by Anna Jeffrey
The breath whooshed from Shannon’s lungs and she dropped to her desk chair. “Do you—do you have the address”
A pause, then Christa came back on the line. “It’s a downtown Fort Worth address.”
An adrenaline rush like she had never known blasted through Shannon’s system. She began to shake. She had never experienced blind rage, but this must be it.
Her thoughts collided as she put together all that had happened. He must have known weeks ago that she owned the adjacent thirty acres. Five acres wasn’t large enough for most commercial projects. Discovering the owner of surrounding land would be the first thing any land investor and speculator would do so he could try to buy it. Yet he had said nothing to her. He had betrayed her in the most ruthless way he could have and he hadn’t even had the guts to say anything to her face. No wonder she hadn’t heard much from him after the Lubbock trip.
“Shannon, are you there?” Christa asked.
“I need to hang up, Christa,” she said in a steely voice she almost didn’t recognize.
Shannon stared at the phone as another painful reality slowly sank in. A wave of nausea threatened to send her racing to the bathroom, but she swallowed a few sips of water and managed to keep down breakfast. She was as exhausted as if she had run two miles. She left her office, went home and threw up in her bathroom.
Grammy Evelyn fussed over her and tried to nurse her, but all she wanted to do was lie down. She sat down on her bed, toed off her high heels and did just that. She drifted to sleep, but awoke an hour later still tired and hungry. She padded to the kitchen and pulled a container of yogurt from the refrigerator and joined Grammy Evelyn in front of the TV.
Her grandmother questioned her, but she explained she must have caught a bug. She had never discussed the five acres with Grammy Evelyn, didn’t want to do it now. A heart-to-heart with her grandmother would come soon enough.
****
Monday. The gold necklace Drake had sent to Shannon had arrived back in his office. No note, no message. At a loss, he had done the thing that cured most of his ills: He immersed himself in work. He was determined to keep himself too busy to think about Shannon Piper. Or Tammy McMillan. Women brought more chaos and disorder into his life than anything else he could think of.
Life’s events did turn on a dime. He couldn’t believe how quickly and how easily the fragile trust he had worked so hard building with Shannon had been shattered. Her returning the necklace, along with the dozens of ignored phone calls, might have been unwritten messages, but he couldn’t accept that she no longer cared until he heard it from her mouth. Today was the day. No matter what else happened, he intended to see Shannon today and explain Tammy being in his condo.
He was signing documents, catching up before leaving his office when Gabe’s head popped through the doorway. “Hey, boss.”
“Come in, Gabe.”
“I’ve been trying to catch up with you for a couple of weeks. You know that little piece of land we bought on the highway down in Camden County? The one we picked up for the company? The one another buyer kept bidding up?”
In a different compartment of his brain, Drake recalled that Gabe had told him someone was bidding against him on the five-acre parcel and he kept having to up the ante. “The five acres?” Drake asked, preoccupied with the paragraph he was reading. “What about it?”
“I got distracted by nailing down those leases in Dallas, but now I’ve gotten back to the five acres. I’ve been doing some research on the surrounding properties. I think there’s a sweet deal to be had. Remember me telling you that one lady, all by herself, owns the thirty acres all around it? Add the five acres, and you’ve got a perfect square on the corner of a major highway and a county road. Perfect location for a big box or a super C-store. Even a truck stop.”
Now Gabe had Drake’s interest. He knew that lots of little old ladies sat on valuable undeveloped real estate in small towns. He willed his thoughts away from his emotional turmoil and set aside his papers. “Sounds good. Who’s the owner?”
“Lady named Shannon Piper.”
A surge of adrenaline zoomed straight to Drake’s brain. “Who?”
“Shannon Marie Piper is her name. It’s five different small parcels, including the one that’s got that old vacant house on it. Probably ought to be torn down.”
All of his instincts told Drake something was wrong with the scenario Gabe had just presented to him. He just didn’t quite know what. That same instinct told him he had better find out. “Leave the information with me,” he told Gabe. “I’ll take care of it.”
“If we list all of it, I’ll get both ends of the commissions, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, no problem.” Drake’s mind locked on Shannon and Camden. “Listen, Gabe, I need to finish up what I’m doing. Shut the door when you leave, okay?”
“But Drake—”
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Drake said, pulling his desk drawer open and rummaging for Shannon’s business card. He had avoided calling her at her office, knowing she didn’t want her personal life aired inside her business. At the moment, he didn’t care. He had to talk to her. He pressed in her office number.
When she came on the line, he said, “Shannon, don’t hang up. This is Drake.”
“I know who it is.” Her voice came across the line brittle as glass.
“Don’t hang up,” he said again.
“Do not send me flowers. Do not send me gifts. Do not ever call me again.” Click!
Hearing dead air ignited a flash of anger within Drake. And frustration. “Goddammit!”
He marched out of his office, stalked home and got in the Virage. Forty-five minutes later, he was pulling into the parking lot in front of Piper Real Estate in Camden.
Inside, he came face to face with a young receptionist. He asked for Shannon.
****
Recognizing Drake’s voice, Shannon sprang from her desk and strode up the hallway to the reception room, saw him in front of Chelsea’s desk. “What are you doing here?”
He looked as he typically looked for work. Boots, starched and ironed jeans and a beautiful button-down shirt in a tan and lavender plaid.
“Shannon, I—”
Thunk! Chelsea knocked over a mug of coffee, spilling it across her desktop. “Oh, damn. Please excuse me.” She shot to her feet and raced around Shannon, bumping her shoulder, on her way to the bathroom. Shannon followed her. Together, they returned with a roll of paper towels.
A wave of nausea gripped Shannon. Her hands shook so badly, she knocked over a pencil holder, splaying pencils and pens all through the puddle of coffee. “See what you’ve done,” she said to Drake, on the verge of breaking into tears.
“Let me,” Drake said, and took the paper towel roll from her. Chelsea stepped out of the way and he calmly sopped up the coffee and returned the pens and pencils to their holder. Afterward, he stood wiping his hands and looking into Shannon’s eyes. “Can we talk?”
Her team members had come into the reception room and began scurrying around, helping Chelsea put her desk back together.
“You can come into my office,” she said coldly. He followed her and she shut the door behind him. “Make it quick. I’m busy.”
“I appreciate that. So am I. I’m sorry to just show up. But you weren’t communicating.”
“There’s nothing to communicate. I’ve already gotten the message. And by now, you should have, too.”
“Can’t you just sit down and listen to what I have to say?”
Shannon was in no shape for this. She was clammy and sweating, her head was spinning and she was struggling not to throw up. She sat down robotically, barely managing to glare up at him. “You’ve got five minutes.”
“That woman in my condo? That was Tammy McMillan. We used to be engaged. I told you about her when we were in Hawaii. We were watching a golf tournament.”
“She was half naked. And I don’t care who she was.”
“She came to swim.”<
br />
“In your living room?” She shook her head then and raised both palms. “I don’t care who you screw.”
“Don’t say that. You have to care. She came to go swimming and that’s it.” He sliced the air with a flattened hand for emphasis. “The golf tournament was on TV and she sat down to watch it a minute.”
Shannon huffed. “I don’t believe you.” She dropped her damp forehead into her hand.
****
Drake had never been so frustrated. He shoved his fingers through his hair. “Shannon, forchrissake. You’ve got to believe me. Because it’s the truth.”
“I know you,” she said shakily. “And I know your reputation. You’re nothing but a…a…a taker!”
He gave her a squinty look. “A what?”
“You steamroll everyone. You take everything in your path. What you can’t take, you buy. Then when you finish with it, you just throw it aside and move on.”
“My God, is that the kind of man you think I am?”
She got to her feet and looked him in the eye. “I don’t know what kind of man you are, or who you are, really. I thought I did. I believed you. I was starting to believe in us. Now all I know is I can’t trust you. It really was just sex.” Sobs broke from her throat.
Drake’s heart wrenched. She was the last person he ever wanted to make cry.
“You—you took my land,” she said. “My land that I needed. It was my future….I’ve been
trying to buy it for two years and you overwhelmed the seller with your money and…and God knows what you did to seal the deal.”
His eyes bugged as facts became clear. Deep regret squeezed his heart again. He should have paid more attention to what Gabe was doing, especially knowing he was dealing with land in Camden. “You were the other bidder? My God, you were.”
She glowered up at him. Now her lower lip trembled, which did another number on his heart. “Shannon, I didn’t know. I wasn’t the one doing the deal. It was one of my associates. If I’d known, I would’ve—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said bitterly. “I blame myself. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you. I let you pull the wool over my eyes. And now you’ve shown me who you really are.” She got to her feet, sobbing and babbling. “I went up to Fort Worth to talk to you….To make some plans…so you could be a part of the baby’s life. But now, I—”
“Baby?” His stomach lurched. His eyes bugged wider. “You’re pregnant? But how—”Her voice became as distant as an echo. White noise roared inside his head. He was having trouble breathing.
She was pregnant? He was going to be a father?
He felt as if somebody had whacked him across the knees with a ball bad. He stepped back and sank to the wicker love seat across from her desk.
“…don’t want you around us. No way would I want the influence of a charlatan on my child….It’s bad enough she’ll have your genes. We’ll get by without you. I want you to go back to Fort Worth and leave me alone.”
“No,” he said, finding his voice. He sprang to his feet. “No. You don’t mean that.”
“I do mean it.”
Suddenly, she dropped to her chair seat, grabbed her trash can and wretched into it.
Stunned, Drake rounded the end of her desk, snatched tissues from a box on the corner of her desk and tried to help her wipe her mouth. “Shannon, my God, what’s wrong? Do you need a doctor?” He straightened and called for Chelsea, who appeared in the office doorway. “She’s sick,” Drake told her.
The receptionist dashed away and returned with damp paper towels. “I’m okay, Chelsea,” Shannon said, dabbing at her forehead and mouth. “Honest. I’m okay now.”
“Are you sure?” Chelsea asked. “Do you want some water. Some Seven-Up?”
Other women came from somewhere and appeared in the doorway, all of them looking at him with a jaundiced eye.
“I’m fine, y’all,” Shannon said to them. “Please. Just go back to work.”
To Drake’s relief, they faded away. He rounded the end of her desk, placed his hands on her shoulders. “Look at me, ” he said softly. “Shannon, you’re it for me. I’ll do anything to be with you. I’d do anything for you. Don’t you get that?”
She shoved a wad of tissues against her nose. “I want you the hell out of my life.”
He pulled her up and against him, wrapped his arms around her. He squeezed his eyes shut as emotion almost overwhelmed him. “Shannon, I—I’ve fought it. I didn’t figure it out at first. I know I’ve been clumsy, stumbling around, but I—”
She wasn’t responding, he realized then. She was standing still as a statue. Rigid, even. He set her away. The fire in her eyes roasted him. “Get out of my office,” she said.
He stepped back, staggered by the ice in her voice. He stared at her for a few beats, but her expression remained unchanged. Hurt and unable to find words, he walked out.
Chapter 40
Drake had never been so lost. His heart had never hurt so much. He paced in front of his desk. He still hadn’t recovered from the initial shock of learning she was pregnant. He thought they had been careful, but he would try to figure out how it had happened later.
At the moment, he had to figure out how to solve the problem at hand, which was Shannon’s rejection. He had been taught—and believed—that success came as a result of problem solving. He couldn’t think of when he had faced a dilemma he couldn’t solve, rarely failed to persuade someone to agree with him.
He had intended to propose before he learned she was pregnant. If that new development hadn’t occurred, he believed she would have accepted. Now that she was going to have his baby, she wouldn’t speak to him. The irony of that contradiction would be almost humorous if his heart wasn’t involved.
Outside, rain poured. He paced more. He had to make her understand there was nothing between him and Tammy, that none of the women he had ever known had been important since he met her. That was a tall enough mountain to climb, but equally important to Shannon, he had to make her understand that he had not schemed against her in a business deal. But how? What could he say?
His assistant came in with a steaming mug of coffee. “You okay in here?”
He accepted the coffee. “Just trying to understand women,” he said with a bitter laugh.
“Good luck,” Debra said. “I don’t think you’re the first man who’s ever fallen into that trap.”
She turned and started for the door, but he stopped her. “Tell me something, if a woman won’t talk to you, how do you get through?”
She shrugged. “You need something irresistible.”
“Like a diamond ring?”
“Lord, no. Something that’s soft and sweet and helpless. Like a kitten or a puppy.”
He frowned. “An animal?”
“All girls are suckers for kittens and puppies.”
He had never had a kitten, but he liked puppies himself. “A puppy?”
His assistant shrugged. “It’s one of those nurturing things. You surely must know women need something to love and take care of.”
He thought about Shannon’s remarks about her grandmother’s cat. He had never heard her say she hated pets. “I guess I’ve been a little dense in that area.”
“You need to narrow your focus, bossman. I just happen to know that the city pound has one of those adopt-a-pet programs going on right now. All week on TV, they’ve been showing the ones that are about to be put down. I just hate to see that.”
“You’re trying to tell me something.”
She shrugged. “I’m just saying…”
The idea was worth considering. He knew Shannon was a strong woman with a formidable will, but he also knew she had a soft heart. “Where’s the pound?”
“Over on the east side, by the Loop.”
He walked over to the coat closet and pulled his jacket. “I’m leaving for the day,” he said.
She gave him a thumbs up. “Remember. Something little and cute and helpless.”
&nb
sp; “I’m not little and cute, but in this situation, I’m damn sure helpless.”
He trekked back to his condo, shoved the diamond ring he had bought in his pocket and
headed for the pound.
He reached Camden mid-afternoon. In his backseat, he had a dog-collar, a dog sweater, a doggie bed, doggie toys and a bag of Puppy Chow. In a fiberglass pet carrier, the cutest female half-grown puppy he had ever seen slept. She looked like a stuffed toy. He had found her at the pound, in line for euthanasia. The keeper at the pound said her name was Prissy, she was a Bichon Frise and he believed her to be a purebred. She was the last of a whole litter an owner had brought in.
He didn’t hesitate. From there, he’d had her checked out by a veterinary friend and paid extra to have her moved to the head of the line to be groomed at a pet grooming shop. Now she was clean, fluffy, snow-white and perfect. At Pet Smart, he bought a big red bow. He stopped in a gas station outside the city limits of Camden, tied the red bow around Prissy’s neck and attached the velvet pouch that contained the ring box. God, she was cute.
At Shannon’s office, he was told by the receptionist she had gone home. The girl had been reluctant to give him directions to Shannon’s grandmother’s house, but when he showed her the puppy and told her his intent, she cooperated.
He parked out front of an old Victorian mansion, gray with white gingerbread trim, a white picket fence and a trellis that probably had roses growing over it in the summertime. Maybe even yellow roses. He gathered the loot and his will power and made his way to the front door.
Shannon answered the door and stood there with a blank expression on her face. She eyed him up and down. “What’s all this?”
“Please let me come in.”
Her eyes misted. “Please don’t do this. I don’t want to be upset. It’ll worry my grandmother if she sees me upset. She doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“Please, Shannon. A business meeting. No upset.”
Her chest rose and fell with a huge sigh, but she invited him in and led him to a formal parlor that looked like something out of an old western movie. She was still dressed for work in a sharp green suit and high heels. She looked beautiful, but she would be even more beautiful if he could just put a smile on her face. He set his packages on the floor.
