by Linda Conrad
Her phoney frown made her look adorable and turned him on again. “Well, don’t just stand there,” he said instead of grabbing her up again. He had to move. “Let’s go see.” He had to get away from her heat.
Kate took a shortcut through the house and got there ahead of him. By the time he’d walked the distance around the house to the veranda, the delivery men were off-loading the first item. And the small audience that had gathered was all but holding its collective breath in anticipation.
“A brand-new John Deere,” Shelby said as it came off the truck. “Wow. No more babying that old relic, Kate. Think of that.”
“A new riding mower,” Kate whispered reverently. She looked astonished.
Good. He’d hoped she would be surprised. It was all he’d been able to think about yesterday at the dealer. Surprising Kate and getting her to smile.
But she didn’t smile. Not yet. At that moment one of the men began to unload the other items Chase had ordered. Kate dashed from box to box, checking out all his purchases.
Finally she turned to him. “Chase, what have you done? Why…?”
She looked like a kid who’d been given a surprise day off from school. Another expression he’d never seen on her face before.
He fisted his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her. “Now that I own this plantation, I want to protect my investment. It’s past time for somebody to fix this old place up.”
“Fix the place…” Kate spun around just as the ladders, paint and roofing supplies were being rolled down the truck’s ramp.
She was stunned. Chase had bought the supplies necessary to fix up her family’s home. Tears swam in her eyes, but she battled them back and reminded herself that the plantation no longer belonged to her family. Still, just being able to see the house and grounds brought back to their former glory would be a wonderful dream come true.
Kate turned to Chase, eager to ask about details. But the morning sun glared, making her shade her eyes.
“Who’s going to do the work?” she asked with her hand against her forehead, blocking the light.
He shrugged. “I’d like to do some of it myself, but my time is limited. I’d thought…”
“Will you hire local contractors?” she interrupted. “There are tons of people without work in this parish.”
“You really have so little faith in my ability to bring the mill back to profit?” he asked soberly. But she could swear she saw a twinkle spark in his eyes and little lines appear around his mouth.
Damn. The man was teasing her again. She’d always believed he didn’t have a playful bone in his body, and yet here he was with a glint in his eyes and the edges of his lips ready to turn up in an out-and-out smirk.
And the strangest thing was…he had actually said he’d planned to try putting the mill back in business. Her heart skipped wildly, but she vowed to stay calm. She needed more information.
Except—she couldn’t stop the wide smile that crept across her face. “No, of course not. But even if you can work a miracle for the mill, it will be months, maybe a year or two before everything can be up and running full force. In the meantime, couldn’t you give a few people the chance to earn some money right here?”
Chase tilted his head and seemed to be seriously considering her question. Kate knew it was an act. He’d already made the decision and was still playing with her. But his new persona was intriguing. Who was this man?
“Well, yes,” he answered at last. “I suppose that would be more efficient than importing help from the city. But I don’t have a clue who around here is best to hire for this kind of work. By any chance do you know a general contractor I can get to oversee the job?”
“Let me handle it,” she squeaked. Kate threw back her head and laughed. The first real laugh she’d managed in years.
He nodded and chuckled, with a more subtle match to her glee. “Just as long as you still have time to be my assistant at the mill…and can keep your evenings free.”
The sensual look on his face shot a fiery spark bouncing through her chest and landing between her legs. It took her breath away. But she had to hold the desire down for now. Later they would have all night for her to show him her appreciation.
“Cool! You won’t be sorry, Chase.” She beamed at him and immediately started making lists in her head of things she needed to do.
He signed the invoice and handed it back to the driver. After fifteen minutes of checking off the delivery, Chase’s body still hummed with lusty tension. And there didn’t seem to be a single thing he could do to quell it.
Kate had actually laughed out loud. He searched his memory but couldn’t think of a time when he’d seen her do that before. It was fascinating. Beguiling. Bewitching.
She had him twisted into hotter knots than he’d ever dreamed possible.
The truck driver made some comment from behind his back, but all Chase could think of was the heat. Kate was getting under his skin again. He’d sworn he wouldn’t allow himself to be blindsided by her—not ever again.
Yet here he was, after only fifteen minutes of not being beside her, and already he felt desperate. His chest had begun to tighten with tension and desire. Where was she?
Looking around, he spotted her instantly. It was as though the sun had put her in a golden spotlight. She was standing in the middle of the lawn, while the sunshine sparkled off her raven hair. Heat shimmered up in waves from the still-wet grass, making everything seem to blur around the edges.
When Chase could focus past the glitter, he saw Kate with one hand on her hip. She was using the other hand to point out where the deliverymen should place the boxes and ladders.
Bathed in the sun’s warm yellow glow, she appeared to be very much the spectacular and efficient dictator. He smiled at the idea.
But something about the sight of her didn’t sit right. Kate had always been the darkness in his soul, not the light. And right at this moment she was the most brilliant, shining ray of light he’d ever seen—rare and dazzling.
Chase’s hand automatically went to his shirt pocket. He palmed the egg, letting its warmth and electricity soothe his nerves. The first strange thing he noticed after that was his chest muscles beginning to relax, maybe for the first time in months.
He kept his hand on the egg and watched as Shelby brought her baby over to Kate. After a second’s discussion, the young mother placed Maddie in Kate’s outstretched arms and headed back toward the house.
Kate shifted the toddler to her hip without missing a beat and continued with her directions to the men. The baby looked up with wonder, staring at the animated face of the woman who held her.
Chase knew exactly how the kid was feeling. Kate seemed different all of a sudden. Competent, strong and so damned sexy his mouth watered. She simply amazed him.
Absently rubbing the egg in his pocket again for comfort, Chase realized he was suddenly changed, too. Something inside him was breaking down, crumbling. And he couldn’t quite get a handle on what it was—or how to stop it.
The rest of Sunday afternoon went by in a blur for Kate.
Shelby spent the day in the kitchen, preparing a meal she’d been hired to cater for a party of forty. So Kate and Maddie and Chase had strolled the grounds of Live Oak Hall, dreaming of how the place would look after restoration.
She and Chase had a few heated discussions as they strolled. “I like the house painted that natural green color. It’s been that way as long as I can remember,” she’d argued.
But Chase won her over to his side of the paint debate by having done his homework. He’d discovered that flat ivory was the original house color. And he insisted nothing else would do except that the plantation be refurbished to look the same as it had when first built.
Impressed, Kate readily gave in.
Later they sat in the kitchen as Shelby fed them a few of the selections she would be serving at the party. Jambalaya, barbecued shrimp, rum-laced bread pudding. Partly it was a taste test, but m
ostly Shell had simply wanted company while she cooked.
Chase asked a load of questions about her catering business while they ate. Shelby rattled on and on with him companionably. The whole scene seemed amazingly cozy and friendly. Something Kate had experienced little of in her lifetime.
When Shell changed the topic of conversation to painters and carpenters, Kate gladly made copious mental notes about the workers her friend discussed. Kate wanted to be ready tomorrow to take bids.
The only thing that tripped Kate up during the whole wonderful afternoon was the sight of Chase, feeding Maddie and then rocking the sleepy toddler to sleep in his arms for her nap. He’d done it easily, even casually, as the grown-ups had continued with their conversations.
“What are you doing?” she’d asked him as he spooned a bite into the baby’s waiting mouth.
He shrugged absently, but kept right on as if he did such things every day.
Busy Shelby paid little attention to what he was doing, but then the baby’s mother didn’t know Chase all that well, either. Maybe she thought such behavior was natural for him.
Kate, on the other hand, had been stunned into silence. The sight of the town’s bad boy gently attending to a baby took her by surprise. Had he really changed so much? First the house refurbishment, now fatherly tenderness?
Later, after Shelby packed up both Maddie and the food and left for her job, Chase suggested the two of them sit on the veranda to watch the sun set. Another out of character suggestion from him, Kate went along with it but began to worry that this was all some kind of act.
They sat in the rockers, silently watching as the shadows grew longer across the lawn. Her mind began racing again.
Was he deliberately leading her along? Lulling her into believing he’d changed and fooling her into falling even deeper in love with him?
Could this new persona possibly be his own diabolical method of exacting revenge? Perhaps making the house a gorgeous showplace and then kicking her out to drool over it from afar was his goal.
But that answer didn’t feel right. If that’s what he was doing, he had certainly carried the whole thing too far.
Besides, making her love him more was not a possibility. She was already in deep. And losing the house would be nothing compared to losing him.
As the setting sun shot dazzling rays of orange and lavender over the bayou, Kate quietly shook her head and vowed not to ask. It was a hopeless situation.
And she was already utterly—hopelessly—lost in love.
Nine
“I give up,” Chase complained after yet another frustrating morning. “We’re moving into the conference room with the computer so we can set up flow charts. Get Rose and all the files you think might help explain these figures and then meet me there.”
Kate shook herself free of the sensual dreams that captured her attention whenever Chase was near, and left his office to do as he’d asked. What an odd ten days they’d just lived through. Both good and bad, the time she’d spent with him had left her alternately confused and dazzled.
If she’d thought that first dreamy, Cinderella Sunday afternoon had been a big blur, then all the nights in the past ten days had proven just how really blurry life with Chase could become.
Each night they spent long hours filled with soft, sensual cries, hardened bodies and silky mind-bending temptations. It had seemed like a passion-filled miracle.
But as each dawn broke to reveal melancholy light-gray drizzle, the magic disappeared. Rainy mornings foreshadowed the nasty reality of frustrating days. Days spent searching for salvation for the mill. Ten endless days filled with damp raincoats and soggy shoes.
Later that same afternoon, long after they’d moved to the conference room, Chase pushed back his chair and frowned. “It’s dark. You look tired, chère. Shall we call it a day?”
Rose had left for home an hour ago. Evening shadows had begun to trace spooky designs over a conference table stacked high with files. And darkness was falling eerily across the computer screen, where dire cost figures blinked out a hideous green pattern.
“I’m fine. Just annoyed that there doesn’t seem to be any good answers for the mill,” Kate told him as she rubbed a hand over her eyes.
She didn’t look fine to Chase. Tiny lines etched her forehead, and faint purple smudges appeared under her eyes.
He drove a hand through his hair and wished for the hundredth time that they had never started this fruitless quest. The weary look on Kate’s face tonight was not one he would ever have chosen for her.
“You know, it almost seems as if your father deliberately ran the mill into the ground,” Chase offered. “I thought he was just incompetent, but this…”
Kate laid a hand on his sleeve in a patient gesture. “For as long as I can remember, my father hated everything and everyone. His parents. My mother. This town. It’s entirely possible that he hated the mill and all that it represented, too.”
“If he hated the place so much, why stick around?” Chase asked. “When his father died, he could’ve sold the business off at a profit and lived on the proceeds.”
“I think…” Kate hesitated a second then folded her arms under her breasts. “Well, in my opinion, my father stayed here to exact a kind of revenge against my grandfather.”
“But your grandfather died twelve years ago.”
She nodded. “My grandfather deeply loved the business that generations of his family had cherished before him. He’d built the mill into an efficient showplace by the time he died. But he never did let his son have any part in running it.
“I’m not sure,” she continued dryly. “But I don’t think my grandfather ever truly believed my father was capable of becoming a manager. Unfortunately, when Grandfather died of a sudden heart attack, my father inherited the whole works…ready or not.”
As she turned to look out the window at the black night, Kate’s shoulders slumped with fatigue. “I’m pretty sure my father decided to manage the mill all by himself just to prove he could do it. But when things got tough, he refused to let go and hire someone better able to take over. By then the hate had eaten him away exactly like the cancer that eventually killed him.”
It occurred to Chase that Kate had done almost the same thing when she stayed on to work at the mill. Her father had also refused to let her have a hand in running things—just the way her grandfather had treated him. Was her heart full of hate the way her father’s had been?
Chase answered his own question with a resounding no. He’d seen no signs of hate from her since he’d been back in town. But perhaps it had been a kind of hatred that had caused Kate to tell the sheriff that story ten years ago. There had to be some reason why she’d lied.
“Do you have any ideas about where we should go from here?” he asked as he stood and rubbed his neck. Chase absolutely refused to dwell on the past for now.
Not when the future for the mill looked so bleak. “Can you think of any avenue we haven’t tried?”
Kate turned to him with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. “There is a possibility. I’d be willing to bet one or two of the rice farmers that used to do business with my grandfather could shed some light on where things went so wrong. Maybe they’d be able to give us some advice, too.”
“That might not be such a bad idea.” Remembering something he’d seen earlier, Chase picked up a folder, flipped it open and pointed out the reference. “These two farmers in the next parish actually still hold small liens against the company. They must’ve once thought the mill had a chance of recovery if they were willing to loan your father money.”
She gazed up at him, and she looked so vulnerable…so needy. He couldn’t seem to help himself. Pulling her to him, he wrapped Kate up in a protective embrace. She took a deep breath, as though she was afraid to be seen as weak. But then she collapsed against him, molded herself into his arms and hung on.
Knowing how much this ghost of a mill meant to her, Chase had worked hard, desperately tryin
g to find a miracle that would save the place. Unfortunately, he was practically convinced now that nothing could ever bring it back. But as long as Kate still had that hope in her eyes, he wasn’t willing to give up and tear the mill down—not yet.
He leaned his cheek on the top of her head and breathed in the familiar scent of her hair. The smell and texture turned him on—the same as every other time he’d held her in his arms.
“Maybe tomorrow we’ll get a break in the weather,” he offered. But his real thoughts were about later tonight when he could get her back into his bed. “If it clears off, let’s try to get appointments to see those two farmers. Okay?”
She nodded quietly, snuggled up tighter under his chin and clung to him.
Wanting more than anything to tell her things would work out fine and that they would discover a secret to save the mill, Chase kept his mouth shut instead. He didn’t want to give her false promises, so he stayed silent and held her.
Just held her.
“Well, look at you, Missy Katherine. A grown-up woman.” Augustine St. Germaine, a seventy-year-old farmer and a longtime friend of her grandfather’s, took her hand with an appreciative smile. “And a mighty fine-looking one, at that.”
Kate felt the twinge of color move up her neck, but ignored it and leaned in to give him a peck on the cheek. “Thank you for seeing us, Gus. You are too kind. I want you to meet the new mill owner, Chase Severin.”
“Severin? You must be Charles’s son.” The old man clapped Chase on the shoulder and beamed at him. “My great-grandfather brought the first Severin down to this corner of Louisiana. Hired him to manage the St. Germaine Plantation. Must’ve been your ancestor. Bet you didn’t know that, did you?”
Chase shook his head once politely. “I’m the last Severin I know of to live in Louisiana, sir. My father lives in Houston now.” He reached a hand out to shake the one Gus offered. “I really appreciate you giving up your time for Kate and me.”
