Lucky Charmed

by Sharla Lovelace

  Kerri followed my look. “No idea, but he was asking for you earlier.”

  I looked at her with a question. “For me?”

  “Right before Mr. Anderson showed up,” she said, nodding. “Nick talked to him for a minute, though, so maybe he knows.”

  I frowned back in the men’s direction, where Bash looked to be hanging on every word J. Crew was saying. Bash did a quick double-take my way, which sent the butterflies skittering again until he said something and pointed and the other guy turned toward me with a polite smile.

  A smile that didn’t quite reach his dark eyes. They remained distracted, and a weird familiar metallic taste filled my mouth as I looked into them. A déjà vu that wasn’t pleasant. Which was ludicrous. I’d never seen this man before.

  “Good deal,” I said, also taking in the manicured hands, the fork in his left hand that was just poking at the food instead of eating it, and the expensive watch on his right wrist. “Get them some more water. Stand toward the new guy’s right to fill it.”

  She frowned, glancing his way. “Why?”

  “He’s a leftie.” She looked at me blankly and I sighed. “He’s new here. He’s barely touching his food. So he’ll be more approachable, less defensive, and more likely to leave a good tip if you serve him on his weaker side.”

  Kerri’s eyebrows lifted. “Wow.”

  “Yeah, it’s rocket science,” I said under my breath as I pushed open the doors to the kitchen. “What’s up, Nick? You know Lanie’s out there, right?”

  He didn’t look up, focusing instead on folding some cream into a bowl of sliced strawberries that would go into his famous strawberry cake. That’s what I loved about this guy. It was strawberries and cream, and he treated it like it came straight from a cow with a golden udder.

  “Yep,” he said. “I was just waiting for David to get here so I can run to the bank with her to do some paperwork.”

  I tilted my head. “She’s taking her break from the bank to come here to get you on your break, to go back to the bank?”

  “That’s what I said, but Lanie said if she waited for me, I’d get caught up in what I was doing and forget.” Nick shrugged. “And she’s probably right.”

  “You do get a little tunnel visioned,” I said.

  “So did he introduce himself?” he asked, picking up a spatula to turn the strawberries gently.

  “Who?”

  Dark eyes darted my way. “The guy out there who looks like his mom dressed him to get beat up at school,” he said.

  I choked back a laugh as I plucked a strawberry slice from the bowl and popped it into my mouth. “No, he’s meeting with Bash about something.” I moaned around the berry. “Oh man, I need about forty more of these.”

  “I have the feeling you might want to double that,” he said, frowning as he grabbed another bowl. “This guy—something’s up.”

  I rose from the stool I’d just rested on. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, he’s odd. He only wanted to talk to you, but now he’s eating with Bash?” Nick said, shaking his head as he worked.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  Nick glanced up. “It has something to do with your dad.”

  Something that felt like cold little fingers traced a path down my spine. Something old and familiar and not welcome.

  “W-why?” I asked, resisting the urge to reach out for the wall, the door, the sink nearby. Anything tangible and touchable that could ground me and yet make me vulnerable at the same time. Don’t show weakness.

  “He said he was here to talk to you on behalf of Oliver Greene.”

  On behalf of…

  I stared at Nick and nodded slowly as I turned for the door. The man’s face came into view as I emerged on the other side as he shook hands with a smiling Bash and the two men parted ways. J. Crew came up to the counter in front of me and sat on a stool, lacing his fingers. Instantly, I knew what the taste had been about, the unpleasant sensation, the déjà vu. I’d never laid eyes on this man before, but I’d seen the others before him and they all had that same useless look about them.

  I held out my hand.

  “Allie Greene,” I said. “What did he lose?”

  * * *

  My father was a good man. He had a heart of gold with hands of steel and had worked hard his whole life before illness stripped him of that. He also had a weakness. If there was a deal or a scam, a poker table or a get rich quick scheme within ten miles, he couldn’t resist. If he had five dollars in his pocket, it would burn a hole until he was forced to spend it, and frequently that was aimed at something with chips or a bigger pocket. Especially during stressful times.

  I loved my dad with everything I had, but I had watched him gamble all our savings away after my mom died. The only new truck he’d ever owned was trailered and gone, and our house—I would never forget the man who came for that. I was seven, and that man’s face would forever be etched in my memory as the person who took away my room with the purple flowers and sent us to the trailer park.

  This man had the same empty eyes.

  “I’m Landon Lange,” he said, gripping my hand. “I’m an acquaintance of your father’s.”

  A tall woman with big blond hair came through the door and strode straight up to the counter. “Hi!” she said, her voice perky, teeth flashing. “Can I get a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure thing,” I said, letting go of the man’s hand and reaching for the nearby coffee pot robotically, pouring a cup. “Sugar and creamer is right there,” I said, pointing without looking.

  “Thanks, hon,” she said. “Great place.”

  I met her eyes. Another stranger. I guessed bringing in a tourist attraction was going to bring that in, too.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I felt my eyebrows lift, looking back at Lange. “So, an acquaintance,” I said, smiling. “That’s a new one. Although I’m curious how you know him recently since he’s been home-bound all this last year.”

  “It’s actually been a little while,” he said. “I was hoping maybe he’d come through.”

  “How much?” I asked, closing my eyes and shaking my head.

  Landon Lange appeared to study his manicured nails on the countertop and then pulled a piece of paper from his man-purse.

  “I own fifty-one percent of this diner,” he said.

  My eyes popped open. My everything popped open.

  “What?”

  “There’s this—” he began, smoothing the paper on the counter. My counter. The counter I’d cleaned 4,394,839,409 times and now held a paper that said—

  “No,” I said. “That’s not—”

  “Miss Greene.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said, bringing the word down to a whisper. A hiss. An utterance of no-fucking-way. “This is my diner. It’s ours. It belongs to my family. It doesn’t go on the table—ever.”

  That was the deal. That was always the deal. Please God, don’t take away the deal.

  “Miss Greene.”

  “Stop saying my name,” I said, hearing my voice rise but unable to control it. It was like someone else held the remote and I was watching the show. The blond lady moved as far over to the right as she could, and Lanie moved slowly up to take her place as if she might need to vault it and kick somebody’s ass.

  “Everything okay?” she asked quietly.

  “Why don’t we go in your office,” Nick said, miraculously appearing behind me.

  “I have this signed—” Landon began again.

  “I don’t care what you have,” I said. “It’s not happening.”

  “Allie, please,” Nick said in a low voice. “Let’s take this in the back.”

  Nick was right. He was being the cool-headed logical one. Acting like management, taking charge of the situation. He was being me. And I was having a mental breakdown next to the coffee pot.

  I own fifty-one percent…

  Oh my God.

  What did you do, Dad?

  The wal
k to my office felt like the walk of doom, as the cold chill of things shifting washed over me. It wasn’t my office if this guy owned—

  The hell it wasn’t. It had been my mom’s and dad’s before me and fuck if some man-pursed asshole was going to take it from me.

  I spun around.

  “Mr. Lange, my father has put a lot of things on the line over the years,” I said, focusing on the tone of every word as it left my mouth. He couldn’t have really done such a thing. I had to believe that. I had to hold on to that hope. “I’ve seen too many things lost, including my home, and he made a promise to me after that. The Blue Banana would never be jeopardized.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” he said, walking in and setting the paper on my desk without hesitation. “It is what it is. Signed and legal. He can verify it.”

  It is what it is.

  Hope left the room. It peeled itself from every surface and floated away. My father did it. He lost it. He lost our everything.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “He—” I cleared my throat. “My dad can’t verify anything. He’s got dementia. Some days he isn’t sure of his own name.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Landon said. “He was a nice guy.”

  “He’s still a nice guy,” I snapped.

  Landon held his palms forward and then picked up the paper and held it in front of me. “Can you just look at the signature and see for yourself?”

  My feet felt rooted to the floor. I shut my eyes, feeling the tightly wound control I valued so much begin to slip away. I didn’t have to look. I didn’t want to. I’d know my father’s writing in a heartbeat, and I knew with just as much conviction that it would be on that paper. Still, I needed to see the proof. The stinging slap to the face. I felt Lanie’s arm link through mine and Nick’s hand on the back of my neck, and my eyes fluttered open to a watery image of a yellow form. A deed transfer. Of majority percentage of the Blue Banana Grille to Landon Lange. Signed and dated in a hard right-slanted hand by Oliver Greene, Owner.

  I didn’t have even a tenth of a percent to my name. I ran it as my own because it was our baby. My mother gave birth to it, my father raised it, and I took it on. Now this stranger who had never set foot in here before today had controlling ownership. Had been in control for a while, and I never knew it.

  “This was signed last year,” I said, my voice not much more than an exhausted whisper. “Over a year ago, actually. Why are you here now?”

  He never changed expression, just set the paper down on my desk when I didn’t take it from him.

  “Honestly, I like your father, Miss Greene,” he said. “He’s straightforward and truthful, and I don’t see much of that in my line of work.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said.

  “What exactly is your line of work?” Nick asked from behind me.

  “He’s a bookie,” I said.

  “I’m a private loan officer,” Landon amended.

  “He’s a bookie,” I repeated.

  “So,” Landon continued. “I didn’t want to capitalize on his bad luck. Thought I’d give him a while to straighten out his affairs, but he never contacted me again.”

  “His affairs are sitting at home watching war movies and sports and taking walks from one end of the trailer park to the other,” I said, cutting off the tears that wanted into my words. “Most likely, he doesn’t remember any of it.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” Landon said, then shrugging. “Or fortunate, perhaps. Spares him the drama.”

  “What do you want?” I asked, swiping a rogue tear as it fell and letting that one little piece of weakness be my staff. I took a step forward. “You don’t strike me as the diner type, Mr. Lange. I don’t see you having any interest in a small town like Charmed or any of its establishments.”

  His lips tugged into an almost-smile. “On the contrary, Miss Greene,” he said. “I see a lot of opportunity here. I’ve recently made a couple of lucrative investments here in Charmed—I figured why not since I own the majority of the most popular eating establishment.” He smiled, and my skin prickled. “Give back, is what I always say.”

  The image of this man sitting across from Bash, shaking his hand, crossed my thoughts.

  “What do you want?” I repeated, crossing my arms over my chest.

  His smile grew curious. “Are you suggesting that I’m open to a payoff?”

  “I’m suggesting that anyone able to so glibly take a man’s livelihood with a piece of paper is probably just soulless enough to throw something else out there,” I said, refusing to blink.

  Landon clapped his palms together and rubbed them in a fast motion. “Oooh, an insult and a challenge all in one sentence,” he said. “You do make it interesting, Miss Greene.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Oliver was in to me for fifty grand,” Landon said finally, setting my skin on fire with his oily words. “Not all at one time, mind you. I let him skate by a time or two. But things add up after a while and Oliver—well, he couldn’t seem to get on the right side of it.”

  Fifty grand.

  Sweet Jesus.

  “But that was before I checked on it,” he said. “The Blue Banana appraises for just over seventy-five thousand.”

  I stared at him, not really seeing him anymore. Seventy-five thousand dollars. We were done. I was done. I couldn’t get that kind of money if I wanted to. I basically worked for him now.

  “You—want Allie to cough up that kind of money to buy her own diner back?” Lanie asked.

  Landon shrugged. “Makes no difference to me one way or the other.” He turned to go. “But I have to ask—The Blue Banana?” He screwed up his face in dislike. “What’s with that?”

  My chest squeezed around my heart and I briefly wondered if cardiac arrest might be in my near future.

  “It’s personal,” I pushed out.

  He shook his head as if pondering it. “I’ll give it some thought. We can do better than that.”

  And he was gone.

  Nick and Lanie were talking to me. I felt hands and hugs and something resembling comfort. But all I could see were the eyes of another man taking something from me. The sound of his words telling me that my life’s plan had just flipped on a dime. The feeling of what had always been solid ground under my feet being wiggled away one tug at a time.

  “What are you going to do?” I heard Lanie ask.

  “Counters need wiping,” I said breathily, forcing myself to walk. “If Dave’s back, go do what you have to do, Nick. We’ll take care of it.”

  “Allie.”

  “Go,” I said, looking back but not really focusing since the world as I knew it was dissolving into confetti. “Business as normal.”

  Normal.

  Whatever that was.

  Sex in a Pan (Sully’s dessert)

  Ingredients:

  Crust:

  1 cup pecans, chopped

  3 Tbsp. white sugar

  1/2 cup butter

  1 cup flour

  Cream cheese layer:

  1 8 oz. package cream cheese

  1 cup powdered sugar

  1 cup whipped cream or Cool Whip

  Vanilla pudding layer:

  1 package of instant vanilla pudding (5.1 oz. or 144 g)

  3 cups milk

  Chocolate Pudding layer:

  1 package of instant chocolate pudding (5.1 oz. or 144 g)

  3 cups milk

  Top layer:

  3 cups whipped cream or Cool Whip

  Shaved chocolate (enough to cover; took me 3 Hershey bars)

  Directions:

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

  Spray a 9×13-inch baking dish with cooking spray.

  Mix the crust ingredients together and press the mixture into the prepared baking dish. Bake for about 20 minutes.

  Prepare the chocolate and vanilla pudding as per the instructions on the package.

  In a mixer, combine the cream cheese, powdered sugar, and 1 cup of whipped cream. Mi
x until light and fluffy.

  Let the crust cool. Spread the cream cheese mixture evenly over the crust.

  Spread the chocolate pudding over the cream cheese filling, then the vanilla pudding over the chocolate. (I sprinkled a light layer of additional chopped pecans between the pudding layers just because we are nutty freaks over here, but that’s a personal preference)

  Top with the whipped cream and sprinkle with the chocolate.

  Refrigerate for a couple hours until set.

  Oh my my my…

  Photo Credit: Leo Weeks Photographers

  Sharla Lovelace is the bestselling, award-winning author of sexy small-town love stories. Being a Texas girl through and through, she’s proud to say she lives in Southeast Texas with her retired husband, a tricked-out golf cart, and two crazy dogs. She is the author of five stand-alone novels including the bestselling Don’t Let Go, the exciting Heart Of The Storm series, and the fun and sexy new Charmed in Texas series. For more about Sharla’s books, visit www.sharlalovelace.com, and keep up with all her new book releases easily by subscribing to her newsletter.

  She loves keeping up with her readers, and you can connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @sharlalovelace.

  Did you miss the first Charmed in Texas Novel?