Can't Buy Me Love

by Molly O'Keefe

  “No,” his eyes were kind and she got lost for a moment in those eyelashes, “which kid is yours?”

  Her blush turned radioactive. Maybe if she wasn’t such a damn hermit she’d know how to talk to handsome strangers. “Oh, my son.” Jacob was the only boy, and his fierce frown was so cartoonish both Victoria and the man laughed. “I’m afraid he doesn’t like ballet.”

  “Most boys don’t. My mom put me in violin lessons when I was your son’s age. All I wanted to do was play junior tackle.”

  Her heart shuddered at the thought of Jacob in junior tackle.

  “Are you from around here?” she asked.

  “Nope. Arkansas. My sister moved here with her husband ten years ago. I have a lot of business in Dallas and I try to visit a few times a year.” He pulled up the fabric of his black pants and crossed his legs. The distance between his knee and her thigh was minuscule and she felt his warmth through her skirt. Awareness, prickly and foreign, made her sit up straighter in her chair, pulling her leg from the magnetic force of his.

  She caught him looking at her hands, unsure of what he was doing until it dawned on her that he was checking for rings and it was so new, so strange, she clenched her fingers in her lap.

  For a long moment she wanted to just curl up and die.

  You never do anything right, she berated herself.

  “I’m sorry.” He ran a hand over his face. “I … I’m not good at this. Since my divorce … I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. There aren’t any rules for dating again. Do I just ask if you’re married? Or do I just wait until your husband walks in and I get my hopes crushed?”

  She stared at her hands, her ears buzzing. How was this happening? Here? Now? He made her feel somehow young. As if the last year of her life were melting away under this man’s attention. “No rings,” she finally said, glancing sideways in time to see him smile.

  “Are you from here?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “My father died, and my son and I are spending the summer getting things in order.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your father.” His sympathy, while sweet and warm and comforting, made her uncomfortable, all too aware of the half-truths she’d been telling.

  “Don’t be,” she said with a half-smile. “We weren’t close. Lyle Baker wasn’t close to anyone, really.”

  “Lyle Baker? Lyle Baker died?” He blew out a long breath.

  “Did you know him?”

  He nodded slowly, his gaze unblinking, on his feet. “We did some real estate deals a few years ago. I knew he’d been sick … I can’t believe Old Man Baker is dead. He was such a force of nature.”

  Victoria felt oddly like she should comfort this stranger, who was taking her father’s death with more honest grief than she’d been able to manufacture.

  “Tell me—” He stopped, then lifted his hand, cutting himself off. “Never mind. I’m sorry, this is personal.”

  “How about you ask and I’ll decide.”

  “Did your father marry a woman named Tara Jean Sweet?”

  “How do you know about her?”

  “Well, last time I was in town that was the rumor, and I knew a girl in high school named Jane Simmons … she’d changed her name to Tara Jean Sweet and honestly, I can’t believe there are two women with a name like that.”

  “They didn’t get married,” she said, trying not to mutter. Trying not to sound raw and angry at just the mention of the woman’s name. “He died first.”

  “Is she blond? Real pretty?”

  Victoria nodded and the man laughed, wiping a hand over an astonished face. “Wow. Small world, huh?”

  “Were you good friends?”

  His hesitation spoke volumes. “We grew up together, but she was … she was a troubled kid.”

  Without a doubt they were talking about the same Tara Jean Sweet.

  “She’s still at the ranch,” she said.

  “I’ll have to stop by … if that’s all right?”

  “Of course,” she said. She wasn’t sure what force was motivating her. The drugging nature of his smile, the length of his eyelashes, the price tag on that watch. She didn’t know and she wasn’t going to scrutinize it. In a life that was being scrutinized down to the last penny, she was going to—for once—act without thinking everything to death.

  “Come on out tonight,” she said. “After class. My brother is picking us up here. You and Abby can follow us.”

  “Oh, Abby’s mom is picking her up. But I would come … if you’re sure.”

  She nodded, definitively, her smile so wide and real it nearly hurt to keep it.

  “That would be great, thank you.” His eyes touched her face, wandered across her lips. “You have a beautiful smile,” he said, and she blushed with pleasure.

  “My name is Victoria,” she said, leaving off her last name in case it should once again ruin everything.

  “I’m very happy to meet you, Victoria.” His hand took hers and she felt the buzz and the thrill, the cloud of desire enter her bloodstream. “My name is Dennis.”

  Saturday night, Tara Jean walked into the house looking for Ruby. She’d stuck close to the ranch, scared that Dennis might be waiting for her at her apartment if he hadn’t left town, but as the days passed it became more obvious that he’d moved on.

  All week she’d been coming into the house long past dinner, avoiding the family and eating leftovers hunched over the sink. Trying not to see anyone. Well, trying not to see Luc, mostly.

  But now, this small-sized model crisis was forcing her to face the dragons in their den.

  It was dinnertime, but the formal dining room was empty, not even set for dinner. The kitchen was still, nothing bubbling away on the stove, no delicious smells wafting from the oven.

  Very bizarre.

  “Hello?” she yelled. Only silence answered.

  She walked down dark hallways, past hushed rooms, and realized that the house used to be like this; just a few weeks ago, when it was only her and Ruby minding Lyle in turns. Eli joined them occasionally, but he usually slept in his house on the other side of the creek three miles away.

  Funny how a family seemed to pad a house, fill its empty spaces. Crowd into the corners. So when that family was gone the house seemed extra empty. Incomplete.

  The TV was on in the den and she followed the sound of applause only to find Ruby and Celeste, eating tuna fish and green grapes, their feet propped up on the coffee table. Watching a dance show on the flat screen.

  “Hi,” Ruby said, popping up when she saw Tara Jean. Guilty, as if she’d been caught consorting with the enemy.

  “Where is everyone?” Tara asked, and Celeste finally turned to look at her. The elegant woman wore red yoga pants with a matching jacket, the color making her dramatic hair even more theatrical.

  “Well, Luc found an ice rink in Dallas, and Victoria took Jacob to his dance class,” she said.

  “Oh,” Tara Jean said, all the courage she’d mustered up to face the dragons in their den falling flat. The dragons were eating tuna and watching a dance show. That didn’t require much courage.

  But Celeste was still staring at her like she had some fire to breathe. “My son tells me that you are a designer for Lyle’s little leather store.”

  “The little leather store is actually a multimillion-dollar chain,” she said, prickling up probably just as Celeste intended.

  “You still making cheap bags and thongs?”

  “Only the cheapest.”

  Celeste’s beautiful lips that could only be maintained by the grace of God, or the careful and subtle application of collagen on a regular basis, curled into a smile.

  “Ruby,” Tara said, ignoring Celeste and getting back to the matters of her kingdom. “Does your niece still live in Springfield?”

  Ruby nodded, tuna clinging for life to her wide bottom lip.

  “Remember last year when she helped me with some fittings? Do you think she could do it again?”

  Ru
by rolled her eyes. “She made us all crazy for weeks talking about her big modeling break, and three weeks later she was back working doubles at Dairy Queen. I’m sure she’d love to do it. I can call her.”

  “It’s two weeks, not much notice—”

  “We’ll see.” Ruby relaxed back into her seat. “If you want tuna salad, there’s more in the fridge.”

  “No, thank you,” Tara said, but her stomach growled in protest. Celeste smirked.

  In the kitchen, she filled a bowl and grabbed some grapes and crackers, and then lingered in the quiet room, suffering a strange attack of indecision.

  She could go to her room, or back out to the workshop—there was always work to be done. But for some reason the den seemed more appealing. She wasn’t invested in the TV show, and Lyle’s ex-wife clearly didn’t like her. But still, it seemed more interesting than being by herself.

  Feeling oddly defiant, she went back into the den and sat in the oversized chair.

  By the time the show was over, Tara Jean was fully committed to the young break dancer from Los Angeles, and Ruby had brought out a box of chocolate chip cookies that totally negated the virtuousness of the tuna fish.

  But Celeste ate two and it seemed like a party.

  The front door slammed open, smashing the encapsulated peace of the den, and Tara Jean leapt out of her chair, her heart in her throat.

  “Hello!” Jacob yelled, and Tara crumpled slightly in relief.

  Celeste was staring at her, her brilliant eyes missing nothing.

  “We’re in here!” Celeste yelled, and it sounded as if a herd of elephants stampeded toward them. Such was the power of one excited kid.

  “Hey,” Jacob said, charging into the room, his face flushed and his hair askew. His eyes were bright, and Tara Jean smiled in response to the electric joy that radiated out of him like sunshine. She wanted to tilt her head back and bathe in that boy’s sunlight.

  Luc followed, his eyes finding her right away, and the smile froze on her face. He wore jeans and a gray T-shirt that stretched over his shoulders and flirted with the strong muscles of his chest. The shirt was indecent. The shirt should be arrested.

  But his face was a warning flag, tense and lined, as if he were waiting for an outcome that was bad either way.

  “Tara Jean,” Jacob said, jumping on one foot. “You’ll never guess.”

  She jerked back, surprised that the boy was talking to her.

  “Guess what?” she stammered.

  “We ran into an old friend of yours,” Victoria said, stepping into the room. She looked changed too. Gone was the weariness, replaced by a manic brightness, totally manufactured and slightly scary.

  “Hello, Tara Jean,” the devil cooed, looking smug and rotten. A cancer in this house.

  It was Dennis.

  chapter

  14

  Mr. Beanfang had taught Tara a lesson about security. All of them had, but because Mr. Beanfang was first, he was tattooed into her brain with the ink of shame and regret. God, she’d been a kid, fresh from her sixteenth birthday, though she’d probably been the oldest sixteen-year-old around.

  She’d just met Dennis at one of the lowest points in her whole life and he’d seemed like … a rainbow. A promise sent from heaven that the bad times were over.

  Mr. Beanfang had been Dennis’s idea. Dennis had convinced her to take part in his scam because Mr. Beanfang was dying and he was rich and most importantly, he was alone. No one would care who he gave his money away to.

  And Mr. Beanfang had so much money it didn’t seem to matter. It was as if the dollar bills were litter on his bedside table, his dresser, stuffed into the pockets of his robe. He gave it away to everyone—to the orderlies, the woman who came in to cut his toenails and trim his nose hair.

  Those good and honest people tried to refuse, but he insisted. Tara didn’t even try to refuse.

  For her entire life she’d equated money with security. But none of Mr. Beanfang’s money kept him safe.

  That first day when she’d come in pretending to look for her own grandfather, he’d asked her to sit, told her that she looked like his long dead wife. They’d talked, and when she offered to read him the paper, his big blue eyes went watery and his hands shook with gratitude.

  The plan had worked so well it felt like fate. Like God saying it was all right to take some of this man’s excess for all the years of nothing she’d had.

  He gave her money. Watches. A pearl ring that had belonged to his wife.

  And she made him a victim.

  Security was a sham. That was Mr. Beanfang’s lesson.

  Forty percent of a company didn’t make Tara Jean secure. Leaving that hospital four years ago, running away from Dennis with a concussion and three broken ribs, an eye so swollen she couldn’t see out of it, to come out here with Lyle didn’t make her secure.

  Money. The apartment with the locks. Changing her name.

  None of it had worked.

  Staring at Dennis in the TV room of the Crooked Creek Ranch, she realized she hadn’t scared away the devil. She’d waved a red flag in front of his eyes.

  She’d invited him here with her brave fuck-off.

  Fear was a sandstorm obliterating the landscape.

  Her ears buzzed while handshakes were exchanged. Friendly greetings. She heard, through the deafening drone of her panic and fear, Dennis talk about being in town on a real-estate business deal.

  An old lie. Threadbare and full of holes.

  He was desperate, working off the dimming wattage of his smile. His slick suit and finely polished shoes.

  A high-gloss patina on a fake.

  But the act still played. Even Celeste seemed to be buying it.

  And Victoria, Christ—Victoria was eating it up as fast as Dennis could spoon it out.

  “Can I talk to you?” It was as if she’d screamed into a tin can—her voice was too loud, too sharp. Everyone stared at her, as though she was the one poisoning the air. “It’s been so long,” she said with a smooth smile, sliding her arm under Dennis’s. Her skin crawled at the touch; her stomach heaved at his nearness.

  “Of course,” he said, smiling down at her fondly and then back up at the gathered Bakers. “It was a pleasure.”

  Again, friendly exchanges. Polite and civilized all the way around, and inside Tara was begging for mercy. Finally, she was able to lead him out into the hallway.

  “Nice place you got here,” he murmured, his eyes missing nothing. Not the paintings or the rugs. He could put price tags on the light fixtures.

  She led him out of the house and down the verandah steps, across the yard to the door of the greenhouse.

  The gate to her kingdom.

  For a moment, she hesitated, unsure of how she could clean this place of him once he’d stepped inside.

  But he was here and she had to handle it.

  She unlocked the door and flipped on the light, and as soon as he was in the greenhouse, she dropped his arm, getting as far away from him as she could.

  “Surprised you, didn’t I?” He grinned at her as if he’d brought an unexpected bouquet of flowers instead of ruination.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You can’t run from me, Jane.” He shook his head, as if she were a bad student. He stepped farther into the studio and ran his hands over the cutting table, trailing his fingers across the white leather bustier on the tailor dummy.

  Don’t look, the demon whispered, the way she used to when one of her boyfriends would trash their trailer. Don’t let yourself see what he touches.

  The weight of his filth, of his malice, turned the air to mud and she couldn’t breathe. But she’d stared this man down once; she could do it again.

  “We’re done, Dennis.”

  “Well, now, I think my being here changes that, doesn’t it?”

  It did. It really did.

  Because it proved that she wasn’t going to be able to sever herself from him without payment. She should hav
e known that to begin with.

  “Fine.” With hands that shook, she took out her checkbook. The company checkbook, big and black, representative of so much more money than she had, sat under it. She left it there, slamming shut the desk drawer. “I gave ten thousand dollars back to Terry Dickow—”

  “I don’t want ten grand.” He slid toward her like a snail on his own malevolence.

  “All I have in my savings is twelve thousand dollars.” The closer he got, the harder it was to hide her fear, and she wanted to stand there and be strong, impervious, but when he cleared the corner of her desk she sidestepped.

  The moment she moved, he was on her. His hand a clamp around her throat, lifting her chin. His eyes bored into hers and he pushed her against the wall, her head ricocheting off the wall.

  “You don’t tell me to fuck off. You don’t walk away from me.”

  “Okay. Okay.” She clutched his hands, trying to get him to stop.

  “You and me, we’re never done. Change your name. Move. It doesn’t matter.” He leaned close, his chin grazing her neck, and she swallowed a whimper. “I could smell you, Jane. A hundred miles away. In jail. At night. I could taste you.”

  She swallowed back bile and shut her eyes, gathering her forces as best she could.

  “How much … how much money, Dennis?”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars.”

  Her eyes flew open. “What?”

  He squeezed her throat, shook her, like she was a rag doll and he was a dinosaur. Stupid theory about holding her own in a fight with smaller men. She was just so stupid sometimes.

  “Two hundred,” he cooed in her face, leaning forward so his breath spilled like a minty-fresh garbage dump over her mouth.

  “Or what?” she spat.

  This was how she’d ended up in the hospital. He could beat her, but he couldn’t break her. She could fight. So she would.

  He stepped closer until his body pressed against hers and she could feel his erection, like a knife against her stomach.

  The fear became so dense, so all-encompassing, that she was suddenly lifted free of it, carried on the painless wings of shock.

  “I don’t have two hundred thousand dollars,” she said. “Rape me. Beat me. That won’t change.”