by Metsy Hingle
Stretching her arms over her head, he pulled the wisp of silk free from her body and tossed it to the floor. His breath quickened as he feasted on the sight of her naked flesh. “You look like a pagan goddess,” he whispered, and need licked through him as her eyes darkened with desire. “My pagan goddess.”
Still holding her wrists captive, he lowered his mouth to her breasts, swirling his tongue around the tip of first one and then the other.
“Chase!” She struggled, trying to free her wrists from the prison of his fingers.
“Not yet,” he murmured, closing his teeth over the darkened nipple before drawing it into his mouth. He paid homage to her other breast, then slowly shifted his mouth to kiss the tender flesh at her rib cage, down her stomach. Using his free hand, Chase ripped away the scrap of lace and tangled his fingers in the nest of curls between her thighs.
Madeline whimpered. She struggled for freedom and he released her hands. Her fingers clutched at him. “Please, Chase. I need you inside me.”
“And I want to be there. But first, let me love you,” he whispered, fighting his own need to join their bodies. He wanted to give to her, to show her how much she had given him.
Opening the tender folds that hid the sensitive bud of her womanhood, he lowered his head.
Madeline gripped the wrought iron rail at the head of the bed. She arched her body, crying out his name as the first spasms hit her.
A shudder went through him at her response. He continued to love her with his mouth, his excitement growing each time her body quivered beneath the stroke of his tongue. He flicked his tongue across the sensitive nub once more, while easing a finger inside her honeyed warmth.
Madeline cried out. And then her hands were reaching for him again, grabbing his hair and dragging his mouth to hers. “I love you,” she whispered before guiding him into her warmth.
“Madeline!” Chase sheathed himself in her, surrounding himself with her love.
Somehow, he promised himself as he drove them both towards that bright ball of red fire. Somehow, he would find a way to keep her love—because without it he wasn’t sure he could survive.
Madeline opened her eyes as the fingers of dawn spilled through the window. Smiling, she brushed the hair back from Chase’s forehead and caressed the stubble of whiskers that shadowed his cheek. Her body would bear the marks of those whiskers, she thought, recalling the number of times they’d made love during the night and into the early morning hours. But she had no regrets. How could she, when there had been such an intensity to Chase’s lovemaking, so much emotion in his declaration that they would sit down and discuss the future this morning?
The future. That they would have one together, she no longer doubted. She smiled again, warmed by the thought, and allowed her fingertips to drift over the scar on his chin.
Chase captured her fingers and brought them to his lips. “Good morning,” he told her, pulling her over on top of him. He drew her head down and kissed her.
“Morning,” she murmured when he released her mouth. “Do you want the bathroom first? I put out the card on the door last night for room service. It’ll be here soon.”
His hands stilled on her hips. The laughter disappeared from his eyes. “We need to talk, Madeline. There’s something I need to tell you.”
Uneasiness whispered along her spine. “All right. Why don’t we—” A series of raps sounded at the door. “That must be room service,” she said strangely relieved by the interruption.
“I’ll get it,” he told her. “You go ahead and get dressed. I’ll meet you in the other room.”
Chase watched as Madeline walked away and closed the bathroom door behind her. Shoveling his hands through his hair, he prayed somehow he’d find the right words to make her understand. He didn’t want to lose her. Not now. Not when he’d just realized how much she meant to him.
The pounding started at the door again. Frowning, Chase pulled on his slacks and went to the other room. Ready to take a bite out of the room-service waiter, he jerked open the door.
“You bastard.” Henri Charbonnet stormed in, his face red with anger, his eyes narrowed slits, a legal-looking document curled in his fist. “You stole my hotel from me.”
“I didn’t steal anything, Charbonnet,” Chase said, pulling up the zipper on his fly. He walked over to the mini refrigerator and pulled out a container of juice. “You lost it all by yourself. I warned you that you’d have to come up with your share of the money for the overruns on the renovations and the conference center addition…use some of the money you got from Majestic for their interest in the hotel.”
“I don’t have enough, and you know it.”
Chase pulled back the seal on the orange juice and drank it straight from the plastic bottle. Setting the juice down, he wiped his hand across his mouth. “You can always ask Majestic for an advance against future profits.”
“You already know they turned me down. Thanks to you.” Charbonnet stalked over to him, hatred in his eyes. “You can quit the cat-and-mouse game, McAllister. I talked to Jamison this morning. I know you’re one of Majestic’s partners and I know all about the deal you cut with them giving you the interest in my hotel. He faxed me a copy of the demand letter that’s being delivered today.” Raising the crumpled document in his fist, he threw it at Chase. It hit him in the chest and fell to the floor.
“You might have succeeded in stealing the Saint Charles from me, but you’re not going to steal my daughter. Madeline’s convinced herself she’s in love with you, but she won’t be when I tell her what you’ve done. She’ll wash her hands of you like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And I for one will be glad. You’re scum, McAllister,” he said, his lips curling. “You’re not fit to breathe the same air with her.”
Angered, Chase gave him a thin smile. “I’ve got news for you, Madeline and I have shared a lot more than just air.”
Charbonnet stiffened. He ran a glance over Chase’s halfdressed state, and then his eyes darted to the closed bedroom door. “Why you lousy—” He lunged at Chase.
Chase blocked the blow and pinned the older man to the wall, his arm pressed across his windpipe.
“Keep away from my daughter.”
“Why? Don’t think I’m good enough for her?” Years of rage and hatred, of grief for a mother he had lost too soon, for family holidays he had never known, for the familial love that had never been there, churned inside Chase. He stared at the man responsible for it all. He wanted to hurt him as he had been hurt. “Is that it? You think I’m not good enough for Madeline the same way my mother wasn’t good enough for you?”
“What are you talking about?” Charbonnet pushed at the arm blocking his throat. “I don’t even know your mother.”
“Oh, but you did know her at one time. Quite well, in fact. Her name was Katie…Katie McAllister. Twenty-six years ago she worked for you as a waitress right here in this hotel. She was also your mistress.”
“No,” he whispered, his face paling. His body started to tremble. “It’s not true.”
“Don’t lie to me. I know it was you. I heard her on the phone with you that day—she called you by name.” The scene came back to Chase, spinning him back to the past and the painful sight of his beautiful mother weeping. “She told you she loved you, pleaded with you not to end the affair, to let her come to the hotel to see you. You hung up on her. When she called you back, told you she loved you, begged you to forget about the hotel and go away with her, you hung up on her again. And then you refused the rest of her calls.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“No, I’m not. I heard everything. I was home from school that day because I’d fallen and split open my chin.”
Madeline stood frozen in the doorway. Her breath lodged in her throat as she watched her father’s eyes drop to Chase’s chin. Could it be true? Had her father and Chase’s mother been lovers?
“You wanted revenge,” her father accused.
“Yes.”
&n
bsp; Revenge. Had that been what Chase had wanted all along? Had that been the reason he had set out to seduce her? To avenge her father’s sin against his mother? Pain sliced through her. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling as though she would rip in two.
“Did you even care when you found out that she’d put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger that night?” Chase grabbed her father by his jacket and shook him. “Did you?” he demanded.
“Stop it!”
Chase whirled around. Seeing her, he released her father and started toward her. “Madeline, I can explain.”
“No! Stay back.” She rubbed her arms, trying to stop the trembling and the awful pain inside her. Oh, God, it hurts. It hurts so bad. “How could I have been so stupid? I believed you loved me, but you were only using me. You used me to hurt my father. And I made it so easy by falling in love with you.” She laughed, the sound as hollow as the feeling inside her.
“You’re wrong, Madeline. Please believe me, you’re wrong. I admit I did want revenge against your father. That’s why I had Majestic buy into the hotel…to take it away from him. The way he had taken my mother away from me. But you…” His voice broke. “You were never a part of that plan. I fell in love with you. I’m still in love with you.”
He started toward her again, and she cried out, “No! Don’t come near me. Don’t touch me.” Madeline shuddered. “I couldn’t bear to have you ever touch me again.”
Chase jerked back as though she had hit him. She forced herself to look away, not wanting to fool herself into believing it was pain she saw in his eyes at her rejection. Afraid because she wanted to believe him so badly that she would. Blinking back tears, she shifted her gaze to her father. He lay slumped on the floor, clutching his chest. “Father!” She raced to his side. “Father, what’s wrong?”
“Pain,” he whispered. “Bad pain in my chest.”
Chase took her by the shoulders and moved her aside. Then he was easing her father’s head to the floor, checking his pulse, listening to his heart. Another pain gripped him. “Call 911, Madeline. Now! I think he’s having a heart attack.”
The ten minutes seemed like an eternity. But as the paramedics placed her father onto the stretcher, he refused to leave until Madeline let him speak to Chase. “You got it all wrong, McAllister,” he whispered. “It wasn’t me.”
Madeline squeezed his hand. “Father, please.”
“No. He needs to know the truth. It wasn’t me with your mother. It was my father.”
“She called you by name. You came to the funeral.”
He coughed and clutched his chest again. “My father and I had the same name. I went to the funeral to spare my mother. She’d found out about Katie. My father confessed, and he asked her for a divorce. She refused and threatened to take away the hotel. That’s why he broke it off. It wasn’t me. For me there was never anyone but my Lillie. Ask Madeline.”
“It’s true,” Madeline told him. “My parents were very much in love. It nearly killed my father when she died.”
Shock. Disbelief. Resignation that he had been wrong. Madeline saw all of it register on Chase’s face. He looked so lost, so alone. She remembered the stories Chase had told her of his childhood, and because she hadn’t learned yet how not to love him, a part of her wanted to reach out and comfort him. She squashed the notion and hardened her heart. “You got your revenge, Chase. I hope you find it sweet.” Turning away, she followed the stretcher out of the room.
Revenge wasn’t sweet, Chase thought as he waited for the call to come. It brought him no peace, no happiness. How could it, when the hate that had sustained his need for revenge had turned out to be a lie? When it had nearly cost an innocent man his life? When it had cost him the only woman he would ever love?
The phone jangled and Chase snatched it up on the first ring. “McAllister.”
“Mr. McAllister, this is the front desk. Ms. Charbonnet just came into the hotel and she’s getting on the elevator now.”
“Thanks,” Chase told the clerk. After replacing the receiver on the phone, he closed the door to his suite and started for the elevator at the end of the hall.
In the four weeks since Henri’s release from the hospital, he had had time to do lots of soul searching. At last he had accepted that his mother had been responsible for making the decision to choose death over life without the man she loved. In doing so it had been his mother who had decided to abandon him. He had accepted it and forgiven her, although he would never understand her decision. Perhaps his mother had been too weak to fight; so had Madeline’s grandfather, obviously.
He wasn’t. Stepping onto the elevator, Chase punched out the floor number for Madeline’s office. He loved Madeline, and despite her refusal to see or speak to him, he believed she still loved him. He hoped he wasn’t wrong, Chase told himself as he exited the elevator and strode down the hall to her office. Because against everyone’s advice he had risked everything he owned on a gamble that she did love him enough to forgive him. If he was wrong, then he had given her the instruments for her to seek her own revenge against him—the hotel and his heart.
“I see you got my letter,” Chase told her.
Madeline’s head jerked up, and she glared at him from her position on the floor. “I got your attorney’s letter demanding that I clear my personal things from the office,” she informed him. She dumped the contents of her bottom desk drawer into the cardboard box.
“That’s right. You returned the letters I sent to you unopened. You refused my calls, too.” Chase picked up one of the boxes and walked over to the bookshelves. “Want me to pack these for you?”
Her back stiffened, and the air in the room dropped another ten degrees. She shrugged. “Suit yourself. You could have saved yourself the legal fees, if you had just had my things packed up and sent to me the way I asked you to in my letter of resignation.”
“I suppose I could have, but then I wouldn’t have had a chance to see you again and tell you how sorry I am. I blame myself for your father’s heart attack.”
Madeline paused. “I know you do. And…well, you shouldn’t. It was a minor attack, Chase. The stress of your fight with him probably didn’t help, but apparently he was having problems for a long time. He’s doing fine now. He just needs to watch his diet and keep his blood pressure under control.”
Something softened in her eyes. “I appreciate you creating that ambassador position for him here at the hotel. I don’t know if he’ll actually take you up on it, but I think he was pleased by the offer.”
“I hope Henri does decide to take it for the hotel’s sake. He may not have been the best director I’ve ever worked with, but he was great at hotel relations. Besides, he still owns a third of the hotel.” Chase took a plant from a top shelf. “Should I pack this?”
“Just put it on top of one of the boxes.”
They worked in silence for the next ten minutes. When Madeline packed the last of the items from the top of her desk, Chase handed her the lid to the carton. “Looks like that’s it,” he said, giving the office a quick glance.
“Yes,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. Chase’s chest tightened at the sad look in her eyes.
“Well, I’ll just load these in my car and be out of your way.” She picked up a box and walked to the door.
Chase blocked her path. “I’ll have one of the bellmen carry them down for you.”
“That’s not necessary,” Madeline told him. She needed to get out of here before she started crying, before she found herself begging him to hold her and tell her that he still loved her, that it all hadn’t been a lie.
“I insist.” He removed the box from her hands.
After the bellman had arrived with a small dolly and had loaded the boxes and plants, Chase said, “You can take it all to the executive floor and put them in the general manager’s office.”
“What? Those are my personal belongings. They don’t belong to the hotel or to you. You tell him to come back here w
ith my things right now.”
She started after the bellman, who was already pushing the dolly onto the service elevator. Chase grabbed her arm and steered her to the main elevator. “Where do you think you’re taking me?” she demanded, trying to pull free of his grasp and not succeeding.
“To the office of the new general manager of the Saint Charles.”
“Chase, I do not want to go to your office. I have nothing more to say to you.”
“Then you can listen, because there’s quite a lot I have to say to you.” He tipped her chin up and brushed his lips across hers. A quiver of longing raced over her skin, and Madeline cursed her traitorous body. The doors to the elevator opened, and Chase marched her down the hall of the executive floor. “Why are you doing this, Chase? You’ve avenged your mother. You now control the hotel. You’ve gotten what you wanted.”
They stopped in front of the office door, and Chase turned her to face him. “You’re wrong. I don’t have what I want, Madeline, not if I don’t have you. I love you. Without you, the rest means nothing to me.”
Her heart jumped to her throat, but before she could say anything, Chase was opening the door and urging her inside the office.
Roses. There were red roses everywhere. Hundreds of them spilling from crystal vases, painted wicker baskets, Waterford pitchers. They stood majestically, their petals looking like velvet, atop the antique desk, the credenza, the bookcases, even along the windowsill. They seemed to cover every inch of the room. She could barely make out the surface of the Queen Anne table or the new pearl carpet that covered the floor. Their perfumed scent filled the air with its sweetness.
“I had new wall coverings, drapes and carpets put in, but if you don’t like them, you can redo it however you want.”
Madeline blinked and noted for the first time the damask drapes of soft green, the mint and cream wall covering with just a hint of pale rose running through it. She turned to look at Chase. “I thought this was the new GM’s office.”
“It is,” he said, smiling. “It’s your office, Princess. You’re the new GM of the Saint Charles.”
