by Jo Barrett
Dylan was sleeping. Like a big bear. On her canvas. And his genitals were hot pink. It made Kat want to start laughing, but she didn’t dare disturb him. If sleeping were an Olympic sport, you’d take home the gold, babe, she thought. He always fell asleep after sex. For at least ten, maybe fifteen minutes.
Kat tousled the big bear’s hair and stood up. She shimmied out to the terrace in the nude, took a seat on one of Dylan’s bulky patio chairs, and lit a cigarette.
She wasn’t a smoker, per se. It’s just that sometimes—especially in times of crisis—a cigarette tasted damned good.
Kat blew the smoke out slowly and thought about secret number two. She stared out into the distance and flicked her ash over the edge of the balcony.
Why me? she wondered.
Of all the women on earth, why did it have to be her?
Dylan knew secret number one. He was well aware of Kat’s financial predicament. But secret number two belonged to Kat.
Kat regarded the cigarette with a frown and stabbed it out in the silver tray on the table. She stretched her arms above her head in a yoga pose known as “praying mantis,” and took in a sharp breath.
What if they’re wrong? she thought. I mean, it’s not like these doctors know everything.
She tried to clear her mind and focus on her yoga teacher’s instructions—Na-ma-ste—but the sound of a blaring horn startled her. Jumping from the deck chair, Kat peered over the wrought-iron ledge to the front entrance of the Royal Arms. Twenty floors beneath her, she spotted him. Blaring on his horn. Shouting and waving his arms frantically out the driver’s side window. Waiting impatiently for the valets to come park his awful, wasp yellow Hummer.
Well hello there, Prince Charming.
It was C. Todd Hartwell. The building’s rogue. A self-proclaimed Texas Casanova. Complete with eel-skin cowboy boots and smelly armpits. He was rumored to have fathered many children, slept with hundreds of women, and tried to bed Kat on every occasion he could muster.
Kat watched him angle out of the Hummer and slam the driver’s side door in frustration. A red-uniformed valet ran toward him at full sprint. C. Todd had driven onto the building’s front entrance flower mound, crushing the tulips and scaring up a few birds.
Kat shook her head. Jesus. Grow up, she thought. C. Todd gave the valet a good tongue-lashing before ambling toward the front entrance. He must have had the sense of a trained bloodhound, because just as he reached the front entrance, he looked straight up—twenty floors at Kat. For a moment, they locked eyes. Kat watched him smile at her—the same snake charmer smile he always gave her. She realized, suddenly, that she was naked and her breasts were in plain view.
Oh! Shhhhit!
Kat turned and fled back into the apartment—and rammed straight into Dylan.
“Hey there. Easy, wild Kat. What’s got you spooked, hon?”
“I accidentally flashed C. Todd, and it’s not even Mardi Gras,” Kat said, covering both breasts with her hands.
“Sonofabitch!” Dylan roared. He jerked Kat sideways and ran out to the balcony, his hot pink genitals flopping. It was enough to put Kat in stitches. She couldn’t help it. She laughed uncontrollably. Watching Dylan lean over the balcony with all that hot pink flapping between his legs.
“Yeah, you better run and hide!” Dylan was shouting over the railing.
He heard Kat snorting with laughter so he whirled around.
“Look,” she said, pointing at his hot pink surprise.
Dylan stared down. In his sleep, he must’ve forgotten about the hot pink paint gracing his pride and joy.
“Jesus, Kathleen! This better come off in the shower!”
Kat crossed her arms over her chest. Her visit to the doctor this morning had been quite enough drama for one day.
She began to tap her foot. Slowly.
Tap…tap…tap.
Kat’s foot tapping was famous. It meant that her patience was tried, and that Dylan better march to the shower, or else there’d be hell to pay.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Every woman in Texas had a signature move. Kat’s foot tap was like the Bataan death march.
She watched Dylan sulk off to the bathroom. Kat smiled slightly. A lot of women made the mistake of yelling at their boyfriends.
A man doesn’t need to be yelled at in order to be trained, she thought.
Her mama had taught her well.
Eight
Dylan didn’t want to deal with another mess. It wasn’t enough that his father had died suddenly when he’d slammed his Escalade into a concrete barrier on Highway 59. Nope. Butch Grant tended to leave land mines wherever he went. And Dylan had spent his entire life trying to disarm them.
He wasn’t surprised when his phone rang early the next morning just as the sun came glinting through the bedroom windows. Dylan opened a blurry eye and reached over to his bedside table.
Perfect, he thought. What now?
It was Tim Johnson. Senior partner at Johnson and Bernstein Private Wealth Management, Inc.
“You need to come to my office A-SAP,” Tim said in a serious tone.
“What’s this about?” Dylan asked.
“I’d rather see you in person.”
Dylan sat up in bed. Perfect.
“It’s not a good time for me, Tim.”
“I know about your father, Dylan. That’s why I need to see you A-SAP.”
Dylan wondered if Tim enjoyed saying the word A-SAP. If this word made him feel important.
“Okay. Give me an hour,” Dylan said, resisting the urge to add “A-SAP.”
Bad news usually traveled slowly—unless your father was Butch Grant. Then it was like a damned flood.
Kathleen rubbed her eyes and kicked off the sheets. “I’m hot,” she murmured. “Who’s calling so early?”
“Tim Johnson.”
Kathleen rolled over in bed and blinked. “Did you tell him about your dad?”
“He already knew.”
“Uh oh. That doesn’t sound good.”
Dylan leaned over and kissed her hair. “Don’t worry about it, babe. Go back to sleep.” He got up and padded to the shower. As soon as he’d seen Tim’s number pop up on his mobile, he knew it was bad.
His thoughts were confirmed an hour later when he found himself sitting in the River Oaks Trust Building, staring incredulously out the window.
Sitting across from him, behind a massive oak desk—the type of desk preferred by judges, lawyers, and assholes in general—was Tim Johnson.
The money manager was about as white-bread, gumshoe corporate guy as you could imagine. With a conservative banker’s haircut stiff and gelled back, a navy suit and tie—nothing to write home about—Tim Johnson of Johnson and Bernstein Private Wealth Management, Inc., wasn’t making any kind of statement. His outfit fit his demeanor—quiet, calculating, snub-nosed, and efficient.
Dylan didn’t dislike Tim. The two men just didn’t click. Dylan had asked Tim out for beer a few times, but the money manager always declined. His kids had soccer, was usually the excuse.
Now Tim was dropping a bomb. And not just a puny grenade. This was Hiroshima.
“What do you mean, the leases don’t belong to us anymore?” Dylan asked. His voice caught in his throat. He was sitting in a stiff leather chair. Dylan gripped the arms of the chair and squeezed with all his strength. I’m going to throw this goddamned chair out the window, he thought.
“Your father lost the title to that tract of land in a poker game,” Tim said. He leaned across his desk and passed a single page to Dylan. “I received this from Bo Harlan’s lawyer yesterday.”
Dylan swiped the paper from Tim’s outstretched hand. For a moment, he stopped breathing. His hand quivered. At the bottom of the page was his father’s signature. In that damned red ink.
There could be no denying what the page clearly stated. Dylan and Wyatt had just lost the last stitch of their inheritance.
“I…can’t believe…” Dylan trailed off.
<
br /> His mother, the lovely Clarissa Grant, had died of a stroke a few years back, after suffering too many decades of Butch Grant’s drinking, gambling, womanizing, and abuse in general. Which proved the general theory that the good die young, but the pricks live forever.
Dylan blamed his mother’s death squarely on his father. But one thing Butch Grant had done right—the only thing he’d ever done right—was preserve the main mineral lease that had been in the Grant family since they settled in Texas in 1874. For generations, the well had carried the name of #7, but had been renamed the Clarissa #7 when Dylan’s mother had died. After Clarissa’s death, it had yielded hefty checks each month for Dylan and Wyatt to split between them.
The sum had once been a whole lot more, but Butch Grant managed to ratchet down his dead wife’s family money. He’d lost the other oil wells that had once belonged to the Grant family in his late night beer-stoked poker games, famously nicknamed “Yards and Cards.”
Dylan figured that the only reason his father hadn’t gambled away the Clarissa #7 was that his wife’s name was attached to it. Even Butch Grant wouldn’t dare mess with the heavens by gambling away an oil well named after his dead wife.
“I don’t understand how this could happen,” Dylan sputtered, allowing the paper to drop to the floor. The paper that, signed by his father, would strip the Clarissa from Dylan and Wyatt—the last remaining heirs to the Grant family inheritance.
Tim Johnson leveled Dylan with a steady gaze. In his quiet accountant’s tone, he said, “I see it all the time, Mr. Grant.”
He was all business, Tim.
Dylan snorted. At a time like this, screaming and carrying on was certainly called for. He leaped from his chair and paced the room. His mouth worked feverishly, attempting to form the words blazing through his head.
“You’re telling me Bo Harlan is claiming the Clarissa as his own!” Dylan said, his voice like a fist.
“He says your father lost it to him in a game over fifteen years ago. The deal was your father could keep the rights to all minerals flowing from the well until the day he died, at which point any remaining mineral interests would pass to Bo Harlan.”
Tim took off his eyeglasses and began to polish the lenses. First one, then the other. Calmly. As if Dylan wasn’t wildly pacing his office. As if Dylan wasn’t in dire financial straits.
As if nothing is wrong, at all!
It was time to get Tim’s attention. After all, he and Wyatt had been paying the lofty commissions charged by Johnson Bernstein Private Wealth Management, Inc., for many years.
Dylan lurched forward and swept his arm across Tim’s desk, sending the files and the paperwork flying onto the floor in a messy heap.
Ka-chunk!
Time stood still for a second.
And then…
The unflappable Tim Johnson continued to polish his eyeglasses.
Hearing the commotion, Johnson and Bernstein’s luscious little secretary appeared in the crack of the doorway.
“Everything all right in there, Mr. Johnson?” she asked in her baby-doll voice. Dylan saw Jennifer’s eyes blinking in the doorway. Her freshly painted cherry red lips so inappropriate for ten A.M.
He strode over to the door and slammed it shut.
Nice move, jerkoff.
Dylan cracked open the door. “I’m sorry, Jennifer.” He looked intently into the secretary’s wide eyes. “You caught me at a bad time is all.”
He broke out into his trademark grin—a grin that Kat referred to as his “Special Sauce.”
It worked.
The secretary flashed him a sweet smile, with a hint of sexual undertone that Dylan was used to with women but never acted upon.
The secretary drummed her polished fingernails against the door frame. “You’re probably thirsty, and I forgot to offer you a drink. Would you care for a bottle of Evian or a Coke?” she cooed, fluttering her beautiful dark eyelashes.
“I’m good,” Dylan said.
“Well then. I guess my work here is done.” This time she winked at Dylan, and the overt sexual offer was more than a hint. Turning on her kitten heels, she sashayed back to her desk, swinging her hips slowly from side to side. She even looked back over her shoulder and gave Dylan a parting smile.
Dylan was in no mood to deal with a flirt. Jennifer was the ultimate gold digger and had already blown Wyatt in the parking lot during her lunch break a few years back. His younger brother had considered it a “fringe benefit” and now referred to Johnson and Bernstein as the greatest money management firm on planet Earth.
Dylan shut the door and swung around toward Tim.
Tim Johnson was eyeing him as if Dylan had sticks of dynamite taped across his chest.
“It’s not like I’ve got sticks of dynamite taped to my chest,” Dylan said.
“I can understand why you’re upset, Mr. Grant, but trashing the contents of my desk doesn’t help matters,” Tim said, matter-of-fact. The money manager was sitting stiffly in his leather-backed chair, as if daring Dylan to do something more.
Smooth, Dylan thought. He couldn’t do anything to peel the calm veneer off the man. He collapsed back into his own chair, and ignored the pile of stuff on the floor next to Tim’s desk.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to pick it up!
“Fine. What do you suggest?” Dylan asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
The two men sat facing each other. Square-on.
“You can fight it out in court,” Tim said in a somber voice, “But the lawyers don’t think you have much of a case. Problem is…Bo Harlan did his homework. He’s crossed all his t’s, dotted all his i’s.”
Dylan leaned forward in his chair. “Number one,” he said, counting out on his fingers, “Bo Harlan robbed my old man blind. I was there during those poker games. I was still a kid, but I was there.”
“Who was running the games?” Tim asked. “Bo Harlan or Butch Grant?”
“You know my dad was the ringleader, Tim. But what does it matter? A cheat is a cheat.”
“Your father signed away the lease, Dylan. He signed it in front of witnesses. All the men at those games claim that your father lost, and he lost big. He gambled away your family’s money year after year.”
“Witnesses!” Dylan smacked his hand against his knee and was pleased to see Tim flinch.
“Let’s call them what they really were—Bo Harlan’s hired guns. I mean, witnesses don’t usually carry Smith & Wessons, do they?”
“Are you claiming your father was under duress?”
“You bet.”
“Where’s the proof?”
Dylan clenched his teeth. Proof. I’ll show you proof when I jam your head up your ass, he thought. For a moment, he imagined himself leaping across Tim Johnson’s desk and grabbing his money manager by the throat. But why kill the messenger? It wasn’t the accountant’s fault. No matter how smug the senior partner of Johnson and Bernstein Private Wealth Management, Inc., appeared to be.
“Look, Tim,” Dylan said, exhaling sharply. “Bo Harlan knew my father was an alcoholic, and that he was out of control. He should’ve stopped the game.”
“Since when is it Bo Harlan’s duty to protect your father from himself?”
Dylan flinched. “Tell me something. Why does Bo Harlan need this very last well? The one named after my mom? No matter how drunk my father was, he never would’ve gambled away—”
A fuzzy vision flashed through Dylan’s head. It was a distant memory. Of cigar smoke choking the air, the sound of a bottle smashed against the floor and gunshots ringing through the ceiling. Dylan had remembered being scared shitless. Hiding behind the stinky brown sofa with his hand cupped over Wyatt’s mouth, so his younger brother wouldn’t cry.
“Hush up, Wyatt! Or we’re both gonna get killed!” Dylan had pleaded into his brother’s ear. They’d crouched behind the couch for hours while Butch Grant cursed and smashed bottles and shot his gun into the ceiling, causing white spackle to rain down into both
Dylan’s and Wyatt’s eyes.
Wyatt had peed his pants. Dylan had done the same.
“You’ll never take the Clarissa while I’m alive!” Butch Grant had slurred.
Dylan had remembered the noise. The terrible noise.
His dad wailing from the alcohol and depression and grief.
That was the night the police showed up. But this time, instead of giving Butch Grant a warning, they’d deposited Dylan and Wyatt at the neighbor’s house where the kind widow Ms. Honeycutt fed them hot milk and her famous snickerdoodles.
Dylan wondered if that was the night his father decided to end it for good. The night when the drinking started in earnest. In the past, the whiskey and vodka and beer had been sport.
“I’m sorry, Dylan,” Tim said, suddenly, as if he were reading Dylan’s mind. Dylan jerked back to reality and scowled across the room.
“The Clarissa #7 is the only thing Wyatt and I have left, Tim! What do you expect us to do?”
“The first thing I’d advise would be to pare down your financial obligations,” Tim said, curling his hands under his chin. “You’ve got to start saving, not spending. And…” Tim paused and took a deep breath. “You and Wyatt could consider getting jobs.”
“Jobs!” Dylan nearly spat the word out. “Dealing with my father was a full-time job, let me tell you!”
“But your father is no longer the issue.”
“What the hell do you think I do all day long, Tim? Twiddle my damned thumbs! I’m up to my knees trying to manage this shit!”
“I was referring to your brother,” Tim said. “Seems as though Wyatt has been on a bit of a spending spree.”
Spending spree?
Dylan was afraid to ask. But the words tumbled out of his mouth. “How much?”
Tim made a big production of leaning over and rustling through the files that Dylan had dumped on the floor. Dylan watched as his money manager pulled a manila folder out of the stack marked “Wyatt Grant.” He plopped the folder on his desk and flipped it open, rather flippantly in Dylan’s opinion.
“Against my advice, Wyatt took a very sizable loan out against the well—the well that you both no longer own.”