“That’s depressing,” Landry murmured. She felt her cheeks flaming red hot. Damn her red hair! “I don’t have a lot of experience at all. I slept with two guys in college and they were jerks.”
“Thomas Jackson,” Zane said quickly. “At least I think he was the first one. I beat the stuffing out of him for that.”
Landry gaped at him. “You what?”
“He was—” Zane suddenly seemed to think that he had said something really bad. “I just did. He was rude.”
Great. Landry felt as though her college mistakes were actually coming back to bite her. “If you’re saying that because you think that I don’t know that he was talking about me all over campus, you’re wrong. I totally knew. It was embarrassing! If you beat him up for it I owe you one. I just wish I could have watched. He was such a jerk! And he was selfish.” Landry felt her mind sinking back years and years as she recalled her other relationship. “Peter Granby was better. He was just—well, he was better I guess. We dated for several months and he was really nice, but good gracious, the man was boring!”
“Oh, after hanging out with a King for most of your life you decided that other men are just too sedate for you, hmm?” Zane teased. He reached over and grabbed her knee beneath the covers. Squeezing in just the right spot, he made her giggle and pull away.
“Knock it off, Zane King!” Landry ordered. “I’ll have to start bashing you over the head with a pillow or something.”
“Great plan.” He snorted and shook his head. “And I didn’t know about Peter. I think I had heard you were dating Nathan Fox.”
“Nathan was a jerk. He asked me out, but he pretty much made it clear that he wanted to see if the carpets matched the drapes.” She gestured to her hair.
“Okay. I’ll have to put him on my list of people that still need an ass whooping,” Zane grumbled.
“Have you ever had a long-term relationship?” Landry wondered out loud. How was that possible? The Kings never seemed to get involved with anyone long term until all of a sudden they got married. “Your brothers were the same way. It’s weird. Like Jason. He never dated at all and suddenly he’s married to some reporter? What happened there?”
“It’s complicated,” Zane murmured. “Although Edward is with Diana Appleton. He’s known Diana almost as long as I’ve known you.”
“Yes, and Diana was just as lucky as I was in the parenting department,” Landry murmured. “Poor woman. Her folks just up and got killed in that car wreck. It was so very sudden!”
“But I can tell you that Diana is very well adjusted and happy. She’s gotten over her parents’ deaths, and I think she and Edward are going to be very good together if they can just stay in Italy and away from my mother.”
“What’s the deal with your mother anyway?” Landry could not help but wonder if Tisha Olivares-King was pretty much going crazy the older and more desperate she got. “I can’t read her.”
“That’s because my mother is one big lie.” He chuffed out a big breath and pursed his lips. “You have to understand that she’s desperate. Her husband died.”
“Under some pretty crazy circumstances,” Landry pointed out quickly. “Do you really believe that he somehow managed to shoot himself with a rifle while on horseback at your old ranch property? Don’t you think it was kind of convenient that he was all alone and the only person to know anything about it is now dead too?”
“We all think it’s suspicious,” Zane growled. “Well, except my mother, and that’s because she’s trying to have her cake, eat it, and steal our cake while she’s at it. The woman is playing every side that she can.”
He cleared his throat. “Which kind of brings me to a very strange little proposition.”
“Uh oh.” Landry did not bother to try and hide her apprehension on this. “I shudder to imagine what this is going to be.”
“My mother invited me to bring you to a party to do the whole introduction to the society matrons, etc. Basically a coming-out for our engagement.”
“Are we engaged?” Landry asked quickly. “Maybe we should start there.” Why was her heart beating so fast right now? Was she afraid he was about to say that they weren’t or something even worse?”
“Of course we’re engaged.” Zane said this as though it were a total no-brainer. “I finally got you to say yes to my marriage proposal. If you think I’m going to let you back out now, you’re out of your damn mind.”
Well, what could she say to that? “Um, okay?”
“I think we should go to this party.” He sounded as though he were thinking it through even as he was speaking. “My mother was challenging me for several reasons, but I think that part of it is that she doesn’t actually believe it’s true. Another thing is that she’s pissed at my older brothers and trying to use this notion of supporting my choice as a way to get back at them.”
“Okay, that’s just disgusting,” Landry spat. “Seriously, what is her problem?”
“So many things that I can’t even begin to describe them.” He didn’t seem concerned with it right now. “But I can promise you that if we show up to the stupid party and we can make it seem like we’re a happy little couple it’s going to completely ruin whatever plans she has going on right now. And I’ll also admit pretty freely that ruining my mother’s plans and making her pissed off is high on my list of worthwhile activities right now.”
“Wow.” Landry could not actually argue with that. “All right then. I guess I’m going to a party tonight. Too bad I don’t have clothes. What kind of party?”
“Outdoor on a patio?” Zane shrugged. “Does it matter?”
Landry sighed. “You’re such a guy. Honestly. Does it matter? Yes!”
“What if I take you shopping?”
“I hate shopping.” Landry’s gut knotted at the idea.
He grunted. “Not as much as I do. But it’s really only fair, all things considered.”
“Right.”
She burrowed beneath the covers. She did hate shopping. The money. The feeling of wasting money. The fact that she was going to have to buy underwear because she had nothing appropriate for a cocktail dress. Ugh! Even the idea of this shopping trip was horrible.
“Maybe I can come into the dressing rooms to help zip up your dresses, you know?”
Zane sounded so nonchalant that Landry threw the covers off her face and sat straight up in bed without even thinking about the skimpy clothes she was already wearing. “Seriously, Zane King? Do I need to rethink my comments about you being a respectful young lad?”
“I don’t know.” He made a point of looking away from her skimpy camisole top. “It that’s really what you’re worried about you might try putting some clothes on. If I was really the bad boy everyone says I am I would have eaten you up by now.”
“Oh!” She pulled the covers back up, blushing as she did. “All right. Shopping. Just please excuse me so I can get dressed?”
“Of course, my lady.” He winked at her as he left and she felt almost like she was going to swoon. The handsome devil!
Chapter Twenty-Six
Shopping. It was probably the one thing in the world guaranteed to make Zane King shudder with horror. He glanced around at the cluttered interior of Orville’s Department Store and wondered silently how anyone ever managed to find anything in here. The two-story building in downtown Dallas was packed wall to wall with racks of clothing, displays featuring the finest linens and china patterns, the latest kitchen gadgets, and even furniture. There was a small section at the very front of the store featuring some kind of weird leather and wood furniture made by a local craftsman that seemed to favor antler and bone in the trim work. It was all rather busy in Zane’s opinion.
Landry led the way through the store. For a moment Zane thought that she actually knew where she was going as they swept down the main thoroughfare. Then she stopped in front of the store directory and peered at it as though she were trying to read a pirate map.
“Seriously,” Landry m
uttered. She twisted her head to better whisper to Zane. “How do people find anything in these places? When they come up with the condensed catalog version where you walk in and choose what you want from a bunch of pictures I’ll be the first to applaud.”
Zane felt the laughter welling up and could not stop it. From the corner of his eye he spotted several people turning to stare at them. What was with people in public places always wanting to stare at others and whisper behind their hands? He spotted a couple of young women looking in what appeared to be the shoe section.
Zane and Landry took a right turn around the shoe section and headed for an escalator. “I think we have to go to the second floor,” Landry explained. Then she glanced behind him as the two of them rode the slow moving escalator up to floor two. “And just so you know, I think we have stalkers.”
“What?” He swung around to try and figure out what she was talking about and realized that the two young women from the shoe department were now climbing onto the bottom of the escalator. “Oh, seriously? Why?” he moaned.
Landry took his arm and was practically hanging off his body by the time they got off the escalator at the top of the stairs. She linked her arm through his and meandered toward a grouping of mannequins wearing evening gowns. They were all draped in satin and lace and filmy stuff that Zane couldn’t have identified. The outfits were all covered in some beads and junk that glittered underneath the harsh overhead lights.
“Just ignore them,” Landry suggested. “They’ll get the message.”
“Yeah, but this isn’t doing anything for my crappy reputation.”
Landry drew back in surprise. “That’s what you’re worried about?”
“That you’ll think I’m somehow encouraging or liking it? Yeah.” He frowned. He didn’t mean to be a downer here, but he was really tired of feeling as though everything he did had the opposite effect of the one he intended. “Isn’t that a good thing? Don’t you want me to be aware of that? I’m not a womanizer, Landry. I don’t want you to think that I am.”
She stopped walking and turned to face him. He could feel the gazes of a dozen or more shoppers—mostly women—on them right at this very moment. Why had Zane never thought about the possible ramifications of this shopping trip? How come he had not remembered that there would be people here?
“Zane,” Landry murmured his name as she stroked his cheeks with her fingertips. “I am so very flattered that you would be worried about my opinion. You have no idea. You really care. And honestly I’m sorry about everything that happened yesterday. I’m sorry that all of that resulted in you believing that I don’t trust you.”
“How can you trust me when the whole city believes I’m a skirt-chasing sleezebag?”
Her smile warmed him all the way from his head to his toes. It was a beautiful smile. “You know how I can trust you?” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Because you did not have to care about your reputation and you did. There’s also the fact that I know you. I know that you’re not that kind of man. You’re better than that.”
Zane sighed. If she could ignore the stares of these bizarre women, then he needed to man up and deal with it too. So all at once he made a grand sweeping gesture with his hand to indicate the mannequins. “So, milady, which gown suits you?”
“The pink.” Landry stood back and looked them over with what appeared to be a critical eye. “I like that style the best.”
“Do redheads wear pink?” Zane wondered out loud.
She swatted him across the belly. “Really? That’s rude! Are you saying that the dress would clash with my hair?”
“Isn’t that what people with red hair are always saying?”
Landry marched toward a rack of dresses that appeared to resemble the simple and yet very frothy number that the mannequin was wearing. “I suppose you’re right, but it’s not actually that simple. I’ll try it on and we’ll see whether or not it’s a total fail.”
With the dress in hand, Landry disappeared into the back of the store where there was an enormous sign announcing the dressing rooms. Zane followed at a distance. He hated dressing rooms and shopping, and actually at the moment he was a bit apprehensive of being anywhere near the dressing rooms lest he accidentally ruin poor Landry’s reputation.
“Okay.” She turned and thumbed over her shoulder to the dressing rooms. “I’ll go try this on. You stay here and avoid getting assaulted.”
“It could be difficult.”
Landry stood on tiptoe and kissed him again. Then she giggled and retreated to the dressing room. That left Zane to wait. He was utterly surrounded by evening clothes and formal dresses. It was like being dragged along on one of his mother’s shopping excursions all over again, except that in this case he actually enjoyed spending time with the person he was escorting through the shop.
“Ahem.”
It wasn’t that Zane didn’t hear the female voice behind him making a less than surreptitious noise while clearing her throat. Of course he heard her. That really wasn’t the issue. It was more that he was hoping if he ignored her by appearing to be utterly involved on his smartphone, that she would just sort of go away on her own.
“Ahem.” The voice was getting closer and a bit louder.
Zane sighed. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. It was simple. Right? He didn’t need to worry about this person. It wasn’t a store employee. He could see that perfectly well when she began to sidle around him as though she were trying to sneak up behind him, knock him on the head, and drag him back to her lair so she could suck his soul out.
“Can I help you?” Zane asked, not looking up as he realized that the woman was not going to go away. She was most definitely just hovering right outside his personal bubble.
“My name is Nicole.”
“Can I help you, Nicole?”
Nicole appeared to be in her early twenties. Her look was all Texas with her teased blonde hair sticking up all around her head, her tight blue jeans beaded and tooled with designs all over the pockets and all up and down the legs. Her western shirt was snapped closed and the plaid design was actually shot through with shining silver and gold thread that intensified the shades of hot pink and lurid yellow.
“I saw you in the paper the other day.” Nicole sidled in closer. He could feel the outside of her thigh pressing against his hip. “I just don’t think a man like you should go without someone to take care of you.”
For some reason he could not name, Zane could not help but notice that this woman had fake breasts. It just stuck out to him like a huge red flag or something similar. He could not understand it. The whole idea that she was coming up to him with her shirt hanging half open and her fake breasts popping out over the top of the neckline and through the buttons was somehow disgusting.
“I’m not interested,” Zane said flatly. “I can’t imagine how you didn’t notice that I’m here with another woman.”
“I did notice.” Nicole shrugged. “But she seems pretty dry and crackly. Besides, she’s a redhead.” Nicole did not seem to find this acceptable for somehow. “You could do so much better, Zane King. So much better.”
“I see. Like with you,” Zane suggested.
“For sure.”
“So I could do better than a woman I’ve known and loved for my whole life by hooking up and leg shackling myself permanently to a woman with fake boobs who has the brass to approach a total stranger in a department store, wait for his fiancée to step away from a moment, and then winds up propositioning him and suggesting that the fake boob chick is the perfect woman for him. Does that sound about right?”
It was obvious that his words had disturbed the woman. About the time she finally seemed to come up with a response, the door of Landry’s dressing room opened and she stepped out. The confection of pale pink and ivory lace was exquisite on her. Zane was stunned as he realized that she had been absolutely right. Pink did not apparently always clash with red hair. The pale color brought out beautiful blonde highlights i
n Landry’s hair. The cut of the dress was flattering and the lace overlay made her skin look even more delicate and precious that it already did.
“Wow, baby,” Zane finally murmured in appreciation. “That is a good look for you.”
“And what do you think?” Landry pointed at Nicole. “Since you’ve been standing there since I went into the dressing room. You realize that your voice carries, right?”
“It does?” Nicole squeaked the words. Then she pressed her lips into a tight line and spun about to leave.
Zane felt embarrassed. If Landry had been able to hear the whole conversation, what had she thought of the way he’d handled Nicole? Had she appreciated his decisive words? Or did she feel as though Zane should have been more forceful? He could just imagine starting to yell or scream at Nicole while he put his fingers in his ears and chanted la, la, la to avoid hearing her suggestive words to him.
But Landry did not seem bothered. She merely turned to look at Zane with a warm expression of humor in her eyes. “That was very well handled on your part, by the way.”
“Huh?” He was certain he had misheard her. “You said well handled?”
“Yes.” Landry bobbed her head and looped her arms around his neck. “You had a very obvious opportunity to do something bad there. She was propositioning you and you just threw it back in her face. I cannot imagine any woman who would not be flattered and thrilled to know that her man could be like that when he thought that she had no idea what was going on.”
Zane couldn’t really argue with her there, but still… “Are you sure? Because I feel like there are lots of women who would have still been upset.”
“That’s possible of course.” Landry made a face. “In fact, it’s kind of highly probable because women sometimes act totally crazy.”
“You would say that about your own sex?” Zane asked with mocking surprise. “I thought the girl code was to always stick together.”
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 67