back.
“Uh, Madame Seville said it would be all right for me to come out here to talk to you. I’m not catching you at a bad time, am I?”
Her midnight-black curls were pulled back in a loose ponytail and glistened with rain. Drips of water trickled down her porcelain cheeks and clung to her dark, thick lashes. She had a khaki-colored trench coat thrown over her arm, and rainwater was puddling under her as she stood there waiting for him to give her an answer.
The sight of her simply stunned him, took his words away. He reached a hand toward his shirt pocket without thinking, then cursed himself silently for being such a fool. He didn’t need help facing this echo of days gone by, despite the fact she was the most gorgeous creature he had ever laid eyes on.
“What are you doing here?” he asked with a forced grin. “I thought we’d agreed to start on the books first thing in the morning?”
“I need to talk to you, Chase.” She raised her chin in that smug little way she’d had as a girl and took a tentative step closer.
“Talk? I’ll just bet you have a lot to say now.” He turned his back on her and spread his feet for the balance he badly needed at the moment. “You’re ten years too late. You have nothing to say that I care to hear anymore.”
“Please,” she whispered from behind him. “This isn’t about the mill. I’m hoping that will be strictly business with you. But what I wanted to talk about tonight was…”
“Not about the past, I’d wager.” He spun around and glared down at her in the slanted light. “I’d give better than even odds that you’d rather die than have to face your past sins tonight. Am I right?”
She was a good half foot shorter and the shadows cast by the back light kept him from seeing her face clearly. But he did manage to catch the anger in her glinting stare, and he watched her work her slender white throat as she swallowed back a nasty remark.
Tempting, this ghost from his past. Too tempting.
Kate shook her head and straightened her shoulders. “I don’t think it would serve any purpose to go over our mistakes at this late date.”
Just to please himself, to give in to the urgent need to arouse her, Chase moved closer. She backed up a step and he took another in her direction, deliberately pushing her and limiting her personal space.
“My only mistake was in trusting you once, telling you that I loved you.” He heard the evil chuckle coming from his own lips and wondered at just how far he had come away from the naive young kid he had been back then. “It’s a mistake I never intend to repeat.”
Her eyes closed and he heard her soft sigh. Regrets? From the ice princess, Kate Beltrane?
The silent whiff of her perfume reached icy fingers into his soul. The smell of camellias and gardenia that he’d once imagined he would never be able to get out of his mind took a swift sledgehammer to his heart.
He felt that soft underbelly of pity and desire creeping up on him again as he reached a hand toward her shoulder. Before he could give her comfort, her eyes popped open and determination narrowed those full tantalizing lips.
“I didn’t come here tonight to rehash old wounds,” she told him with sudden fervor. “I came to ask…explain really…about Live Oak Hall.”
“You came here…in the rain…to explain about that broken-down old plantation?” He allowed himself a sneer, but didn’t back away from her.
“It’s about the guest cottage. My friend, I don’t know if you remember her, Shelby Rousseau?”
When he just squinted at her, Kate rushed ahead. “Well, she’s a single mother now and trying to get a business started. And…I’ve been letting her trade out cleaning and cooking to stay in the guest cottage. She can’t afford to pay rent, you see, and I thought…”
“You have to start remembering that Live Oak Hall is mine now.” He shook his head and grimaced. “No rent? You must’ve inherited your father’s great business sense.”
The humiliation ran through Kate’s veins. She couldn’t stop it from smarting. But she could hold her place and not let Chase see how badly he was getting to her.
He would have no way of knowing how she had begged and pleaded with her father to let her help make the business decisions for the mill. Two years of business college didn’t make her an expert, but she’d seen what a mess he had been making of the fiances. How he’d run off the best customers and overpaid the farmers for their rice in years when crops were plentiful.
But her father had quite typically berated her back then. Reminded her that a girl could not know what was best in business. He’d relegated her to the accounting pool, telling her account books were for females. And if she would ever have the sense to marry, her husband could give the advice while she gave him the grandchildren.
“This isn’t about business or revenge,” she told Chase with a surprisingly steady voice. “It’s about friendship and love. Please…”
Chase took her chin with a firm grip, frightening her at first. Then he leaned close enough that she could hear his ragged breathing and could smell his desire. The man still wanted her. After everything she’d done.
The shock of realization and the breathlessness of staring into his deep-gray eyes kept her silent too long. Chase must’ve sensed the weakness and moved in.
“Friendship and love, huh? And those are things the poor kid from the bad side of town would know nothing about, is that it?” He inched even closer.
She wanted him to kiss her. They were so close that another centimeter would bring their lips together. Dreams of one more kiss from Chase had kept her going in the darkest hours.
But tonight it wouldn’t be the same as in her dreams. Tonight the rage in them both would make it all wrong.
The panic drove her back in time to become once again the ten-year-old girl who’d run away from home and found a scary but perfectly safe shelter with an old drunk and his twelve-year-old son. She’d wanted Chase to kiss her then, too, because he’d been her white knight and savior.
But he hadn’t kissed her that night. It wouldn’t have been right when they were children—and it wouldn’t be right now when they were both so tense.
She reared back out of his grasp and shoved at his arms. The coffee mug he’d been carrying all this time slipped to the granite tile floor and shattered into a million pieces.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she cried as she kneeled to clean up the mess. She quickly gathered up a few broken shards and then looked around for some kind of cloth to wipe up the cold coffee and the tiny silvers.
“Just let it go, Kate.” He was kneeling beside her and took her arm. “Are you all right?”
“Huh?” She must be in some kind of desire-filled daze, because she couldn’t quite understand his meaning.
He gently pried the broken ceramic from her hand and put it aside. “You’re bleeding.” His big hand encompassed her smaller one, but with a touch so light it nearly brought tears to her eyes.
“It’s
