Call Me: sold live on CBS 48 Hours (Barnes Brothers Book 1)

by Alison Kent

  PRAISE FOR

  CALL ME BY ALISON KENT is a book I love to read over and over again…

  I can’t even tell you how many times I have read it!

  I also loan it to friends. They love it, too!

  I am sorry to say it is now falling apart… but I never plan to throw it away.

  I hope it will go to Kindle e-books… I would buy it in a heartbeat!

  ~ Cyn, Amazon reviewer

  ONE

  It’s up to you.

  “It’s up to you” Mona Tedrick frowned at the cryptic message scrawled on the back of the business card. She flicked the white rectangle like the filter end of a cigarette and repeated, “It’s up to you? That’s it? Nothing else?”

  Reaching across the corner of her rolltop desk, Harley Golden plucked the card from her shop assistant’s hand She wasn’t about to risk damage to a piece of paper that was her only connection to the man of her dreams.

  A man she’d seen once.

  A man she would never see again.

  “Yes, that’s it. No, there’s nothing else.” And since it’s up to me, that’s that. End of story.

  Stroking her thumb over the bold raised letters, she slid the black-and-white souvenir of her fantasy under the corner of her desk blotter. With the memento out of sight, she released a weighty sigh, picked up her number-two pencil, and squinted down at the estate sale invoice.

  She really did need to think about computerizing her customer accounts the same way she had her shop inventory, for her poor CPA’s sake if not her own. It didn’t make good business sense to keep her clients’ idiosyncratic preferences filed away in her head.

  But keeping the books in old-fashioned green ledgers just seemed so simpatico with her old-fashioned surroundings. Besides, her hands-on accounting method complemented the personal service she’d offered her customers since opening Golden’s Touch.

  “You’ve already decided not to call him, haven’t you?”

  Harley continued writing. “C’mon, Mona. I’m not the flake he obviously mistook me for. How many women do you think he pulls this ‘call-me’ routine on?”

  Checking her reflection in the cheval glass behind Harley’s desk, Mona smoothed her diagonally slashed hair from earlobe to chin. “Who cares? If this guy’s the GQ material you say he is, I’d go for it.”

  “The guy was stuffed like a sausage in the seat of a 737.” Harley recorded the invoice total in Mrs. Mitchmore’s account, slammed the ledger, and tossed her pencil on top. “So he had a nice face. Even GQ would need to know more than that before pursuing the man.”

  Mona jackknifed her long legs into the easy chair she’d pulled up next to Harley’s desk. A pensive look creased her brows into a dark V. “When you say sausage, do you mean Vienna? Jumbo frank?”

  Harley glared.

  “Polish link?”

  “What I mean is that airline seats were not designed with the human body in mind. If Mrs. Mitchmore isn’t satisfied with the blanket chest, then the next estate sale I hit I’m flying first class and tacking it on to her bill.”

  “Which is exactly what Mrs. Mitchmore has told you to do since the beginning of time,” Mona reminded Harley.

  “True.”

  “But you won’t because traveling first class makes you feel like you’re taking advantage of your clients.”

  “True, again.”

  “And being the Miss Goody Two-shoes that you are, you choose to suffer for the cause because it balances out the guilt you feel for enjoying what you do.”

  “True for the third time.” Harley kicked off her heels, flexed her toes, and groaned. “Speaking of shoes, I’ve got to pick up a new pair in the morning. Something with cushioned heels. And soles. And toes. I’m going to be shopping most of tomorrow and my feet are hamburger.”

  Mona dismissed tomorrow with a wave of her elegant fingers. “You’ve been back two hours from a two-day buying trip. Take tomorrow off. I can handle a Saturday on my own.”

  Harley didn’t have a doubt. She’d recruited the flamboyant arts major from an exclusive gallery where Mona’s dramatic flair for setup and design had often outclassed artists’ showings.

  Here at Golden’s Touch, Mona’s eccentric eye for detail was responsible for more than one customer’s return visit. And that’s why Harley paid Mona close to what she paid herself.

  “Much as I’d like to kick back tomorrow, I can’t. I had a message on the answering machine. A patient of Dr. Fischer’s insists she saw a Shaker syrup bottle in one of the antique stores in Spring. The good doctor sounded desperate.”

  “The good doctor always sounds desperate.”

  “Which is why I’m determined to finish both his office and his study before Christmas. That gives me two and a half months to finish the job. It’s a good commission but what he’s costing me isn’t worth what he’s paying me.”

  “Tell him you need more.”

  “What I need is to be done with this job.”

  Mona reached up to switch on Harley’s Tiffany desk lamp, then pulled the business card from beneath the blotter. “Enough already about business. Tell me about this guy.”

  Harley breathed deeply. It was time to deal with the fantasy and put it to bed. “There’s not much to say. The guy was gorgeous. End of discussion.”

  Mona blinked. “Oh. How stupid of me. I forgot. Harley Golden doesn’t do gorgeous guys.”

  “Give me brains over beauty and brawn any day.”

  “Harley,” Mona admonished. “You’ve got to quit judging every potential hunk by your ex. Just because Brad had abs and buns of steel, plus that other hard part that got him into trouble, doesn’t mean all hunks are scum.”

  Harley stashed the ledger in a desk drawer, slamming it shut. “I don’t want to talk about Brad.”

  “Why not? Ever since your divorce, the only men you talk about are René Lalique, Louis Tiffany, and Thomas Chippendale.”

  “At least they don’t moan to me about their therapist, their mother, or their Pekingese.” And they sure as hell don’t sleep around, Harley couldn’t help but mentally add.

  “Pekingese, huh? You must be talking about Sahara.”

  “Admit it,” Harley said, pinning her friend with a pained look. “The guys you fix me up with are weird.”

  Mona stuck her nose in the air. “My friends are not weird.”

  “Okay. Then they’re just not my type.”

  “Was the mysterious Mr. Business Card your type?”

  “Yes. No. I told you. He was too good-looking.”

  “So, then, why the major eye contact on the flight?”

  “He started it.”

  “Which gives you the upper hand. He wants you. And doesn’t know a thing about you. Call him. Create a new identity. Have phone sex.”

  “Mona!” Harley gasped, outraged… but not really.

  “Do something wild and scandalous, Harley, before you become as fossilized as this room of antiques.”

  “I’m not old enough to be an antique.”

  “You’re one-third of the way there.”

  “I’m ignoring you, Mona.” Frowning, Harley pulled her organizer from her briefcase. Knowing she’d never decipher Mona’s scrawl, she handed over the stack of message slips sitting beneath her paperweight. “Give me the rundown on who’s called about what since I left Wednesday.”

  Mona covered the half-dozen or so requests and Harley jotted notes. “I can probably knock out two or three of these tomorrow”

  “And then what?”

  “What do you mean ‘and then what’?” Harley asked.

  Mona expel
led a theatrical sigh. “I can’t believe I’m saying this but there’s more to a woman’s life than shopping, Harley Golden.”

  “That coming from you? Anyway, this kind of shopping is the best of all. I get to spend obscene amounts of other people’s money on totally extravagant items.” She wiggled her brows. “And they pay me to do it.”

  “Ooh. Thrill me to death. Harley, do you realize when Gibson and I picked you up last Saturday night you were still in the shop?”

  Harley’s chair squeaked as she crossed one leg beneath her. “Of course I was. I live here.”

  “No, you live upstairs. You were down here. In the shop. Working.”

  “Saturday evenings are closure time for me. You know, updating the books and the customer files, rearranging displays to compensate for items sold.” She shrugged. “That leaves me Sunday free to do what I want.”

  “So what do you do on Sundays?” Mona held up one hand. “No, wait. Let me guess. You go through all the trade papers, making lists of which antique auctions and estate sales you can hit the next week. Harley, get a life!”

  “Fine,” Harley grumbled, knowing there was but one way to shut up her assistant. She flipped to the address section of her organizer and ran her pencil down every page. She was up to the letter S before she realized she wasn’t going to find a date in here. She hadn’t made many male acquaintances since her divorce. Her fault, really. She hadn’t been in the mood.

  She’d thrown herself into her business, reminding herself of her own self-worth. Proving that it wasn’t something inside her that had driven Brad to other women.

  She shut the organizer. “Okay, who was that guy you and Gibson fixed me up with?”

  “Which one?”

  “Remember? The four of us did the museum thing. Omri. He wasn’t too bad.” Harley picked up her pencil. “What’s his number?”

  “Omri. Hmm.” Mona examined the lacquer on her nails. “Not a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s in Tibet.”

  “Tibet?”

  “He’s entering the monastery.”

  Harley tossed her pencil in the air. “Great. I drove the man to a life of celibacy.”

  “I don’t think you had a lot to do with it.”

  “You’re probably right. He did spend the evening praising the Dalai Lama.” Harley sighed. “Too much competition for me.”

  “That’s just it.” Mona leaned forward, her face expressive. “You don’t have to compete. You’re stunning. When are you going to realize it?”

  Harley glanced from Mona’s dramatic black hair and ruby lips to her own reflection in the mirror. Tucked beneath the navy-and-taupe designer suit was a body that wasn’t half bad. But unlike a certain unnamed assistant, Harley wasn’t one to flaunt.

  As far as makeup went, well, her eyes were already a huge sleepy-looking blue. If she added anything more than a coat of mascara, she resembled a three-year-old who’d gotten into her mother’s cosmetics. And the bow of her mouth was so plump that applying lipstick gave her the look of a forties’ starlet.

  Her hair was hopeless. Wheat-colored wisps escaped from the topknot she’d tucked it in. She shook her head and the strands tumbled to her shoulders in a heavy mass of fifteen different blondes. Her dimples weren’t a bad touch but she looked a lot like the Keebler elf when she smiled. She glanced back at Mona.

  The other woman’s jet black brow arched. “Well? What do you think?”

  “Okay, I guess.” She finger-combed her hair from her forehead. “I just don’t like to fuss”

  “Judging by this business-card business, you don’t need to.”

  “Can we forget this business-card business? Please?”

  “Are you kidding? C’mon Tell me everything. Start with what he looked like.”

  It was no use. Mona would never give up. “He was wearing a classic Italian suit. His hair was short.” Harley gestured above her ears “Not military-style but that precision model cut. It was dark… but not as dark as his lashes. They were spiky. And long. His eyes an incredible icy green” Harley shivered and sighed “He was very… continental. And entirely too scrumptious for me”

  Mona tapped a wine-dark nail on the arm of her chair. “He sounds perfect When are you going to call?”

  “Never. I spent four years married to a man too gorgeous for his own good—and for mine. Brad spent so much time admiring himself and getting up close and personal with his exercise groupies that he forgot he had a wife.”

  Harley shook her head “No more studs for me, thank you very much. I want a man who knows how to treat a woman” She pounded her fist on her desk. “I want attention. I want worship. I want my man to drool at my feet.”

  “Maybe you’d better get a dog.”

  “Exactly my point. I’ll never find what I want because I’m too picky to settle for less.”

  Mona pushed up out of her chair, smoothing down the mandarin collar of her dramatic black tunic. “Well, I’m off. It’s Friday night and Gibson has promised me candlelight, wine, and shrimp Florentine at his place.”

  Harley got to her feet, laid her arm across Mona’s shoulders, and walked her friend to the door. “Have a good time for me, too.”

  “If I make up for what you’ve been missing, you won’t see me for months.”

  “Very funny,” Harley mumbled but Mona was already halfway down the block.

  Lowering the front window’s lace-and-linen shade, Harley flipped the sign to Closed and wandered back through the store. She swept her palm over the smoothness of a refinished oak chiffonier, lingered on the lavishly carved details of a carousel horse, and fingered an iridescent carnival glass punch bowl before returning to her desk and the more mundane tasks of running Golden’s Touch.

  The mundane no longer held any appeal. All Mona’s talk of men and fun had sparked to life a restlessness Harley was finding difficult to keep tamped down. She wished she had an ounce of Mona’s boldness when it came to relationships. But Brad’s infidelity had made her wary of involvement.

  No, that wasn’t exactly true. Her wariness had much deeper and more personal roots than an unfaithful husband. It had started years before, once she’d been old enough to realize that her parents’ love for each other wasn’t normal. Or healthy.

  What it was was obsessive. Smothering. Consuming. And that destructive emotion had frightened her more than the times early in her childhood when Buck and Trixie had left Harley and her sister home alone for days.

  She’d vowed years later to never settle for less than pure and perfect love. A love founded on mutual respect and seasoned through time with friendship and passion.

  Brad had happened along during one of her weaker moments.

  The first time he’d asked her out, her sorority sisters at the University of Texas had shrieked with envy. Later she’d come to realize it was her lack of big Texas hair and her fresh farm-girl face that appealed to him. When they were together, he received the attention.

  But she’d been blindly enamored, and young, and naive enough to believe he’d grow to love her with the same intensity. She’d still believed it four years later when she’d found him in bed with one of her sorority sisters who’d had a layover in Houston.

  Brad had moved out as Harley had asked, giving her time to reconcile her feelings. Catching him in the parking lot of his health spa with one of the club bunnies who notched hard bodies on her bedpost cinched Harley’s decision. She was done.

  She’d thrown herself into her business then—a business Brad had never been crazy about. Easy enough to understand. When he’d walked through the shop, he’d been outshined by the beauty of aged wood, beveled glass, etched crystal and gold.

  Harley glanced around at the merchandise she offered, every piece with a history of its own. Mona’s right, Harley thought. I’m petrifying. A quick stain and varnish and I’ll blend right in. It was pretty pathetic that a thirty-year-old woman got her thrills from a Louis XV instead of a flesh-and-blood Louis. />
  She wasn’t a total hermit. She did go out. And she wasn’t afraid to take risks. Every time she accepted one of Mona’s fix-ups she was taking a big one. Mona and her friends existed on a plane that belonged in a whole other dimension.

  A monk. Good grief.

  Harley picked up the business card.

  Gardner Barnes

  Excalibur’s King of Prince William’s Knight

  915-555-1782

  A risk? A thrill? Or sheer stupidity?

  Whichever, she picked up the phone and punched in the number.

  She wanted to hear his voice one more time. An experiment to test what she was sure she’d imagined. The tingle at her nape, the dampness behind her knees, the tightness in her lungs.

  The connection clicked at the fourth ring, stopping Harley’s heart.

  “Yo. Stud Central.”

  TWO

  GARDNER CROSSED BEHIND HIS UNCLE Judson, stepped over a kitchen chair pulled out from the table, and grabbed the receiver from Ty’s hand “Hello?”

  Hearing nothing but a dial tone, he cuffed his younger brother on the shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Ty glared back. “You want to expand the operation of this ranch? Get yourself a secretary, Gardner. I’m tired of answering the damned phone.”

  “Look, Tyler. This breeding venture benefits you as much as anybody. You want a free ride to Texas A & M next fall, you answer the phone like an adult.”

  “It’s not your breeding venture sending me to A & M, Gardner. It’s those barrels of crude oil pumping out of Acre 52,” Ty retorted. “The same West Texas Sour that paid for your Cessna.”

  Gardner grabbed a skillet of hamburger steaks from the stove and slammed it onto the table. “You just help your uncle get supper on. I’ll call the men.”

  Spatula in hand, Judson stepped into his path. “Ain’t no call getting riled at the boy, Gardner, just ’cuz you got a bee buzzing.”

  Hands on his hips, Gardner met his uncle’s gaze, then turned back to his brother. “Sorry, Ty. It’s been a bitch of a day.”

  Ty flashed his cocky eighteen-year-old grin. “Yeah, well, when you climbed out of the Cessna wearing a suit and tie, I figured you’d have my butt in a sling before the day was out.”