“It’s a farm, big boy. That’s how we roll.”
Too tired to argue, he rested his head and let his eyes focus on her. Jeans today, faded but tight enough to show every curve. And an oversized T-shirt so loose that when she leaned over to adjust the milk pail, he could see right down to a tank top. Her hair was pulled back in her Heidi braid. Small, taut muscles in her arms bunched as she squeezed out milk, her lower lip tucked under her teeth in concentration, a glisten of perspiration giving her a glow.
“You can use the facilities in the trailer,” she said, not even looking at him.
“In a minute. I’m mesmerized by milking.” And the milk maid.
She tried to hide her amusement by tucking her head under the goat’s belly instead, but he caught the smile. “Good, you can finish for me. I think you learned how to do it last night.”
Yes, he had. Squeezed the udders till those suckers were dry as bones. And never wanted to put his hand on another goat nipple as long as he lived. “Aren’t you almost done?” he asked.
“Still have Ruffles and the little girls. And I need to leave in less than an hour.”
He sat up completely. “Where are you going?”
“County Clerk to get to the bottom of this Burns guy and his bogus will.”
Except, the will was not bogus. Elliott was certain of that. How Burns’s client was able to coerce the old man to sign it might not have been the most ethical of means, but the will was legal. “I’m going with you.”
That earned him a vile look. “No, you’re staying here to milk the goats.”
“I’ll do both, but I’m going with you.”
“I can handle it. I’ve already started, to be honest. Last night I Googled that lawyer and the name of his client.”
Oh, that was not good. “What did you find?”
“He’s a real lawyer, sadly. But Island Management doesn’t have a Web site or anything trackable. But I have some contacts in the county government who helped me after Nonno died without a will or a deed to this land.”
Brushing some hay out of his hair and off his jeans, he finally got up from the homemade bed, his real estate experience taking over his brain for a moment. “How can he not have a deed to the land?”
“He was a founder of the island, back in the 1940s. A group of people actually settled the island, and were able to claim ownership of land. That’s how the lady who owns Casa Blanca got a lot of that land, from her grandparents who were part of the founding group. But there’s a deed now, on file, and in eight, no, seven more days, it transfers to my name.”
Not if it transferred to another name first. In six days, if all went according to plan. An unwanted pressure of guilt punched hard enough to push him to a stand. “Let me hit the head and I’ll finish the goats, shower, and go with you.”
Her jaw unhinged.
He ignored it. “C’mon. You know you want company.”
Before she could argue, he was crossing the pen and headed for the trailer, blinking into the blinding sunrise, making plans for who to call first and exactly what strings to pull and palms to grease. He had to be at those government offices with her.
Her grandfather was a founder of the island.
He silenced the voice in his head with a litany of rationalization. This place was perfect for the stadium, great access, close to a good population base on the other side of the causeway, still small and out of the way enough to be a real tourist draw. Plus, they’d already secured the surrounding properties, and this little plot shouldn’t hold them up. The whole plan wouldn’t work without a good access road and parking. This was too easy to start over.
Fast, easy, simple, lucrative, and...a shitty thing to do to Frankie.
Swearing softly, he stepped inside the little mobile home to find the bathroom in the hall. He’d have to go get some things from the resort if he was going through with this plan, but Frankie had thoughtfully laid out an unopened toothbrush package with toothpaste, a washcloth, and something that looked like a bar of soap. It was brown and lumpy and smelled...amazing.
He sniffed again, getting a mix of sweet and peppery smells. When he turned on the water to lather up, the scents got stronger, and the soap slid around in his hands with a buttery, luscious texture.
If she washed in this stuff, then he wanted to...touch her.
Oh, hell, he wanted to anyway.
He stripped his T-shirt off and took a French bath, imagining how good a whole shower would be, except he didn’t think he’d fit in that phone booth of a shower. Once he’d dried off and brushed his teeth, he checked outside and, not seeing her, pulled his phone out of his back pocket and called Zeke.
The hello was very sleepy and not real pleased. “What?”
“Did I interrupt the honeymoon?”
He got a low groan. “We’re not married...yet.”
Geez, the guy fell hard and fast. “We need to talk.”
“You didn’t close that Cardinale deal yet, Becker?” Zeke was awake now.
“Working on it.”
“Call me when it’s done. I’m sleeping.” A female voice in the background, followed by a soft laugh, told Elliott that his friend wouldn’t be going back to sleep anytime soon. Lucky bastard.
“Well, sorry to delay your morning exercise, but you have to hear me out. I put an offer on the land through a lawyer who appears to have a legitimate claim naming his client as the owner of the land.”
“And?”
“Owner’s granddaughter is going to fight it, so I have to delay, distract, and divert her for a week while we slip in under the radar and get the land. And, just in case this lawyer’s a shyster and he’s lying, then I have to work on buying the land directly from her. Either way, I’m going to win.” He felt better just saying it out loud. He had a plan and needed to stick to it.
“Hmm. Okay. Sounds...okay.”
“Oh, it’s more than okay,” he said, reassuring himself as much as Zeke.
“Why, is she hot?”
“A ten.”
Zeke snorted. “You are the luckiest son of a bitch on earth.”
“Says the man who is in the sack with a gorgeous female while I have a goat waiting to be milked.”
“What?”
“It’s a goat farm,” he explained. “The late owner ran a goat farm, and she took over.”
“So why doesn’t she want to sell?”
“Sentimental value, best I can tell.”
“You can outbid that, Becker.”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t know about my deal with the lawyer, and she doesn’t know what we’re planning to build.” Another one of those little guilt pricks stabbed at his chest, so he paced the trailer. In three steps, he was in a bedroom he knew had to be Frankie’s, decorated—if you could actually use that word—with a simple beige comforter and a few pillows, some pictures of the great outdoors on the walls, and a single dresser with a hairbrush, mirror, and two small, framed photographs.
It didn’t look like any woman’s bedroom where he’d spent time. He was used to counters that looked like the makeup department at Saks and overflowing closets with a zillion pictures of...themselves. This room was as simple as the farmer who lived in it. And all that did was intrigue him more.
“So, what’s your plan?” Zeke asked with a yawn.
“I’m going to, um, stick around her farm.” He cleared his throat. “And work.”
“What?” Zeke barked out a laugh. “You? Work a farm?”
“Yeah.” Leaning over the dresser, he squinted at one of the small pictures. But his focus was on the girl in the photo—definitely Frankie, though a good dozen or more years ago, with the gangly body and braces-heavy smile of a preteen. She stood between two people who were undoubtedly her parents, the mix of features easy to discern.
“Then she must be an eleven, not a ten.”
“Grow up, Einstein.” Hey, was that the Plaza in the background? A limo driver behind them, waiting with an open door, the small family dress
ed for a special event. Vacation in New York City? The other picture was of an older man, he’d guess the grandfather she called Nonno, leaning against the shelter Elliott had just slept in. A bull of a man, with a shock of white hair and some teeth missing in his broad grin. One hand was on a goat, the giant, gnarled fingers nearly covering the animal’s whole head. Next to him, that same little girl, the braces still on.
“So, can you make it?” Zeke’s question brought Elliott back to the conversation.
“Sorry, make what?”
“Brunch tomorrow at Casa Blanca. Nate’s docked his yacht in the harbor, and he’s meeting Mandy and me for brunch. Why don’t you come over and join us? I mean, if you can get away from the goats.” He chuckled, and in the background, his girlfriend was laughing, too.
But Elliott ignored them, looking from one picture to the other, both of which had to have been taken in the same year. With her grandfather, she had hunched shoulders and a shadow of pain around her young eyes.
“We’re meeting around noon at the restaurant. Be there, because I have some great news to announce.”
Elliott pictured that great news in bed next to Zeke—the woman he’d known from high school and found not so long ago cleaning his villa over at Casa Blanca. “I can only imagine.”
“No, you can’t,” Zeke said, his voice rich with a contentment that Elliott had never heard in Einstein’s tone before.
No surprise, really. Zeke had confessed his longing to settle down awhile back, when he and Elliott had become friends. They’d had Yankees season tickets near each other and had then joined the same recreational softball team. But the very idea of settling anywhere with anyone made Elliott’s teeth itch.
Zeke covered the phone, muffling his words but not the woman’s laugh. Okay, it didn’t sound exactly like hell to be that happy, but the same woman forever? That was not easy enough for Elliott Becker. That was downright...difficult.
He signed off the call and picked up the two pictures again, looking at them side by side, imagining that little—
“Can I help you find something?”
He jerked around, stunned that he hadn’t heard her come in. “Just looking at your pictures.”
“Also known as invading my privacy.” She strode closer and took the photos, placing them exactly where they’d been on the bureau.
“What happened to your parents?” he asked, letting his gaze shift to the other picture.
She swallowed, hard. “9/11.” Her words were so gruff, so soft, he almost didn’t understand. But then he did. And he felt his own shoulders sink with the truth.
“Both of them?” God, that wasn’t fair. So, so not fair.
She blew out the slowest, saddest breath he’d ever heard, closing her eyes. “Both of them.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching to her and pulling her into his arms.
“Frankie, I’m sorry.”
She was stiff at first, but then she molded into him with the next sad sigh. “Not as sorry as I am.”
Something in his heart just twisted and cracked and fell right open. Easing her down on the bed purely so he could sit and hold her, he stroked her hair off her face and looked into her eyes.
He shouldn’t do this. He shouldn’t get personal or care. Zeke and Nate wanted this land, and when they wanted something, they got it. She’d just be the collateral damage of their unstoppable success. Well-paid collateral damage.
His job was to figure out how to get this land, not how to understand her heart. That’s why they’d sent him.
Still, he couldn’t help himself. “Tell me about them,” he whispered.
He felt her lean further into him, one step closer to trust he knew in his gut he didn’t deserve. Trust he’d be betraying soon. But he held her anyway because there was no way he couldn’t. No way.
Chapter Six
Comfort. Sweet, strong, delicious comfort in the form of muscular arms wrapped around her and a bare chest beating with a heart she wanted to rest against. The consolation felt so good and necessary when she let herself slip to that sad place, so Frankie just let herself fall into Elliott’s embrace.
“I really don’t talk about it, about them.” She swallowed against the rock in her throat, sniffing the lingering smell of lavender and sea salt. “You used my goat’s milk soap.”
“That creamy stuff?”
She nodded and sniffed again. She’d never smelled it on anyone but herself, and on him it was divine. “I made it.”
“Nice.” She could feel his face move in a smile against her head. “And nice attempt at a subject change. Talk to me, Frankie.”
She exhaled, knowing this man well enough to realize he wouldn’t let her stand up and go on until he got what he wanted. Inching back, she met his gaze, unashamed of her tears. “My parents are the reason you can’t sway me with money. I really do believe it is the root of all and every evil, including the greed that stole their lives.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Greed didn’t drive jets into the World Trade Center, Frankie.”
“No, but greed had my parents insisting on being workaholics, never missing a day, even an hour. Even that day, when...” She fought the lump again, the injustice, the bad timing, the big fat what if that had ruled her life for so long after September 11, 2001.
Every time she’d heard a miracle story about someone who hadn’t gone to work at the Twin Towers that day, she choked on her own “what ifs.”
“What if they’d skipped work that morning to come to the school open house instead, like they promised they would?” she asked, giving voice to a question she’d asked herself a million times. “What if they’d chosen to meet my new teacher like all the other parents? What if they had a story like that…and they’d been saved?”
He stroked her hair, not saying anything or passing judgment on her bitterness.
“They didn’t have to be there that day,” she whispered. “They were supposed to be at my school, but some big multimillion-dollar client was coming in that afternoon and at the last minute, they bailed on the school meeting.” She closed her eyes, remembering that last breakfast, the punch of disappointment because, once again, money trumped everything else. Not even one of them would pick school over a client, so she’d lost them both.
“And they could be alive if they could have been somewhere else, and they would have been if their priorities had been in order.”
“Everyone who died could have been somewhere else, Frankie.” His voice was as calm and sweet as the fragrant soap he’d washed with, but the words did nothing to help her.
“But they should have been somewhere else,” she insisted, clinging to the regret and anger that always bubbled under the surface. “I’ve forgiven them, but...”
“Not if there’s a but you haven’t.”
Well, she’d tried. It had been thirteen years and she wasn’t angry at the world anymore. “But I’ll never be a fan of anyone who is motivated by the desire to have more. That’s what drove my parents—the need for more. More money, more things, more status, more success, more multigazillion-dollar deals.” She puffed out a disgusted breath. “They died to have more.”
He didn’t respond—how could he? He was a billionaire who no doubt worshiped at the altar of More Is Never Enough. But his gentle caress on her back felt like that of a kind, caring man, so she tried to forget that he was cut from the same cloth as her money-hungry parents and let him soothe away the old beast of bitter who reared his head more often since Nonno had died. So maybe it wasn’t bitterness that had her blue, maybe it was just a far too familiar sense that she had no one.
She closed her eyes and rested on his powerful shoulder, practically purring at how good he felt.
“I came here after it happened,” she finally said, not wanting to talk about her parents anymore. They weren’t why she wanted to hold on to this land. It was because of her savior, Nonno. “To live with my grandfather.”
“Was he your only re
lative?”
“No, my mother’s sister in Long Island also wanted me, but according to my parents’ will, I was supposed to live with Nonno. So I left a four-thousand-square-foot apartment on the Upper East Side and a private school, driver, and a life of pure luxury to move to a goat farm in the middle of a swamp island.”
It was his turn to back away and look at her incredulously. “That must have been horrible.”
She fought a smile. “I loved it.”
“Really?”
“Well, not immediately, no. I mean, it was a bit of a culture shock and I was a typical teenage brat full of denial and anger, but Nonno? Boy, he just loved me like I was another one of his darling does. He was just the most amazing, sweet, terrific guy in the whole world. My grandmother had died a few years earlier, and the farm was fading, but only because he needed a second pair of hands and he was too stubborn to ask for help. His middle name was stubborn,” she said, trying to make light of the character trait that had nearly cost her that last goodbye. “But once he started teaching me how to do things, I really, really loved the life.”
“You lived in this trailer?” he asked.
“Oh, no. We had a little ranch house, but it was messed up badly in a hurricane that hit the island a few years ago. He put this up temporarily.”
“I guess it was a great escape from the pain of what you’d gone through in New York,” he said.
Everyone thought that, and it made sense. “It didn’t seem like that to me at the time. I enjoyed the animals and loved Nonno and he loved me. Completely and wholly and unconditionally. Way more than my parents did, or at least than they acted like they did.”
“Like, he went to your teacher conferences instead of working?”
She laughed softly. “Even better. After the first year at Mimosa High, he yanked me out and homeschooled me because the teachers were all ‘from hunger,’ he used to say.”
“He educated you himself?”
She shrugged. “More or less. He certainly taught me how to milk goats and breed them, and how to make soap and cheese, and get a doe ready to give birth. But that’s not exactly what qualifies as an education in the state of Florida.”
Seduction on the Sand (The Billionaires of Barefoot Bay #2) Page 5
