Can't Buy Me Love

by Molly O'Keefe

  He’d been sixteen the last time she visited. A boy on the edge of manhood, growing into his body and his glower. Which clearly, he’d perfected. Eli had been the object of many a teenage fantasy.

  “Do you still ride?” he asked, picking up another hoof. She edged around toward the horse’s head, trying to keep her face hidden.

  “Me? Oh, no. No. No riding. Not many horses in Manhattan.”

  Though she could have had them. She could have had anything. But when she’d married Joel, horses, this barn, her early love affair with both, had become a part of her past. A past she had pushed away with as much force as possible.

  “I wasn’t very good with them anyway.”

  “That’s not true.”

  She watched him with one eye, waiting, suddenly breathless for more.

  “That’s what my father always told me.”

  “Your father was an ass.”

  She laughed, she laughed so hard tears ran down her eyes and she didn’t notice him watching her from over the horse’s back.

  He pointed to her face, suddenly intent and focused. On her. That affable mystery turned predatory, and she remembered, stupidly, that she was in the barn trying to hide her busted-up lip and cheek.

  “What happened?” His lips barely moved.

  The ice rearranged itself in the tea towel she held up to her cheek and he reached forward as if to pull it away, but she stepped out of the way.

  “Don’t,” she said, implacable. Staring at him dead center in a way she’d never been able to do before.

  “Who hit you?”

  If she told him, she knew instinctively what would happen. Eli would tell Luc and then, with all the best intentions, they would take care of her problem, not even caring whether that was what she wanted. Or even needed.

  And the desire to tell him, to sway just slightly toward him, to have him cradle her against that admittedly handsome chest, it was a potent desire.

  But it was a desire born out of habit. For too long she’d been cared for. Petted and worried over without ever once stepping up and handling her life herself.

  It felt as if her bones were breaking, but not in a painful way. In an empowering way, as if suddenly she was breaking down her own prison walls, the limitations and restraints she’d put on herself for so long that she no longer saw them.

  Like a woman living in a dollhouse, thinking it was a palace.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she told Eli, and she meant it. Was proud of the implacable nature of her voice, like she was an authority in her own damn life.

  About time.

  Luc stared out the safety glass at the small knot of reporters that had collected outside the arena doors. He’d been avoiding it, making a last-ditch effort to pretend his life was as it had been. But it was time to give his statement. Beckett was going to have his ass for not making it official—no press conference, no written statement. No him.

  But somehow, in front of this little arena that oddly felt like a huge part of his future, ending his career felt right.

  The second he stepped out the door, the reporters swarmed, mics in his face, the lights on the cameras blinding him, and it became obvious that he’d lost his touch when he reached up an arm to shield his eyes.

  “Ice Man.” It was good old Addie Eggers; decent of her to come all the down from Toronto to witness the end of his career. “Do you have anything to say—”

  He waved his hands as if he were brushing away annoying flies. “Calm down, kids. Just relax. I’ll give you my statement.”

  The silence after his words was so deep, he felt like he might lose his balance and just topple in. “I’m old. My brain is broken. And I’m done.”

  “Who knocked you out, Luc?” she asked. “Has the front office brought legal action against him?”

  “No one knocked me out. I was on the ice with a kid, but … this is a problem I’ve had.”

  “What about the rumors that you’re coaching a Junior A team down here in Texas?” Addie asked.

  “I’m coaching peewee hockey,” he said. “That’s it for the foreseeable future. If that changes …” He smiled at her. “I imagine you’ll be the first to know.”

  Within two hours, his phone was ringing constantly.

  Frustrated, he flipped it open looking at the number on display. “Gates—”

  “We’ve got a development,” Thiele said, and Luc pushed away from the boards he’d been leaning against.

  “You found Dennis?”

  “No. Not really. But he made a purchase from a source of mine who just contacted me. So we know he’s in the Dallas area.”

  “I already knew that,” Luc barked, having no problem taking his anger out on the undeserving private investigator. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “He bought a gun.”

  chapter

  29

  Luc’s heart pounded in his throat, the sensation of losing control a hideous freefall. He took off down the front steps while the streetlights flickered on across the street.

  Frantic, he called Tara Jean’s cell phone but it clicked right over to voice mail.

  “Look,” he said, squeezing the phone so hard his hand ached. “I know you’re upset, but we’ve got a problem. Dennis bought a gun. You need to call me.”

  Back to the ranch, he thought, his brain firing and misfiring, all the wires pulled and crossed. Maybe she had changed her mind. Maybe she was there, waiting. Safe.

  He ran back inside the arena to gather up Billy and Jacob, to take them back to his father’s home, where despite all of his best intentions, he always seemed to fuck up.

  In the end, it wasn’t that hard to get a message to Dennis. She called the bars where he used to hang out and left messages with bartenders and a few of his sleaze-bag friends that she was leaving town, heading back to Arkansas.

  She didn’t know how much time she had, but she worked as fast as she could. Packing up all of her boxes and shoving them into the Honda hatchback. Ignoring the constant ringing of her phone. It was Luc. And there was nothing more to say.

  Sad, she thought, looking at the garbage bags and recycled produce boxes that held all her worldly belongings. That was just sad.

  The sun had set not long ago and she wanted to be on the road soon. She had no intention of going to Arkansas, but she prayed that Dennis would believe her, follow her little trail of crumbs in the wrong direction. Instead, she was thinking of New Orleans. A woman could get lost in a city like that.

  She ran back into her apartment, left the keys on the kitchen table, and ignored any impulse to look around, wanting to get on the road before Dennis came looking for her.

  But when she turned, Dennis stood in the open front door.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked, so familiar it was like looking in the mirror.

  “Back home,” she muttered, using everything she had to keep herself calm. Too late. She’d waited too long. She’d even managed to screw this up.

  “Where’s my money?” he demanded. He was already drunk, mean drunk, and there was an explosion of fear in her chest.

  For a moment she contemplated a lie, a diversion. But she didn’t have the capacity for it anymore; there was nothing she needed as much as him out of the Bakers’ lives.

  She shook her head. “There’s no money. I fucked up.”

  “I should know better than to count on you.”

  “That’s right,” she said, laughing a little. “You should. So beat the shit out of me, or whatever you’re planning. But I don’t have any money.”

  He stepped closer, staggering slightly, and when he put his hand up to the wall to steady himself, something heavy clattered against it.

  A gun.

  She backed away, running into a kitchen chair, sending it screeching along the linoleum. “What are you doing with that?” In all the horrible things she’d seen Dennis do, a gun had never been involved. Whatever was happening to Dennis, whoever was after him—it must be bad. Worse than ever.


  “This old thing?” He wagged it in the air, his flippancy raising gooseflesh over her arms.

  Dennis was pushed to the wall, wild-eyed and evil. Scared.

  “Who is after you, Dennis?”

  “Someone a whole lot smarter than you.” He waved the gun at her. “Get up. Let’s go for a drive.”

  Luc paced the front porch, a watchdog on high alert. His failures were hot coals under his feet, a burning pain in his head. Frantically, for the last few hours he’d been trying to make things right.

  But no one knew where Tara Jean lived in Springfield. Not Ruby. Not Eli. Not Randy Jenkins. Not Victoria, who’d shut herself up in her dark room with a migraine.

  He’d known since he first came to the ranch that she was off the grid. Untraceable. Every bill paid in cash. No land line. No address.

  But now he knew it was all to prevent Dennis from finding her.

  And now Dennis had a gun and he was looking for the two hundred thousand dollars she didn’t have.

  Thiele was trying to find Dennis in Dallas with no luck, and Luc was stuck pacing the porch.

  In his desperation he concocted a half-assed plan, unsure if Dennis would show here. He called the cops to tell them what he knew about the protection order and Dennis buying a gun. He asked them to find Tara Jean Sweet using the address on the forms she’d filed at the courthouse, but they didn’t have those forms. Randy Jenkins didn’t have access to them either. He wouldn’t until Monday morning.

  So that left him, a house full of his family, and Eli out behind the house with his twelve gauge if things went to shit before the police arrived.

  An hour passed, and he wondered if he was jumping at shadows. Expecting the worst when there was another explanation for everything.

  And then he heard it, the sound of tires over gravel. No headlights, though. Nothing but shadows and a sense of foreboding that crashed up against this house like a storm.

  He knew in his gut that in that car was Dennis, sneaking up on his family.

  Luc pumped the shotgun in his hands.

  The front door behind him slipped open and Ruby’s unusually pale face peeked through the crack.

  “What was that?” she asked. “Tara?”

  He shook his head. “You’d better stay inside. Call the police.”

  The front lawn was washed in moonlight, creating a gray, flat landscape. The shadows were so thick past the gleaming bumpers of the cars that it took a second to see Tara Jean’s pale face, silvered in tears. His heart hammered in quick relief.

  “Well, look who’s here, Tara,” Dennis said, all bonhomie. His arm slung over her shoulder like they were two drunks out on the town. But the gun in his hand stood out, a black nightmare against the pale skin of Tara’s throat, the white gauze of her sweater. “The very man we wanted to see. But that shotgun has got to go, Luc.”

  His hands flexed on the barrel, but when Dennis held the gun to Tara’s head he slid it to the ground, not wanting to antagonize the man. Police would be here in twenty minutes, if they ignored the speed limit.

  Twenty minutes.

  A period of NHL hockey.

  The world stopped turning; birds were silent and the breeze was still. His heart slowed to a calm rhythm and the world receded to this moment. This spot on the earth. That gun and the woman he loved.

  “What do you want?”

  “Not so nice, is it, Ice Man, having someone spy on you? Having someone show up outside your house demanding things, like they’ve got the right.”

  “I’m sorry I had you followed—”

  “Not as sorry as your sister was. Or you’re going to be.”

  Cold hands squeezed his guts. He could barely look at Tara without seeing the mistakes she’d warned him not to make. It’s on you if this blows up in your face, that’s what she’d said.

  And she had been so right.

  “Just … tell me what you want.”

  “What do you think I want?” Dennis asked. “I want some fucking money.”

  “Fine—”

  “No!” Tara cried, and Dennis shoved her hard to the ground and she skidded across the gravel. Luc lurched off the porch toward her.

  “Luc! No!”

  Immediately, he realized his mistake—he’d left the door open and Dennis, always a man with an eye on an upgrade, had climbed up the steps of the porch kicking the shotgun into the bushes.

  “I’ll get you money,” Luc said, crouching over Tara but keeping his eyes on Dennis. “Right now. Just … I need to go inside.”

  Run down the clock, that was all he had to do. Run down the clock.

  “Call someone else,” Dennis said, pointing the gun with terrible intent toward Tara’s head. “You can wait out here with us—”

  “Uncle Luc?”

  For a moment, the world rushed back into place as his nephew stood in the doorway in his SpongeBob Square-Pants pajamas, rubbing his eyes, his curls waving in the breeze.

  “Jacob!” Luc yelled but it was too late—Dennis grabbed the boy, holding the gun to his temple.

  “I think the boy makes a much better bartering chip than you, sweetheart,” Dennis said, sneering at Tara. “In fact, I want money and whatever jewelry is inside that house. Now.”

  “Fine,” Luc said, holding out his hands, edging toward the porch. “I’ll go—”

  “Not you.” Dennis shook his head and leaned down to whisper in Jacob’s ear. “Call for your mommy.”

  Jacob’s scared-rabbit eyes turned to Luc, who could only nod and clench his fists.

  His plan to stall burned to a crisp in his anger. Now he just wanted to kill Dennis. Beat him into a pulp for scaring Jacob.

  “Mommy!” Jacob’s trembling voice pierced the night, accompanied by Tara’s guttural moan.

  In a heartbeat Victoria was in the doorway, panting and terrified.

  “Jacob!” she cried, lurching toward him until she saw the gun in Dennis’s hands. She stopped on a dime and Luc got a hard look at the bruising on her face, he hadn’t seen it before this moment, and he wanted to scream at his ineffectiveness. For a man who prided himself on taking care of everyone he loved, he’d been doing a shit job of it.

  “Well, hello there,” Dennis said to Victoria. “You look like you ran into quite a door.”

  In Dennis’s arms Jacob started to wheeze, his small chest heaving.

  “He needs his inhaler!” Victoria cried, holding her fingers to her lips. “Dennis, whatever you want, you can have. But let him go. Please, he has asthma.”

  “Well,” Dennis said. “You better hurry.”

  “Hurry?” She shook, her eyes locked on her son, shock making a mess of her.

  “Vicks,” Luc said, trying to pull her attention away from the dark barrel of that gun pressed to Jacob’s head. “Go inside, get the money from Dad’s desk. My bedroom dresser. And get the jewelry from Celeste’s room.”

  “I’ll go,” Tara said, stepping forward, but Dennis pulled the boy up the stairs, getting in her way.

  “Sit down,” Dennis told Tara. “Like a good dog.”

  This situation was fraying at every corner, pulling at every seam, and Luc had to fix this. Control it.

  “Go,” he said to his sister, reaching up to her arm, nudging her into action. His touch seemed to snap her forward and she ducked back into the dark doorway.

  “Listen to your brother, Victoria,” Dennis said. “The minute I hear sirens I’m leaving, with the money or the kid.”

  “Dennis,” Tara said, stepping up the steps toward him. The smile on her face was the bravest thing Luc had ever seen. “Let’s just go. The cops are coming. We’ll start over someplace new. Florida. Imagine those rich old men in the retirement homes down there! We’ll make more there than we can here.”

  “Tara,” Luc breathed, broken at her efforts to protect them. “Don’t do this—”

  But Dennis talked over him and he wasn’t sure if Tara was even listening to him. “Right. Like I’m going to trust you again.�
��

  “You can, Dennis. I swear. I made a mistake. But … I want to do this. Let’s just go.”

  “I can’t just go. I need this money to get out of a little jam.”

  Jacob wheezed in Dennis’s arms.

  “Okay, Dennis.” She reached a trembling hand for Dennis’s shoulder, like she was touching a lover, and Luc felt like dying watching her sacrifice herself. “But please, let Jacob have his inhaler. Please. There’s one in the truck.”

  “It’s sweet how attached she is to the kid, isn’t it?” Dennis asked, as if Tara Jean weren’t there, and Luc got an ugly view of what her life must have been like with this asshole. “I mean, I’m surprised as hell. She hates kids.”

  Jacob’s lips were turning blue.

  “Screw you, Dennis,” Tara snapped, and she ran toward the truck.

  “Tara, stop!” Luc cried, knowing it was just the kind of thing to make Dennis lose it.

  Dennis fired the gun, and gravel and dust exploded four feet in front of Tara. Luc’s heart stopped. Tara froze. The gunshot echoed, filling the silence for miles.

  Eli, he thought, come on, Eli. He had to have heard that.

  “You move,” Dennis sneered, “when I say you can move.” He waited a second, a sick smile crossing his face. “Go ahead.”

  She ran to the car and grabbed the inhaler and then raced back to Jacob, helping him with the puffer.

  Luc stepped forward to help, to get closer, within arm’s distance to that weak little man and his gun.

  “Un-uh,” Dennis sang. “Stay back there, Ice Man.”

  Luc stopped, chewing his tongue, feeling blocked in at every step.

  Jacob caught his breath, the color returning to his cheeks.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Tara whispered, and Dennis shoved her backward.

  She nearly tripped and fell down the porch steps, but Luc grabbed her.

  “Holy shit, Dennis!” Luc yelled, pulling Tara back, while frustration chewed through his control. “We’re doing everything you want. Just relax!”

  “When I’ve got the money,” Dennis said, all his bonhomie gone, the wide-eyed smiling act vanishing. “Hurry up!” he yelled over his shoulder.