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.”