“I love dancing with you, but until your mind is actually on the fact that you’re dancing with me, I’d prefer to find someplace to sit down for a few moments.”
He drew back and stared into her soft blue eyes. God, he wished they were anywhere but here. Anywhere but under the eyes of so many strangers and in possible danger. Someplace where he could hold her, touch her, still the unrest he could see moving through her expression.
She had questions and she wouldn’t wait much longer to ask them. He’d prefer to wait a hell of a lot longer before he had to answer them.
He escorted her to the buffet bar. There, they filled two delicate china plates, accepted a glass of wine each, and returned to the patio and the small wrought-iron tables and chairs that surrounded the dance area.
He wasn’t hungry. And he didn’t need the wine. What he needed was an explanation for the vague sense of warning that kept prodding him.
His gaze swept over the area again, coming back time and again to Emily, as guests stopped to speak, laugh, and draw her into the gossip that seemed to be the spice of political life. There were enough people surrounding her now that he didn’t have to worry about an assassin’s bullet.
As his gaze moved back to the couples dancing on the patio, he froze.
He hadn’t seen them in fifteen years, but he would recognize them anywhere. They were older, aged, their faces lined with grief and weariness, their eyes filled with sadness as they watched him.
Son of a bitch. He didn’t need this. Not here. Not now.
“Emily.” He rose to his feet and extended his hand to her as she stared back at him in surprise. The guests surrounding her parted immediately as she straightened from her chair and came to him.
No questions asked. She moved to him.
“We need to leave now,” he said softly. “Right now.”
She nodded swiftly, lifted her purse from the table and turned back to him.
But it was too late. Dammit, it was too damned late.
“Kell.” Aaron Beaulaine stopped in front of him, his weathered expression filled with determination and hope as he straightened his stooped shoulders and his arm curved around his petite wife, Patricia.
“Excuse me, sir,” he answered coolly. “We were just leaving.”
“Kell. It’s been fifteen years,” Patricia Beaulaine whispered softly. “Can’t we have fifteen minutes?”
He could feel Emily’s confused gaze as she stared at him and the older couple.
“I’m sorry,” he answered again. “But we need to be going.”
He tugged at Emily’s hand and she tugged back. Stilling, he clenched his jaw and whipped his gaze to her, feeling the anger beginning to rise inside him now.
“Hello.” She extended her hand to Aaron. “I’m Emily Stanton.”
“Richard Stanton’s little girl.” Aaron’s smile was tremulous. “It’s very good to meet you, Miss Stanton. I’m Aaron Beaulaine and this is my wife, Patricia.”
The Cajun accent was diluted, but still there. Unlike Kell, Aaron had never been able to completely drown out the low, accented drawl he had been raised with.
Emily looked from Kell’s closed expression, then to the older couple once again.
“Kell. It’s been so long.” Patricia reached out to him then, her green eyes, not as dark as his, not as bright, shimmering with a damp sheen as her fragile hand shook.
She was so much tinier than she had been last time he had seen her. So much more frail.
“Has it been long enough?” he asked her then. “Would it be long enough for you?”
He hated this. For fifteen years he had avoided anything that would bring him in contact with them, that would allow for such a scene.
“A time comes in a man’s life when he must make hard decisions,” Aaron said then, his voice gruff. “When he must see the mistakes of his past. Just ’cause we are older, doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes.”
Mistakes. That was how they saw it. How they had seen his marriage to Tansy. How they had seen the child he had created with her.
“And a time comes when a man has to admit that no amount of regret can ever change certain mistakes or their results.” He kept his voice cool, as unemotional as his expression. “This is neither the place nor the time, Mr. Beaulaine. We’ll have to speak later.”
Mamère whimpered. Before Kell could catch himself his hand reached for her, but he quickly jerked it back, an inner fury lashing inside him at the instinctive response.
“Kell, we’ll be gone soon.” Patricia kept her voice low, her awareness of those around them evident. “I beg of you, allow us to make amends.”
He shook his head. “Amends were never needed.” Some things couldn’t be fixed.
With that, he dropped Emily’s hand, gripped her upper arm, and moved her away from the couple, leading her back into the house and heading for the front door.
She wasn’t speaking. He had glimpsed her face though, seen the suspicion in her eyes and the anger.
Damn her, did she think he liked turning his back on them? They were old. So old that the knowledge of their limited time on this earth struck him with startling strength each time he thought of them.
And each time he thought of seeing them again, reaching out to them, he remembered the child that had died with its mother. The child he had never held, never known, and yet had loved with all his heart.
As they said their goodbyes to the Dunmores and Emily made some excuse about a headache and gave her effusive thanks to Wilma for hostessing the party, Kell watched as Ian moved to the limo that had pulled up to the bottom of the steps that led to the circular driveway.
His neck was still itching. He stared around the well-lit grounds, his eyes narrowed on the shadows that ringed the woods around them.
As he moved Emily down the steps, he saw it. The small red bead that began to dance over her chest from the sights of an assassin’s rifle.
He jerked her to the side as part of the cement column behind them shattered, and Ian jumped into action. He rushed up the steps from the open limo door, placed himself in front of Emily as Kell gripped her waist and they all but threw her into the limo. Kell jumped in beside her.
Within seconds, the vehicle was moving away from the house as Ian barked his report to Reno into the secured cell phone he carried.
Emily stared across the distance at Kell, her eyes wide, her face pale.
“I saw it,” she whispered, the horror in her voice clenching at his soul. “Fuentes has decided to kill me? I thought he wanted to kidnap me?”
“If his assassin wanted you dead he wouldn’t have used a fucking laser sight,” he snarled, his hands clenching as he fought to keep from jerking her to him, from devouring her just to be certain she was truly still there with him. “The son of a bitch is playing games again and laughing his ass off as we scramble around trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Once I figure it out, I’m going to watch that bastard bleed.”
Seventeen
EMILY ESCAPED TO HER BEDROOM the moment Kell announced that the house was clear and safe. Her father was downstairs with the rest of the SEAL team, planning, trying to figure out what the Fuentes cartel was doing and what their next move would be.
All Emily could see was the small pinpoint of light that had jumped from her chest to Kell’s. The knowledge that the laser sight was aiming for him, not for her, and the startling realization that life would never be the same without him.
She wouldn’t be the same without him.
She loved him.
He was secretive. Mysterious. Sexy and manipulative and she knew it. He had been manipulating her since the day he had come into her life. But the manipulation was designed to spur her to fight for what she wanted. Not to restrain those needs.
He probed and he pushed, and every time he touched her she went up in flames.
At the moment she was furious with him. And she hurt for him. She had seen the pain in his eyes when his grandparents
had approached him at the party.
Oh yes, she knew the Beaulaines, and she knew a part of their history. The only grandchild they had was disowned years ago, before the death of his wife. Once the wife had died, they had tried to mend the break, to bring him back into the family. But the boy they had thrown away had become a man, and the man had refused to acknowledge them.
It wasn’t a secret in the political and social sphere she moved within. The Beaulaines were heavy contributors to her father’s political fund. And come to think of it, so were their good friends Douglas and Mena Krieger.
Emily froze in the center of her bedroom. Why hadn’t she pieced it together? Of course, she had met the Kriegers only once and Douglas didn’t resemble Kell in any way. Kell looked like his maternal grandfather, the piercing gaze, the shape of the lips.
They had disowned him because he wed his pregnant girlfriend, a young black girl who had come from the streets, with no family, no home, and most important, no fortune to back her up.
She sat down on the bed with a weary sigh.
She had seen his eyes when he turned away from the couple. They were haunted, so bleak and filled with aching despair that she hadn’t been able to protest his rudeness.
He loved them. He loved his grandparents, and he ached for them, but whatever had happened all those years ago had driven a wedge between them forever.
Was that why he pushed her to declare her independence from her father? To stand up to him rather than attempting to compromise between her wants and his? Because he knew the inherent danger, the pain that could result when she finally decided enough was enough?
She stared down at her hands, realizing they were shaking with the shattering realizations pouring through her.
The past week had been filled with so many tumultuous emotions that she hadn’t had a chance to question him about his past. She had seen the man he was though. Strong. Determined. He walked the path he had set for himself years ago, and he walked it alone. Out of choice. Better to know he had no one to depend on than to depend on them and to lose something so precious as the woman he loved and the child they had created.
What had happened?
She crossed her arms over her breasts, her fingers clenching into her upper arms as she gripped them tightly, and rose to her feet to pace the bedroom once again.
What had caused him to forever deny himself the family he loved for so long?
And what of his parents? She knew they were dead. Lisa and Sturgill Krieger had died when she was a child. A car accident, she believed. If rumor was to be believed it had happened just after their son had disappeared from Louisiana.
He hadn’t done as they had wanted him to. He hadn’t turned his back on the girl they considered beneath him and he hadn’t walked the line that generations before him had walked. The line that led to more power, more riches, to marrying within the social set of which they were a part.
“Oh Kell,” she whispered. “What did they do to you?”
“They killed her.”
She swung around, her eyes widening as she realized how silently he had opened her bedroom door.
“What?”
He closed the door behind him, his fingers moving to the buttons of his dress uniform, releasing them to strip it from his broad shoulders and toss it to the foot of the bed.
“Her name was Tansy,” he said conversationally, his tone bland, in direct contrast with the pain that filled his green eyes. “She was carrying our son. Tansy let me pick out his name. I wanted to name him Aaron Douglas Krieger, after my grandfathers.”
He paused, staring down at the jacket reflectively before giving his head a quick jerk and staring back at her for long, silent moments.
“You know who the Beaulaines are?” he asked then.
“Your grandparents,” she whispered, her arms lowering, her hands clenching the skirt of the evening dress she still wore.
He nodded slowly. “My mother’s parents. Aaron and Patricia Beaulaine of the Louisiana Beaulaines. New Orleans to be exact. Did you know Hurricane Katrina destroyed their estate?”
She nodded. She didn’t know what to say, what questions to ask.
“They loved that fucking mansion. The lands surrounding it. The history they claimed as their own and the power they had built through the generations. They were the Beaulaines. And because of a freak of nature, they had no son to carry it on, only a daughter. Until they had me. And they were certain I would carry on the tradition. Kellian Beaulaine Krieger.” A grimace twisted his lips. “The last great hope of the Louisiana Beaulaines married street trash and tried to forever taint the impeccable bloodlines they had established.”
God, the pain in his eyes. His expression was bland, clear, no tears marred his gaze, no grimace of rage creased his face. But his eyes were alive with it.
“How did Tansy die?”
He ran his hand roughly over his stubbled jaw.
“They threw me out. I was seventeen, no money, no job, I’d graduated high school that year but I was still dumb as the road. I took a job in a New Orleans coffeehouse and café that was frequented by my parents’ friends.” His lips twisted mockingly. “My parents called me a disgrace. I would laugh at night at the expressions on their friends’ faces when they realized I was working there. And the pity in their eyes when they tipped me. I knew they were talking. I knew my parents were paying.” His expression twisted then, the pain a hard grimace on his face as he turned away from her.
“The café was used by people other than my parents’ friends. It was the early days of Diego Fuentes’s reign in the cartel. His suppliers were there. They were braggarts and they didn’t bother to hide what they were doing. I would pick up the information during the day and sell it to the police detective who approached me one night after work.”
“And they found out.”
“They found out.” He nodded. “They had a hit on a local judge. They were going after him that night. I called my friend, they caught them in the act, and I had to testify.”
His hands pushed through his hair. “I had to testify.”
He shook his head roughly before turning back to her.
“Did you testify?”
“They threatened Tansy. I got a message at work, that if I didn’t retract my statement, they would make her pay. I left work and went to the Beaulaine mansion. The keys to an old boat were there. I needed that boat to hide Tansy. We had a hunting cabin in the bayou. No one knew where it was except the family. No one knew about it.”
She could feel it coming. She could feel the pain, the horror building inside her.
“They found her?”
He nodded bleakly. “My mother caught me stealing the keys. She warned me that if I didn’t leave Tansy that she would make certain Tansy paid for it.” His voice lowered. “She sent a message to the suppliers, and she told them where Tansy was hidden. She told them I was with her, even though I wasn’t. She knew I wasn’t. I had to work because the doctor had to have the money up front for the baby, and the larger she grew with our child, the weaker Tansy seemed to get. I couldn’t afford to hide.”
Emily was silent as he finished speaking. He seemed to stare off into the distance for a long moment.
“I didn’t have to hide,” he finally said softly. “I knew something was wrong when I eased the boat into the bank that evening. I knew she was dead. The gators were churning in the water, even they could smell her blood. My baby’s blood. And they were hungry.” His gaze seemed to chill then, became icy, hard. “They ate that night, Emily,” he snarled then. “I fed them the bodies of those fucking animals that killed my family.”
Emily felt the tears that slid from her eyes and fought to hold back her sobs. Kell wasn’t crying. He was stone hard, cold, icy.
“The woman who gave birth to me, who swore for seventeen years of my life that I was the light in her heart, betrayed my family. She signed her grandchild’s death warrant without so much as a flicker of regret. And when it was over, whe
n I was standing over my goddamned wife’s grave, her fucking lawyer stepped up to me and informed me that if I wished, I would be reinstated within the family.” His laughter was mocking. “As though their deaths meant no more to them than a mild inconvenience. As though the six months I had spent scraping together the money to pay a doctor and to feed my wife wasn’t even a blip in their little world.”
“Oh God. Kell.” She reached out to him, seeing the remembered horror of that time on his face.
She expected him to reject her, to push her away, but she needed to touch him. She needed to warm that icy rage in his eyes.
She stepped to him, laid her head on his chest, and pushed her arms beneath his to wrap around his back. He stiffened, his hands clasping her shoulders, before a hard shudder shook his body and he wrapped himself around her instead.
He rocked her. His lips pressed against her neck as he breathed in raggedly.
“I wasn’t stupid when I married Tansy,” he said softly. “She loved me, but I knew the lure of the drugs would have taken her back. But the baby. That was my baby, Emily. My child.”
And he would have died for it. He had killed for it. And he had turned his back on the family whose betrayal had changed his life forever.
“I know,” she whispered tearfully.
His chest cushioned her tears as she heard the weary acceptance finally overshadow the rage and pain in his voice.
Then his hands were gripping her head, pulling it back, his gaze blazing into hers, filled with such possessiveness, such heat, it took her breath.
“I won’t lose you,” he vowed hoarsely then. “Do you understand me, Emily? Something broke inside me when I lost my family, but if I lose you, I couldn’t survive the rage. Do you hear me?”
“Kell—” she whispered in startled surprise at his declaration.
“You can walk away if it’s not what you want, but you’ll have my soul wrapped around you forever. No matter where you go, what you do, or who you love, Emily. You’ll always be a part of me.”