by Jennie Lucas
The truth was, if they knew what had driven him since he was sixteen years old, if they knew his real name, they would only find a way to use that information against him. They would use his old grief as a wedge in his soul to devour him, to destroy him.
Reveal weakness to no one. It had been a hard lesson to learn, when his first business partner, someone he’d trusted, had run off with his money, setting Kassius back an entire year of backbreaking work. Showing your throat even to the meekest sheep would only reveal weakness and give the sheep the sharp greedy teeth of a wolf. He wouldn’t give anyone the opportunity to go for his jugular.
But the most important lesson in success was from the example of his own father. He’d learned to be selfish and pursue his own desires. No matter how it might hurt others. He’d learned to only care about himself.
He’d chosen Laney not just because of her deep sexual appeal, but also her sweetness, her innocence. Her kind heart. He’d thought perhaps he could let himself be vulnerable with her, after they were wed.
But now he suddenly realized he couldn’t take that risk. If even Laney knew his weaknesses, she could use it against him. She could leave him, or betray him.
He would never give her that power. She would get no ammunition from him—no bullets from his past she could use against him.
“I think you’d make an excellent lion tamer,” he said mildly and opened the menu. “What looks good?”
She looked at her own menu, filled with very elegant and precious delicacies such as foamy quail eggs, and sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for some good Southern cooking right now.” She brightened. “Maybe we could stop at the supermarket on the way back to your penthouse.”
“Southern?” He looked up sharply. “You know how to cook Southern cuisine?”
“Sure,” she said with a shrug. “Fried chicken, grits, collard greens. Gumbo, dirty rice, muffuletta sandwiches. All that stuff. My grandma taught me.”
The waiter came to take their order. By this time Kassius’s mind was so full of Louisiana cooking that he barely cared about some impossibly exclusive three-star French restaurant. He impatiently ordered them both the tasting menu and a fine red Bordeaux, a 2005 Château Lafite Rothschild. As the waiter departed with a bow, Kassius leaned forward. “I’ve been trying to hire a Louisiana chef for my ski chalet in Gstaad, but it’s hopeless.”
“You must not be looking in the right places.” Laney smiled at a different waiter, who brought a bread bowl to their table. She immediately helped herself to a piece of the plump, fresh bread and slathered it with butter. “Where I’m from, everyone knows how to cook.”
“Didn’t you once work as assistant to that world-famous Louisiana chef?”
She frowned. “How did you know that?”
Oh. Right. She didn’t know about the investigator. Shrugging, he gave her a charming smile. “I heard it somewhere.”
“Huh.” She looked a little confused, then continued, “Sure, I learned some stuff from him. But if you ask me, my grandmother is the best cook in New Orleans.”
“That’s quite a statement.”
“It’s true, and she taught me everything she knows.”
A shiver went through Kassius. Sitting at this exclusive restaurant on the Côte d’Azur for a meal that might easily cost fifteen hundred euros a plate, his mouth was suddenly watering for something more simple. The home cooking of long ago. When he’d had a home. And when someone had cooked for him, not for money, but for love.
The waiter brought the wine and poured a bit in a large wineglass. Kassius swirled it, sipped, then nodded. The waiter poured for them both.
“I haven’t been home for over two years. I miss it.”
“What do you miss?” he asked curiously.
“My family. The city. The food. The smell of cypress and magnolias. Everything.” She sighed as she sipped her wine and settled back in her chair. “Even Mardi Gras. What a party. The whole city goes crazy.” Crossing her leg, she bounced her bare leg. Her toenails were a wicked, glossy red. He had a hard time not staring at her crossed leg, bouncing. She continued dreamily, “Nothing but parades and music and food, and the whole city out of their mind with joy.”
“Sounds...nice.” His mother used to speak wistfully about Mardi Gras, too. But he’d never been to New Orleans, not once, or seen the house where she’d been born on St. Charles Avenue. Her wealthy, disapproving parents had disinherited her at nineteen, when Emmaline had run off to be a stewardess rather than accepting the decorous marriage they’d arranged for her. Sixteen years later, after Emmaline had been abandoned by the father of her son, when she was desperate and grievously sick, she’d humbled her pride and written her parents to ask for their help. She’d asked them to promise to take her teenage son, whom they’d never met, if she died from her illness.
Their answer had been scathing.
You made your bed, Emmaline, they’d told her. Now lie in it.
His mother had never told Kassius about this, of course. But after her death, he’d found the letter from her parents, Eugene and Thelma Cash, tucked next to his own birth certificate.
Kassius’s grandparents wrote him after her death, to try to take back their cruel words, to make him part of their lives. “We thought she just wanted money. We didn’t realize she was actually dying.” He threw their letter in the trash and left for Athens.
Later, after he’d made his fortune, after his grandparents had both died, he’d bought their old house in New Orleans. He’d had it destroyed. He’d never wanted to see it.
But suddenly, Kassius wanted to see New Orleans through Laney’s eyes.
“Sounds like a good place for a honeymoon.”
At this, she abruptly stopped bouncing her leg. “What are you saying?”
“We could even get married there. Isn’t Mardi Gras next month?”
She stared at him, her eyes joyful. “You mean it? My family could be there?”
She seemed far more thrilled by the prospect of having a party with her family than she’d been by the over half a million euros he’d spent on her today. He found he liked being the object of her gratitude, the person who gave her joy. He liked it very much. He wanted more of it.
“Sure, if that’s what you want. By the way—” he took a sip of the red wine “—since you were so concerned about your family’s financial situation, I have instructed my business manager to call them and make sure they have any money they need, without limit or question.”
Her brown eyes were huge. “Seriously?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, Kassius—” Then she bit her lip as her expression faded. “But they can be proud, especially my father. I’m not sure they will accept money from you.”
“Of course they will,” he said firmly. “It is my responsibility now to provide for all of you. And money doesn’t matter. It’s not what I care about.”
“What do you care about?”
He looked at her.
“Finishing this damn dinner,” he said frankly, “so I can take you to bed.”
“Oh, just you wait.” Ignoring all the high-powered tycoons and socialites at surrounding tables, Laney rose from her chair. Her beautiful face was suffused with joy as she went to him and climbed in his lap. He could feel the entire restaurant goggling at the sight of Laney in the red dress as, wrapping her arms around him, she bent her head and whispered in his ear, “I intend to thank you tonight. Very thoroughly.”
Kassius felt fire whip through his blood, from his brain to his groin. And though they hadn’t even been served their dinner yet, it was all he could do not to immediately raise his hand and call for the check.
* * *
“Oh, no,” Laney whispered aloud. She stared down at the bathroom scale, which was giving her news she didn’t like at all. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was green.
But was it any wonder she felt so ill and run-down? For the last eight weeks, since they’d left Monaco, she’d had too much o
f everything.
Too much travel, for a start. Too many days with Kassius on his private jet, accompanying him on business trips around the world, from London to Berlin to Tokyo to Johannesburg to Sydney to Nairobi to Santiago and back to their home base in London. She felt exhausted just thinking about it.
Too much shopping. In each new city, Kassius had insisted on showering her with expensive gifts of clothes, handbags, shoes and jewelry, when she already had so much, her big walk-in closet at the town house in London was threatening to explode. She hadn’t yet had time to wear half of what he’d bought her.
Too much time spent planning their upcoming wedding in New Orleans. Laney would have been fine with a simple ceremony she planned herself, with a few friends and maybe some rum punch and her grandmother’s homemade Cajun dinner, but Kassius had insisted she hire a wedding planner in New Orleans to manage everything. Which meant Laney was constantly on the phone with her, and spending far too many hours over ridiculous decisions, like what candy color the iPads in the guest gift bags should be.
And worst of all—Laney had suffered through far too many of Kassius’s business dinners in expensive restaurants, where the red-faced, oversize men all seemed to have stomachs of iron, and ate huge dinners of steak, foie gras and baked potatoes covered in butter and sour cream, then smoked cigars as they washed it all down with scotch and drank oceans of expensive wine. Their girlfriends and wives, skeletal as fashion decreed, seemed to meekly subsist on lettuce leaves and an occasional gin and diet tonic.
Kassius thought that was ludicrous and had threatened to end their engagement if Laney ever followed their example. “I like every single pound of you,” he’d told her firmly. “Don’t lose a single one.”
Laney had liked it when Kassius said it, but now she was in a panic. Because just this last week, without trying, she’d lost five pounds.
All the fault of this exhausting lifestyle, she thought grumpily. And since they had sex at all hours, she hadn’t had nearly enough sleep. No wonder her body was breaking down. She’d felt so nauseated that four days ago, she’d actually sent Kassius off alone on his business trip to Hong Kong. He’d been none too pleased about it.
She hadn’t been, either. She hated having him so far away from her, even just for a few days. Though she didn’t always love the forced luxury of their overscheduled, shallow lifestyle, she did love living with Kassius, being in his arms, in his bed. She loved that he was the first person she saw in the morning, and the last person she saw at night. It was starting to feel like...a relationship.
She shivered at the thought.
All the plans she’d once had for her life seemed like pale shadows compared to her daily joy of being with him. All thoughts of going to college or getting a job had flown out the window. The thought horrified her. Here she was, a twenty-first-century woman, but all she wanted to do, all she wanted to be, was the lover—the wife—of this intoxicating, infuriating, sexually electrifying man.
And soon, the mother of his child? They were going to be a family. As someone who’d always had to work for a paycheck, just being able to spend her days with him, for him, made her deliriously happy. Even if the activities that filled their days weren’t ones she would have necessarily chosen, somehow having Kassius beside her made it endurable. Even magical. Suddenly, all the fairy tales were making sense.
Did Kassius feel the same? she wondered. He hadn’t liked leaving her in London. He wanted her with him constantly. It was the reason why, after eight weeks together, he still hadn’t let her visit her family in New Orleans.
“You’ll see them soon enough, at the wedding,” he’d growled. “Until then, I need you with me. You’re my woman.”
Words that made her toes curl in happiness.
He was due to return from Hong Kong tonight. But it worried her. After four days spent alone in Kassius’s huge London town house, barely getting out of bed, she’d thought she’d be feeling better by now. She’d thought she would be back to her old self, and able to welcome him home properly—and by properly, she meant in bed.
Since they’d left Monaco, London had been their new home base. She’d liked the city from the moment they’d arrived at a private airport and a car had arrived to whisk them to a fancy neighborhood that Kassius told her was called Knightsbridge.
At the four-story town house, Laney had met additional house staff, besides the bodyguards and driver carrying their luggage. Four people were waiting to formally greet them as they walked in.
“Welcome home, sir,” a thin, elderly woman said.
“Thank you, Mrs. Beresford. I’d like you to meet my fiancée, Miss Laney Henry.”
Mrs. Beresford had shaken her hand politely.
But later, as Kassius led Laney up the sweeping stairs of the elegant mansion, she whispered to him, “I don’t think your housekeeper likes me.”
He’d looked at her, surprised, then shook his head in amusement. “She’s just nervous.”
That thought surprised Laney so much she stopped on the stairs. “Her, nervous?”
“You’re her new boss.”
“Me?”
He smiled. “As my wife, you’ll rule the home, and I have five of them—houses, I mean—with a paid staff at each. You’re now their boss.”
The thought astonished Laney. Her, the boss?
“Really?” she squeaked.
“Why? Are you afraid?”
Terrified. “Um...and they all live here?”
“Only Mrs. Beresford. But they all exist to serve our desires.” His eyes darkened, turned hungry. “As you, Laney, exist to serve mine.”
Then he’d taken her to bed.
But Laney’s whole life hadn’t been spent in bed, unfortunately. Or even on his very comfortable private jet, zipping to exotic locales.
Sadly, she was also expected to be his hostess, and his companion at social events and those awful business dinners. Those were the worst. She always feared she wasn’t interesting enough and they were laughing behind her back. When it all got too stressful, the only good cure was calling her family for a nice long chat. But even those weren’t the same as they used to be.
When she’d first phoned her grandmother and father to tell them she was engaged to Kassius, they hadn’t exactly been overjoyed. Her grandmother had been shocked and dubious. Her father had been downright mad.
And now, eight weeks later, not much had changed. Each time she called them, it was the same.
“You sure about this wedding, Laney May?” her grandmother kept repeating. “You just met the man, and marriage lasts a long time. It ain’t just about great sex.”
“Gran!” she cried, embarrassed. But talking to her father was even worse.
“What kind of man is he, to propose marriage after two days’ acquaintance?” her father growled into the phone.
“We just met, and we knew...” She blushed. “Kassius is amazing, Dad.”
“So amazing he won’t let you come home for a visit? So amazing he can’t be bothered to come meet your family and ask your father for your hand in marriage?”
“Of course he’s dying to meet you and Gran. He’s just such an important man, Dad, and so very busy...”
It had sounded pretty lame, even to her own ears.
“Busy?” he’d said scornfully. “Doing what—counting his money? Flying you all over the world on that private jet of his, traveling everywhere but your home? Face it, Laney May. The man doesn’t respect you. And he sure doesn’t respect us.”
No, talking to her family wasn’t nearly as comforting as it used to be. But at least she had assurances from Kassius’s business manager that her family had been informed they now had access to any and all financial resources they might desire. She’d been a little surprised they’d consider his offer, given their opinions about him, but since they hadn’t said no, she tried to take it as a good sign.
Her wedding day was almost here. She and Kassius were supposed to leave for New Orleans tomorrow, and
their wedding would be held the day after. It was a tight schedule, but he’d been busy wrapping up a deal in Asia.
At least her wedding dress was finished—her grandmother had sent Laney her wedding gown, used fifty years earlier when she’d begun her own long, happy marriage to her grandfather. The elegant 1960s gown had been recut and tailored to Laney’s size, and lengthened for her extra two inches of height. Last week, when she’d first seen herself in it, she’d cried.
“Everything is set. Your wedding will be perfect, Miss Henry,” the wedding planner had told her that morning over the phone.
But it wouldn’t be such a perfect wedding, Laney thought unhappily now, if she was violently ill into her wedding flowers.
Maybe she should call a doctor. Because she was really starting to worry. In the four days since Kassius left, she’d existed on saltine crackers and lemon-lime soda. It seemed strange she wasn’t feeling better. She felt so tired all the time. And her breasts still felt so sensitive, when Kassius hadn’t made love to her for days. It was almost as if...
She sucked in her breath.
“Is there anything else you require, madam?” Mrs. Beresford peeked in at the door of the front sitting room. “I’m going to retire for the night.” She frowned, coming closer. “Are you quite all right, Miss Henry?”
Laney sat up straight on the sofa. “Can you help me find a doctor who does house calls?”
Two hours later, after Dr. Khan congratulated her and left the house, Laney walked back to the sofa in a daze.
She wasn’t sick. She hadn’t been feeling ill because she’d eaten too many fattening meals or traveled too much or had too much sex...or actually—she blushed—her situation was the result of precisely that last one.
She was pregnant.
“Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Beresford said gently, patting her on the shoulder, “I’m so happy for you. I did wonder all week if that might be the cause...”
“You did?” Of course Mrs. Beresford knew. Household servants were always the first to know. Often even before their employers did.
After the kindly older woman left for her own suite, Laney hunkered down on the sofa to wait for Kassius to come home from the airport. She cuddled beneath her grandmother’s homemade quilt, feeling dazed as she put her hands over her belly.