Masters Forever (Masters #3)

by Ginger Voight

  He merely shook his head. I knew how much pain he was in from all the treatments that left him so sick. They were still fighting, but he was willing to give it all up. “What’s the point of living longer if I have to live like this?” he had protested mere weeks before. “Why?” he repeated now.

  I gulped hard as I squeezed his hand in mine. “Because you’re going to be a grandfather.” His eyes widened as he turned to me. “I’m pregnant, Dad. I’m due in November. So you have to hang around, because I don’t want to do this without you.”

  He struggled to process this new data. “But… you’re not married, Coralie.”

  “I know,” I said quietly.

  He tried to sit up, the first time he had tried to do that in weeks. I helped him. “I want to see him. Now.”

  I nodded. The forceful tone in his crackling voice was the most life I had seen out of him in a while, and it was worth everything to preserve. I called for Caz, who joined us minutes later.

  “You got my daughter pregnant,” Father announced, and Caz looked appropriately contrite.

  “It would appear so.”

  “And when do you plan to marry her?”

  Caz looked at me briefly before he turned back to Father. “August. In France. For her birthday.” It was an answer on the fly, one we’d never talked about, but it seemed to intrigue Father nonetheless as he did the math.

  “We’ll do it in May,” he decided. “The sooner the better, before Coralie shows. Then we’ll spend the entire summer in France, to let the story die down before we come back here for the baby to be born, and to ensure Harvey’s presidential win.” He glanced to me. “That’s more important than ever now.”

  I thought about the last May wedding I had. “I don’t want to get married in May, Dad.”

  “Then June,” he suggested. “A little cliché, but we might as well keep to one tradition. You’ve picked good, solid French names, I trust.”

  I nodded. It pained me to answer. “Chloe for a girl. Remi for a boy.”

  He turned to Caz. “You’ll return to your family name of Gaboury, of course.”

  Caz practically paled as the reality of things sank in on him. Once again he wasn’t his own man. He belonged to the Cabots now. “Of course,” he answered, though less convincingly than before.

  “Remi Cabot Gaboury,” Father said with a wistful smile. He took my hand in his and kissed it softly. “Your mother would be so proud.”

  With tears in my eyes I reached for a hug, and I felt his body try to spark to life in my arms. This was what he needed to hold on. I could feel the fight return. “We’ll announce your engagement as soon as possible,” Father decided but I shook my head.

  “We don’t need to rush, Dad. Our whole relationship has been kept under wraps for months. I say just announce the wedding and go forward from there.”

  Even as I said the words, I couldn’t help but feel as powerless and trapped as I felt a year before. But this time I was locking myself in my own cage for a reason. It was to save my dad. That had been my job since I was thirteen years old, and I wasn’t yet ready to retire.

  “We’ll announce the engagement shortly,” he insisted with that stern look in his eye. “And you’ll get married in our chapel, just like your mother and I did.”

  I sighed as I laid him back down against his pillows. “We’ve got plenty of time to worry about all of that, Father. I just need you to concentrate on getting better. For Remi,” I added, and he closed his eyes with a happy smile.

  Caz kept an arm around me as we walked back to Petit Paradis. “Smooth move about the August wedding,” I commented as he let us into the private bungalow.

  “Seemed fitting. Since it was so important that you spent the month there last year.”

  I nodded. If only I had gotten pregnant then. “I should tell Devlin.”

  Caz shook his head. “You can’t tell Devlin.”

  My eyes met his. “Why not?”

  “You tell Devlin and he’ll never let you go. It’ll lead Suzanne right to you.”

  “I keep telling you she’s not going to do anything.”

  “And I keep telling you not to underestimate her. She’s a full blown psycho. As long as you and Devlin are apart, she’s off the hunt. Think of your baby, CC,” he said as he put his hand against my flat stomach. “That little nugget is worth a thousand Devlins, or a thousand mes, and you know it.”

  I nodded, though I didn’t necessarily agree.

  I debated telling Devlin the rest of the week, right up until he showed up for Aubrey’s piano lesson that Wednesday. Why Wednesday? Because it had always been Wednesday. As long as Caz was in my life, it would always be Wednesday, because that was the rules of his game. A hump day, in every sense of the word.

  I was in the kitchen when he arrived. Gretchen was one of the few people actually ‘in’ on my little secret. Since she was going to be the one to take care of my little ‘nugget’ as Caz called him or her, she began her job in earnest the minute she found out about it. She had begun fattening me up with all kinds of foods to spoil me and pamper me, and by default, my baby as well.

  Dev popped in the doorway of the kitchen, to drop off a big basket of German sausages for her, and, one might argue, for me. He spotted me at the table. “It’s good to see you eat, ‘pussycat,’” he murmured. “You’re much too thin.”

  “That’s what I keep telling her,” Gretch said.

  “I’m up seven pounds,” I informed them both.

  “And it looks good on you, Coralie,” he said softly. “It reminds me of a beautiful woman I used to love.”

  The way he used the past tense practically fractured my heart in two, tearing all the pieces I had only begun to mend. Gretch used that unspoken cue to make her unobtrusive exit, which left Dev and I alone together. Dev walked to the table, where he pulled out a chair to sit.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while. How have you been?”

  I looked away. I just knew he’d read the answer in my eyes. “Good. Busy.”

  “New relationships take a lot of work,” he murmured, fishing for info on my status with Caz.

  “You know how it is,” I shrugged.

  His voice was soft as velvet. “Yes.”

  Finally I looked him in the eye. “How’s Suzanne?”

  His face hardened. “Same as you. Busy.”

  “A shame you don’t get to see her more often.”

  “I see her plenty,” he informed me coolly. It stabbed me right in the gut. “I don’t live with her, of course. But we make time.” He leaned forward. “Would you like to know how we make time, Coralie?”

  I swallowed hard. “Not really.”

  “Then why bring her up?”

  “To see if she’s still an issue,” I answered softly. “And clearly she is.”

  “Why shouldn’t she be? You’ve moved on, right?”

  I nodded. “I had no choice.”

  “You always have choices,” he reminded me, echoing the words he told me when we first got together.

  “So says the man chained to Suzanne Everhart’s ankle.” I waited only a moment before I said, “Unless there’s something she’s still holding against you, you have to be there by choice.”

  His stormy eyes met mine. “You have a point, Miss Cabot,” he said, emphasizing my maiden name. He rose from the table. “You should join us in the den to hear your cousin play. She’s advancing beautifully.”

  “She has a great teacher,” I commented.

  He leaned down, his hand bracing on the table in front of me, as his breath burned hot in my ear. “Indeed she does.”

  He left me with that provocative comment. It only proved one thing. Whether this baby was Caz’s or Devlin’s, I did have the choice on who might actually father him or her.

  Until Devlin could find his way out of Suzanne’s cage, that could never be him.

  And I could tell him about it, to give him that incentive, but it would risk my child on a pretty big maybe. Devlin hadn�
�t been able to shake Suzanne free for years, no matter what he had done. I wasn’t going to wait around to see if that hateful woman was going to allow my happy ending.

  I was going to take the happiest ending I could muster, one that would provide for the only person that mattered in this equation. My child.

  I walked back to Petit Paradis, where I finally accepted Caz’s proposal. Within a week, I wore his ring, a diamond set in a vintage art deco design engraved into 14-carat white gold. Within a month, we had announced our status to the world, and Caz had moved into the main house with me.

  Now there was nothing to do but sit back and wait for all hell to break loose, which I predicted would happen in three… two… one…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I thought I had seen Devlin Masters angry before. I’d watched him punch a hole in our living room wall. I had seen him beat the crap out of Caz Bixby, very nearly strangling him to death on my sofa. But nothing matched the rage that brewed in those incredible eyes when he found me that following Wednesday, to congratulate me on my upcoming nuptials.

  I had sent Caz out for the day, allowing him to field all our interviews and manage any kind of social brouhaha that had erupted from our surprise announcement. I figured that was much safer than his being at the house that afternoon when Devlin arrived for yet another music lesson for Aubrey. She hadn’t even gotten home from school when he arrived, likely hoping for a little one-on-one time with the blushing bride-to-be. He found me in my father’s office, which spilled out onto our back patio. I had the door open as I handled what I could from home, using Father’s computer.

  “Busy bride, hard at work,” Dev drawled from the doorway. My hands trembled as I pulled them away from the computer keyboard.

  “Devlin,” I greeted quietly. He sauntered into the room, his rage barely contained in his body, making his movements a little stiffer than usual as he fought to contain himself. He didn’t stop until he could perch on the edge of my father’s desk, like he had done on the very first night we met.

  “I hope you don’t mind. I wanted to come early to personally extend my best wishes for your wedding.”

  “I don’t mind,” I stammered.

  He chuckled as he watched me. I remembered well how he had toyed with Caz that day in our apartment, when he had forced Caz to reach for clothes he had stupidly discarded. I knew without touching him that he was one flinch away from losing control. “Do I get to kiss the bride?”

  “Devlin,” I started but he merely chuckled again as he stood to tower over me where I sat. I practically shrank back from him, which only pissed him off more.

  “Stand up, Coralie,” he commanded softly.

  I quaked in my shoes as I stood slowly to my feet. He took me by my left hand and pulled me around the desk until I stood right in front of him, so he could inspect my ring.

  “Diamonds,” he murmured. “How unoriginal.”

  “Devlin,” I started again but his eyes shot to mine, with a look so powerful it shut me up at once.

  “You really think I’m going to allow you to marry him, Coralie?”

  My eyebrow arched. “Allow?”

  He pulled me to him at once, which took my breath away. “You’re mine. Or have you forgotten?”

  He crushed his mouth on mine in an angry kiss. I didn’t submit. I didn’t resist. It only made him angrier.

  “I suppose you have forgotten,” he decided. “Maybe it’s time to remind you.”

  He swept me into his arms and marched right back out of the open patio doors, striding confidently towards Petit Paradis. I struggled against him but he held me stronger. When we got to my bungalow, neither of his had a key, but that didn’t stop Devlin, who used all his rage and all his strength to kick open the door. He didn’t stop until we got to the bedroom, where he tossed me on the bed before locking the door behind us.

  I scrambled back to my feet just in time to see him tear open his shirt as he advanced.

  “Like a chained beast ready to claw his way out of his restraints,” Aubrey had said.

  She wasn’t far wrong. I felt a bit like Faye Wray as he picked me up into those massive arms, crushing me against his solid, bare chest and he kissed me again, practically making my lips bleed under the unrelenting force of his mouth. “Submit!” he growled against me.

  “No!” I cried back.

  With a ferocious roar, he threw me back onto the bed and crawled over me to hold me down. “You’re not going anywhere, do you understand me? You were mine from the day I touched you, right here on this bed, a virtual virgin just waiting to be mastered. And I did that. Admit it!”

  He held me prone, forcing me to look at him. “Devlin, please,” I begged but he just shook his head.

  “You’re mine, Coralie. Mine.” He bent to kiss me, only this time it was much more persuasive than punishing. I almost wished he stayed angry, because I couldn’t fight him any other way. When his tongue forced its way into my mouth, I finally started to resist, mostly because all I ever wanted to do was give in. He was right. He had mastered me like no one before him or after could ever hope to do.

  “Stop! I’m marrying Caz!”

  “You just think you are,” he said with an evil snarl. “I’m never letting you go. I’ll kill him first. And you know I will.”

  My eyes met his. “So the transformation is complete. You’re just like Suzanne.”

  He gripped me tighter. “I’ll do whatever I need to do to. You’re not leaving me, Coralie. Not now. Not ever.”

  “I already did,” I said softly.

  “Then why does your body reach for me?” he asked as his hand slipped along my shoulder and down across my chest. “You’re only fighting yourself, darlin.’ Like always.”

  “Devlin please,” I started again and he bent for another kiss.

  “Please what?” he coaxed softly. “Please kiss you? Please touch you? Please make love to you again, like I did in our bedroom in Brentwood? Remember how good it was? How good we were?” Another kiss, this one longer and more insistent.

  “Please let me go,” I begged.

  Those eyes captured me. “If I could, don’t you think I would? You’re in my blood, Coralie. You’re every breath I take.”

  I closed my eyes and turned away. He used the opportunity to kiss my neck and nuzzle my ear until finally I gasped softly. He knew he held the winning hand. He turned me back to him for another kiss, and this time he didn’t end it until I finally submitted at last. “There she is,” he whispered against me. “My beautiful wife.”

  It broke my heart to hear it. That was my fairy tale, no matter how complicated, no matter how dark, no matter how cursed. And maybe that was what I might have wanted when I was looking out for only me. But I had a new priority now. A bigger one. “Dev, please. I’m going to marry Caz.”

  He grabbed me tighter. “Why? You love me, Coralie. You want me. I can feel it. I can taste it. Why would you ever settle for someone else?”

  My eyes finally met his. “Because I’m pregnant.”

  It was like I had zapped him with electricity. He shot off of me like a bullet, staring down at me in shock. “What?”

  I pulled myself off of the bed and faced him. “I’m having a baby, Dev.” The last part was even harder to utter. “Caz’s baby.”

  He stumbled backwards as he stared at me. “When?”

  I shuddered. That was one question I would never answer. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He advanced. “It matters plenty! If that’s my baby…,” he started, but I shook my head.

  “It’s Caz’s. More importantly, it’s mine. And I don’t want my baby anywhere near Suzanne Everhart. Ever.”

  He stared at me for a long moment. Finally he nodded. “I see.”

  “Please, Dev. If you ever loved me, please just… do whatever you need to do to keep her away from us. I don’t want to end up like Laurie.”

  He stepped closer, his eyes flashing. “You’ll never end up like Laurie. You understand?�
�

  I gulped hard and nodded. “We haven’t announced the pregnancy yet,” I started but he cut me off.

  “I won’t tell a goddamned soul,” he growled. The alarm on his watch beeped and he looked down at it. “It’s time for Aubrey’s lesson,” he announced before he started buttoning his shirt.

  “Under the circumstances, I think it would be best if you suspended all lessons, especially held at the house.”

  He studied me for a moment, silently deliberating. “She can come to me,” Devlin decided at last. “You know the address,” he sneered before he spun on his heel and left the room. By the time I emerged from the bungalow, he was nowhere to be found, likely getting as far away from the estate as possible before he committed murder at long last.

  Caz was concerned as he inspected the broken door later that evening. “Wow. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I nodded. “I’m okay. Just… relieved it’s over I guess.”

  He chuckled. “You think it’s over? That’s cute. Still believe in Santa Claus, too?”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Caz.”

  “Don’t be naïve, CC. The only other woman I’ve seen Devlin lose his shit over is Suzanne, and they’re still going strong.” I made a face, but he kept going. “Once you’re his, you’re his. That’s how it works in his head.” He glanced me over. “And apparently he’s right.”

  “I sent him away, Caz. I’m trying.”

  Caz stood to face me. “After how many kisses? How close did you come to fucking him just one more time, just because you could?”

  I turned away but he turned me back.

  “No judgment. I walked into this arrangement eyes open. I just want you to do the same.”

  I sighed. “Fine. I wanted him, okay? He’s a beast, but I wanted him. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Because obviously I’m sick in the head.”

  He pulled me closer. “You’re not sick, baby. You’re just neglected. All your life you’ve been waiting for someone to let you know they couldn’t live one day without you, like your father did for your mom. That’s how you’ve been programed to think love works, all lightning bolts and roaring thunder.”