by Jan Hudson
She froze. Who was out there? Had she locked the door? She couldn’t remember.
“Tess! Where are you?”
Dan! It was Dan! Startled, she raised up, banged her head on a rafter, and let out a yelp. “I’m down here,” she yelled. Hunched over to keep from bumping her head again, she started for the steps.
“Where?”
“Down here. In the basement. I’m coming.”
When she got to the abbreviated stairway, she looked up to see Dan standing in the door. He was dressed in a business suit, complete with conservative tie. He frowned. “What in the hell are you doing down there? You’re filthy.”
Trying to make herself presentable, she swiped her hands over her hair and her clothes, but she only succeeded in raising a dust cloud and smearing spiderwebs on her hands.
“What in the hell are you doing in Galveston? I thought you were in Pittsburgh playing president of Friday Elevators.”
He grinned. “I discovered it was no fun without you.”
Her heart did a back-flip and her eyes widened. “Do you mean . . . ?”
He laughed. “I’m here for good. Know anybody who needs a good architect?”
Tess ran up the steps and hurled herself into his arms. “Oh, boy, do I!”
He swung her around, and they kissed and laughed and hugged and kissed again. “Oh, God, how I missed you, babe,” he said, holding her close. “I don’t think I’ve laughed once in the time I’ve been gone. My headaches and stomach problems started again the first day I went to the office, and I was miserable without you. Kathy had done a great job as president while I was gone. I think everybody was sorry to see me come back. And she loves it. Can you imagine that? She actually enjoys being president.”
Tess laughed and kissed him again. “There’s no accounting for taste. Did she boot you out again?”
“No, when she saw me moping around and acting like a bear with everyone who crossed my path, she insisted that we have a heart-to-heart talk. For the first time we were honest with each other. I admitted that I hated the job and only continued with it out of a sense of obligation to the family and to protect her. She admitted that she’s been dying to take over for a long time, especially after she saw me struggling through the past year or two, but she didn’t want to hurt my pride by telling me. That sly sister of mine sent me to Galveston hoping Gram could talk me into retiring from the presidency.”
“I think I’m going to like Kathy.”
He grinned. “I think she’s going to like you, too. By the way, she loved the gifts from Gram and me that you selected.” His hand cupped the side of her neck and his thumb traced the line of her jaw in a tender, familiar gesture. “I don’t want us ever to be apart again, love. Will you marry me as soon as possible?”
She gave a saucy grin. “I always intended to.”
“I can scrape up enough to buy the house for you, and we can take our time restoring it.”
She threw back her head and gave a low, throaty laugh. “Right now I have a surprise for you. Take off your coat and tie.”
With a wicked gleam in his eye, Dan quirked an eyebrow. “You got it, babe.” Before she could say a word, he shed his coat, dropped it on the floor, and yanked off his tie.
“Not for that.” She gave him a playful swat. “That comes later. Right now I have a surprise for you.” Grabbing him by the hand, she pulled him toward the steps. “Watch your head. There’s not room to stand up down here.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going to dig for treasure.”
Dan groaned. “Oh, no, not again.”
“You just wait. This time I know absolutely, positively, without a single, solitary doubt, where the loot is buried.”
“Where have I heard that before?”
With a little bob of her head, she gave a smug grin and offered him the shovel. “But that was before I knew about Granny Casey’s Bible verses.” With both of them kneeling in the basement fill dirt, he sighed, gave her an indulgent smile, and reached for the short-handled tool. She pulled it back, narrowed her eyes, and said, “You’re not one of those macho types who would be intimidated by a rich wife, are you?”
Amusement lifted one corner of his mouth. “I think my ego can take it.”
“Good, because we’re about to be very, very rich. Dig.”
He dug.
In a few minutes, the earth was cleared from a metal chest, dark and crusted with age. They looked at one another. “Open it, sweetheart,” he said, sitting back on his heels.
Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath. Her heart was in her throat and her hands were shaking as she reached for the latch. She lifted it and slowly opened the lid. Some sort of fabric lay over the top. When she reached to pull it aside, it disintegrated in her hands.
Through the rotten remnants, something flashed in the light, and she brushed the scraps aside. Her eyes grew wide, and she sucked in a gasp. “Oh, Daaan,” she whispered.
“My . . . God.”
The chest was brimming full of gold and silver bars, hundreds of Spanish gold coins, and all kinds of precious gems both mounted and loose.
Dan picked up a gold tiara, studded with pearls and rubies the size of quarters. He placed it on Tess’s head and smiled. “It matches your outfit, my love.” He clasped a necklace of similar design around her neck.
She looked down at the heavy piece, squealed, and threw her arms around him. “Oh, Dan, we found it! We’re rich!”
Laughing and crying and crazy with joy, she planted scores of smacking kisses all over his face. So exuberant were her kisses that they fell backward in the dirt with Tess sprawled across him. He held her and hooted with laughter.
When the shock wore off, she sobered and said, “Dan, this is only one. There are others.” Her eyes flashed and her voice was full of wonder.
They started digging again. In a little more than two hours, they had unearthed twelve metal boxes, each filled with treasure.
Tess reached down, scooped a mound of gold coins up in her hand, and let them trickle through her fingers. “How much do you think is here?”
Dan sat down on one of the chests and wiped his face on the sleeve of his white dress shirt. He shook his head in amazement. “I have no idea.”
“Do you think one chestful would be worth two million dollars?”
“I suspect that’s a conservative estimate.”
She was quiet for a moment, then said, “Jean Laffite provided well for his descendants. And Casey and Marsh Prophet made sure that it would be safe for coming generations. Why don’t we keep out one for us and one for Aunt Olivia? The rest we can cover back up to leave for our children and our grandchildren.”
He looked pained. “Right now?”
Sitting in the dirt beside him, covered with grime, with cobwebs in her hair and tiara slightly askew, Tess laughed and laid her head against his thigh. “Tomorrow will be soon enough. Let’s go upstairs and take a bath. After all that work, I’m sure you’re very tired and need to rest.”
Raising one eyebrow in that deliciously wicked way of his, he said, “I’m not that tired.”
Pursing her lips to keep from laughing, she said, “I see.” She leaned close to him and gave him her most provocative smile. “Did I mention that everybody is in Louisiana? We have the house all to ourselves for three whole days.”
Epilogue
Over the bateau neckline of a long hostess gown, deep crimson and made of the softest velvet, Tess wore a heavy gold necklace, encrusted with pearls and bloodred rubies as big as quarters. They sat snuggled together on the huge, poofy couch covered in oyster suede and watched the firelight flicker in the Italian marble fireplace. Above the mantle hung Hook’s painting of the blue water nymph with Tess’s face. The colors matched the blue watered silk on the walls.
The smells of burning oak and fresh paint and wax mingled with those of warm cinnamon and nutmeg. A fragrance of potpourri and baby powder wafted through the high-ceilinged house as w
ell.
A crystal bowl filled with pine and holly sat on the massive coffee table beside a wooden Bible case studded with a meandering trail of rainbow-colored stones. A magnificent Persian rug covered the polished oak floors.
“It’s taken a long time, but at last it’s all finished,” Dan said, nuzzling the side of her neck. “Happy with it?”
“Very. I’ve never been happier in my life,” Tess said, lifting her chin to give her husband better access to the spot where his tongue was doing delicious things. “I have everything any woman could ever want. You?”
“Very. And you were right. I have more clients now than I can handle.”
In the corner stood a tall spruce tree, covered with gold balls and angels and great swags of gold and crystal beads. Four hundred twinkling lights reflected off the gleaming brass samovar on the long table next to it. Under the tree were great piles of gaily wrapped Christmas presents.
“Why don’t you and I go upstairs?” he whispered.
“Can’t.” She sighed. “Hook went to pick up Kathy and your mom at the airport, and they should be here any minute. Aunt Olivia and Gram Martha and Ivan said they’d be here for dinner at six. It’s almost that now.”
“What are we having for dinner?”
“I don’t now. Ivan’s bringing everything. He said it would be a traditional Bulgarian American Christmas Eve feast, whatever that means.” She gave a deep, throaty laugh.
The sparkle in her eyes worked the same magic on him that it had when he’d first seen her. “How I love you, Tess.”
She kissed the little freckle on the side of his mouth. “And I love you. Now and always, Friday.”
The doorbell chimed.
“Up!” came a voice from the playpen at the end of the couch.
“Up!” came another.
Dan and Tess looked at one another. “I think the twins are ready to play,” she said. “The whole bunch is going to spoil the girls rotten. And you-know-who is the worst. I’ll get Casey. You get Marsha.”
They each picked up a small imp with identical red curls and dressed in identical green coveralls . Four new teeth peeked out from behind each twin’s babyish version of their mother’s million-kilowatt smile.
“Hook,” said Casey, pointing one tiny, wet finger toward the door.
“Hook,” echoed Marsha, kicking her feet against her father’s hip.
“How do they know?” asked Dan.
Tess shrugged. “Beats me.” She laughed and went to open the door.
* * *
Author’s Note
Three of the houses mentioned in my story are loosely based on historic homes. The house made from two houses is the residence built in 1886 by John L. Darragh, president of the Galveston Wharf Company. When I first saw the house over twenty years ago, it was for sale and in poor condition, as described, though the Galveston Historical Foundation was trying to save it. It has since succumbed to fire, as have many of the neglected beauties that have been felled by arson, weather, or simple old age and financial issues. While I’ve taken a few literary liberties, the redbrick Italianate family home where Aunt Olivia and the others lived is modeled after Ashton Villa, built by John M. Brown, a prosperous businessman, in 1859. It has been restored and is open to the public. Tess’s Moorish Gothic dream house was fashioned after the 1890 home of John Clement Trube. For a long time the dramatic old structure, sometimes called Trube Castle, existed as Tess and Dan saw it, and as I first saw it, but it has been restored.
Jean Laffite was, of course, a real privateer who established Campeche on Galveston Island. There are many legends about his buried treasure, including stories about riches cached along an overland route through East Texas to St. Louis. The journal mentioned is in the Sam Houston Regional Library in Liberty, Texas, and is thought by many experts to be authentic. Note, too, that I’ve used the Laffite spelling used in that journal as opposed to the often spelled Lafitte.
Laffite’s friend, Aaron Cherry, owned property in the area where the cemetery was located. So far as I know, there was never any treasure buried there or at any of the other sites described, nor was Laffite married to the fictitious Contessa. While within the realm of historical possibility, the stories of Violet and her descendants, including Casey and Tess, and their connection to Laffite, were born entirely of my imagination.
When I first wrote this book, I tried to be meticulous about the time line of Tess’s ancestors and the historical accuracy of certain events and generations, but in this updated edition, the time line suffered, and I have taken a few liberties rather than tear at my hair trying to make it fit. If you found a few inconsistencies, please forgive me and grant me literary license.
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I hope you’ve enjoyed ALWAYS FRIDAY. If so, please let others know by tweeting and/or posting a review on the website where you purchased it. And please note that unless you borrowed this book from a public library, you should have purchased it from one of the commercial ebook online stores such as Amazon, B&N, Sony, Apple iStore, Kobo, Smashwords, etc. (Occasionally one of these reputable commercial sellers mentioned offer a freebie with author permission, and some have special lending programs.) Several other sites online claim to have the right to share scads of free ebooks. They don’t. I own the copyrights to all the books with my name on them, and if you downloaded from one of these pirated sources, you’ve received stolen property. Please be aware of that. Writing books is the way I earn money for groceries and my car payment.
You can find me at
I’ll have several of my back list of tales with Texas ties, author revised and updated, coming as ebooks in the next few months. Some of these humorous romances (most originally published by Bantam Loveswept) are out now or will be soon. Excerpts from THE RIGHT MOVES follows. After these, be on the lookout for the Berringer Brothers Trilogy in the summer of 2012: BIG AND BRIGHT, CALL ME SIN, and SLIGHTLY SHADY. I think you’ll love these Texas based stories about twins who are Texas Rangers and their older brother, who is also a heartthrob. All are filled with love, laughter and a little sizzle.
Also, I’ll be e-publishing an original humorous mystery with female PI Kelly Green and her very unusual sidekick in the fall of 2012. You won’t want to miss this light paranormal–OUT OF SIGHT!
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THE RIGHT MOVES – Excerpt
Texas Tales: Houston
Chapter One
“Somebody here call for a tow?”
Leaving his post beside one of the potted trees flanking the carved door, the parking attendant stepped from beneath the red canopy. White script across the front of the awning discreetly identified Le Boeuf. The same script adorned the left pocket of the smiling young man’s red jacket. His smile widened when he looked into the cab of the tow truck.
“Sure thing. It’s for Mr. Russo. Park it over there,” he said, pointing to the curb farther ahead. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
Chris Ponder pulled the big black wrecker to the spot indicated, climbed down from the cab, and rubbed her back. It had been a long, rough night, pleasantly warm for March in Houston but full of the typical Saturday night crazies. Already she’d worked three major wrecks on the freeways, a couple of side-street fender benders, and four or five other assorted calls. She’d plumped her pocketbook considerably, but she was pooped.
A glance at her watch confirmed that it was almost one-thirty in the morning. After this job she was going to call it a day. She’d been at it for over ten hours. Stifling a yawn, she crammed her fingers in the back pockets of her jeans, rocked back on her scuffed Nikes, and waited.
The smiling young man was back in a short time. “Mr. Russo’s with the manager in his office. He said he’d be another few minutes and to come in and have a drink on him.”
Scowling, she looked down at her grease-smeared jersey and then to the e
legant entrance of Le Boeuf. “In there? Like this?”
“Sure,” the young man said. He lifted an eyebrow and stared at the front of her shirt. “You look fine to me.”
Chris rolled her eyes heavenward. Lord, deliver her from libidinous males, even teenaged ones. This boy, who couldn’t be a day older than her eighteen-year-old stepson, continued to ogle her. “Knock it off, kid,” she said. “I’m nearly old enough to be your mother.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, sobering and straightening at the stern parental tone universally recognized by sons.
“Come on,” Chris said, smiling and softening her words. “I could use a cup of coffee.”
“Yes, ma’am.” His grin was back as he led the way and opened the heavy door for her.
Inside, it was dark and smoky. Rock music, so loud that it vibrated the floor beneath her feet, was mixed with frenzied, high-pitched screams.
What kind of a place was this? After the bright lights of the parking lot outside, Chris could hardly see a thing. A form appeared beside her.
“Welcome to Le Boeuf, honey,” a deep male voice drawled. “The tables are all full, but there’s a spot at the bar. What can I get you to drink?”
Chris squinted at the form, but all she could make out was a red bow tie that seemed to glow in the dark and white teeth gleaming in a wide grin. Someone jostled her and she automatically reached out to steady herself.
Her hand met hard, bare flesh. She gasped.
“Uh-uh, honey,” the voice said. “Look, but don’t touch.”
She snatched her hand away from what she could now make out as a broad, naked chest. She swallowed. “Excuse me. I’m waiting for Mr. Russo. I just wanted a cup of coffee. Perhaps I’d better wait outside.”
“Nick Russo? My apologies, miss. I’ll find you a place right down front. This way,” he said. Taking her elbow before she could balk, he steered her through the crowd of screaming women and seated her.