Free A Scandalous Melody by Linda Conrad Page A

guy.”
    â€œYou whipped all four boys?”
    He tipped his chin. “They were drunk.” It was still not something he was terribly proud of. “The one that had grabbed Kate ended up having to be taken to the hospital, and the sheriff said it was touch-and-go with him for a while.”
    â€œBut why would the sheriff put you in jail?” Shelby asked. “They attacked you and Kate first.”
    â€œThe other three boys gave a statement to the sheriff saying they’d seen me attacking Kate. They claimed they had been the ones to come to her rescue.”
    â€œWhat? Everyone in town knew you and Kate were a couple. Why would anyone believe such a thing?”
    Chase drove his hand through his hair, wishing that he’d never started this trip down memory lane. Shelby was not going to like hearing what he had to say next.
    â€œKate told the sheriff it was true,” Chase said in a low but clear voice. “She swore I’d been drinking and had dragged her out of the car and was attacking her when those boys came along and tried to save her.”
    Shelby’s mouth dropped open, and for a minute she just stared at him. “I can’t believe that.”
    Chase shook his head and gave her a wry smile. “I had some trouble with the concept at the time, too, but her old man turned up right then and offered me a deal. Henry Beltrane told me that because my father’s family had been in the area for generations he would giveme a break. If I’d leave town for good, he would see to it that no one pressed charges against me. I’d be in the clear, but I could never come home.”
    Shelby was still shaking her head. “There’s something wrong with that story. I don’t buy the part about Kate.”
    â€œIt took me a few years to accept it myself. About six weeks ago I finally located the grown man that once was the boy I had put in the hospital. I never could understand why those kids were out there by the river that night. Nobody but Kate and I ever went to that place.
    â€œAnyway, I found him working as a night security guard in New Orleans,” Chase continued. “He confessed that Henry Beltrane had paid those four boys to find us and to beat me up…run me out of town. The rest of the story is that their fathers had been recently laid off from the mill and their families needed the money bad. But still…they had to get stone drunk to have the nerve to do such a thing.”
    â€œBut why?” Shelby cried. “And why would Kate…?”
    Chase shrugged. “Since that bastard Beltrane is dead, we’ll never know his reasons.”
    Shelby looked so horrified that Chase decided to say something more. “I suspect that Kate must feel some guilt for her part since she refuses to talk to you about it.”
    â€œThat story is just so unlike Kate,” Shelby insisted. “I can’t understand it.”
    All of a sudden, Chase knew he had said too much. “I can’t understand it, either,” he hedged. “But I didn’t mean for these old ghost stories to come between the two of you.”
    â€œOh, they won’t,” Shelby quickly told him. “That story has nothing to do with the Kate I know. And the Kate that I know saved my life.”
    Shelby reached over and swung her daughter up in her arms. The baby giggled before she nestled down against her mother’s breast. “Right after Maddie was born…I thought I was going to have to give her up. I had nothing. No job and no family. I didn’t have anywhere to live that would accept a baby, and I’d been begging friends for scraps of food.
    â€œKate’s father was still alive at the time but he was sick,” Shelby continued. “So Kate snuck us food and helped me fix up that old guest cottage out back so we’d have a place to stay. She even babysat so I could go round up some catering jobs.”
    Shelby placed a soft