Can't Buy Me Love

by Molly O'Keefe

  He had money. Safety.

  Christ, Victoria had a son.

  The two were on a totally different planet from the one where she lived. And while betrayal and pain and long, lonely nights might seem universal, it all depended on who was experiencing it.

  “You’re right,” she said and left.

  Luc couldn’t look at his sister without wanting to start tearing the ranch down brick by brick, so he went to the one place he was sure she wouldn’t be.

  Celeste’s room.

  Maman was propped up against the headboard, looking a mess. Well, as much of a mess as Celeste ever looked. Her jacket and shoes were gone. Her hair, rumpled on the pillows. Her lipstick smeared all over the glass of amber liquid in her hand.

  Around her, like blue velvet islands rising from the white sea of the duvet, were the jewelry boxes.

  They were all still closed.

  “You all right?” she asked, looking at him over the rim of her glass as she finished her drink.

  He nodded and grabbed the Scotch from the liquor cabinet, poured her another, and then put it back.

  “You’re not joining me?” she asked, and he shook his head.

  He was reaching an uncomfortable place, where frenzy and anger fed off each other until he didn’t have control. And he needed control.

  He’d almost kissed Tara Jean. If that wasn’t an indicator that he needed to get his shit together, he didn’t know what was.

  The woman was like that candy she was always eating. Sweet, but bad for him.

  “What’s in the boxes?” he asked. He sat at her feet and his weight pulled the smallest of the blue boxes toward him.

  “Go ahead,” she said, her negligence a thin veneer over an unexpected grief.

  The box creaked open in his hands.

  Heavy-duty bling. In ring form.

  “My engagement ring,” she said, and she used her leg to sweep the rest of them toward him. “Open the others.”

  There was a gold and diamond necklace that looked like something a queen might wear.

  “When I caught him cheating. The first time.”

  A thick diamond bracelet set with emeralds as big as his eyeballs.

  “The day you were born. His heir. He was so excited.” Pearls.

  “His grandmother’s. I wore them at our wedding.”

  Dangly opal and diamond earrings.

  “When Victoria was born. An apology. In very poor taste.”

  A dozen boxes. All with a story to tell.

  “The guy was a bastard,” he sighed.

  “Not always. And not at first. He was, a long time ago, kind in his own way. I think … perhaps when I left, things got very bad.”

  “It’s not your fault he hurt us, Maman.”

  “I’m sorry, son, but I don’t quite believe you.” Her smile was cracked and broken, full of a lifetime of sadness. He put his hand over hers and she clutched his fingers.

  He waited for her to say more, but she was silent and it felt good to sit there beside his mother, bathed in the familiar scent of Chanel No5.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

  “I imagine you’ll be sticking around,” she said, and he stood back up. The frenzy, the hot dance of his nerve endings needed to be cooled off.

  “It would be the right thing, wouldn’t it?”

  “Are you thinking of doing the wrong thing?”

  “Is it so hard to believe that it might be good for Victoria?” he asked. “That if she was forced to stand on her own two feet maybe she’d stop looking to other people to solve her problems?”

  “You want to be the one to make sure she does it?” She took a sip, her cagey eyes missing nothing. “She’ll hate you, and it will probably be forever.”

  It was the truth. He knew it, but knowing it didn’t make it sit better.

  “And what about Jacob?” she asked, turning the screws.

  “I know about Jacob,” he said. “I get it. I understand. All right.”

  His words echoed into a silence that pounded at his head.

  He had to get out of here, he had to burn off this anger or he’d lose it. He pulled his shirt out of his pants.

  “Where are you going?” Maman asked.

  “Running.” Dr. Matthews’s orders had been explicit. He needed to rest. No working out. No ice time, no physical exertion, for at least six weeks.

  But he couldn’t just sit here and do nothing.

  “Luc,” his mother whispered, and he paused to look at her before walking out the door. A gorgeous, ageless woman surrounded by all that was left of love.

  Diamonds and regret.

  “You can’t undo it,” she whispered. “Your decision right now, what you do with your sister, you can’t change it once it’s done. You … you can’t go back.”

  Her pain ran headlong against his anger, doing nothing to cool it. Nothing to calm him. He nodded once and left. Buttons flew off his shirt as he yanked it free.

  Goddamnit. Had he even packed his running shoes?

  “Luc?”

  His sister’s voice was a dagger between his shoulder blades. He took two deep breaths before turning to face her.

  So pale and resolute, she stood in the hallway, so thin and fragile a good wind would knock her over.

  The men in her life had kicked her. Used her and betrayed her. Both of them. Father. Husband.

  He couldn’t join their ranks.

  “I’m staying.”

  “You … you don’t have to do that.”

  That she tried made him love her more.

  “Yes, I do,” he said, and then, because everything in his life was falling apart and he couldn’t be trusted not to scream his rage into the face of his sister, he left.

  To battle the demon of his anger on his own.

  chapter

  10

  At five o’clock on Monday morning, Tara Jean was ready to start her new life. She’d hibernated for twenty-four straight hours and woken up with a plan.

  She simply wouldn’t deal with Luc. Not unless she absolutely had to.

  Also, she decided, it was time to get rid of the crutch. The monkey on her back. She’d quit smoking two years ago, drinking four years ago, sleeping with inappropriate men six years ago—surely she could kick the candy habit.

  Considering that this truly was the first day of the rest of her life, she wore the kind of leather that made the demon happy: short and tight.

  A red skirt from her first design season that wasn’t much bigger than a Band-Aid, with an oversized white button-up shirt, which she didn’t bother buttoning much of. The black peep-toe heels and big chunky necklace classed her up a bit.

  She’d make the Bakers forget they’d ever seen her bunny slippers.

  The dawn was pearly and damp, the color of pigeons after a rain. But the moment she stepped outside, all of the hair on the back of her neck stood in terrified attention.

  You’re being watched.

  She ducked back into the vestibule of her building, pulling the safety door shut, unable to breathe until she heard the big lock catch. Her panicked breath bloomed against the cross-hatched glass as she peered out into the small parking lot, waiting for movement. But the cars didn’t even twitch.

  She looked to the right and left of the door as best she could through the glass, and she was patient, but she didn’t see a thing move. Not for many long minutes.

  You’re being paranoid, she told herself. Her hand cupped the heavy pounding of her heart, holding panic in her palm. She’d changed her name. Used disposable cell phones, didn’t have a credit card. The apartment was leased under Lyle’s name, utilities paid for by the company.

  But Dennis was out of jail by now. And he’d be looking for her.

  She crushed her hair against the glass, resting her head on the door. Adrenaline made her stomach churn and her head fuzzy.

  “Stop it,” she whispered. “Just stop it.”

  What you should do is get in your car and drive aw
ay, the demon said, sucking on a Virginia Slim.

  “What the hell do you know?” she muttered.

  She didn’t want to run. Not anymore. She had a new life, and this was the first damn day of it.

  Taking herself in hand, she pushed open the door and held her head high as she walked to her car. She wasn’t going to cower. Not for the likes of Dennis Murphy.

  The morning was already hot by the time she got to the ranch and the sun hadn’t even been up very long, which did not bode well for the rest of the day and its relationship to her hair.

  Her body, against her express demands, tightened in expectation.

  Luc.

  As if to defy her body and those expectations, she didn’t look around as she got out of the car. She didn’t glance over her shoulder, seeking him out.

  Nope. She opened the greenhouse and the first order of business was taking every stash of candy—from the gummi bears in the supply cabinet to the Riesen in the bottom drawer of her desk, the Mike and Ikes in her purse, all of it—and dumping it in the garbage can.

  It hurt, she couldn’t lie, but it was a new day.

  After that bit of housekeeping, she unpacked the sleek laptop Lyle had bought her. She’d had wireless installed in the whole ranch last year, so it took only moments for her to access her emails.

  Her business phone rang, distracting her from an email from a Nigerian prince who so desperately wanted to give her his money.

  “Baker Leather,” she said, deleting the email.

  “Hi, Tara Jean, it’s Randy Jenkins.”

  She felt actual affection for Randy, who, during the process of her taking over operations for Baker Leather, never treated her with anything but respect.

  “What can I do for you, Randy?”

  “Well, I’m looking for Luc.”

  “Luc?” She spun in her chair. “Why’d you call me?”

  “Because he’s not answering my calls. And I know you’re still at the ranch. Is he?”

  “Far as I know,” she said, though she had no real proof. A sense. That expectation low in her belly. Her skin buzzing with dim electricity.

  “Well, I think you better hunt him down. I need him to come in and sign papers so the Crooked Creek and Baker Leather can actually do business.”

  “I’m doing plenty of business.”

  “Well, not for much longer if he doesn’t come in here and relinquish signing authority. You can’t sign a check for over five thousand dollars, Tara Jean. Not without a letter from me signed by Luc.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked. “I own forty percent of the business!”

  “That doesn’t change things. Not unless Luc cooperates.”

  She slouched back in her chair, staring up through the glass ceiling at the birds flying through the blue sky.

  One thing she was sure of: there was no way, absolutely no way she was going to get tangled with Luc on the first day of her new life.

  “We paid all the big bills before Lyle died,” she said. “I can handle things until next month.”

  “And then …?”

  “And then, I figure you’ll have taken care of this little problem.”

  There was a long silence that gave Tara Jean the impression that real business owners didn’t act this way. Fine. She was learning.

  “Well, if you see him, tell him to get his ass into Dallas, first thing.”

  “Absolutely,” she said, scanning her emails. If she had any intention of seeing him, she’d tell him.

  Around lunch she headed toward the big house, looking for a sandwich.

  She found Eli on the porch, sweating and drinking sweet tea. He was staring off down the driveway, toward the gravel road that led to Springfield.

  Eli was a staring-off-into-the-distance kind of guy, and she didn’t think anything of it until she stepped onto the verandah and he gestured with his glass over Tara’s shoulder.

  “You talked to him?”

  “Luc?” she asked. Now that Lyle was gone, there could only be one him.

  Eli nodded and Tara turned to see Luc, in shorts and a T-shirt, his head bowed on his neck like a boxer stepping into the ring, running through the midday June heat.

  Deep in her body, as if kindling had been set, ready for a match, a fire ignited.

  The gray shirt he wore was nearly black across his shoulders and down his spine. His legs … good lord, the man had nice legs.

  “What … what’s he doing?” she asked, trying not to sound slightly out of breath.

  “Running. Every day. Twice a day.”

  “You talked to him?” She treaded lightly, sensing a whole lot of pissed-off beneath his ninja calm.

  “Can’t get him to slow down long enough to say three words.”

  She thought about that call from Randy. And how Eli had been screwed in the will, how he was probably dying to turn this place on its ass and couldn’t do it without Luc signing those papers.

  I am not getting near that man today, she told herself. Not if I can help it.

  “You got anything sweet?” she asked, watching Luc’s body get smaller and smaller as he chased dust and sunlight across his own dry, flat land. “Candy? Gum?”

  “Cough drop.” He held out a Halls in a crumpled white wrapper.

  “Gross.”

  But she took it anyway.

  Tuesday morning, Luc was all over the radio on her drive to the ranch. Apparently, Melanie in the Morning had a GIANT crush on the hockey star and she was all aflutter with the idea that Luc Baker might actually get traded to the Dallas Mavericks, which Tara could only assume was a hockey team.

  Melanie in the Morning further theorized that being in Texas for his father’s funeral was probably just a cover—that Luc was really here to talk to management and work out with the team.

  Melanie probably didn’t realize how stupid she sounded. She never seemed to.

  Tara Jean flipped the radio off in disgust.

  But a day that started bad only got worse when she got to the ranch.

  “What do you mean, you’re pregnant?” she asked Jennifer Hodges, who, when she wasn’t knocked up, was Tara’s small-sized sample model.

  The final measurement for the samples was scheduled for two weeks away, the beginning of July, the second-to-last step before Tara Jean hand-delivered them to the factory where they were cut and sewn in bulk. Most of the fashion world used factories in Taiwan and Bangladesh to keep costs down, but Lyle had liked to brag that they made clothes for Americans, by Americans. Using the hides of American cows.

  Cost him a freaking bundle, but it was something to be proud of.

  But the final measurements were going to be a problem since Jennifer hadn’t kept her legs together.

  “I’m sorry,” Jennifer said. “I’m seventeen weeks and I’ve already gained ten pounds and my boobs are huge—”

  “Great, fine.” Tara pinched the bridge of her nose and eyed all that sweet, sweet candy that was still in the garbage can. “Don’t worry, Jennifer, and … congratulations.”

  Christ. What was with all the breeding going on around here?

  Now she needed a small model. For next week. She’d give it a shot herself, but her C-cups hadn’t fit into a small since she was in seventh grade.

  Today, when she went in for lunch it was Ruby standing on the porch, watching Luc run down the driveway through the shadows from the tall poplars.

  “I can’t say I like the man,” Ruby whispered, as if Luc might hear her from a hundred yards away, “but I love watching him run away.”

  “You dirty bird,” Tara laughed, and Ruby smiled.

  “I’m old, not dead. Here.” She handed Tara the mail. Tara flipped through it, and opened up the envelopes from Jones Tannery and All-American Shipping.

  Both overdue bills.

  What in the world was going on here? Lyle had signed those checks, hadn’t he?

  She made sure of things like that, usually taking the books and the bills into Lyle’s bedroom and
helping him put his shaking, indecipherable signature on the right line.

  She’d begged him to give her the authority to sign bigger checks before he died, but he’d been so wrapped up in getting his children down here, he’d pushed it off.

  Or maybe he never intended to do it.

  The betrayal bit deep.

  “Ruby, have you cleaned out Lyle’s room?”

  “Not yet.” The smile and gleam slowly leaked from her eyes. “Today, maybe.”

  “Well, I’m just gonna check and see if I left something there.”

  Ruby nodded and since Luc had run out of sight and the show was over, she headed back into the house in front of Tara.

  Lyle’s room was quiet. Abnormally hushed and dark, like a church or a bar bathed in daylight. The pieces of medical equipment sat blank-faced and unneeded, their cords curled uselessly around their necks.

  His sheets had been stripped. A naked pillow sat alone on his state-of-the-art hospital bed.

  The table by the chair where she usually sat was still filled with the various pills and creams that made Lyle comfortable. The books she and Ruby had read to him were still splayed open, their spines bent forever to the page where they’d stopped reading, like a clock stopped just when he’d died.

  Oddly enough, she wasn’t sad. It was as if the weekend had dried her out and looking at these things, the flotsam of a man’s last days, she only felt glad that she’d known him.

  She lifted the New York Times crossword puzzle that Ruby had been doing with him and found the invoices she was looking for.

  Unpaid.

  Great. The last hope she’d had that this was a mistake died.

  Now she was going to have to get the checks signed by Luc. Unless she could call the bank and sweet-talk someone into seeing things her way.

  It was stupid, but she wanted to hold onto this little fantasy that the company was hers. That she didn’t need anyone, much less a man, to make her plans come to fruition. She’d had enough of leaning hard on a man’s strong shoulder her whole damn life; she wanted to do this on her own.