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That look had been all a lie. And he needed to keep the pain fresh in his mind when he dealt with Kate now.
A lone Snowy Egret caught his attention as it swooped low in the skies between the B&B and the swamp. It was a beautiful and graceful sight with its white plumes and its slow, gliding movements. But all the bird’s solo flight succeeded in doing was driving home the point that Chase had lived with for most of his life.
He was a loner and had been happily content with his own company for as long as he could remember. A solitary man who needed no one and should expect nothing that he didn’t make for himself.
Kate stopped walking and looked up, watching the Snowy Egret as it glided past and headed out toward the Gulf. It was exactly this kind of beautiful sight she would miss the most if she had to leave town and her home to find work in the city.
She lowered her head and trudged on down the ancient path, leading between Live Oak Hall and the mill. How many more times would she be allowed to make this trip in the quiet early hours? How many more times would she make the return trip, watching as the sunset streaked its fantastic rose and gold hues over her plantation home?
Everything depended on Chase now. Her father had never let her contribute ideas concerning her own destiny. Now it looked as if Chase was going to do the same thing.
When the outline of the mill came into view, she forced her slumping shoulders back into some semblance of a straight line. It had been a very long night, tossing and turning with the erotic flashes of Chase taking her into his arms and running his hands over her body.
She hadn’t allowed herself to dream or even to think of those things in so many years it seemed like forever. But that whole scene with Chase on the B&B’s terrace last night had stirred up more than just the dreams.
Taking her hands out of her jacket pockets, Kate looked down on her bandaged finger and thought about the sensual sensations that had rolled over her in waves as he sucked her finger into his mouth. It gave her chills even now as the sun was beginning to warm the landscape and the morning mists disappeared back into their hiding places in the dismal swamp.
If Chase was serious about making her his mistress in payment for letting Shelby stay in the guest house, she would happily jump right in. There wasn’t much she could ever hope to do to repay him for the wrongs that had been done to him so long ago. The wrongs that she had helped create with her own stupid mistakes.
Seeing him make a success of the mill and living happily in Live Oak Hall wasn’t anything she could have a real part in. Those were the kinds of things he would have to get for himself. Though he probably deserved to be given those things and much more from the town that had deserted him when he needed them the most.
But if he really still did want her…body, she would give it gladly. She knew herself well enough to know she would never let on to him that he could also have her heart—did have her heart—and always would. No, that would be giving him too much power. The two of them weren’t meant for a future together, a fact she had accepted long ago with regret.
Kate stepped into the mill’s office and removed her jacket. Listening for sounds that would tell her that Chase was already at work, the sound she heard instead was a soft crying sob. She followed it around a corner and found her secretary, sitting at her desk and bent over in tears.
“Rose? What’s wrong?” Kate went to her and began patting her back.
“He’s going to deliberately ruin us,” Rose sobbed. “None of us will have a job. We’ll all have to leave our homes.”
“Shush, shush, chère. What makes you say these things? Is Chase here?”
Rose shook her head and looked up into Kate’s eyes. “No, not yet. But the word is all over town. He’s come for revenge and means to get even with everyone in Bayou City for how they treated him as a kid.”
Kate leaned over to put an arm around her secretary’s shoulders. “Nonsense, Rose. You’ve lived in this place all your life. I can’t imagine you’d start believing the town gossip at this late date when I’m positive you know better than that.”
Besides, Kate thought grimly, the only people left here that Chase had a real reason to hate were her father and herself. And her father was beyond his reach now.
“Chase is obviously a successful businessman, Rose. I don’t believe he would deliberately throw money away just to even an old score. He’s much smarter than that.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, chère.” The deep sound of Chase’s voice came from the doorway.
Kate twisted around to see him leaning against the threshold with his arms folded across his chest, studying her. “Chase. I didn’t hear you…”
“But I don’t need your support,” he interrupted.
She stood up and sighed silently to herself. No, he would never allow her to give him anything. She knew that, but it stung all the same.
He narrowed his eyes to scrutinize her, and the close survey began to make her feel all itchy, like she’d forgotten to wash.
Chase took a couple of steps into the room toward her. “In fact, judging from how you look, I won’t need anything from you today.” He turned to address Rose. “Do you think you can show me where the files are without dissolving into a weepy mess, young woman?”
Rose sniffed once and nodded without opening her mouth.
“Fine.” He turned back and lowered his voice to a growl. “Go home, Kate. You look terrible. I’ll expect you to appear rested and at your best for our appointment this evening.”
“But, Chase…”
“Go home. There’s nothing you can do for me—until tonight.”
Kate fisted her hands at her side and bit her tongue to keep from saying something she would forever regret. Chase was acting like a real jerk, but she knew he was a different person deep inside. He just couldn’t have changed that much in ten years. But he did have reason enough to hate her, and there was nothing she could ever do or say to fix things.
So she clamped her mouth shut and turned away, running from the memories. Running from her heart. And running from the pain of accepting the consequences of her past.
Chase drove a hand through his hair and leaned back in the desk chair. He couldn’t seem to concentrate on the damn accounts when all he could think of were the deep-purple smudges that had been under Kate’s eyes and the bone-weary slouch of her shoulders this morning.
He’d come to Bayou City with the intention of hearing her beg…for the mill…for her home. And if the truth were known, to beg for his forgiveness.
But he hadn’t liked hearing her beg for a friend and that friend’s baby, or to see her looking so emotionally bruised. It didn’t sit well with his memories.
He was trying to reconcile what he felt now with all the built-up hatred from ten years of believing her to be someone he despised. To see her looking melancholy and fragile this morning had ripped big holes in his plans…and in his soul.
It was midafternoon and it was time to accept the fact that he really did need Kate to interpret some of the mill’s figures for him. He would have to give it up for today and begin again tomorrow when she could help.
He dismissed the secretary for the rest of the afternoon, put the convertible top down and climbed into his Jag. Intending to go straight back to the B&B to dress for dinner, he was surprised to find himself on the canal road and heading toward the shack where he had spent his youth.
Chase knew the house had stood empty for five years now, ever since he’d spirited his father away in the middle of the night and delivered the old man to a rehab clinic in Houston to dry out.
But something inside him must’ve wanted to see the old place. He needed to refresh his harsh memories, and what better place than the run-down house he had always hated.
That shack had forever been the bane of his existence. The kids at school teased him unmercifully about his dirt-poor circumstances and about his father the drunk. The other kids’ parents didn’t want them to hang out with such trash. Everything that had ever gone wrong in town had been somehow connected to Chase or his father, “that drunk Severin.”
Not that Chase had ever been in any real trouble. Just a few fights and a day or two suspension from school for those times when he’d not shown so he could sober up his father. But the word about him being bad to the bone got around anyway.
He had no family to fight for him. No brothers, cousins or uncles to cover his back like every other boy hereabouts in St. Mary Parish. So he learned early how to take care of himself—and how not to trust anyone.
Too bad his lessons hadn’t extended to Kate. Despite the fact that her father was the most powerful man in town and always had it in for him and his father, Chase had let her get under his defenses. The pain of her betrayal still stung after all these years.
Driving along in the sun, he noticed that nothing much seemed to have improved in the town of his childhood. If anything, the whole place seemed a little shabbier than in his memories. The businesses in town gave way to two-story clapboard houses and finally to what could easily be called shanties as he drove down the gravel and mud road that ran alongside the no-name canal.
He slowed as he passed by the last decent house on the road and saw his former neighbor Irene Fortier sitting on her front porch. She waved at him and stood, so he brought the car to a stop beside the yard in order to speak to her.
If it hadn’t been for Irene five years ago, Chase wouldn’t have known that his father had been lying comatose in his bed for twenty-four hours. She’d found his dad and had called to ask for help.
Chase had come at once. Nothing, neither bad memories nor business commitments, would’ve stopped him from helping his father. But he didn’t let anyone else in town know he was there, and he certainly hadn’t stayed long.
“Hello, cher,” Irene said as he stepped out of the car. “I heard the rumors that you were back in town.”
He nodded but eased away when she went to kiss his cheek. Her flower print dress and the homey smells of cooking lingered in his brain and reminded him of how much he’d always liked being around Irene as a kid.
“You’ve come home to move back in?”
“No, Irene. I’m not sure why I’m down on Canal Road this afternoon. Guess I just wanted to see how much damage the elements have done to Dad’s shack.”
“It’s about the same as always. I’ve been seeing to keeping the critters and the bums out.”
“Thanks.” He wasn’t sure he really thanked her for her efforts. Maybe he would’ve been happier to know the place had burned down and taken all the old hurts along with it.
“You plan on staying in Bayou City?” Irene asked.
“Only long enough to exorcise old ghosts.”
Irene studied him from behind the plastic-rimmed eyeglasses she wore. “You own the mill now, I’ve heard. You here to get even with people, son?”
He’d thought that’s why he had come home. But now… The memories of Irene’s goodness, finding the town in such sad straits and the odd tenderness he’d felt when Kate had asked his help for a friend and not herself made him want to reconsider his intentions.
Hell. Not sure of his own motivations anymore, Chase ignored Irene’s question and asked one of his own. “Did you ever meet my grandmother Steele? Did she ever come to Bayou City? I don’t remember meeting her or even hearing her name when I was a kid.”
Irene shook her head sadly. “No, child. Your mother, Francine, died believing her own mother hated her for marrying your father. I tried to encourage Francine to call Lucille when the time was getting close for your birth.” Irene hesitated and sighed. “I think she might’ve done it eventually…if she’d lived.”
Chase had no memory of his mother, only pictures and the stories that Irene had told him when he’d been little. He didn’t have any reason to grieve for a woman that he’d never known. But inheriting money and a family from her had made him rather sorry that they’d missed talking to each other.
“Why did my mother marry my father, Irene?” Knowing what he’d learned recently about Lucille Steele and her family, he couldn’t imagine now why a young woman from such a good home would run off and marry the town drunk.
Irene laughed. “Love would be my guess. But that’s a question that you should ask of your father.”
Chase remembered asking his father lots of family questions as a boy. Only he’d never gotten any answers. He’d learned early that simply asking the questions only made his father sink further into the drunken stupor that had been his old man’s constant companion back then.
Today, his father wanted to talk, but Chase couldn’t manage to listen. There was too much heartache in the past for him to forgive.
He shrugged off Irene’s suggestion. “Someday maybe.”
After he’d said goodbye to Irene, he spun the Jag around in her front yard and headed back to the B&B. There wasn’t time now to go look at the old shack.
And that was really for the best. Too much thinking and talk about his childhood unsettled him, and he wanted to be sharp for his confrontation with Kate tonight.
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