up to where she was standing by the fireplace and shrugged his shoulders. “They did everything my parents told them to do, and according to my shallow, superficial father, they’ve both made him very proud with the choices and decisions they’ve made, which were pretty much dictated by my parents. My brother is a surgeon, and my sister married a hedge fund manager, and they’re all tight with the wealthy, elite society we all grew up in,” he said, giving her a much bigger glimpse into his family’s life, which wasn’t a pretty picture.

“Now, me—I already told you I was the rebellious, reckless kid who pushed every boundary and rule there was, and instead of trying to channel all my energy into something constructive, my parents decided that the best way to deal with me was to ship me off to my grandparents, who barely knew me because my father’s relationship with them was so strained and pretty much nonexistent. I was sent here as a punishment so I’d come back home more appreciative of what I had and be more apt to conform, but that never happened.”

She recalled everything Chase had told her about his grandfather the night in San Francisco when they went to Scoma’s for dinner, and just how much Chase had bonded with the old man when he was younger and throughout his adult years. “Obviously, it was the best thing your father could have ever done for you.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” he said, and then a devilish grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Though my father was so pissed off when I inherited this entire place, instead of him.”

She frowned in confusion. “Why would he want it?”

“To sell it.” A muscle in his jaw clenched tight. “So there wouldn’t be any ties to the life he had prior to the one he’s living now, and to wash his hands of a past he didn’t want to be associated with.”

Without thinking, she reached out and took his hand in hers, just because it felt like the natural thing to do. His fingers curled around hers, and she couldn’t ever remember feeling such tenderness in such a simple gesture. “They left the house to the right person. You deserve it. Your grandparents obviously loved you very much.” And that love for him was evident within the house even now.

“I know,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “They gave me everything my parents never did, and I’m not talking about material possessions. They gave me the things that
mattered.
”

“I can see that,” she said, and smiled as she indicated the framed photos on the mantel, which told a story all their own. “Every one of these pictures speaks for itself.”

There was a shot of a much younger Chase and an older man she assumed was his grandfather, both of them holding fishing poles with Chase showing off a big fish hanging from a hook, a huge grin on his face. Another picture showed Chase hugging his grandmother, the sparkle in the other woman’s pale blue eyes stating how much she adored her grandson. There were a few others, and all expressed varying degrees of happiness, contentment, and the kind of unconditional acceptance Chase’s own parents hadn’t been able to give him.

He picked up a gold frame and gazed at a picture of himself holding a small box with buttons and dials that had seen better days. “This was taken after my grandfather took me to my first flea market when I was twelve and I found an old Crosley radio from the 1930s. I bought it for my grandmother with my own money, and my grandfather and I restored it for her for her birthday. In fact, here it is.”

After setting the frame back on the mantel, he moved to a wall of built-in shelves that held an abundance of different kinds of antique items and ran his hand over the surface of a beautifully refurbished radio, the rich wood now glossy from a lacquer finish. “One antique, and I was hooked,” he said with a grin. “My grandmother loved all this stuff, and I can’t bring myself to pack anything away. Every single item on these shelves has so much meaning behind it.”

It was so clear to Valerie how attached Chase was to this house and everything about it. He
belonged
here, even if he didn’t realize it yet.

“This case right here is all the Capone stuff my grandfather collected over the years,” he said, pointing to various items displayed on a shelf. “His own dad gave him this piece of wood parquet floor from Al Capone’s office at the Lexington Hotel that has his initials engraved into it. And this is one of Capone’s wooden cigar boxes,” he said, clearly enjoying his trip down memory lane.

She remembered him telling her how his great-grandfather worked at a speakeasy that Capone had frequented, and how the gangster had become a source of fascination for Chase’s grandfather. How fitting was it that Chase was now in pursuit of possibly one of the biggest treasures of all time related to Capone. She was certain his grandfather would have loved being a part of Chase’s latest adventure.

“How old were you when you had your first psychic incident?” she asked

“Eighteen.”

Surprise rippled through her. From what Valerie knew—from her own experience and reading articles on the subject—symptoms of extrasensory perception usually developed at an earlier age, and increased in frequency and strength as the person got older. “You didn’t know about your gift before then?”

He must have realized what she was asking and shook his head. “No. I wasn’t born with my psychometric abilities, and they didn’t develop over time. I know exactly when and how I got my gift. It was right after I was struck by lightning.”

She sucked in a sharp breath, certain she hadn’t heard him correctly.
“What?”

“I know it’s crazy, which is why I don’t tell many people that’s how I came to get my psychometric abilities. But I swear it is.”

She shook her head, still trying to process the fact. She’d read stories about how a bizarre incident in a person’s life could prompt ESP abilities, but knowing that Chase had been basically electrocuted had her in a state of awe. “I believe you, but I’m still stuck on you being struck by lightning. What happened?”

He absently rubbed a thumb along the line of his jaw, his gaze turning dark with memories. “Like I said, I was eighteen and I was back at home, playing football with some friends in an open field during a summer electrical storm. Stupid, I know, but I was a teenager, and me and my friends did dumb things that we thought were fun.”

And knowing how rebellious Chase had been as a teen, she wasn’t surprised to hear he’d thought he was invincible, too. And it was honestly such a
guy
thing to do to play football in a storm, with no care toward the consequences.

“Just as my best friend, Doug, tackled me to the ground, lightning struck him because he was on top of me. The bolt went through Doug, and me, as well, but he took the brunt of it and died.” His voice grew thick with pain and regrets. “The incident left me in a coma for a week, and when I woke up again, everyone thought I was back to normal.”

“Except you weren’t,” she said, and pressed her fingers to her lips. She could feel his misery and torment over his best friend’s death, and her heart ached for him.

He shook his head. “I thought I was okay, I even
felt
okay, until I was out with my grandfather a few months later at an antique auction and flashed for the first time ever on a very old hunting knife I picked up. It was from back in the 1800s, and I saw a man killing a deer and skinning it.”

She winced. “Okay, that would have completely freaked me out.”

He laughed. “It did. The vision scared the shit out of me because I thought I was having some kind of bizarre hallucination. Then I started touching other old things with historical significance, and the same thing happened. I found the more I focused and concentrated, the stronger the images were that I saw in my mind.”

“How did your grandfather react when you told him about your vision with the knife?” she asked.

“At first, he was skeptical, until we researched some of the other things I’d touched and had visions on, and we discovered that what I knew about the items was accurate and true. As strange as it might sound, it was as though the lightning strike had rewired me somehow.”

She already knew how his family viewed his gift, and she felt awful that he didn’t have his parents’ support during a very difficult time in his life. “I’m sorry about your friend Doug.”

“Yeah, me, too.” He moved away from the shelves of knickknacks and strolled over to the window to stare out at the gloomy afternoon weather.

She followed and stood next to him, watching as he struggled with some kind of internal tug-of-war, as if he wanted to tell her more but was having a difficult time doing so. Outside, the rain was coming down in sheets, and thunder rumbled in the distance, a suitable backdrop for everything Chase had just revealed.

Then he finally spoke. “Losing my best friend devastated me. For the longest time I carried around this heavy guilt, like it should have been
me
that was killed that day, and not him. And because of everything that happened with my parents disowning me, and losing Doug, I just adopted this whole
what the fuck
attitude.” He pressed his fingertips to the windowpane and shook his head. “I mean, I lived when I should have died, and so I just started living life recklessly. I’ve done every extreme sport you can imagine, because it was all about the adrenaline rush so I’d
feel
alive. I know I’ve put my life at risk more times than I can count because I cheated death once, and I figured I had nothing left to lose.”

He showed the classic signs of survivor’s guilt, and she hated that he’d spent so many years abusing himself emotionally and physically over something he had no control over. “You can’t keep tempting fate like that.” Because Valerie knew if he continued taking careless risks with his life, there would come a day when
fate
wouldn’t be so kind or forgiving.

“I know. But for years, I honestly didn’t care.” He turned his head and finally looked at her, his dark green eyes meeting and holding hers in a way that revealed how he truly felt about her. “Until now.”

The
until you
in his tone was implied, and she heard the words even though he hadn’t spoken them. The emotion in his gaze—the caring and affection that etched his strong, masculine features—made her breath catch in her chest because she instinctively knew that this whole journey had changed them both in ways she would never have imagined or believed possible.

A slow smile lifted the corner of his mouth, turning an intense moment into something lighter and more flirtatious. “I’m pretty sure the lightning strike that hit me, combined with the energy of your psychic abilities, is responsible for all that static electricity between us.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” Which brought up something else she was curious to know. “Where did the lightning strike you?”

His hands went to the front of his jeans. “How about I show you?”

He unzipped his pants, then tugged down the left side of his jeans and tight briefs to reveal the spot where he’d been struck—to the left of his flat abdomen, right where that sexy, muscular groove in his hip cut down to his groin.

“It hit me right here, way too close for comfort, but as you already know, everything still works just fine, thank God,” he said in an amused tone. “I had a special tattoo designed of two connected lightning bolts to represent Doug and myself, so I’ll never forget that day. Not that I ever could,” he said as he ran a finger over the black tribal art pattern.

Shock rendered her speechless, and his voice became a buzz in her ears as she stared at the tattoo that marked the place he’d been struck. Oh, God, his tattoo was the exact same one she kept seeing in her erotic dreams. Not two jagged lines as she’d thought, but rather two intertwined lightning bolts.

With her heart racing a mile a minute, it hit her that she’d never seen Chase completely naked. Their first time together he’d been behind her, and the second time, well, it had been all about her pleasure and he’d left his shorts on. But now, she could clearly see his tattoo, and there was no doubt in her mind that he was the one she’d been dreaming about for the past few months now, that her visions had been a premonition foretelling her future with this man.