Can't Buy Me Love

by Molly O'Keefe

  “Well, now you’ll have to excuse sweet Lyle, but he doesn’t get around much anymore. He’d love to see you, but it will be in his quarters.”

  “Fine,” snapped Luc and she could feel his gaze, those deep hazel eyes, rake over her body, reaching under her clothes to the skin and the blood and bone beneath.

  Her body shook at the sensation, like a trailer in a tornado.

  For years now, she’d been numb. Frozen deep. Unmoved.

  But now, in the face of this man’s hate, she … quivered? Unbelievable. Shocking, even.

  He stepped toward the door, as if ready to charge back down the hallway the way he had last night. But she stayed where she was, reaching one arm up to place a hand on the frame. His eyes sparked, his lips tightened, and he stopped a few inches away from her.

  Lightning bolts flashed between them, and all the fine hair on her body trembled and lifted.

  You can’t bully me, she thought, planting her heels all the way through the earth. Her eyes locked on his and she smiled, just enough so that his eyes dropped to her red, red lips.

  Sinner’s lips, Grant Wasinsky, the worst of Momma’s boyfriends, used to say, before Momma got wise to his intentions and kicked him out. Too late, as it happened. But points for trying.

  And the heat in Luc’s gaze proved he wasn’t as immune or disgusted by her as he wanted to be.

  “Behave yourself,” she whispered, and waited long enough for his dark eyes to crawl back to hers. Desire and disgust mingled in his expression. “I belong to your daddy.”

  “Ignore her,” Victoria breathed as they followed Tara Jean’s perfect, denim-covered ass down the hallways. Tara Jean was blathering on about the house, as if they didn’t know a thing about it. As if they hadn’t run these hallways in their pajamas, their bare feet, their boots—searching for a place to hide from the old man’s belt.

  “She’s baiting you,” Victoria added through pinched lips. “And you’re falling for it.”

  Vicks was right and he knew it, which made him angrier. Tara Jean was nothing. Less than nothing.

  They stopped in front of the bedroom door. Tara Jean paused as if she were about to say something, but he didn’t give her the chance. Whatever was about to happen, as bad as it might get—it was all between Luc and his sister. Just like it always had been.

  “It’s bad,” he said to Victoria, taking her hand in his. He felt every bone, the pounding of her blood. “We don’t have to do this.”

  She nodded once and squeezed his fingers. “Let’s go.”

  He reached past Tara Jean, who’d been watching him and Victoria with unreadable eyes, and opened the door, pushing it wide to reveal the bed, the machines, and the man served by all of it.

  Victoria gasped.

  “Well now,” said the skeleton on the bed. “Ain’t this something.”

  Animated, the skeleton looked a lot more like the father Luc remembered. The bright eyes, the smile. The arrogance.

  The king was dying, but he wasn’t dead yet.

  “Why don’t y’all have a seat.” Tara stepped past them, toward the two chairs pulled up beside the bed. Luc held out his hand, stopping her. He didn’t touch her, but he could feel the heat from her ridiculous body. The silk of her shirt fluttered against his palm and a shot of electricity sizzled through him.

  Behave yourself, he seethed.

  “You can go,” he said.

  She smiled and leaned toward him slightly, pressing the silk of her shirt, and then the taut skin of her belly, into his hand. He went flush from the heat.

  “Not on your life.”

  She swept past him and walked around Lyle’s bed. She hitched a curvy hip onto it and curled her body around the old man’s. A vine suffocating the life it climbed all over, except Lyle smiled at her, running a frail hand over her thigh and leaving it there.

  Luc’s fingers twitched.

  “Wayne—” Lyle said.

  “It’s Luc, Dad. Has been for years.”

  “That’s not what it says on your birth certificate.”

  “Well, it’s what it says on my checks.”

  Luc managed to smile, rubbing it in, pleased that he was managing to stay calm. Delighted to see the bright spots of anger on the old man’s cheeks.

  “How are you doing, Daddy?” Victoria asked, taking a tentative step toward the bed. Lyle’s dark eyes swung to her and she stopped, as if repelled by a force field.

  Luc stepped forward to protect his sister from the menace in the old man’s eyes.

  “Where you been the last ten years?” Lyle asked as if Luc wasn’t even there. Victoria stiffened.

  “You kicked me out, Dad,” she said, putting her hands at her side.

  “Not for ten years I didn’t.”

  “I can’t read your mind,” she said. “You told me if I married—”

  “I know what I said.” A feral grin split his face. “And I was right, wasn’t I?”

  Victoria flinched as if he’d punched her, and Luc reached for her hand. But she shook him off and stepped closer to the bed.

  After this thing with Joel, she’d left amateur whippingpost status behind and gone pro. Every stranger on the street that recognized her name or her face from the news had something to say to her, and she just laid herself bare for their hatred and bile.

  Luc couldn’t stop her. Couldn’t even figure out how.

  “You were right,” Victoria said. “Joel was a crook. He …” She took a deep breath. “He left us with nothing.”

  “And that’s why you’re crawling back here—”

  “Stop it, Dad,” Luc intervened. “She’s been punished enough.”

  Lyle’s eyes—sunken in his skull—blazed. “Not by me, she hasn’t. Your mother ruined you,” he snapped at Victoria. “You haven’t done a day’s work in your life—”

  “We didn’t come down here to be abused by you, Dad,” he said.

  “Still fighting your sister’s fights?” Lyle sneered.

  “Daddy,” Victoria whispered.

  “Stop hiding behind your brother, you coward!”

  “This is ridiculous.” Luc grabbed his sister’s hand even though she resisted. “We’re leaving. We never should have come.”

  “She has a son,” Tara whispered, running a long-fingered hand over the old man’s cheek. “A little boy.”

  Lyle blinked. Blinked again, and Luc realized that the old man didn’t know about Jacob. Luc didn’t know whether to laugh or to grab Jacob and run back to Canada.

  Victoria looked over her shoulder at him and Luc shrugged.

  “How old?” Lyle barked. His pale hands shook against the sheets.

  “Seven,” Victoria answered. “His name is Jacob.”

  “A grandson?” A monitor next to Lyle beeped and beeped again. A red light flashed.

  Tara turned, suddenly efficient, to check the computer’s readout.

  “Sweetie,” she said, “you need to calm down.”

  A nurse rushed in wearing a pair of pink scrubs with bunnies on them that seemed so ridiculous, so incongruous, Luc couldn’t look anywhere else. The bunnies wore sunglasses.

  This wasn’t what he wanted. As much as he hated his father, he didn’t want to watch him die.

  “Is he here?” Lyle asked, and Victoria, her eyes wide, just nodded and the monitors went berserk again.

  “Dad,” Luc said. “You need to calm—”

  Tara Jean’s eyes narrowed with a fury so palpable he could taste smoke and fire in the back of his throat.

  “You need to leave.” All that Southern peach was gone. She stood, her arms wide, corralling them from the room.

  “Is he okay?” Victoria asked.

  “Mr. Baker,” the nurse said as she lowered the mattress. “Can you hear me?”

  “Oh my God,” Victoria breathed.

  “Get. Out,” Tara said, and Luc reluctantly realized she was right. They were in the way, and Lyle’s wild eyes kept seeking out Victoria.

  He put his arm
around his sister, leading her out of the room. Once they stood on the navy-blue runner in the hallway, the bedroom door slammed shut behind them.

  The hallway buzzed with silence, all the sounds from the bedroom eaten by the thick wooden door.

  “This is a nightmare,” Victoria whispered.

  The thin white lines of strain around her mouth tore at him. “Vicks,” he whispered. “You don’t need this man’s money. We can—”

  “I do.” Her midnight eyes were bright, feverish. “I know you don’t understand that. But I need his money.”

  “That stuff he said—”

  “He’s said it all before. I’ve never understood why he was even with Mom when he hated her so much.”

  “He didn’t know about Jacob?”

  “He kicked me out, Luc. It’s not like I was sending him Christmas cards.” The sarcasm was a nice change, and he stroked her arm.

  “But with all the press last year?”

  “I kept Jacob out of it as much as I could.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “He probably wasn’t following all that closely, just enough to know he was right and the rest of the world, especially me, was wrong.”

  “He’s been keeping tabs on me for twenty years.”

  “ESPN practically does that for him.” Her smile was the saddest thing he’d ever seen. “And it’s no secret he likes you better.”

  There was nothing he could say, so he didn’t even bother.

  She glanced back at the door. “I had no idea he didn’t know.” After a long moment she shook her head, as if getting rid of her maudlin thoughts. “I’m going to go find Jacob; I’m sure he’s bored out of his head. What are you going to do?”

  “Wait,” he said, thinking of Tara Jean Sweet and the buried steel beneath all that blond bimbo. “I’m gonna wait.”

  Victoria found Ruby and Jacob on the front porch. He was showing the housekeeper his Transformers and Ruby, wearing a rhinestone Minnie Mouse T-shirt, one size too small, was pretending to be interested.

  Victoria had one of those out-of-body experiences looking down at her son. Just a few months ago—the worst night of her life, worse than the night Joel told her what he’d done, worse than the night he’d killed himself—she stared down at him in his hospital bed, so small, so tender and vulnerable, lost among the sheets.

  The doctors had told her to prepare herself for the worst, that the H1N1 virus was too strong, and his lungs, already compromised by his asthma, were just too weak.

  So she’d lain in bed with him and told him about the morning he was born and how he used to curl up in her arms and play with her hair. She read him all his favorite stories and she held him as close as she could, feeling every young bone beneath his thin skin.

  And she wished she could die too.

  But she woke up the next morning and stared into his open eyes. “I’m thirsty,” he’d said, and she’d wept buckets of tears.

  The doctors warned that he wasn’t out of the woods yet, but every morning he woke up and she knew, despite the way her life had been stripped down to the bone, that she was blessed.

  But now, she looked at Jacob and she was tired. Tired of worrying. Of doubt. Of fear. Of being inadequate to every task.

  He was her blessing, and she wasn’t sure how to take care of him.

  Her mother would say she needed a man. Someone to replace Joel as a payer of bills, a provider of security. That had been her mother’s solution to every problem.

  “Thank you,” she said, and Ruby stood, wincing when her knees creaked, pulling the hem of her shirt down past her tummy. “I know this isn’t your job.”

  “You’re right.” Victoria gaped at the woman; honestly, she wasn’t like any housekeeper Victoria had ever known—and she’d known her share. It was amazing the woman had a job.

  “But it’s nice to have a child here.” Her round face creased with a wide smile and Victoria relaxed. “He’s a good boy.”

  “Yes, he is,” she whispered, feeling fragile against the glare of the sun, the slight cool breeze. Her father’s words, while not unexpected, had stripped her raw. Left her sore.

  “Hey, Mom,” Jacob said, barely looking up from his small army of Autobots.

  “Heya, bud, how you feeling?”

  Jacob just rolled his eyes, no doubt tired of the question.

  “He needed his inhaler,” Ruby said. “Twice.”

  “I always need my inhaler,” Jacob said, his voice too old. Too over it all. “It wasn’t bad.”

  “And …” Ruby pulled a pink rubber pancake out from the back pocket of her jeans. “This. Boy about gave me a heart attack.”

  The whoopee cushion. She was going to kill Luc for giving that to Jacob.

  Jacob laughed and Victoria arched a silencing eyebrow.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, taking the toy. “My … father seemed to have had some kind of … attack,” she added, thinking Ruby should know, since she seemed to know everything that happened on the ranch.

  “Is he okay?” Ruby’s panicked sadness stunned Victoria. Silenced her. How in the world did that man inspire such warmth in other people, in servants, rude ones at that, when his children were left shivering in the cold?

  “I … I don’t know.”

  Just like that, Ruby disappeared back into the house. “Grandpa okay?”

  Grandpa. That word out of her little boy’s mouth made her teeth itch. Her heart burn.

  “I think so,” she hedged. “What do you say we take our stuff out of the truck—”

  “I thought we weren’t staying long.”

  They’d taken only their overnight bags into the ranch house last night, but their suitcases—for their worst-case scenario—were still in the car. “Well, we’re going to be here awhile, pardner. So help me out.”

  Luc’s giant SUV rental crouched in the parking area like a big black monster. Same kind of car Joel would have driven—the kind of car that made every other person on the planet seem small. Insignificant. Something to be rolled over.

  Luc liked it because he was a big man, with big shoulders and long legs.

  Joel liked it because he was a small man.

  With a tiny penis.

  “You need some help?” a rough voice like steel wool asked over her shoulder. She spun, startled to find a man, tall and thin, standing far too close. He wore a dusty denim shirt, unbuttoned at the neck to reveal collarbones and damp skin.

  He smelled like sunshine and horse.

  “Excuse me,” she said, her voice sharp, and the man shifted back. He wore a big cowboy hat and the sun behind him made it impossible to see his face.

  “Sorry.” She didn’t know if he was smiling, but something in his voice sounded like he was mocking her.

  She tried to see beneath the hat, but he shifted away, reaching past her for the bag. His arm was inches from her face, and she could smell the sweat of him. Earthy and masculine.

  “What … what are you doing?” She sounded affronted, which wasn’t entirely what she intended. She was just so off balance.

  “Getting your bag.” Now, when he turned she could see under his hat.

  Green eyes stared holes through her. A thick, full mouth smiled, but again, the emotion behind it didn’t seem kind.

  “You don’t recognize me?”

  She blinked, feeling somehow suspended by his gaze. Removed from the hard-packed earth, the sun-baked metal of the car at her back.

  “Should I?”

  She felt his hot breath against her cheek; his eyes touched every part of her face. “I guess not.” He pulled the luggage down and set it on the ground, popping the handle up. He turned slightly and tugged his hat at Jacob, who stood slack-jawed with delight.

  “Y’all have a good day,” the man said, and then he was gone and she crashed back into her physical reality.

  “Who was that?” Jacob asked as if they’d just been visited by Superman.

  “I have no idea.”

  chapter

  4
/>   The door to Lyle’s room opened a sliver and a very different Tara Jean slipped into the hallway. She was limp, exhaustion like a blanket over her shoulders, dimming her impressive wattage.

  Luc’s heart spiked hard and he stood up from the chair he’d been waiting in.

  “Is he okay?” She jerked at the sound of his voice, her hand covering her throat in surprise.

  “You spooked me.” Her hand stayed at her chest, covering the bare skin at her neck as if she were suddenly too naked. It was a nice act, as far as suddenly demure tramps went.

  He didn’t apologize and they stood there in a simmering silence. Two feet and a thousand miles of differences between them.

  The sun from the window at the far end of the hallway highlighted both her beauty—the perfect skin and the lush lips—and her flaws. The small lines around her eyes and mouth. The spray of freckles across her nose. She looked almost normal—well, as normal as a woman that beautiful could look.

  “Is he okay?” he repeated, and she nodded.

  “Good.” He pushed past her for the door. But she got her tiny body right in the way.

  “He’s resting,” she said, each word enunciated through her teeth. A guard dog with a push-up bra. Honestly, he was nearly charmed.

  “I’ll wake him.”

  “I don’t think you understand what’s happening here,” she said. “He’s dying. And it’s not a matter of months. You go in there and it might not even be days.”

  He smiled, leaning close. “We can’t have that, can we? Not until after the wedding, right?”

  It looked like she was chewing her tongue, but then her smile spread across her face, as bright and empty as a pickle jar.

  “That’s right, sugar,” she said. “Try not to kill him before I get my hands on all that money.”

  “You’re a piece of work,” he said, disgust slipping over him.

  “And you’re going to kill him if you go in there worked up like you are. Cool your heels and try again later.”

  Her eyes raked him, stripping off his clothes and a few dozen pounds, and then she left as if trusting her good sense to have swayed him, or maybe she just didn’t care all that much.