A Billion Reasons Why

by Kristin Billerbeck

  Maybe she did.

  “Katie, your father asked me to buy the business. I bought it because he asked me to and for no other reason. I borrowed the money from my dad, knowing my inheritance and graduation was coming.”

  She took time to process his words. “What could have changed? People still needed vegetables. And why would he ask you, of all people?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Because it wasn’t making it, and he thought you with your business degree could turn it around?” she asked, hoping to solve the mystery.

  “The business was fine. In the black.” Luc rubbed the back of his neck, a sign that he felt uncomfortable. “I suppose he trusted me and I told him he could buy it back if he changed his mind, but he assured me he wouldn’t.”

  She wished Luc would come out and tell her all he knew. All the prancing around the facts. Why? Why did her dad sell his beloved business to Luc? To anyone for that matter?

  “I don’t know why he asked me to, but he came to me in need. And he was a proud man, Katie. I knew he wouldn’t have come if he didn’t need to sell. I had too much respect for him to ask him why.”

  Nothing made sense to her. “But surely he might have sold it another way. Publicly.”

  Luc shrugged. “Maybe he knew I wouldn’t ask questions.”

  His BlackBerry trilled, and he stepped away from her. “I just need to take this.”

  She grabbed the phone from his hand and threw it to the back of the room.

  “Katie!”

  “If you’re serious, you have to know that I don’t like to be ignored for long periods of time. And if you want to be happy like my Paddy, well, he would have never brought his work home to interrupt family time. Can you handle the constancy of Paddy's life? The slowness of it?”

  The phone buzzed again from the back of the room.

  “It still works. You can get it later.” She placed her hands in his again for the dance.

  “So I guess this means you’re serious? You’re ready for the truth?”

  “You forget, I have nothing to lose now. I already look like an idiot, and here I am again at a DeForges family function playing the lost little puppy dog. My bum is on the cover of the Tattler, and they said your so-called fiancée has put on a few pounds and is pregnant, hence the wedding. So you need my wild Irish blood. Who else could put up with that kind of stuff?”

  “There was something more going on with your father, Katie. I didn’t know what it was, and I worried if I said yes to you, the insurance people would start investigating and you and your mam would be left with nothing.”

  She steeled herself. “Why is my mam mad at you? When my mother makes up her mind about someone she never changes her mind, and she is not nice to you right now. Why not?”

  “That part of the story I’m not sure about. I didn’t ask why your dad had to sell me the business, and he never told me. He was very adamant that no one find out it was in fine shape.” Luc’s cell started up again. “Katie, I just felt God saying, No, not yet when you asked me. I wanted to ask you, but then—there were all these questions. You still didn’t have your insurance settlement.”

  “Eight years and two hundred blondes or so just sort of slipped by.” Her voice took on a hard edge.

  “Look me in the eyes and tell me what you believe to be true about me, Katie.”

  She stared into his eyes, and her stomach filled with butterflies, her throat became parched, her defenses weakened. She felt her chest pounding. She’d read that men’s cortisol levels rose when they met a beautiful woman they considered out of their league—it was bad for their hearts.

  She wondered if being with Luc DeForges was bad for hers.

  “Your eyes tell me what your lips won’t. I know what you think of me, Katie. Even if you fight it with everything in you.” Luc reached into his pocket and pulled out a small gray box. He opened the lid, and she gasped.

  “My ring! You had it all along?”

  He knelt in front of her. “Katie McKenna, marry me.”

  She covered the bottom half of her face with her hands. “Where did you get that?”

  “Your father gave it to me.” His gaze didn’t waver. “Answer the question.”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t. You had a copy made.”

  He stood up and took the ring out of its box. He brought the ring to her face and showed her the engraving on the inside: My Everlasting Love. “It’s yours. Your father gave it to me on the day he died. I knew he wouldn’t have killed himself, but I didn’t want the insurance agent to have any reason to assume he had. So I kept it all these years. He asked me to give it to you on your wedding day. I almost told you so many times that I had it, that it was time, but you were so angry with me. And then the years passed and I didn’t know how to go back. Then you went and got engaged to someone else, and it was fish or cut bait.”

  “I came home for that ring. All this way, and all this trouble, and you had it in California?”

  He swallowed visibly. “I needed time to show you I’m not all about the money. That you can trust me.”

  “By lying to me?”

  “I fudged the truth a bit. I said no that night to protect you and your mother, but you never let me explain. You were grieving. You didn’t have the insurance settlement, and I didn’t have my own inheritance yet. There were a billion reasons why I said no that night.”

  “My father loved that store. He would have never sold it if he could have made it work. Why couldn’t you have lent him the money to fix the business?”

  “Katie, listen to me. There was nothing wrong with the business. It was in the black when I bought it. I told you, I don’t know why he had to sell it, but he came to me saying he had to.”

  “If you wanted to marry me, you had eight years to make it happen. Why would you wait until I was engaged to another man? You just want to win!”

  “What have I won? If anything, it looks from my point of view that I’ve lost what matters most to me. I’ve lost your faith in me.”

  “No, you still have all that money, your private jet—” She didn’t have the strength to say any more.

  “Money won’t ruin us, Katie. I promise you. There’s no reason to fear it. You can start your own foundation, give it away any way you see fit.”

  “It’s not the money I fear.”

  “You can’t marry Dexter. If you found out that Dexter kissed a woman as passionately as you kissed me yesterday, would you marry him?”

  She went numb. Of all the things he might have said . . . “Just because I made an error in judgment doesn’t mean I should relinquish my whole future. A kiss isn’t that powerful. You’re only trying to confuse me.”

  “Am I?”

  His cell phone kept ringing. He closed in on her again. She smelled his delicious light cologne and she felt his warmth and was suddenly transported to eight years prior. I love you, Luc. I always have. Always will.

  “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.” He touched her chin. “When Bogie says that line, he’s telling Ilsa, I see you. I know who you are and why you have to go. I know who you are, Katie. Inside. I know what makes you the most beautiful woman on earth. I know you can’t live a passionless life. If I’d said yes all those years ago, this anger over your father would be in our marriage. Solve this with me. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us. You need to forgive me and understand I only had your best interests at heart. I still do.”

  “You’re not going to try and tell me you did me a favor?”

  “You wanted to escape the pain of your father’s death, Katie. Admit it. You used me as a salve, and I let you that one night and then you questioned my motives from then on. When I said no to you, you would cry, but you still cried over the wrong thing.” He stepped back, and she looked at her feet rather than admit any of his words were true. “I see you, Katie, and I will always love you. But you’ve told yourself you were being loyal to your father all these years, didn’t you?”

  “Did it bother
you when you learned I was engaged? Did you care that I dated? Where were you, Luc?” She pounded on his chest. “You come into my life every year or so to update me with a bullet point memo on your life, like I’m some Christmas card recipient? And I should have felt I was one of the special ones because I got a phone call and a real signed card, not a printed one?”

  “I see the woman I love, the only woman I’ve loved, making a mistake. I’m trying to stop you from doing it. You don’t love Dexter Hastings, and you never will. Don’t bother lying to me. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “It never occurs to you that you might be wrong, does it, Luc? Does that confidence come with being a billionaire?”

  “No, it comes at the multimillionaire stage, apparently. What’s it going to take to prove it to you?” Luc looked at her with those deep blue eyes, and her stomach fluttered.

  She held out her hand. “I’ll take my ring now.”

  Luc snapped the hinge closed, and the ring disappeared. “Poindexter can come and get it from me.”

  “You can’t do that. It belongs to me.”

  “It belongs to you when you get married, and you told me yourself you’re not engaged yet. Let Poindexter come ask me for it. If he’s man enough.”

  “He’s not going to do that! He shouldn’t have to do that!”

  “Your father gave the ring to me. I’d say Poindexter does have to do it.”

  She should tell him the marriage was off, but her blasted pride kept rearing its ugly head. “Stop calling him that! You’re behaving like a child.” She straightened her spine. “All right, we’re going to play like this, are we? Give me the ring or I’m not singing at your brother’s wedding.” She placed her flattened palm in his face.

  “I’ll hire Harry Connick, Jr. He’s in town this weekend.”

  “You do that.” Katie smoothed her skirt and picked up the gift Mam had wrapped so carefully for Olivia. Gift-wrapping was a Southern skill she never could seem to master. She turned to Luc, who followed closely behind. “You can make this as difficult on me as you please, Luc DeForges, but you won’t break me. My fiancé can buy me another ring if you choose to keep mine. Maybe I’ll make a visit to your brother Jem’s store tomorrow.”

  “Katie, battle me all you want, I can take it, but don’t dig yourself into a hole to fight me.”

  “Wish me luck. I’m off to see your mother.”

  “What about practice?”

  “Maybe you should ask Harry Connick, Jr. to practice with the band today.”

  She stepped out into the excruciating heat and leaned against the building’s wall, letting her pulse slow. She wanted to just swallow her pride, jump off the cliff, and go back and shout yes! Yes, she would marry him. Instead, she did what the new, reserved Katie McKenna always did. She went where she was supposed to be, on time, gift in hand.

  Chapter 17

  ALL OF ME

  YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO

  A LUNCHEON BRIDAL SHOWER

  TO HONOR

  MISS OLIVIA TYLER,

  THE FUTURE MRS. RYAN DEFORGES

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9TH AT TWELVE O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON

  GIVEN BY STACY GIBBONS,

  MAID OF HONOR

  AT THE HOME OF MRS. AIMÉE DEFORGES

  R.S.V.P. 555.4232

  At one time a luncheon at the DeForges mansion would have sent Katie into a panic, but she took it in stride as part and parcel on the road to closure. She was living fearlessly, no worries about what some man expected of her. Mrs. DeForges garnered no power over her anymore, and the house never had. She hated its cavernous rooms and stark beige interior—there wasn’t a hint of warmth in the place to make it a home. She wondered if a coat of salmon paint wouldn’t do the DeForges family some good.

  She took the streetcar to the infamous estate, dressed in the most inconspicuous dress she’d brought with her: a gray boat-neck, shantung silk with a tight bodice and full A-line skirt. With the shoes, she’d only paid fifteen dollars for the outfit at a secondhand store, and she felt compelled to tell Mrs. DeForges about her bargain. It wasn’t difficult to see where Luc had gotten his negotiating skills; for all her wealth, Aimée DeForges loved a good bargain. If you complimented her on a piece of furniture, she’d tell you the price and bartering skills she used to buy it. Luc used to say she’d find a way to tell the deal she’d gotten on her casket when the day came.

  “Luc tells me you live in a shotgun house down in the Channel. When did your parents buy that house?”

  “I don’t know. Before I was born.”

  “And how old are you now?” Mrs. DeForges asked.

  “Eighteen,” she’d said.

  “Eighteen!” Mrs. DeForges looked to Ryan. “Is this girl old enough to be in the college Bible study?”

  “I started college at seventeen,” she’d explained.

  “Very well. So your parents probably paid about . . .” The older woman drummed her fingers on her chin. “About twenty-five thousand dollars for that house, and now, if it’s in good shape, they probably . . . Do you know what their mortgage is?”

  “Ma!” Luc had snapped.

  “I don’t know,” Katie said again, sheepishly.

  “All in all, an excellent bargain. There is no better moneymaker than staying in your home. You tell your parents for me they’ve made wonderful choices.”

  “I will, ma’am.”

  Aimée DeForges kept a dark, dirty little secret behind the walls of her great mansion. There were very few people in town who knew that Aimée, with a French pronunciation, had grown up near the Warehouse District as plain old Amy Aucoin. Mam said the wealthy socialite would never go back to that life again, and putting a price on everything was Mrs. DeForges’ way of finding her value in life.

  Katie approached the arched sandstone exterior, which looked more like a city museum than a home, and shifted her gift from one hip to the other. “Here goes nothing.” She pressed the doorbell, which chimed for an eternity until a Creole woman answered the door dressed in a frilly white uniform that not only looked ridiculous but harkened back to another era. She wondered if Mrs. DeForges wasn’t taking the forties theme a little far.

  “Mornin,’ miss. May I take the gift?”

  Katie passed off the box, which was a collection of 1940s big band and swing CDs and some candles Mam had lying around the house. She’d wrapped them all in pink cellophane, so it appeared more celebratory than her teacher’s salary could afford.

  “The ladies are all in the salon. Come this way.”

  Katie passed the ornate dining room with its carved mahogany ceiling and seating for too many to count. It was a pity someone had to dust that thing continually. Her mam would use a table like that. Luc told her Mrs. DeForges hadn’t entertained since that horrible night Katie caused the family “great embarrassment,” as his mother had put it. Great embarrassment for whom? she’d thought at the time, but she was so traumatized by the experience she’d just nodded and apologized.

  She’d prayed up a storm that morning for the stamina to keep a smile plastered on her face and reminded herself that she needed to face her fears. Otherwise she’d be forever defined as the girl who’d ruined Luc’s graduation party and announced her loss of innocence to New Orleans society at large. She steeled herself as she stood beneath the great arched entryway to the salon. No music played in the background, and the room appeared as cavernous and stark as ever. Not so much as a streamer hung from the ceiling, and not one of the maybe twenty people in the room had a drink or an hors d’oeuvre in hand.

  Olivia saw her coming and hurried over. “Katie, you made it!” She took the gift from the maid. “You didn’t have to bring anything. I just wanted you to come.”

  Two steps below, several faces gazed up at her. She recognized Mrs. DeForges, of course, with her dark, penetrating eyes that didn’t miss a trick and the wispy, silver-blond expensive haircut.

  “Mrs. DeForges,” Katie said in her best drawl. “It’s been so many years sin
ce I’ve seen you, and you look wonderful. You haven’t aged a day. Thank you so much for inviting me.”

  “Thank you, dear.” Mrs. DeForges addressed the other guests. “Katie here was once in the college Bible study I taught. Look what a lovely young lady she’s grown into.”

  “Is that so? I never knew you taught a class, Mrs. DeForges,” someone said above the murmurs.

  “I wasn’t always this old.” Mrs. DeForges laughed. “No, I used to have a lot more life in me, and teaching the Lord’s Word gave me such pleasure.”

  “No doubt. It’s the small contributions in life we remember,” an older woman, with a name tag that read Mrs. Fredrickson, said. “Katie, you are such a beautiful girl. That red hair. You can’t buy that in a bottle.”

  Katie smiled politely.

  Mrs. DeForges spoke again. “I do believe all of my sons were in love with Katie at one time or another.”

  “Oh, I think that’s an exaggeration.”

  “It most certainly isn’t,” Mrs. DeForges said. “That’s why Katie will be singing in Ryan and Olivia’s wedding. She and Ryan used to perform together at college and then at that horrible bar. Won’t that be lovely for Ryan? She knew him when he first toyed with the idea of show business.”

  Katie stepped into the living room and looked about for a seat. She was making her way to a solitary French chair when Mrs. DeForges stopped her.

  “Not that one!” The older woman dropped her painfully thin arms, marbled by blue veins, and regained her composure as the rest of the women stared at her. “It’s an antique.”

  “Sit here,” Olivia said, offering her seat. “I’ll sit next to my mam.”

  “Not everyone will be able to see you open the gifts from the sofa,” Mrs. DeForges said. “Katie, why don’t you sit on the sofa where Olivia is, and she can come over here to this chair.”

  Mrs. DeForges pointed out a French tapestry chair similar to the one Katie tried to sit in, but apparently it wasn’t as valuable. Either that, or Olivia would inflict less damage upon it.