The Tycoon

by Anna Jeffrey

  “He was undaunted by the ridicule of the naysayers,” the article said.

  Undaunted. A word that suited what little Shannon knew of Drake.

  After removing the asbestos and modernizing the building, he had turned the bottom floor and a mezzanine into a mall of boutique retail shops and trendy restaurants. The upper floors became luxury high-rise condominiums. He had spent a small fortune and he had plastered his name across all of it. In her mind’s eye, Shannon could see the name LOCKHART standing out in the daytime and highlighted by architectural lighting at night.

  Currently, no one jeered about Lockhart Tower. It was one of the highlights of the Fort Worth cityscape, a sought-after home address. Every square foot of commercial space was leased and had a waiting list. Every residential unit had sold for an astonishing price.

  The article continued to trumpet Drake’s accomplishment. In a good real estate market, he had done the difficult. In a market trending down, he had done the impossible. Fort Worth city leaders called him a hero. A true Texan with that old-fashioned Texas can-do spirit, a man who marched to his own drummer.

  Shannon clicked a link to a short article in a real estate magazine. Value of the condos had nearly doubled since they first came on the market. The smallest unit in the building had resold a few months ago for more than half a million.

  She sat back in her chair, reeling from the knowledge that he must have been younger than thirty when he bought the bank building. The realization of just how smart and daring Drake Lockhart was amazed her. But after more thought, that information wasn’t so stunning. She’d had a firsthand experience with how persuasive he could be when he wanted something. She, as much as anyone, should know he was someone who seized opportunity.

  Now she was even more puzzled by why a man of his ilk would be attracted to her—ordinary, white bread Shannon Marie Piper. Other than being in the same business—sort of—what did they have in common?

  She remembered the moment their eyes had connected at the TCCRA party. The arcane link between them, as if they had known each other forever and he was a magnetic force too powerful for her to resist. And how sexual arousal had been her first reaction to him. The fact that he was who he was had not been part of that.

  And he had said he felt the same….I knew it’d be good. The minute I saw you, I knew.

  Well…that wasn’t exactly saying he felt the same, but she took it to be close enough.

  Chapter 21

  Shannon arrived at the restaurant promptly at six. Drake’s silver sports car was already parked in a far corner of the parking lot. She still didn’t know what kind of car it was.

  She found a slot beside handicapped parking in front of the entrance. No chance for hanky-panky in this spot, she thought, as she scooted out of her Sorrento. She dragged out her briefcase and carried it in for show, just in case some Camdenite she knew might be inside.

  Sure enough, the young hostess who greeted her was an acquaintance. “There’s this guy waiting for you,” she said. “He said y’all would be talking business. I put him in the back in a corner where it’s quiet.”

  “Thanks, Stacy.” Shannon followed her, happy to see only a few diners.

  Drake stood as she neared the table. He had on typical cowboy garb—butt-hugging jeans and boots, a long-sleeve button down shirt. Today, it was an absolutely lovely gold and pink and green plaid. After seeing the magazine spread, she had concluded that this style was his usual dress. She wondered if he chose his own clothes. At least he wasn’t a drugstore cowboy. At least he was connected to a real ranch. He could probably ride the horse he had been sitting astride in the Fort Worth, Texas magazine article.

  Now that she could see him in a more ordinary environment, he seemed ordinary. Nothing like one would expect from a man who had done all that he had done and owned all that he owned. He held a chair for her, she sank onto it, slipped out of her coat and let it fall across the back of the chair.

  Stacy came to take their order for drinks, but they both declined. Stacy handed them the menus and hurried away.

  “I went to high school with her oldest sister,” Shannon told Drake about Stacy. “So you see why I keep my nose clean in Camden?”

  “I know how it goes,” he said, smiling in that almost-shy way he had. “I grew up in a small town, too, you know.”

  One of the few things they had in common as far as she could tell. It struck her that they would have been teenagers at about the same time, but she didn’t mention it. Those years had been miserable for her.

  Drake averted his attention to the menu. “So if this is a steakhouse, the steak must be good, huh?”

  Shannon quickly scanned the menu. “Maybe. I’ve never eaten here.” She sat back and crossed her hands on her lap. “I’ll have the tortilla soup.”

  Drake looked up at her. “In a steakhouse?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to eating light at night. My grandmother says she sleeps better if she doesn’t eat a big evening meal. She does most of the cooking, so I eat whatever she fixes. I think she’s right about that anyway.

  Stacy returned and Drake ordered soup for both of them.

  Shannon gave him a look. “You don’t have to eat soup just because I ordered it.”

  “You’re not the only one who thinks your grandmother’s right.”

  They sat in silence for a few beats. She had never felt so awkward. She could think of absolutely nothing to say.

  “This is quieter than happy hour at that Mexican joint,” he said at last.

  On an inner sigh, Shannon resigned herself to the fact that they were, after all, going to discuss that Saturday night after the TCCRA party. She ducked her chin and focused on straightening her napkin in her lap. “You’ve probably figured out that I took us there because I knew it’d be too noisy to talk. I was so surprised to see you and I knew you’d ask me questions I couldn’t answer. And I didn’t want to talk about that…that night.”

  “I did figure it out. Eventually.”

  She looked up. “There’s no point, right? We both know what happened. We got a little drunk and went off the deep end.”

  “I wasn’t drunk. And you weren’t either.”

  More awkward silence. When she didn’t reply, he said, “So, uh, how is it? Did you do a test or something?”

  A flush of heat crawled up her neck. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation with a man she barely knew. “I’m not that worried about it. I don’t need a test. My calendar’s good enough.”

  “You sure?” he asked.

  She slid furtive looks around, to see if anyone could hear them, was relieved to see the nearest diner three tables away. She nodded.

  More silence. What he had said on the phone about the parking lot incident sailed into her thoughts….If anything happens, we’ll take care of it....

  She looked up to see him watching her. “Tuesday night. Has that happened to you before? Have you gotten caught doing the wrong thing at the wrong time?”

  His expression remained inscrutable. Finally he ducked his chin and rearranged his napkin. Obviously a subject he didn’t want to discuss. “Once. Some years ago.”

  “How did you handle it?”

  “It didn’t have to be handled. It was a false alarm. I told you before, I’m usually careful. I don’t have an excuse for Tuesday night.”

  Stacy reappeared with their soup. Shannon waited until she placed their bowls and left before saying, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Can I refuse to answer if I don’t like the question?” He smiled then. “Of course you can ask me something.”

  “When you said if anything happened, we’d take care of it, did you mean you’d expect me to have an abortion?”

  “No,” he answered sharply, giving her a frown. “Why would you think that?”

  “I just assumed—”

  “Don’t assume. My God, my family’s in the animal breeding business. If something needs to be aborted, Nature takes care
of it.” He tucked into his soup.

  So much for the abortion question. But if he wouldn’t want her to have an abortion if she got pregnant, what would he want? For that matter, what would she want? With the sex so hot and evidently irresistible for both of them, it was something to consider.

  Setting the sticky topic aside, she tasted her soup. “Soup’s good.”

  He put down his spoon and looked at her. “Shannon. It’s been a long time since I’ve met somebody I felt like telling I wanted her company more than anyone else’s. I don’t know what it means and I’m not trying to attach anything high-flying to it. I’d just like for us to spend some time and get to know each other….Not that I’m turning down the sex.…I mean, I’m only human.”

  He gave a little-boy smile and a soft laugh that she found so charming she almost couldn’t bear it. He returned to his soup. “You’re right,” he said. “This soup’s good.”

  She released a sigh. “I have to say, Drake, you must know a lot of women who have more

  to offer someone like you than I do. So why me?”

  “Why not you? You’re interesting. Most of the women I meet, I figure out in ten minutes. You’re different. You keep surprising me. And I believe we’ve got more going for us than you know. Maybe even more than I know.”

  She shook her head. “We live in two different worlds.”

  The line between his brows deepened. “Okay, this is weird, but I’m going to say it anyway. First, I’m no saint. I won’t tell you I’ve never been involved in a one-time deal with a woman. But not in years. I’m trying to believe I’ve grown up.” He leaned forward. “But that night at the Worthington, something came over me. When I saw you, every other woman disappeared. I can’t explain it. All I knew was I had to have you.”

  Shannon grimaced. “Well, you’re right. That’s weird.”

  “C’mon. If you hadn’t felt something yourself, you wouldn’t have gone home with me and you wouldn’t have gone to bed with me. So I think something beyond both of us was influencing us.”

  She might have had similar thoughts, but she had never let herself believe in the unbelievable. Now she was more nervous. She managed a little laugh. “I was hungry. And you have to admit, you were persistent. You didn’t exactly take no for an answer.”

  “But I would have if you’d meant it.”

  Oh, God. Had she been that transparent? She gave another nervous laugh. “Thanks for reminding me how weak I am.”

  “I don’t know you that well yet, but I suspect being weak had nothing to do with it.”

  She hesitated, letting her aim to be tough go ahead and collapse. “Okay. You got me.” She looked down and fingered the hem of the napkin in her lap. “I felt the attraction, too. I still do. But acting on every wacky impulse that comes up can get you into trouble.”

  Stacy halted the conversation by showing up and asking if they needed anything else. Shannon welcomed the interruption and a chance to change the subject. After Stacy walked away, Shannon said, “I saw your car in the parking lot. It’s a beautiful car. I didn’t hear you say what it is.”

  “Aston Martin.”

  She didn’t know the exact cost of an Aston Martin, but she suspected it was six digits. “Ah. No wonder you parked so far away. If I owned a car like that, I might carry a plastic bubble to put around it when I parked it somewhere.”

  He grinned. “Wanna hear its story?”

  “Sure.”

  “I was valedictorian my senior year in high school. In Drinkwell, there weren’t that many kids in my class to compete with, but still…”

  After what she had read about him earlier, this wasn’t surprising information. She put down her spoon, tilted her head and gave him rapt attention. She would much rather hear personal information about him than eat soup. She already believed he was the smartest man she had ever known personally.

  “…my parents were so proud,” he went on. “I was afraid Dad’s shirts weren’t going to hold his puffed up chest. You know that small town gossip you’re worried about? Everyone in Drinkwell said my dad bought me that honor. I hated people saying that about me. And about him. I got it because I studied and worked my ass off for it.”

  He swallowed a spoonful of soup, then continued to talk. “My parents knew I had earned it. One day when I came home from school, a new Corvette was parked in the driveway in front of

  the house.” His face broke into a beaming smile. “It was shiny as a diamond and fire engine red. I knew it was for me. I nearly tore the front door off getting into the house.”

  “Wow, how nice,” Shannon said, returning to her own soup, and suddenly wondering how it would be to have a father who would reward you with even a small something. As far as she could remember back, even before hers died, he had hardly known she existed.

  “What I didn’t know at the time was that before I got there, my dad and mom had a big fight over Dad buying it. I barely got through the front door before Mom said, ‘Do not get used to that car. It’s going back where it came from tomorrow.’ I thought she’d lost her mind.

  “Score one for Mom because Dad didn’t offer a word of argument. Sure enough, the next morning, she drove the Corvette back to Fort Worth, I followed her in my old truck and she returned the car to the dealership. I had all I could do to keep from bawling.”

  “So you never got over it and now you own a sports car.”

  He lifted a finger. “Ah, but the one in the parking lot I bought myself, with my own money. That day, on our way home from the dealership, Mom told me something important, something I want to tell my own kids someday.”

  Remembering the engagement photo she had just looked at online, Shannon looked up. “How many kids do you have?”

  “None. I’ve never been married.”

  A little happy dance erupted in Shannon’s chest. “So what did your mom tell you?”

  “She said, ‘Son, you have to understand, our pride in you doesn’t call for an extravagant material reward. It lives in our hearts and always will because we love you, whether you’re the smartest boy in Drinkwell or not.’”

  Shannon smiled, liking his mother. “Aww. Your mom sounds like a wise woman.”

  He dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “I was pretty pissed off at her that day. I pouted all the way back to the ranch. She told me something else I’ve never forgotten. She said, ‘I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t have a sports car. You can have any extravagance you want so long as you earn it and pay for it yourself.’”

  He paused a few beats as if waiting for a reaction, but Shannon had no clever remark.

  “You see, my mom wasn’t like my dad,” he continued. “She didn’t grow up with the material advantages he did. Her parents—my grandparents—were hard-working blue collar types. My grandpa was a handyman around Drinkwell. He got called on to fix damn near everything. And my grandma cooked in the school cafeteria.

  “Dad always wanted to help them financially. He could’ve made their lives easier, but they refused his help. They’re proud, common-sense people. Coming from that environment, Mom saw life in a different way from Dad. Or at least she did back then.”

  “You mean she’s changed?”

  “She and Dad have been married thirty-five years. I don’t think you could live in the Lockhart family that long without its influence rubbing off on you.”

  “Ah, I see,” Shannon said, nodding. But she didn’t see at all. Was something wrong with the Lockhart family?

  “So that’s the story of my sports car,” he said. “It’s a prize I gave myself. But it wasn’t until a couple of years ago I thought I’d earned it.”

  Thanks to his mother, perhaps he hadn’t grown up a spoiled rich kid after all. “When you opened Lockhart Tower, you believed you had earned it?”

  “Not even then. I had some heavy obligations at that time. I didn’t dare declare success until they were settled. Only after the last unit was sold, the deal closed and my debts paid did I

  bu
y that sports car. So now, it’s your turn. Tell me a story about you.”

  Most of the Shannon Piper tales of the past were dark, with nowhere near the cheery flavor of his. Nor the happy outcome. She didn’t want to share them. “Don’t know one,” she said.

  “I don’t believe you. I’m thirty-five. You must be about my age.”

  “Thirty-three,” she said, smiling and wagging her finger at him. “I’m only thirty-three.”

  “Whatever,” he said on a laugh. “My point is, you’ve got a story. You own your own real estate brokerage. Not many thirty-three year-old women can claim that. Getting to where you are couldn’t have been easy, especially in a small town. Real estate, whether it’s commercial or residential, is a take-no-prisoners game with a high attrition rate. And the market’s been volatile for several years. Sounds like you’ve got what I call stickability.”

  Indeed she had stuck it out, one plodding step at a time—when she had put in eighteen-hour days, working at a job full-time and going to school at night; when she had spent two years listing and selling houses, slogging through mud, dripping through rain, shivering through blue northers, learning everything she could about the business; when she had winged it through sticky-wicket deals involving big city lawyers; every time she had been crushed by the loss of a good listing or a buying customer to a competitor. And when she didn’t know where her next mortgage payment might come from and it looked as if she might lose it all.

  “I have worked hard,” she said.

  “And a story goes with that.”

  “When you spend all your time working, you don’t have a life. So, no stories.”

  “What about your family? Why do you live with your grandmother?”