Brand New Me

by Meg Benjamin

  Craig had that pole-axed look again, although she didn’t think she’d said anything that would be particularly confusing to anyone who was actually listening. “Tell my father I said thanks but I’ll pass. Or he can hear it straight from me if he wants to get in touch with me in person.”

  “Thanks but you’ll pass?” It might be her imagination, but his face seemed to be a little grayer all of a sudden.

  Deirdre felt another quick shot of fury-inspired adrenaline. “Look, Craig, I’m happy here. This place is perfect for what I want. And I’ve wanted it for a long time, although nobody seemed to notice what I wanted back in Houston. So I guess you can head back home, and report to my father. Sorry you wasted a trip.”

  She began sorting through the bag of brushes again, looking for the extension wand for the paint roller. Maybe if she ignored him long enough, he’d take the hint and get out of her sight.

  Unfortunately, Craig had never been much for hints. “Dee-Dee…” he began through clenched teeth.

  “And it’s not Dee-Dee anymore.” She screwed the paint roller onto the extension with several fierce twists. “It’s Deirdre. I think I mentioned that to you back in Houston.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, as if he were weighing exactly how serious she was. She could have told him. Very.

  “Okay…Deirdre.” He almost spat the word, which at least made her look at him more closely. His face wasn’t gray anymore. In fact, it had turned a red that reminded her of little boys holding their breath. “Listen to me. Your father has gone to a lot of trouble to find you. You owe him the courtesy of discussing this with him in person. I’ll call him this afternoon. He can send a car for you if you don’t want to drive yourself back to town.”

  She frowned slightly. He’d raised an interesting point. You owe him. Even more interestingly, she didn’t feel the usual pinch of guilt that those words should have inspired. “Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t think I do owe him much of anything.” She leaned back against the counter, studying him. “Daddy’s the one who decided I had to leave, and he’s the one who cut off my access to funds that actually belong to me. I’m not asking him for anything here. Not now. Not his money, and certainly not his approval.”

  Craig opened his mouth to say something, and then frowned, as if whatever he’d been going to say didn’t seem relevant all of a sudden. She could almost see the questions he was considering and rejecting.

  She shrugged. “I don’t really know what Daddy and I would talk about right now. I told him what I wanted to do and why, but he wasn’t interested at the time. I guess you can tell him he’s welcome to come down after I open the shop in a couple of months. I’ll send him an invitation. And I’ll be sure to make him a good cup of coffee.” The corners of her mouth edged up in a faint grin. She was, she realized, enjoying herself.

  Craig stared at her blankly. “Dee-Dee…Deirdre, he’s worried about you. You need to talk to him.”

  “No.” Her jaw tightened again. She’d already wasted a lot of good painting time on this conversation. “If he wants to talk to me, he knows where to find me. That is, he will after you tell him once you get back. Now good-bye, Craig.”

  She walked over and opened the front door without looking at him. She was fairly sure he’d be watching her with fire in his eyes, but she was also fairly sure she didn’t care. She stood holding the door open as she glanced back at him.

  It took him a moment to accept that she really was throwing him out. She could see the moment when the penny finally dropped. The look he gave her then moved from annoyed to faintly murderous. Deirdre felt the first stirrings of unease feathering along her backbone.

  “You haven’t heard the last of this…Dee-Dee,” he growled. “Your father’s not going to be happy. And you know when he’s unhappy, he tends to lash out at the things that are pissing him off.”

  Deirdre sighed. Already this conversation had gone on way beyond where it should have ended. “My father’s never been a particularly happy man, Craig. You should know that by now. And that doesn’t change the fact that I’m opening a coffee roaster here in downtown Konigsburg. And there’s nothing either of you can do to stop me.”

  Her lips tightened as she stared back at him, a knot of tension forming in her gut. She’d never seen him looking quite that angry before. If worse came to worst, she could always call next door for Chico.

  Then Craig pushed by her, stepping outside the shop onto the street. He paused for a moment, looking back, as if he had one more devastating remark that he chose not to deliver. He shook his head and stomped off toward the central part of town.

  She exhaled slowly. For someone who’d just won a major victory, she felt a little unsteady. On the other hand, she’d managed for once not to cave in to her father or to his hirelings. That alone should have been worth some mild celebration.

  She walked back into the shop, wishing she had something better than a lukewarm Diet Coke to toast herself with.

  Craig marched up Main Street as if he had somewhere to go. Actually, of course, he did. Houston. But he had a feeling Big John wouldn’t be delighted to see him until he had the runaway daughter tucked into his back seat.

  Deirdre. The name alone left a bitter taste in his mouth. She was Dee-Dee, goddamn it. Big John’s puffball daughter. His once-and-future fiancée. Key to the Good Life. Where the hell did she get off telling him no? Sure he’d mentioned the possibility she might do that to Big John, but he’d never actually believed it would happen.

  She thought she was going to turn that piece-of-crap hole-in-the-wall into a coffee roaster? A coffee roaster she’d manage herself? Shitfire. The woman had enough money to have her coffee flown in daily from Timbuktu if she wanted. Why the hell was she playing around with some half-assed business she knew nothing about?

  Something pricked at the back of his mind. Something about Dee-Dee and coffee. He couldn’t exactly remember what it was, but now that he thought about it, maybe she’d said something once about working in some coffee shop someplace. Hell, it was probably behind the counter at Starbucks or something. She must think being a part-time barista was enough to qualify her to own the place. Typical rich airhead.

  Part of him wanted to let her go ahead. The place would go under, and she’d slink back to Houston with her tail between her legs, at which point Big John could give her a position in the mailroom and Craig could dry her tears. But there was always the thousand-to-one chance that she might succeed.

  Actually, the odds were a little better than that, if he was realistic. Dee-Dee had a decent track record on her ideas. He’d stolen enough of them to know they usually worked.

  Which meant he needed to head this one off before it got too far. He paused at an open space that turned out to be the city park. Some families sat at the park tables, parceling out fried chicken to the kids. A couple of old men played checkers on one of the benches. Craig plopped down on a seat in the central gazebo to do some thinking.

  If Dee-Dee actually succeeded with her shop, she’d be a lot less susceptible to pressure, from him or from Big John. Getting her back to Houston, back to her father and back to her carefully planned future with Craig, would be a lot more difficult if she had a life somewhere else.

  The answer to that was simple—she couldn’t have that life. Not even slightly.

  He pondered his options. Technically, he should probably notify Big John before he did anything. But the big man had told him to use his own judgment. And he’d basically given him carte blanche to do whatever he thought best, so the first thing he needed to do was find a way to head Dee-Dee’s plans into the dirt. After that, he’d find a way to make her life here in blue-hair central a lot less pleasant than it was at the moment.

  He took a deep breath, pushing down the tight knot of resentment that still burned in his gut. Before he did anything else, he needed to work on a quick scheme to wipe that confident little smile off Dee-Dee’s face. The smile she’d had the audacity to try on him
. Nobody smiled at him like that and got away with it, not even a wayward almost-fiancée.

  Craig’s mouth spread into his own taut little grin. Once he’d taken care of that smile, the rest should fall into place without much trouble. Once Dee-Dee was truly down and out, she’d be a lot easier to deal with. And then he could get them both out of this shithole and back to the big time where he unquestionably belonged.

  Chapter Twelve

  All during the lunch hour, Tom had to fight the impulse to go next door and see how Deirdre was doing. Actually it was more like a compulsion than an impulse. Chico had headed over to her shop once it was clear that the lunch crowd was made up strictly of elderly tourists and young couples who didn’t need his policing. He’d gone to see if she needed any help, and he hadn’t come back. Which meant she was probably painting. Which meant she could use another pair of hands. Only Tom’s hands were currently occupied drawing beers and pouring the occasional glass of wine.

  Clem grinned at him when he headed to the kitchen for a quick sandwich before the next round of orders. “Heard you had a big night last night.”

  He froze with his ham and cheese halfway to his mouth. What exactly had Deirdre told her friends?

  Clem’s expression faded to something more like curiosity. “The band, boss. I’m talking about the band. Chico said it was really rocking.”

  The band. Right. He took a quick breath. “Yeah, they were real good. Big crowd.” He wolfed another two bites of sandwich, hoping he could finish eating and get away before Clem could ask anything else.

  The curiosity hadn’t faded from her eyes. If anything, she looked more interested. “What else happened? More fights? Visits from the cops?”

  He shook his head, swallowing a last large bite. “The only cop I saw was Nando, and that was just long enough to have a beer. Oh well, gotta get back to the bar now.”

  He dived through the door before Clem could think of anything else to ask, but he saw her sardonic grin as he went.

  By two, the lunch crowd had departed, such as it was. The Faro didn’t really compete with the Sunday brunches the big restaurants served, and the drinkers wouldn’t start trickling in until later. He helped Bobby Sue clean up the tables, hauling dirty dishes to the kitchen where Leon was loading the dishwasher.

  Clem sat at the kitchen table, resting her feet on a chair as she took a bite of a bacon burger. “So you danced with Deirdre? To ‘Volver, Volver’?”

  Tom stared at her. So far as he knew, nobody except Bobby Sue had gone into the kitchen since his own ignominious exit. Clem must be plugged into information sources far superior to his own.

  She grinned more widely, nodding toward the open back door where Chico leaned as he drained a glass of iced tea.

  “Just a dance,” he muttered, trying for studied nonchalance. “Nothing big.”

  “To ‘Volver, Volver’? No such thing as ‘just a dance’, jefe.” Clem took another massive bite of her burger. “Damn, I’m good.”

  He grabbed at the escape he saw glimmering on the horizon. “Yeah, you’re very good. We need to talk about a dinner menu sometime. Particularly on the weekends. As long as the weather holds we could sell a lot of burgers and sausage out in the beer garden on Saturday nights. Maybe set up a grill.”

  “Got that right. Why should the Silver Spur have all the fun?”

  “Why don’t you work up a sample menu? Stuff we could handle with the staff we’ve got right now.

  “I’ll do that.” Clem’s eyes danced. “Nice diversionary tactic, by the way.”

  Tom stepped back into the main room as a single customer approached the bar. He was a big man. Not as big as Chico, of course, but few men were. This one looked like he’d been an athlete in his prime—broad, muscular shoulders and heavy arms. Tom guessed the guy had played football at some point in his life, but he’d already begun to go a little soft around the middle. The clothes looked expensive, but they also looked like they’d been lived in for a while. Judging from his bloodshot brown eyes and slightly pallid face, Tom would bet he was also nursing one hell of a hangover.

  The man turned toward him as he approached the bar, his narrowed eyes giving him a quick assessment and then dismissing him. “Afternoon.” He glanced around the room. “I need to talk to the owner. Is he here?”

  Tom shrugged. The guy didn’t exactly look like a salesman, but who knew? “I’m the owner. What can I do for you?”

  The man’s eyes widened slightly in surprise as he looked back at him. Something about his expression was vaguely hostile, but since Tom had never seen him before in his life, he figured he wasn’t reading it right. After a moment, he reached a beefy hand across the bar. “Craig Dempsey.”

  Tom shook his hand, managing to avoid the crush grip Dempsey tried to use. “Tom Ames. What can I do for you, Mr. Dempsey?”

  “I heard you own the place next door too. Is that right?”

  “Yeah. It’s all one building.”

  “I’m interested in leasing it. The shop, that is.” Dempsey pushed his lips into one of the phonier smiles Tom had ever encountered. “Good location.”

  Tom managed not to look as incredulous as he felt. In fact, the shop was in one of the lousier locations in town. At the wrong end of Main, next door to a previously notorious bar. Deirdre might be able to make something out of it because she was determined and because she knew her market. Somehow, Craig Dempsey didn’t strike him as similarly gifted. “It’s not available. Sorry.”

  Dempsey’s eyebrows went up in an exaggerated version of surprise. “It’s not for rent?”

  “Already rented. The place is being renovated.”

  “So you’ve got a contract and all?”

  Something about his tone rankled, as if he already knew the answers to his own questions and was much too pleased about it. Tom unloaded some glasses from the rack Leon had just placed behind him. “We’ve reached an agreement, yeah.”

  “Well, Mr. Ames, I can guarantee you I’d be willing to pay a lot more than whatever rent you’ve agreed on with the current occupant. You’d definitely come out ahead on this deal, believe me.”

  Dempsey leaned an elbow on the bar. His expression was so elaborately casual that Tom immediately assumed he was lying about something even if he was telling the truth about the money.

  “Sorry. Like I said, I’ve already rented the place.” He stacked a few more glasses, deliberately not looking at Dempsey.

  “You ever heard of Big John Brandenburg, Ames? Brandenburg, Inc.?”

  A drip of ice coursed down Tom’s spine. At least they were finally getting to the point, even though that point seemed a lot more dangerous to Deirdre than he’d figured before. “No. Can’t say that I have.” He gave Dempsey a tight smile. “He from around here?”

  “No.” He narrowed his eyes again. “Houston.”

  “That could explain it, then. Why I haven’t heard of him.” He went back to stacking glasses. He couldn’t see any reason to make Dempsey’s job easier.

  “Look, Ames, let’s quit screwing around here. Dee-Dee Brandenburg is renting your shop. Her father is Big John Brandenburg. More money than god and a couple of his angels. He wants her out of here and back in Houston where she belongs. He’ll rent the shop from you for whatever price you want.”

  Tom turned to stare at him. Deirdre? More money than god? Fortunately, his years as a gambler had taught him how to keep a straight face no matter what he was thinking. “Okay, first of all, I don’t know anybody named Dee-Dee. I’m renting the shop to Deirdre Brandenburg. She’s been working her ass off getting it into shape. Why the hell should I screw her over because her father wants her to go back to Houston? Doesn’t look like she’s interested in going right now herself.”

  Dempsey’s jaw tightened. There was no suggestion of a smile anymore. “If you do it my way, everybody wins. You cancel her lease, she goes home, her father’s satisfied, you get a lot of money. Everybody’s happy.”

  “Except Deirdre.”


  Dempsey shrugged, glancing at his watch. “She’ll get over it. In fact, her father would also appreciate it if you found yourself a new barmaid. Believe me, Big John Brandenburg can be a very generous friend. And you don’t need the kind of trouble here that Dee-Dee Brandenburg could cause you.”

  For a long moment, Tom considered how satisfying it would be to plant his fist in the middle of Dempsey’s doughy face. A broken nose might give him a little character. On the other hand, given Dempsey’s personal sliminess, Tom doubted even a complete body cast could do that. “Let me get this straight, Dempsey. I’m supposed to fire Deirdre. Then I’m supposed to cancel her lease on the shop. All because, according to you, her rich daddy wants her to go back home and you’ll make it worth my while.”

  Dempsey shrugged again. “That’s it. Straightforward enough, I’d say. Big John Brandenburg’s a good man to have on your side. And he’ll definitely be on your side after you do this. You won’t be sorry, believe me.”

  Tom closed his fist around his bar rag, largely to keep from closing it around Dempsey’s throat. “No. I promised the shop to Deirdre, and she’s doing a good job waiting tables here. I keep my promises. Plus I don’t fire people just because somebody else wants me to.”

  Dempsey stared at him, his expression blank. Then he sighed. “Suit yourself. If you change your mind within the next forty-eight hours, I’m staying at the Woodrose Inn.”

  “After forty-eight hours, you leave?” Tom tried to keep the hopeful tone out of his voice.

  Dempsey gave him a wintry smile. “After forty-eight hours, the offer expires. And believe me, when it does, you’ll wish you’d taken it.”

  He turned and stalked out the door. Tom watched him go, wishing once again that he’d simply decked the bastard when he had the chance.