Can't Buy Me Love

by Molly O'Keefe

  8

  Victoria traced her fingers around Jacob’s palm, over and over again. When he was sick in the hospital and she had to wear a hazmat suit just to sit by his side, this was what she’d do. She’d draw hearts and smiley faces. Numbers and letters. She’d spell her name on his skin, a map to bring him back to her.

  The tension in the den was sickening, and if it weren’t for Jacob telling Celeste scene for scene about the Iron Man movie he’d watched against Victoria’s better judgment, it would be intolerable.

  A powder keg.

  As it was, Victoria had to stomach Queen Celeste smiling down at Jacob as if he were just another part of her kingdom.

  He’s mine, she wanted to hiss and yank him away. But Jacob liked Celeste. And Celeste was kind to Jacob in her own way. As if he were a dog, but her favorite dog.

  And Victoria was so nervous she could throw up, so having Jacob distracted worked in her favor.

  How much do I need? she kept wondering. It wasn’t as though she needed to live the way she had lived with Joel. That kind of money had been a false security of the worst kind. But she needed to take care of Jacob. School. College. Medical bills. A modest home.

  The door to the den opened and Luc walked in, smiling as if he’d just heard the best joke. Victoria might have written that off to Luc being a jolly drunk, but at his heels was Tara Jean.

  Looking like death warmed over.

  Laughter, surprised and unchecked, bubbled out of her throat and she clapped a hand over her mouth. Celeste glanced sideways at Victoria with a wicked little smile on her million-dollar mouth.

  For a second, all those differences between them—that Victoria was the daughter of Lyle’s mistress, that Celeste hated her, that she hated Celeste—all of them were gone. Two women, in a glance, sharing a joke at another women’s expense—it was a female language born thousands of years ago.

  But Tara Jean lifted her chin and sailed past them to go stand next to Eli Turnbull, and the moment popped.

  Eli lifted an arm over Tara Jean’s shoulders and pulled her to his side. Tara Jean curled up there. Safe. Protected.

  Victoria’s heart coiled, shrinking from the pain. Not that she cared one way or another about Eli, but that Tara Jean, Bimbo Barbie, had a strong shoulder where she could rest her head during all this pissed Victoria off.

  I did everything right, she thought for the millionth time, the vile acid of her anger as biting as it had been that first long night her life had begun to unravel.

  Ponzi scheme.

  Thinking the words made her skin cringe.

  “We can get started,” Mr. Jenkins said.

  “Mom,” Jacob whispered, “you’re hurting my hand.”

  Victoria unclenched her fists and kissed an apology on her son’s palms while Mr. Jenkins made his way through the necessary legalese.

  “Mr. Baker made some changes to his will before he died,” the lawyer said after droning on for what seemed like hours, and Victoria tuned back in.

  In her lap, Victoria’s fingers twisted into knots.

  “Tara Jean, as agreed, will get forty percent of Baker Leather.” Jenkins glanced over the top of his glasses toward Tara Jean. “In deferment to your wishes, he has left you no money. And I … I need the …”

  Tara Jean stepped forward, wiggling the giant five-carat sapphire off her knuckle. It landed on the desk with a thunk.

  “As agreed?” Luc asked from the club chair where he was sprawled. He turned twinkling eyes over to Tara Jean, who visibly bristled. “What did you do, I wonder, to earn such a thing?”

  “Don’t be disgusting,” Tara Jean hissed, which was all very ironic considering the way she’d acted when Victoria and her brother arrived at the ranch.

  If she wasn’t chock full of nerves, Victoria might be interested.

  How much did she need? she wondered. A million, easy. If she wanted to stay in Toronto. New York was an impossibility. Too many people associated her face with Joel’s crimes.

  “Eli Turnbull, in recognition of your hard work and the years of hard work dedicated by your father, you are given control of the Angus herd and fifty percent of the profits upon sale.”

  Victoria had no idea what that meant, and Eli’s face didn’t indicate whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “In addition,” Jenkins continued to read, “the two hundred acres that were your father’s before he sold them to Crooked Creek Ranch is available to you for purchase, at cost and interest free.”

  In the ensuing silence, the page Jenkins turned was loud.

  “That’s it? The two hundred acres Dad sold twenty years ago? At cost?” Eli was red-faced, his lips barely moving. Now she realized he was angry. How surprising to see him with an emotion. “What about the rest of the land that belonged to my family?”

  “The will doesn’t mention any other land.”

  The room was held hostage until finally, white-lipped and controlled, Eli nodded once and everyone took in a breath of relief.

  Good God, Victoria thought, giddy with nerves, we’re off to a rocky start.

  “For Celeste.” Jenkins cleared his throat and opened a safe-deposit box at his elbow. He took out a dozen velvet jewelry boxes of various sizes and slid them toward the front of the desk.

  Victoria could feel Celeste’s hard-wired stillness. The woman practically rattled in her seat.

  “You gonna get that stuff?” Jacob asked in a whisper.

  “Why don’t you go get it for me,” Celeste said with a smile that hummed with sorrow.

  Victoria closed her eyes for a moment. The restrained and repressed emotions in the room were threatening to cut off all air supply. They’d all just asphyxiate in silence.

  Jacob came back with the velvet boxes stacked to his chin.

  “There’s a note. From Lyle,” Jenkins said, his eyes darting up to Celeste’s and then back down to his paper. “These are yours,” Jenkins read. “They always were. They always will be. Divorce changed nothing. Not for me.”

  With trembling hands, Celeste took the boxes from Jacob and set them on her lap. She didn’t open them. Her eyes, full of tears that dared not fall, stared straight ahead.

  Diamonds, Victoria thought, her desperation turning her into an ugly, grasping mercenary. Lots of diamonds.

  Victoria could live off one of those boxes for a year, she had no doubt.

  Jenkins turned another page and Victoria held her breath, waiting for her name.

  Half a million. She’d sell the last of her jewelry. She could live frugally. Plant a garden. Get rid of the car.

  “Wayne Luc Baker, you are the sole inheritor of the twenty-five hundred remaining acres of Crooked Creek Ranch, including all mineral and water rights and all other assets, which includes a fifty percent interest in the Angus herd and sixty percent control of Baker Leather.”

  The words detonated like a bomb. All of it? Luc got all of it?

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Luc said, staring slack-jawed at Jenkins.

  “Yeah,” Tara Jean piped up from the back of the room. “This is a mistake.”

  Jenkins shook his head. “It’s all Wayn—Luc’s.”

  What about me? Victoria thought.

  “Good Christ.” Luc ran a hand down his face. “This is a nightmare.”

  Yes! It is!

  “I’ll sell it,” Luc said, his face growing stormy. “Fuck him. I’ll sell it.”

  “I’ll buy it.” Eli sounded hard and sure and confident.

  “Great.” Luc nodded. “Name your price—”

  “It’s not that simple,” Jenkins said.

  “It is,” Luc insisted. “For me it’s that simple.”

  “What about us?” Victoria asked, her voice the weak, pathetic cry of a weak, pathetic woman.

  Luc turned, and she refused to look at his face. She knew he didn’t understand her and she knew she disappointed him, but she couldn’t be like him. She couldn’t not care.

  “Jacob and me?” sh
e asked. “There’s nothing in there about us?”

  “May I continue?” Jenkins asked, staring at Luc as if he were a child behaving badly.

  Luc nodded, his control regained.

  “Victoria Schulman and her son will receive a trust of one million dollars.”

  She collapsed back against the seat, her body boneless, her mind empty with relief.

  “On the condition—”

  Her body curled upright. “What condition?” she asked. How like him, how very like her bastard father! Even after he was dead he wanted her to crawl.

  “That Wayne—”

  “My name is Luc,” Luc said through his teeth.

  “That Mr. Baker acts as CEO of Baker Leather and stays at the ranch without selling it for the duration of his off-season. Five months at minimum.”

  chapter

  9

  Shock emptied Tara Jean’s body and she was just a crumpled paper sack in dirty sweat pants.

  Luc was her boss.

  Why didn’t she see this coming?

  She’d thought, when she bothered to think about it at all, that Lyle would split the rest of the company shares with his family, but as the 40-percent owner, she’d be in control. And she would be her own boss.

  Or even if Lyle gave one of his children control of Baker Leather, that person would be an absentee owner. Collecting checks and leaving her to run the business no one seemed to care about.

  But now, Luc was her boss and he was here.

  Lyle, what did you do to us?

  Luc had bolted the moment his death sentence had been delivered.

  Celeste had left after him.

  Victoria remained on the couch, a black puddle of despair.

  Tara Jean had a relationship with despair. She knew the pit well, but Victoria would have to find her own way out. Tara Jean didn’t have a rope to throw her.

  Not that Victoria would have taken it.

  Numb, Tara Jean signed the last of the paperwork that had been drawn up three months ago. The day after the doctors told Lyle he didn’t have much longer to live.

  The day he’d concocted this whole plan.

  Her services had been paid for with a 40-percent share in Baker Leathers. Lyle got the whole gold-digging fiancée act and she got security.

  For the first time in her life she got security.

  Amazing, how he’d managed to save her and screw her all at the same time.

  Thank you, Lyle, you son of a bitch. She sent the prayer heavenward and stepped out of the way so Eli could sign.

  She wanted to say something to Eli. To ease some of the hurt and disappointment he must be feeling. But he just walked out of the den, shoulders back, eyes straight, never giving the impression he’d just been fucked by Lyle Baker.

  Tara Jean was tired. Heartsore and desperate to be back in her own home, and she practically ran out of the ranch house to her studio.

  This was a new chapter and she needed to come back here on Monday with a tactic, a plan for managing Luc. She pushed open the greenhouse door and headed over to her desk to get her purse and keys, and some much needed distance between her and the house that betrayal had built.

  Honestly, Lyle, she thought, when you play God, you go all out.

  She took off her slippers and slid her feet into the only shoes she had here. Three-inch black stilettos.

  Overkill with sweats cut off at the knee, but that was where she was at.

  “Did you know he was going to do this?” a voice asked from behind her and she jumped, smashing her hands and hip against the metal edge of her desk. She swore and tried to shake out the sparks.

  “Answer the question!”

  She spun to face Luc, dark and looming in the doorway.

  For a second her heart sputtered in fear. He was a man pushed to the wall. And men pushed to the wall were dangerous animals.

  “No,” she said, pulling her bag out of the drawer and swinging it over her shoulder.

  “Bullshit.” The word exploded out of his mouth and she realized he was here to take his anger out on her.

  “Think what you want.” She stepped toward the door. But, predictably, Luc didn’t move and she lost it. Whatever scrap of control or cool that might have survived the firebombing of the last few days just gave up the fight.

  “You think I wanted this? You? As my boss? He’s playing around with my life too.”

  His eyes didn’t budge from hers and she felt as if her skin might start smoking at any moment. They were bound in this. Stuck together, and as much as she might want to fight and claw her way out, she couldn’t.

  Play nice, the demon whispered.

  “He said you’d stay for your sister,” she said after the silence started slapping her around a little.

  “Well, he sure rigged it that way, didn’t he?” He rubbed a hand through his hair, looking every minute of his age and occupation.

  After that absent touch earlier today, she’d told herself she wouldn’t be moved by this man. But here she stood, in the same damn place just a few hours later and she felt bad for him. Bad. For him?

  Which was honestly ridiculous.

  The man was her freaking boss.

  “You gonna do it?” she asked.

  “Stick around?” He braced himself against the door frame. His muscles pulled against his shirt, and all that desire that had woken up a few hours ago was running around her body like a toddler on a sugar rush.

  She nodded, trying to slap that toddler into a harness.

  “And run the company.”

  His smile was sharp, lethal. “Worried about your boss?”

  “This company matters to me, Luc. And yes, I’m worried that you’re going to run it into the ground out of spite.”

  “I’m not … I don’t care enough to run it into the ground. I’m a fucking hockey player! I don’t belong here.”

  “So,” she said as if he might not understand English. “Are you going to leave?”

  He stared off at the horizon, shaking his head, as if the decision hadn’t been made yet. Her mouth fell open, stunned that he was considering kicking in his sister’s teeth like that.

  But if there was one thing she knew, it was that people were really only loyal to themselves.

  Luc was no different.

  The web Lyle had constructed had Luc well and truly stuck. If she weren’t a victim of the old man’s machinations herself, she’d be impressed.

  “If the inquisition is over,” she said, rattling her keys for emphasis, “I’d like to go home.”

  “Home?” His dark eyebrows knit together over his eyes. “You don’t live here?”

  “Your private investigator didn’t tell you that?”

  He breathed hard through his nose and after a moment shook his head. “After I found out you’d changed your name, I figured the rest of it didn’t matter and I called him off.”

  “You had me pegged, huh?” She couldn’t resist the sarcasm. “Figured the worst and left it at that?”

  “Don’t be sanctimonious, Tara. He paid you forty percent of a leather company to pretend to be his fiancée, didn’t he? It was all an act, wasn’t it?”

  What to do when this whole charade was over hadn’t even crossed her mind. Of course she’d thought when it was all said and done, Luc and his sister would pick up their millions and head back to the land of the spoiled.

  She’d never imagined coming clean. Or having to explain herself.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice loud and bright in the dim of the greenhouse. The sun was heading down behind the other side of the house, bringing premature night to her kingdom. “He knew you’d try to stop the wedding and all he wanted was to get you down here.”

  His laughter was rocky, covered in dirt. “Well he sure knew us, didn’t he. And he used the right kind of bait.”

  She bristled, her feelings injured despite herself. “Your father was good to me.”

  “I’m sure he was,” he said, insinuating and nasty.

 
; “He never touched me. Never.”

  His eyes skated over her body, carved figure eights around her chest. It was ugly and juvenile and she knew he barely meant it. He was a playground bully, and all he wanted was to see someone else bleed.

  “Screw yourself, Luc. I’m leaving.” She stepped past him, into the heat of the afternoon.

  He laughed, low and dry but without rancor, without the bitter edge that kept her on her toes, and the sound was so unexpected it was like finding diamonds in her breakfast cereal.

  Their eyes caught for a moment. And then another. His body tensed, leaned slightly toward her, and she could feel the kiss in the air between them. She could see it in his dark, shuttered eyes, in the heavy set of his shoulders.

  In another life, she might have let him kiss her. They were both grieving in their own way. He wasn’t quite the devil she’d first thought he was, though she wasn’t sure he wasn’t a different kind of devil altogether. He was beautiful and she was weak.

  But this was now. Now after Lyle died, giving her this security, and she didn’t have to kiss men to feel better. Even if she wanted to.

  “I’ll see you on Monday.” She slid her aviator sunglasses down low over her eyes.

  “I can’t wait.” His voice managed the high-wire act between threatening and inviting.

  The pea gravel crunched and slid under the thin soles of her shoes, every stone a small pain, a reminder, until she couldn’t take it anymore and she stopped.

  Tara turned to face him only to find him watching her.

  Don’t do this, she told herself, you don’t care. Not really. And these people don’t care about you. If you were on fire, Victoria would drink the water rather than use it to put you out.

  But there had been so much grief lately, she didn’t want to witness any more.

  “Your sister,” she said, and paused, not exactly sure what she wanted to say. Don’t break her heart? Don’t hurt her any more than she’s been hurt? Is one good shove away from losing it?

  “You don’t need to worry about my sister,” he said, circling the wagons. Right then, she knew he wouldn’t leave. She was going to have to live with him for five months.

  As her boss.

  He stood there, just outside the doorway to her world, to everything she had fought and bled for. He was a creature of privilege. His sister, too. And boo-hoo, their daddy didn’t love them like they wanted to be loved. They’d survived. More than survived.