Bad Boys of the Night: Eight Sizzling Paranormal Romances: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set

by Jennifer Ashley

  “You cooking something?” he asked.

  She shook her head and pursed her lips.

  “Who is?”

  “No one.”

  He hated that the subdued answer made him feel like ants were crawling over his skin. “You don’t smell that? It’s roast.”

  “I smell it.”

  A nervous tick twitched her eye, cracking her airtight facade. Surprised at how it shook his composure, Reilly passed her on the way to the kitchen. Though the rest of the house had finally cooled somewhat, it was warm in here, the scent of roasting beef overpowering. Suspiciously, he opened the oven door. No hot blast and thick aroma wafted out. The oven was cold and empty.

  There wasn’t a Crock-Pot tucked away on the counter, either. Nothing to explain the mouthwatering scent anywhere.

  “Nathan.” Chloe’s voice came from behind him, almost scaring him out of his skin.

  His spun to find her standing at his back. “Jesus, quit creeping up on me like that.”

  “It started about an hour ago,” she said. “I thought I was the only one who noticed it.”

  “This is an old building. Maybe the rain is letting some of its odors out.”

  Chloe almost smiled. “You’re quite accomplished at justifying things that can’t be explained.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve had some practice.”

  “If you’re hungry, Bill was kind enough to bring back chicken. It’s in the refrigerator.”

  “Thanks.”

  Reilly opened the fridge and saw a two king-sized buckets filled with fried chicken on the top shelf. He recognized the logo on the side. Diablo Springs was too small for a big chain grocery, but the market down the street had a deli and made great fried chicken. He snagged a piece, grabbed a paper plate and napkin from the holder on the counter, and went out to one of the tables. Chloe trailed him like an annoying toddler at a family reunion.

  “May I talk to you for a moment?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question or do I have a choice?”

  “Are you always so rude when you’re frightened, Nathan?”

  “I’m not frightened. And don’t call me Nathan.”

  “I’m sorry. I know it bothers you, but when I see you, the name is always in your mind. Did you know that?”

  Reilly finished the chicken, wiped his hands and fingers, and leaned back in the chair, resigned to her conversation.

  “You hate it because it was your father’s name and you hated him.”

  A deck of cards sat in the middle of the table. He reached for it and began to shuffle.

  “And now you resent me, because I’ve made you see it.”

  Eyes narrowed, he looked up, and his gaze locked with hers. “Chloe, what do you want?”

  “I want to know when your brother Matthew began to change.”

  She stood poised on the other side of the table, as though she might run if the conversation turned south, which it very well could. She looked frailer than she had just last night. And older. So much older.

  “You okay, Chloe?” he asked gently.

  She gave him a weak smile. “The last time I was here, I was younger and stronger. I was able to block them out.”

  “Them?”

  “The voices. Diablo Springs is full of voices, and they all want to be heard.”

  He started shuffling again, thinking about that. “You talking to dead people, now?”

  “Since I was a little girl and my mother died.”

  He stood up and moved to the bar in a futile search for some booze.

  “Try the panel against the wall,” Chloe said, pointing.

  Reilly moved to the end of the bar and pushed the strip of wall near the corner. He heard a soft snick and the panel popped open, revealing a small storage room he’d have never noticed otherwise. Inside, three shelves of dusty bottles stood in wait. Reilly pulled out a bottle of amber twelve-year Macallan scotch and smiled.

  “Join me?” he asked Chloe.

  “How could I refuse.”

  He grabbed two glasses from the kitchen and sat down at the table. After they’d both savored the burn for a moment, Chloe said, “Your brother ... He wasn’t always such a monster, was he?”

  Way to kill the joy. Sighing, he said, “No.”

  “But you never understood what happened to him, did you?”

  “I understood fine. Life happened. My dad happened.”

  “And when he killed your father ...”

  Reilly downed the rest of his scotch and poured another. His heart was doing a tango in his chest, and his hands felt clammy. Chloe stared back at him nervously, like a rabbit in an open field.

  “Matt didn’t kill our dad.”

  He heard her swallow, but her words didn’t hold the same sense of fear her expression did. “Covering up for him has always been a way of life for you, Nathan. You lied to protect him, even though he still had blood on his hands.”

  “I didn’t always protect him.”

  “But you were the good son. Then you were the good brother. Now it’s time to be a good man. Be a hero, Nathan.”

  He snorted. “You and Bill been out in the back getting stoned, Chloe?”

  She gave him another of those leveling looks. He wanted to stride out of the room. He wanted to get in the Jeep and plow through the river-filled roads until he could go no farther. But he couldn’t make his legs and feet cooperate. Just as she’d made him bite at her bait and come here, she’d hooked him with her leading questions.

  “My father was an abuser, too,” she said. She walked over to the picture hanging above the mantel and pointed at it. Each step seemed to cause her pain. How had she aged so much in so little time? Reilly found himself glancing around, looking for Bill. If she keeled over, he wanted Bill around, but for once, Chloe Lamont was alone.

  “That is my grandfather,” she said, pointing to a man who stood just at the corner of the picture.

  The statement blew every other thought out of Reilly’s head. Her grandfather? Why would Carolina Beck have a picture of Chloe’s grandfather hanging in her house? He came to stand beside her, staring at the tidy man in the pinstriped suit standing just shy of the background. His disbelief turned sour as his gaze shifted from the sepia print to the woman beside him.

  She watched him as he noted the similarities she shared with the white man in the portrait. The shape of their faces, the small, tucked ears, the pointed chin, the piercing gleam in their eyes.

  “He’s my grandfather.” Her voice dipped. “And he is also my father.”

  “What?” Reilly asked. “He can’t be both ...”

  But even as he said it, Reilly realized that he was wrong. It was possible that he could be both grandfather and father, it just wasn’t right.

  “You ask yourself, how could a man violate his own daughter? The answer is worse than you can imagine. In his mind, my mother was an animal, as was her mother. Animals do not have the rights of parentage. They have no rights at all.”

  Reilly didn’t know what to say, but she didn’t seem to expect a response.

  “He was old when he came for me. But his hate and anger had turned him into something stronger than a man half his age.”

  It took a moment for Reilly to register what she’d just said. He was old when he came for me. The bastard had impregnated her grandmother, her mother, and he’d gone after Chloe, too? It was sick beyond his understanding, but he didn’t think for a moment that she was lying. The raw shame in her voice was too real.

  “I was a young woman, still in school when it happened. It killed my mother, knowing what he’d done. Eventually, she died of her despair.”

  A logical part of Reilly wanted to argue that someone couldn’t die of despair, but the night he’d stood in front of the mirror and shaved his head, his own anguish had felt great enough to kill him, hadn’t it?

  “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

  “Hear me out. Please.”

  Reluctantly, Reilly nodded.

&
nbsp; “For generations my family has told stories about this man.” She pointed at the picture, revulsion on her face. “We thought he was dead once, but it was merely a fool’s hope. My mother believed he couldn’t be killed and that he haunts our family still. Carolina Beck also held this belief.”

  Reilly looked at the picture and back at Chloe. He didn’t know what to say.

  “My grandmother lived in this very place. Here, at the Diablo.”

  Her pause felt more than weighted. It felt of things he couldn’t understand, things she didn’t want to explain. The heaviness of it filled the stillness until it seemed like sand, shifting, but so dense it threatened to crush them.

  “Why are you here, Chloe?”

  She moved back to the table and sat down with an exhausted sound. Age hunched her shoulders and darkened the crescents beneath her eyes. When she spoke, it wasn’t to answer his question.

  “Even before I understood what there was to be afraid of, I knew my mother was frightened. It was in the way she’d watch the horizon, the way she’d check the locks after dark during a time when people didn’t lock their doors. It was in the shadows of her eyes. We were like animals in a cage, trapped by our own fears. Our family stories told of how we’d tried to get away from him and how he always tracked us down and made us pay.” She looked at him. “Do you know what my mother’s name was? Misery. They named her Misery. She was a child born of pain, and my grandmother wanted her to always remember that.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Sometimes sense cannot be made from violence. You, of all people, should know that.”

  He nodded in acknowledgment, but he couldn’t quite meet her steady gaze. Quietly, he splashed more scotch into both their glasses. Chloe gave him a weak smile and downed hers.

  “He still plagues my family. I believe he plagues Gracie’s, as well.”

  “Plagues? He can’t still be alive?”

  “Can’t he?”

  “If he was old when you were a girl, then he’d be over a hundred, hundred and twenty by now.”

  “His body, yes. Not his spirit.”

  “You’re talking about ghosts, again.”

  “There is another world, Nathan Reilly Alexander, and it exists within our own. My gift, my curse, is that I feel the spirits around me. Sometimes I can help them find the resolutions they seek. Sometimes I can only suffer alongside them.”

  He glanced at the kitchen. He could smell the potatoes and carrots roasting alongside the meat, now.

  “I have visions. Terrible visions. I saw the murder of Gracie’s mother.”

  “She fell into the springs, Chloe. Hardly murder.”

  “In the middle of the night? Why would she be out there, in a place everyone in this town fears?”

  He said nothing. More disturbed than he cared to admit, he glanced at the picture again. He could feel Chloe tightening the threads of her tale, and he knew that somehow he’d end up at its center.

  “Diablo Springs has been haunted by evil for years, Nathan. Your people talk of the Dead Lights as if they’re some phenomena of steam and moonbeams. But no one mentions all the bodies in those caverns. You know there are many.”

  He knew. It was probably chock-full of dead bodies. But evil spirits ...

  “My, that roast smells delicious,” Chloe said.

  “Old houses smell. Damp brings it out.”

  “Of course. What else could it be?”

  He turned his back on the picture. “Cut to the chase, Chloe.”

  “Three months ago yesterday, my mother came to me in a vision.”

  She watched him closely, watched a reaction he couldn’t stop sweep across his face. Three months ago yesterday, Matt died.

  “Every night since, she has come. Last night she was joined by Carolina Beck. Nathan, your Gracie and her daughter are both in danger.”

  “Because of your visions?”

  “Because it’s true,” she cried, anger making her voice sharp. “Do you think I want to be here? I have tried to forget this horrible place my entire life.”

  The throb in her voice struck Reilly deep. Hadn’t he tried to forget Diablo Springs in the same way? Hadn’t he found a way to survive by wiping his memory of everything that had happened prior to his leaving here? It wasn’t that he forgot; it was that he didn’t choose to remember. And being back now was like peeling the scab off a festered wound.

  “I came because I want to stop seeing Diablo Springs. I’m an old woman. I want to know peace before I die. Now I ask you again, when did your brother change?”

  Reilly didn’t even have to think about it. Matt changed the night their father had beaten their mother to death. The night Matt had returned the favor.

  He wished it weren’t so easy to play the memory in his head, but something like that you never forgot. After their father was dead, he and Matt had shoved his body behind the wheel of his old Grand Prix and rigged it to drive right into the springs. For weeks after, every time he closed his eyes, he saw those taillights wink an instant before they plunged down into that pitch-black hole. He could still here the boom and screech of metal twisting.

  As they’d stood watching, the clouds had shifted and the moon broke free. Reilly had looked into his brother’s face then, and he’d seen it. He’d seen the change. As if some kind of exchange had been made. A deposit. A withdrawal. His dad for his brother.

  Reilly knew what came next. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop Chloe from prying deeper any more than he could have stopped that night from happening. He stood and strode to the window, staring out at the storm.

  He said, “Why are you asking me questions when you know the answers? Who wouldn’t change after what we saw, what we lived through?”

  “You didn’t.”

  “The hell I didn’t.”

  She braced herself against the back of a chair as she faced him. “I know what’s in your heart, Nathan. I know you yearn to remember your brother as a good man. You don’t blame him for your father’s death. The law was willing to believe your story; this town was willing to turn a blind eye to what was obvious because they knew your father and they’d done nothing to help you boys or your mother against him. But after that ... after that, Matt changed. He wasn’t a monster before, but he became one, and you couldn’t protect him anymore. Wouldn’t you like to know why? Wouldn’t you like to release his spirit from the guilt of this world? Wouldn’t you like to release yourself from the feelings of failing him?”

  Reilly swallowed around a lump of emotion. He didn’t answer. He didn’t move a muscle. He couldn’t.

  “Do you know why your father beat your mother?”

  “Because he could.”

  “Yes, because he owned her. And nothing in this world would ever change that. If she’d left him, he’d have followed. No matter where she went, he would have found her.”

  Reilly stared at a point over her shoulder, fighting to keep the tide of his feelings from spilling over. Spilling out.

  “My grandfather felt the same about these women,” she said, gesturing to the picture again. “He still does. You’ve recognized the woman in the middle, haven’t you? You see the resemblance between her and Gracie. She’s Gracie’s great-grandmother, Ella.”

  “If you say so.”

  “She’s the one he wants.”

  “Well, that should make it easy then. She’s dead, he’s dead. Let him have her.”

  The look on Chloe’s face made him regret the words as soon as they were spoken. “Would you condemn your brother’s soul to hell so easily?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. He supposed his expression was answer enough. If he could save Matt’s soul, he’d do whatever it took.

  “There are only women in the Beck family. You’ve noted this, I’m sure. Each generation is another chance for my grandfather to have his precious Ella.” Hatred flashed across her face. “He lured Gracie’s mother to the springs. He lured her daughter there, too. Your daug
hter.”

  His daughter. On the heels of the thought came a rush of protectiveness that stunned him.

  “I told you last night, you are part of the story. And I gave you the excuse you needed to come. I’m here to end the cycle, Nathan. I’m here to send my grandfather to the other side.”

  “How?”

  “There are two reasons why he won’t leave. The first, as I’ve told you, is Ella and her lineage. He considers the Beck women his possessions. He wants them back.”

  “And the second reason?”

  “He’s searching for something. Something lost. Again, something he believes belongs to him.”

  “And what is that?”

  She looked guarded for a moment. “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  “That’s because you don’t believe what I’m telling you. You’re looking for a concrete thing that will explain it all in a tidy way.”

  Fair enough. “So how do you plan to accomplish the ending of this cycle?”

  “I want to do a séance, Nathan. Tonight. I need Gracie and Analise in my circle. And you. We are all connected in ways I don’t understand. My mother, your brother, Gracie, and now Analise. I have to know what happened. I need to see the past so I can protect against the future.”

  Reilly laughed. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Even if I believed everything you said—which I don’t—I’m not going to be part of a séance. And your kettle’s cracked if you think Gracie will stand for it.”

  “She will if you ask her.”

  “Which I won’t. There’s a lot of history between me and Gracie, Chloe. None of it inspires the kind of faith in me you’re imagining.”

  Chloe’s smile was resigned. She shook her head and took a step away. Like magic, Bill chose that moment to appear, and Reilly had to wonder how long he’d been listening. Mr. Rogers chose that moment to make his way down the stairs, too, looking surprised to find them there. He was a shitty actor. He’d probably heard the whole damn thing. Suddenly royally pissed off, Reilly splashed more scotch into his glass and gave the caretaker a look that said, Open your mouth and lose some teeth.