Love Takes All

by J. M. Jeffries

  A couple with two children walked into the lobby. They trailed suitcases on wheels. The little boy loudly announced he wanted to be a cowboy and the mother simply shook her head, looking frazzled. They approached the desk and started to check in.

  Lydia was amazed that despite the lack of amenities people still came to stay at the Mariposa when they could go elsewhere. Circus Circus was a good choice for families.

  The sounds from the casino reached out into the lobby. She could hear the clanking of dishes from the café. Suddenly an idea for the spa started to coalesce in her mind. Spanish architecture was based on the influence of the Moors. She had an idea for billowing curtains, intricate mosaic tile floors and overstuffed sofas. She headed toward her office, anxious to get as many of her ideas written down and sketched out, feeling as happy as she’d ever been since before Mitchell passed away.

  * * *

  Lydia removed the art from the walls and replaced them with some of her own in an attempt to make the suite more personable. Having her own possessions around her gave her a strong sense of comfort. She rearranged the furniture to make the foyer and living room feel a little less cavernous.

  For the deck, she requested plants to break up the long, straight line of the pond and add a bit of color. The pond was barely a foot deep, but koi flashed back and forth, hiding under the large leaves of the water lilies in the brightness of the early afternoon sun.

  The suite was quiet without Maya’s constant chatter. Lydia had arranged for her to take an extra tutoring session in a meeting room down the hall from the suite so she would be gone when the meeting with Vanessa happened. The tutor had been advised not to turn Maya over to anyone but Lydia, and Hunter had posted a security guard outside the room just in case. Lydia didn’t want Maya accidentally overhearing their planning session. Maya liked Miss Weston. She made learning fun and Maya soaked up knowledge like a sponge.

  She sat at the desk in a corner of the living room, more at ease now that Maya would be ready for school here. She could get a bit of work done before her meeting with Vanessa.

  Hunter had worked out a plan for the building of the spa and Lydia read through it several times. A survey team had been hired to measure the open areas around the hot springs. Hunter had the job of talking to the building department to get the necessary information he would need to apply for building permits.

  Lydia’s job was to start putting together color schemes and look for samples of carpet and tile. She’d already been to a variety of home improvement stores to collect paint chips that were currently spread across the top of her desk.

  She couldn’t seem to focus. Her mind kept skittering away from her task to her stepsons. Despite Vanessa’s assurance that she wouldn’t lose custody, she couldn’t take the risk. She wasn’t a gambler like Miss E., who seemed to understand the cards in some sort of psychic manner.

  David and Leon scared her. She’d met Leon’s children and they weren’t nice children. She knew all teenagers went through stages of defiance, but his children had taken the stage to new levels.

  A knock sounded on the door and she rose to answer it, opening the door to Hunter. The more she saw him, the more she had this queer little lurch inside that left her heart pounding and her palms damp. He made her feel all gooey and uncomfortable.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She sighed. “I know everyone says that my chances of losing Maya are slim to none, but I don’t even want slim.”

  Hunter shook his head. “We’re not going to let that happen.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Scott is digging up dirt on them right now. No one is going to look at you and look at them and think you’re a terrible mother. You have a happy kid.”

  Again, Lydia’s thoughts went back to Leon’s angry children. She doubted they would ever be happy. Their mothers weren’t happy. All three of Leon’s baby mamas had been minimum wage earners, and even though the estate paid each one of them a generous amount each month, they were never satisfied nor did they seem to have anything left at the end of the day. Was anger something in their genes, something they’d never overcome?

  “You need to stop worrying so much. You’re a good mother, Lydia,” Hunter repeated. “David and Leon may make things uncomfortable for a time, but they don’t have a chance of getting custody.”

  But she couldn’t stop worrying. Another knock sounded on the door and Lydia opened it to find Vanessa and Scott in the hall. They entered. Vanessa immediately sat on the sofa to open her briefcase and pull out a folder, her laptop and a long box with DNA Kit stamped on the side. Scott also opened his laptop, and Lydia found herself tensing.

  “Lydia,” Scott said, “I started things in motion to get a thorough background check. I should have results in a few days. And I want to put security cameras in their suite. Will you let me?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Vanessa said with a side glance at Scott. “They have an expectation of privacy in their suite.”

  “It would give us some idea about what they’re up to so we can plan accordingly,” Scott said.

  “I’m uncomfortable with that,” Lydia said.

  “Why?” Scott asked.

  “It’s so...unseemly.”

  “Unseemly! These two lowlifes want to take your kid.”

  Lydia mused over his suggestion. She glanced at Hunter. “He’s a pit bull.”

  “I’m your pit bull,” Scott answered with a grin.

  “What would you do?” Lydia asked Miss E.

  “To keep my kids? Anything.”

  Lydia would do anything, too, but some things just seemed wrong. “But would this information be admissible in court?”

  Vanessa thought for a moment. “Depends on the judge and how we present our argument, but I’m going to go with a no. Though knowing what they’re doing does give us an advantage.”

  “They’ve only been here two days,” Hunter put in, “and they’ve already brought in what I will euphemistically call ‘dates.’ We have them on tape. I should think it would give a judge some idea of their character.”

  Lydia closed her eyes, her thoughts whirling. When she opened them to look at Hunter, she couldn’t think how to frame her question.

  “Listen,” Hunter said patiently, “we won’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

  His eyes looked so concerned, and she was grateful. “At this point, I’m uncomfortable with putting security cameras in the suite. I think we can get enough information about them without doing something like that.”

  “Okay then,” Scott said, “no security cameras in their suite.”

  She glanced around and realized no one was judging her for her decision. They accepted her decision without argument and she suddenly felt good. Her parents had always questioned her decisions and usually she would change her mind to please them. As much as Mitchell indulged her, he’d never asked her opinion about anything. He’d assumed she didn’t have one. She felt like she belonged right here, right now, with these people, who all looked at her with concern in their eyes. And for the first time in her whole life, she’d felt like she had a real family, one who treated her like a grownup capable of making mature decisions. She liked being treated like a thinking, intelligent person.

  The conversation drifted around her while she thought about David and Leon. Would they really claim Maya to be illegitimate to forward their claims?

  “I’ll be talking to hotel security in an hour to discuss setting up remote surveillance on them,” Scott said. “I want all their actions on tape.”

  “I’ve done a little digging,” Vanessa said, “and found out they do like their gambling. And they like their girls and their alcohol.”

  “And,” Miss E. added, “they like messing with the hotel staff. They’ve alienated everyone they’ve come in
to contact with.”

  “We can use that,” Vanessa said, typing furiously on her laptop. “I want everyone on your staff who comes into contact with them to document the encounter. This indicates character, or lack of.”

  Lack of, Lydia thought with a half smile. She didn’t realize she was staring at Hunter until he raised an eyebrow at her. She felt heat blossom on her face. She liked his character. And wished...she didn’t know what she wished for. She had to stop thinking about how much she liked Hunter and concentrate on Maya’s safety.

  Focus, she sternly ordered herself. Focus on the problem at hand. She’d only been a widow for two years. Thinking about Hunter was improper. But why, why was liking him now considered improper? Her mother had stressed at Mitchell’s funeral that her future behavior had to be above reproach. She wasn’t supposed to taint her name, and yet she’d run away to Reno and unexpectedly found herself the owner of a casino. David and Leon made a career out of tarnishing their family name, while her parents held her to a much higher standard.

  “Lydia,” Hunter said. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “I was just thinking about things better left alone.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “The past,” she admitted.

  “Nothing good comes from thinking about the past,” Miss E. said. “You need to let it go. You have one hell of a fight in front of you, sweetie.”

  “I know the odds are in your favor,” Hunter stressed, “but I don’t think David and Leon are bright enough to know that.”

  “And that makes them dangerous,” Scott put in.

  * * *

  Lydia was too restless to relax. She left Maya with Miss E., who was teaching her the art of the inside straight after they went to look at horses. Miss E. stressed that poker taught two very important lessons—self-discipline and reading body language. Lydia wasn’t certain how she felt about her daughter learning poker, she did know that the lessons learned would last her the rest of her life. Poker was a game of strategy and would teach Maya how to think and puzzle through challenges. Lydia’s grandfather had taught her how to play chess, but to her chess was just a game. Not until later in her life did she realize chess was a game of strategy and since she didn’t play as well as she thought she should, she felt she’d wasted her grandfather’s lessons.

  Without realizing it, Lydia found herself at the hot springs, dangling her feet in the warm water, breathing in the mineral smell and letting her stress drain away.

  She didn’t want her daughter being raised by anyone but her. How Leon and David thought they could convince a judge to turn Maya over to them puzzled her. She didn’t doubt for a minute that it was the money they were after, but to use Maya so callously said a lot about their character, or, as Vanessa said, lack of. If not for Maya, she would have written them a check for whatever they wanted. The problem was they wanted it all. Maya was a child with a bright future and she had no doubt her daughter could make a success out of herself with nothing but her own grit and determination, but she was going to give her child every advantage she could. That included a happy future. They were grown men who’d already wasted their future.

  Mitchell had been generous in providing for Leon’s children, but she knew Leon was frustrated by the iron-clad trust he couldn’t touch. Every penny needed to be accounted for and Everest had an accountant who did nothing but work on the trust and deflect Leon’s demands. And once the children turned twenty-five, the trust reverted back to Maya, which was another thing that galled Leon. Which Lydia thought was kind of odd. But she’d never questioned Everest about why Mitchell had written the trust the way he had.

  “Lydia, why are you out here alone?” Hunter sat down next to her.

  “Maya is having her poker lesson and I didn’t want to hover.”

  “Self-discipline and body language skills,” Hunter said with a chuckle.

  “She called them life lessons.” Hunter took his shoes off, rolled up his pant legs and put his feet into the water with a little sigh.

  “So she taught you to play poker, too.”

  “All of us,” he said.

  “How do you use your life lessons in your occupation?”

  Hunter rolled up his socks and put them inside his shoes. “I restore old buildings to their former glamour. The problem with some owners is that they don’t understand the importance of being accurate. Like the Painted Ladies. The colors they were originally were always bright and cheerful, colors we consider ticky-tacky today, but were appropriate to that style. And I can tell when someone is going to be difficult or accommodating. I know just how much I can say to talk a difficult client into doing what needs to be done, and I learned by controlling my reactions and reading their body language. I’m not just an architect. A lot of time, I’m a therapist.”

  Lydia tilted her head, thinking about what he’d just said. Mitchell had lived in the Garden District house where his ancestors had originally been slaves. He’d even searched for the original furniture and found as many pieces as he could. He’d spent millions of dollars restoring that house to its former glory and he’d been incredibly proud of the fact that he’d come to own the house his ancestors slaved at.

  She had never liked the house. It was cluttered and cold and whatever character it had seemed submerged beneath layers of pain. She never felt comfortable. Living in the house was like sitting down in a wobbly, two-hundred-year old chair. If it broke, she had to call a specialist to repair it.

  She didn’t sell the house because it was Maya’s heritage, but the minute the will had been read and probated, she’d packed her bags and rented a house in the French Quarter. She’d turned the Garden District house into a museum and allowed the local historical society to use it for tours. Hunter would have had a field day restoring that old house.

  “Why Reno?” Hunter shifted to get comfortable on the hard rock.

  “Because it was so unexpected,” Lydia said. “All my life I’ve done what was expected of me. I was sent to the right schools, the right college. I earned the right degrees with the best grades. I married the right man and ate at the right restaurants and supported the right charities, because all those things were expected of me. When Mitchell died, my expectations of the right life died with him, and I thought, what the hell. If life was going to shake me up, I would shake life up right back.”

  “So you came to Reno when you could have gone to Paris, London or even New York.”

  “I thought about going to Paris, but that would be expected of me. No one expected me to show up in the ‘biggest little city’ in the world and win a casino in a poker game.” Her parents had been appalled at her when she announced she was leaving. Her mother argued with her about appearances and tarnishing her upstanding family’s image. She refused to listen. Mitchell’s death freed her. He’d left her a generous amount of money to live her life and that was what she planned to do—live her life according to her rules.

  “Now that I get,” Hunter said.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I volunteered,” he said with a chuckle. “When this is done, I’ll head back to San Francisco and pick up where I left off.”

  “So you think,” she replied. Miss E. was a spider and once she had someone in her web, that person was caught. “Your grandmother has you exactly where she wants you—back in the fold.”

  “In the back of my head, I know you’re right,” Hunter said with another laugh. “But I’m going to go right on pretending I’m a grown man and continue with my life.”

  She joined him in laughter. “Five minutes after meeting Miss E., I knew she was going to keep me in her life forever.”

  “Your parents were pretty controlling, from what you’ve said. Miss E. is just another form of control.”

  That was a fair statement. “I thought we were just going to be friends. I had
no idea we were going to be business partners, and I’ll be honest, this was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.” She splashed at the water with her feet too aware of the warmth of his body next to her.

  “Miss E. is like that, helping you come to the right conclusion, which is right in line with hers.”

  “You’re being kind of harsh about your grandmother.”

  “I’ve known her longer than you have,” he said with a grin.

  They fell into silence. A cool wind blew in down the side of the mountain and Lydia shivered. He put an arm around her and she found herself leaning into his warmth. She wasn’t expecting him to kiss her, but his lips on hers were warm and inviting. His kiss teased and excited her. She felt a tingle all the way down to her toes.

  She pushed him away and scrambled to her feet and fled to the hotel without a backward look. She’d finally kissed him and she’d loved it. Yet at the same time she felt a sense of disloyalty to Mitchell. His kiss had never excited her like this. Not once during their marriage did he make her feel dizzy and out of control.

  Chapter 4

  Hunter stood in the center of the lobby watching as the workman assembled their scaffolding and set out barriers to keep incoming patrons safe. They were fixing some water damage discovered when a painting had been removed for cleaning.

  Lydia was at a low point in her life and he felt like a jerk, taking advantage of her. His kiss had surprised him probably more than Lydia. But something about her made him ache to protect her, to keep her safe, to keep her for himself. Kissing her was going about it the wrong way.

  The elevator door opened and Lydia walked out. She took one look at him and scurried away in a different direction, avoiding him.

  “What did you do to Lydia?” Miss E. poked him in the ribs with one finger.

  “Nothing,” Hunter protested.

  “I can smell guilt from a mile away and you reek of it.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You know I’m a grown man, right?”