The Tycoon

by Anna Jeffrey

  “That sounds good,” Shannon said, eager for her grandmother to leave the room so she could get out of bed.

  “I’ll heat it up,” Grammy Evelyn said, still smiling. “It’ll take me just a few minutes.” She left the room, rocking from side to side in her little-old-lady gait.

  Shannon sat up. She felt like hell. Her head ached. Every muscle was sore. Sex with Drake had been an athletic event. Then, she had followed up with a tense drive in the soupy weather with her jaws and shoulders taut as a tightrope all the way from Fort Worth.

  Since the Piper mansion had been built in 1870, the bathroom adjoining her bedroom was

  one end of a porch that had been closed in thirty or forty years back. A metal medicine cabinet with a mirrored door hung above an antique porcelain pedestal sink. She stood in front of it and stared at her reflection, only able to see her upper torso. She looked worse than she felt.

  And she did indeed have a purple hickey the size of a golf ball just below her navel. On her pale skin, it purplish color competed with her tattoo. Damn. The thing would be weeks going away. She covered it with her hand and closed her eyes remembering the exact moment Texas Monthly’s Most Eligible Bachelor had put it there.

  The bathtub was an old claw-foot with an overhead shower and a plastic curtain that slid all the way around it on an oval metal pipe. A clumsy and inconvenient set-up, but it gave total privacy. And that was what she wanted this morning while she bathed and further examined her body.

  After shampooing her hair, she found two more hickeys on the insides of her thighs, one in such an awkward spot, she could barely twist her leg far enough to see it. That one had occurred on the kitchen counter, no doubt, when he’d had her pinned and his mouth had had free range of her most intimate parts.

  The breath-stealing orgasms Drake had taken her to rushed into her memory. Sex with Justin Turnbow, or any man she had known, had never been like it was last night with Drake. How had he driven her to climax over and over and made her want him again even after she thought she couldn’t come again?

  Experience, her cranky alter-ego said. The guy knows too much about women.”

  Shannon couldn’t argue the point.

  Just thinking about how he had felt inside her set a tingle buzzing in the tiny core of her sex. She put her hand between her legs and cupped herself with her palm. With only a little help from her own fingers, she could come again right this minute.

  God, she had been so needy. Embarrassingly so. She had given herself to him completely and had enjoyed it. Maybe celibacy wasn’t such a good idea for someone who liked sex as much as she used to before she gave it up.

  After drying and straightening her hair, she wrapped herself in a heavy flannel robe and returned to the bedroom. She picked up The Dress from the bed and held it to her nose, testing. To her relief, the only odor she detected was Pleasures, the Estee Lauder fragrance she wore most of the time these days. Not too many years ago, an Estee Lauder product would have been out of her reach.

  She carried the dress closer to the window and inspected it for damage. It appeared to be none the worse for wear. None of the mirror sequins looked to be missing. As she carefully hung it on its padded hanger and placed it in its own plastic storage bag, a flashback came to her of the day she and Christa had shopped for it at Neiman Marcus and the whispery debate they’d had in the dressing room:

  “Oh, my God, that is you, Shannon,” Christa had said. “It’s sexy as all get out.”

  But Shannon’s focus had been on the price tag. “It costs too much.”

  “Hah. If I found a dress that made me look that good, I wouldn’t care what it cost. Buy it for yourself for a Christmas present. You’ve earned it. You’ve worked like a dog this year. C’mon. Go out and look at yourself in the three-way mirror. You look gorgeous.”

  When Shannon had stepped out of the dressing room to peruse herself in the three-way mirror, the clerk gasped. “Honey, that designer had your hair and your fair skin in mind.”

  That had been pure malarkey, of course. Shannon had worked in retail stores for years,

  knew the sales clerks at Neiman’s were paid commissions. She recognized puffery when she heard it. Still, the barrage of flattery had been too much to resist. She had bought The Dress.

  As she hung it on the rack in her closet, she wondered if she would ever wear it again, Was there any point in spending the money to have it cleaned.?

  She thought again of the moment she and Drake had first seen each other at the party. No man had ever looked at her as he had. And just like that, The Dress became worth every penny she had paid for it.

  Finally, she ambled to the kitchen. She found her grandmother lifting the lid on a steaming pan sitting on one of the stove burners and releasing a homey aroma into the small room. No microwave for Grammy Evelyn. Eating nothing since lunch yesterday except a few canapés and a few bites of Crème Brûlée. Shannon was starved.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and walked to the refrigerator for cream. A dozen magnets her grandmother had collected were plastered on the refrigerator door. The one at eye-level said: BEHIND EVERY SUCCESSFUL MAN IS AN ASTONISHED WOMAN.

  “I thought potato soup sounded so good in this weather,” her grandmother said, ladling steaming creamy soup into thick crockery bowls. “That television weatherman said this storm is supposed to go away later today. But I don’t trust his forecasts. I have more faith in that woman forecaster. Did you have any trouble on the road, dear?”

  Shannon had always wondered about Grammy Evelyn’s sarcasm toward men. “It was foggy and wet, but I took it slow. That’s why I got home so late.”

  “Christa called. She’s eager to hear about your evening. As am I.”

  “I’ll call her later,” Shannon said.

  She sat down to eat at the small round oak table in the frilly Victorian breakfast room. Ivory crocheted lace shadowed the windows from the outside light. Mauve and blue floral-patterned chintz covered the chairs. A round blue antique rug lay on the floor under the round table. This room was a step back in time, which, for some reason, made Shannon feel secure.

  Grammy Evelyn brought a china teapot and two delicate china cups and saucers to the table. Shannon had always thought having tea in china cups with her elderly grandmother in this era-gone-by setting was a fitting thing to do. A fantasy, like “Alice in Wonderland.”

  As that thought crossed her mind, she thought again of last night. The entire evening had been one big fantasy. But it was more like a porn movie.”

  Through the meal, Shannon described the party to Grammy Evelyn—the hotel’s lavish decorations, the extravagant clothing and jewelry, the people she met, the luxury baubles in the silent auction and the outrageous prices the guests had paid for them. Her grandmother was enthralled.

  Afterwards, Shannon called Christa.

  “Come over,” her pal said.

  “I thought I might just hole up for today and—”

  “You will not! I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking about you all dressed up at that party. I want to hear all about it. You aren’t about to keep me waiting.”

  Christa was the only person with whom Shannon shared any part of her personal life. “Okay, okay,” she said, laughing. “There’s plenty to tell. I’ll see you later this afternoon. I have to go to my office and do a few chores, then I’ll be over.”

  ****

  Piper Real Estate was located in a forties vintage house Shannon had bought and had

  remodeled and was making mortgage payments on. It wasn’t on the main street, but was just around a corner from the state highway that ran through town. It wasn’t open on Sundays unless she or one of her team had a customer. Usually, after taking Grammy Evelyn to church, she went into the office and spent the quiet afternoon updating her files and catching up on what she had neglected through the previous week.

  Today, even in the silence and privacy of the empty office, she couldn’t concentrate. Instead of working, she sat a
t her desk, her eyes closed, her cheeks resting in her palms, while she replayed the previous evening, the hour or so in bed with a prince of Texas and the words he had murmured to her.

  She could make neither heads nor tails of her emotions. On the one hand, what she felt was akin to grief over blowing her opportunity with a man who could be the man of her—or any woman’s—dreams.

  On the other, she didn’t want a man—even one like Drake Lockhart—interfering with her life. For the first time ever, she was her own person, not relying on or worrying about what some guy was doing or thinking and she liked that feeling, had no plan to ever let it go. Independence. She had never known anything like it.

  Besides, her experiences with the opposite sex had been so negative she didn’t trust men—any of them.

  And she had no sooner had that thought than she returned to thinking about Drake and wondering how he had reacted when he awoke today and found her missing.

  Despite having a hard time concentrating, she finished her tasks quickly and headed for Christa’s small house in one of Camden’s older neighborhoods near town. Christa had never left Camden. After high school graduation, she had played at going to a junior college until she married her first husband. She had gone to work for Vista Title Company as a clerk and researcher. Now, twelve years later, she was a closing officer. When Shannon decided to open her own real estate company, Christa was who she had talked to first, who had convinced her she had what it took to run her own company.

  By late afternoon, Shannon was sitting at her best friend’s kitchen table, drinking hot chocolate. Surrounded by the noise and commotion of Christa’s sons playing a video game and the spicy aroma of chili simmering in the Crockpot, Shannon made a full confession. She didn’t have to explain who Drake Lockhart was. Anyone in the real estate profession knew.

  The blond friend leaned across the table, her big brown eyes alive and warm. “This is so exciting. What’s he like, really? I mean the things people have written about him—”

  “Oh, Lord, Christa, he’s hard to describe. He’s charismatic. And intense. And he’s aggressive. A real no-holds-barred kind of guy. And he’s so…he’s just so…” She looked down, embarrassed. “I couldn’t tell him no. He’s persuasive.”

  Christa’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, my God. Did he force you?”

  “No, no.” Shannon quickly shook her head. “It was me. I could’ve left any time I wanted to.” The look in Drake’s eyes at the moment she consented flashed in her memory. “But I guess I didn’t really want to.”

  “He’s so good-looking in his pictures,” Christa said.

  Shannon nodded, thinking back again about seeing him cross the room to the bed and how she hadn’t been able to stop staring at him. “He looks better in person.”

  Christa heaved a sigh and sipped her hot chocolate. “I can’t believe this. When you got that invitation from that other Realtor, who would have ever thought?”

  “I know, right?” As another memory flitted by of Drake’s sleeping countenance, Shannon

  touched her forehead between her brows. “He’s got this deep line here. It makes him look like he’s frowning. It never goes away.”

  “Serious minded, huh? Do you think he’ll try to find you?”

  “Lord, no, Christa. I’m just a chick he picked up in the bar. A one-night stand, you know?”

  But even as Shannon said that, she remembered the high voltage that had arced between her and Drake clear across a crowded room. Would he be able to forget that?

  “My God, Shannon. This is like a story. A look across a crowded room, yada, yada, yada. It’s like Cinderella. Why did you lie to him about who you are?”

  And that was the question Shannon had no answer to. Why, indeed? She winced and frowned. “I don’t know. I was so flattered and shocked that he even looked at me. And so nervous. I was intimidated by the surroundings and the people. I’ve never been anywhere that was like that party. I wasn’t thinking clearly and I’d had a lot of champagne. Everything got out of my control.”

  “Well it’s easy to fix. You just call him up.”

  “And say what? ‘Hey, remember me? The pick-up from Saturday night. I sure remember you.’”

  “Tell him what you just told me. The way I see it, you wouldn’t be any worse off than you are now.”

  Shannon gave that some thought. Christa knew more about men than anyone she knew. Drake’s business phone number must be in the Fort Worth phone book. But then, she hadn’t heard him say the name of his company. The information would be easy enough to find, but she wasn’t convinced that calling him was the right step. “I don’t know, Christa. You know my rotten history with guys.” She shook her head. “I think I’m better off to put it behind me.”

  Christa huffed and waved away her concerns. “You should think about it some more.”

  The video game ended and the kids trouped into the kitchen for water and food. Christa invited Shannon to stay for supper, but she declined and left for home.

  She drove slowly, considering options. Maybe she would look up Drake’s company and call him tomorrow. An imaginary conversation sifted through her mind: Hi, guess who?... Sorry I left in the middle of the night. Had to get home, you know. Don’t worry, I didn’t steal anything but a coffee mug.

  She shut down those thoughts. No way could she call him. She would never find the right words. Why cause herself pain on top of embarrassment?

  Hell. Just hell.

  Chapter 12

  Sunday evening, after spending Saturday night with Barron Wilkes, Betty Lockhart withheld an invitation for him to sleep at her house and sent him home. She didn’t mind sleeping at his house, which she had done last night, but she didn’t want him spending the night at hers. She didn’t want her stuffy neighbors seeing his car parked in her driveway in the early morning. And she never knew when her estranged husband might drop by.

  Tonight she had thought Barron would never leave. She was dying to know what had happened between Drake and Donna Schoonover. Reluctant to have so personal a conversation with her son in Barron’s presence, she had sneaked a call to him this morning while Barron was in the shower, but she hadn’t had an opportunity to call him since.

  She wasn’t well-acquainted with Donna. Nor did she know much about Drake’s relationship with her. But she hated that he had quarreled with the daughter of Don and Karen Stafford. She believed Donna to be a good catch for any man.

  The Staffords had venerable standing, not only in Texas, but everywhere. Don Stafford was friends with Saudi princes and had been influential with four or five Presidents. Karen Stafford was a member of every important organization for good causes in the state and had even written a children’s book. And they had so much lovely money.

  Still, Betty did wonder what kind of mother Donna would make. For all of the heiress’s plusses, Betty had to admit that Drake could be right about her drinking. Every time Betty saw her she had a drink in her hand. And though she and Drake were near the same age, she was rumored to have been married three times. But Betty refused to let herself get bogged down with minuses that conflicted with her wishes.

  Now she paced in front of the marble fireplace in her family room, considering how she should approach her son. He hadn’t appreciated her advice in years about his girlfriends and marriage.

  Well, her children could brush off her opinions all they liked. Both of her boys were past thirty now and her daughter, Kate, was nearing the thirty mark. It was high time all of them settled down—time Drake spent less time making money, time Pic spent less time tending cows and time Kate chased after something other than wild cowboys and horse shows.

  And poor Troy, her stepson who had moved to the Double-Barrel when he was eight years old. Betty doubted he would ever settle down and be loyal to one woman. He was probably too much like his trashy mother. Having lived in a family of animal breeders, she knew a thing or two about genes.

  All of them had a bad taste for marriage. Betty wished she und
erstood it. Pic had had a wife years back, though the girl had never acted as a helpmate. She had hated the ranch and hated living in Drinkwell and she had behaved as if she hated Pic. After the marriage failed, an ugly divorce and settlement had cost Pic as well as the family a lot of money. Because of it, friction bubbled beneath the surface among Pic and his siblings to this day. And sometimes it erupted.

  Betty walked to the kitchen and poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, continuing to think about her children and when they were small, when she’d had some control of what they did and said. She had loved those years. She loved kids. She wanted nothing more at this stage of her life than grandchildren.

  But as she again tried to envision Donna Schoonover as a mother, that cruel bastard Reality, punched her right between the eyes. While she might like seeing Drake married into one of the wealthiest and most influential families in Texas, she had no wish for him to bring her longed-for extended family into a world of messy parenting and an unstable home life. She knew that story and all of its difficulties. She had stuck it out with Bill Junior for years for the sake of preserving a two-parent environment for their children, but at great cost to her own self respect and happiness.

  Or at least, that’s what she had told herself many times. With Bill Junior, there were other factors, to be sure.

  She carried her coffee back to the family room. A shiver passed over her and she moved closer to the fire. She found these cold dreary days trying. She couldn’t work in her flowerbeds, couldn’t play golf and didn’t like leaving the warmth of her home to go play Bridge or even go shopping. If she had some grandchildren, she could bring them here and bake cookies for them, read to them, play games with them. They would pay attention to her, as her own children had done only when they were small.

  And as those thoughts tumbled through her mind, her landline rang.

  “Hi, Mom. Look, I know we talked about lunch, but I’m—”

  “Drake. I’m so glad you called. Did you and Donna sort everything out?”