A Scandalous Melody (10 page)

“You think there will be ghosts in our old place,
chère?
Perhaps we need to exorcise them. Cast them out with the other devils from our past.”

Chase was beginning to feel rather tense himself. But he'd dreamed of this place and this woman for ten long years, and today they would close the book on that miserable chapter in their lives. Start again fresh.

Her father was gone. The mill was about to become just a memory. Everything was different for them these days.

He needed the closure. There would be no leaving town again until they'd come full circle.

Kate leaned back and closed her eyes to the harsh sun. It wasn't that she didn't want him. It wasn't even that she minded making love to him in the middle of the day and outside under their old tree. She didn't.

What troubled her was having to face her guilt head-on. If they made love in their old place today, she knew the truth would come out.

She'd almost told him a dozen times over the past two weeks, but held the words in, knowing it would probably mean the end for them. Now that the future of the mill was no longer in question and the construction workers would begin restorations on Live Oak Hall tomorrow, her time with Chase had clearly narrowed down to a few more days at most.

Wiping away the lone tear leaking from the corner of her eye, Kate swallowed back the pain and decided to make the most of their last few hours. She owed him that much.

First they would have their picnic. Then they would lose themselves in each other's arms, just the way she imagined he'd been dreaming about for all these long years. And finally she would give him his answers.

For she too had dreamed. Dreamed of going back to change everything. And, today was that day. The end of dreams.

“Look, Kate. Our willow is sitting high and dry. The course of the river must've changed over the past ten years.” Chase pulled the car to a stop a few yards away, jumped out and headed for the trunk and the picnic supplies.

As he stuffed the car keys back into his pocket, he spent just a second running his fingers over the smooth surface of his lucky egg. Wondering if the river's change of course was a good omen, he figured maybe he and Kate were about to have a change in the course of their lives as well.

Being here might be as difficult for him as it was for her. But they needed a new beginning, and what better place to start again?

 

Deep in the shadows of Blackwater Bayou, the old gypsy woman nodded her head and cackled. “You have no idea how much the course of your lives is about to change, young Severin.”
Lucky
egg—indeed.

Gypsy magic took no luck. It took only skill and true belief.

Everything was in place and ready. She slipped the crystal into her pocket and rubbed her hands together. It wouldn't be long now.

Surely she had made the best preparations possible. This young Steele heir would shortly be forced to accept his inheritance. The true magic would make all the difference.

Promises would finally be kept and secrets would be revealed.

 

Kate lay back on her elbows and watched as Chase peeled an orange. She was feeling languid and lazy and fat as a tick. The poorboy sandwiches had been terrific and as usual they were more than filling. Shelby was really clever to pack fruit for dessert instead of loading up the basket with a heavier sweet after all that food.

Waiting for Chase to take the first bite, she was surprised when he held a slice to her lips. “You first,
chère.
”

There was no mistaking the look in his eyes. His hunger had certainly not been sated by food. The heat in those deep-gray eyes made it clear what he wanted next. And it wasn't an orange.

He slipped the slice into her mouth. She took it along
with the tips of his fingers. Savoring both, the citrusy taste along with the erotic touch of skin caused explosions on her tongue. Sweet and absolutely perfect, she couldn't help the small moan of pleasure as juice escaped her lips and dribbled down her chin.

Chase's eyes narrowed…darkened. He pulled his fingers free just as she'd swiped a hand across her chin to contain the juice.

He captured that hand and ever so slowly licked each finger. When he ended by drawing circles with the tip of his tongue across her palm, Kate began to pant.

Picking up another juicy orange slice, Chase took it into his mouth, then leaned in to slant a kiss across her lips. A riot of flavors and sticky sweet juices turned the plain orange into a sinful treasure shared in their mouths.

She mumbled words of shock and disbelief against his lips, letting the juice roll down her neck and flow between her breasts. Kate could swear there was a steamy orange juice mist rising between them.

There would be no help for Chase's frantic craving to have this woman beneath him. Neither of them were exactly the same people as they had been ten years ago. But he'd ached to have her here under their tree again for all that time. Why fight it?

Leaning over her, he possessively molded her breasts with his hands. Her body began to vibrate under him, sending sizzling currents through them both.

Sweet and sticky, he nibbled his way down her neck at the same time he used one hand to unbutton her shirt. “You are so…” No words could describe what he was feeling at the moment. Every image, every adjective was inadequate and paled in comparison to the reality of Kate.

She melted into him, going soft and fluid just as he went hard. Their need was suddenly insane and rash.

He tried to hold on to sanity, but found that nearly impossible to accomplish. They began tearing wildly at each other's clothing. One last fleeting rational thought reminded him of the foil packets he'd put into his pocket in anticipation of being here with her.

So as he scrambled out of his slacks he dug one up, tore it open and covered himself. He stopped then, for just a moment, hovering over her and savoring the sight of her lying naked looking up at him. It was his dream.

Her eyes were glazed with passion as she reached out to run her hands across his chest. A flash of memory clogged his throat, and the wistful sting of remembered desire clouded his eyes.

Kate arched up to him and nipped at his nipples, using her teeth and tongue to push him on. The pleasure verged on pain, jumbling in his mind.

He bent to her, teasing, tasting, driving them both upward on a fast hot ride.

Kate gasped, ran her fingers through his hair and held him in place. She dug her nails into his back as she arched her hips.

“Chase,” she whispered. “This…this is so different. I feel…so different.”

He managed a smile as he held himself slightly above her. “Different good? Or different bad?”

“I don't know,” she said on a low moan. “It's just more. I'm desperate…frantic…to feel you inside of me. If I don't have you there soon, I think I might die.”

“My sentiments exactly,
chère
.”

Giving in to his body's command, he pushed inside
her on one long, slow, exquisite glide. Chase closed his eyes and experienced the velvet feel of her body surrounding him, wrapping around him like a sensual vice grip.

His mind blanked as he heard the word “more” repeating in his ears. She was
more.
Together they became
more. More
than just one.

Rocking his body into hers, the blood rushing through his veins, he pulled her with him as he urged her to climb higher. He thrust and she met him, time and again.

Too soon he felt her internal muscles sucking him deeper into her body and releasing the flood of dizzying stars that would quickly capture them both.

Kate screamed his name. His voice broke on hers. They collapsed in a heap, holding each other as the pleasurable ripples subsided.

When the blood stopped rushing in his ears, he rolled to one side and spat out a curse.

She sat up, gasping for a ragged breath. “What's the matter?”

Chase sat up, too, and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Please tell me it doesn't matter that the condom just broke.”

“I…” She reached for her blouse. “You're kidding, right?”

“Wish I was. We need to figure out how bad this might be. Where are you in your cycle?”

Shoving her arms through the sleeves of her blouse, Kate tried to calm down and think. But the math betrayed her. This simply could not be happening. Had she learned nothing at all from her past?

“I'm four days late.”

“Oh, God.”

She blinked her eyes and decided it was time to panic. Scrambling to get dressed and using his own words, she mimicked, “My sentiments exactly.”

 

Chase paced down the hallway right outside the bathroom. “How long has it been now?”

“Time will not go any faster if you ask that same question every ten seconds.” She glared at him.

He glared back, shrugged and paced the hall.

Kate hugged herself around the waist but refused to stare down at the pregnancy test wand sitting on the counter. She stormed down the hall in the opposite direction.

This was too much a repeat of the past. She couldn't face it. She'd been lying to herself and wasn't strong enough. She hadn't even had a chance to tell him what had really happened the night he left town.

Guilt, panic, hysteria…they all combined to drive Kate over an edge. “You might've at least gone out and bought a new box of the damned things,” she snapped. “Just because it was a fifty-pack, you didn't have to rely solely on me for our supply.”

Chase turned and paced toward her. “Are you implying that a twenty-year-old box of expired condoms might not be totally reliable? What a shock.”

“And that would be all my fault…how?”

“Dammit, Kate,” he said with a grimace. “Maybe you're late due to stress or something. Just because one condom in the box was bad doesn't mean they all were.”

“Hey. Wishful thinking is always such a big help in a crisis. That'll make everything
so
much bet….”

“How long has it been now?” he interrupted.

She checked the wall clock. “Three minutes. It's probably ready.” But her feet refused to move.

Chase hesitated, looked at her for a second, then walked into the bathroom and picked up the wand. “We'll both look at the same time, okay?”

Her heart moved into her throat. “Right. On three. One…two…”

“W
e'll get married.”

Kate shoved at Chase's chest, then fisted her hands. “Don't be ridiculous.”

“Why is that ridiculous? When people make babies together, they get married.”

Since the moment they'd both seen the plus sign, Kate's mind had been racing. Right along with her heart.

She folded her arms across her chest with a grimace. “But not us. You said you wanted things to be temporary. Why would you marry me?”

He took a step toward her, then hesitated, as though changing his mind. “I'd have thought my feelings would be rather easy to guess after the last couple of weeks.”

Not so much, she thought wryly. There had been times when she'd imagined that he really cared for her.
But then, in the next instant, everything would dissolve into a lust-filled haze, blurring whatever other feelings might exist between them.

She knew he wanted her—craved her—exactly the way she craved him. But what else was there to fall back on? Nothing but distrust.

That had been the real reason she had not told him the truth of their past yet. She loved the fact that he still desired her body. And she hadn't wanted to see the end of their time together come too soon. It was selfish, sure. But there it was.

“Okay,” she agreed. “So we have great sex…um…more than great. But that's not a good enough reason for two people to marry.”

Chase's expression turned down in a scowl. “Just sex?” This time he moved quickly and placed both hands on her shoulders to keep her from backing away. “That's what you think we…?”

Without finishing the thought, he silently scanned her face, looking for some basic truth he must've wanted to see. Kate tried to block the emotions from shining through in her eyes. She couldn't bear for him to know everything. It would make her too vulnerable.

She pulled her shoulder free from his grasp. “Look, Chase, let's think about this rationally. You have businesses that need you to go to far-flung places. Pretty soon the mill will be gone and you'll have no reason to stay here in Bayou City at all.

“I on the other hand have no reason to leave,” she continued. “This is my home. I can raise my child here with the help of my friends.”

“Then you do intend to have this child?”

“What?” The question was such a shock, Kate had to take a moment to breathe. “Yes, of course I do.”

Chase's eyes were nearly black with emotions Kate couldn't begin to imagine. “And you intend to be a single mother in a town that has no industry and no means to earn a living?”

“I can find some way to support myself and my child. Look at Shelby. She's doing okay.”

“Perhaps…with your help. But Maddie is not my child.” He closed the gap she'd put between them. “Shelby had no choice in the matter. I do. My child will not grow up never knowing its father.”

Too close,
she thought. When he's too close, I can't think.

She turned again and walked to the head of the main staircase. “I'm trying to be reasonable here, Chase. If you want to participate in your child's life…even give us financial support…I won't stop you.”

Kate started down the stairs, addressing him over her shoulder. “But that's no reason for you to give up your freedom and tie yourself down with a woman you don't trust and will never love.”

He reached her on the landing. “Stop it, Kate.” Swinging her around, Chase pulled her close. “You're running again. Why?”

Kate bit down on her panic and tried to relax her shoulders. The time for running was over at last.

“All right, Chase.” She took him by the hand. “Come with me to the kitchen. I have something to tell you.”

 

Chase had mixed feelings about what Kate would say. He had wondered about that night for ten misera
ble years. He'd made up every excuse in the book for her behavior, and now he wasn't sure he wanted to know the truth.

It would change everything.

He needed a cigar to get through her story. No. He needed a good stiff shot of bourbon. No, not that either.

After pouring Kate a glass of water and himself a cup of chicory coffee, he palmed his lucky egg and immediately felt stronger. “Sit down,
chère.
I want to hear everything right from the beginning.”

She was trembling slightly, and her vulnerability made his heart flip wildly in his chest. “Are you cold? Do you need a sweater?”

Kate shook her head and slumped into one of the kitchen chairs. “Thanks, no. I just need to find the words.”

He pulled out his own chair and joined her. “That should be fairly easy. Just start with the
why.
”

Blinded by the sincere expression on his face, Kate tried to shake the picture in her head of Chase as a teenager. He had been so handsome and exciting…the town's bad boy who was secretly just a lost and lonely kid. And she'd been the lonely little girl who had secretly loved him. They'd become friends. Then they had become lovers.

That was the real beginning to their story.

But that wasn't where she wanted to start. She didn't want to begin from the moment they'd first made love—or the time he first told her that he loved her, either.

Instead she began with the end. “Before I sneaked out to meet you that last night, my father and I had a terrible fight. He'd…well somehow he'd found out we had
been seeing each other. And he knew…he knew how close we'd become.”

A sharp look of confusion filled Chase's eyes. She couldn't allow him to ask any questions, questions that might come too close to all of the truth. So she hurriedly continued with her story.

“I made the mistake of telling him that we planned on running away together. I know it wasn't the truth, but I had to make him stop threatening to cut me off. It was all I could think of, letting him believe we could take care of ourselves and didn't need him or his money.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because it wasn't true,” she sighed. “I didn't really believe I could get along without his money. I was young, Chase. Seventeen. You didn't have a real job. I was scared.”

“And spoiled,” he added softly.

“Yes, all right. And spoiled.” She hadn't remained spoiled for long. Kate had grown up fast. But she wasn't ready to let go of all her secrets.

“I imagined that I could just stay out of the house for one night and then go back the next day and he'd be so glad to see me everything would be okay again.” She took a sip of water, but noticed her hand was shaking, so she set the glass back down. “I hadn't counted on the extent of my father's hatred of both you and your father. I didn't know he'd stop at nothing to keep me from leaving town with you.”

Guilt had been her constant companion for ten years. It was hard now, admitting her mistakes. Hard to watch Chase's face as he heard the truth.

“But you didn't know your father set me up? That he had hired those boys to run me out of town.”

“No, of course I didn't know. I wouldn't have…” She let the words trail off. It was too late to claim total innocence. “I was just as surprised as you were when Justin-Roy and those boys showed up.”

Chase's face filled with confusion and hurt. “Then why, Kate? Why did you lie to the sheriff?”

She wanted to scream her excuses at him once more. She had been young. She had been scared. But they all sounded so hollow.

“The sheriff called my father when we first got to the station and made me talk to him on the phone,” she admitted. “Father said I had to agree with the boys' account of what happened or else… Or else he would press charges against you for statutory rape. He told me he could make it stick no matter what I said, and that you would be sent to prison for twenty years hard labor.”

“What?” Chase's face was a mask, so she rushed on.

“I couldn't let that happen. Don't you see? It was all my fault. I couldn't bear to have you put in prison because of my family. It would've killed me.”

A new look that just appeared on his face told her everything. It said if he could strangle her right now, it would be too quick and easy. It was difficult to see him this angry. But it wasn't any worse than she had expected.

Chase pushed back his chair and stood. “Why didn't you tell me this that night? Why didn't you try to find me to tell me later?”

“I didn't have a chance that night. My father came and dragged me home. But I did try to find you…later. You seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.” She wasn't prepared to go into that part of the story, however.

Looking off into space as if he'd been struck dumb, Chase appeared blindsided…as though his mind refused to take it all in.

“Can I do anything? Get you anything?” She was starting to worry about him. This had to have been a huge shock.

He shook his head. “I need a little time.”

“What does that mean? Are you leaving?”

“I'll contact you tomorrow,” he said as he turned and stormed through the house to the front door.

When she heard his car start up and then listened while the engine noises receded into the night, Kate's nerves finally gave up. She crumbled back into her chair in a sorry heap and cried the tears that she'd thought had dried up years ago.

 

Madder than hell, Chase downshifted the Jag and took the river road curve at sixty.

Frustrated. Stunned. But most of all furious, Chase beat his fists against the steering wheel.

He could not take revenge against a frigging ghost. Dammit! And it was the ghost of Henry Beltrane that he now knew for sure deserved all his anger.

Unbelievable. The bastard had actually used his young, scared seventeen-year-old daughter and forced her to lie for him. If Chase knew where the devil's grave was, he might be tempted to dig him up and kill him—again.

Every time from now on that Chase thought of how undeservedly guilty Kate had been for the last ten years—and of how he himself had wrongly thought it was her that should be punished for betraying him—

“Et là!”
he swore, as he put his foot on the gas pedal and roared down the country roads.

Dark questions still swirled in the back of his mind. Why had Kate's father hated the Severin family badly enough to force Chase out of town? And who had told Henry Beltrane that his daughter and Chase had been intimate? No one else should've known that.

He'd thought when Kate explained about that last night, he would have all the answers. But he only had more questions.

Hell! All this anger swirling inside his heart and no way to take revenge.

For several hours Chase drove down deserted lanes. He had to find some plan for getting even with a ghost.

In a way, it was a good thing Beltrane was already dead.

Chase slowed the car at a stop sign. Instead of revenge, his mind kept focusing on how blessed he and Kate were to be having a child on the way. A brand-new generation of Severins soon living in St. Mary's parish.

Raking his fingers through his hair in frustration, Chase tried to devise a plan of how to make his child's life better than his had been. And at the same time exact a measure of revenge against the ghost who haunted him.

An idea began to percolate in the back of Chase's mind. He turned the car around and headed toward Highway 90 that would take him into New Orleans.

Just maybe there
was
a way….

 

The sun had driven the gray shadows of dawn back into the swamp before Kate finally dragged herself out of bed and made it down to the kitchen for coffee. She
hadn't slept and couldn't manage to stop the tears long enough to take a shower or get dressed.

Chase had left all his things when he turned his back and walked out of her life last night. Would she ever see him again? Or would he simply call and tell her where to forward his stuff?

For a few shining minutes when they'd first found out she was pregnant, Kate had really started to hope. But she'd always known the day of reckoning was coming. The day when the truth of that awful night would come out.

And now it had. But it was really only fair that Chase knew the truth.

Kate sighed. There was more. More that Chase probably should know.

But she couldn't make herself tell him about that. She had never told anyone but her father. Ever.

And now… A chill ran up her arms, raising the tiny hairs and bringing goose bumps.

Now that she was pregnant, she couldn't even bear to think of it herself, let alone speak the words. She combed a hand through her hair, leaned against the kitchen counter for support and tried to banish the memory for good.

Without Chase in her life, nothing made much difference anyway.

“Morning,
chère.
”

“Chase?” She spun at the sound of his voice. “Oh, thank heaven. Are you all right?”

He walked toward her but stopped just out of reach. “I'm okay. But you don't look as if you feel too well. Has it something to do with the pregnancy? Should you see a doctor?”

Her shoulders slumped and she swiped at her eyes. “No. I mean, I feel fine. Just tired. I was worried about you.”

He grinned. “Well, except for a speeding ticket, I'm all in one piece.” He raised a hand as though he wanted to touch her face, but too quickly he let it fall back into place.

“A ticket? But…”

Chase waved off the question. “I'm going upstairs to pack a bag. I have a plane to catch and not much time.”

“Oh.” The tiny hope that had almost sprung to life in her chest disappeared in a flash. “Can I help? Would you like breakfast?”

“Wish I had the time…for that and other things as well. But no, thanks.”

“Uh, do you know when you'll be coming back?” It was a presumptive question. If she just assumed he would be coming home, then maybe it would be true.