Page 93

“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.”