Through the Night

by Janelle Denison

  While one part of her wanted to crawl into Chase’s bed and enjoy the rest of the night in his arms, she knew it was something she had to avoid at all costs. Touching him meant being inside his head, and after the intensity of what they’d just shared, she needed distance—physically and emotionally. There was no way she could share a bed with him tonight.

  With a plan in place, she changed into her pajamas—nothing seductive about those—then washed the makeup from her face and brushed her teeth. Feeling a tad bit more in control of herself and the situation, she left the safety of the bathroom and headed back out to face Chase.

  The light on the nightstand between their beds was on, and he was lying on his mattress, the covers pulled up to his gloriously bare and taut stomach, and she was fairly certain he was equally naked below the waist. His hands were tucked beneath his head in a very casual way, but there was no mistaking the heat in his eyes as he watched her.

  There was plenty of room beside him in the bed for her to join him. In fact, the sheets were deliberately pulled back in a way that invited her to do so. She made a beeline for her own bed and tossed the decorative pillows on the floor, all too aware of his gaze still on her.

  “Valerie, is everything okay?” he asked, his voice low and husky.

  No. Having sex with you just turned my well-ordered life upside down and inside out.

  “I’m fine,” she said, unable to look at him as she slipped into bed and burrowed under the blankets. She knew he didn’t believe her, and in order to soften the rebuff, she said, “I just prefer to sleep alone.”

  It was a huge lie, and she felt awful for rejecting him, but right now she had no choice because maintaining her distance was all about self-preservation.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  His understanding tone lacked the disappointment she’d expected, as if he knew she needed time to adjust. He knew her too well.

  “I’m here if you need me,” he added, then switched off the light and the room went silent.

  That was the problem, Valerie thought. She didn’t want to need Chase. For anything.

  As exhausted as Valerie was, insomnia plagued her. She spent most of the night tossing and turning, too many thoughts tumbling around in her head. And when she did finally succumb to sleep in the early hours of morning, her dreams were filled with intense, erotic images of her faceless lover and that intriguing tattoo that seemed to burn brighter than it ever had before.

  Chapter Ten

  The soft, sensual sounds of moaning woke up Chase. He was normally a light sleeper anyway, but hearing those sultry sighs coming from Valerie’s side of the room perked him right up, in more ways than one. His dick twitched and hardened, producing an impressive piece of morning wood with no immediate relief in sight.

  Another breathy groan and the rustling of the covers prompted Chase to glance toward Valerie’s bed to appease his curiosity. He’d heard her restless shifting throughout the night that told him she was having a difficult time sleeping, and somewhere along the way she’d kicked off the covers and now lay on her back, her dark, silky hair spread over her pillow in sexy disarray. Her back was arched, legs open, and knees slightly bent. Her fingers gripped the sheets at her sides, and she gasped softly, her body writhing as if she was in the throes of passion.

  Oh, man, she was having an erotic dream, and yeah, he’d like to think he was the one she was visualizing as her fantasy lover. Just watching her in the midst of being so incredibly aroused made him ache to give her the release she was clearly chasing. If she’d come to his bed last night, he would have had her pinned beneath him by now, his throbbing erection giving and taking pleasure and making whatever dream she was envisioning a reality.

  He reminded himself that Valerie hadn’t come to his bed for a reason, and for now he had to respect the boundaries she’d set, even if he didn’t like them.

  Unable to handle any more of her provocative exhibition, he rolled out of bed and pulled on his jeans from last night so he didn’t give her a rude awakening. It was time for them to get up, anyway. They needed to shower, get ready, and have breakfast before heading to the airport to catch their early flight to Florida. It was going to be a long traveling day, especially since they’d be losing three hours because of the time change from California to the East Coast.

  He stepped up to the edge of her bed and lightly touched Valerie’s arm. “Hey,” he said softly, gently, not wanting to startle her.

  She moaned again, and as he continued to stroke her skin, her head rolled to the side and her lashes lifted over slumberous eyes the color of rich, dark chocolate. A sensual smile curved her mouth, until she realized who was touching her.

  Eyes wide with shock, she frantically grabbed for the covers, her face flushing with embarrassment. “Chase,” she said, her voice a husky rasp of sound.

  He grinned, feeling just wicked enough to tease her. “Must have been some kind of dream you were having.”

  She tried to hide her mortification, and failed. “What makes you say that?”

  He lifted a challenging brow. Just because he’d decided to give her the space she seemed to need after last night didn’t mean he was going to start treating her with kid gloves when it came to their attraction. The last thing he wanted was any lingering tension between them. “Do you really want me to tell you what you were doing?”

  “No,” she muttered, not meeting his gaze.

  He bit back a chuckle. “Then don’t ask, because I’d be more than happy to enlighten you. In detail.”

  A hint of a smile made an appearance as she cast him a sidelong glance. “A gentleman wouldn’t have even mentioned it.”

  “I’ve never, ever claimed to be a gentleman,” he teased, glad to see that they were at least back to being playful with each other. In was a step in the right direction, anyway.

  He headed toward his overnight bag and pulled out a clean change of clothes. “Our private jet leaves in a few hours to Florida, so we should start getting ready. I’ll jump in the shower first real quick, and if you could order something up for breakfast, that would be great, and then the bathroom is all yours.”

  “Sure. I can do that,” she said, and reached for the room service menu on the nightstand.

  Chase was in and out of the shower and dressed with his hair dried in less than twenty minutes. While Valerie claimed the bathroom, he packed up his things and took his luggage out into the living room. Since he had some time to kill, he booted up his computer to check e-mails, and glanced at all the notes from yesterday’s conversation with the auction house and Tony that he’d left beside his laptop. The stack of papers looked as though it had been rifled through, and he frowned as a strange sense of unease trickled through him.

  Something wasn’t right. Something didn’t feel right, and as he turned his gaze to the entryway, something else caught his attention that he’d totally dismissed last night when he and Valerie got back to the suite. A standard-sized white envelope lay on the floor, but that wasn’t the problem since he’d been expecting the itinerary that Tony faxed over for him while he was out to dinner with Valerie. No, his issue had more to do with the placement of the envelope, and now, with his head clear, it stood out like a red flag and triggered every one of his internal alarms.

  The envelope was at least three feet away from the door. If someone had slipped the itinerary beneath the door, it would have slid only a few inches into the suite. And if a hotel staff member had used a key card to enter the suite, why wouldn’t they have left the envelope on a table, instead of dropping it on the floor?

  He walked over to the entryway and picked up the envelope. The front had his name and room number written on it. When he turned it over, he saw that instead of the flap being sealed, it was carefully peeled open, and now the flap was tucked inside the envelope. Clearly, someone had tampered with the envelope and contents.

  A knock on the door jarred Chase out of his pensive thoughts. Filing away his suspicions to sort out later, he
glanced through the peephole and saw a man dressed in a white waiter uniform. Whatever breakfast Valerie had ordered was here. He let the guy in, waited for him to set up the service cart, then signed off on the meal. Just as the waiter left, Valerie came out of the bedroom wearing a pair of denim jeans, a brown knitted top, and her dried hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  He smiled, determined to keep things amicable between them. “Good timing. Breakfast just arrived.”

  She returned his smile with one of her own, though her guarded gaze spoke volumes. “Good thing. I’m hungrier than I realized.”

  “You must have worked up an appetite last night … dancing.” He couldn’t resist teasing her.

  “I think you’re right,” she said, handling her reply with a convincing amount of aplomb. Reaching the buffet of food, she lifted the lid from a plate. “I ordered you a ham and cheese omelet with hash browns. I hope that’s okay?”

  “Perfect.” He picked up his plate, took it to the table, and placed the envelope on the stack of papers to deal with after breakfast.

  She joined him with her eggs Benedict and coffee. A few bites into their meal, she glanced at him, her gaze curious. “So, what was up with Angie last night at the club? Anything interesting happen with her while I was in the restroom?”

  Chase searched her eyes and while for the most part she seemed genuinely interested, he wondered if she’d been even a little bit jealous of Angie’s advances. Right now, she was guarding her emotions well, and it was hard for him to tell.

  He shrugged. “She’s having a hard time taking the hint that it’s over between her and me.” He ate a bite of his omelet, deciding to be completely honest with Valerie, because he had nothing to hide, and he didn’t want her to think that anything was going on with Angie behind her back. “Since we saw her and Russ in the lobby the other day, Angie has been calling and texting me. A lot.”

  “Oh,” she said quietly.

  Her soft one-word answer was enough to tell Chase that Valerie cared about his feelings toward Angie, and where she herself stood in the scheme of things. “I haven’t taken any of her calls, or answered her messages,” he said, needing her to know that. “And when she first came up to me at the club, she was angry that I’ve been ignoring her and she demanded to know why. I told her that she and I were over and I’d moved on, and that just set her off more.”

  Chase wasn’t about to go into details about how Angie had slandered Valerie and attacked her character with some pretty unscrupulous comments, which had really pissed Chase off. And as soon as he defended Valerie and made it clear to Angie that she needed to back off, she’d revealed a nasty, vindictive streak that included threatening him.

  “Then she must have seen you behind me, because she changed and started getting sexually aggressive with me.” He shook his head in disgust. “Trust me, it was all for show on her end to make you jealous.”

  “She’s quite the actress,” Valerie said, and took a drink of her coffee.

  “No, she’s a manipulative bitch, plain and simple.”

  Humor flickered in Valerie’s gaze. “I won’t argue with that.”

  Finished with his omelet, Chase reached for his laptop to check his e-mails, just to make sure Tony hadn’t sent him any updated information or messages before they headed for the airport. As soon as he saw the blacked-out screen and a breach-of-security message prominently displayed on the computer monitor, everything within him froze—before thawing with the heat of fury that coursed through him.

  “Fuck.” The expletive was fueled by shock and outrage. “Someone has been on my computer.”

  She appeared startled by his outburst, then confused. “What do you mean?”

  Jaw clenching and stomach churning, he turned the laptop around so she could see what it said. The words YOU HAVE BEEN LOCKED OUT glowed in bright letters on the screen and left only one way to bypass the safeguard. “In order for me to log on to my computer, I have it password protected—always. If the password is typed incorrectly three times in a row, it locks out the user and can be restarted only by a disk drive I have in my possession at all times. This is how my computer booted up this morning, so that means someone was in our room between the time we left for dinner last night and when we returned from the nightclub, and tried to access information on my laptop.”

  She frowned, her expression skeptical. “Are you sure?”

  “One hundred percent sure,” he said, and grabbed the envelope he picked up from the floor earlier to show Valerie. “This is the itinerary that Tony faxed over for me, and it was delivered while we were gone. I’m assuming a hotel staff member slipped it under the door, which is what they normally do, but the envelope was three feet away from the door. And it’s been opened. Meaning, someone took the envelope, checked the contents, then placed it back on the floor and didn’t think about where they put it down.”

  He watched her process what he’d just told her, knowing she was trying to come up with a logical explanation for everything. Except, there wasn’t a rational explanation beyond the one he’d already come up with.

  “Also, when I first walked out of the bedroom, I noticed that all those notes from yesterday’s discussions with Tony and the woman at the auction house had been messed with. Unless you did it?” There was no accusation in his voice, because he knew without an ounce of doubt that Valerie wasn’t responsible for the locked-out computer, the open envelope, or the disrupted papers.

  She shook her head, and her ponytail swung with the movement. “I haven’t touched anything.”

  “Exactly,” he said, making his point. “Which means someone else did.”

  “How could someone, other than hotel staff, have gotten into the room?”

  “Trust me, there are ways.” Chase wasn’t a thief, but he knew plenty of people who were crafty enough to find their way into anything if they wanted to badly enough. Hell, the Internet probably had step-by-step details on how to make it happen. “My guess is that it was Russ, who is fully capable of breaking and entering.”

  She still didn’t look completely convinced. “But why would he want to?”

  Because the guy was most likely after a bit of revenge. Chase might not have proof or evidence, but his gut intuition was strong enough for him to trust it. “Remember when I told you about Russ discovering how valuable the ivory cane top was after I won it at the auction?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, he was pretty pissed off about losing out on a big score.” That was an understatement. Russ was beyond infuriated and had vowed to get even. “That’s when I was still dating Angie. A few weeks after acquiring the cane top, I caught her on my laptop reading through my research notes on how there was another component to the cane, and just how much the completed piece was worth. She’s the reason I got the extra security put on my computer. I’m pretty sure once Angie got together with Russ, she told him all about what she’d found, and now he wants a piece of the pie, so to speak.” And that pie included something far more valuable than the cane itself.

  “Wow. I get it,” she said, finally understanding. “But breaking into someone’s room is pretty extreme.”

  “Not for someone who wants a little retaliation,” he said, certain that was what had motivated Russ’s actions.

  “True,” she agreed, and tipped her head to the side, her gaze hopeful. “But since your computer locked out on whoever tried to access the hard drive, they didn’t get any information, right?”

  “Just what’s on our itinerary for Florida, and my notes. So, basically, he knows where we’re heading next.” And Chase had no idea how far Russ would go to get what he believed ultimately belonged to him.

  “So, what do we do now?” Valerie asked.

  “The only thing we can do,” he said, matter-of-fact. “We proceed with caution and watch our backs.”

  * * *

  The flight to Florida was smooth and uneventful, as was the night Valerie and Chase spent at a hotel in Boca Raton—in separate b
eds. The following morning, Chase drove the SUV they’d rented for the day toward Jack Harrison’s home, located in the gated, exclusive community of Long Lake Estates for their 11 A.M. appointment to see the desk the man had displayed in his home.

  Currently, Chase was talking to Tony on the hands-free speakerphone in the vehicle, letting the curator know that they were about to arrive for their meeting. Chase told him to remain on standby, just in case the desk turned out to be the real deal. Once Chase was able to verify the authenticity of the desk by touching the leg posts, Tony could then transfer payment to Harrison’s bank account so they could take immediate possession of the secretary.

  Chase hung up just as they arrived at the guard shack to the private estates. The man verified that Chase and Valerie were on a guest list for Harrison, and the gates opened and they were let inside. A few minutes later, they pulled up to one of the most gorgeous, monstrous homes Valerie had ever seen. The architecture was Mediterranean in style, with a huge circle drive paved with what looked to be imported natural stone, and the property was surrounded by lush, tropical landscaping.

  Side by side, they walked through a courtyard to the massive double mahogany doors at the front of the house. “So this is how the other half lives, huh?” She knew her voice was filled with awe, but she couldn’t help it.

  “I guess so,” Chase said, seemingly not so impressed as she was. “As amazing as the house is, it’s a bit too ostentatious for me. My tastes run toward simple and streamlined.” He rang the doorbell, which echoed inside the house.

  Valerie recalled Chase mentioning he owned a condo in Chicago, and wondered what his place looked like. Would it be warm and welcoming, or a bit sterile since he spent most of his time traveling? Her thoughts were cut off when an older, distinguished-looking man opened the door, wearing a blue-collared shirt, blue plaid pants, and golfing shoes.

  He greeted them with a friendly smile. “You two must be Chase and Valerie. I’m Jack Harrison.”