The Tycoon

by Anna Jeffrey

  But she couldn’t sleep. Keeping her in a state of semi-consciousness was the fact that precisely what she feared would happen had happened. For four days, she had left the real estate office totally in Terry’s care, hadn’t even discussed it, had scarcely thought about it. She had even shoved the deal on her five-acre corner to the back of her mind. Just sex had flown out the window and all she could do was dwell on Drake’s every word and action.

  Her cranky alter ego beat a drum in the back of her mind that said this could not end well for Shannon Piper. Somehow, she had to get control of her emotions.

  The first thing she would do to get herself back on track toward good sense would be to decline his sending a car for her. He was trying to do something good for her, but she felt like a “kept woman.” She didn’t like having it pull up in front of Grammy Evelyn’s house. Everyone on the Camden square could see it and see her get into it and out of it. No doubt they were already talking.

  ****

  After the Town Car disappeared from his sight, Drake lingered a few minutes in the parking garage, dreading going upstairs to his empty condo. Gloom weighted his shoulders like a heavy cape. He hadn’t wanted Shannon to leave. And that was crazy. He had to get back to work and so did she. He had a planned trip to Honolulu coming up next weekend to watch a couple of his favorite golfers play in the Sony Open. Consequently, he had two weeks’ worth of work to do in a few days.

  Upstairs, unmotivated to work, he dragged a bottle of Perrier out of the fridge and sauntered over to the window wall. The weather was nice today, but another cold front was expected tomorrow.

  The weather had been great while he and Shannon were in San Antonio and Austin, too. He couldn’t believe she was over thirty years old and had never seen the Alamo. Or strolled the Riverwalk. He had done all of those things many times as a younger man. After Tammy had dumped him, he had spent many a weekend partying in the bars on the Riverwalk.

  These days he hardly ever frequented tourist attractions, but he was happy he had chosen to entertain Shannon in that way. A sense of pure joy had filled him at her fascination with the Alamo and its rich history. He thought about how she had loved the Mariachi band in one of the Mexican cafes on the Riverwalk. And she had loved the Robert Earle Keen concert. who was, by anybody’s standards, a Texas music legend.

  Now Drake knew what it was about Shannon that drew him. The way he saw her was exactly who she was. No phoniness, no airs, no ulterior motives. She was just Shannon. Beautiful, smart, fun, a quick wit laced with a touch of cynicism and a fascination for everything around her. He liked her more every time he saw her, liked being with her, liked making her happy. And making love to her drenched him with unadulterated bliss.

  Whoa! When had just sex turned into making love?

  ****

  When Shannon arrived at home, her grandmother was absorbed in one of her TV shows, her fingers working away on crocheting a baby afghan. Shannon was glad she was busy because

  she was exhausted. After a brief chat, she went to her room and fell into bed.

  Monday morning, she awoke with cramps, a relief considering how often she’d had sex in the past month. She didn’t dare complain, lest the gods of retribution decide she deserved a comeuppance, such as a leaky condom or a miscalculation. She was eager to get to her office and learn what had gone on in her short absence. Maybe one of her team had written a deal that needed her review and signature. Maybe the owner of the five-acre parcel had made a decision. Though still worn out and having no energy, she pushed herself out of bed.

  She dressed and made her entrance into the kitchen. Her grandmother had oatmeal and hot tea waiting for her. An Asian friend of Grammy Evelyn’s brought her oolong tea from the Asian market in the Metroplex and Shannon loved it.

  Before leaving town on Thursday, she had again called on Christa and her two sons to look in on Grammy Evelyn every day, but she suspected that yesterday, Grammy had hitched a ride to church with Colleen and Gavin. “How was church?” she asked as she scooped hot oatmeal into a bowl.

  “Oh, I thought we’d never get away after the service. Gavin had to shake hands and visit with everyone he saw. He’s decided to go ahead and announce for the legislature from this district. He’s going to be a Democrat.”

  “Wow. How’d he come to that decision?” Shannon carried her oatmeal and tea to the table.

  Her grandmother followed her and sat down opposite her. “He says Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one in this county. So the odds are better that he can win if he’s a Democrat.”

  Shannon sipped the soothing tea. Nothing was better for her cramps than hot tea. She had no comment on her brother-in-law’s political career.

  “Colleen said a popular judge from Waco is running against him in the primary,” her grandmother said. “I doubt Gavin will have much of a chance at winning. My Lord, he doesn’t stand for anything.”

  Ain’t that the truth, Shannon thought. She doubted if he could win a race for dogcatcher, but she wouldn’t trouble her grandmother with a catty remark. “Grammy, you didn’t mention who I was with, did you?”

  The little old lady’s eyes twinkled behind her thick glasses lens. “Lands, no, dear. That’s our little secret, remember? I just hope you had a wonderful time.”

  “We went to the Alamo.”

  “The Alamo?” The disappointment in Grammy Evelyn’s tone couldn’t be mistaken. “Oh, my. I thought you’d do something exciting.”

  Shannon covered her mouth with her napkin and laughed. “It was plenty exciting, Grammy. When I’ve got more time, I’ll tell you about it.”

  ****

  Shannon found her office calm. Several showings had taken place in her absence, but no new business had developed. Disappointing. Chelsea reported no call had come from the Dallas broker either. Annoying. So annoying, in fact, that she called him, but got only his voice mail.

  She went to lunch with her team. All three of them quizzed her about her new boyfriend. She gave them tidbits of information, but not a name. She swore them to secrecy and promised them she would reveal all when she could.

  All day, she expected to hear from Drake, but no call came. Was what she had told Christa about him true? Had the new already worn off?

  Anxiety began to build. She vacillated about calling him. With great effort, she did not.

  Wasn’t a woman supposed to wait for the man to take the lead? He’s a busy guy, doing big deals, she told herself. She would just have to learn to live with that. After all, she was only his sex partner at his or her convenience.

  But he could still call, if for no other reason, just to say hello, that pesky alter ego insisted.

  She began to slide back into a familiar pattern of doubt and insecurity where she had often found herself in dealing with men.

  When he didn’t call by bedtime, she switched off her cell and went to bed. This was good that he hadn’t called, she told herself. If they were going to continue with this arrangement, they had to return to just sex. Or maybe they weren’t going to continue at all.

  She awoke on Wednesday, lecturing herself about being a slave to the phone and a spoiled millionaire’s call. To hell with him, she thought. If he can’t call, then just to hell with him.

  Though the weather had turned back to being cold and windy, she put on her jacket and running shoes and did two miles before going to work. The exercise ended with her legs trembling and her lungs bellowing. If she didn’t return to her regimen of running or walking at least three days a week, she would get completely out of shape. She hadn’t run for the whole month of December, which proved her point about Drake Lockhart. Just knowing him took too much of her time and attention.

  Midmorning, a call from Unknown Number came on her cell phone. An adrenaline zing went straight to her midsection. When she keyed into the call, the devil didn’t even say his name, as if he expected her to know who was calling. “Can you take a quick trip next weekend?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” she
answered guardedly. “I’d have to check my schedule,” she quickly added, not wanting to appear too eager.

  “Can you check it now? My assistant is making arrangements today for the Sony Open finals. And I’d like you to go with me.”

  Shannon had no schedule to check. “I guess I’m dense. I don’t know what that is.”

  “Golf. It’s a golf tournament. You like golf, don’t you?”

  Ah. Golf. Golf was big in Texas. Tournaments took place all over the state. The mid-January weather seemed chilly for it, but south of the Metroplex, temperatures were warmer. Perhaps she could manage another day trip to South Texas. She stalled a few seconds for effect, then said, “I could manage it, but I should tell you I don’t know much about golf.”

  “You’ll enjoy it. I’ll see to it. We’ll fly over there tomorrow and come back on Monday.”

  Five days? Her brain homed in on over there. “Um, where is it?”

  “Honolulu.”

  Her mind went blank for a full fifteen seconds. Hawaii. Oh. My. God. Hawaii. She had never been to Hawaii, hadn’t expected to ever go. She had never been out of Texas except for a few trips to casinos in Oklahoma. Five days in Hawaii.

  “Shannon?”

  His voice brought her back to the moment. “I’ll have to work on it,” she said in a rush, “but yeah, I could go.”

  Dummy, that pesky alter ego snapped. Can’t you tell him no for a change?

  Not saying no to a trip to Hawaii, she told her nemesis.

  “This is a good time to go,” he said casually, as if he hadn’t just left her speechless. “The weather’s iffy here, but it’s good over there. I can send a car for you this evening and we’ll leave early tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. I’d rather drive my own car.”

  Some tough girl you are. That nagging alter ego refused to give up.

  “Whatever you want to do,” he said. “You know what to bring, don’t you?”

  “Is there something special I should know about?”

  “This trip is strictly for relaxation. I’m not expecting anything we’d have to dress for.”

  “Right. Got it.”

  “I’ll see you this evening. Try to be here by five-thirty or six. I’ll have supper ordered.”

  “Sure. Fine. Got it.”

  He disconnected, leaving her mind in a blank space. No sweet talk, no small talk, not even a hello. Just instructions. Was this what “making this work” was going to be?

  See? her alter ego said. You’ve become his mistress, fated to wait at his beck and call. Even at the last minute.

  But before she could argue with herself about that, she thought about the five acres. Oh, hell. She had to get that deal wrapped up before the weekend so it wouldn’t be on her mind while she was with Drake.

  While she was with the Drake Lockhart!...In Hawaii!

  She picked up the receiver and called Emmet Hunt, got his voice mail. All she could do was leave a message.

  Now she faced a new dilemma. Six days and five nights away from home. Asking Christa to look after Grammy Evelyn was expecting too much of even as good a friend as Christa was. Shannon would have to call Colleen.

  “Who are you going with?” her sister asked.

  “A friend,” Shannon answered.

  “The same man you went off with before?”

  Shannon closed her eyes and repressed a sigh. “Does it matter?”

  “It certainly does. We might need to get in touch with you for some reason. And we all need to get our stories straight.”

  Shannon would not let her sister’s spitefulness derail her. All that was important was that she keep tabs on their grandmother. “That was unnecessary, Colleen.”

  After Colleen agreed to help, Shannon spent the rest of the day preparing for the trip. She hurriedly brought her business up to speed so it could be handled easily by Chelsea or her sales team in her absence.

  While getting her hair trimmed in Great Clips, she checked her messages. Nothing from the Dallas broker about the five acres.

  She and Christa hit Walmart, which was a mistake because Christa talked her into spending money she couldn’t afford. She bought new flip-flops and a sexy lacy bathing suit cover-up, as well as a cute hobo-style beach bag adorned with fish and ocean waves. She even bought a new suitcase. Her old one, the only one she had, was worn and ratty.

  Shopping took her mind off waiting for a call back about her latest offer on the five acres.

  Late in the afternoon, she gave up on hearing from Emmet Hunt. She sent a text message to Drake letting him know she was on her way.

  He met her in the Lockhart Tower lobby. Just like the last time, they made out all the way up to the twenty-eighth floor, filling the elevator cab with steamy desire. By the time they reached 28C, they were fondling intimate places and tearing off clothing and they went to bed. Later, they reheated the dinner he had ordered before her arrival in the microwave.

  The next morning, they boarded the Lockhart plane again. As the jet zoomed into the western sky, he reached across the narrow aisle and held her hand. Once they smoothed out, her

  stomach began to settle. “Do you often just pack up and fly off somewhere on the spur of the moment like this?” she asked him.

  “I rarely do anything on the spur of the moment,” he answered. “I’ve got a lot of deadlines. Being that impulsive could cost me a helluva lot of money.”

  One side of her mouth quirked up. “I have to say, cowboy, that since I’ve known you, most of what I’ve seen you do is impulsive.”

  He laughed. “You cause me to behave in an atypical way.”

  “Wow, don’t I feel special.”

  “We haven’t spent enough time together for you to get to know the real me.”

  “I want to know the real you,” she said sincerely. “I wish I could know everything about you.”

  He gave her a mischievous grin. “You might not like the real me. A lot of people don’t. They say I’m a bastard, a hard-ass. Among other things.”

  “I can see that in you,” she teased. “Try me. Tell me all about the real you.”

  “I’ll trade you fact for fact. You tell me something about you and I’ll tell you something about me.”

  “You go first.”

  “Okay, see what you think of this. The real me is a dull turd. Stodgy and conservative. Stubborn and set in my ways. My work and my Blackberry, and sometimes my family obligations, rule my life. If I’m working a deal that calls for twenty-four seven, that’s what I give it. If I have to miss a party, it doesn’t break my heart. When I work, I work hard.”

  “I don’t see any of that as bad. Do you? Really? But you can’t work all the time.”

  “I relax. That’s why we’re going to Hawaii. So I can get away from everything. And I do mean everything. I don’t even have my Blackberry with me. And by the way, this trip isn’t an impulse. It was planned. I blocked out the time several months ago.”

  “Ah. Then if the trip isn’t an impulse, I must be an impulse. The woman I saw you with at the TCCRA party was who was planned to go with you.”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t seen her since that night. Until I met you, I had planned to make this trip alone and hang out with friends.”

  That revelation, if true, made her heartbeat stumble and she smiled. “No kidding?”

  Smiling back at her, he picked up her hand. “This trip is something I expect to enjoy. I wanted to share it with somebody I ca—I like. Somebody who doesn’t put any pressure on me. ”

  “In other words, I’m a pushover and I follow you around like a puppy.”

  “I don’t mean to imply that. You’ve got priorities straight and you understand a little about my business.”

  She did understand that being a Realtor, if one was good at it, was sort of like being an obstetrician. Your agenda was not your own. And from her own experience in the business, she knew about sudden changes in plans and the pressure of waiting out a deal. “You can’t
kid me, cowboy,” she said, laughing. “You like the hot sex. You’re not exactly stodgy and conservative in bed, you know.”

  “Neither are you. We’re a good match that way. It’s all a part of the whole.” With that, he leaned his seat back and said, “Let’s take a nap. We didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  True enough. She drew a deep breath, leaned her own seat back and closed her eyes, proud of herself for diverting the conversation and not revealing even one piece of information about herself. She, too, soon dropped off.

  When they awoke, a steward appeared and served them a cocktail. Her mind tried to tally

  the cost of a trip to Hawaii in a private plane that included a pilot, a co-pilot and a steward.

  A meal of poached wild-caught salmon and roasted asparagus followed the cocktail. “I hope you like salmon,” Drake said. “I forgot to ask you when I called you.”

  “It’s delicious,” she said. And it was.

  Soon after that, she was deplaning in a tropical paradise, hanging on to the arm of Texas Monthly’s most eligible bachelor. Look at me, World! Shannon Piper’s in fairyland again!

  Drake had rented a condo on a private inlet. To say it was luxurious was an understatement. The night was the same as the night before, with hours of passionate, emotional sex.

  They spent the next day walking and watching the world’s best golfers compete for a fat prize at a magnificent golf course next to an incredible hotel that was a tropical paradise. All of it was so manicured, it looked artificial.

  Drake dutifully explained the game to her as they followed the players. He even offered to teach her to play or arrange a round of lessons from a pro. She declined the lessons, but told him someday she would let him teach her.

  That evening, they dined in a restaurant with a superb location on a beach. He introduced her to at least a dozen of the golfers with whom he was personally acquainted. He had even played with some of them in various pro-am tournaments around the country. He made a golf date with one of them at some country club for the next time he was in Dallas.