Chapter Thirty-One

The car came to a stop before Kara’s cottage and Raphaël glanced at her. She could see in his eyes that there was plenty he wanted to say, but was keeping to himself.
She wasn’t surprised. Isabelle’s husband didn’t seem to be the type to toss out his opinion when it wasn’t requested. Silently, she opened the door and started to get out.
“Don’t need any help gathering your stuff, do you?” Raphaël asked mildly.
Kara shook her head and he nodded, having gotten the answer he expected.
She closed her door and tugged her jacket close about her as she walked toward the cottage.
“Ag, crap,” she murmured upon reaching the door and realizing that she didn’t have her darn key.
Scowling at the sky, she trudged around the main house and headed for the barns and stables where a melody of neighs and moos could be heard.
Kara looked out at the field where some horses grazed, but François’s ranch hands were nowhere in sight.
She huffed and put her hands on her hip. What was the use of a ranch hand if he wasn’t on hand when you needed him on the damn ranch?
It was ridiculous. With a disapproving shake of the head, she peaked into one of the open stables and there, like a swaggered country singer, lounged one of the head foremen.
Kara whistled and he shot up out of the hay in which he’d been relaxing and nervously fixed his hat, Kara laughed at his jitteriness.
When he saw that it was only Kara, he breathed a sigh of relief strong enough to blow a cow over a fence. Kara laughed and shook her head.
“When the cat’s away, the mice will play, huh, Jack? Where is everyone?”
The lean man walked over to her, raising his shoulders in a shrug. His mop of brown hair hung over his forehead and he swept it aside.
“Ah, tu sais. They are doing this or that.”
He shrugged again and Kara smiled, looking around at the place. It was spotless as always, everything running smoothly as François liked it. That sense of family that she’d gotten when they’d driven into the ranch that first day hadn’t faded.
The workers of the ferme d’Olivier had warmth and laughter in abundance. They’d never even once questioned her life before the ranch, besides being curious about the US, and had easily taken her in as one of theirs. She’d miss them. Maybe even for more than just the free fruits and horse rides. Like miss them… the people.
Oh, darn. Kara sniffed and turned away as tears wet the corners of her eyes, threatening to stain her cheeks and embarrass her.
She didn’t feel like bloody crying any longer.
Jack raised his brows.
“But what is wrong, petite? Why are you crying?”
Kara quickly shook her head. “Oh, don’t you worry, Jack, I’m fine. Yup, cheerful as ever. I was looking for anyone who might have spare keys to the maid’s quarters?”
Jack raised his brows. “Oh, I have a, uh, very big key ring, but I don’t know a lot of those keys… One might be yours, oui?”
Kara clapped her hands together. “It might. Can I see them, please?”
Jack brought out his key ring, which she had to admit was huge. No wonder he didn’t know what most of the keys even unlocked.
After a minute of careful searching, Kara found a weathered looking version of her house key and quickly took it, giving Jack a kiss on his cheek for his trouble.
Kara hurried back to the cottage, somewhat sad that she hadn’t seen the others. A sigh parted her lips as she reached her door and unlocked it. Maybe it was for the best. It would be better if they just forgot her.
Walking into her cottage was more painful than Kara had anticipated.
The first thing she saw was the slight mess that had been left last time she’d been home. Last time she’d been home with Lucas.
Her heart seemed to throb with physical pain in her chest as everything her eyes drifted over reminded her of something or the other, all concerning Lucas.
She didn’t want to remember what it was, how it had been between them when he first imposed his presence on her in her own cottage. The feeling had been electrifying, nothing like anything Kara had ever experienced before.
The feeling of simply being the same room with him and having her heart accelerating, her skin tingling and her stomach somersaulting, all without him even touching her! Damn, it had been glorious.
It tortured her to not be in control of her own damn body as she was used to, but… Kara loved it.
It made her excited and giddy…like a little schoolgirl.
The thought came like cold water on her little trip down memory lane and Kara squashed the longing she could feel sneaking up on her.
Lucas had been right when he’d called her immature and naïve. Maybe she was… and he’d played it as best he could.
With purpose in every step, she walked over to her bedroom and threw open the door.
Kara looked at everything that was there. The shoes, the clothes, none of it belonged to her. It was all property of Lucas Cartier.
With a blank expression and pain churning in her heart like it was wrapped in barbed wire, she sought out the only things that belonged to her. Her backpack. Kara lifted it off the closet floor. A little worn and faded, but it was still hers and she’d come a long way with it.
A long way through the filth and poverty that clearly disgusted Lucas. Her expression hardened as she held the bag tightly against her, as though embracing the very poverty that had repulsed Lucas. She wouldn’t let herself care! It was who she was and she was okay with it, if he had issues then he could walk away. Actually, he could fuck right off. And she was okay.
Two fat tears rolled down her face as her throat burned with unshed sobs and Kara tried to breathe.
She would be okay.
She opened the backpack, struggling to keep the thinned material open as it had little of its initial support structure. Kara looked through her tears and there at the bottom of her closet, she found her treasures, just where she had hidden them.
She sunk to her knees and opened the box. In it sat only four things. First, was all the legitimate documents that Markos Vilmont had acquired for her. Kara had known that she would never be able to head back home without them.
Secondly, she stretched out the single twenty Franc note that was wrinkled with lines of fear, desperation and determination. It’s all she had, before she met Lucas.
Kara swallowed to hold onto unnecessary emotion.
Then something glinted in the box. Reaching in, she drew it out. It was a thin, golden necklace with a slim, graceful swan as a pendant charm. Kara swung it before her eyes as she did as a child, watching the gold glint as it caught the light at different angles.
Her heart swelled as it always did when she held the necklace, because Kara remembered what she’d read before she had seen it for the first time.
And that was what she picked up next. A yellowed, tightly folded paper that seemed quite average to the unsuspecting eye. But to Kara it meant so much more. When she’d accidentally discovered both the letter and the necklace in her mother’s room one day and had seen, with great shock, that they were addressed to Kara Kingsley, she’d immediately taken them.
She felt well within her right to have them, so she’d taken them and ran to her room to hide in case her mother discovered the missing items.
Kara sighed and held the letter to her heart, loving her late grandmother for the words she’d written in the letter more than she ever had before. Grateful that she’d had someone who wanted her to know that she was more than what she was being born into. That she was, by mind and soul and heart, a queen.
Sniffling, she replaced all four items into the box and put the box into her backpack. Looking down at herself, she realized that everything she wore belonged to her, besides the jacket. Without missing a beat, Kara tugged it off and threw it onto the bed, remaining in her black jeans and t-shirt, her boots on her feet. Just as she had come, she was leaving.
Her slightly reddened eyes flitted over everything she’d left in the room and she nodded, it was only right. None of it belonged to her, so she’d leave it behind. Lucas could claim it if he wanted, but Kara wouldn’t take them and she hoped it would make him feel better.
Better about her stealing from him or about his betraying her, she wasn’t sure.
The thought had more following on its heel and Kara started for the door as they filed into her mind, one at a time. Lucas. Every thought was on him.
Her chest tightened as she closed the bedroom door and Kara felt her bottom lip curve downward as the pent up emotion tried to break out of her. It was more than just feeling stupid because she trusted Lucas and he sold her out.
She was sad. So sad and fucking hurt! She let herself want him, let herself become so drawn into him that she began to need him. And what did he do? He betrayed her.
After everything she went through to get away from Markos, to get away from the bloodshed and the murder and the drug world, the literal hell that she lived in! Lucas, whom she had trusted, like a blind idiot, cold-heartedly sent her back.
He tried to send her back to that hell. Like all he could think was that she belonged there…
Kara paused in the doorway as her control splintered and the sobs poured out of the large cracks in her heart. She put a hand over her mouth, trying to ride out the pain as she cried, but it wasn’t fading away this time.
It was heavy, unrelenting pain and it tore through her.
The heavy sobs sounded through the quiet little house as she covered her face, trying to hold it in. Kara never experienced such pain before and it hurt more coupled with the way he had treated her the previous night. Like she was nothing. He treated her just like everyone else in her life had treated her.
Like she was nothing.
Kara held her head up high through most of it, but when a heart is human, it staggers beneath the pain sometimes. And other times, it’s simply crushed.
She sniffled heavily and grabbed some tissues from the kitchen, blowing her nose into them and using others to clean her face even as she fought to keep more tears at bay. Tears helped nobody and although her and her grandmother, Donna Kingsley, had never met, Kara knew she would agree.
She inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times and took one last look around the cottage, then, with her bag emptier than it had ever felt before, she left the cottage.
Raphaël watched her leave the cottage and frowned in slight surprise.
Kara pulled open the car door and slid in, fastening her seat belt.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” she said politely to Raphaël.
He nodded, but continued frowning at her. “Did you not want to take your belongings?”
Kara glanced at him and when his eyes narrowed on her bloodshot ones, she turned away. “Uh, yes. I did.” She patted her bag, sitting on her lap. “They’re all in here.”
Raphaël’s jaw clenched and his gut churned with sadness for the young lady sitting beside him, but he remained silent and started the car.
They drove out and began the hour drive to Raphaël and Isabelle’s place, the car was filled with thick silence and her sadness was so evident, it seemed tangible in the air around them.
Raphaël quietly shook his head. Lucas had work to do.
*********

Luc sat very still in his arm chair, eyes focused on the movement of his fingers across the material of her canvas bag where it sat across the arm of his chair.
He was alone at home, having sent all servants away, hoping that in the silence, he’d think of some way to convince Kara to stay. But all he’d managed to come up with was guilt, shame and sadness.
He couldn’t even begin to estimate how much she probably hated him after what he did. Luc knew why he did what he did, but how on earth could he explain that to Kara? How could he say that he was afraid of his feelings? How stupid did that sound?!
He didn’t know what he was going to say to her, but he had to figure it out, because if Kara left him, Luc knew that he would die. He no longer even had the ability to imagine his future without her green eyes and melodious laughter in it. God, he needed her.
But Kara would run, he knew that. How the fuck could he keep her? How?
Luc clenched his jaw and closed his eyes against the nausea churning in his gut.
Suddenly, the shrill ringing of the phone pierced the silence and he lifted it off its hook, placing it against his ear.
“Cartier.”
“Where the hell are you?” demanded Raphaël and Luc sat up.
“Home. What’s happened? Is it Kara?”
“Home? Did you move back there? That’s why nobody’s picking up the phone at the house?”
“Yeah…no. Wait, what’s happened, Raphaël?”
“You tell me! Your ass is supposed to be here, on your fucking knees, begging this woman to give you a second chance, Lucas!”
Luc cringed.
“There’s nothing else I want to do right now, believe me, but…”
“But what? You’re in love with her, okay?! If she leaves you, trust me man, you’re going to be so fucked up.”
Lucas felt his heart pound with fear.
“I was going to give her the night and come in the morning…”
“I don’t recommend that,” stated Raphaël.
Lucas heard it in his friend’s tone and paled.
“Why not?”
There was a beat of silence.
“Because, Lucas, she is sitting in my living room, convincing Isabelle and Celeste to buy her painting so she can use the money. For a fucking plane ticket to the USA. And she wants to leave tonight.”