Drawing Hearts

by J. M. Jeffries

  Nina pursed her lips. “I’m going with no, that doesn’t count.”

  “Had I not ended up with Hunter, I would have wondered if I was missing something.” Lydia’s smile was wistful and sweet. The baby stirred and Lydia picked him up, patted his diaper and cuddled him in her arms.

  Kenzie watched Lydia and the tender way she held her newborn. “I want a baby,” Kenzie said and covered her mouth. Had she said that out loud? No, she couldn’t have.

  Nina burst out laughing. “I know. I want the package, too.”

  Kenzie said, “So you’re going to give up that perfect figure?”

  “I’ll bounce back, and...” She held her hands out to Lydia. “And for this it would be worth it.”

  Kenzie understood. She and Nina had been focused on their careers for so long they’d put aside other needs. “How are we going to integrate a career with a husband and family?”

  Lydia laughed. “You are both involved in a family business. Stop worrying—there will always be someone to pick up the slack. Miss E. has been waiting for great-grandbabies for a long time. You already have a built-in babysitter. Stop obsessing about it. Hendrix kidnapped Maya yesterday and took her swing dancing. She came home with victory rolls and saddle shoes, singing her off-key rendition of ‘Jump, Jive and Wail.’ I found her measuring Christian for a baby zoot suit.”

  “Hendrix is pimping out your baby,” Kenzie said.

  “So,” Lydia continued with a wave of her hand, “the excuse for career versus family is out the window. We’re modern women. We’ll need to plan our time, but we can do both. Balancing a career and a family isn’t going to be easy, but we have each other.”

  “Miss E. juggled a career with grandchildren and she did it,” Kenzie mused. “And she did it with others weighing judgment on her. She was single, black and a woman. Some people told her it was a recipe for disaster.”

  “You all turned out well,” Lydia said, “You didn’t even know you were at a disadvantage.”

  “We got this,” Nina said.

  “We do, don’t we?” Kenzie said in agreement.

  * * *

  Reed had never played dress-up with dolls in his life and here he was doing exactly that. Kenzie, using the camera integrated with the laptop, took a photo of her assistant. Bianca was a short, round woman with pleasant features and blond hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  “Do you have enough?” Kenzie asked.

  He nodded.

  She turned the camera on another of her staff and began taking a photo.

  “Is this software going to replace us?” Bianca asked curiously.

  “No,” Kenzie replied, “it’s going to add extra value to you as staff because you can tap into all these different databases and pull out clothes for the customers. But the important part of your job is making the client feel good. Your job is like psychiatry. The hard part is that most of these people you’ll never see again.”

  Both images appeared on the screen. The women clustered around him to watch him manipulate the images. He was especially aware of Kenzie who rested a warm hand on his shoulder. He could smell the faint aroma of her perfume and the heat of her body. Kenzie had become an important part of his life and he wanted to impress her.

  “Let’s start with Donna Karan.”

  With a few clicks of the mouse, Reed began pulling clothing templates from the database. He tried to keep it simple so that no matter how computer non-savvy a person was, she could use the program. “Donna Karan’s size range is size two to fourteen.” He started pulling out a dress and morphing it to both of the models. When he finished they both wore the same dress, but each could see how different it looked on them with their different body shapes and height.

  “Wow,” Kenzie said, awe in her tone. “That is spectacular.”

  “I can see all the possibilities,” Bianca said. “I can’t wait to get started.”

  “There’s more to do. I have a couple bugs yet to track down and repair, and I haven’t finished with the final layout,” Reed said. “But you’ll have this working and ready to use in a couple weeks.”

  Kenzie hugged him, her scent wafting over him making him even more aware of her closeness. His stomach clenched. “You did good.”

  “I sort of feel like I’m playing dress-up with dolls.” Oops! He didn’t mean to say that.

  Kenzie laughed. “Hunter and Scott played dolls with me.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Reed swiveled around to see if she was teasing him.

  “Usually when they did something wrong, I blackmailed them into playing with me.”

  “What about Donovan?”

  “When he messed up, he made me cookies.”

  The other women tittered. Kenzie just grinned at them. Reed wondered how the brothers would feel knowing she was telling secrets out of school.

  Bianca raised her hand. “What are you going to give me to keep this secret?”

  “Nothing, dear. Tell anyone you want. Spread the word.”

  “I think I won’t,” Bianca said with a grin. “I may need blackmail for some other time.”

  The other women nodded in agreement as they started to back away, breaking into groups. Those still working headed back into the store and those who had just come for the meeting grabbed their possessions and walked out the front door to the lobby.

  “Want to go to dinner?”

  She glanced at her watch. “I know it’s a bit early, but I’m hungry. Dinner is on me.”

  “I can afford to feed you,” Reed objected.

  “You have worked your fingers to the bone making me look awesome in the world of fashion. I can afford to buy you a burger as long as you don’t want anything worth more than fifteen dollars.”

  Reed grinned. “Fair enough.” He closed the laptop and dropped it into his briefcase. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I know a little café with great burgers. It’s only a couple miles from here.”

  “Then let’s go.” He held an arm out to her. She linked arms with him. Having her so close set his heart pounding into overdrive.

  As much as Reed enjoyed eating at the hotel and having the staff fawn over him, he liked getting away. He parked his Lexus in a small lot and Kenzie led him into a quaint café that looked as if it had been opened in the fifties.

  “Thank you,” Kenzie said. “You made that software incredible and it’s going to double the revenue in the boutiques. You are going to copyright it?”

  “I already have the paperwork half done.”

  “Something like this could revolutionize the fashion industry.”

  He nodded. “It has a lot of practical applications. I already had the core software from the prosthesis application, I just evolved it into fashion and tweaked it.” He’d tweaked it a lot, but still, he had to admit in his own sense of pride in making Kenzie look good. He wanted her to look good, to be indispensable to her.

  He had enjoyed the challenge. The whole idea of fashion just wasn’t on his radar. He knew how he needed to look in the corporate world, but hadn’t given thought to how women approached fashion. His company policy had been casual and low-key. In his business people weren’t judged on clothes or personality, but on brainpower.

  A waitress led them to a table and handed them menus. He ordered coffee and Kenzie ordered a glass of water. As they perused the menu, Reed couldn’t stop watching Kenzie. Several men had turned to look at her, admiration in their eyes and envy when they gazed at Reed. He felt different around Kenzie, more alive and happy.

  Kenzie had her own glamour despite the designer dress, tasteful jewelry and fashionable shoes. Her beauty was incandescent. She glowed with confidence. She was smart and funny. She had a sweetness to her that made him want to protect her. The women he’d gone out with before had dated hi
m to have him on their arm. He wanted Kenzie on his arm. She wasn’t an ornament.

  The waitress came over and took their order.

  “You are looking at me strangely,” Kenzie said.

  “You are your own practical application.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Thank you. I think.”

  He just smiled at her. “I’m sorry. I’m thinking like a computer programmer. You are so different from the types of women I’ve dated before.”

  “Are we dating?”

  “Yes,” he said firmly.

  She smiled at him. “Then continue. What about the women you dated?”

  Her smile gave him confidence. It had been a long time since he’d done this. Dating a woman because he wanted her. Taking the time to get to know her. He liked it as much as he’d missed it. She held her glass with long, slender fingers, her nails polished dark red. On her thumb and ring fingers, little white flowers had been painted adding contrast to the brilliance of the red. Her lipstick matched her fingernails. The memory of her hands on him sent his senses reeling. He had to remind himself to breathe.

  “They had their eye on my bank account more than on me.”

  “How do you know I’m not doing the same thing?”

  Startled, he studied her. He knew she was teasing him, but he hadn’t missed that glint of empathy in her eyes. “Because you don’t need me. Anything you want, you can get on your own.”

  “You’re not like any man I’ve dated, either. Though admittedly, my ex-boyfriend was the only one I was kind of serious about.”

  Knowing what he knew about Sam, he wondered why she dated him. “What about him did you like?”

  She tilted her head, pursed her lips, and took a long breath. “In his own way, he was comfortable. He didn’t expect anything more from me than I was willing to give and I felt the same way about him. I just didn’t know he wasn’t what I wanted until Miss E. won the Mariposa and asked me to help her. Then I wanted more and Sam didn’t. Sam couldn’t imagine himself anywhere but New York. I realized I was tired of New York and wanted to be with my family.”

  The waitress brought their order. Kenzie had decided on a salad, but Reed wanted The Works hamburger.

  “This is good,” Reed told Kenzie after his first bite. The burger was juicy, the bread soft enough to soak up the juices, but firm enough not to fall apart. The blend of mayo, mustard, relish and ketchup was perfect. Deep-fried string onions added the perfect tart aftertaste.

  “Donovan and Hendrix come here a lot.” Kenzie took a bite of her salad. “If you’ve only dated women who just wanted your money, why did you date them?”

  “That puts me on the spot, doesn’t it?” He licked a finger. Whatever the secret sauce was on the burger, Reed liked it. He wasn’t much of a gourmet eater though Donovan was trying to educate him. He just knew what he liked and what he didn’t like.

  “I’m curious, so answer the question.”

  He sighed. “Like a lot of men, I’m guilty of taking low-hanging fruit. That sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?”

  “What man doesn’t want a beautiful woman on his arm? Even my brothers do.”

  He held up a finger. “But when they started to get serious, they chose women with brains. The fact that they’re beautiful is secondary. Your brothers fell in love with what was inside, not outside. Some of the women I dated had brains, but they chose not to use them, preferring to put their beauty forward first. You’re an incredibly smart woman who just happens to be beautiful.”

  She looked a bit uncomfortable over his compliment. “A lot of celebrity women are beautiful, but without makeup they are ordinary-looking. Without makeup, I’m kind of ordinary, too.”

  He’d seen her without makeup as they shared a cup of coffee the morning after they’d made love. She was stunning even devoid of makeup, captivating in her fresh beauty. “I’ve seen you without makeup and you’re not ordinary. You look young and fresh and pretty in a different way. With your makeup you’re polished and sophisticated.” He looked her up and down critically. He liked her in both her guises, especially her morning look with her eyes all sleepy and her hair standing up in peaks.

  “Thank you, but more importantly you sound like a makeup ad.”

  “I’ve been reading those fashion magazines while working on your project.”

  “And you sound pretty proud of yourself,” Kenzie said with a chuckle.

  “Those magazines tell you crazy things. Ten articles rhapsodize on the benefits of the ultimate diet, but after reading them, the core of every diet is to eat right.”

  “I’m sure men’s fitness magazines tell you the same thing.”

  “They’re even crazier because they tell a guy to eat right, then have a cheeseburger and a bourbon, but don’t forget to work out and get in game time.”

  “Bourbon, cheeseburgers, video games and a workout. I take it you’re not a big fan of men’s magazines.”

  “No, although I did interviews for them. They always portray me as the cool geek, or the hot nerd.”

  “You don’t want to be perceived like that.”

  “I just want to be a man. I work out because I spend half my life in a chair and it’s good for me. High blood pressure runs in my family. I know I don’t look like I can bench-press a Buick. Men will never be portrayed as meat, the way women are. There is just as much pressure for us to conform to a certain look as you are.”

  She ate her salad silently for a few minutes. He could see her turning his comments around in her mind. “That’s kind of scathing, considering what industry I’m in.”

  “If that were true you would never have allowed me to create templates for women up to a size thirty. According to the fashion industry only women sized zero and two should be allowed to be seen in public. But you’re making it comfortable for women in larger sizes to buy clothes. I did a lot of research and most of the fancier stores in the other hotels don’t carry much of anything over a size ten or twelve. You have beautiful clothes that range from a size two to a size thirty. You want to make sure any woman who shops in one of your boutiques can find something beautiful.”

  Kenzie nodded. “Trust me, when I wasn’t a size two, I felt like nothing. I need to be who I need to be in my size-six body. Look at Hendrix. She’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met and she’s a size fourteen and proud of it. Have you seen the way she dresses? When she’s not in her uniform, she’s a bombshell. Donovan got himself a pin-up girl who can cook. Which totally worked out for him, because men only think about three things.”

  “We do? What are they and how do you know?”

  “Every once in a while there’s a good article on relationship psychology.”

  “What are the three things we think about?”

  “Food, status and breeding. Like wolves. In the pack, the alpha is the only one who gets to breed. He gets to be the alpha by eating the most food. Hunter is the perfect example. He got himself a thoroughbred wife because he’s awesome and now he has a baby—” she paused for a moment “—and a minivan. Trust me. I grew up with that man. If he didn’t get the last biscuit at every meal, he pouted.”

  Reed found himself laughing. Everything about Kenzie charmed him, especially her outlook on the world. One woman he’d dated had been so dramatic and jaded he’d been bored with her after an hour. “New York didn’t steal your ability to see the wonder in the world.”

  “After eight years in New York, you’d think I’d be more cynical. For all I know, that’s probably why it was so easy to leave.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “Me, too.”

  Chapter 10

  The conference room had an air of seriousness to it. The walls had recently been painted pearl gray to match the carpet. A solid mahogany table large enough to seat twenty people dominated it.
One wall held a huge monitor that normally hid behind sliding panels. A sideboard was laden with a coffee urn, tea kettle, mugs and two dishes of pastries Donovan had brought. Kenzie wanted to add some liveliness to the room with a couple abstract paintings she’d found, but Miss E. said not yet.

  Kenzie sat next to Reed at the conference table. He’d called a meeting with everyone, and Miss E. had included Jasper, the previous owner of the hotel, hoping he might know something as well. Jasper, a slim, dapper man in his mid-seventies, sat next to Miss E. His salt-and-pepper hair gave him a distinguished look and the looks he gave to her grandmother made Kenzie think something really serious was going on between them. Every once in a while, Jasper would pat Miss E.’s hand gently.

  Hunter sat across from her flanked by Donovan and Scott.

  Reed tapped his on his laptop and the monitor on the wall came to life. “This is what I’ve found so far.” He paused as he waited for the screen to catch up with his laptop. “I originally thought the routing number was to a bank in the Caymans, but discovered it’s to a bank account in the Seychelles, which is the new financial hot spot for ill-gotten gains now that the Caymans have tightened their regulations regarding money. The account is registered to a company called Preferred Investments.” He tapped some more. “I took this investigation as far as I can legally. So I turned what I have over to Scott.”

  “I don’t have the same moral compass,” Scott said. “In the event of protecting my family’s integrity and reputation, I called a friend in the IRS. They’ve started an investigation on this Preferred Investments.”

  “I’ve heard of this company,” Jasper said with a frown. “But I don’t remember why I know the name.”

  Scott nodded. “That’s good to know. They may be completely legitimate, or not. Do you remember what context you heard the name?”

  “Sadly, no.” Jasper shook his head.

  Scott continued. “I did find out it’s a shell corporation. It has no assets, no information on file except that it’s receiving five percent of each cash card purchased in our casino. The money is accumulated over a twenty-four hour period and automatically wired at midnight every day. I have a friend who did a little extra checking and discovered there’s only about two thousand dollars in the account at present. And from what he could see the money sits in the account for about two months before it’s transferred to another shell corporation registered in Luxemburg and from there it goes to another bank in Hong Kong. We haven’t been able to trace anything from there. My friend will keep working on it.”