A Scandalous Melody. Linda Conrad

her to be someone he despised. To see her looking melancholy and fragile this morning had ripped big holes in his plans…and in his soul.

      It was midafternoon and it was time to accept the fact that he really did need Kate to interpret some of the mill’s figures for him. He would have to give it up for today and begin again tomorrow when she could help.

      He dismissed the secretary for the rest of the afternoon, put the convertible top down and climbed into his Jag. Intending to go straight back to the B&B to dress for dinner, he was surprised to find himself on the canal road and heading toward the shack where he had spent his youth.

      Chase knew the house had stood empty for five years now, ever since he’d spirited his father away in the middle of the night and delivered the old man to a rehab clinic in Houston to dry out.

      But something inside him must’ve wanted to see the old place. He needed to refresh his harsh memories, and what better place than the run-down house he had always hated.

      That shack had forever been the bane of his existence. The kids at school teased him unmercifully about his dirt-poor circumstances and about his father the drunk. The other kids’ parents didn’t want them to hang out with such trash. Everything that had ever gone wrong in town had been somehow connected to Chase or his father, “that drunk Severin.”

      Not that Chase had ever been in any real trouble. Just a few fights and a day or two suspension from school for those times when he’d not shown so he could sober up his father. But the word about him being bad to the bone got around anyway.

      He had no family to fight for him. No brothers, cousins or uncles to cover his back like every other boy hereabouts in St. Mary Parish. So he learned early how to take care of himself—and how not to trust anyone.

      Too bad his lessons hadn’t extended to Kate. Despite the fact that her father was the most powerful man in town and always had it in for him and his father, Chase had let her get under his defenses. The pain of her betrayal still stung after all these years.

      Driving along in the sun, he noticed that nothing much seemed to have improved in the town of his childhood. If anything, the whole place seemed a little shabbier than in his memories. The businesses in town gave way to two-story clapboard houses and finally to what could easily be called shanties as he drove down the gravel and mud road that ran alongside the no-name canal.

      He slowed as he passed by the last decent house on the road and saw his former neighbor Irene Fortier sitting on her front porch. She waved at him and stood, so he brought the car to a stop beside the yard in order to speak to her.

      If it hadn’t been for Irene five years ago, Chase wouldn’t have known that his father had been lying comatose in his bed for twenty-four hours. She’d found his dad and had called to ask for help.

      Chase had come at once. Nothing, neither bad memories nor business commitments, would’ve stopped him from helping his father. But he didn’t let anyone else in town know he was there, and he certainly hadn’t stayed long.

      “Hello, cher,” Irene said as he stepped out of the car. “I heard the rumors that you were back in town.”

      He nodded but eased away when she went to kiss his cheek. Her flower print dress and the homey smells of cooking lingered in his brain and reminded him of how much he’d always liked being around Irene as a kid.

      “You’ve come home to move back in?”

      “No, Irene. I’m not sure why I’m down on Canal Road this afternoon. Guess I just wanted to see how much damage the elements have done to Dad’s shack.”

      “It’s about the same as always. I’ve been seeing to keeping the critters and the bums out.”

      “Thanks.” He wasn’t sure he really thanked her for her efforts. Maybe he would’ve been happier to know the place had burned down and taken all the old hurts along with it.

      “You plan on staying in Bayou City?” Irene asked.

      “Only long enough to exorcise old ghosts.”

      Irene studied him from behind the plastic-rimmed eyeglasses she wore. “You own the mill now, I’ve heard. You here to get even with people, son?”

      He’d thought that’s why he had come home. But now… The memories of Irene’s goodness, finding the town in such sad straits and the odd tenderness he’d felt when Kate had asked his help for a friend and not herself made him want to reconsider his intentions.

      Hell. Not sure of his own motivations anymore, Chase ignored Irene’s question and asked one of his own. “Did you ever meet my grandmother Steele? Did she ever come to Bayou City? I don’t remember meeting her or even hearing her name when I was a kid.”

      Irene shook her head sadly. “No, child. Your mother, Francine, died believing her own mother hated her for marrying your father. I tried to encourage Francine to call Lucille when the time was getting close for your birth.” Irene hesitated and sighed. “I think she might’ve done it eventually…if she’d lived.”

      Chase had no memory of his mother, only pictures and the stories that Irene had told him when he’d been little. He didn’t have any reason to grieve for a woman that he’d never known. But inheriting money and a family from her had made him rather sorry that they’d missed talking to each other.

      “Why did my mother marry my father, Irene?” Knowing what he’d learned recently about Lucille Steele and her family, he couldn’t imagine now why a young woman from such a good home would run off and marry the town drunk.

      Irene laughed. “Love would be my guess. But that’s a question that you should ask of your father.”

      Chase remembered asking his father lots of family questions as a boy. Only he’d never gotten any answers. He’d learned early that simply asking the questions only made his father sink further into the drunken stupor that had been his old man’s constant companion back then.

      Today, his father wanted to talk, but Chase couldn’t manage to listen. There was too much heartache in the past for him to forgive.

      He shrugged off Irene’s suggestion. “Someday maybe.”

      After he’d said goodbye to Irene, he spun the Jag around in her front yard and headed back to the B&B. There wasn’t time now to go look at the old shack.

      And that was really for the best. Too much thinking and talk about his childhood unsettled him, and he wanted to be sharp for his confrontation with Kate tonight.