Savannah Martin has always been a good girl, doing what was expected and fully expecting life to fall into place in its turn. But when her perfect husband turns out to be a lying, cheating slimeball - and bad in bed to boot - Savannah kicks the jerk to the curb and embarks on life on her own terms. With a new apartment, a new career, and a brand new outlook on life, she's all set to take the world by storm. If only the world would stop throwing her curveballs...
When Shelby Ferguson, Savannah’s ex-husband’s new wife, begs Savannah’s help in figuring out what’s going on with Bradley, Savannah can’t in good conscience say no. Shelby has no one else to turn to, no one to whom she can admit that her marriage is on the rocks and that Bradley may be straying.
But helping Shelby turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg. With two different sets of buyers vying to purchase Mrs. Jenkins’s house, and an escaped prisoner targeting Savannah, she has more than enough to deal with. And that’s before TBI rookie Manny Ortega is shot down in cold blood.
With Savannah’s boyfriend Rafe Collier, and homicide detective Tamara Grimaldi, along with the combined forces of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations and the Metro Nashville Police Department, all busy looking for Manny’s murderer, it’s up to Savannah to juggle buyers and adulterers and vandals and murderers, and come out on top... without losing her Southern Belle poise or her life in the process.
KICKOUT CLAUSE
Savannah Martin mystery #7
Jenna Bennett
Chapter One
In real estate, a kickout clause is something that allows a seller—under certain circumstances, after accepting an offer—to accept another offer and kick the first one to the curb.
In life, an equivalent would be something like accepting an offer of marriage from a gentleman of means, while reserving the right to accept an offer from another gentleman of bigger means, should he happen to come along before the marriage is consummated.
Rafe finished the renovations on his grandmother’s old house on Potsdam Street the first week in March. After three days on the market, we had an offer to purchase that included a sale-of-home contingency. In other words, the potential new owners already had a condo they had to sell before they could buy Mrs. Jenkins’s house. And although there wasn’t really much doubt that they’d find someone to buy it—Nashville’s real estate market was reasonably brisk, and the location, in the downtown area called the Gulch, was hot—we still ran the risk of something going wrong, and of having to wait month after month while hoping and praying that things would work out.
So being the smart and savvy real estate agent that I am, I advised my client—and boyfriend—to accept the offer but to attach a rider known as ‘seller’s right to continue to market property.’ That’s what set up the kickout clause. And it was a good thing I did, because two days later we received another offer, this time without the sale-of-home contingency. The second set of potential owners had no house or condo they had to sell before they could afford to buy Mrs. J’s house.
At that point, I notified Brian, the agent for the first potential buyers, that his clients had 48 hours to decide whether they wanted Mrs. J’s house badly enough that they were willing to take a chance on ending up with two properties for a while if they couldn’t sell the condo in a timely manner, or whether they wanted to withdraw their offer and let the other people have the house.
While they were thinking about it, I received a phone call from Shelby Ferguson asking me to meet her for coffee.
Shelby is my ex-husband Bradley’s wife. She was his paralegal while we were married, and she became his wife less than two weeks after our divorce was final.
In other words, I had no reason whatsoever to like her, and none at all to agree to meet her.
And I must have made my feelings clear, because she said, “Please, Savannah. There’s nobody else I can ask.”
I found that very hard to believe, and told her so. The last time I’d seen her, in November, she and a girlfriend had stopped by an open house I was hosting, and they had whispered about me behind my back. I was pretty sure I’d overheard the word ‘chunky.’ To add insult to injury, Shelby had been pregnant and glowing, while I’d been battling morning sickness and weight gain and wondering whether Rafe would be happy or upset about knocking me up.
“It’s true!” I could hear panic lacing through her voice. “I can’t tell any of my friends that my husband... that Bradley...”
She ran down before she could get the damning information out, but I could read between the lines. She couldn’t tell her friends and family that her husband was a jackass, but she could tell me, because I’d been married to Bradley too, and was only too familiar with that fact.
I allowed myself a few seconds to gloat—silently—before I took pity on her and agreed to meet.
She must really be desperate, because she said, “Now?”
“Sure,” I said, throwing caution to the wind. And hey, this way I got it over with. No need to fret about it until tomorrow if I took care of it today. “There’s a Starbucks on Hillsboro Road, right?”
“We can’t meet there!”
We couldn’t? I was trying to do her a favor, by picking a meeting place close to Bradley’s townhouse—the one I’d shared with him before Shelby entered the picture—so she wouldn’t have to drive so far in her condition.
“I’ll come to East Nashville,” Shelby said. “Nobody will recognize me there.”
Oh, sure. These days, people from all over town come to East Nashville to eat and shop, even from Shelby’s snobby Green Hills. But if she preferred to believe she’d be safely slumming in my neighborhood, she was welcome to.
“There’s a coffee shop on the corner of Tenth and East Main,” I told her. “Brew-ha-ha.”
“That’s the name of it?”
I told her it was, and resisted the temptation to ask whether she didn’t think it was a cute name. Between you and me, I find it a little too cute, but the coffee’s good. “It’s just after you pass the gym.”
“I’ll find it,” Shelby said. “Three o’clock?”
I checked my watch. Less than forty five minutes from now. “That’s fine.”
“I’ll see you there.” She clicked off before I had the chance to respond. I arched my brows and dialed Rafe.
“Something funny just happened,” I told him when he answered.
I could almost see one eyebrow arch. “Strange funny? Or ha-ha funny?”
A little of both, actually. “Shelby Ferguson called. You know, Bradley’s new wife?” Or not exactly new—they’d been married for almost three years—but new since me.
There was a moment’s pause. “Why?”
“She didn’t say. Just that she needed to talk to me. And that she couldn’t talk to anyone else.”
“Maybe she found out you had dinner with him back in December,” Rafe said.
Dear Lord. I could feel myself turn pale. I had had dinner with Bradley in December. And he’d been very concerned that Shelby not learn about it, too.
But surely, since we were into March, if she was going to hear about it, she would have heard by now? “You don’t really think so, do you?”
“Dunno,” Rafe said. “What’d she say?”
“Just what I told you.”
There was a pause. “He cheating again?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “He cheated on me. There’s no reason he wouldn’t cheat on her.”
In fact, I’ve never understood women who marry cheaters—men they’ve been sleeping with while he was married to someone else. If he cheated on his first wife, do they really think he won’t cheat on them?
“You gonna meet her?” Rafe asked.
“Three o’clock at Brew-ha-ha.”
“She ain’t wasting any time.”
No, she wasn’t.
“You want I should go with you?”
“I don’t think I need a bodyguard,” I said, “do you? She must be at least eight months pregnant by now. I don’t think she’d risk a fistfight.” And if she did, I could probably take her.
“Prob’ly,” Rafe agreed. “You worried?”
“Not at all. Even if she has found out about that dinner back in December, it wasn’t like it meant anything. I just needed some information about Bradley’s uncle. It’s not like I’d want him back.”
“No?” I could hear the grin.
“Absolutely not. Why would I want Bradley when I have you?”
“I can’t imagine,” Rafe said.
I couldn’t, either. “And anyway, it isn’t like Bradley would be interested in taking me back even if Shelby weren’t in the picture. If he’s cheating again, he’s moved on. To someone who isn’t pregnant and who can still do it on top of the desk.”
There was a beat. “I thought you said he was boring in bed.”
“He was boring with me. But I’m sure he and Shelby did it on the desk. Or in the broom closet. They worked together, after all.”
Rafe didn’t say anything for another second. “I have a desk,” he told me.
My boyfriend works for the TBI, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. For the past ten years, from the time they sprang him from prison at twenty until last December, he worked undercover, doing his best to eliminate a far-reaching SATG—South American Theft Gang—with fingers in a lot of pies all over the southeastern United States. In the process, he blew his cover sky high, and had to retire from undercover work. He retired from the TBI altogether for about two months, until civilian life drove him crazy and he decided to accept the position they offered of training other undercover agents. These days, he spent most of his time in the gym, teaching rookies how to become Quick Draw McGraw and excel at hand-to-hand combat, and the rest of the time in the field, teaching them surveillance and how to evade capture. But he did have a desk, for whenever he had to do paperwork. It was located in a cubicle, on a floor full of other cubicles, and I draw the line there.
“I’ll make to love to you anywhere there’s a door I can close,” I informed him. “But not in a cubicle at the TBI. You’d probably get fired if we got caught.”
“Might be worth it,” Rafe said.
“No, it wouldn’t. You love your job.”
“Not as much as I’d love to get you naked on top of my desk.”
I blushed. “You can get me naked on top of the dining room table instead. Unless you’re working late tonight?”
He’d only had the job for a few weeks, and so far he had worked late a couple nights a week. That was when he took one or more of his charges into the night to play cops and robbers. They’d practice following each other around, on foot or by car, and see who could get away without being caught. It must be fun, because he always came home with a big grin on his face.
“Not tonight. Tonight I’m all yours.”
I don’t think I imagined the innuendo in his voice. In fact, I’m sure of it. When I didn’t answer, because I was too busy fanning myself, he grinned. I could hear it in his voice, even if I couldn’t see him. “Have fun with Shelby, darlin’. Think about me.”
“Sure thing,” I managed.
The last thing I heard before he hung up was a chuckle, low and ripe, the kind of sound that trickles down your back and leaves goosebumps in its wake.
I got to Brew-ha-ha before Shelby, but only by a minute or two. I’d barely planted my posterior at a table by the window when I saw an eggshell white minivan pull up outside. Bradley had threatened to get her one for Christmas, and I guess he’d come through. After a moment the door opened and Shelby got out and waddled toward the entrance to the coffee house.
I did my best not to stare—staring is rude—but it was hard.
Last time I’d seen her, three or four months ago, she’d looked great: dressed in snug jeans and a shirt that draped becomingly over her baby bump, positively glowing with health and pregnancy hormones.
That woman was nowhere to be seen today.
She must have gained thirty pounds in the time since I’d last seen her, to where her butt was now the size of a doublewide trailer, and clad in something that looked suspiciously like polyester. The shiny blonde hair that used to hang like a curtain to her shoulders, looked stringy and thin around her much rounder face. And it was mousy brown. I guess maybe she couldn’t bleach it while she was pregnant, so she’d gone back to her natural color for the duration.
She scanned the room until she found me, and then waddled over to pull out the chair on the other side of the table. “Thanks for coming out, Savannah.” She dropped down on it with an unladylike groan.
“Swollen ankles?” I asked sympathetically, while inside I was grinning like mad.
She made a face. “Pregnancy sucks.”
I hadn’t felt that way about mine. I’d struggled with morning sickness and worry, and with sleeping more than usual and gaining weight, but I hadn’t thought that being pregnant sucked. Being pregnant without knowing whether my baby daddy was alive or dead or would ever come back to Nashville... now, that had sucked a bit. But I had rather enjoyed the pregnancy itself, or would have, if it hadn’t been for that other thing.
“What can I get you?” I asked and got to my feet. “I guess coffee is out?”
She nodded. “Hot chocolate, please. And some kind of muffin or scone.”
“Just a minute.” I headed to the counter, where I placed an order for two hot chocolates—I ordered mine out of solidarity, and also because it sounded good—and an orange cranberry muffin for Shelby. That sounded good, as well, but I resisted the temptation to indulge. I wasn’t eating for two, after all, and the hot chocolate had calories enough.
The barista told me she’d bring the drinks to the table once they were made, so I paid and took the muffin and headed back to Shelby, who was scanning the room, a nervous look on her face. When I stopped beside her, she jumped.
“Here.” I put the plate with the muffin down. “Orange cranberry. The hot chocolate is on its way.”
“Thank you.” She started picking at the muffin while I took my seat on the other side of the table again. I waited for her to begin the conversation with something that mattered, but when she looked up and addressed me, what she said was, “You look good.”
“Thank you.” I should have known better. Like me, Shelby was raised a Southern Belle, and we excel at small talk. Flattery. Beating around the bush. Putting people at their ease before getting to the point.
“Have you lost weight?”
“Since the last time you saw me? Probably. I was pregnant then.”
The way she looked down at my stomach was impossible to miss, as was the question scrolling across her eyes like a marquee.
“I had a miscarriage,” I said. It had taken several months to get to the point where I could say those words out loud without dissolving into tears, but my voice was even. “Just a week or so after the open house in Green Hills where you stopped by.”
“I’m sorry,” Shelby said. “Brad...” She trailed off, blushing.
Surely she didn’t think I’d mind if she brought up Bradley’s name? “What about him?”
“Brad told me you had a miscarriage while you were married to him, too.”
I nodded. “I seem to be prone to them.” And that was one of my biggest fears, that I’d never be able to carry a baby to term. I did my best not to let it show in my voice, though. “I’m hoping I’ll get lucky the third time.”
She slanted another glance down at my midriff. “Are you expecting again?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. We haven’t really been trying.”
Of course, we hadn’t really been trying to avoid it, either. But in spite of al
l the sex we’d had, somehow I hadn’t ended up getting pregnant in the past two months. But that was fine with me, honestly. I wanted Rafe’s baby, but our relationship was still very new, and on top of that, I was nervous from the last miscarriage. Having a little extra time before I had to deal with another pregnancy didn’t bother me. It would happen when it did. So far, I hadn’t had any problems conceiving, after all; it was what happened afterwards that was the problem.
“Brad told me you were thinking of getting remarried.” Shelby’s eyes lingered on the ring on my finger, with a stone just about the same shade of blue as her eyes.
I twisted it self-consciously. It had been a Christmas gift from Rafe. Not an engagement ring, he’d informed me, because he hadn’t thought we were ready for that level of commitment the day after he showed back up in my life. I’m pretty sure a little part of him had been worried that I wouldn’t want him. But at the same time, he’d wanted to claim ownership of me, and to do that, he needed me to wear his ring. I was happy to do it because there was nothing I wanted more than to belong to Rafe, and to know that he belonged to me too.
“We’re thinking about it,” I told Shelby. “We’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting closer.”
At least I hoped we were. We hadn’t talked about it again, but things were settling down between us, into a nice, comfortable way of life. Rafe’s new job helped. He hadn’t liked being unemployed.
“I’m happy for you,” Shelby said formally, just as the barista crossed the floor with a steaming cup of hot chocolate in each hand. The conversation ceased while we both got busy stirring and (in my case) spooning the whipped cream and white chocolate shavings off the top of the cup and into my mouth with the dark chocolate stick.
“So what’s going on?” I asked eventually. Mother brought me up as a Southern Belle, too, but I’m recovering, and besides, we’d already done the preliminaries.
Only we didn’t seem to have done them well enough, because Shelby glanced up at me. “What do you mean?”
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