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.”
“I see,” she said as she tilted her head to question him. “Then what do you want from me? Am I just to go home and never return to my family’s mill again?”
“Not at all, bébé.” He watched her carefully. “In the first place, I’ll need your assistance in going over the mill records and reports and will pay you for that time. I suspect you’ll be needing the money.
“And in the second place, you no longer have a house to go home to. I will expect you to pack and be out by the first of the week.”
“Live Oak Hall?” Her voice rose three octaves, but her panic didn’t thrill him as it should have. “You can’t mean…”
“I mean that I own it, or rather I hold the mortgage on it, too. Your father left nothing that wasn’t in debt, and I’m calling in your mortgage at the end of the week.”
She blinked her eyes and he saw her chin tremble. “I knew the mortgage was behind, but I thought the bank would give me more time. Where will I go? Where will I stay if you kick me out of the plantation that’s been my family’s home for over a hundred years?”
He felt a niggle of pity stirring in his soul, but he tried to ignore it. “Blame your father for your troubles, not me. Perhaps I’ll consider renting you one of the guest cottages. If you can afford it, that is.”
Tears welled in her eyes, but instead of crying she set her chin defiantly. This was his time at long last. But now that it had finally arrived, he found that her pain gave him absolutely no satisfaction and her pride turned him on.
And he almost hated her for it.
Almost.
Two
A wicked wind blew black storm clouds up from the Gulf and threatened to tear new leaves off the ancient oaks lining the allée drive in front of Live Oak Hall. Standing in the kitchen and looking out the window, Kate knew cold late-spring rains would come in a few more minutes. Right before sunset.
But even with Kate’s vivid imagination, she was positive those rains didn’t have the power to wash away the sting of memories, the heartbreak of wanting things to be different. Lord, how she had dreamed of having the opportunity to make other choices in her life, to go back in time and change what had happened.
Now that Chase had come home, it was clear that she would have to face some of those old poor choices. He wouldn’t let her escape them any longer.
She knew her secrets and her mistakes would eventually come out. But there was one cruel secret that she would never give up. No matter what.
Nothing could ever pry that one from her heart. Not even to save her from Chase’s hatred. It had to stay buried. Where it belonged.
“I can’t believe Chase Severin owns the mill now.” Shelby Rousseau, Kate’s oldest and best friend, frowned once then smiled as she captured her toddler daughter and lifted the little girl into her high chair.
“Well, I’m afraid he does, Shell.” Kate wasn’t sure how to explain the rest of it to the one person who had stuck with her through the worst of times. And far in the back of her mind, Kate still had hope of a reprieve.
Sitting down at her huge kitchen table to watch Shelby finish preparing their supper, Kate agonized over what she knew she had to say. How could she tell her friend that her home was lost? That the young single mother would soon be evicted from the guest cottage where she had been raising her daughter.
That
