by Conn, Claudy
He sighed and sat back in his seat. “Business is business.”
I stared at him. I had expected he would raise the board, but what he was talking about was way over the top. “Are we done?” I asked, pushing my coffee aside. “I’m tired and would like to go home.”
His eyes narrowed, and he said, “Of course. What was I thinking, keeping you so late?”
A few minutes later, we were in his black Jag and heading back to the farm. I answered his questions with monosyllables and grunts, and finally he sighed and said, “Charlie … why don’t we do this? The boarders presently here will all be given a moderate increase and advised that the board will be raised again in six months to what all new boarders will be billed. Those who cannot afford that increase will have six months to find another home for themselves and their horses. Fair, Charlie?”
I didn’t want to see some of the people who had become friends over the years have to leave, but he was right, that was fair. It really was, and he was right. A business had to be run as a business.
I nodded. “Yes, it is all very sad, but I agree … that is fair.”
He used the remote to open the gate and drove me up to the first barn, which housed my apartment. I started to get out, but he said, “No … wait a moment.”
He ran to my side of the car, something my dad always does for my mom, and opened it wide. “A lady allows a man to be a gentleman,” he said, grinning, and that grin of his was so damn infectious.
“Maybe, but I never said I was a lady,” I bantered with a smile as I walked to my door, key ever ready.
He took the key from me, unlocked the door, turned, and took my hand to put the key back in it. Then, all at once, he had me in his arms.
I could have pushed away. I could have said no. I could have … I didn’t.
His kiss sent a blast of pleasure racing through my entire system. His tongue tasted of wine, and I was happy to drink up. His hand on my back pressured me to fold into him, and I did. What was wrong with me? I am not (here is the old line) that kind of girl. I am a ‘take my time’ and ‘get to know you’ and ‘never kiss on a first date’ girl—and besides that, this wasn’t even a date.
He set me aside and looked at me. I was speechless as I looked back at him.
His smile was soft and caressing, and, damn oh damn, if I wasn’t careful, I might just fall. His voice enveloped me as he said, “Good night, Charlie Wells. Sweet dreams.”
* * *
Sweet dreams, my ass.
That good-night kiss was “hello, come on in”, and it had kept me up and tossing all night.
Hot, his one kiss had made me hot for more, and then he just left me. Insecure, I kept reliving it. Did I do something wrong? Was I a horrible kisser? I knew I didn’t have much experience. Maybe I was supposed to do something different than slide my tongue against his. Oh, his kiss was riveting. Was mine so bad?
John came to mind. I had never had a kiss like that, not in the three years I was with John, not ever from anyone.
In fact, John and I split because I had never been in love with him or really aroused by him, and I kept thinking there had to be something more. Well, here it was, ‘the more.’
John and I were still friends. For most of those three years, that was actually what we were—friends.
Not one kiss that I’d ever had—and I’d had plenty of kisses in high school and a few in college before John and I became an item—none of those kisses came close to the kiss Wade Devon had planted on me.
Gloria the hotshot was right. He could swallow me whole, and if he spat me out, I would be ruined for anyone else.
Okay, new day ahead, and if I went down to get Sassy, I would be sure to be quiet—get in, get her tacked, get out without bumping into Mr. Wade Devon.
I also wanted to paint, but I couldn’t concentrate on the canvas, so I hurried down through the woods to Sassy’s paddock, hoping I wouldn’t be seen.
She trotted over, and I got my saddle out of the shed and slipped it on her without doing much of a brushing. She was clean enough.
No sign of Mr. Hot Lips. Thank goodness.
I mounted and walked her down the driveway, into the back riding ring, and onto the dirt path that led to the preserve’s extensive riding trails, where I opened her up. We both needed a run.
I had to find a way to get Wade Devon out of my head. This billionaire hottie was dangerous to my peace of mind. We were an odd contradiction. We had the same thought waves, and yet our goals were very different.
He had said it when he summed up what he wanted to do with the farm. He had so many plans that would take it out of the warm and cozy and into the big and famous.
He came from a place that made big money, and I had no doubt he could be ruthless when pushed. Though I’m an artist, I am interested in business and not naïve about it at all. I know you can’t get his kind of money unless you are willing to do what you have to do, and what that might have entailed in his case, I could only guess at.
Sassy snorted under me as I told her what I was thinking. She totally agreed with me. She added, Heartbreaker—he is a heartbreaker. Don’t go near him.
As I rode my mare back past the stables and down the narrow, wooded path to her paddock behind Devon’s home I had a difficult time thinking of anything other than Wade Devon.
I dismounted, put Sassy on cross ties near her little barn, and brushed her down, all the while questioning myself. What was happening to me? I had never felt this way before. I laughed at my friends when they went on and on about someone they had met, and now, here I was … doing much the same—well, at least in my head.
I walked Sassy back to the paddock behind what was now Wade’s house.
Still no sign of him … he was gone. He was off somewhere.
Kiss and run was his style, I was sure. A man like him (I had Googled him) didn’t get to be twenty-eight years old, a billionaire, and single without some effort.
Someone else, however, was at his house. A tall, lean guy with a neat haircut and a square jaw. I saw him out back talking to one of the contractors. He looked angry. No, not angry. Agitated. I heard him say, “Tell him to call Sam Tinsdale as soon as he gets in.”
The contractor said, “Look, buddy, I’m not his secretary but if I see him, I’ll give him the message.”
Tinsdale turned on his heel and got back into his limousine.
None of my business. But it tickled my curiosity nerve, and, oh, I have a curiosity nerve. It does all sort of things to me until it is satisfied once it has been aroused. Naughty nerve.
I left Sassy to graze and walked back to my apartment, smiling and waving as some of the boarders arrived for their daily rides.
Upstairs, I set up my easel on the deck and positioned myself so I could stare at the back woods. The ten acres my parents had coveted but had never been able to afford. Just like that, Wade had purchased the plot.
I sighed. Soon that little piece of heaven for the wildlife presently snuggled there would be gone. Soon bulldozers and excavators would change it forever.
I needed to immortalize the way it looked right then on my canvas.
Red and green sent waves of vibrant shades into my head and down through my nerves, and red and green began to take shape in waves of pulsating life. It didn’t take more than a few strokes for it to come alive right before me. I stood back and smiled.
This was art. When you look at a piece of art, it should capture the imagination. It should capture the senses, and I was very pleased with what I had done thus far.
Intricate lashes and rubs formed life and had created their own song.
A shout caught my attention, and I looked in the direction of the parking lot, which is fully visible from my deck.
Oh no, those two were at it again. Randy and Stella James. Now they could afford a board hike. They were somewhere in their mid-thirties, and I had never really liked either one. They’d always been prone to public and nasty outbursts, but something was different
about the argument they were conducting just then.
I watched and listened not because I was curious—well, maybe a little—but because something about the way she moved told me she was a woman who had passed her limit. Whatever he had said or done had broken something inside her.
As the shouting got louder, a couple of boarders hurried away, taking their horses towards the back riding ring. Then Stella hauled off, slapped Randy’s face, and screeched at him, “Dead! I don’t want you anything but dead.” She turned and stalked to her car, and I had a bad, bad feeling.
This wasn’t the first time over the past few months I had witnessed one of their violent arguments. Lately they had been going at it pretty regularly, but this was the first time I had seen her lay hands against him, and I hoped she was leaving.
I was pretty sure Randy was cheating. He was more than just a flirt. With him you knew it wasn’t just innocent fun; he was definitely trying to get it to the next level. I always avoided him, but one young woman in particular seemed closer to him than all his other flirts.
Stella was sobbing as she opened the door to her car. I could see she was a woman at the end of her rope, but when she reached into her car and turned, Glock in hand, I almost choked on my surprise.
I hadn’t seen that coming.
My instinct sent me racing off the deck, down the stairs, and running around the building, where I stopped short and took a moment to gather myself.
Stella stood, legs spread apart as she pointed her gun at her husband. She waved it about and told Beth, the young brunette standing beside Randy, that she hoped he was worth it.
I said, “Stella … don’t.”
She cocked her head at me, not appearing surprised I was there. “Stay out of this, Charlie. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will. I am willing to go down for this, as long as I can watch him bleed out and die. I’ll take as many down as I have to just to see that.”
“Then you lose again, Stella, and I don’t know why you would give him such a win,” I said, taking another step closer to her.
Stella waved her gun around wildly, and I thought, Uh-oh, this is really not too smart. I should have just called 911.
“He has to die!” She settled back down and pointed her gun at her husband.
“Yeah, but there are things worse than death,” I said, hoping to catch her interest.
“Like what?”
“Like, he has money and a house and things you can take. I wonder how much Beth will want him when he doesn’t have enough to buy her pretty things?” I just wanted to give her an alternative to murder.
She looked at me. “He wouldn’t like that.” She turned her attention back to Beth and said, “But she needs to die. She knew he was mine. She took him … what is she, all of twenty? How could I compete against that?” She cursed and ranted on for a few moments, and I saw the spittle collect at her lips and run over.
“Stella … think. Why should you suffer any longer because of them? Give him the heave-ho, take a good chunk out of him, and move on.”
“But I want to see him bleed.” She was pleading now, and I knew I was close, very close to getting the gun from her.
“Stella, put the gun down now. You’re smart enough to know there are better ways to torture a man … right? You kill him … he is dead, never has to think about what he did. You take him for all he has instead.” I wanted her to lower the gun. I saw one of the boarders stick her head out of the other barn and talk into her cell phone. Police were on their way. If I didn’t get Stella to put the gun down before the police arrived, we’d have a bloodbath. I knew it in my bones.
She didn’t look at me but spat out, still very much in a fury, “He needs to die, Charlie … he needs to die before he wrecks anyone else’s life. I wanted kids. I’m thirty-five now, and … he put me off and put me off … and now, now he has to pay.”
“But you don’t need to go to prison. You can still have kids. You can still have a life. You can be with someone who deserves you. He never did. What you need to do is divorce him … not kill him. Think about it. The only way you win is to leave him and move forward and find the right fit, the right man. You’re still young enough, still pretty enough, and then you still can have children. If you go to prison for him … for him, Stella … then you’ll never have those kids you want.”
She stared at me. “Children … yes, I can still have them …”
“That’s right, hon … come on, you know he isn’t worth it. Killing him will end your life. Haven’t you given him enough of your life?” I saw something click in her eyes and move into her brain.
I had gotten through. I was sure of it.
“Give me the gun, Stella.” I moved cautiously towards her and gently took the gun from her hands.
She started to sob in body-racking waves.
I put the safety on the gun and put an arm around her. She collapsed with her arms around me, I mean, like dead weight.
She was a tall, large woman, and I think I vanished somewhere in her hold. I managed to disentangle myself. I squeaked out, “It’s okay, Stella … come on … time for you to go home.”
She rounded on her husband then and spat, “I will take you for everything you have—every last dime.”
I pulled her towards her car. “Stella, do you need me to drive you home?”
“No … you know I’m not far … I’m okay. I’m okay now.”
I unbent, backed away from her Mercedes, and watched a moment as she pulled out of her space and started down the long drive. As I turned, I noticed another figure standing just a few feet away.
Wade Devon.
He looked angry as he approached me and snatched the gun out of my hands. His voice was harsh. “That was the dumbest thing I have ever seen!”
Yeah, my eyes must have opened wide because I wasn’t expecting that. A pat on the back, a ‘way to go’ a ‘hey, wow’, but when I stared back at him, I saw he was absolutely livid.
Astonished, I said, “Excuse me?”
“You could have been killed!”
“She wasn’t aiming at me, but she could have killed someone else. Nice lawsuit you would have had on your hands.”
“Charlie … what were you thinking? You should have called 911.”
“Ah, someone did that and oh … look, here they come wailing down the drive. Her husband would already be dead by now, and Stella’s life would be over. If I were you, I’d put that gun away before they arrive.”
“We’ll talk about this later.” He went over to Randy, handed him the gun, and pointed a finger into his chest. I could only guess at what he was telling him.
Whatever he told Randy was effective, for they both approached the police car, and it didn’t take long for the officers to leave after that. My guess was that Randy downplayed the incident and claimed there had merely been a verbal argument between himself and his wife. Since the boarder who had called them was absent, evidently not wanting to get involved, the police just shook their heads and left.
Time for me to do likewise, and I started off.
Wade stomped towards me, took my hand, and led me off to the side of the building. “Don’t you ever put yourself in the middle of anything like that again.”
“Who the hell do you think you are talking to me like that?” Did I just say that? I never speak like that.
“I own these stables, and I am responsible for anyone who works or lives here,” he said softly.
When I turned on my heel, he reached for and held my arm. I gave his hand a glare and then turned the glare on him. He dropped his hand. “Charlie, when I saw her pointing that gun … at you, my heart stopped. Besides that, what happens here affects my ability to draw in new boarders.”
“Then you should be grateful to me, because we averted a scandal.”
“We did, but only because I advised Mr. James that it would be in his best interest not to mention a gun registered in his name being waved around at my farm when the signpost at the beginning of the dri
ve forbids firearms being brought onto the property. He didn’t press charges against his wife because he was afraid of a lawsuit from me.”
I eyed him. “How did you know the gun was registered in his name?”
He grinned. “I made a lucky guess.”
I laughed. It had been a soul-draining experience. There hadn’t been time to think that I could have been shot, even accidentally. Now it all flooded back, and my reaction was hysteria. I started laughing and couldn’t stop.
Nerves will out.
I sobered up and stopped laughing when he took me into his arms and laid those delicious lips on mine. Damn, but my knees buckled, literally, and I held onto him as he held me in place.
I’ve read about knees buckling and thought, yeah, sure—and then it happened to me. He was my romance novel come to life. The bones in my knees … gone. What could I do but collapse into his embrace?
He suddenly held me upright by my shoulders, but not in an embrace. He took a step back from me, and his blue eyes seemed glazed as he whispered, “Run away from me, Charlie … run.”
I did just that.
I ran up the stairs and into my living room. Clasping my hands, I paced between my easel and my desk, and then finally, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to paint or anything else, I picked up my bag and headed back downstairs. My stairs lead right from my living room to the outside. The fresh air hit me in the face, and it was good. I needed more.
I needed to have a moment with Dee. I speed dialed her, and she answered. “Well, it’s about time, Charlie. Where ya been?”
“Meet me at Joe’s Café.”
“Sure, but I only get forty-five minutes for lunch today. Heading out now … you?”
“Yes, on my way.” Dee was my drug of choice. Right then I needed a tranquilizer. She had a way of sorting things out and lining them up. Yeah, she was a gadabout, but she was also practical and no-nonsense. Besides that, I missed her.
As I passed Wade’s house, humming with construction workers in and out, I noted Mr. Hottie was nowhere in sight. But Blondie was. She pulled into his circular driveway, which had its own entrance from Mutton Road.