Brand New Me

by Meg Benjamin

  “So how did you end up with the Faro?”

  Well, hell. He put down his fork. “If I said it was complicated, would you let it go?”

  Deirdre shook her head. “I’ll tell you why my stuff is complicated if you’ll tell me about yours.”

  He chewed on his catfish for a moment, thinking. But there was no polite way to put it. Might as well let her know how much distance there was between them from the start. “Okay, here’s the thing. I’m not a college grad. When I finished high school, I didn’t have the money or the inclination. And my trade skills out of high school were pretty much limited to road construction, which didn’t strike me as much of a life.”

  He paused. Judging from the line currently marring Deirdre’s perfect forehead, he had her attention at least. But she didn’t seem too dismayed. Yet. “So I tried the army for a few years, but that didn’t exactly do it for me either. On the other hand, I picked up a hell of a skill set.”

  “Doing what?” The line was more pronounced now. He figured she’d made the leap to mercenary soldier. Or maybe armed robbery.

  He blew out a breath. “Poker. Actually, cards in general. But poker’s the most profitable game, so it’s the one I played most.”

  The line disappeared as Deirdre’s eyes widened. “You won the Faro in a poker game?”

  “Pretty much. Up in Dallas. Kip Berenger was in to me for a lot of money. He asked if I’d be interested in the Faro instead. Frankly it wasn’t worth as much as he’d lost, but I was ready to move on anyway. And I always liked the idea of my own bar.”

  “You lived in Dallas.”

  “I stayed there. Hotels, mostly.”

  “But where did you…” The frown was back. “Didn’t you have a home anywhere?”

  Tom gave her a tight smile. “Not really. I’ve never had a home until Konigsburg. Never owned any property, that is.” No, sweetheart, I’m definitely not a dues-paying member of the middle class.

  Deirdre shook her head slowly. “So all the stuff you’ve done at the Faro was from your poker winnings?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, that and the money I saved from the army. I didn’t have any other use for it. And now the place is paying its way. On average, I figure we’re pulling in about as much as the Silver Spur most nights.”

  “Clem says you’re going to start serving dinner.”

  “Thinking about it. We need to attract the locals, too, and food helps. So does the music.”

  “You’ve done really well. Congratulations.”

  Tom blinked. She seemed sincere. The billionaire MBA, late of the Houston Brandenburgs, congratulating the poker-playing saloon owner on his business sense. Only in America.

  She started to take another bite of her burger, but he shook his head. “Nope, you don’t get out of this. Your turn to uncomplicate the story. Why did you leave your father’s company?”

  Deirdre set her hamburger back on her plate as the line appeared in her forehead again. “It’s sort of hard to explain. Not the part about my leaving—Dad threw me out, basically. But the part about why I told him I didn’t want to work for him anymore.”

  “Wait.” He held up his hand, his jaw tight. “He threw you out? Literally?”

  She shrugged. “I was living in a company apartment, and he said since I wasn’t going to work for the company anymore, I didn’t get the apartment. Plus I’d been sort of an idiot because I’d never gotten around to establishing my own credit cards and bank accounts. His name was on everything as a holdover from when I was in college, and he basically blocked me from getting hold of any of my money. Including all the savings I had from my salary.” She gave him a wan smile. “You’d never guess I had an MBA, would you?”

  Tom bit back all his immediate responses, which pretty much amounted to son of a bitch! “You probably just didn’t expect your father to cheat you out of your own cash. I’d guess that’s more par for the course in my neighborhood than yours.”

  “It’s just…” She stared down at her burger for a long moment. “He never seemed to listen to me when I was there. If I wanted to get something done, I’d have to tell him two or three times before he’d pay attention. And by then sometimes somebody else would have heard what I was trying to do and stolen the idea.” Her jaw tightened. “That happened more than once, to tell you the truth. With people I should have been able to trust. It taught me who my friends were.”

  “So you figured he wouldn’t care if you wanted to leave and open a coffee roaster in Konigsburg?”

  Deirdre nodded slowly. “That’s exactly what I figured. Why would he care? I wasn’t doing anything special for him—any number of young MBAs could have taken my place. And it didn’t seem to matter to him whether I was there or not.”

  “Maybe he just wanted you to stay with his company. Maybe he had plans for your future.”

  She sighed. “Probably he did. Of course, he never bothered to share those plans with me. I could have saved him a lot of grief if he had.”

  “You always planned on doing this?”

  “Yeah.” She picked up another French fry. “I figured I’d give my dad a couple of years and then strike out on my own. I mean, it wasn’t like he was going to pass Brandenburg, Inc. down to me or anything.”

  “He wasn’t?” Tom frowned. He thought that’s what people in the Brandenburgs’ tax bracket always did.

  Deirdre shook her head. “He already had his succession figured out. Plus we both knew I wouldn’t be good at it—I’m not big on big. The idea of running a major corporation gives me hives. Maybe he thought I’d stick around in some honorary post.”

  “Not what you wanted to do.”

  “Not even slightly. I actually told him a couple of times that I was interested in getting into the coffee business. I guess it didn’t sink in.”

  Or he hadn’t heard. Or he hadn’t wanted to. Deirdre stared down at her dinner plate, munching on a fry. She’d eaten maybe half of her hamburger, and now she was drawing patterns in the ketchup.

  Tom really wanted that desolate look out of her eyes. He wanted it out now. “Want to see where I live?”

  She glanced up at him. “I don’t know. Do I? Is it memorable?”

  “Not particularly, but I’ve got a friend you might like.”

  “You live with a friend?”

  “I do indeed.” He waved across the room to Carol. “What do you say we get the rest of this boxed up to go.”

  He knew at least one thing that should put a smile on her face, assuming he wasn’t totally out of practice. At any rate, it would definitely put a smile on his.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tom’s house really wasn’t much to look at, Deirdre conceded. She estimated it was from the teens or twenties, early twentieth century anyway. Shotgun layout with one room opening into another in a straight line. It was painted white with black trim, set back from the street by a small yard enclosed with a wooden fence and an iron gate.

  The front yard was shadowed by a huge cottonwood that had dropped its cotton in dense mats on the street. The breeze kicked up clouds of fibers, as if someone were shaking a feather pillow somewhere.

  “Messy,” he acknowledged. “I spend half my summers raking up that muck.” Deirdre followed him up the creaking front porch steps to the door, where he pushed his key in the lock.

  The living room was cool and dark, the light of the setting sun reflected through the side windows. He stepped inside and turned on a lamp. From somewhere nearby, she heard an odd scratching sound, like insects running across a wall. She glanced around the room with a quick shiver.

  One corner had its own light. As she moved closer, Deirdre realized it was actually a cabinet, only not exactly. The walls were made of plywood on three sides. The front was something transparent—glass or Plexiglas. She could see a couple of shelves inside, with what looked like tree limbs propped against them. Ivy hung around the edges and bright lights illuminated the sides.

  Tom stepped beside her. “So this is who I w
anted you to meet. The friend I live with.”

  She shivered again. “I don’t see anybody.”

  “She’s hiding.” He stepped closer to the cabinet. “Come on Doris, come out and meet the nice lady.”

  More scratching sounded from the upper part of the cabinet. Then a large lizard emerged from the shelter of the shelves. Her body looked like it was covered in tiny polka dots that Deirdre assumed were scales. Her head was a deep green that shaded off down her body into moss and brown, ending with a long striped tail. Small spikes ran down the edge of her spine from head to tail. Her long toes were tipped in curving claws, the origin of the scratching sound as she edged carefully down the branch that angled closest to the door.

  She licked her lips. She had no intention of getting any closer. In fact, she wondered if she could possibly move back a bit without being insulting.

  He turned toward her, grinning slightly. “Don’t worry. She’s not free range. She stays in here most of the time, although I give her a shoulder ride every now and then.”

  The lizard, Doris, raised her head, setting her wattles trembling, and regarded him with black peppercorn eyes. For a moment, Deirdre thought she looked almost affectionate. Probably projection.

  “Have you had her a long time?”

  He shrugged. “A few months. A customer owned her—she belonged to his girlfriend who took off and left her. He was getting ready to take her out and let her loose someplace in the hills. That struck me as a really lousy idea for everybody involved, especially Doris, so I said I’d take her off his hands.”

  “Did you build her…enclosure?”

  He grinned again. “It’s a cage. And no, she came with it. Don’t know if the girlfriend built it or if she inherited it like I did.”

  Deirdre inched closer. Doris stayed on her branch, watching her carefully, as if she’d head back up to the shelves in an instant if Deirdre started to pose a threat. “What does she eat?”

  “Iguana chow.”

  Deirdre narrowed her eyes.

  “Iguanas are herbivores. She gets alfalfa and other greens, like kale. And she’s very big on nopal. Probably reminds her of home.”

  “Cheaper than a carnivore.”

  “Yeah, the most expensive thing about her is temperature control. She can’t get too cold or too warm, which pretty much means she has to live inside, at least in Texas.” He gestured toward the lights. “Those help. And there’s a heater.”

  “And she’s a female?”

  He shrugged. “Haven’t a clue. Supposedly males have bigger pores on their rear thighs, but I didn’t particularly want to hoist Doris up to find out.”

  “So you just decided she was a she?”

  “Hey, I’ve got a fifty percent chance of being right.”

  Deirdre was standing beside him now. Doris really wasn’t that big once you got used to her. Maybe three or four feet in all. And the emerald green on her head was really pretty. “Do you ever pet her?”

  “Nope. I think she considers me a sort of soft, warm tree limb. And tree limbs don’t scratch your ears, at least not deliberately. Right now I need to give her fresh water.”

  He opened the catch on the cage door as Doris’s long tongue flicked out and back. Deirdre fought the impulse to back up again—she really was a nice-looking iguana overall. Of course, she had no idea what a bad-looking iguana would be like.

  Tom took the water bowl out of the cage and headed toward what she assumed was the kitchen. Doris descended to the cage floor, using her curved claws to hang onto her branch. They looked very sharp.

  “Nice Doris,” Deirdre muttered.

  “She doesn’t bite. Well, she could, but she hasn’t. And if she really is female, she’s less likely to. Males can get aggressive in mating season, but females just sit back and wait for males to come to them.” Tom set the water bowl back in the cage.

  “When’s mating season?” As soon as she’d said it, Deirdre wished she hadn’t, but there was, of course, no backing up now.

  He grinned again. “I’d love to give you a smartass answer, but I won’t. It varies from iguana to iguana, which is to say I’m not sure.”

  She blew out a breath and gazed around the rest of the room. A leather couch was pushed against one wall, with a couple of Mission-style chairs sitting next to a woven rug. A large steamer trunk strewn with magazines and a coffee cup sat in the middle of the room, a sort of rough-and-ready coffee table. “Nice furniture. Where did you get it? Or did you bring it with you?”

  He shrugged. “Most of it came from the antique and second-hand stores downtown. I sold them some stuff I didn’t want from the Faro, and they gave me a break on prices for the chairs and the trunk. And I picked up the rug from Elsa’s weaving shop down on Main—West Texas wool. The couch I had when I lived in Vegas.”

  Deirdre managed not to blink. Of course he’d lived in Las Vegas. Where else? “I need some furniture myself. Or I will when I finally get enough cash to start living again. You can tell me where to go.”

  Tom glanced at her as if he were considering pursuing the comment about her cash flow problems, but then he let it go. “Most shops in town have good stuff, and they’ll give you a fair deal if you’re willing to bargain. Some are a little weird, though. I’d avoid Milam Broadus, for example.”

  “Which one is he?”

  “The Republic of Texas store on Spicewood. He deals in Texana. He’s also nuts, but that may go with the territory.” His teeth flashed white against his skin in the dimming light.

  She took a careful breath, avoiding that ice-blue gaze. “I probably can’t afford Texana. I’m sort of into comfort anyway.”

  His grin turned slightly sour. “Which is why you were sleeping on a sleeping bag?”

  “Well, I’m not anymore. It’s a great mattress. You should try it sometime.” Deirdre’s face promptly heated to fever temperature. Oh very subtle. Why don’t you come up and see me sometime, handsome?

  “Would you like something to drink?” He turned away from her, maybe to let her have some time to recover. “I’ve got a bottle of red wine the distributor swore was first rate, as opposed to the jug stuff we’re stocking at the Faro.”

  “Yes, please.” She managed to say it without stammering, which she took as a major advance. She watched Tom uncork the wine, his movements with the corkscrew smooth and sure. “Why don’t we stock any Texas wine? Morgan Barrett’s got some really nice stuff at her winery. She’s married to one of Docia’s in-laws.”

  He turned back, handing her a glass. “She’s married to the chief of police, as a matter of fact, and her winery does make good wine. If the Faro starts serving dinner, I’ll probably stock more individual bottles. Right now, we only get orders for single glasses, usually women who don’t like beer. The place isn’t exactly a wine bar yet.”

  Deirdre sipped, tasting smoky flavor and deep fruit. “This is really good. I’d drink it.”

  “You already are.” His grin was back as he sat down beside her on the couch. “Like I say, once I get a dinner menu set up, I’ll see about expanding the wine list. Of course, that’s if Clem comes up with something besides burgers. Burgers work better with beer.”

  Deirdre couldn’t think of anything to say to that. The moment of silence fell between them like a drop of clear water.

  He sipped his wine slowly. “So. Were you engaged to Dempsey, or just ‘engaged to be engaged’, or what?”

  She stared down at her wine, mainly to avoid looking at him. There was something sort of unnerving about those blue eyes, that slow grin. “We didn’t have anything formal. He may have thought we were more involved than we really were. Plus my father wanted me to be involved with him.”

  “Why?” One golden eyebrow arched.

  “Because it made a lot of sense from a business point of view. And it would have looked great in the annual report.” She managed a dry smile. “I’m being sarcastic, but hiring Craig was always more a PR strategy than a business decision. He used to play for
the Cowboys. I guess he was sort of famous—a lot of people recognize him, anyway.”

  Tom’s forehead furrowed. “I didn’t. But I’m more a Chiefs fan.”

  “He’s sort of got that famous-person attitude. He expects people to recognize him. He must have been unhappy when you didn’t.”

  “I don’t think he was considering me as a potential fan.” Now it was Tom’s turn to look away. She wondered what exactly he was trying not to tell her.

  “Anyway, we dated for a while, and Daddy kept inviting him to dinners and other stuff. He acted like Craig was part of the family.”

  “But you didn’t think so?”

  She shook her head. “We didn’t have anything in common. And then it got sort of…bad.” She paused, trying to think how to explain it.

  Tom’s jaw hardened. “Did he hurt you?”

  “No. Nothing like that. He stole from me. I told him some ideas I’d had and he passed them on to my father as his own. Daddy loved them. Of course, he might not have felt the same way if he’d known they were mine.” Her father had shown a distinct lack of interest in most of her proposals up to that point.

  He set his wineglass down on the steamer trunk. “That was shitty. Did he have any explanation?”

  “He said we’d discussed them, ‘brainstormed’ them. So what he’d proposed wasn’t really mine. It was his idea that had grown out of my idea. Except that it was my idea—exactly the idea I’d told him about. We didn’t have any kind of formal relationship—we’d just been dating for a few months. So I stopped going out with him. I’m not sure Daddy even noticed.” Her father seldom noticed things that didn’t fit into his idea of what was supposed to happen. If he went on not noticing for a while, sometimes things might go back to the way he wanted them to be.

  “So old Craig gets credit for being smarter than he is, and your father gets to go on believing he’ll have an NFL star on the family team.” Tom grimaced. “Sweet.”

  She swallowed a larger sip of wine. “It’s my own fault. If I’d stood up for myself and stopped being such a pushover, Craig wouldn’t have gotten away with it.”