The Charmer in Chaps

by Julia London

  “No,” Ella said, and seemed to shrink a little in her seat.

  “What? Luca, what’s the matter with you? Take her to Three Rivers,” Brandon said to Luca, clapping him on the shoulder and squeezing hard. To Ella, he said, “You won’t believe the views. It’s one of the biggest ranches in Texas. You have to see it to appreciate it.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Ella said.

  Funny, they’d never talked much about the ranch. Luca didn’t know what she knew about it.

  “That’s why we’re having the fund-raiser there,” Brandon said. “Potential investors will come, and they’ll see that view and hear what we have to say, and voilà. If anyone can charm them into opening their wallets, it’s Luca Prince,” he said with a wink for Luca.

  “Yeah,” Ella said. She tucked a bit of hair behind her ear. “It sounds . . . fancy.”

  “Oh, absolutely!” Hallie said. “Black tie, cocktails, fancy food. Mom taught me that a long time ago—when people get all dressed up, they think that what they are doing is really important. And honestly, we need a good excuse for a party at home, don’t we, Luca? It’s been a mausoleum out there.”

  “Ella, you need to come,” Brandon said earnestly.

  “You do,” Hallie agreed.

  Ella looked startled. “I’ve never been to a fund-raiser.”

  “This should be your first,” Luca said. “We nailed down the date this morning—June tenth. I would love for you to come, Ella, and meet the family.”

  Ella’s eyes widened.

  “That’s perfect!” Hallie said. She looked at Luca and Brandon. “Remember that summer we were all in Cabo? That’s when I introduced Chris to the family, remember?”

  “I remember. His boat was a lot bigger than yours,” Brandon said.

  Hallie clucked her tongue. “His family sold it. They’re getting a yacht.”

  “So back to the fund-raiser,” Luca said, uninterested in Chris’s boats. “I heard back from the US Department of Agriculture, did I tell you? Their conservation arm is studying soil erosion and the protection of water reserves. They are very interested in attending.”

  Brandon wasn’t listening. “How big is the yacht?” he asked Hallie.

  “I don’t know, seventy-five feet?”

  “Nice,” Brandon said, nodding approvingly. “We should all get together and fly out and have a look.”

  “Hey!” Hallie said brightly. “Let’s do it! You, too, Ella. You’d love our villa in Cabo. It’s not huge, but it’s right on the beach.”

  Ella looked like she wanted to sink below the table. Luca loved his sister, but sometimes, she could be a little insensitive. Did she or Brandon really think that Ella could just call into work, then fly out to Cabo the next day? To see a yacht?

  “Actually, I should get back to work,” Ella said.

  “Stick around,” Luca said, and had to resist the urge to lunge for her, to keep her there. “We’re through talking about yachts.”

  “We’re starting to close down, and I need to help.” She stood up. “It was nice seeing you all tonight.”

  “You too, Ella,” Hallie said cheerfully. “Hope to see you at the ranch!”

  The three of them watched Ella return to the hostess stand, then Hallie turned to Luca. “What just happened? Was it the yacht?”

  “Maybe,” Luca said.

  “Maybe it was mentioning your family,” Brandon responded. “That would scare anyone away.”

  Luca and Hallie laughed.

  But Luca considered that maybe Brandon was right. Maybe it was too soon to have suggested meeting his family, and Luca shouldn’t have so casually tossed it out there. He was rusty on the rules of relationships. He didn’t do relationships. He never thought about bringing a woman to Three Rivers, because he never went out with a woman past two or three dates. That was the point at which it became impossible to hide his affliction.

  Ella was at the hostess stand when they left, and as they walked out the door, Luca lingered. “See you tomorrow?”

  “Maybe,” she said, smiling.

  “Just a maybe?” he asked, and touched his fingers to her hand.

  “I’m meeting the Ladies Auxiliary in the morning, and I have some errands I need to take care of.” She gave him a half-hearted shrug.

  “Luca!” Hallie shouted at him from somewhere outside.

  “Text me,” she said.

  He wanted to say something. His chest felt funny, but he couldn’t quite determine what it was. So he kissed her cheek and backed away from her, unwilling to lose sight of her just yet. Ella laughed at him. “You’re going to trip.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t do anything weird.”

  “Remind me not to make any more breezy promises,” he said.

  She waved at him, and he turned around and walked out to the parking lot, trying hard not to appear as besotted as he felt.

  That’s when he realized what the sensation in his chest was. It felt like the bulb of a plant, like all the thoughts and emotions that formed the idea of settling down with one person, of committing to one, were beginning to knit together into a bulb and take root.

  That realization was a little stunning.

  He was going to need another drink to absorb such significant changes in his cell structure.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Ella locked the door of the bar and turned, almost colliding with Mateo. “Jesus, you scared me. You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”

  “I didn’t sneak up on you, I walked to the door. Maybe you were distracted.” He’d donned his dark leather jacket and ball cap, and he was looking past her, out the door. “So that’s the new guy, huh?”

  Ella looked over her shoulder, but of course, everyone had gone. “No,” she said, and inwardly winced at her lie. “I mean, sort of. It’s new. Actually, it’s not really defined, it’s just . . .” For heaven’s sake, she sounded like a babbling idiot. Why was she so hesitant? Why couldn’t she just own it? She wasn’t worried about hurting Mateo’s feelings—they had definitely moved on from each other. No, this was something else entirely. Part of her thought Mateo wouldn’t believe her. Part of her didn’t believe it herself. Damn it, but she still felt unworthy of someone like Luca Prince. Still.

  “You know the guy he’s with, right?” Mateo asked.

  “Brandon? Do you know him?”

  “I don’t know him, but his dad is that guy in the TV commercials. ‘If you’ve been hit by a truck, call four-four-four,’” he said with a roll of his eyes. “I heard the old man commutes from the Dominion to his downtown office every day in a helicopter. Can you imagine the scratch you’d have to have for a daily helicopter?” Mateo stepped around her to the door. “So who’s the guy?” he asked.

  “His name is Luca. Luca Prince.”

  Mateo stilled a moment. “Whoa,” he said. “Figures—the two families with all the money in Texas. Well, lucky you, Ella.”

  “Money doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she said, exasperated by the insinuation.

  Mateo gave a dark laugh. “Are you serious? Money is the way of the world, or haven’t you been paying attention? Those that have lots of it get to do what they want. And then there are the rest of us. We’re just mortals,” he said, and winked at her before he pushed the door open. “Good luck running with that crowd,” he said, and walked out the door.

  She locked the door behind him.

  Good luck running with that crowd.

  The words rattled around in her head, refusing to settle. It was the same thing she’d thought privately, especially when they’d started talking about Cabo. Hey, let’s jet down to Cabo this weekend and see some guy’s yacht. You, too, Ella! Then again, why not run with that crowd? She wasn’t a peasant. But she couldn’t jet off to Cabo, and she would never have the kind of
money the Princes had. Still, she was proud of what she’d accomplished. She was proud of finishing college while working two jobs. She was proud that she had a degree in spite of her shaky beginnings.

  Meet his family? She was not ready for that. In spite of Ella’s confidence, there was something about the perfectly put together Princes that made her feel less than adequate. She didn’t want to meet his family. She didn’t want to step off her little farm and be reminded of who she was not.

  She glanced heavenward, looking for help she was not going to get. She was so stupid, living for the moment, pretending the outside world didn’t exist. She still hadn’t gotten used to the idea that she and Luca were kind of, sort of, seeing each other, or know what it really all meant past their little bubble.

  But what really annoyed her was that she was thinking that way at all. She had believed she was well past the point of caring what others thought of her. She was supposed to be a self-assured woman, and mostly, she had been. She had been right up to the moment she was faced with the prospect of actually going to the famed Three Rivers Ranch, and had promptly tumbled into a pit of insecurity that felt as big and deep as it had when she was in high school.

  “Damn, I annoy me.” With a shake of her head, she went to the back to help Chrissy close out.

  * * *

  • • •

  Later that night, with Buddy stretched out beside her and snoring loudly as if he’d worked cattle all day instead of lazing around on the porch, Ella cranked up her laptop and Googled Brandon Hurst to see if what Mateo said was true.

  She discovered that Brandon had not followed his father into the apparently very lucrative practice of injury law, which had sprouted offices in San Antonio, Austin, and Houston. There were several articles about his father’s high-profile injury cases and multimillion dollar settlements, as well as his family’s high profile charity events. Thomas Hurst had two sons. The oldest, she knew, was the Cimarron County sheriff, who had an entirely different set of articles, mostly to do with drug busts, traffic accidents, and burn bans.

  There were a few articles about Brandon, too, and his efforts in environmental law. He was not as visible as his father or brother, but he had been involved in the successful litigation on behalf of some rice farmers who’d sued an oil company that had failed to adequately clean up a spill.

  Next, she Googled Luca. Stacy said one should never date a man without at least a cursory Google check, but Ella had never really checked on Luca past scrolling through some social media and Google references. But she hadn’t clicked on the articles that popped up. For one thing, it felt invasive. And she was busy. And her internet connection was so primitive as to be considered third world. And she was afraid of what she might find, other than him with a bevy of beauties.

  She held her breath and hit the return key. Oh, but the beauties popped up, all right, going back ten years. The things written about Luca were very different from the news on Brandon. There were no accolades for his performance in a courtroom, no distinguished honors at a school or in a profession. There were, however, quite a few mentions of him in conjunction with his family’s philanthropic foundation, and many, many pictures of him at high-society parties. There was Luca in a tuxedo, a little glassy-eyed, holding a highball glass on a rooftop in New York. There he was again, his arms around two men on either side of him, on a Caribbean beach. There he was with a beautiful blonde at what looked like a debutante ball. Another woman at an opera in Paris. At a boat show. At an art gallery opening in Los Angeles.

  Good luck running with that crowd.

  Ella’s head was beginning to hurt. She closed her laptop and went through the motions of getting ready for bed while Mateo’s words played on repeat in her mind. She tried to read to quiet her thoughts, but it was a long time before she fell asleep.

  The next morning she woke up groggy and out of sorts. She dressed and made her way to the Baptist Church to meet with the Ladies Auxiliary.

  “As long as no one objects, you have the job,” Mrs. Wilson, the president of the group had said when Ella spoke with her earlier in the week.

  The board met in what turned out to be a rather dusty, stuffy basement room of the church. Someone had set up metal folding chairs in a circle. On a table against the wall was a cornucopia of carbohydrates—cookies and sheet cakes—baby carrots and broccoli that no one touched, and—there seemed to be a bit of a row about this—sugary punch instead of tea. From what Ella could gather, Mrs. Rosenholz had defied the wishes of the food committee and brought the sugar punch instead of tea.

  But the ladies gamely carried on without tea, filling their plates with cookies and cake, and settling in. Ella took a seat in the designated guest spot and was pulling out her notes when she heard a familiar name: Cordelia Prince.

  “I’m telling you, he sees Cordelia Prince up there sitting on his grave in the early evenings. I mean on top of the grave. Like she’s made herself a bed there.”

  “Oh, how she must miss him,” said one of the ladies. “I still miss John, and he’s been gone thirty-two years now.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t piss on Charlie Prince’s grave if he were my husband,” said another.

  “A man like Charlie Prince would never have been your husband, Willa.”

  “Betty!” Mrs. Rosenholz said. “That’s not nice.”

  Willa didn’t seem terribly offended. She said, “He ran around on Ms. Prince all their lives! He had that kid with Margaret Sutton of all people, and let me tell you, that woman has said some things that would curl your hair.”

  “Did you know that Margaret and Ms. Prince were best friends once?” Mrs. Rosenholz asked slyly.

  “That Charlie,” said another of the ladies with a tower of cookies that looked precariously close to toppling over. “He was good for nothing. Nearly ran the Prince name into the ground.”

  “Ladies,” said Mrs. Wilson primly, “this is a house of worship, not a coffee klatch, and we have a lot of business to get to. And besides, it’s all just gossip. None of us knows the truth of what happened between them. Now, I found Charlie Prince to be a good Christian man. We wouldn’t have that cross out front if it weren’t for him!”

  The cross she was referring to, Ella gathered, was the one that was almost as tall as the church.

  “That’s true enough,” said Betty. “He was a sinner, but he was a good man, too. His kids are another story,” she added with a snort.

  Everyone giggled.

  Ella could feel heat creeping into her cheeks.

  “I like Nick,” said Willa. “He seems responsible. Not very friendly, but responsible, and someone has to be with that kind of money floating around. I tell you what, the way Hallie shops is something else. Big Barb says she gets boxes and boxes from New York and Paris all the time.”

  “It’s their money to do with as they please,” said Mrs. Wilson, and sat in her chair. “Can we please call to order? I am sure Miss Kendall has better things to do than listen to gossip about the Prince family.”

  Actually, she did not.

  But the group settled into their seats and began to review the books and what Ella could do for them.

  The books, she discovered, were a hodgepodge of handwritten notes, receipts, and a meeting agenda from two years ago. It was a nightmare for Mrs. Wilson, and even Ella would be challenged to make sense of it. But she liked a challenge, and promised to clean up their accounting and present them with a new spreadsheet that showed exactly how much available funding they had at the next monthly meeting.

  “Well, then I guess you’re hired, hon,” said Mrs. Wilson, then looked around the room. “Any objection?”

  The other ladies shook their heads.

  They moved on to the next item, and Ella walked out to her car, still digesting all the talk about the Princes. It was stunning to hear them so openly discussed. In her car, she checked her list of thin
gs she had to do today and saw she had a missed call from Luca, followed by a text that said, Cal me?

  She smiled. He was getting better about texting, although his spelling needed work. She decided she’d call him when she got home. She put her phone on the hands-free device and backed out of her parking spot. It rang as she was backing out, and she hit the button to answer, assuming it was Luca. “Hey there,” she said.

  “Oh my God, finally,” Stacy’s voice shouted into the space of her car.

  Ella suppressed a groan. “Hey, Stace. What’s up?”

  “What’s up? Are you kidding me? You’ve been avoiding me, that’s what is up, Ella!”

  “Are you going to start this conversation by yelling at me?”

  “I’m not yelling at you. I’m pissed! Why haven’t you taken my calls?”

  Ella slammed her car into drive, her errands forgotten. “Because I’m pissed at you, Stacy!”

  “What?” Stacy asked, sounding perplexed. “What’d I do?”

  “Are you kidding me right now? You stole a dress from Mariah!”

  That was met with a slender moment of silence, and then a dismissive, “Oh, that.”

  Ella’s fury soared to new heights. “Yes, that,” she snapped. “I’m done, Stacy. I’m really, seriously done this time! I’ve never been able to stand your stealing, but now, I refuse to put up with it. If you’re going to shoplift from our friend, then you are on your own.”

  “I’m sorry!” Stacy wailed. “I swear I won’t do it again. And besides, it was just a stupid sale dress. Seventy-five percent off.”

  Ella banged the steering wheel with the palm of her hand several times. “Do you hear yourself? It doesn’t matter that it was on sale! You stole from Mariah! Your good friend Mariah. Don’t you have any remorse?”

  “Of course I have remorse,” Stacy said, her voice quieter. “Actually, I feel really bad about it. But you know I can’t help it sometimes.”

  Ella rolled her eyes. That was always Stacy’s excuse. She couldn’t help it. “Yeah, well, I can help it, and I’m not your mother, and I don’t want to be around you at all if you’re going to steal.”