by Anna Jeffrey
3:00 a.m., wearing an evening wrap. No, she had to call for a cab and she needed to do it now so it would be waiting for her at the curb as soon as she reached the bottom floor. Inside the bathroom, she pulled her cell phone from her purse and in a low voice, ordered a ride.
Next, she checked her ear lobes to be sure her grandmother’s diamond earrings were still in place. After that, she washed herself, then examined her dress for tears, found every seam intact. The garment was made of a fabric that didn’t wrinkle. She put the dress on and after carefully viewing her reflection, believed no one would be able to tell it had been lying on the floor in a heap for two hours.
She applied a new layer of powder over the tender whisker burns around her mouth and on her chin, then fiddled with her hair until it looked presentable.
Taking no chances that her shoe heels would sound against the tile and wooden floors, she left the bathroom carrying them and placed them and her clutch by the entry closet.
When she had been in the kitchen gathering her clothing a few minutes earlier, she had noticed the coffee carafe half-full. She returned to the kitchen and quietly searched the cupboards, hoping to find a mug with a lid. She found a stainless steel one. She poured the mug full of coffee, loaded it with two heaping teaspoons of sugar, then switched off the coffeemaker.
For a moment, she considered going back to the bedroom to glimpse Drake one last time. She feared waking him, so she rejected the idea. The last thing she did was pad to the dining table and swallow a few more bites of the Crème Brûlée.
In the entry closet, she found her jacket. Other coats hung there. She was tempted to take one that would be warmer, but thought better of it. She was already taking—no, borrowing—one of his coffee mugs she hoped he wouldn’t miss. Rather than have him think her a thief, she would make do with her own jacket. She slipped into it, then inventoried everything—shoes, car keys, phone, purse, coffee mug—and opened the condo’s front door.
Easing into the silent hallway, she prayed not to meet anyone. Ahead of her and around the corner she would run into the glass doors with their security keypad. Damn! Would she be able to pass through the sliding door from the inside without keying in a number? Logic told her the door wouldn’t be locked from the inside. For a few seconds, going back into the condo and climbing back into bed with Drake called to her.
Forget it, her common sense told her.
She slipped her feet into her shoes, drew a deep breath and pulled Drake’s front door closed. It locked behind her. She was committed.
Several dozen steps later, she approached the glass door separating her from the elevator. It glided open automatically and silently. Yes!
Mere minutes after that, she stood in the elevator’s open doorway, looking at the uniformed man at his desk on the bottom floor. She lifted her chin, squared her shoulders and walked through the lobby with bravado.
As she neared the doorman’s desk, he rose from his chair and greeted her with a “good morning.”
“Good morning,” she said cheerily.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
“No, thank you.”
She strode past his desk, toward the front door and boldly kept walking without looking back, praying that he didn’t wonder why she was leaving this exclusive place alone at 3:00 a.m. and decide to call Drake—or the cops. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the cab she had called parked outside waiting.
It delivered her to her SUV. Driving through dense fog and cold misting rain, she reached the Fort Worth city limits and the open road to Camden. She could barely make out the white line that divided the four-lane highway. She set her cruise control at forty miles an hour, gripped the steering wheel at ten and two and motored into the dense fog.
At exactly 4:30 a.m., she pulled into the detached garage at her grandmother’s house. She’d had an hour and a half of driving time to reflect on tonight’s events. She had made many mistakes with men in the past, but tonight?...She had enjoyed it too much to call it a mistake. Even so, she had to put it behind her as if had never happened.
****
The warble of Drake’s cell phone on the bedside table startled him from a deep sleep. Without opening his eyes, he fumbled for it. “Mmph,” he said into it.
“Son, did I wake you?”
Mom. Shit. He blinked himself awake. “What’s up?”
Remembering he had gone to sleep with a companion, he glanced at the opposite side of the bed and saw it empty.
“I just had a long conversation with Donna,” his mother said. “You broke up with her?”
“I sure as hell did,” Drake answered absently. He listened for sounds in the bathroom, but heard none. He threw off the covers and sat up.
“Why did you do that, Drake? She’s very upset. She says she’ll do anything to make up with you.”
“Do we have to have this conversation now?”
“But, Son—”
“Mom. I don’t want to talk about it.”
He got to his feet and padded to the toilet. He was freezing his ass off. He kept the temperature in his bedroom below seventy.
“You should call her, Drake,” his mother said. “She says she knows she was too loud last night. She says she drank too much and doesn’t—”
“Mom. Cut it out.” Finished at the toilet, he found a robe in the closet, shrugged into it and returned to the bedroom. Annoyance just short of anger spiked within him. “It’s my business.”
“When one of your women friends calls me and asks me to speak for her, what am I supposed to do?” his mother asked.
He opened the shades on the window wall. Outside, the sky was still a dull gray, the weather still wet and messy. He walked up the hallway that led to the dining room, pausing to reset the thermostat.
From the dining room, he glimpsed the kitchen, saw Sharon’s clothing gone. The bag of food from Reata lay on the floor with a puddle under it. The coffee maker had been switched off. The two dishes of dessert still sat on the dining table, one partly eaten.
“Mom, I’ve got to go.”He walked through the rest of the condo’s rooms. Sharon was nowhere.
His mother gasped. “Drake! Stop and think about what you’re doing. I don’t know how you could do any better than Donna. I know she’s a little spoiled, but she’s from a very important family. Her daddy—”
“Mom, I know who her daddy is. Maybe he should use some of that importance to fix her problems. She’s got a screw loose and she drinks too much.”
He recalled hanging Sharon’s coat in the entry closet. He tramped to the closet, saw an
empty hanger where he had hung her black jacket. He turned around and shot a look at the entry table where he had last seen her purse. But for an original bronze sculpture and a lamp, it was bare. Shit.
“Well you don’t have to bite my head off. I’ve never heard you be so un-chivalrous—”
For a minute, in his distraction, Drake had forgotten he was talking to his mother. “Sorry, Mom. I’m just tired of dealing with the drinking and a lot of other stuff. Last night, you heard her yourself….Look, I just got up. I’ll call you back after a bit, okay?”
They disconnected. He checked the time. 10:30. The door attendant and the concierge on duty last night would be off work now, but a log was kept of strangers who came and went in the late hours. Drake called downstairs. The daytime concierge reported that the night man had written in the log that a red-haired woman in a black jacket left alone at 3:15 a.m. in a cab.
Drake hung up, stunned. Good God. She had fucked his brains out, given him half a blow job, then crawled out of his bed and disappeared? Never had anything like that happened to him.
His next thought was what had she taken with her? Other than original western art, he wasn’t a collector, so he had few valuables in the condo that could be easily picked up and carried out. He went back to his bedroom and checked his wallet. His cash and credit cards were as he had left them. His Rolex lay on the bedside table. He trekked
through the condo again and inventoried each room. He found nothing missing.
Dazed by the bizarre turn of events, he cleaned the coffee pot and put a new batch of coffee on to brew. His cell phone bleated. He checked caller ID. Donna. Shit. He had hoped to have a reprieve from this phone call until noon. He hesitated a few beats trying to decide how to handle what he knew was coming. Finally, he keyed into the call.
“Hi, sweetikins, it’s me.” She began talking before he could say a word. “Drakey, I am so sorry. I should have stopped drinking gin when you wanted me to. It will never happen again.”
“Donna, I—”
“I’m giving up gin. It just does something crazy to me.”
“Donna, listen—”
“Oh, I know. I don’t blame you for being mad. But I know you didn’t mean what you said last night.
“Donna, I did mean it.”
“I just hung up from talking to Daddy about the cabin in Aspen. My friend Mitzi—you remember Mitzi—said the skiing up there is just fantastic right now. The snow is fabulous. Perfect. And a lot of the crowd is there. Jerry and Kay, Judy and Cal, to name a few.
Her friends, not his. Most of the people he called friends didn’t have so much idle time on their hands.
“The weather’s supposed to clear up later today,” she said, “and we could fly. I’ve already talked to Daddy about using the plane.”
This was how Donna dealt with what didn’t go her way. To try to steer a wrecked train back onto the track, she used offers most reasonable people couldn’t refuse.
“Donna, I can’t do this anymore and you shouldn’t want to either. It’s not good for either one of us.”
“Aww, I know you don’t mean that, baby. We need some time alone. If we can just be alone, I know we can work everything out. I can’t think of a better place to do that than Daddy’s cabin.” Her tone changed from whiney to seductive. “You know how good to you I can be. Don’t you remember when we went up there a few months ago? The amazing romantic week we had?”
In fact, he didn’t remember the romantic part of the trip very well. What he did recall was
that he had gone trout fishing in a mountain stream and had gotten skunked.
“Hmm,” she hummed. “I can see us in the hot tub, sipping wine, watching the stars. Doesn’t that sound marvelous?”
Amazing. Fabulous. Marvelous. Fantastic. Donna’s vocabulary was rife with words like that. But what the hell did they mean? He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger. “It’s no good, Donna. It’s not going anywhere with us. And you need help I can’t provide.”
“Drake,” she said petulantly. “You are not going to tell me you can’t go to Aspen after I’ve already talked to Daddy and gotten the plane and everything.”
This, too, was how she dealt with setbacks. She simply passed over them. She was so used to having people kowtow to her every whim, she never heard the word “no.” His patience collapsed. His hackles rose. “Go to Aspen. Without me. As you say, a lot of your friends are up there.”
And he didn’t doubt that if one of them happened to be male and without a companion, after a few drinks, Donna would find him. He had never believed her to be faithful.
“Dammit, I’ve already told Mitzi and Conrad we’d be there,” she said. “I warn you, Drake, if you embarrass me by not going—”
“Don’t threaten me, Donna. I’ve had it. And I’m not going to Aspen. Period.”
He disconnected, threw the phone on the bed and stalked to the shower. He had intended to wait until next week to make the planned trip to Lubbock, but with the weather clearing, now suddenly seemed like a great time to go.
And as soon as he returned, he would find out who the hell Sharon Phillips really was. That probably wasn’t even her real name. And she probably wasn’t from Houston, either.
Chapter 11
Shannon awoke slowly. Visions of sugarplums were not what was dancing in her head. What filled her mind was sex. And why wouldn’t it? She’d had animal sex with one of the hottest men she had ever met and had happily let herself be thoroughly debauched. He had touched and kissed every intimate body part he could reach and she had done likewise.
She envisioned the image of him walking naked from the bathroom to the bed in all of his masculine beauty. The dark and naughty side of her wished she had stayed the night and awakened beside his warm body between his silky sheets. As much stamina as he had, she was certain this morning would have brought a reprise of the night.
Though her shades were drawn, a dull light stole into her bedroom. She could tell that last night’s storm was on the wane. Still, with everything dripping wet, today was a good day to don her sweats and cuddle under an afghan in front of TV.
Before her thoughts took her further, light raps sounded on her door and a small feminine voice said, “Are you awake, dear?”
Grammy Evelyn. Shannon blinked herself fully awake. “Come in, Grammy.”
The wizened woman’s face poked through the doorway. Then she walked in wearing a fashionable navy blue suit with white trim and she smelled like lavender. As she came closer, Shannon saw that she wore makeup.
Uh-oh. She was either going to or coming from church. Shannon usually took her to church herself on Sunday mornings. Last night’s excursion into fantasyland had thrown her off track. She turned to her back, gathering the covers under her chin. She was naked and the room was cold. “Oh, my gosh, Grammy. You’ve been to church already? What time is it?”
“It’s a little after noon, dear. I called Colleen. She and Gavin picked me up. I didn’t want to miss the Christmas program. It was so lovely.”
Oh, hell. Colleen was Shannon’s older sister. Earlier in the week, Shannon and her grandmother had discussed going to the Methodist church’s Christmas program together. Immersed in all that had gone on last night, Shannon had forgotten. “I’m sorry Grammy. You should’ve gotten me up.”
She stretched and yawned, then rubbed her eyelids with her fingertips. Her eyes felt like sandpaper. She had fallen into bed without washing off her makeup.
Her grandmother took a seat on the foot of the bed, crossed her thin hands on her lap and showered her with a patient smile, meant to gently punish. Shannon loved her dearly, but she had lived with her long enough to know the clever little woman could be a manipulative, though sweet, imp.
“That’s all right, dear. I knew you needed to sleep. I took canned goods for the Camden Mission boxes. Gavin donated two big turkeys.”
Gavin Flynn, Colleen’s husband, was a lawyer of mediocre talent who handled divorces and minor lawsuits. As far as Shannon was concerned, Gavin himself was a big turkey. No small amount of friction existed between Shannon and her sister and thereby her sister’s husband. “And how are Colleen and Gavin today?” she asked.
“They’re just fine. Gavin is thinking about running for the legislature in Austin, so it looks like they’ll be going to church more often.”
“Grammy! I can’t believe you said that.”
“Good heavens, you know how important it is for a politician in Camden to be seen as a God-fearing man.”
“He must have decided which party he wants to belong to.”
“I don’t know if he’s gone that far yet.”
Membership in any of them would make him nothing other than a hypocrite, Shannon thought. Still, she laughed. A sense of humor helped when dealing with Colleen and her husband. “It’s nice he has ideals he’s true to.”
“Now, now,” her grandmother admonished. “We must be open-minded toward Gavin. He’s family and we know he means well. Sometimes he’s just confused.”
And living with Colleen was enough to confuse anyone. “Humph,” Shannon said.
Now that she was conscious, she became aware of tenderness between her legs. Even with Grammy Evelyn sitting on the foot of the bed, she couldn’t keep from remembering the earlier hours. She had crashed without showering. Could her grandmother smell sex?
“You must have gotten home very late, dear.”
“Later than I intended.”
“I thought so. I had to get up a little after midnight to let Arthur into the house and you still weren’t home.”
A shiver passed through Shannon as more memories assailed her. Around midnight, she had been naked and wantonly posed on Drake Lockhart’s kitchen island in a position that would challenge a gymnast, begging him for more.
Arthur was her grandmother’s tomcat. Grasping the opportunity to change the subject, Shannon said, “Didn’t Christa come by and try to get Arthur back in the house?”
Christa Johnson was Shannon’s best friend. They had gone all through school together. Since Shannon’s return to Camden, they had become fast friends again. She often came over and looked in on Grammy Evelyn if Shannon couldn’t be home in the evening. Christa didn’t expect a favor in return and she wouldn’t accept pay, so Shannon gave her and her boys every ticket she came by to various events around town and in Fort Worth and she sprung for a video game occasionally.
“Oh, yes. She and her boys came, but we couldn’t find him.”
Shannon frowned. “I thought Arthur didn’t like cold weather. Why was he outside so late?”
“Oh, you know Arthur. He probably got interested in some little female somewhere and forgot the time.” Her grandmother looked down at The Dress that lay on the floor beside the bed. “Oh, my. Your pretty dress.” She bent forward and picked it up.
Shannon hid a catch in her breath. The Dress looked a little less glittery today and she had no idea if it smelled like sex. She wanted to grab it away from Grammy Evelyn, but she didn’t want to throw off the covers and bare herself. Lord, she might have hickeys all over. “It’s okay, Grammy. Just leave it. I’m getting up in a minute. I’ll take care of it.”
Her grandmother stood, spread the dress across the foot of the bed and smoothed out the fabric with her hands. “I made potato soup for supper last night and a loaf of yogurt bread. I was thinking of soup and toast for lunch. Would you like some?”
