A Scandalous Melody

Her back to Kate, Rose started to get up from her desk. Just as suddenly Chase raised his eyes to Kate’s office door and for one crazy moment his gaze met hers. Kate’s hands trembled at the sight of the dark-gray eyes that she hadn’t forgotten for one day in the past ten years.

He was still the best-looking guy she’d ever seen. Only even better as a grown man. With a monumental effort, she turned and scurried back to her desk. Chase was coming her way, there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to stop him. The door swung wide just as she reached her chair and turned around.

“You won’t believe this,” Rose said as she came into the office with Chase right on her heels. “You remember Chase Severin, don’t you, Kate? Well, he’s the man we’ve been expecting. Isn’t that a surprise?”

“What…?” Surprise was hardly the word for all the emotions that were shooting through her mind and body at the moment. Confusion mixed with remembered desire and caused chaos in her mind.

“Hello, Katherine,” he said in that deep, dangerous voice she had heard so often in the wind and in the rain.

The Louisiana humidity, the nasty low-down kind that usually never bothered her, closed in despite the air-conditioning and cut off the words in Kate’s throat. Sweat beaded at her temple and on the back of her neck and she couldn’t think of what to say.

He narrowed his eyes. “I guess if a person doesn’t say goodbye, that must make it okay for them to ignore hello. Is that right, Ms. Beltrane?” His bitterness was plain…understandable but still hurtful at the same time.

“I, uh,” she stuttered. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her chin. “Hello, Chase. You took me by surprise. I’m sorry. It’s been a long time. How’ve you been?”

“Considerably better than I was the last time we saw each other, chère.”

Okay, Kate admitted to herself. Chase had a right to be angry with her—even after ten years. What she’d done deserved his anger and much more. But she was no longer the scared little poulette of her childhood years. Afraid of scandal and rumors, afraid of her father.

“Rose, will you excuse us, please?” she asked her secretary. If this was going to be a rehash of yesteryear, she didn’t want the worst of it ending up as gossip around town. There were plenty of other subjects for the citizens to stew about these days.

The secretary excused herself and shut the door behind her. Kate had a momentary flash of fear at being closed up with a man who must hate her guts. But her own curiosity and pride overcame it.

Whatever Chase Severin might be, he would never hurt her physically. She knew that right down to the toes of her too-tight shoes.

“All right, Chase. What do you really want here?”

It took a few long seconds for him to answer. Kate couldn’t breathe and wished she’d turned up the air-conditioning earlier. But biting her tongue, she waited.

“Everything, Kate,” he finally told her. “I want it all. And this time I’m not leaving before I take what I’ve got coming…starting with the mill.”

She felt the confusion and shock spread across her face and reached a hand out to steady herself against the desk. “The mill is in bankruptcy. A corporation has secured the liens that my father…”

“Your dead father, you mean?” Chase interrupted with a sneer. “The one who not only ran me out of town ten years ago, but who also ran the mill right over the edge into oblivion with his careless management.”

“You work for the corporation that has come to take over the operation of the mill?” Kate’s knees were knocking together so loudly that she was petrified he would hear and mock her for it.

“I am the corporation, Kate. Surprised? I’m the sole owner of the corporation that now owns the mill. And I haven’t decided yet whether to continue operations or burn the thing to the ground.”

The soft gasp escaped her throat before she had a chance to swallow it down. “You have a right to be angry at my father…and at me. But this mill has always been the lifeblood of the town that raised you. You have no cause to take some kind of fanatic revenge against the whole town.”

Chase reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a slender cigar. Without asking permission, he lit it up and then sat down in her chair while he blew out a fragrant cloud of smoke.

“Don’t I?” he asked with a wry grin.

Chase found he could barely breathe as the room began closing in around him. But he would never let her know how he’d been affected. After ten long years, he was close enough to the woman he had loved and lost to actually reach out and touch her face.

The conflicting emotions swelled in his chest. For so long he had wanted revenge. He’d dreamed of it. Tasted it.

Breathed it in along with his air.

It was revenge against Kate’s father, Henry Beltrane, that had occupied his mind for all this time, though. And the bastard had gone and died six months ago. Now, Chase suddenly discovered his intentions toward Kate were much more complicated than he had imagined.

He’d set her up today, just to see what kind of reaction she would have to learning he was the one who now had charge of her future. But he hadn’t counted on the fact that with one look, she would still be able to stir his soul and weaken his knees with the very same desperate need he’d had for her as a teenager.

Chase let the nicotine soothe his jangled nerves, while he kept his best poker face on for Kate’s benefit. This whole scene was like something out of his dreams.

At twenty-seven, she hadn’t changed much from the sweet seventeen-year-old wisp of a girl whom he’d poured his heart out to. Her hair was still a wild riot of ebony curls, even though she’d tried to pin them up off her slender neck. That soft white neck he alternately wanted to kiss—and to wring.

Just now, her rich chocolate eyes were every bit as wild as her hair. There was obvious fear in them. Fear of him and the power he now held over her life.

He wasn’t too sure he liked seeing those particular emotions from her. Yes, it was what he’d thought he wanted. He’d wanted her—wanted everyone—to pay.

At this moment, however, seeing her again and being this close to the reality of his dreams…it was not fear that he would’ve chosen to see in her eyes when she looked at him. Sensual awareness and need were what he longed to see—what he’d secretly desired for so many years.

“Sit down, Kate,” he said in as steady a voice as he could manage.

Could he find the words to say that he wanted her to realize what she’d thrown away the night she let him leave town? And that he wanted her and the whole town to regret what they had let happen to him that night.

She looked pained, as if he’d struck her, and she put the back of her hand against her lips.

But she just as suddenly turned, opened a file drawer and pulled out an ashtray. “Here. If you must have that nasty thing, you’ll need this.” Her eyes flashed, dark and furious.

Ah. There was his Kate. The one he remembered from youthful stolen moments and shared secrets. So strong willed. So proud.

He stubbed out the cigar as Kate primly took the secretary’s chair opposite him. “Still the proper princess, chère? I would’ve thought ten years and the loss of your father and his fortune might have brought you down to earth with the rest of us mere mortals.”

“What I am…what I’ve become…is not the point. What have you become, Chase?” She straightened her spine and sat stiffly at the edge of her chair. “Apparently you have money now. What else is different about you? Will you destroy a whole town just for the hell of it?”

God, how he wanted her. The sudden slashing need to run his hands along her body’s curves—her narrow waist, the high-tipped breasts—was so strong it actually made him wince.

He wasn’t a womanizer. Never had been. And what with his tight business schedules and his bruised memories of youthful romance, he rarely got involved with women. Certainly a few of them had passed through his nights throughout the years, but they were women who knew he only wanted the pleasure of their company for a short time. That he had nothing else to offer.

His affairs were brief, consensual and devoid of passion.

But this was his Kate. The woman he had hated for ten long years. So the desperate erotic need he’d felt when he looked at her had come as a complete shock.

He’d been anxious to see her face, to see the whole town’s collective and astonished face, when they figured out their former whipping boy was the person behind the corporate facade who’d bought out the mill. He’d wanted that revenge. They owed it to him.

But it hadn’t occurred to him that he would feel other things beyond satisfaction. Kate had never married, and according to town gossip had never had a lasting serious relationship over the past ten years. Chase figured that must be because she thought she was too good for the men around her, the way she’d apparently felt about him all those years ago.

Cold. Frozen. Man-eater. Those were the words used on the streets of Bayou City to describe his former girlfriend.

But that wasn’t what he felt when he looked at her now. No, Chase felt the flames licking at his libido as strongly now as he ever had as a randy teenager.

His conflicted emotions raised the stakes for this game.

“What I decide to do about the mill in the end will be all about business,” he finally told her. “It’s my deal now, Kate. I hold all the cards.”