A Scandalous Melody

by Linda Conrad

  “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 miserable 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 t
ears 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.

  “No,” he said with a little hesitation in his voice. “I’m not sure. I hope it won’t be too long.”

  Ah. There went that little ray of hope again.

  She took a big leap of faith and decided to try pinning him down. “But then why are you going?”

  “I have casino business to attend to. But I don’t have any idea how long it will take.”

  Oh, well. That wasn’t so bad. He was going on business. At least, she hoped he wasn’t making it up for her benefit. Lots of men panicked when they first found out they were becoming fathers. And Chase had more reason to be wary of the child’s mother than most.

  “I want you to shut down the mill for good while I’m gone, chère.”

  Her heart sank. It was the end of an era and probably spelled doom for the town. But she’d known it was time.

  “Box up the files and sell off as much of the office and mill equipment as you can,” he continued. “Then I need you to be here to supervise the restoration crews.”

  “But…what about Rose?” Her secretary was the last mill employee besides herself. What would she do?

  “Rose?” he asked thoughtfully. “Oh. Rose. She should still be your secretary for a while. You’ll need help in closing down the mill, and then she can set up the payroll and files for the construction crews.”

  “So, it’s okay if I stay here until the house construction is done?”

  “Of course,” he said with surprise. “This is your home for at least nine more months. I don’t want you to have to move until after the baby comes.”

  All Kate heard of his comment was that after the baby came she would not be welcome to live in his house. The tears swam in her eyes again, but she held them back.

  “All right, Chase. If that’s what you want.” She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her misery.

  “Great,” he said as he turned to head up the stairs.

  He stopped at the doorway and turned back to her. “We have lots to talk about, Kate. I had a fantastic…” He hesitated again. “There’s no time now. We’ll do this when I get back.”

  She looked up at the man she had loved for her whole life and managed a half smile. She had to hide her real desolation.

  But when she smiled, his eyes lit up. He closed the gap between them with one step.

  “Ah, chère, don’t tempt me.” He pulled her into his arms and lasered a desperate kiss across her lips. “I have to go,” he said when he raised his head at last.

  “Will you be all right while I’m gone?” He kept her close to his body, and Kate felt his heart strumming wildly in his chest.

  She nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Terrific.” He ground his lips against hers again and groaned as he forced himself to let go and back away.

  This time he made it all the way out the kitchen door before he turned around once more. “I almost forgot. While I’m gone, plan the wedding. Do it up however you want.”

  “Wedding? Us? But…”

  “No buts, Kate. We’re getting married. My child will carry my name and will start to feel my love before he’s even born. It’s a done deal.” With that he dashed out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

  Chase was still driving her crazy. What did he really feel for her? Was he mad or not?

  Shaking her head, Kate decided she would just have to take it one step at a time.

&n
bsp; For however long they had remaining.

  Eleven

  Chase carefully guided the Jag through the deep twilight, as he drove down the allée drive toward Live Oak Hall. In the three weeks that he’d been gone, lots of changes had taken place at the plantation.

  Construction equipment was spread out across the lawn, scaffolding had been erected against the walls of the house, and the old peeling green paint had been replaced by a rough-sanded look that was even worse. But Chase wasn’t the least unhappy about the plantation’s condition. It was progress. Progress toward a phenomenal ending.

  He couldn’t wait to see Kate. To tell her that he’d done it. Actually done it. As far-fetched as it had sounded at first, the wheels were in motion that would make his plan come true.

  Barely containing his excitement, Chase found a spot to park that looked safe enough under a tall crepe myrtle tree. He wanted to see Kate for another reason, too. He’d only managed a handful of calls while he’d been out of town. Twice he had actually reached Shelby instead of Kate. Now he needed to see Kate, to hear her voice, to touch her.

  On the drive down from Baton Rouge, it had belatedly hit him that not only hadn’t he told Kate his plan, but he also hadn’t told her he loved her. Not getting her hopes up by sharing the details of a risky plan was one thing. But not telling the woman you intended to marry that you loved her was sheer lunacy.

  A mistake he intended to rectify immediately.

  He bounded out of the car by vaulting over the door instead of opening it. Heading for the kitchen where lights were blazing, Chase palmed the lucky egg that he now kept with him at all times.

  It had truly been a blessed day when that old gypsy had gifted him with this legacy. Safe and secure in his world for a change, Chase excitedly took the back stairs in one leap.

  Throwing open the kitchen door he called out to her, “Kate. I’m back. And do I have something to tell…”

  When he rounded the corner, he realized at once that Kate was not in the kitchen. Shelby was at the stove and Maddie sat in a high chair watching him intently.

  “Well, hello, Chase. We weren’t expecting you. Sorry. If you’d called to let us know, then…”