Baby of His Revenge

by Jennie Lucas

Kassius ground his teeth.

  Well, what had he expected? He’d chosen Laney because of her kind heart, her honesty and good nature. Of course, for her, love would be an expected part of marriage. She wasn’t like Mimi du Plessis, who was coin-operated, motivated primarily by greed. Now that Mimi knew he wasn’t pursuing her, she’d been frankly suspicious about his motives for quietly buying up all the loans and assets of her employer, Boris Kuznetsov. So he’d bought off those suspicions with an arrangement—she would be paid with gifts. The one she’d received yesterday had been particularly rich, a five-carat diamond necklace she’d seen advertised in an auction brochure that had supposedly once belonged to the Empress Josephine. He’d had it delivered to his house by a private courier earlier that week so he could give it to her.

  But gifts, even expensive ones, wouldn’t hold Mimi for long. Sooner or later, the woman would realize that there was more money to be made from blackmailing him and threatening to go to her boss. Mimi didn’t know his true identity—no one did—but she could put Kuznetsov on his guard.

  Kassius just needed a little more time. Boris Kuznetsov was overextended, overmortgaged and nearly out of assets. In a few months, he estimated, he’d be a broken man. All he had left was a shell of a company, now nearly stripped of assets, and the pink mansion on the Cap Ferrat. The one he’d promised to buy for Kassius’s mother someday.

  When he was a child, on all the nights he’d cried for his father when he was away, Emmaline had soothed Kassius to sleep with stories about the pink palace on the sea where someday they’d all live together. “We’ll get that puppy you keep asking for, Cash, and eat your favorite meals. Every day will be like Christmas!” she’d said, and he’d believed her. He’d been comforted and had fallen asleep in the warmth of his mother’s dreams.

  But later, as a teenager, he stopped believing. By then, he hadn’t seen or heard a word from his father for years, and he was getting into fights almost daily: with loudmouthed kids who sneered at him as a bastard or—far worse—called his sweet, softhearted, helpless mother a whore; and also with drunken neighbors who pounded their door at midnight, believing because they were poor and Emmaline “obviously slept around” that she was fair game, available either by payment or by force.

  After his fights, his mother’s face would be sad as she quietly washed his bloody knuckles, his ravaged cheekbones and, once, his broken nose. She tried to hug him and tell him the same stories about the future, when his daddy came back, how they’d all live together in that pink palace in the South of France. But he no longer believed in fairy tales, even if she did. His mother never quite gave up hope.

  Not until the end.

  Kassius’s hands clenched, just thinking about it. Kuznetsov had indeed bought that pink palace by the sea, but only for himself, after Emmaline was long dead. And the man had held onto it, treasuring it over his other possessions. So that fanciful pink mansion would be the last thing Kassius would take. An ironic smile lifted his lips.

  Funny to think that his child would be born around September, too. All his plans were working out with eerie precision.

  Laney. Pregnant with his baby. He still couldn’t quite believe it.

  And tomorrow, they’d be wed. The thought made him feel strange and jittery inside. Why? Because he’d nearly succeeded? Because he’d gotten everything he wanted? The fortune. The power. The wife. The child.

  An empire. A family.

  Everything that had once been denied him. Everything...

  Kassius looked at Laney. Everything but a bride who was willing to even look him in the face. Gritting his teeth, he walked over to her. “We’re landing soon.”

  She peeked over the quilt, her expression cold. “I heard.”

  “You should buckle your seat belt.”

  “I did.”

  And she went back under the quilt.

  So much for olive branches. Irritated, Kassius returned to his white leather swivel chair and buckled his seat belt.

  Should he have lied to her last night? When she’d all but accused him of cheating on her with Mimi du Plessis, should he have looked into her stricken face and said those three little words that would have magically fixed everything? If he had, she’d have smiled at him in joy, and kissed him, and taken him with her to bed.

  As it was, she’d slept in the guest room last night.

  He folded his arms, feeling disgruntled and unfairly judged. He’d told her the truth. You’d think she would have sense enough to be grateful for that rather than being angry he hadn’t tried to deceive her with pretty lies! But no.

  She’d slept in the guest room, then given him the silent treatment. He didn’t like it. But it fueled him with the one emotion he did feel comfortable with.

  Anger.

  When the plane landed at the small private airport outside New Orleans, Laney slipped into one of the designer outfits he’d bought her, still not meeting his gaze.

  They came down the steps onto the tarmac, and he instantly felt hit by humidity and heat. “Where are we? The jungle?” he gasped, taking off his jacket, rolling up the sleeves of his button-down shirt.

  “It’s nearly March. Warmer than usual for Mardi Gras,” Laney agreed, then looked at him coolly. “You’re the one who needs to buckle in now.”

  She walked right past him, proud as a queen, to where their driver held open the door of the waiting Bentley.

  Kassius stared after her. She looked magnificent in her sleek black day dress. She had no problem walking in stiletto heels now, and the expensive designer purse hung carelessly from her arm, as if she’d had expensive bags all her life, as if they were expendable. He suddenly missed the old Laney. This new one seemed hardened on the edges. He watched her climb into the back of the sedan without even a backward glance at him, much less a smile.

  Once the driver and bodyguard transferred their luggage from the jet into the back of the sedan, they drove from the airport toward the outskirts of New Orleans, where her grandmother lived.

  Kassius looked out the window. Laney was right. Even the air here smelled different. He rolled down his window, taking a deep breath. Even in late February, the air was swampy, humid and warm. But it was more than that. He took another breath, closing his eyes.

  Exotic flowers overlaid the distant salt of the Gulf of Mexico and the muddy Mississippi. Beneath that, the faint scent of the bayou, of Spanish moss, of cypress and oak and a sweet, musky rot.

  He’d never been to the American South. His visits to the United States had been limited to California and the Acela corridor between New York City and Washington, DC.

  But his mother had been born here. He wondered what his life would have been like if she’d left Istanbul when Boris had first refused to marry her. What would have happened if she’d come back here, pregnant, to plead her case to her parents? If she’d given birth in New Orleans, if his grandparents had actually held him as a baby—would even they have truly been cold enough to refuse to let them stay?

  He doubted it.

  What would Kassius’s life have been like if he’d grown up in a comfortable home, surrounded by family, always knowing he belonged?

  If Emmaline had given up her romantic dreams of Boris and freed herself to find a man worthy of her love?

  She might be alive now. Happy.

  He could still hear the anguished echo of her voice. If someone ever shows you the truth of who they are, if they lie or cheat or betray you, promise me you’ll believe them the first time! Don’t destroy your life, or your child’s, wishing and hoping and pretending they’ll change—

  Who would Kassius have become here?

  Someone else. Someone different. Someone who knew how to love, maybe, he thought cynically. Everyone seemed to think giving one’s heart away was a good thing. He didn’t understand why—they only ended up broken.

  Better to remain tough. The poverty and misery of his childhood hadn’t destroyed him. To the contrary. The struggle had made him stronger. Able to ris
k anything. Endure anything.

  He glanced at Laney sitting beside him.

  He’d told her he knew everything about her from the private investigator, but that wasn’t precisely true. He knew the basic facts of her life: birth, schooling, father’s injury, mother’s abandonment and later death. Those had been collated for him like bullet points on a résumé. But he was suddenly curious to know more than just plain facts.

  “What was it like, growing up here?” he asked.

  “It was fine.” Laney’s voice was cold, giving nothing away as she continued to stare out the opposite window.

  She was blocking him out. He recognized the strategy. He did it all the time, and turnabout was fair play. He should shrug it off, let it go. But the fact that she’d been treating him so coldly for so many hours, in spite of her warm, generous nature, made him feel uneasy. Made him worry that makeup sex might not be enough to melt the ice.

  Plus, he had something else to do first. Something he dreaded.

  Meet her family.

  The driver pulled up to a tiny, narrow house on a sagging street on the outskirts of the city. Not even the carefully tended flower beds could distract from the falling-down roof, the peeling screen door. There was pride here. But no money.

  He saw Laney brace herself, take a deep breath, and put a big smile on her face before she climbed out of the car.

  “Gran!” she cried, and a wizened, stout, gray-haired woman on the porch beamed and held open her arms.

  She was much shorter than Laney and had to reach up to hug her granddaughter tight, patting her shoulders fiercely. She drew back, mystified. “What are you wearing, child?”

  “Do you like it?” Laney twirled, showing the sleekly expensive black dress.

  “Like it?” The older woman’s mouth lifted humorously. “It’s pretty enough, but honey, seeing all that black, all I can ask is, who died?”

  Her grandmother turned her sharp gaze on Kassius, who’d followed Laney up the five steps to the porch. Craning back her neck, she looked him over critically, from his freshly shaven jawline—he’d shaved on the plane—to the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt, his tailored vest and Italian shoes. Her gaze shifted to the luxury sedan at the curb, with the driver waiting inside it. Her black eyes clearly weighed his good sense and found it lacking. She sniffed. “You must be Kassius Black.”

  Kassius suddenly realized how ridiculous his car and driver were here. He glanced at Laney, hoping for some hint of how to proceed, but all he got was a similarly cold stare. Apparently both Henry women had a similar opinion of him at the moment.

  Giving the elderly lady his best smile, he stuck out his hand. “You must be Yvonne Henry,” he said smoothly. “I can see where Laney gets her good looks.”

  Mrs. Henry snorted, rolling her eyes. But she seemed to thaw out slightly. She started to reach out her hand. Then he made the mistake of adding, as he looked over the shabby house, “Didn’t my business manager contact you? You were supposed to have access to all the money you need.”

  He heard Laney’s intake of breath, saw Yvonne Henry narrow her eyes, drawing herself up to her full four feet eleven inches.

  “Laney,” she said coldly. “Please inform your boyfriend that we are not in habit of taking charity. Especially from strangers.”

  Had he been rude to offer them unlimited money? For a moment he was bewildered, then he realized Yvonne had taken his words as a slight on their home’s appearance. Which he supposed it had been.

  Yvonne Henry began watering the flowerpots on the porch. “Lunch is almost ready, but you’d best go introduce the man to your father first.”

  “I can’t wait to taste your cooking,” Kassius said, trying to dig himself out of the hole. “Laney said you’re the best chef in the city. I haven’t been able to think of anything else!”

  “My cooking is what you’re looking forward to? Not meeting us? Bless your heart.” She turned to her granddaughter. “Laney May?”

  “Let’s go in,” she said quickly, tugging on his arm.

  “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said politely and followed Laney into the house. When the screen door slammed behind him, he exhaled.

  Laney was staring at him in disbelief. “You really aren’t good at this.”

  “I think she likes me,” he said.

  Her expression changed. She glanced around them, drawing closer. “Just be respectful, okay?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My dad didn’t like how you proposed to me, without asking his permission.”

  “Are you kidding? Who actually does that anymore?”

  “Look around you,” she bit out. “We’re not rich jet-setters who are too full of our own importance to bother with the old values. We still believe in family. In love and respect.”

  Hmm. Kassius sensed criticism.

  “So whatever you might think of me and my family,” she continued, “can you please keep it to yourself and just pretend to be a decent person?”

  Pretend?

  “Fine,” he bit out.

  As Kassius followed her through the dark, shotgun-style one-story house, he noticed the damp walls and peeling wallpaper. He knew her father was in a wheelchair. Had there even been a ramp from the porch to the street? He wondered how her father managed to leave the house. If he did.

  Kassius was going to be a father soon. He suddenly wondered how he’d feel if someone proposed marriage to his son or daughter on the other side of the world, without making the gesture of at least meeting the family first. Not good.

  Pushing open a door, she led him into a dark bedroom. “Dad, I’m here!”

  “Laney!”

  She clicked on a light, and Kassius realized the man had been sitting in the dark. The bedroom was tidy and scrupulously clean. But the furniture was old, and the walls covered with photos of Laney at every age, often with a pretty, laughing woman he took to be her mother. The woman who’d abandoned them when they needed her most. Pictures Clark Henry could no longer even see.

  “What are you doing in here, Dad, in the dark?” Laney said affectionately. She looked down at open book in his lap. In Braille. “Good book?”

  Clark’s unfocused gaze lit up in a smile. “Just waiting for you to get home! Come here, girl!”

  Her face was tender as she went to him in the wheelchair and hugged him tight. “I missed you, Dad.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, it’s been so long,” Clark Henry said, blinking fast as he hugged her tight. When she pulled away, he cleared his throat. “And you’re not alone.”

  “Did you hear me?” Kassius said awkwardly, feeling like an intruder.

  The man smiled, but his expression was tight. “I could smell you at ten paces. Cologne and car leather.”

  Kassius gave himself a surreptitious sniff.

  “Yes, Dad,” Laney said. “This is my fiancé. Kassius.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir.” Taking the older man’s hand, he shook it. He noticed Clark still wore his wedding ring.

  “Nice firm grip,” her father said and abruptly withdrew his hand. “But as for the fiancé business, we’ll have to wait and see. I haven’t decided if I’m willing to give you away.”

  “Dad, the wedding is tomorrow night!”

  “If I don’t give you away, there will be no wedding. So let me ask your fella a few questions.” He glared in Kassius’s direction. “What makes you worthy of my daughter?”

  “Dad!”

  “I’ll take good care of her, sir.”

  “How?”

  Kassius hid a smile. “I own many houses around the world, two jets, with a personal net worth of—”

  “I get it. You’re rich.” Her father snorted, waving an impatient hand. “My daughter already told me, and so did that guy who kept calling, wanting to shove your money down our throats. That’s not what I asked.”

  “Sir?” Kassius said, feeling bewildered again.

  “What I asked,” Clark Henry said, as if speaking t
o a not-so-bright child, “was how you are worthy of my daughter.”

  That brought Kassius up short.

  He looked down at the man who’d lost everything in an oil rig explosion, trying to provide for his family. Working as a roughneck was hard, dangerous, isolating work—which was why it was well paid. But after the accident, the drilling company had found a legal loophole to deny compensation. Clark Henry had lost his sight, his mobility, his wife. Now he had no ability to work or even leave the house. He’d literally lost the power to look out for his family.

  Kassius took a deep breath. And gave the only answer he could.

  “I’m not,” he said humbly. “But I intend to spend the rest of my life trying to make her happy. If you will please give me permission to marry your daughter.”

  The man’s expression changed. He hadn’t expected that. Nor, by the dumbfounded look on her face, had Laney.

  Then with a cough, Clark frowned again. “Fine. You’ll take care of her. But will you love her with all your heart? As my only child deserves to be loved?”

  “Dad!”

  “Let the man answer me, Laney May.”

  Kassius tried to think of what to say. Somehow he didn’t think that his usual speech about “I’m just not a sentimental man” would satisfy Clark Henry. But he also had too much respect for the man to lie to him. He began, “The thing is...”

  “Guess what?” Laney broke in, giving Kassius a warning glance. “I have news, Dad. Big news! The hugest! You need to come out into the kitchen so I can tell you and Gran at once.”

  “Good news?” her father said gruffly. “Or bad?”

  “Definitely good.” Laney kissed the top of her father’s head. “But Gran will kill me if I don’t tell you both. You go first, Dad.”

  Setting his jaw, her father pushed his wheelchair out of the bedroom, using his powerful arms to roll himself back down the long dark hallway. She started to follow him.

  Kassius blocked her with his arm, putting his hand against the wall. He said in a low voice, “Thank you.”

  She stared at him for a moment, her deep brown eyes sad. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for them. They want so badly for me to be happy. They can never know you...”