He positioned the bed of the truck in front of the spot and then neatly maneuvered the truck into the spot backwards. There was not one moment of hesitation or even a second’s bobble. It was like he never had any misgivings about anything.
“Now.” Zane put the truck in park and shut off the engine. “You totally owe me a dance for doubting me like that.”
“A dance?” She felt her eyebrows shoot off the top of her forehead. They were probably stuck to the ceiling at this point. “I can’t dance! Not in these clothes at any rate. That would be lame. I would look absolutely ridiculous.”
“Darlin’,” he rumbled at her in a low voice. “You would never look anything but beautiful no matter what you were wearing or what you were doing. So let’s go get some food and then we can talk some more about that dance because I know there’s a good old jukebox inside Tucker’s.”
Landry swallowed. When was she going to realize that there was absolutely no arguing with this man about anything. Ever? She needed to just accept that she was going to have to dance one dance and enjoy herself. Because every moment with Zane King was enjoyable no matter if you wanted it to be or not. And that was just the way it went.
Chapter Four
Being with Landry made Zane feel young again. He wasn’t really sure how to qualify that. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that there was such a long standing acquaintance between them. Zane didn’t have to be on when he was around Landry. He could just be himself. There was no pressure to be the party boy or the rich suitor or the most eligible bachelor in Dallas. He could be silly and make dumb jokes and she never seemed to care.
“The ribs were good. Are you sure you don’t want more?” Zane gestured to the quarter rack of ribs still on the platter in front of him.
Zane had the feeling that Landry was eating enough food to carry her through about a dozen meals. It was an odd thought. Yet he could not get the picture of her walking down the rainy street out of his mind. She was having troubles. He could tell. And those troubles involved money. He could tell that too.
“I think I’m stuffed.” Landry leaned back in her seat and put both hands over her slightly bulging belly. “The sausage and the turkey were both so good that I think I probably ate enough to make me full for a week!”
“Are you sure? Because there’s plenty of leftovers that are just going in the trash.” Zane only had to wait the span of a few breaths before Landry reacted to that suggestion.
She sat up quickly and started gathering the remnants of the a la carte meal they’d ordered at the big Tucker’s meat counter. “Are you kidding me? You ordered a whole quart of potato salad and another one of coleslaw. Then you didn’t touch the potato salad! You can’t throw that away! There are starving children in Africa. Remember?” She made a face at him.
“Oh yes. I remember that one well from our school cafeteria. Are they still throwing that lie out to kids? Hilarious.” Zane could make a joke, but he had a feeling that her real concern was the starving woman in her house. And that was fine. She didn’t want to talk about it. That was obvious enough. “Then you can box these up and take them home. Maybe you should try sending them to Africa. Just address the care package to starving children and see what happens.”
“Funny.” She gave him a look of mock seriousness. “I seem to recall you saying something very similar back in school right before you threw almost your whole lunch in the trash.”
“Only when my mother packed my lunch,” Zane joked. “She couldn’t make a peanut butter sandwich to save her life!”
Landry placed her elbows on the table. The interior of Tucker’s was the definition of low key. The place was filled with old-style picnic tables lined up in long rows and then covered in red plastic checked tablecloths. There were rolls of paper towels on the tables and squeeze bottles of barbeque sauce everywhere. The soda machines and condiment bar were all ready access for customers and you ordered your meat by the pound and your sides by the quart. It was a very casual dining experience, but the food was amazing and the cooks spent most of their early mornings and probably half the night smoking the meat until it was the perfect tenderness and flavor.
As Landry leaned toward him Zane could not help but notice her birdlike appearance had gotten even more pronounced. She was struggling and trying hard not to show it, but her clothes were hanging off her narrow five-foot-five-inch frame. Her cheeks were hollow and there were dark smudges beneath her pretty blue eyes.
“I seem to recall that your mother wasn’t much for the maternal pursuits. Has that changed?” Landry asked in a very deliberately casual tone of voice. It was obvious that she was trying very hard not to upset him or to make it seem like she was prying.
“Nope. It hasn’t changed at all.” Zane chuffed out a big sigh. It was hard to describe his mother. There just weren’t adequate words.
Then Landry cleared her throat and looked uncomfortable. “I was really sorry to hear about your dad. I saw in the papers that the circumstances were rather surprising.”
“Suspicious,” Zane corrected. “Straight-up suspicious. And of course the man who found his body and who seemed to be tied into the whole string of suspicious occurrences wound up dead because he was attempting to murder my mother.”
“What?” Landry’s eyes went wide with shock. “Are you talking about Tex Johnson? The details were all really sketchy on that situation.”
“Yeah.” Zane didn’t want to talk about this. Why were they talking about this? Why weren’t they talking about something fun like what they were going to do after dinner? “I suppose it’s kind of hard to explain that the young woman who was dating and is now married to my youngest brother felt like she had no choice but to bash Tex over the head with a golf trophy because he was strangling my mother.”
Landry opened her mouth. Closed it. And then finally bobbed her head and sighed. “I suppose that would be super awkward to explain all the way around. So you think that your brother’s wife is lying?”
“No. I think my mother somehow tried to get Tex to attack her. I think she was attempting to discredit and get rid of him. Then he fell over backwards, bashed his head on a desk, and wound up dead.”
“Which was probably very convenient for Tisha Olivares-King,” Landry murmured. She reached across the remains of their meal on the table and brushed his hand with her fingertips. “I’m so sorry, Zane. That’s a lot to swallow.”
“My mother is a piece of work. I think that’s the only thing we all agree on.” Zane snorted. He could not stop thinking about the interaction last night and the threats she had issued. Landry didn’t know about shifters. She wasn’t aware that Zane was one or what it entailed. That fact wasn’t exactly something that they spread around. You had to be careful with that sort of information. If could come back to bite you. “At the moment she’s starting to get a little desperate that all of her sons are moving on. We’re leaving her and starting to disagree pretty openly with her plans and desires.”
Landry snorted. She grabbed up her soda and took a long swig. Then she toyed with the straw as though she were trying really hard not to offend him. “Most parents love it when their kids move out. It’s like the goal of parenting. Make your kids financially independent and get them to move out of your house and stop costing you so much money. Eventually parents want to move back in with their super successful children and reap some of that residual benefit.”
“Is that what happened in the Fisher family?” He knew it had not. Zane knew a lot more about the Fishers than probably even Landry did. “I seem to remember your parents moving back in with your grandmother.”
“Yeah. That wasn’t to take care of Grandmama.” Landry sounded almost disgusted with that situation. Maybe Zane didn’t know quite as much as he thought that he did. “My parents moved back in because they’d done something really stupid and managed to not only lose their house but also their fortune, their shirts, and even the toys out of my playroom.”
“I’m sorry.
That must have been really tough.” Zane realized that it wasn’t very nice of him to bring that up. Maybe he should have just let it go. “I know when the banks failed your father was stuck pretty much holding the bag.”
“Yes. In spite of the fact that he hadn’t really been the one to make all of those decisions. There were more people than just him choosing what loans to take and how to split them up and create these huge high interest packages where they were basically speculating that at least twenty percent of each group wouldn’t pay.” Landry slumped into her seat and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, I don’t want to talk about this! I don’t even want to think about it. Everything was such a mess, Zane. You don’t even know! My parents were just beside themselves. And Grandmama was so pissed off that they had to move back in. She hadn’t been planning on that and I think she punished them for it until my dad couldn’t take it anymore.”
Zane sucked in a quick breath and held it. Nobody talked about how that story ended. Nobody. It was like all of Dallas society had opted to forget about it for the benefit of the family, but that did not mean that the family wasn’t still suffering.
Maybe he could take her mind off of it. Maybe he could somehow make her feel better. “My mother is threatening to throw me out now,” Zane announced suddenly. It was rather complicated to try and explain why that was when there had never been an inkling of it before. And this probably wasn’t the time to just belt out the truth about his shifter nature.
“She’s threatening to throw you out?” Landry frowned and seemed glad to turn her mind to something other than the fact that her parents had decided to take a bunch of pills one night and never woke up, leaving their seventeen-year-old daughter with an angry grandmother for a guardian and not one red cent to her name.
Zane just nodded. “Yep. My mother is getting pretty fed up. I told you that two of my brothers just left.”
“I thought Edward moved out during college.”
Zane bobbed his head. That was one way of looking at it. “Now he has absconded to Italy.”
“What?” Landry gaped at him. She put both hands flat on the table as though she were about to launch herself over the top to shake answers out of him. “Are you kidding me? When? How?”
“Do you remember Diana Appleton?”
Landry bobbed her head so hard that her red ponytail bounced over her shoulder and lay against the curve of her breast. Wait. He didn’t need to be looking at her breast or thinking about them or anything of the sort. Focus!
“So Edward and Diana got back together. Kind of. I don’t really understand how the whole thing came about because I never knew they were like a thing to begin with.”
“They weren’t.” Landry snorted and shook her head. “You are such a guy! You never pay attention to that stuff! Diana had the biggest crush on your brother and I honestly think that Edward liked her back. They were only a year behind us. Remember?”
“Yes.” It was hard to forget that, but Zane didn’t really remember Diana and his brother ever being more than friends before now. “Well, now they’ve announced it officially and moved to Italy together to start a real estate brokering company with someone that Diana knew there. I honestly don’t get the whole thing. It was kind of sudden. But since Edward doesn’t inherit any of King Security Solutions or even our old ranch land, it’s kind of stupid for him to hang around, I guess.”
“Wait a second.” Landry shook her head and sliced one hand through the air as though she were going to reach over and grab him. “Why isn’t Edward inheriting the company? Actually, how can your mother even threaten to kick you out anyway? And who the hell cares? You’re in your twenties, Zane. Get your own place!”
Hmm. This was more complicated than he had initially thought it would be. He didn’t want to explain the rest. It was embarrassing and complicated and probably even more embarrassing because he didn’t actually understand all of it. All Zane knew was that he didn’t have the same inheritance rights as his two older brothers. Zane did not trust Orion as far as he could pick him up and throw him. But Devon was a different story. And when Devon told Zane that he needed to back off and just let them handle it, Zane figured that it was probably a good idea to listen. But he could not just sit here and explain this to Landry.
“You said you’d dance with me,” Zane reminded her suddenly.
Her elegant red eyebrows drew together in a delicate looking sort of frown. “No. I definitely did not!”
“You did. Remember? Because you didn’t trust my parking.” He winked at her. That always seemed to have an effect on Landry. “So how about we go ahead and go pick a song on the jukebox and have our dance. I’ll even let you choose.”
“You will?” She frowned at him and he could see a hint of that ornery little girl in there somewhere. “So it doesn’t matter what I pick?”
“As long as it’s slow,” he amended.
“What!” She started laughing. Then she stood up. “Fine! I’ll pick a slow song. But no fancy stuff. I do not want you spinning me into the condiment bar and somehow ending with me covered in banana peppers or something.”
“Fine. I can agree to that.” Zane stood up. He was already fishing quarters out of his pocket.
Landry beat him to the jukebox and was leaning over, peering at the selection. Zane could not believe how good the girl managed to look in khaki pants and a plain T-shirt. She probably had those middle school boys eating out of the palm of her hand! If he had been anywhere nearly Landry in the seventh grade he would have been in the principal’s office every single day for making inappropriate comments and asking the poor teacher out every time he saw her.
“Okay, I found one,” Landry announced. She snapped her fingers and held out her hand. “Quarter.”
He handed her two just because he was hoping she would pick two songs. “What is it?”
“You’ll have to wait.”
She kept shoving him back so he could not see what she selected. Shoving the quarter into the slot, Landry pushed a letter and a number and then turned around and grabbed his hand. There was no dance floor inside of Tucker’s. As soon as the music started playing, the other diners looked up from their meals. It was late. The place closed in a short time and there weren’t that many people left inside. That might have been better. Because when the song about tears and beers came on Zane did not care how much he was laughing. He pulled Landry close and held her while they swayed side to side in time to the music.
She felt amazing. It did not take long for Zane to realize that this had been a bad idea. She was soft and so very feminine against him. The way she moved felt like second nature to him. They were perfect together. Her scent was familiar and comforting. And all he wanted to do was bury his face beside her neck and close his eyes until the whole world went away and nothing but the two of them remained.
“You are on my lonely mind.” He whispered the words in Landry’s ears as they played on the jukebox. Too bad they were absolutely true.
Chapter Five
Landry pressed her back against her front door and sighed. The interior of the house was dark. Nothing but the glow of the porch light filtered through the narrow windows on either side of her ancient wood door. The yellow glow created twin strips that stretched across the old wood and the old square area rug in the living room. It was quiet and utterly lonely inside the house.
Maybe that was for the best. Landry was having a bit of trouble figuring out how to keep herself put together after the evening with Zane. She was carrying a huge bag of leftover food. Perhaps that was a good place to begin. She would put the food away and try not to think about the fact that she was pretty sure Zane realized that she’d wanted the leftovers because she was flat broke and could not afford to eat. That didn’t matter. Not really.
Landry pushed off the door and headed into the dark kitchen. The single light above the sink was plenty for the task at hand. She set about carefully selecting her grandmother’s old plastic storage containers and taking
care to keep the food well sealed so that it would last until the last possible second. Welcome to real life the way it was at the moment.
Once all of the to-go boxes were empty, Landry squished them back into the bag from Tucker’s. It was time for a trip out to the garbage cans in the backyard. In fact, she needed to drag those suckers around the front of the house and put them by the curb so the garbage man could empty them tomorrow morning.
The familiar routine of gathering up the trash in her kitchen was soothing. Landry had no notion of what time it was. Sometimes it felt like her dinner with Zane King had taken all night long. The rest of the time it felt like the blink of an eye. But for once she was not dragging ass in the evening here at home. She did not feel as though she were falling down a well of depression and anxiety about how she was supposed to keep going day after day when it felt like her whole life was falling down around her ears.
Landry gathered up trash. She swept the hallway and vacuumed the area rug. She scrubbed her kitchen sink and even emptied the bathroom trash and the one in her bedroom. She replaced the towels and started a load of laundry in her tiny stackable washer and dryer. It was all very domestic and happy somehow.
Was it because of Zane? Was it the happy, bubbly sensation of feeling as though someone like Zane King thought well of her? Landry did not want to think that she was the sort of person who needed that kind of validation, but it wasn’t like she got it from anywhere else in her life.
After tidying up and de-cluttering for a good hour or so, Landry got that trash together and headed for the back door. She flipped on the porch light and it was almost as though that were a switch in her head. The glow of the light spilled across her brick patio. She paused at the door and exhaled a long deep breath. She could do this.
Pushing open the door, she peered outside and listened. There wasn’t much noise. Cars on the street. The honking of a horn somewhere and the blare of a stereo with the bass booming somewhere a few miles away. There was that horrible noise from the house about three doors down where the man was trying desperately to learn to play the clarinet with mixed and often loud results. A dog barked next door. And finally Landry felt as though there was nobody out in the backyard to worry about.
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 51