Tycoon Meets Texan!

by Arlene James

  “Girl, you look like a million bucks,” Gwyn drawled, a hand perched on her slender hip, “which puts you in the same category as your bank account.” She laughed and flopped her hand from the wrist before plopping her blue-jean-clad bottom onto the red vinyl seat of the booth. “Then again, you always looked like a queen slumming.”

  “Thanks,” Avis said dubiously, wishing she’d worn denim instead of plum silk. “You’re looking pretty good yourself. I like your hair down. I don’t think I realized how long it is.”

  Gwyn grinned and preened like a schoolgirl, her cool gray eyes sparkling as she confided, “Molly insisted that I wear it down. She says I don’t make the most of what I’ve got, like I care when I’m hauling it out at 3:00 a.m.”

  Gwyn’s business required long hours and hard work, which accounted for her firm, lean look and the minimalist approach she seemed to take with her appearance. As usual, Gwyn hadn’t worn a shred of makeup, but her thick, biscuit-brown hair hanging board-straight from a side part to the bottoms of her shoulder blades made her look much younger than her thirty-six years, an effect bolstered by her customary attire, which consisted of a simple T-shirt, running shoes and blue jeans.

  “Well, Molly’s right about the hair,” Avis said, “but I understand what you’re saying.”

  The lack of a scraped-back ponytail wasn’t the only change that Avis detected about her friend, however. In many ways, the hard edge that seemed so much a part of her personality had lost some of its sharpness during this past year, and in a strange way, Avis supposed they had Edwin Searle to thank for that, too. Gwyn, like the rest of them, had started to change when she’d come to terms with Edwin’s will.

  “So, what’ve you been up to?” Gwyn asked.

  Avis made a face. “Working, working and working, with the exception of one very boring cocktail party, which was also work-related. Bankers, by the way, are not exactly party animals. But enough about me. How’re you doing? Kids okay? Business good?”

  “Kids are fine,” Gwyn answered. “Business is so-so, but we’re hanging in. As for me, I’m good.” She smiled and folded her firm, slender arms against the tabletop. “We had this conversation right after you got back from London, if you remember, so let’s skip to the chase. Sierra says you’re avoiding her.”

  Avis threw up her hands and plopped back in her seat. “I am not avoiding her! I’m busy. I…” She stopped, propped her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her hands. “All right, I’m avoiding her.” She looked up again. “It’s not that I don’t care or don’t want to spend time with Sierra or…or Val, for that matter. It’s just that Sierra has Sam now and Val has Ian, and I just feel…”

  “Left out,” Gwyn supplied knowingly. “Alone.”

  “No,” Avis said firmly. “I prefer alone. I treasure alone. I wouldn’t change my life for anything. It’s just…oh, I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  Gwyn clucked her tongue soothingly and reached across the table to pat Avis’s forearm. “There, there, honey. I didn’t mean it that way, like you’re lonely or anything. Heck, you’ve got us, me especially, and I know something’s been bothering you. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  Avis sighed. “I don’t know where to begin. It’s all so confusing.”

  “Why not try starting with London?”

  Avis looked up sharply, but before she could form a reply, a waitress approached with water glasses and an order pad. They chose two salads and a large sausage pie with pineapple.

  “I can hear Chip now,” Gwyn said with a grin, referring to her thirteen-year-old son. “‘Yuck! Pineapple! Girlie pizza.’“

  “That won’t keep him from eating it, though,” Avis predicted.

  “He’ll be shoving it in while he’s complaining.”

  They both laughed. Then Gwyn leveled her gaze. “Come on, kiddo, tell me about London, and I don’t mean Buckingham Palace.”

  “What makes you think this has anything to do with London?” Avis hedged.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you went over there the same Avis we’ve always known and came back different somehow.”

  Avis bit her lip and softly said, “I met a man.”

  Gwyn sighed. “I should’ve known.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gwyn smiled. “I mean that it’s obviously your turn. First, Val found Ian. Then Sierra found Sam. Stands to reason you’d be next. My luck, I’ll get left out of this deal, too.”

  “No!” Avis insisted. “That’s not it, at all. I don’t want a man. You know that.”

  “I know that’s what you think.”

  “That’s how it is,” Avis insisted, but Gwyn lifted a hand.

  “Why don’t you just tell me about it?”

  Avis nodded glumly. She had never intended to tell anyone what had really happened in London. It was meant to be her guilty little secret, a figurative pint of ice cream to be gobbled in privacy at moments of weakness or indulgence. Somehow, though, she found that she couldn’t enjoy her hoard of memories. Maybe it would help if she shared it.

  “This is just between us,” she warned, and took a deep breath. “We met on the airplane going over. He’s a widower, part Greek, and yes, he looks like one of those ancient statues carved in marble, too beautiful to believe. He’s wealthy and charming, thirty-six, and I stayed with him all but the very first night I was there.”

  Gwyn’s eyes had grown wide as the words had tumbled out of Avis’s mouth. She blinked at that last bit of information and blew out a short breath. “Well. He must be something. I mean, I’ve seen you hit on by all types.”

  Avis rolled her eyes. “You have not.”

  “Oh, yes, I have. You just haven’t bothered to notice. That’s the point. Any man who could grab your attention has to have something major going on.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Avis muttered, and Gwyn laughed.

  “Come on. I want a blow-by-blow account.”

  To Avis’s surprise, the story spilled out in one continuous flow. She kept the intimate details to herself and still told more than she’d intended. The salads came, and then the pizza, but neither slowed her narrative, and when she was done, she somehow felt different. In a strange way, she felt warmer, as if she’d been chilled and stiff inside for all these weeks and talking about it had loosened up the blood flow to her emotions once again. It proved to be a two-edged sword, however, as suppressed feelings crowded her. She tired to shake them off, but they came so swiftly that she couldn’t even identify them, let alone control them. Shaking her head, she finished up her long tale. “Anyway, I had to come home. So here I am. And that’s it.”

  Gwyn stared at the half-eaten piece of pizza on her plate and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  Avis frowned. “What do you mean? It was a vacation romance. Now it’s over.”

  “Why?”

  Avis stared at her friend with dismay. “I was on vacation. It was time to come home. I had to end it.”

  “Oh, come on. You know you weren’t ready for that.”

  “I was ready,” Avis insisted softly, desperately. “No one forced me to leave when I did. I chose the time. I made the reservations.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  Avis looked at Gwyn helplessly. “I don’t know.”

  Gwyn studied her for a moment, choosing her words carefully. “He excited you, and that must have been frightening, given your history.” Avis’s frown deepened, but Gwyn leaned forward and went on, lowering her voice. “You’ve beat yourself up enough over Kenneth. It’s time you learned to trust yourself again.” Avis began shaking her head, but Gwyn was determined to have her say. “You never had anything to be ashamed of there, honey. You were a baby, for pity’s sake. He was much, much older, a professor, more sophisticated. I know you felt responsible. I know your brother held you responsible. But you made the only choice you felt you could, and then you lived with it. You did the right thing, as you saw it
, and you paid a stiff price. Trust what you’ve learned as a result, and give yourself some credit, for pity’s sake.”

  “That’s what I’m doing,” Avis hissed. “That’s exactly why I had to come home.” She sighed and admitted, “In some ways, Lucien was an even bigger mistake than Kenneth, and as soon as I realized that, I couldn’t get away fast enough.”

  Gwyn’s expression verged on pity. “If that’s so, then why are you grieving?”

  Grieving. The truth of it hit Avis like a ton of bricks, and it was as if she plunged into a deep well of sadness. Or perhaps she had been floundering around in that well for the last month or so, only just now realizing it. She wished she hadn’t.

  Gwyn smiled wanly. “I’ve seen that look in your eye before, first when Kenneth died, then when Edwin did. But this…all I really know for sure is that he got to you in a big way.”

  Avis blinked back sudden tears. “You’re right. Lucien did get to me, like no one else ever has, but don’t you see? That’s all the more reason to end it and get back to my life here.”

  “But isn’t that just running away, Avis?”

  Avis stared at her friend for a long time. “Maybe,” she finally conceded, “but you don’t know how many times I’ve wished I’d had the strength to run from Kenneth. So much would have been different.”

  “Different maybe,” Gwyn argued, “but you don’t know that it would have been better.”

  “I know I wouldn’t have disappointed my brother,” Avis said softly. “I know Kenneth wouldn’t have been forced out of his teaching career. I know Ellis wouldn’t have hated me for taking away his father’s attention.”

  “Avis,” Gwyn said urgently, “you were twenty years old.”

  “Stop saying that. It’s no excuse.”

  “You needed someone to love you.”

  “And I’ve learned never to let myself be that needy again,” Avis stated firmly.

  Gwyn slumped for a moment, but then she nodded, sat back and pointedly changed the subject. “Have you heard what our illustrious mayor’s been saying about Sam and Sierra?”

  Even as Avis cringed at the thought of fresh rumors, she smiled in gratitude for the change in topic. “What now?”

  “The new story, and I know for a fact that Heston Witt is floating it, is that Sierra’s baby might not even be Sam’s, but he’s claiming it in order to get Sierra’s money.”

  Avis shook her head in disgust. “And people are buying that tripe?”

  Gwyn shrugged. “Probably not, but that doesn’t keep them from passing it around.”

  “What did people in Puma Springs gossip about before Edwin made that will?”

  Gwyn chuckled. “Yeah, he gave you, Sierra and Val a million-plus each, but he gave the town years worth of grist for the gossip mills.” She waved a hand dismissively. “They’re just jealous. I should know.” Her self-deprecating smile pinched Avis.

  “Gwyn, you’re such a good friend. It’s not fair—”

  “Oh, now, don’t start that again,” Gwyn interrupted. “Like I said in the beginning, it is what it’s supposed to be, and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’d trade places with any of you. I see what the inheritance has brought with it, the gossip, the scrutiny, the envy, the kooks and mooches. Yeah, I get tired of stretching a buck, but I don’t have the patience to put up with all the junk you and Sierra and Val have.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t envy y’all the inheritance, not considering everything that comes with it, anyway. Now, on the other hand, Ian and Sam are pretty cute.” She grinned and wiggled an eyebrow. “I would happily get in the way of something like that.”

  Avis laughed. “You lie. You’re no more interested in men than I am.”

  “That,” said Gwyn softly, “is unfortunately true. The problem is, you’re more interested than you want to admit, at least in one man.”

  Avis clamped her mouth shut at that, and Gwyn, bless her, decided it was time to signal the waitress for a take-out box for the leftover pizza and, since they’d really eaten very little of the meal, she insisted that they should have dessert, too. Avis happily agreed, and they shared a piece of turtle cheesecake dripping with caramel, chocolate and pecans before going their separate ways. Alone.

  Chapter Seven

  Avis stared through the window overlooking downtown Fort Worth and the popular Sundance Square, with its shops, restaurants, clubs and art galleries. The traffic on the street seemed as desultory and lethargic as she felt, but she supposed that was normal for a weekday afternoon. Then again, time itself seemed to be dragging listlessly of late. The past week and more had crept by with nerve-wracking tedium.

  Time and again she had reached for the telephone, only to draw back for reasons she couldn’t quite explain even to herself. During the course of her marriage, she’d been somewhat isolated, having little in common with Kenneth’s few friends and limited opportunities for making her own. During his illness, Kenneth had contented himself with his books and his collections, she had stayed occupied with the hobby shop and seeing to his care. After his death she had felt terribly alone. Money had been tight, and life had felt like a continuous struggle, but she’d made friends of the other businesswomen at the strip mall and gradually had come to feel liberated. That was no longer the case. Now, while her friends were concerned with their families and other responsibilities, she had only her work. In many ways she seemed more isolated than ever simply because the Searle inheritance made it impossible for her to trust new acquaintances easily.

  She hated feeling lonely. She hated even the word, but she could find no other more appropriate for the dissatisfaction that consumed her. She turned abruptly from the window, realizing with a start that she was not actually alone.

  Of course she was not alone. Pete had come into the office some minutes earlier and had been reading aloud to her from a long e-mail message that he had just received. And she hadn’t heard a word. Not that he seemed to notice, if his sudden whoop was any indication. He threw his arms into the air, tossing the papers exuberantly. The three closely typed pages wafted to the floor.

  “Do you know what this means?” he exclaimed jubilantly. She didn’t have a clue, so she just smiled benignly. “We’re going to get the TexBank redevelopment!”

  The TexBank redevelopment project involved the acquisition and refurbishment of a forty-story downtown office tower substantially damaged by a direct-hit tornado some three years earlier. The building had been abandoned by its owner, one of the largest banking institutions in the state, and the insurer who’d retained possession of it, had been trying to rid itself of the damaged property ever since. Debate had raged over whether or not to tear down the building due to the extensive damage to its glass skin and interior or refurbish the existing steel superstructure, which city inspectors had judged sound. Ardent proponents of refurbishment pointed out that the cost of deconstructing and rebuilding would be substantially higher than that of restoration, say seventy-five million as opposed to sixty, but in a tough economy sixty mil had proven as difficult to come by as seventy-five.

  That hadn’t stopped Pete from dreaming. He’d found a bright young architect in Austin, who had some startlingly innovative plans which he insisted could be executed for a mere fifty-six million dollars. After two years of promotion, Pete was still thirty million short of the goal. Avis had assumed that he’d given up on the idea. The gleam in his eyes now said otherwise.

  “This could put us in the big league, Avis!”

  The biggest deal they’d ever done had required a measly fifteen million dollars in investment, and she knew that he expected her to show some enthusiasm for the TexBank project, but somehow she couldn’t seem to muster up any. For one thing, she didn’t understand what was going on yet. Walking across the carpeted floor toward her desk, she bent and swept up the papers one-by-one, asking, “Do you mind if I keep these and take another look?”

  He laughed. “Look all you want, partner! Meanwhile, I’m going to check out Corydon
.”

  Corydon. That must be the company who had expressed interest in the deal. Avis nodded, quickly perusing the printed e-mail while Pete ran from the office in his eagerness to prove that Corydon was on the level. Leaning a hip against the corner of her desk, Avis carefully dissected the missive word for tiny word.

  Corydon described itself as a fairly small but aggressive New York investment firm specializing in reclamations. It was aware of the TexBank situation, having learned of the project through a shared line-of-credit lender, and boasted almost limitless investment funds. Since Corydon deemed TexBank a prime investment opportunity, they were interested in pursuing a limited partnership. It requested a convenient date for a company rep to call in person to discuss the possibility of a joint venture. The name at the bottom of the letter was Charles Anthony Daniels, CEO.

  Avis arched both brows at the familiar name. Daniels was a well-known financier, as famous for his flamboyance as his cagey investments. If Daniels was really involved, the thing would be easy enough to check out and undoubtedly legitimate. Well, well. Pete just might get his big deal, after all. She smiled, happy for him, and wondered why the feeling seemed so flat. But if her feet remained firmly stuck in the doldrums, his did not.

  Pete could barely get his head out of the clouds, especially after Corydon checked out as expected. As the day for a face-to-face meeting with a Corydon representative drew nearer, Pete only grew more exuberant, bouncing around the office on the balls of his feet, laughing and talking up the project. By Friday, he could barely contain himself.

  “Monday,” he exclaimed, perched on the corner of her desk with a grin. “Sweet, merciful heaven! Can you believe it? Suppose Charles Anthony Daniels himself will come?”