Finder's Keeper (21 page)

He grinned, completely un-quelled. “By the way, that little waggle you do as you’re lining up your shot is insanely hot.”

She looked down at her ball, barely seeing it. “I do not waggle.”

“Oh, you waggle. Trust me.”

She forced her eyes to focus on the ball.

“So Peter…?”

“My ex.” His name returned the conversation to comfortable ground. Mia executed a flawless hole in one. “Talking about him won’t rattle me, so you can just accept your defeat now.”

“‘Never give up. Never surrender’.”

Mia snorted. “Did you just quote
Galaxy Quest
at me?”

“Did you just recognize a
Galaxy Quest
quote? I’m shocked. I thought you were all work and no play.”

“Hey, I play.” Though admittedly, she wasn’t much of a player when left to her own devices. Her
Galaxy Quest
savvy came more from Gina’s addiction to all things Alan Rickman than her own playful inclinations.

“With Peter?”

Honesty forced her to admit, “No. But Peter was even more work and less play than me.”

“How long were you two together?”

She shrugged, stepping away from the tee so he could line up his own shot. “Eight or nine years.”

Chase nearly spiked himself with his putter. “Seriously? You were with a guy for nine years and talking about him doesn’t rattle you even a tiny bit?”

“We were compatible—both professionally and personally. What we wanted lined up neatly. Then he got an offer for a position in Edinburgh and we parted ways. No fuss. No drama.”

“No drama. So you never loved him?”

Mia blinked, startled by the blunt question, delivered in his typically casual manner. “Not the way my family talks about love, no.”

“And there was no other great love? No one besides Peter?”

“I never really had time for relationships. My work came first. If you want to talk about love, I love my work.”

“Huh.”

He sank his ball, falling another stroke behind and Mia trailed him to the next hole before curiosity got the better of her. “What does
huh
mean?”

“I just had you pegged as being like me. I saw the lengths you went to trying to isolate yourself and keep those who love you at arm’s length—your family, even those research assistants of yours.”

“I don’t do that,” Mia protested, but the words hit a bit too close to home, stinging more than she wanted to admit.

“I saw myself in you. Figured you were burned by love. Gun-shy after being shot in the face by life.” He stepped back to give her access to the tee. “But your family is one marital success story after another and now you tell me you’ve never had the shit kicked out of you by a guy. I guess I just can’t understand how someone who has only ever seen the good side of love can be so terrified of it.”

“Why does it have to be fear?” she challenged. “Why can’t it just be reserve? Caution?” Or a complete lack of skill in the area of interpersonal matters.

“Could be. If that’s what you want to call it. But how does a woman grow up cautious in your family? Because, yes, you look too much like your father to have been switched at birth, but I can’t think of any other explanation.”

“Well if you find one, will you clue me in? Because I’ll be damned if I know.” She accidentally smacked herself in the shin with her club, wincing. “I’m awful at all that romantic nonsense. It’s not how I’m wired. The faulty Corregianni. Don’t you think I’ve heard that my entire life? All skepticism, no trust. If it seems too good to be true, it must be. I don’t isolate myself, they isolate me. That odd girl Mia. Why does she have to poke into everything? Why can’t she take anything at face value?”

She swung wildly and the green ball caromed off the edge and flew onto the next hole.

“Crap. Now you have distracted me.”

“And here I thought ricocheting off that hole was part of your ingenious strategy.”

Mia smiled in spite of herself, sobering as Chase waved to the teenagers on the hole she’d bounced onto and fetched the ball back, dropping it within inches of the hole. “That’s cheating.”

He grinned. “I did warn you.”

Mia watched him line up his own shot, admiring the bunch of muscles across his shoulders and the way his blazer rode up as he bent for the shot, revealing his bounce-a-quarter-off-it ass in his faded jeans. “Do you know how Gina met her husband?” she asked conversationally.

He shook his head without taking his eye off the pink ball. “Don’t think I caught that story.”

“On the very first day she had the watch, she went to a jewelry store, just to stand out front, wearing the watch and looking through the window at the engagement rings. She started thinking about the man she wanted to marry, this man who’d only ever existed in her daydreams. So she’s planning their perfect life together, when who should stroll by but Tony. He never walked that street on his way to work, but that day he took a detour. He takes one look at her face and says she looks like the kind of girl who needs a ring on her finger. Next thing you know, he asks her if she’ll go inside with him and let him buy her one, right then, just to keep warm until he could work up the gumption to propose to her.”

“Cute story.”

“So cute,” she agreed. “But it could never have happened to me. I would have hated the cheesy line. I would have looked for the catch. I would have told Tony where he could shove that engagement ring because I don’t believe in Prince Charming, but not Gina. No, Gina just fell into her husband’s arms and hasn’t left since. Gina is a true Corregianni.”

“So are you,” Chase insisted. “Who says all Corregiannis have to be believers?”

Mia snorted. “My entire family says.”

“Maybe.” Chase took another shot. “How are things at Casa Corregianni these days? Still in a furor over the adoption?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Things are still at DefCon One between Mama and Teresa. I think even my mother knows she’s being an idiot at this point, but getting her to stand down will probably take a United Nations resolution.”

Chase opened his mouth to reply, but the ringing of his cell phone cut him off. “Sorry. I thought I’d turned it off.”

“No, it’s fine.” Mia moved a few feet away to give him privacy, grateful for the interruption. Somewhere between holes seven and nine, things had gotten serious and she wanted the fun back.

Though by the look on Chase’s face, the phone call was not going to resurrect the fun. By the time he closed his phone, his expression was as dark as she’d ever seen it.

“Everything okay?”

“No. That was my property maintenance company. Apparently there’s a problem at my brother’s house.”

“Do you need to go now?”

He grimaced, his entire body tense. “Yeah. I should.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” She didn’t know what made her ask, but she knew as soon as she saw some of the tension in his shoulders relax that it had been the right thing to say.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.”

She picked up her golf ball and began weaving through the remaining holes to the exit. Turning back when she realized he wasn’t following. “Chase?”

He shook himself and started after her. “I’m coming.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Househunters: Supernatural

Opening the front door to his brother’s house was a shock. Not because memories rushed back to swamp him or anything melodramatic like that, but because he’d never really given a thought to what six years of neglect would look like.

It was like a scene out of
Great Expectations
. Dusty sheets covered the furniture that hadn’t been sent to Goodwill, visible only by the moonlight that filtered through the slats of the window blinds since the electricity was disconnected. Chase found himself looking around for Miss Havisham in her wedding dress.

For the second time in as many days, he felt ashamed of the way he’d handled—or rather completely avoided handling—his loss. If there was a right and wrong way to grieve, he’d picked the wrong way.

Then Mia’s hand slipped into his, her slim fingers cold as always, and the weight of his guilt lifted slightly. This was not the way he’d envisioned the evening ending. Watching Mia in her best naughty librarian get-up taking a stance and waggling her hips at every tee, he’d been playing putt-putt half hard and mentally mapping his personal trajectory toward her bed every time she calculated the angle on another shot.

And now they were at the last place he wanted to be and his libido might as well have taken a vacation to Peru. Best laid plans for getting laid…

He pushed open the door all the way and they stepped into the foyer. “Hello?”

A middle-aged man, his girth splitting the seams of his Levi’s and the bright green polo shirt with Luxor Management embroidered on the pocket, hurried out of the kitchen area to greet them. “Mr. Chase? I’m Gary Valdez with Luxor.”

“It’s Mr. Hunter, but just Chase is fine.”

Valdez consulted his clipboard and gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Whoops! Guess that’s a comma, isn’t it?” He rushed on, energetic to a degree that Chase found grating. “Sorry to bother you at night, Mr. Hunter, and I can assure you that Luxor does not make a practice of intruding upon the owners’ evenings, but during our initial inspection of the property we came across a few items that qualify as safety hazards and it is Luxor policy to address those issues without delay.”

“I gave my permission for you to do whatever you need to do.”

“Of course, Mr. Hunter, but in the cases of repairs costing more than two thousand dollars, our contract requires that we consult with the property owner.”

Chase’s hand tightened on Mia’s. She remained silent and steady at his side. “Two thousand dollars?”

Valdez grimaced, an exaggerated pantomime of sympathy that further shredded Chase’s nerves. “It’s the furnace, I’m afraid. We turned it back on yesterday to begin the process of returning the house to a livable state and today the neighbors reported smelling smoke coming from the house. We were unable to locate the smoke upon examination, but we shut off the electricity again and disconnected the furnace as a precautionary measure. Unfortunately, our technician has just informed us, due to the extreme disrepair…”

Chase tuned him out.

He’d heard all he needed to and couldn’t focus on chitchat and bullshit at the moment. To his left was Toby’s living room. He’d had his last real Christmas in that room. Toby and Nicole had just bought the house. They’d been so proud, so excited to host their first major holiday. So excited Toby had gotten a tree that was too big for the room. He’d tipped it at an angle into the corner so the angel at the top wouldn’t brain itself on the ceiling, but it had been glorious, every inch decorated and bristling with lights.

Katie’d come over after spending Christmas morning with her folks an hour north. She’d curled up next to him on the love seat, everyone he loved in one room.

Then two months later, everyone he loved was gone.

Mia’s hand felt icy in his, but the room was unbearably hot, stuffy as hell. Valdez chattered away, oblivious.

He couldn’t be here. He just couldn’t do it.

“Excuse me.”

Chase didn’t wait for a reaction. He slipped out the front door, not bothering to shove it all the way shut behind him, and leaned against one of the pillars on the front porch. He took a deep breath and the cool night air instantly cleared his head. Inside he could hear Mia dealing with Valdez, smoothing over his abrupt departure.

He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and wandered away from the voices, down the walk to where he’d parked his car at the curb.

A new furnace. They didn’t come cheap and he was already taking all the work Karma threw his way. Working so he wouldn’t have to sell. Still doing everything he could not to move on.

Chase pulled out his cell and dialed his boss. She picked up on the second ring, even though it was well past business hours.

“Chase.”

“Hey, boss. Don’t suppose you have any big-ticket clients lying around who need some knick-knack found?”

“I’m loving this workaholic leaf you’ve turned over, Chase, but you’ve already cleared half of Ciara’s backlog and all the finds I had pending for you except Dr. Corregianni.” There was a slight pause, then, “How much do you need?”

“I’m not asking for charity.”

“And I’m not offering any, but a loan is another matter. What’s going on, Chase?”

“It’s nothing. I’ll handle it.” Her waiting silence prompted him to add, “I need a new furnace. It’s smoking up my house and the neighbors are complaining.”

“I see. Can you smell the smoke?”

“What?”

“Sometimes, to the untrained eye, a ghost infestation can manifest as mist or smoke. One of the symptoms of Wyatt Haines’s haunting was a sabotaged furnace, I believe. Could you have a spirit problem?”

Chase’s heart tightened into a hard knot. Had Toby and Nicole been hanging around all these years? Waiting for some kind of closure? “It’s my brother’s old house.”

“Ah. I’m sorry. Would you like me to send Jo over to check if you have…lingering energy?”

Energy. Not spirits. Not restless dead souls haunting the house they’d once loved. He could handle it if he thought of it as energy. “I can’t afford her.” The ghost exterminator was fucking expensive.

“Pro bono,” Karma cut him off, her tone sharpening when he suggested paying. “I’ll send her right over.”

“I’d appreciate it, but I was really calling about extra work.”

She hesitated. “I might be able to find something for you to do. What’s your degree in again? Architecture?”

“You know I didn’t complete my degree.” But for the first time, the idea of going back to school and finishing up didn’t make his stomach revolt.

“Ah. Of course. Well, my latest secretary just quit. There’s always filing to be done if you’d like to pick up some extra hours.”

Filing papers or filing for bankruptcy…

“I’ll take it.”

Karma snorted. “My God, you are desperate. Come by tomorrow and I’ll keep you busy.” There was another momentary pause. “How are things going with Dr. Corregianni? Any luck with her watch?”