by Anna Jeffrey
“Not much to tell there either. Grammy Evelyn’s eighty-four. She’s spry, but she needs someone. She has only a small income from Social Security. I pay the bills and the taxes and take care of the house and she lets me have a place to live. She owns one of those rambling old houses that’s been designated a Texas historical home. It was built before 1900. Sometimes the upkeep on that thing gets to be a challenge. But so far, I’ve managed.”
She laughed, thinking back to when she first moved back to Camden, into Grammy Evelyn’s home.
“What’s funny?” he asked.
“It must have been, oh, a couple of weeks after I first moved in with Grammy Evelyn, that she got around to telling me she hadn’t been able to pay the taxes for several years and the house was in danger of being seized by the county.
“Oops,” he said.
“It was an oops moment, for sure. I was broke. I had just started working as an assistant to a real estate broker friend of hers. The friend would’ve known what to do, I thought, but I was afraid that if I told her, Grammy Evelyn would be embarrassed.
“I wasn’t making a lot, so I went to the tax assessor’s office and tried to work out a payment plan. But the county’s lawyers had run out of patience with my grandmother. They had no interest in an installment plan. And I had no way to get the money in a lump.
“If the county had taken the house, I could’ve gotten along living somewhere else and I could’ve taken Grammy Evelyn with me, but moving out of her home would’ve been a blow to her. She’s lived there since she first married my grandpa.”
“I know how it is with elderly people,” Drake said. “My dad’s mother is ninety. What did you do?”
“When I couldn’t think of any other solution, I had to go to my sister and brother-in-law and beg them to catch up the taxes. My brother-in-law’s a lawyer here in town. He had the
money to just pay the taxes and be done with it, which he did. But he put a lien on Grammy Evelyn’s house.”
“Why?” Drake asked.
“He and my sister Colleen are afraid that when Grammy Evelyn passes on, she might leave the house to me. They think I’m trying to undermine my sister. The lien was his way of making sure she gets a piece of it. I think they’re in a lather over nothing. I’ve never seen my grandmother’s will, but I doubt if she would leave my sister out.
“Anyway, him doing that pissed me off. Grammy Evelyn didn’t understand what was going on. She worried about it. She was afraid my brother-in-law might take possession of the house at any time and kick her out. I couldn’t make her understand that he couldn’t easily do that.
“And I couldn’t make him see, or care, that he was causing her stress. So I spent almost every extra penny I had for the next two years paying him back and getting that lien lifted. And pretty often, I had to hound him to get him to go to the county clerk’s office and acknowledge that he got the money.
“Nice guy,” Drake said.
A wicked pleasure slunk through Shannon. Gavin would be mortified if he knew she had told something so evil about him to a man of Drake’s status. “Something good came of it, though. As Grammy Evelyn’s told me about a million times, when a window closes, a door opens, or something like that. That experience and her nagging are what got me interested in the real estate business. And here I am. So there’s a story for you.”
“What did you brother-in-law think when you paid him back?”
“I’m not sure he wanted to be paid back. I think he would’ve rather had the lien. He’s controlling.”
“The rest of your family?”
“Um, my dad’s been dead for years. My mom lives in California. And that’s about it.”
She omitted saying that her mother was a fifty-year-old moon child on her fifth live-in to whom she wasn’t married.
“There’s bound to be more,” Drake said. “Everybody wants to talk about himself. Why don’t you?”
She frowned and cocked her head. “Because. Some stories are just better left untold.”
He lifted his chin, his golden-brown eyes alight with mischief. “A woman with a past?”
“Well…I haven’t killed anyone. Haven’t been in prison, if that’s what you might be thinking….Oh, and I haven’t done drugs either. Consumed my share of alcohol, but no drugs.”
Drake’s face broke into a huge, white-toothed smile. “Same here. I partied a lot when I was younger, but I hardly drink at all now.” He picked up his water glass and saluted her. “Someday.”
“Someday?”
“C’mon. Lift your glass. Someday you’ll trust me enough to talk about yourself. I’m counting on it.”
Reluctantly, she picked up her glass and touched it to his with a soft clink. “We’ll see.”
They progressed to general conversation about the real estate market in Camden. He briefly mentioned a luxury apartment complex he had under construction in Southlake. Time flew. Before long, they noticed that the waitress had cleared away their dishes, each of them had made a trip to the restroom and it was eight-thirty.
“It’s time for me to get home,” she told him. “My grandmother has this ornery cat and if he doesn’t come inside before her bedtime, she goes looking for him. I don’t want her doing that
with me not there.”
“You said you’re busy this weekend?”
She nodded. “The Camden Realtors’ Christmas party is Saturday night.”
“Is someone taking you?”
“I’ve already bought tickets.”
“Are you wearing that green dress?”
She snorted a laugh. “Our little gathering will be nothing like that shindig up in Fort Worth.”
“You know where Stone Mountain Lodge is?”
Stone Mountain Lodge had once been Stone Mountain Ranch, fifty miles west of town. A real estate development group had bought it and built a plush private hunting lodge. “Everyone in Camden County knows about Stone Mountain Lodge,” she said. “I’ve even been there. When it first opened, the owners invited the Camden Realtors to a free lunch and a tour. They thought we might help them sell memberships.”
“I’m planning to hunt there with some friends Saturday and Sunday mornings. Is there any way you could be my guest Friday night?”
A stone dropped in Shannon’s stomach. So they were down to it. She had been so engrossed in reading about him on the Internet, she hadn’t rehearsed how she would say what she had decided. “You’re a member?”
He shrugged.
Of course he was a member. Stone Mountain Lodge was a chi-chi destination. Most of the Fort Worth upper crust who hunted probably held memberships. “I don’t hunt,” she said.
“There are other things to do.”
“Like hop into bed? I thought we were going to get better acquainted before we did that again.”
He grinned. “Listen to you. I was talking about the spa. I haven’t used it myself, but people who have tell me it’s great.”
“Were you planning on me having a separate room or what?”
“Is that what you want?”
He had given her a perfect opening. She hesitated, crafting an answer. “Okay, here’s the deal,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about this. What I don’t want is to get involved. I don’t mind a, um”—she cleared her throat—“an arrangement. As long as it doesn’t interfere with my work.”
He cocked his head, angling a narrow-lidded look at her. “An arrangement?”
“Yes. We could just get together for sex occasionally and not bring feelings into it.
He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “A body can be pretty cold without the person inside it, don’t you think?”
She didn’t want to discuss the fine points. Instead of replying with words, she, too, folded her arms under her breasts and gave him a take-it-or-leave-it stare.
A slow grin tipped up one side of his mouth. “But I can handle that….If you can.”
She saw the dare in his eyes. She should h
ave known better than to challenge him. He hadn’t become what he was because he ever relinquished control of a negotiation. Yet she couldn’t let him get the upper hand. “You think I can’t?”
They stared at each other a few seconds. Then he sat forward and rested his forearms on the table, his eyes leveled on her face. “I want some ground rules. One woman at a time is all I want in my bed. I’d expect the same loyalty from you.”
She gave a huff and a chuckle. “I just said how busy I am. If I barely have time you, how
could I have time for someone else?”
“I accept that, although I haven’t seen much that makes me think I should believe you. So getting back to the weekend. No-strings, burn-down-the-walls sex in a totally private quaint little place. How about it?”
Shannon flinched inside at the blunt words. But she had thrown out the idea and the truth was the truth. “From what I recall of the lodge, those cabins are more than private quaint little places. Isolated luxury is a more accurate description.”
He shrugged. No doubt luxury was the norm for him. “I’ve got one of the them reserved. The dining room serves excellent food. We can have dinner, then go back to the cabin.”
A visual of the cabins flitted through her memory—rustic décor, soft relaxing colors, a fireplace, floors of Italian tile. During the Realtors’ tour, she and another Realtor had looked at the king size bed that almost filled the sleeping area and the bathroom’s tub large enough for two and joked about where the emphasis was.
“I’m flying down there tomorrow,” he went on, “but I can get a car and come over here in the afternoon, pick you up and take you back with me. Since you can’t be seen with anybody, maybe we can sneak in and out of Camden on the back roads and no one will spot us.”
“Now you’re being sarcastic.”
“Hey, I’m just trying to be cooperative. While I’m hunting Saturday morning, you can take advantage of the spa. My treat. The works if you want. I’ll get you back to Camden in time for the Christmas party Saturday night.”
Unless something had changed, the spa treatments started at two hundred dollars for a single treatment. Shannon could spend a thousand dollars easily. But if she took advantage of his offer, what did that make her? For that matter, what did this entire arrangement make her even if he didn’t throw in the spa treatments? Damn. She should have given this more thought.
Still, she refused to back down. She drew a deep breath. “Getting away overnight is hard for me.”
His eyes leveled on hers. “Turning chicken?”
She refused to blink. She stared back at him. “I have obligations. I told you, I don’t like leaving my grandmother alone in the evening. And now, I really do have to go.”
She stood and lifted her coat off the back of the chair. He stood, too, took it from her and held it while she slid her arms into it. She picked up her purse and looked up at him. “I’ll call you and let you know.”
“I’ll be waiting,” he said, pulling on his own coat, then picking up the check.
She waited while he paid and they walked outside. He followed her to her SUV’s door. As she started to pull on the latch, he covered her hand with his and stopped her. “I don’t give a damn who’s watching.” He bent down and kissed her, then looked into her eyes. “I’ll be waiting for your call. Don’t disappoint me.” He turned and strode across the parking lot to his car without once looking back.
Dear God. What had she gotten herself into?
****
Could this get any crazier?
The after-dinner conversation Drake had just had with Shannon was the last thing he expected. As he drove, he tried to digest it. She couldn’t be serious about wanting just sex. No woman he had ever met would be happy with that.
An emotion churning within him was making him uncomfortable. He couldn’t identify it. It felt like rejection. But it wasn’t rejection because they would meet again. For just sex.
Why couldn’t he be satisfied with that? An occasional hot, easy, no-strings-attached coupling with a drop-dead gorgeous female? Not too many years ago, that was all he had wanted. Why did the prospect of that arrangement with Shannon, a woman he hardly knew, leave him feeling empty and adrift instead of relieved?
I haven’t had sex in two years.
Her words in the Mexican restaurant parking lot. He couldn’t get them off his mind. Those words said something about her, but he didn’t know what. They flew in the face of what he knew from the time they had spent together.
He had never had a woman more willing or giving in bed. Was that something special that applied to him only? His ego made him want to believe it was. Or had she been that way with every guy she had ever slept with? And how many were there? The question usually didn’t come up with the women he dated. He had never expected women over thirty years old to be virginal. But then, he typically didn’t run into one who stated outright that she wanted only sex from him.
His thoughts veered from speculating about her motives to trying to figure out what drew him to her. His past included career women with lists of degrees and accomplishments to brag about. And most of them were also agenda-driven, hard-to-please, and determined to steer him or bend him to their will. He classified those affairs as hookups and they had never lasted long.
He suspected Shannon was nothing like them. Though she had told him numerous lies, she came across to him as being honest to the core. Then what he liked about her dawned on him. She had a raw instinct and an innate fearlessness, a self-confidence that came from a place so deeply ingrained, she didn’t even know she had it. Gut-level traits he couldn’t keep from admiring, especially in a woman. She reminded him of himself. And that could be what had him so antsy about her.
Be cool, Lockhart, he told himself. Just be cool. Just take one step at a time. He could play her game for now. If sex was all she wanted, he could handle that with pleasure. He already knew she liked fucking and because of that, if for no other reason, she would call him. And she would figure out a way to meet him at Stone Mountain Lodge tomorrow. He had already made her howl at the moon. And he could do it for as long as necessary.
Necessary? Necessary for what? What did he expect from this?
Chapter 22
Okay, now what? Was Shannon’s first thought when she awoke early Friday. Sleeping all night with a guy and waking together was different from just having sex. And those cabins at Stone Mountain Lodge were really small and really close quarters.
She shut down those thoughts and veered to the logistics of spending Friday night away from home. These days, because of Grammy Evelyn and Arthur, Shannon was rarely away from home at night. Her grandmother didn’t really need a babysitter, but Shannon wanted someone to look in on her in the evening in case she went outside to look for Arthur and fell.
Christa usually did her this favor if needed, but Shannon knew she was leaving work early on Friday to take her boys to a football game and wouldn’t be home until late.
Shannon tried to keep her private life out of her office. She never asked the women who worked there to do something personal. One thing she had learned in six years was that unlike relatives, real estate agents came and went. And just as they brought gossipy tales with them, they took them when they left.
Shannon’s next choice was her uptight older sister. Colleen would keep a secret, if for no other reason, because she feared Shannon’s social life might affect her or Gavin in some negative way. Not a nice thought about her own sister, but a fact nevertheless.
Shannon sat up and looked at the clock on the bedside table. Colleen’s husband usually went into his office early. By the time Shannon was ready to leave the house, he would be at work. She hurried through her morning ritual and breakfast with Grammy Evelyn, then headed for her sister’s house fifteen miles out of town in one of Camden’s several gated lakeside communities. As one of the few lawyers in Camden, Gavin, as well as Colleen, felt they had a certain cachet to uphold.
Shannon rehearsed h
er speech all the way to her sister’s sub-division.
Colleen and Gavin lived in a home so new, the lawn was skimpy and the yard plants still had a newly-planted look. Colleen invited her in and offered her a cup of coffee in her sparkling white kitchen with its accents of spring green. Most people Shannon knew served coffee in mugs, but not Colleen. She handed Shannon a china cup of coffee sitting on a saucer.
Colleen’s appearance was as uptight as her personality. She was pencil thin, shorter than Shannon and eight years older. Her hair had once been red, thick and naturally curly like Shannon’s, but these days, to cover gray, she dyed it a dark red color that was almost burgundy. A short wedge cut made it look as if a triangular turban encompassed her head. Every time Shannon saw her, she wanted to advise her to get a new do, but enough friction existed between them without Shannon opining about her hair.
Today, Colleen’s flat chest was hidden by a white sweater dotted with red poinsettias. Breast size was one more area where Shannon and her sister had nothing in common.
Colleen and Gavin had no children and their tidy home adorned with expensive decorator touches reflected that. A small Christmas tree stood in one corner of a sunlit breakfast room adjoining the kitchen. Colleen put Christmas trees in several rooms. She had learned this from Grammy Evelyn, Shannon guessed, recalling when their grandmother did the same thing. But Grammy hadn’t done it in years and Shannon herself was lucky to get one Christmas tree standing and decorated in the parlor of Grammy’s house.
Shannon could see by her sister’s behavior that she wasn’t fooled by this uncommon visit. Colleen knew she wanted something. So as they sat at the white granite breakfast bar, Shannon set her cup on its saucer and went straight to the point. “I need a favor. I’m going to be out of town overnight. I need someone to look in on Grammy this evening and again tomorrow morning. It’s so cold at night. I worry about her going outside after dark to look for Arthur.”
“Where are you going?” Colleen asked, setting her coffee cup on its saucer.
The answer to that was none of Colleen’s business. “Out of town,” Shannon said.
