Chain of Title (5 page)

Shayna
had a permanent grin plastered on her face all morning.  She simply couldn’t
make it go away.  Her friends at the gym were curious as to her obvious glow
and chipper spirits.  Oh, how she had wanted to stand on one of the bench seats
and announce that, after three long years, she had finally gotten a proper lay—make
that plural.  She felt her face flush with heat. 
Absolutely
worth the
wait, she giggled to herself, standing under the multi-headed shower in her
master bath.  The warm water cascading over her achy muscles felt wonderful and
soothing.

Her girlfriends were understandably
disappointed with her lack of information, but she wasn’t ready to share Sean
yet.  Besides, a growing number of her friends thought she was an idiot not to
have given Frank a second chance—the same friends who had vehemently agreed
with her walking out the door in the first place.  She snorted, closed her eyes,
and allowed the water to tumble and stream down her face.

Apparently, they had believed
she would, or
should
, take him back after a respectable amount of revenge
sex on her part and the appropriate measure of groveling on Frank’s part.  Some
of them were actually perturbed with her decision to go through with the
divorce. 
Come on, Shay, you’re not going to do better than Frank at this
stage of the game.  Don’t just throw away all those years like that.  Everybody
makes mistakes.  You need to forgive him and move on.
  Those were the
sentiments most of her friends had admonished her with by the end.

She tilted her face back
under the warm spray.  For them to even suggest that meant they didn’t know her
at all.

Shayna Montgomery didn’t dole
out second-chances indiscriminately, especially when someone who had claimed to
love her could lie so cunningly to her face.  Frank, of course, didn’t see it
that way.  He didn’t appreciate being compared to her mother, but lying by
omission was no different in her book. 
Deal with it, Frank.  If you’d known
anything about me, you damn well should’ve known that.

She smoothed the water off
her face and applied shampoo to her hair.

An image of her father popped
into her head, drawn from her youth.  Her own
Mr. Mom
.  He had been the
Fire Chief in the little town of Aurora, where she grew up.  A mountain of a
man with the heart of a teddy bear, who had deserved so much more out of life. 
He could’ve been bitter and broken.  Nevertheless, he rarely complained.  He
and her older brothers, Jackson and Scott, had taken such good care of her,
been so protective of her while she was growing up.

Her dad was actually
responsible for her unwillingness to indulge in meaningless revenge sex after
Frank’s betrayal.  He had told her on many occasions when she was younger and
becoming sexually aware, that she was a treasure, and she should never let a
man touch her who hadn’t proven himself worthy of her.

She still thanked her lucky
stars for her dad.  She couldn’t have had a better one.  His big, strong body
and gregarious personality only made his ending that much more difficult to witness.

The Golden Years Nursing
Home.  Really?  Shayna huffed and shook her head, washing the pear-scented shampoo
from her recently shorn locks.  How oxymoronic was that?  If
that’s
what
she had to look forward to in
her
golden years, she’d prefer that falling
debris take her out first.

Ben Montgomery had spent his
last two years in the Alzheimer’s unit at the Golden Years facility, not
recognizing Shayna or his sons.  Every time she visited, she left knowing that
there were worse things than death.  Most of the people there ended their lives
the way they had begun—diapered and drooling.

It had been fours since he’d died,
but she still found herself thinking about him almost daily.  He had been her
rock growing up, and had been responsible for so much of the person she was
today.  She credited him for her positive attributes and blamed her mother for
all of her bad traits.  The woman was worthless...

Shayna reached for the body
wash, squeezing out a creamy heap in her hand and massaging the luxurious pear-scented
soap all over her skin, wishing she could wash away all traces of her maternal
lineage.

Some things could never be
forgotten—or forgiven.

Turning on the side sprays in
her seamless travertine shower, Shayna indulged in the deluge of warm water. 
Letting out a long exhale, she pushed out the negative thoughts and feelings. 
She only wanted to think about the last twenty-four hours right now.

Sean Parker.

Wow.  That was a night to
remember.  She wasn’t really sure where it was all headed, or where she even
wanted to take it, but for now she would just take it day by day.

She now realized that for the
past eighteen months they had been dating—in a very old-fashioned sense.  They
had gotten to know each other pretty well through her frequent visits to
Gaetano’s during that time.  Sean had been an open book, and she had been, too,
for the most part.  During their many conversations she had glossed over a few
things that would always be too private to reveal casually—hardships that were
done and in the past that Shayna didn’t like opening up to the light of day.

Stepping from the steamy
shower, she glimpsed herself in the full-length mirror, as she reached for the
plush white towel hanging on the warming rack.  She needed to do something
about the lighting in here.  Between the skylights and windows in the spa-like bathroom
of her large owner’s suite, the sun’s truth rays did not paint her canvas as
uniformly as she envisioned it.

Rolling her eyes to the
ceiling, she shook her head and sighed.  Boy, she really needed to stop judging
herself so harshly.  She wanted the unshakable self-confidence back that she
had always had—before Frank splintered it.  Sean certainly seemed to like what
he had seen last night.  
In the low lighting...,
her judgmental, bitchy
twin chimed in.

Stop it, Shayna!

Willing her eyes to the
mirror, Shayna viewed the image reflected back as if she were gazing at an old
friend.  Was everything where it had been twenty-five years ago?  No.  Did it
all look as tight and firm as it did back then?  No.  But it was still hers,
recognizable and well-maintained, and had even produced a daughter.  Her body
had remained steady and strong for forty-eight years, and she wouldn’t ever
want to exchange it to be that twenty-something girl all over again.

She had fought hard for
almost five decades to meet the woman standing in the mirror before her.  The
outside didn’t necessarily match the inside the way she would like—or maybe it
did.  Either way, she had earned it all.  She needed to stop wasting time
picking at her flaws—the superficial ones.  Everybody had them, even in their
twenties.  She snickered to herself.  Did women ever stop pressuring themselves
to look like airbrushed, non-existent, unattainable ideals?  Hopefully at some
point she would stop.

If a man like Sean Parker
still wanted to take her to bed, who was she to be so self-critical?  She
needed to look at herself the way he did.  And, boy, did she ever like the way
he looked at her.  She closed her eyes and inhaled, feeling the goose bumps
pinging from head to toe.

Wrapping the oversized towel
around her body, Shayna grabbed a smaller towel and rubbed it roughly over her
head.  Oh, she was so happy not to have that long hair anymore.  Frank had
always insisted that she keep it long; he thought it was sexy.  She snorted in
aggravation.  He just wanted to maintain the illusion of a youthful wife and it
didn’t work so well in the end.  Nope, she really liked her new look.  The
layers and flips highlighted her large eyes and gave a lift to her cheekbones
and jaw line.  It made her feel feisty, sexy, energetic, and ready for whatever
came next.  Exactly the way she wanted to approach this new stage of her life.

And the grays?  Well, so far
so good.  Occasionally she would come across one of nature’s highlights, hard
to distinguish against her blonde shade—and happily pluck it out of existence.

After toweling off, Shayna
slid into her long silky spa robe and padded barefoot to the kitchen with breakfast
on her mind.  As she stood gazing through the glass door of the Sub-Zero
refrigerator, a knock sounded at the front door.  Glancing up at the digital
display on the microwave, she furrowed her brow.  Who would be here at
eight-thirty in the morning?

Pulling the sash on her
amethyst robe tighter around her waist, she strode through the sunlit hallway that
acted as nature’s art gallery with its bank of seamless windows displaying the
hilly terrain, dense evergreens and colorful plantings.

A broad shadow fell across the
opaque-glass entryway.  Shayna inhaled with surprise when she opened the door,
then smiled warmly at the handsome man on her doorstep.  In the crisp morning
light, she saw the hint of gray at his temples—making him even sexier.  She
shook her head, faintly.  Life just wasn’t fair.

“Morning, gorgeous,” he said
with a quick wink.  His eyes creased from the broad smile that stretched his
soft lips.  “I can’t believe you left this morning without saying goodbye,” he
teased, with a knowing grin.

“I left a note.”  She felt
her skin flush as she watched his eyes slowly scan the length of her body.  She
might as well be naked.  The robe wasn’t much of a barrier to the hills and
valleys with which he was now so intimately familiar.  “You know I like to work
out first thing in the morning.”

“Yeah, but I keep thinking if
I’d done things right you wouldn’t have been awake to make it to the gym this
morning.”

Crossing her arms under her
breasts and tilting her hips, she said, “Well, I guess one of us did things
right. 
You
certainly seemed to be sleeping soundly when I left.”

She saw him bite back a
laugh.  He shook his head and huffed softly.  “Well, maybe you’ll give me the chance
to redeem myself.”  Shayna shrugged, and he smiled.  “Are you going to let me
in?”

“Should I?”

“Well, I was hoping to catch
you before you had breakfast.  I whip up pretty mean omelets.”

“So you’ve said,” Shayna replied
as she stepped back and opened the door further.

She wasn’t used to seeing him
outside of Gaetano’s.  He was dressed casually, in a white polo shirt draped
over loose jeans.  His short sleeves highlighted his strong biceps and thick forearms,
while the silver Breitling drew attention to his large hands hooked at his
front pockets.  Was there any place those hands
hadn’t
touched her last
night?  The fresh memory of the cool steel of his watchband pressing against
her heated flesh made her shiver.

“I was just getting ready to
make breakfast, but if you’re offering, I’d be more than happy to let you.”  As
he eased into her brightly lit foyer, she felt his hand snake around her waist
while the other cupped her face, pulling her up to her tiptoes for a deep kiss. 
Her body tingled.  This man knew how to kiss, knew exactly how to kiss
her
. 
The hair at the back of his neck felt damp, probably from a recent shower, and
he did smell good enough to eat.

Breaking their sultry seal,
Shayna pulled away and said with narrowed eyes, “You’re not getting out of
making me breakfast, Sean Parker.”  She grinned and took his hand, leading him
to the enviably large gourmet kitchen.  She parked herself on a padded stool at
the stone countertop and gestured around the well-appointed, modern kitchen. 
“Make yourself at home.  I can point you in the direction of anything you
need.”

“You’re not going to help?”

“Nope.  I’m going to indulge
my fantasy.  A man who can cook in the kitchen
and
the bedroom—now
that’s
a major turn on.”

Sean laughed aloud as he removed
eggs, cream, jalapeños, cheese, and other ingredients from the refrigerator.  “Well,
I just hate to see all your cooking classes go to waste.  I thought you’d show
me what you can do,” he said, as he placed the perishables on the cool
countertop.

Shayna laughed throatily.  “Oh,
I think I already have,” she replied sexily.

Sean stopped what he was
doing and outlined her features with his eyes.  Then they clouded over, and he inhaled,
shaking his head clear.

“Of course,” she continued, “any
good cook knows that a recipe is merely a suggestion.  You have to make it your
own, put
your
mark on it.  Can’t ever be afraid to experiment, try new
things.”  She heard him swallow hard and she licked her lips before giving him
a carnal wink.

“Sure you want to eat first?”
Sean asked as he leaned across the counter space nearer to her.

“Oh, no,” she said, wagging
her finger at him and smiling.  “You’re going to make me breakfast
first
,
and then we’ll just see what comes
second
.  I haven’t decided yet.”  She
giggled and rested her elbows on the countertop, dropping her chin down into
her hands, framing her face.

Sean reluctantly resumed meal
preparations, and they continued their easy banter.  When everything was ready,
they placed the food, juice, and coffee on serving trays and relocated to the extensive,
cable-railed deck adjacent to the great room.