by Anna Jeffrey
Shannon rested her elbows on the table, clasping her cheeks with her palms. “I’m scared, Christa. I just can’t understand what he could possibly see in me.”
“Don’t think about that,” Christa said. “I say grab that wild horse and ride that sucker all the way to the buzzer. How many women even get a chance at a young, good-looking millionaire? Most rich guys are old and fat. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, but meanwhile, just look at the fun you can have.”
Dark flashbacks battered Shannon. The hookups she’d had with men who obviously had no futures, including two years of clandestine trysts with the married Justin Turnbow, whom she had once thought she was in love with. She had never had difficulty attracting men. Finding one worth having or who hadn’t lied, cheated or used her had been harder.
Over the years, she had armored herself with a perverse wisdom learned from experience: Get over one lost lover by hooking up with another one. When the new had worn off one, she had simply drifted on until she bumped into another one.
“You just described my life and my attitude from a few years ago, before I came back to Camden,” she said. “It was a colossal mess and I was miserable. I’m much happier now without a man around at all.”
“But you live like a nun. I hear talk from all quarters, you know. I know of a dozen guys who’d like to date you, but they’re afraid to ask you. The Ice Princess, they call you.”
“I don’t care what they call me. For the first time ever, I’m in control and I’m going to stay that way. My God, if I let myself, I could go completely bonkers over Drake Lockhart. What sane woman wouldn’t? He could hurt me in a big way. That common sense you just mentioned? It tells me to stop it now.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “But I’m afraid of that, too. I’m scared that if I don’t give this a chance, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”
“Exactly,” Christa said.
“So here’s what I’m thinking. I’m going to call him back and thank him for the flowers and sort of feel him out, see what’s on his mind. If he still wants to play around, I’m thinking I’ll tell him okay, but I want to have just sex. No emotions. That way, when he drops me, it won’t hurt so bad.”
Christa barked a laugh and she nearly choked again on a drink of beer. “Good luck with that.”
“That should make him happy. Don’t men want sex with no strings attached?”
“Not if they’ve fallen for someone, Shanny,” Christa said softly. “Emotional sex is different from sex for fun.”
A huff burst from Shannon’s chest. “You’d think I’d know that, wouldn’t you? But to be honest, except for Justin, I don’t know if I’ve ever been involved with a guy where there was a sincere emotional attachment. I mean, I’m thirty-three years old and the only lips I’ve ever heard say those three little words belonged to a man who was married to someone else. How can I not think getting involved with Drake Lockhart will turn out like all of the other jerks I’ve known?”
“All I can say, Shannon, is relationships are hard. And I’ve had plenty of experience. As for love?”—she flipped her hand—“Pfft. It’s whatever people think it is. Everyone, male or female, gambles and hopes. They make plans, buy presents, take trips, go through all kinds of gyrations. No one ever really knows what’s going to happen, but they still take the chance.”
Shannon grabbed her napkin and dabbed more moisture from the corner of her eye. Ever since she met Drake, she had been on the brink of something she couldn’t quite grasp. “Hope. That’s the key word, isn’t it? If only I could get over fearing his motives. Or that I might wake up beside him some morning and he’ll have three heads. Or God knows what else.”
“You’re crossing bridges before you get to them, Shannon. You do that all the time. Do yourself a favor and do not tie a can to this guy’s tail….Yet.”
Chapter 20
Having made a decision how to deal with Drake, Shannon awoke on Thursday morning reenergized and without a hangover. Her stomach had calmed and she no longer had a headache.
When she reached Piper Real Estate, the fragrance of roses permeated the air even in the reception room. In her office, the rosebuds had opened into baseball-sized, lemon-colored blooms.
If softening her attitude toward him by sending flowers had been Drake’s plan, it had worked. She felt peculiarly appreciative. Thus, vulnerable.
After being shored up by last evening’s talk with Christa, she had gone to bed with what she would say to him firmly fixed in her mind. But she had awakened this morning with a new speech. Then there was the option of not calling him at all. She believed in fair play and not calling him wasn’t fair, even if she was nervous about talking to him. So here she sat dithering over calling him and thanking him.
Finally, taunted by the flowers, at midmorning, she closed her office door, drew in a deep breath and keyed Unknown Number into her cell phone.
“Hey, you, it’s me,” he said on the first burr.
She heard a smile in his voice, but his answering so quickly caught her off-guard. “Oh. Uh, hi. I didn’t expect…I got the flowers. They’re beautiful….I didn’t expect them. So thanks.”
She scowled. She sounded like a silly fool.
“You’re welcome. The card was with them or you wouldn’t be calling.”
“Yes. Yes, it was.”
“What do you think?”
“Well…I don’t know. I did think about it. All night, to be honest.”
“And?”
“Well…I sort of thought…I mean, maybe we could get together and talk about it.”
His deep chuckle came across the line. It sounded soft and intimate. “Fine with me.”
She nodded, as if he could see her, her self-confidence restored by his buoyant attitude. “I was thinking, if you still want to come down here for dinner, there’s a new steak house out on the north end of town, by that new grocery store. It’s called Rio Brazos Steakhouse. If anyone asks, we could, like you said, tell them you’re shopping for a house.”
“When?”
“I’m busy over the weekend, but I could do it tonight. Or even tomorrow night.”
“Great. I can be down there this evening. What time?”
OhmyGod. She hadn’t expected him to be so agreeable. “Six? I can’t stay late,” she added quickly, just so he would know this was to be a short meeting.
“No problem.”
She cleared her throat. “Okay then. I’ll, uh…I’ll park out front,” she added, just so he would know there would be no repeat of the episode in the parking lot behind Casa Familia.
****
Drake disconnected, jazzed and unable to remember the last time he had been this interested in pursuing a woman.
As he checked his watch, counting the hours until six o’clock, a soft rap sounded on his office door. “Come in.”
Gabe Mathison’s head thrust through the doorway. “Hey boss, got time for lunch?”
Gabe’s calling him boss was a joke attributable to Gabe’s inexperience. The fact was that his real estate broker’s license made him his own boss. He hadn’t been at the game long enough to absorb that. “You bet. You got the info together on that Camden County property?”
“Ready to roll. Already got a contract written. At first I wanted to sell it to somebody, but now I’m thinking we ought to keep it in house. Do it ourselves. Strip mall. Lease to small businesses.”
Drake liked his thinking. At this point in his young career, Gabe hadn’t gotten so greedy that he wasn’t a company man. A couple of years from now, his attitude would be a hundred eighty degrees different. “Sounds good,” Drake said. “I don’t mind adding another strip to our inventory.”
Over lunch at the Petroleum Club, they reviewed Lockhart Concepts’ offer to purchase 5.17 acres on the corner of two state highways in Camden County and Drake made a mental note to look at it as he passed it this evening on his way to dinner with Shannon.
As they left the club, Drake asked, �
�What did you learn about the surrounding property?”
“It’s about thirty acres. It’s owned by one woman. Probably some little ol’ lady who inherited it from her husband. Probably can’t wait to sell it. The holidays have got everybody’s schedules screwed up, but I’ll follow up on it after the first of the year.”
“Great. Go for it. You’ll have to do most of this deal yourself. I’m planning on taking some time off after the holidays. If you have any problems, take them up with Debra or one of the other guys in the office. But keep me in the loop.”
Outside the building, they both pulled on coats and parted ways. As Drake walked back to his own office, his cell bleated. Mom. When he connected, she told him she had decided to go to the Double-Barrel for Christmas after all and she wanted to ride down with him.
This development puzzled him, but he said, “Fine. I’m going next Wednesday.”
“Good. I’ll be ready.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“I want to spend Christmas with my family. And I believe Kathryn needs us all to be together. Going to Santa Fe wasn’t a good idea in the first place.”
“That’s great, Mom. So you and Dad made up, huh?”
“We’ve been talking. I told him I might reconsider a reconciliation. It’s a big step after so much time has passed. I’ve gotten used to living alone and I’m sure your father has acquired many friends.”
Friends meant girlfriends, Drake translated. He made no comment.
“I’m hoping we’ll have a chance to talk some more over the holiday,” she added.
She sounded happy, almost giddy. “Mom, that’s great. Every single one of us would be glad to see that happen. They miss you at the ranch.”
“Your father’s in a good mood. He even agreed to a winter vacation in the tropics, so I’m researching possibilities.”
“No kidding? He’s taking you on a cruise?”
“No. He refuses to get on a boat. As you’ve reminded me, he’s afraid of water. We’ll fly somewhere. Anyway, he’s making me think about a lot of things. He’s different lately.”
“Maybe he’s getting smarter in his old age.”
“Your father has always been smart,” she said, laughing. “And he will never be old. And neither will your mother.”
Drake laughed, too, happy at the prospect of his parents getting back together. If they did,
maybe the family could return to being like it used to be before his mom left the ranch and his
dad went nuts. “That’s the truth, Mom.”
He didn’t know how he could be in a better mood, but he was.
****
Despite being busy, an anxiety thrummed within Shannon. How could she be so nervous about a face-to-face dinner with a man who had seen her naked, touched her and kissed her everywhere and she had already had sex with twice?
Her staff was gone by five and at last she was alone. For the first time all day, she had the quiet time to think. The person she used to be flashed in her memory. Ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, she would have thought so much mental fuss over a roll in the hay with a hot guy silly. Back then, she had been more like her alias, Sharon Phillips, at the Worthington Hotel two weeks back. But these days, she was no longer that person.
She freshened her makeup, checked her email messages one last time, then idly surfed the Internet, killing time until 5:45. The Google logo in the corner of her screen jumped out at her. Other than knowing Drake Lockhart was rich and successful, had a permanent frown line between his brows, a toned and sinewy body and astonishing stamina in bed, she knew little else about him.
What else is there to know? Christa would say, a fact that made Shannon smile.
She typed in his name.
At least a dozen listings popped up on William Drake Lockhart, III, Fort Worth real estate developer and investor. She followed a link to a short blurb on Wikipedia about his company. In fewer than ten years, Lockhart Concepts, a privately held company with locations in both Fort Worth and Dallas, under the leadership of its CEO, Drake Lockhart, had acquired or constructed roughly forty properties—shopping centers, office buildings and apartment complexes, one in Midland, two in Austin, but most of them in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. The company’s assets were valued at a staggering amount of money. She knew Drake was rich, but she hadn’t known just how rich.
She saw another paragraph about his being a shareholder and the CFO of the legendary Double-Bar L Cattle Company, a ranch that consisted of approximately three hundred sections of grazing land and thousands of head of cattle in North Central Texas. She did some quick arithmetic in her head. Three hundred sections equaled nearly two hundred thousand acres. That number didn’t surprise her. She already knew the Double-Barrel Ranch was huge, but the role he played in its management was new information.
The family also owned thousands of acres of farmland in West Texas. With such large numbers bandied about, she couldn’t keep from feeling silly at how concerned she was with one tiny five-acre corner.
She sped through the information, saw that he was the oldest of four siblings. He had graduated from SMU summa cum laud, then earned an MBA from the university’s prestigious Cox Business School.
Summa cum laud. Shannon didn’t know what that meant. She Googled the phrase and found it, too, on Wikipedia.
Oh, hell. Not only was he unimaginably rich, he was really smart, which she had feared. And he was an MBA.
A sense of inadequacy struck her and she questioned again why he had an interest in someone like her, whose high school diploma had come via GED. Her college education consisted of the classes necessary to qualify for the state real estate exams, most of which she had taken at night or online. Involuntarily, her fingers flattened against her lips, as if they wanted to hold back a groan.
She continued to click on links and found the Texas Monthly feature article identifying him as one of the state’s most eligible bachelors. She remembered him saying he had bought the title in a PR campaign. For a second, she wondered what it had cost. If a person had enough money, she supposed he could buy anything, even a phony title.
The article consisted of more pictures than words. She skimmed through it. With his unusual eyes, his chiseled jaw, his mysterious smile that almost wasn’t a smile, he was very photogenic. Several of the pictures of him in various poses made her stop for a second look—shirtless and swinging an axe against a downed tree; roping a calf from the back of a galloping horse. Shirtless again, he lounged in a bathing suit on the deck of a big boat. The last picture showed him boarding a private jet, wearing a dress shirt and tie.
Did he own an airplane? she wondered. Of course he does, she answered herself. He probably owns more than one.
Every close-up, even the smiling ones, showed the deep frown line between his brows. She checked the article’s date and mused that at that time, he had been thirty-two years old. A crease that deep at that age came from its being there constantly. Why? What made him constantly frown? Just something else she didn’t know about him.
She saw an old article from the Fort Worth Star Telegram, announcing his engagement to Tamara Lynn McMillan. The bride-to-be was blonde and beautiful. She looked like Brittany Spears. The date was fifteen years ago, which meant he had been engaged at a young age. Had he been married? She had never heard.
She read on. His fiancé was the daughter of another ranching family in Treadway County and a student at TCU in Fort Worth. They must have known each other their whole lives. That probability raised a new list of questions in Shannon’s mind. Had they gotten married, then divorced? Did he have kids? Or if he and his fiancé hadn’t married, why not?
She moved on to a link to Fort Worth, Texas magazine where someone had written about the construction of Lockhart Tower. She had lived in Fort Worth when he first bought the old Millennium Bank building. She vaguely remembered the publicity as he remodeled it into a showplace. Some comment about him or the building had been on TV news eve
ry night.
Her interest piqued, she clicked on the link, brought up the article and saw a full-page color portrait of him in jeans and boots, astride a roan horse. Lockhart Tower’s off-white color, its long line of azure windows climbing in a straight line toward a brilliant blue sky filled the background. Cowboy, she thought and smiled. She had always been a sucker for cowboys.
The story began with the building’s irreparable damage from a tornado that had crashed through downtown Fort Worth years back. A flashback of that horrific evening whirled through Shannon’s mind. Back then, her home had been a twenties-vintage rental house on Fort Worth’s west side. She had spent the nightmare storm alone and terrified, crouched under a mattress in an ancient porcelain bathtub in the old house’s only bathroom.
The article continued with some short paragraphs recounting the building’s history. The bank building had been vacant and for sale for years even before the storm’s destruction and many potential buyers had come and gone.
The need for a something to be done about it became more urgent after the thirty stories of concrete and steel had been irreparably damaged by the tornado. No one had known what to do with it. Most of the windows had been blown out and uncountable plywood patches had been slapped over the gaping maws. Not only were they ugly, they were nowhere close to being
waterproof and the building had deteriorated even faster.
Because of the asbestos used in the original construction, the thing couldn’t even be torn down. The estimates for doing nothing more than removing the asbestos to the EPA’s satisfaction came to a huge amount of money. More handwringing by city officials. They had even offered generous incentives to anyone who would present a plan to deal with it, but had no takers. Everyone was afraid of it.
Then, from out of nowhere, Drake Lockhart, young real estate broker, developer and speculator—an upstart unheard of by most Metroplex movers and shakers—had bought the bank building from an East Coast holding company for pennies on the dollar and presented an attractive plan for its future to the city council. Every professional journal in Texas had published commentary on what would finally become of the “old Millennium “albatross” and its young new owner who apparently had more money than brains and experience.