Yours Forever

by Farrah Rochon

  Their twin groans of pleasure rent the air. She moved her body up and down his length, her head pitched back in ecstasy as she relished the feel of the silky, rock-hard flesh invading her body. She pumped her hips, increasing the pace until she was driving up and down in rapid succession.

  Tamryn’s body erupted, her world shattering as her orgasm hit swift and hard. She fell forward, resting her head against Matt’s chest.

  He ran a damp palm down her back before cradling the back of her head in his hand. He used his other hand to lift her chin. His eyes filled with hot promise, he whispered, “I’m not done with you.”

  A shudder coursed through her bloodstream at the seductive tone she heard in his voice.

  Matt slipped from underneath her and carried her to the bed. Tamryn’s limbs were still so weak from the aftershocks of her first orgasm that moving was practically impossible.

  With Matt, that wasn’t an issue.

  He climbed onto the bed and spread her legs wide. He gave no warning at all before he dived for her center, his tongue lashing at her heated flesh. He flattened his palms against her inner thighs and pushed her legs wider, giving him unencumbered access to the very heart of her.

  Tamryn pitched her head back, thrusting her hips forward to meet his skillful mouth. Sensation shimmered along her skin as he drove his tongue inside her, over and over and over again.

  The familiar quake started low in her belly, but the buildup wasn’t slow this time. This time she came hard and fast, her legs shaking with the force of her release.

  Tamryn collapsed back onto the bed. She couldn’t move, could barely think.

  The only thought that managed to make it past the sensual haze surrounding her was the difficulty she would face when it was time to leave this man. Of all the things she’d ever done in her life, saying goodbye to Matt would be the hardest.

  Chapter 11

  Matt pulled up to the two-story home on Camp Street in New Orleans’s historic Garden District. Grabbing his laptop from the front passenger seat, he jumped out of his car and slammed the door shut. As he marched up the walkway, Matt realized that he could count on one hand how many times he’d been here in the five years since his father bought this home. It was five times more than he’d wanted to darken this doorstep.

  The front door opened before Matt had a chance to knock on it.

  “Hello, Matthew,” Marion Samuels answered. Matt stared at his family’s former housekeeper, not surprised to see her standing here.

  “Where is he?” Matt bit out.

  “He’s in his office,” she said, moving out of the way so that Matt could pass.

  He refused to allow her being there to affect him. He no longer cared what his father did with his own life. It was when he stuck his nose into Matt’s business that they had a problem.

  He bounded up the stairs and headed straight for the rear of the house, toward his father’s home office. He didn’t even give him the courtesy of knocking; it wasn’t as if his father would understand courtesy anyway. Matt walked into the large office and spotted his father through the French doors, sitting out on the balcony with his leg crossed and a newspaper opened in his lap.

  Matt went to him and set the laptop on the small, round iron table next to his father’s chair. The only other thing on the table was an ashtray that held a smoldering cigarette.

  Matt braced his feet apart and folded his hands over his chest. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

  “Don’t start this with me, Matthew.”

  Leroy picked up the cigarette and took a long drag on it. Matt had to fight the urge to slap it out of his hands. The only reason he didn’t was out of respect for his mother, who had demanded Matt show this bastard some respect, despite the fact that he hadn’t earned a damn bit of it.

  His father gestured to the laptop. “If you brought that to show me the commercial, it’s not necessary. I already saw it and approved it.”

  “I didn’t,” Matt said. “Even though there’s a voice that sounds remarkably like mine at the end of the commercial saying that I do. Whose voice is it anyway?”

  “A voice actor. He’s pretty good, isn’t he?”

  “I could have you arrested,” Matt spat.

  “Stop being so dramatic,” Leroy said. He pointed to the fabric-covered chair on the other side of the table. “Sit down. We need to go through the strategy for the last half of this campaign. The polling I had done shows that you’re only two points ahead of Carter. That’s within the margin of error.”

  Matt huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “You’re too damn smart to be this dense, so I guess it’s just cockiness.” He leaned forward until he was only inches from his father’s face. “What makes you think I would take campaign advice from you? What makes you think I would take any kind of advice from you? Do you think I look at you and see someone I want to mimic my life after? A man who left his dying wife’s hospital room so he could go home and screw his housekeeper? A man who’s taken so much in bribe money that he owes more favors than he will ever be able to fulfill?”

  “And your hands are so clean?”

  “They’re a hell of a lot cleaner than yours are.”

  “Really?” His brows peaked. “So all those phone calls and lunches you had with Lyle Peterson of the Lakeline Group were just, what, you being courteous? Welcoming them to the neighborhood?

  “But wait,” Leroy continued. “You’re the one who brought them to the neighborhood, aren’t you? I think I remember Lyle telling me that when we had dinner.”

  The smug smile on the bastard’s face was just begging to be knocked off. “To say you loathe me so damn much, it looks like you still learned how to conduct business like your old man,” he said.

  “Don’t you ever compare me to you,” Matt snarled. “I didn’t take a single dime from those developers. I was trying to help the people of Gauthier. I wasn’t trying to help myself like you would.”

  “So why is it still such a big secret, Matt? Why haven’t you gone up and down Main Street and told each one of those business owners that you’re the reason they nearly lost their livelihoods?”

  His father picked up the cigarette and took another long pull on it. “You can hate me all you want to, but you’re still a Gauthier. You’ve still got that blood running through your veins. The tragedy here is that you’ve got so much damn potential. If you didn’t have so much of your mother in you, I could—”

  Matt grabbed a handful of the collar on his father’s robe and pulled him up to his face. “That’s the last time you mention her in my presence, especially when you have that woman living here.”

  His father’s eyes darted between Matt’s face and where he clutched the robe. Matt let go of the collar and took a step back.

  “You already cost Ben his job by conning him into doing that commercial. I fired him this morning.” He pointed a finger at his father’s face. “Stay the hell away from my campaign.”

  Without another word Matt walked back out the way he came. He passed Marion on his way out the door, but didn’t take the time to acknowledge her. He could go the rest of his life without ever seeing either of them again.

  As he drove the few miles to the Civil District Court Building on Loyola Avenue in downtown New Orleans, Matt tried to block out the confrontation so that he could mentally prepare for the hearing on Mrs. Black’s case, but his father’s words continued to reverberate in his head.

  Was he turning out to be just like Leroy Gauthier?

  Every lie he told, every secret he harbored, they all helped to mold him in his father’s likeness, and the thought made Matt sick. He had no choice. He had to come clean about all of it. Matt wasn’t sure how much longer he could live with himself if he didn’t.

  * * *

  “Oh, my God.�
��

  Tamryn clutched the edges of the table she’d occupied for the past five hours in the bowels of Tulane University’s renowned archives room. Her skin tingled. Her breathing escalated. Her entire being buzzed with the mixture of excitement and disbelief cluttering her brain as she stared at the flyer, encased in archival laminate and sitting inconspicuously in a binder.

  “Oh, my God,” she breathed again. Her hand shook as she ran her finger across the plastic, the words swimming before her as her eyes filled with tears.

  Negro School to Open.

  Below the headline was a picture of her great-great-great-grandmother and Nicolette Gauthier. It was a staged shot with the two of them holding up textbooks. The short, two-paragraph article below stated that, despite strong opposition, the classes in reading and arithmetic would be taught to both slave children and free blacks. Tamryn swiped at the tears of relief that flowed down her cheeks.

  After all the years of searching, after all the roadblocks—doubts from colleagues, doubts in herself—finally, finally she’d found proof. It wasn’t the diary that Tamryn knew was out there somewhere, but it was enough to prove that Adeline West had changed history.

  After she’d calmed down enough to stop her body from shaking, Tamryn went to the librarian, requesting copies of what she had found. While the man made copies of the items that weren’t too sensitive to be reproduced, Tamryn packed up the rest of her research materials.

  Once she had the documented proof safely put away in her computer bag, she left the library, her body still humming with energy. She couldn’t wait the few minutes it would take to get to her car before she called Matt. She sat on a stone bench under a towering oak tree and dialed his number.

  She didn’t give him a chance to speak after his initial “Hello.”

  “Matt,” she practically screamed. She wasn’t sure her skin would be able to contain all the excitement flooding her veins. “I found it! I found proof of the school Adeline West and Nicolette Gauthier opened together!”

  The complete silence that met her on the other end of the line had Tamryn’s head rearing back. She looked at the phone, wondering if the call had dropped.

  “Matt?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here,” he said. “Can I call you back? I’m heading into court.”

  “Um, sure,” Tamryn said, ignoring the tremor of unease that traveled down her spine. “I’ll, uh, talk to you later.”

  On her way back to Gauthier, she called Victoria, needing to share her news with somebody. This was too monumental to keep bottled up inside. She was relieved when Victoria answered the phone and expressed nearly as much enthusiasm as Tamryn had. They talked so long that Tamryn had to remind Victoria that she had a class of students waiting.

  She ended the call, smiling at the excitement she’d heard in her coworker’s voice. Maybe it was something only a fellow history buff could get excited about.

  But Matt knew how important this was to her. He knew how hard she had been working to find this missing link to her grandmother’s past.

  “He was going into court,” Tamryn reminded herself. What had she expected him to do? Drop everything and run to her side so they could pop open a bottle of champagne?

  Tamryn drove to Belle Maison so that she could shower and change into one of her more comfortable sundresses. She found Phylicia and Mya out under the gazebo, enjoying iced tea. Both women were thrilled about the document Tamryn had found. Mya called her husband, who in addition to coaching the baseball team also taught American history at the high school.

  If Matt had exhibited even a tenth of the enthusiasm Corey Anderson did, Tamryn surmised that she wouldn’t have the uncomfortable feeling in her gut that she hadn’t been able to shake since her abbreviated call with Matt.

  She left Phylicia and Mya outside and went up to her room, dillydallying around for another two hours before, finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. She headed for the Gauthier mansion, hoping she’d given Matt enough time to get home.

  Her shoulders drooped in relief when she drove around the back of the house and spotted his car parked in its usual spot under the portico just off the entrance to the kitchen. Tamryn gave two sharp taps on the door, and seconds later, Matt opened it.

  “Hi,” she answered with a smile she couldn’t contain.

  “Hello,” he said.

  His subdued expression caught her off guard. He walked over to the kitchen island, where a highball glass filled halfway with amber liquid sat next to a parcel of mail.

  Tamryn’s steps slowed as she rounded the kitchen island. “Are you okay, Matt?”

  He nodded. “You?”

  “I’m more than okay. I’m perfect.” That smile was back again, bigger than ever. She’d smiled so much this afternoon her cheeks hurt. “I found it,” she said. “I found proof that Adeline West and Nicolette Gauthier opened a school for free blacks and slave children.”

  Tamryn wasn’t sure what she expected, but it was definitely not the apathetic nod he gave her. “Matt, did you hear what I said? I found my proof.”

  He took a sip of his whiskey, then he put the glass down and reached for her hands. “I’m happy for you,” he said. “I know how much this means for your career, and for you personally.”

  Disquiet slithered down Tamryn’s spine. She cleared her throat before she spoke. “Call me crazy, but it doesn’t sound as if you’re all that happy for me. I’m not really sure what’s going on, but—”

  “Come with me,” Matt said, but then he stopped, holding up a finger. “Wait one minute.” He picked up the glass and drained the rest of the whiskey. “There. That’s better.”

  The uneasy feeling traveling through her intensified. She had never seen him this way before.

  “Matt, is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He huffed out a humorless laugh, shaking his head. “Something has been wrong for a very long time.”

  He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and gently urged her to follow him.

  They walked to the family library on the left side of the house. Tamryn had only been in the room once, during her first visit to the mansion. She stood just beyond the threshold of the door while Matt walked over to a portrait of Micah Gauthier. He grasped the gilded frame and unhooked the portrait from the wall, revealing a safe.

  As he turned the knob on the combination lock, Tamryn noticed that his fingers were shaking.

  “Matt, what are you doing?”

  His chin dropped to his chest as he braced his left hand on the wall. “Coming clean,” he said.

  He opened the safe and rifled around inside for a moment. She couldn’t tell what he retrieved, but her blood pulsed with a mixture of excitement and dread in anticipation of it. When he turned, Tamryn’s stomach dropped at the sight of the worn, leather-bound book.

  She couldn’t move. Her feet remained rooted in that spot, her eyes zeroed in on the book in Matt’s hands as he closed the distance between them.

  “It wasn’t just the stuff of legends,” he said. He held the book out to her. “My aunt Nicolette’s diary.”

  Trembling fingers floated up to Tamryn’s lips. She looked at the journal, then at Matt.

  “But...” she started, but she didn’t have words. She didn’t have anything.

  Except for hurt. Suddenly, she had all the hurt she could handle and more.

  “This...this whole time?” Tamryn choked out. “You’ve had this the whole time?”

  A small part of her hoped that he would say that he’d just found out from a long-lost family member about the hidden safe at the Gauthier mansion, but Tamryn knew she was grasping at straws. The guilt that washed over Matt’s face was all the answer she needed.

  “How could you?” she whispered.

  His throat moved as he swallowed, but he remained sile
nt.

  “How. Could. You?” she asked again with enough force to shake the walls. “Is everything in there?” Tamryn asked, pointing at the diary she hadn’t summoned the courage to touch just yet. “The school? The connection to Adeline?”

  He nodded. And her heart broke in two.

  “My God, Matt. You knew how much this meant to my career. You knew what this meant to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Sorry?” She took a step back. “You think sorry is enough?”

  “I couldn’t share it with you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there’s a lot more in here than just the information about your grandmother and Nicolette’s school. There’s...everything. Everything about my family and what they’ve done. Everything about how the Gauthiers lied and cheated their way into owning this town, how Micah and Nicolette’s son nearly burned half the buildings on Main Street to the ground and how they covered up the death of the man who died in the fire.”

  A chill traveled down Tamryn’s spine, but she shook it off. Whatever had happened, it had happened a long time ago.

  “What does any of that have to do with my research?” she asked.

  “Everything,” he said. “You’ve been calling since last summer, trying to dig up these skeletons. I couldn’t let you do that. There was too much at stake.”

  “Like my career?”

  “Like my career!” he said. “Do you know what Patrick Carter will do to me if this gets out?”

  “Patrick Carter can’t use what your ancestors did nearly two hundred years ago to hurt your campaign, Matt.”

  “No, but he can use what my father did and what his father did. He can use what I did. This diary is just the start, Tamryn. It’s the first item in a long line of evidence that shows that the Gauthier family has been nothing but a cancer to this town since the day it was founded.”

  Tamryn shook her head. “It’s not an excuse,” she said. “You let me search for weeks, killing myself in that library for hours every day. You listened to me lament about how hard this research was, and question whether or not I was wasting my time looking for something that didn’t exist. And this entire time, you knew it did!”