The Tycoon

by Molly O'Keefe

  “Would you sleep with me?”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “Would you let me touch you again?”

  “Is that what you want?” I cried. “Sex? Seems a little clichéd, if you ask me, but you’re the millionaire businessman.” I was shaking, furious at him and myself for letting those words register even a little. To pull with their fishhook sharpness the memories from where I’d hidden them. I began to undo my buttons on my black jacket. It was all show, but it was a good one and I was committed.

  “But if that’s what you want, let’s get to it.”

  “Veronica—”

  “Do I have to enjoy it? Can I close my eyes and think of England? Another man?”

  “Is there another man?” he asked, through hard lips.

  I leaned in to whisper, “A million.”

  There was no way it hurt him, but I felt like a badass saying it.

  “You never were a good liar,” he said. His eyes, a brown so dark they were almost black, were glittering. Illuminated.

  No one had touched me in five years. That’s how badly he broke me. That’s the damage he caused.

  “Well, you were certainly good enough for both of us. Now, what is it you really want, because we both know sex with me was only the price you had to pay.”

  “That’s really what you think?” he asked. I didn’t realize he’d stepped forward until I took a deep breath and my breasts touched his jacket. I stumbled back, trying to get out of range.

  Thelma finally earned her keep and barked at Clayton.

  “No!” he said in a loud, clear voice, right at Thelma, and she stopped barking. She simply looked at me, and then back at him, like she wasn’t sure what had just happened.

  “Don’t yell at my dog,” I said.

  “Then control her.”

  “I am. She’s protecting me. Against you.”

  He opened his mouth as if to say I didn’t need protecting. I could actually see him thinking it. The words he wanted to say—I’m not going to hurt you—were practically written on his face.

  But he’d already hurt me. And we both knew it.

  “What is the condition, Clayton? It’s been a long day and I’m not interested in games.”

  Unreadable, he watched me and then, to my surprise, he looked away, staring up at the bright blue Texas sky. “Let’s hear what your brother has to say, first,” he said.

  “Are you playing with me?” I asked. “Because I’m not the girl you knew.”

  “I know,” he said. “But maybe I’m not the man you knew, either.”

  He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small gold watch.

  My stomach curled up and twisted with pain and a remembered longing.

  The watch I gave him.

  He opened it to check the time.

  “Lunch is being served,” he said. “You should have something to eat.”

  “What…what are you doing with that?” I asked, pointing at the watch.

  “You gave it to me.”

  “No.” I shook my head. Of all the things that had happened today, this felt the most dire, the most likely to bring me all the way down to the ground. “I gave that to the man I thought you were. Someone totally different than you.”

  “Veronica. I am the man—”

  I shook my head and held out my hand. “Give me the watch.”

  “You’re taking it back?”

  “I am. I’m taking it back.”

  If he wanted to argue, he didn’t. He just ran his thumb over the case, like he was giving it a fond farewell, and then he pressed it into my hand.

  He said nothing else. He just turned and walked away.

  Thelma barked after him. So tough now that he was gone.

  He’s right, I thought. He’s not the man I knew. The man I fell in love with. The man I let touch me and whom I touched with such care and desire.

  That man didn’t exist.

  He never had.

  And I had to remember that.

  But why had he kept the watch?

  7

  VERONICA

  Bea, when I found her, was pushing gnocchi around a small plate and hiding behind a post in the ballroom.

  “Have you seen Trudy?”

  “Shhhh,” she said. “Don’t scare them away.”

  “Who?” I asked and pulled some gnocchi off her plate. It tasted amazing and like cardboard at the same time. The wonder of funeral food.

  “Sabrina and Sheriff Garrett Pine.”

  “Shit. He’s sheriff now?” That made total sense, actually.

  “And, like…super hot. It’s classic. Both of them are trying to ignore that the other is here, but they are constantly sneaking peeks at each other.”

  I looked over Bea’s shoulder to find Sabrina, as Bea had said, glancing over at her long-time crush, Garrett. Who, Bea was right, had grown into a very handsome man. But in the clean-cut, slightly rigid way of police officers. He had been like that even before he was a cop. And just looking at them, you could see that they were so wrong for each other.

  And yet Sabrina, who had dated two members of One Direction when they were the biggest thing on Earth couldn’t let this guy go.

  “What did he do to Sabrina?” Bea asked. “A spell of some kind?”

  “I think he broke her heart. Where’s his wife?” I asked.

  Bea looked over her shoulder at me. “Holy shit, you didn’t hear what happened to Garrett Pine? He got left at the altar. Like, literally.”

  Huh. There must be something in the water around here. Too much betrayal in these wide-open spaces. But nothing about it was funny; I knew how it felt to be hurt like that.

  “Sorry to hear it, but now is not the time. We need to talk,” I said to Bea and pulled her and her gnocchi into the long screened-in porch along the back of the house.

  This used to be our mother’s favorite place. Every evening after dinner she’d bring us out here to play in the evening cool. She would read, or make our dolls elaborate ball gowns or suits of armor out of thin pieces of tin. She was a miracle, our mom.

  And when night fell, she’d crowd us into her lap and we’d watch the fireflies fill the long grass and it felt like we’d be happy like that forever. She died when I was six and Bea was barely four. I don’t know if our mom was happy.

  In her marriage. Or on this ranch.

  But Bea and I were happy and that had to count for something.

  That was something Clayton and I had shared, I suddenly remembered rather unhappily. His mother died when he was young, too. A hole he said that would never be filled. He told me that the night we slept together for the first time.

  “Hey,” Bea took my hand. “What is happening with you?”

  “He kept the watch, Bea.”

  “What watch?”

  “The watch I gave him for our engagement. The watch I found and bought with my own money. The watch with that corny inscription…”

  Words I’d meant but could never, ever say to him.

  For you, forever.

  The embarrassment and the outrage were making me lightheaded and sick to my stomach.

  “I’m sorry, Veronica,” she said. Her beautiful face folded into familiar lines of apology and regret.

  What am I doing? I have bigger problems than the stupid watch.

  “It’s not your fault he kept the damn watch. I took it back, anyway. You know anyone who needs a watch?”

  “Don’t make jokes. I’m sorry about everything. All of it. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even have to talk to that asshole.”

  You’re twenty-five, I wanted to say to her. You’re not a child. You keep making mistakes like you’re some teenager and not a grown-ass woman.

  But maybe the problem was I kept saving her. Maybe she’d grow up if I wasn’t always there with my safety nets.

  “What are we going to do?” Bea asked. She sat down on the swinging bench seat, which creaked and groaned under her very slight weight.

  “
We?” I asked.

  She looked away and I knew I’d hurt her.

  “I’m sorry,” I breathed. “That was a low blow.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’m so tired of being this person, you know? The one who jumps in with both feet only to get them broken. I’m tired of being the fuck-up.”

  “You’re not a fuck-up,” I told her, it wasn’t a lie, but it was mostly hope. “Here’s what you’re going to do. Call the police, tell them what’s happened. See if they can find out what you’ve stepped into.”

  “What about the money?”

  “I’m…I’m going to see what I can do about the money.”

  “Do you think Dylan is going to come through?”

  “Maybe.”

  Bea sighed, the chair squeaked. “Yeah. Me, neither.”

  I went to bed that night with my phone beside my bed. Every notification was turned off except for email. If Dylan emailed me back, the ping would wake me up.

  Except there was no sleeping. My old bed was lumpy with bad memories and I felt both too big and too small inside it all. My only relief was that Clayton had left the ranch with only a quick, terse goodbye.

  King Industries’ headquarters were in Dallas—that’s where his condo and his life were, too.

  “I’ll be back,” he’d said at the end of the evening, standing at the door in his raincoat.

  “Like the terminator?” I joked. So dumb. Beside me, Bea had groaned.

  “Make sure she eats something,” Clayton had said to Bea.

  Why the hell was he trying to feed me all the time? It was ridiculous. And made me even more self-conscious around him. But once he walked out the door I was able to take a deep breath again. When it felt like I hadn’t been able to all night.

  Of course, once I got rid of my Spanx and put on my threadbare, never-used-for-yoga yoga pants, that helped, too.

  The ranch housed only the King girls tonight. Even Sabrina had stayed.

  I checked my phone for the millionth time but there was nothing there from my brother.

  There was, however, a text from an unknown number.

  Did you eat something?

  Only one person was consumed with my eating something, and it felt for a moment like there were fireworks going off in my brain.

  Clayton. I stabbed the screen keypad. How did you get this number?

  I’ve had this number for years.

  Bullshit.

  This is the number you got when you first moved to Austin. We’ve already established I checked in on you.

  Is that what you call stalking these days?

  The phone rang in my hand and I nearly dropped it like it was white hot.

  Of course, it was him.

  I answered before it rang again.

  “I could have you arrested,” I said.

  “Not really.”

  Talking to him on the phone in the quiet and dark was so familiar. It used to be one of the great excitements and comforts of my life.

  I rejected the memories and bristled up like a porcupine.

  “I’m trying to sleep,” I said. “What do you want?”

  “You can’t sleep,” he said. “You never could when you were stressed. And hungry…”

  Fuck. Him.

  “You don’t know me so well,” I snapped.

  “Am I wrong?”

  He wasn’t. At all. I was hungry and stressed out, and sleep seemed a million miles away.

  “Why did you keep the watch?” I asked and then winced. That was not what I wanted to say. And definitely not what I wanted to talk about. “You know, never mind—”

  “I loved that watch,” he said.

  “Stop.”

  He was quiet for so long I wondered if he’d hung up.

  “I’m so sorry, Veronica. You ran and I let you go—”

  “You didn’t let me anything.” I wanted to make that very clear.

  “I let you go without explaining,” he snapped back.”

  “What could you have explained?” I asked. The memory came up out of the dark where I’d put it. It rose with teeth and claws bared, ready to shred me to pieces. “You told me it was exactly what I thought it was. My father sold me and you bought me.”

  “Veronica. Nothing was that simple,” he said quietly. And I could hear in his voice he was going to try and reason with me. He was going to attempt to show me how nothing was what it seemed. That he wasn’t the villain in the story. Simply misunderstood.

  “Ancient history. I don’t give a shit,” I said and hung up.

  I lay in the darkness and let the old grief roll over me. The anger followed.

  I was over this; I was over him. It had taken me a long time, but I’d done it.

  The phone buzzed in my hand.

  A text from Clayton.

  Please, eat something.

  The lights were on in the kitchen and I was surprised to see Sabrina sitting at the counter, a cup of water in front of her. Even rumpled and exhausted, she was beautiful.

  Radiant. I resisted the urge to be angry or petty or small about that. The girl worked for her beauty.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” I asked her.

  “The beds here are the worst.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “You want some tea, or…something?” she asked.

  “I’m okay. Just hungry…” I pulled a banana off the bunch that sat in the small metal bowl beside the fridge.

  “Those are pure sugar, you know? Like, the worst thing to eat before bed. It will literally make you fatter.” She caught sight of my face and winced. “Not that you’re fat or anything.”

  “I think I’ll live,” I said and peeled the banana.

  She had her phone in front of her, which was nothing new. She practically lived with her phone attached to her body. But as I sat down she pulled it closer so I couldn’t see what was on it.

  “What’s got you up so late?” I asked.

  “I’ve been thinking… Maybe it’s time for me to be done with the show.”

  “What? For real?”

  “Yeah. The fans are starting to freak me out. I get some crazy emails… Plus, I do have my pride, you know. I know the show is ridiculous, but I’m not. At least, not all the time.”

  “Of course you’re not.”

  “Tell Bea that.” She sighed. “And I’m…tired.” I put my arm over her shoulder because my bright and beautiful sister seemed so much more than tired.

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “It’s not a big deal,” she said. “People quit their jobs all the time.”

  “I feel like it is, Sabrina. It feels like a really big deal. What can I do?”

  She grinned up at me with her bright smile. The one I saw on TV all the time. The one I saw through to the grief underneath.

  “I’ll be fine. I always am.”

  I put my banana down and pulled her into my arms.

  Later that night I felt the ping of an email notification in my hands and it startled me awake.

  The email had bounced. Dylan’s email address no longer worked.

  He’d shut down his account.

  The King sisters were totally on their own.

  8

  VERONICA

  The morning after the funeral I left the ranch super early. Sabrina’s car was already gone and I wondered if she’d taken off for Los Angeles so soon.

  Bea’s bedroom door was still shut, so I sent her a text.

  Fixing things. Be back soon.

  I drove into the heart of rush-hour Dallas traffic, which was to say, I drove into the gates of hell, right to the King Industries building. A big concrete-and-steel phallus pushing up into the Texas sky.

  First visit was to Madison White. Her firm was actually based out of Los Angeles, but she kept an office in the King Industries building. And she was so damn cool she didn’t even blink when I arrived at her office first thing in the morning without an appointment.

  “I didn’t think you’d be here
at this hour,” I said.

  “Clayton and I had an early meeting.”

  Right. Clayton.

  We made small talk about traffic and weather while her assistant brought me tea.

  “You’re here to see if there’s any way around the will,” she finally said.

  “It’s that obvious?” I tried to make a joke, but there wasn’t much that was funny about my life today.

  “I got the sense yesterday wasn’t what you expected to hear,” she said with a sympathetic bend of her head.

  “No. Not really.”

  “Your brother—”

  “Won’t be coming. And if he does I can’t guarantee he won’t burn the whole thing down. My sisters and I with it.”

  “He’s not that kind of man,” she said and then quickly asked, “Is he?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea what kind of man he is. But the men in my life haven’t exactly been trustworthy.”

  She coughed and glanced away, and I got the impression that she understood exactly what I was talking about.

  “But the will itself. There’s nothing I could do?”

  “You could try to contest it,” she said, sitting back in her chair. She was wearing a red silk blouse and black pencil skirt and she looked sharp enough to cut something. “But you won’t get anywhere. Hank King was of very sound mind and body when he changed it. Your best hope is your brother arriving and being a decent human.”

  Then it was hopeless.

  It suddenly made so much sense why my father changed it. How specifically he wanted us punished.

  “Did you get along with your dad?” I asked Madison.

  She blinked clearly surprised by the question. “What relevance does my family have?”

  “None,” I said and sip the tea her assistant brought me. “But I’m realizing my father changed his will because I left. And I didn’t come back. And Bea left the ranch to move in with me. And she never came back. And Sabrina left and made a name of her own.” I shook my head. “He must have known he was sick and we were never going to come back. He was punishing us for leaving him.”

  But Dylan had left too—and he still got everything if he wanted it. Because he’s the son.