Bianca’s eyes narrowed. “It is not funny.”
“We were on a base one time,” Chay said, “and he was inspecting the troops. And he pulled a guy out of line because his shirt was wrinkled. ‘Have you no respect for your image as an American soldier?’ he said. Something like that, anyway. And all the time—all the time… Honey. I’m sorry. I know the fact that he’s such a whatever-you-called-him isn’t funny to you, but—”
“I called him uno pezzo di merda. A piece of shit. And, no, nothing about him is funny to—to—”
Bianca bit her lip. Then she burst into laughter, but it didn’t last long enough for him not to see tears forming in her eyes.
Chay got up, went around the table, knelt beside her and drew her into his arms.
She sighed, looped her arms around his neck and slid from her chair to the floor so he could hold her.
“He was the world’s worst father,” she said, “and I’m still coming to terms with that.”
“Sorry, baby. If we’re giving out medals for the world’s worst, my old man wins.”
She leaned back in his arms. “Impossible.”
“Okay. My old man is a close second. How’s that?” He kissed her. Lightly. Gently. “And, trust me, I’m still coming to terms with that myself.”
“What was he like? Your father?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“You’re wrong. I want to know everything about you, Lieutenant. And just remember—I outrank you by way of my father, so I have the right to demand that you tell me what I want to know.”
Chay laughed. “That’s it. Hate the old man, but pull rank on me anyway.”
She smiled. “Absolutely.”
“Okay. What do you want to know?”
“You and Tanner grew up in the same town?”
“We grew up on the same reservation.”
“You were best friends.”
“Asshole buddies.” Chay grinned. “Though not by today’s terms.”
Bianca smiled. “Blood brothers.”
“Yeah. Literally. We did that cut-your-palms, let-your-blood-mingle thing when we were eleven or twelve.”
“And Tanner’s mother died when he was in his teens.”
Chay’s grin faded. “My mom outlasted his, but not by much.”
Bianca’s gaze swept over her lover’s face. The conversation had taken a swift downward turn.
“Chayton,” she said softly, “I was joking when I said you had to tell me all about your childhood. If you don’t want to talk about this…”
He never did. Nobody but Tanner knew anything about him that dated back before he’d joined the SEALs and then STUD, but he wanted Bianca to know more.
Suddenly, he wanted her to know the worst.
She might run once she did, but he had to take the chance.
“My father was white,” he said. “That’s where I get the green eyes and the cleft chin. Thank God, that seems to be all of him that I have. He met my mother at a bar in Pierre. A month later, she was pregnant. Her old man—my grandfather—was tough. He confronted my father and demanded that he marry my mother.” Chay shrugged. “Seven months after that, I popped into the world.”
His tone was light, almost carefree, but Bianca knew there was nothing light or carefree about his story.
“And that’s why you were concerned you’d made me pregnant,” she said gently.
“Yes. No. Maybe. The thing is, a man should be responsible for his actions.”
Bianca ran the tip of her index finger down his nose.
“Well, your father was.”
“The hell he was. He married my mother with the proverbial shotgun pointed at his head. The truth is, my grandfather should have stayed out of the situation.”
“Because?”
“Because he died when I was a baby, and with nobody riding his ass, my father reverted to the piece of shit he was. He drank. He whored. He left us alone for months at a time. I hardly recognized him until I was five or six. He just wasn’t there often enough to make a lasting impression.” Chay’s mouth twisted. “But he remedied that quick enough.”
“Why do I get the feeling he didn’t remedy it in a good way?”
“He had what my mother insisted on calling fast hands. What that meant was that he was good at beating her. And me. The one good thing that happened was that as I got older, she got less of it. I became his favorite target. I took it. What else could I do? I took it and took it, and then I began telling myself a day would come when I wouldn’t take it anymore.”
Bianca’s throat constricted. “And,” she said softly, “you were right and that day finally came.”
Chay nodded. “He’d been gone for months. I was seventeen, just naïve enough to start to think he was out of our lives for good.”
“But he wasn’t.”
Chay leaned his forehead against hers
“Coach called me into his office after school.”
“The Grizzlies coach.”
Why did the fact that she’d remembered the name of his high school football team make him so happy?
“Yup. Coach Reed. He told me the University of Colorado was interested in me. That they’d sent him a letter. Well, me and Tanner—which made it even better because we were tight. We hunted together. Fished together. He’d pledged himself to the Sun Dance, but it took another couple of years before I did too.”
“What’s the Sun Dance?”
“A very old Sioux ceremony. You fast, cleanse your body, and kind of open your mind. Then the elders hook you up to a pole and you dance around it until you pull free or collapse. Sounds barbaric, I guess, but it’s a very spiritual experience.”
“I noticed two scars on your chest. Are they from the dance?”
He nodded. Hesitated. And said, in a voice so low she could hardly hear him, “I danced after I almost killed my father.”
He heard her swift intake of breath, felt the sudden stillness in her. But she stayed right where she was. In his lap. In his arms.
“If you almost killed him,” his Tigress said, very calmly, “then he must have needed killing.”
So he told her everything.
The years of beatings. Of incredible brutality. Of the ugly competition, the one-sided fiery jealousy that was his father’s indulgence.
“He used to work odd jobs on nearby ranches, but most ranchers had given up hiring him years before—they couldn’t count on him showing up. He used to saddle-break horses, too, but they stopped using him for that because he whipped the horses that didn’t learn as fast as he wanted. Once I was old enough, I got jobs doing the same things. Odd jobs. Mending fences. Saddle-breaking horses, but without whipping the crap out of them. I worked hard and I got most of the jobs I went after.”
“You were a good kid,” Bianca said softly.
“Not according to my old man. By then, he was spending more time living with us, mostly because he had no income. People knew he was a mean drunk and nobody wanted to have him around. But he blamed me. He said it was because I badmouthed him, that I lied and cheated him out of work.”
“And he took his anger out on you?”
Chay nodded. “It was bad, but I told myself I just had to stick it out. Another year and I’d be gone. College was only a dream because I didn’t have the money, but I figured on enlisting in the service.” He paused. “Then that scholarship letter arrived and changed everything.”
“I can imagine.” She smiled. “It meant you could get away.”
“Yes. But that wasn’t the change I meant.”
“No?”
“No,” Chay said. “I came home all excited that day. My father was sitting in the door of our trailer, waiting for me. One look at his face and I knew it was going to be bad. I could see the rage in his eyes, smell the booze on his breath
. And I could see two other things. He had his belt wrapped around the knuckles of his right hand. I’d felt the bite of it before—it was wide and heavy, and it had brass studs embedded in the leather.”
Bianca’s eyes locked onto his. “Oh, Chayton,” she whispered.
“The second thing I saw was the letter. Coach had forwarded a copy to him.” Chay gave a bitter laugh. “Talk about mistakes…”
“What happened?”
“My father stood up. He spat on the letter and tossed it at my feet. He said he’d played football too. And that I was—I was shit compared to him, and how had I cheated my way into a scholarship offer? I should have kept my mouth shut—but I didn’t. I got angry. I told him I’d never cheated on anybody or anything in my life.”
“Don’t, sweetheart,” Bianca said softly, and she pressed a light kiss to his lips.
“He came at me. He slammed me in the face and I went down. ‘Get up,’ he said, and I got up. He put me down again. I got up. He kept hitting me and I kept getting up and then I heard my mother screaming. ‘Stay down, Chayton,’ she said, ‘for God’s sake, stay down.’ But I got up and she came running down the steps and I saw her and he spun around and punched her in the face and she went down, unconscious, and I—I went crazy.”
Bianca wrapped her arms around her lover. She felt his hot tears on her throat.
“This last deployment, I killed a boy. I had to kill him. He had a bomb and he was going to blow up my men. I know I did the right thing, but for a second I saw me, just a little bigger than that kid, my heart filled with a fury someone older and supposedly wiser had put there, and I knew that the kid was also filled with a fury someone older and supposedly wiser had created…”
Bianca kissed him.
And kissed him.
Chay whispered her name and then she was all around him and he was driving deep into her, and there was nothing but the two of them in the entire universe.
• • •
Hours later, as they lay in each other’s arms with the moon shining through the windows, Chay remembered something Bianca had said.
She had called him “sweetheart.”
He was a grown man.
He’d known a lot of women.
None had ever called him that. He’d have bolted if one had.
But he wasn’t bolting tonight.
He was gathering Bianca as close to him as he possibly could, until he felt her heart beating against his.
Until he drifted to sleep with his woman in his arms.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They went out for dinner.
Chay had figured Bianca could use a change of scene, a touch of normalcy after the last two days.
And, he had to admit, his plan wasn’t entirely altruistic.
They’d made love, but they hadn’t had a date. Not unless you counted the night in Santa Barbara, and he damn well wasn’t going to count that.
Aidan’s travel agent sister had given him a list of restaurants.
“A bunch of places,” she’d said happily. “Everything from where you can get the best pizza to where you can dine très elegant while getting the feel of New York.”
Chay hadn’t had the heart to tell her that elegant wasn’t his style, but he’d saved the list and while Bianca dried her hair, he looked it over, read the thumbnail descriptions Aidan’s sister had provided next to each, and picked one that sounded intriguing.
He phoned.
The maître d’ was pleasant, polite—and very sorry to say that they were fully booked.
“I’m sorry, Mister—Mister—”
“It’s Lieutenant. Lieutenant Olivieri. And hey, I understand. Talk about last minute…”
“Lieutenant? You’re in the service?”
“Right. Look, I don’t suppose you could recommend—”
“Isn’t this amazing. Lieutenant Olivieri? My assistant just this second slipped me a note to tell me that we’ve had a cancellation. For a prime table, right next to the water. Sound good?”
Chay laughed. “Sounds great.”
“Eight o’clock, Lieutenant?”
“That’s fine. Thank you.”
“No, Lieutenant. Thank you. See you at eight, sir.”
“At eight,” Chay said, and disconnected.
Bianca sneaked under his arm. “Look at that smile! Something nice just happen?”
Chay swung her towards him. “We just snagged a table at a restaurant Aidan’s sister says we’ll love.”
Bianca raised her eyebrows. “Aidan’s sister?”
“A guy in my unit. The sister’s a travel agent.”
“What’s this restaurant called?”
“The Boathouse. It’s on the lake in Central Park.”
“Oh, I’ve wanted to go there! It’s supposed to be so pretty.”
“Pretty like you,” Chay said, linking his hands at the base of her spine.
“Prettier. It’s on a lake, remember? They say there are ducks in the water. And turtles. And frogs, too.”
“Ducks and turtles and frogs?” Chay’s expression turned serious. “Well, that might change things. I mean there’s you—and then there are those frogs… Ouch!”
“You deserved that slug, Lieutenant. Actually, you deserve even more.”
Chay gathered her in. “Damn right I do,” he said softly.
It was good that their reservation wasn’t until eight, because they were very busy for the next fifteen or twenty minutes.
• • •
There was an entrance to the park a block from their hotel, and the concierge told them that the restaurant was perhaps a five or ten minute walk from the entrance.
Chay started to ask the doorman to call a cab, but Bianca stopped him.
“It’s a beautiful night,” she said. “Let’s walk.”
They walked slowly, his arm around her, her head tilted against his shoulder.
There were other couples in the park. Bianca looked at the women and wondered if they felt as happy as she did—and then she wondered how she could be happy after the ugliness of the morning…
“Rule for the evening,” Chay said softly. “Only good thoughts permitted.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “You have a lot of rules, Lieutenant.”
“That’s one of the privileges of being an officer.”
He was teasing her, and she knew it.
But the strange thing was that she didn’t mind his having rules. She’d didn’t mind handing over control to him.
It was what happened when you started to care for someone. To fall for someone, Bianca thought, and the sudden realization burned its way into her heart.
• • •
The maître d’ greeted Chay like an old friend.
“Thanks again,” Chay said.
The guy grinned. “I have a brother in the Marines.”
Chay grinned back at him. “I’ll try not to hold that against you.”
Their table was, just as the maître d’ had said, at the railing overlooking the water. He seated them. The busboy filled their water glasses, brought them a basket of warm breads, a little dish of butter, and two menus.
They left the menus untouched.
They were too busy looking at each other.
Chay kept thinking how happy Bianca looked.
And how happy he felt.
He loved watching her, loved listening to her, loved being with her. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this content.
And complete.
That was how she made him feel. Complete.
He told her things he’d never told anyone else. Little things, even foolish things. Like how a course he hadn’t wanted to take and a professor he hadn’t liked introduced him to a new world.
“I discovered books. Until my freshman y
ear in college and English 101, pretty much the only reading I’d ever done was—”
“Playboy.” She laughed at his look of surprise. “I grew up with two brothers, remember? Besides, why waste time on a book when you could be outdoors, getting into trouble?”
Chay reached for her hand and wove his fingers through hers.
“I’m gonna have to keep that in mind. That you’re an expert on guy behavior.”
I’m not, she almost said. I’m not an expert on men at all. I’m certainly not any kind of expert about this—about wanting to spend the whole day and night with a man, wanting to be able to reach out and touch him, wanting not just to be in his bed but in his arms…
“Sweetheart? Where’d you go just now?”
“I was—I was wondering what happened in English 101 that changed your mind about books. Did you fell in love with a special one the way I fell in love with Mary Poppins?”
“Who?”
She laughed. “Never mind. Just tell me more about that English course.”
“Well, I walked in and there was this guy at the front of the room. A stereotypical academic nerd.”
“Watch what you say about us nerds, Lieutenant.”
“No offense, Doc.” Chay grinned. “Besides, you’re not a stereotypical anything.”
That made her smile.
“I’m not?”
“You’re not. In fact, you’re one surprise after another.”
“Is that good or bad?”
He hesitated. Something changed in the way he was looking at her.
“It’s perfect,” he said in a low voice. “You’re perfect. One hundred and ten percent perfect.”
Chay could hear his heart beating. What would happen if he pushed back his chair, went around the table to Bianca, asked her to say to hell with dinner…
A hand holding a printed sheet of paper appeared under his nose.
“Did you want to see the wine list, sir?”
“The wine list,” Chay said carefully. He looked up at the hovering waiter and reminded himself that throttling another human being for asking a polite question wasn’t something most people would find appropriate. “Just bring us a bottle of— Sweetheart? Malbec? A chardonnay? Something else?”
Privilege: Special Tactical Units Division: Book Two Page 17