Heartstrings and Diamond Rings

by Jane Graves

  If so, this guy had committed a third-degree felony.

  He had the same boyish smile and the same sandy brown hair as he did in his photo, both of which coordinated perfectly with his sparkling green eyes. Just looking at him made little zings of pure pleasure shoot down her spine.

  “Yes, I’m Alison.”

  “Oh, good,” he said on a sigh of relief. “You know how it is sometimes when you meet somebody for the first time. They never look like their photo. But in your case…well, let’s just say I’m pleasantly surprised.”

  A slow grin spread across his lips, lips that looked so kissable that Alison was already imagining what they’d feel like against hers.

  Easy there, Sparky. Sexy lips do not a soul mate make. And he’s a vegan, remember? Can you really fill your fridge with tofu and beans for the rest of your life?

  The hostess led them to the best table in the restaurant. The vegan thing came up right away, and Greg asked if she minded him ordering for both of them. The prospect of eating so scantily made Alison a little wary, not to mention the fact that a man ordering for her usually offended her feminist sensibilities. But he asked so kindly with a sparkle in those beautiful green eyes that she just couldn’t hold it against him.

  He ordered a bottle of Shiraz that was to die for, and she wasn’t all that crazy about wine. Then an appetizer, which consisted of a flat bread with roasted red peppers, garlic, and sweet basil that Alison couldn’t get enough of. But it wasn’t until they were halfway through their entrees—whole grain pasta with grilled vegetables, fresh spinach, and an array of spices that gave her a culinary orgasm—that Alison finally came to the conclusion that she might indeed be able to eat like this for the rest of her life.

  They talked about anything and everything—the news of the day, the movies they’d seen, where they lived. He dropped his gaze to her cleavage only a couple of times—enough to show he liked what he saw but not so much that getting laid might be number one on his hit parade. He listened intently when she told him about her job, tilting his head with what looked like interest and laughing at the stories that were supposed to be funny. After two glasses of wine, she let herself think that maybe she really was as fascinating as he appeared to think she was.

  “So you’re in pharmaceutical sales,” she said. “That sounds interesting.”

  “Actually, it is,” he said. “The hours are long, and the clients can be really difficult sometimes, but…” That cute grin again. “I can’t argue with the compensation.” Then he leaned in and spoke with what looked like utter sincerity. “I admit it, Alison. I’m pretty traditional. I think it’s important for a man to be able to support his wife and family in the manner they deserve. Not that I’m against a working woman. I’d just like her to do it because she wants to, not because she has to.”

  And just like that, the heavens opened and angels began to sing.

  She couldn’t believe it. Brandon had done it. He’d actually done it. He’d found her a wonderful man. The money she’d spent to find him felt like pocket change compared to the reality of the man who was sitting in front of her now. She felt the weirdest rumbling sensation just beneath her solar plexus. Under any other circumstances, she might have brushed it off as indigestion, but when she was in the presence of a man who just might be The One, it was more like a swirl of hope, telling her from the inside out that this—this—was the man who would make her life complete.

  The rest of the evening felt fuzzy and unreal in a delightfully dreamlike way. Later, when they left the restaurant, Greg told Alison he’d walk her to her car. It turned out they’d parked in the same lot, and they passed his car on the way to hers. When he pointed it out to her, she quite simply couldn’t believe it.

  He drove a Jaguar convertible?

  “Beautiful car,” Alison said, congratulating herself on shutting her mouth before the second part of that comment popped out: May I have your baby?

  “Want to go for a spin?” Greg asked.

  She came very close to hopping right over the door and plopping herself in the passenger seat, only to remember First Date Protocol. But it wasn’t as if she was meeting a guy for the first time from an Internet dating site. Brandon had vetted this guy from top to bottom and deemed him to be a quality match, so who was she to worry?

  “Sure,” she said with a smile. “I’d love to.”

  Greg opened her door for her—extra points—then circled the car to hop into the driver’s seat. He was just so sweet and warm and attentive that he couldn’t possibly be real. This had to be a dream. A wonderful, lyrical dream filled with fluffy clouds and castles and ocean waves and magical forests, and…oh, my. Over there. Wasn’t that a unicorn?

  Alison didn’t giggle out loud—that would have been weird—but inside her head she was tittering like a schoolgirl.

  Greg swung the Jag onto McKinney Avenue and hit the gas. People on the sidewalk turned to stare as they drove by. She only wished she could ask him to slow down in case somebody didn’t get the opportunity to see her riding in this gorgeous car with this wonderful man.

  In minutes they’d reached Woodall Rodgers. Greg eased the Jag onto the entrance ramp, then gunned it onto the freeway. They buzzed along, weaving in and out of traffic as they drove past the West End. As they circled around the west side of the American Airlines Center, Alison leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, enjoying the whine of the engine and the feel of the wind as it whipped her hair into a frenzy.

  Then all at once, she heard the pulse of a siren. She sat up suddenly and turned to look behind her.

  A police car?

  “Uh-oh,” Alison said. “Were you speeding?”

  Greg gave her a sly grin. “Sorry. I just couldn’t help it. All these horses under the hood are hard to rein in sometimes.”

  Alison gave him a forgiving smile. Could she really be angry? After all, if she’d been driving this car, she probably would have been speeding, too.

  Greg slowed down, then turned onto the shoulder and brought the Jag to a halt. The police car came to a stop behind them. Several minutes passed, but for some reason, the officer wasn’t getting out of his car.

  “What do you suppose is taking him so long?” she asked.

  Greg’s sunny expression grew a little cloudy. “He’s probably just running my plates. But don’t worry. We’ll be out of here in a minute.”

  But then another police car pulled up behind the first one.

  “Two of them?” Alison said. “Isn’t that kind of weird for just a routine traffic stop?”

  Greg’s Adam’s apple bobbed with a heavy swallow. “Uh…yeah.”

  Just the way he said that made Alison’s heart suddenly start whacking her chest. “So what’s going on?”

  Greg was silent, his gaze glued to his rearview mirror. When a third police car drove past him, then swung to the shoulder to park right in front of his car, he squeezed his eyes closed and pounded his fists on the steering wheel. “Shit!”

  Alison jumped as if he’d slapped her. “What’s the matter?”

  “They must have found out. Shit, shit shit!”

  “Found out what?”

  Greg groaned. “Damn it! The money was just so good! How was I supposed to turn it down?”

  “Money? What money?”

  “How else was I ever supposed to drive a car like this? Not working as a fucking night manager at Wendy’s, I’ll tell you that!”

  “Wendy’s? What does Wendy’s have to do with—”

  “Sure, I’m a good-looking guy,” he said, talking with his hands now, like a crazy man who’d just broken free from a strait jacket. “Some chicks think I’m really hot. But it’s funny how hot goes away when I’m staring at them through a fucking drive‑through window!”

  Alison leaned away, plastering herself against the passenger door, wondering who this madman was and what he’d done with her mild-mannered vegan. Her nerves—the ones that had had been doing dainty little pirouettes all
evening—were suddenly stomping around as if they were running from Godzilla.

  Oh—could that be what was happening here? A gigantic Japanese monster was on the outskirts of Dallas, and the police were warning all the residents? Please, God, let it be that and not one more date gone to hell.

  “And once I had more money than God,” Greg said, “I figured, hey, why screw with finding my own women? Why not pay somebody else to do it? It’s like ordering room service. I told that dude what kind of woman I wanted, and she showed up. I sure as hell couldn’t have done that on a fucking night manager’s salary at Wendy’s!”

  “I’m going out on a limb here,” Alison said, “but were you once a night manager at Wendy’s?”

  “Yeah, and if I’d asked you out, you would have told me to go fuck myself, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well—”

  “See? See?” He spat out a breath. “I really liked you, you know? I think we could actually have had something together. But we can’t now, because I’m fucked. Totally fucked!”

  What is this man talking about?

  No. Better question. Why were all those officers getting out of their cars now? Why were they drawing their guns? Why did this look like every arrest on every episode of Cops she’d ever seen, except Greg had all his teeth, no tattoos, and was wearing a shirt?

  Then she found out. And through it all, one furious thought filled her mind, practically burning a hole through her skull.

  Brandon Scott was a dead man.

  Chapter 10

  This movie sucks,” Tom said, as he took another swig of his Bud. “I didn’t know there were people left on the planet who didn’t have cable TV.”

  “My grandmother didn’t need it,” Brandon said as he sat sprawled out in his grandmother’s favorite floral chair, his feet up on the matching ottoman. “All she watched were soap operas and televangelists. That weird converter box allowed her to get those on her analog TV, so she didn’t bother with cable.”

  “Find something better before I die of boredom.”

  “There isn’t something better.”

  “There was that Dragnet marathon on channel twenty-two.”

  “Like I said. There isn’t something better.”

  The thought of being subjected to this kind of programming for the next several months just about killed Brandon, but his only alternative was to shell out a bundle for a new HDTV and a big monthly charge for cable. When that option came due on the Houston property, he didn’t want a couple thousand bucks standing between him and being able to make the deal happen.

  He’d just switched from the movie and was running the dial, when he heard a knock on his front door.

  “Expecting somebody?” Tom asked.

  “Nope.”

  Then more knocks. More very insistent knocks. What the hell?

  He tossed the remote aside and went to the door, where he peered through the peephole.

  Alison Carter?

  Truth be told, he barely recognized her. Her brown eyes were bugged out, her nostrils flared, and her lips were all crunched up with fury. He didn’t get it. She’d seemed so sweet before. But clearly she was a force to be reckoned with, kind of like a category-five hurricane.

  More knocking. “Brandon! I know you’re in there! Open the door!”

  “Oh, God,” Tom said, looking around the doorway into the entry hall. “That’s not the scary Hooters waitress from Denver, is it? Brittany Whatsername? I thought you got a restraining order against her.”

  “Nope. It’s one of my clients.”

  “Your clients scream at you?”

  “Not so far.”

  He opened the door. Alison swept past him like a tidal wave crashing through the house. Then she spun around to face him, her fists rising to her hips and her brows drawing together in a tight furrow. In spite of the impending storm, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes off the cute little black dress she wore. It dipped down at her cleavage, and with every angry breath she took, her breasts shifted provocatively. Unfortunately, angry women didn’t usually like it when a man’s attention was on anything besides what they were hollering about, so as quickly as his gaze fell, he jerked it back up again.

  “Alison?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Didn’t you have a date with Greg tonight?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice quivering with restraint. “And it was the worst date of my life!”

  “The worst?” Brandon said skeptically. “Really?”

  “I once went out with a man who brought his mother with him. That’s what I’m comparing it to!”

  “Wow,” Tom said. “And this one was worse than that?”

  “Hold on,” Brandon said, raising his palm. “What happened that was so bad?”

  “You set me up with a drug dealer!”

  Brandon leaned away, truly shocked. Drug dealer? The man was a vegan. How many drug dealers were vegans?

  “How do you know he deals drugs?” Brandon asked.

  Alison’s eyes narrowed into angry slits. “We were driving on the freeway. He got stopped for speeding. They ran his plates and saw the felony drug warrant. Greg had no clue the cops were onto him until they surrounded his car.”

  “Oh,” Brandon said. “I’m guessing that’s what he meant by pharmaceutical sales?”

  “Yeah? You think?”

  “Wait a minute. You were driving with him? Don’t you know you should never get into a car with a guy you don’t know on the first date?”

  Alison’s eyes flew open wide. “You set me up with a felon, and you’re lecturing me on dating safety?”

  Okay, so that was a little weak. “I’m sorry, Alison. I had no idea. Really.”

  “You’re supposed to vet the guys I go out with. That’s part of the reason I’m paying you a freakin’ fortune to find me a husband!”

  “Vet?”

  “Are you telling me you don’t do background checks?”

  Brandon froze. Background checks?

  Thinking back, he realized now his grandmother had done those, but it had completely slipped his mind that maybe he should be doing them himself. If his grandmother had indeed checked Greg out, maybe it was before there was a warrant out for his arrest. Brandon didn’t know exactly what had happened, only that he couldn’t afford for it to happen again.

  “You can’t imagine how humiliating it was,” Alison said hotly. “I had to stand on the side of the road while the cops handcuffed my date and stuffed him inside a police car. They were going to drag me in, too. Guilt by association. It was all I could do to convince them that I’d never even met him before tonight and the strongest drug I’d ever touched was Tylenol PM.”

  “So where were you when this happened?”

  “On I-35 just outside downtown Dallas.”

  “That’s at least fifteen miles from here. How did you get home?”

  “Oh, no problem there. One of the cops gave me a ride back to my car at the restaurant. Everybody in the whole neighborhood thought it was positively riveting to watch me get out of a police car.”

  “I’ve always wondered what the inside of a police car was like,” Tom said, his eyes alight with interest. “I hear the backseat is plastic so when somebody’s arrested for DUI and they barf, they can just wash it out with a hose.”

  “Where the hell did you read that?” Brandon said.

  “On Ask dot com. You can learn all kinds of things there. For instance, do you know what the loudest animal on earth is?”

  Alison looked at him with disbelief, then turned slowly back to Brandon. “Who’s this?”

  “A friend. Alison, this is Tom. Tom, this is Alison. She’s one of my clients.”

  “No. Past tense. I was one of your clients. I want my money back. Every penny. And I want it now.”

  “Uh-oh,” Tom said. He pulled Brandon aside and whispered, “I read in Entrepreneur magazine that whenever a customer asks for a refund, eight out of ten times y
ou can talk him out of it as long as you—”

  “Go away,” Brandon snapped.

  “But—”

  “Now.”

  Tom turned to Alison. “I’m going away now. But in case you were wondering, it’s the blue whale. A hundred and eighty-eight decibels. They can be heard from—”

  “Go!” Brandon said.

  As Tom disappeared into the den, Brandon turned to Alison. “I can explain.”

  “Yeah?” she said, folding her arms and looking at him expectantly, that scowl still stuck to her face. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Well, I’m just now learning my grandmother’s procedures,” he said, willing his brain to come up with something. “It appears there was a…glitch.”

  “A glitch?”

  “Greg came to my grandmother a few months ago. I’m thinking the warrant must have happened after she ran his background check. I know now that I should update them at a certain point, but I guess this one just got past me.”

  He gave her an I’m sorry please don’t hate me look that he sincerely hoped would appeal to her forgiving side. He wasn’t sure it was working.

  He took a step closer to her, running a hand through his hair, then blowing out a breath. “I’m going to level with you, Alison. This business is important to me. Really important. I have to make it a success. If you could possibly see your way clear to overlook this one tiny error—”

  “Tiny error? Really, Brandon? Tiny?”

  “Okay. It was a big mistake. But it’s one that’ll never happen again. But the question is, did you like Greg?”

  She looked aghast. “Like him? The man is a drug dealer!”

  “I mean before you found that out. Were you having a good time?”

  “Oh, yeah. Our date was a real barrel of laughs.”

  “Alison. Before you found out what he was.”

  She paused. “Well, yeah. I guess. But—”

  “Did you have things in common?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Did you find him physically attractive?”

  “Well, yeah. But—”