The Tycoon (37 page)

“Someday?”

“C’mon. Lift your glass. Someday you’ll trust me enough to talk about yourself. I’m counting on it.”

Reluctantly, she picked up her glass and touched it to his with a soft
clink
. “We’ll see.”

They progressed to general conversation about the real estate market in Camden. He briefly mentioned a luxury apartment complex he had under construction in Southlake. Time flew. Before long, they noticed that the waitress had cleared away their dishes, each of them had made a trip to the restroom and it was eight-thirty.

“It’s time for me to get home,” she told him. “My grandmother has this ornery cat and if he doesn’t come inside before her bedtime, she goes looking for him. I don’t want her doing that

with me not there.”

“You said you’re busy this weekend?”

She nodded. “The Camden Realtors’ Christmas party is Saturday night.”

“Is someone taking you?”

“I’ve already bought tickets.”

“Are you wearing that green dress?”

She snorted a laugh. “Our little gathering will be nothing like that shindig up in Fort Worth.”

“You know where Stone Mountain Lodge is?”

Stone Mountain Lodge had once been Stone Mountain Ranch, fifty miles west of town. A real estate development group had bought it and built a plush private hunting lodge. “Everyone in Camden County knows about Stone Mountain Lodge,” she said. “I’ve even been there. When it first opened, the owners invited the Camden Realtors to a free lunch and a tour. They thought we might help them sell memberships.”

“I’m planning to hunt there with some friends Saturday and Sunday mornings. Is there any way you could be my guest Friday night?”

A stone dropped in Shannon’s stomach. So they were down to it. She had been so engrossed in reading about him on the Internet, she hadn’t rehearsed how she would say what she had decided. “You’re a member?”

He shrugged.

Of course he was a member.
Stone Mountain Lodge was a
chi-chi
destination. Most of the Fort Worth upper crust who hunted probably held memberships. “I don’t hunt,” she said.

“There are other things to do.”

“Like hop into bed? I thought we were going to get better acquainted before we did that again.”

He grinned. “Listen to you. I was talking about the spa. I haven’t used it myself, but people who have tell me it’s great.”

“Were you planning on me having a separate room or what?”

“Is that what you want?”

He had given her a perfect opening. She hesitated, crafting an answer. “Okay, here’s the deal,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about this. What I
don’t
want is to get involved. I don’t mind a, um”—she cleared her throat—“an arrangement. As long as it doesn’t interfere with my work.”

He cocked his head, angling a narrow-lidded look at her. “An arrangement?”

“Yes. We could just get together for sex occasionally and not bring feelings into it.

He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “A body can be pretty cold without the person inside it, don’t you think?”

She didn’t want to discuss the fine points. Instead of replying with words, she, too, folded her arms under her breasts and gave him a take-it-or-leave-it stare.

A slow grin tipped up one side of his mouth. “But I can handle that….If
you
can.”

She saw the dare in his eyes. She should have known better than to challenge him. He hadn’t become what he was because he ever relinquished control of a negotiation. Yet she couldn’t let him get the upper hand. “You think I can’t?”

They stared at each other a few seconds. Then he sat forward and rested his forearms on the table, his eyes leveled on her face. “I want some ground rules. One woman at a time is all I want in my bed. I’d expect the same loyalty from you.”

She gave a huff and a chuckle. “I just said how busy I am. If I barely have time you, how

could I have time for someone else?”

“I accept that, although I haven’t seen much that makes me think I should believe you. So getting back to the weekend. No-strings, burn-down-the-walls sex in a totally private quaint little place. How about it?”

Shannon flinched inside at the blunt words. But she had thrown out the idea and the truth was the truth. “From what I recall of the lodge, those cabins are more than private quaint little places. Isolated luxury is a more accurate description.”

He shrugged. No doubt luxury was the norm for him. “I’ve got one of the them reserved. The dining room serves excellent food. We can have dinner, then go back to the cabin.”

A visual of the cabins flitted through her memory—rustic décor, soft relaxing colors, a fireplace, floors of Italian tile. During the Realtors’ tour, she and another Realtor had looked at the king size bed that almost filled the sleeping area and the bathroom’s tub large enough for two and joked about where the emphasis was.

“I’m flying down there tomorrow,” he went on, “but I can get a car and come over here in the afternoon, pick you up and take you back with me. Since you can’t be seen with anybody, maybe we can sneak in and out of Camden on the back roads and no one will spot us.”

“Now you’re being sarcastic.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to be cooperative. While I’m hunting Saturday morning, you can take advantage of the spa. My treat. The works if you want. I’ll get you back to Camden in time for the Christmas party Saturday night.”

Unless something had changed, the spa treatments started at two hundred dollars for a single treatment. Shannon could spend a thousand dollars easily. But if she took advantage of his offer, what did that make her? For that matter, what did this entire arrangement make her even if he didn’t throw in the spa treatments?
Damn.
She should have given this more thought.

Still, she refused to back down. She drew a deep breath. “Getting away overnight is hard for me.”

His eyes leveled on hers. “Turning chicken?”

She refused to blink. She stared back at him. “I have obligations. I told you, I don’t like leaving my grandmother alone in the evening. And now, I really do have to go.”

She stood and lifted her coat off the back of the chair. He stood, too, took it from her and held it while she slid her arms into it. She picked up her purse and looked up at him. “I’ll call you and let you know.”

“I’ll be waiting,” he said, pulling on his own coat, then picking up the check.

She waited while he paid and they walked outside. He followed her to her SUV’s door. As she started to pull on the latch, he covered her hand with his and stopped her. “I don’t give a damn who’s watching.” He bent down and kissed her, then looked into her eyes. “I’ll be waiting for your call. Don’t disappoint me.” He turned and strode across the parking lot to his car without once looking back.

Dear God. What had she gotten herself into?

****

Could this get any crazier?

The after-dinner conversation Drake had just had with Shannon was the last thing he expected. As he drove, he tried to digest it. She couldn’t be serious about wanting just sex. No woman he had ever met would be happy with that.

An emotion churning within him was making him uncomfortable. He couldn’t identify it. It felt like rejection. But it wasn’t rejection because they would meet again. For
just sex
.

Why couldn’t he be satisfied with that? An occasional hot, easy, no-strings-attached coupling with a drop-dead gorgeous female? Not too many years ago, that was all he had wanted. Why did the prospect of that arrangement with Shannon, a woman he hardly knew, leave him feeling empty and adrift instead of relieved?

I haven’t had sex in two years.

Her words in the Mexican restaurant parking lot. He couldn’t get them off his mind. Those words said something about her, but he didn’t know what. They flew in the face of what he knew from the time they had spent together.

He had never had a woman more willing or giving in bed. Was that something special that applied to him only? His ego made him want to believe it was. Or had she been that way with every guy she had ever slept with? And how many were there? The question usually didn’t come up with the women he dated. He had never expected women over thirty years old to  be virginal. But then, he typically didn’t run into one who stated outright that she wanted only sex from him.

His thoughts veered from speculating about her motives to trying to figure out what drew him to her. His past included career women with lists of degrees and accomplishments to brag about. And most of them were also agenda-driven, hard-to-please, and determined to steer him or bend him to their will. He classified those affairs  as hookups and they had never lasted long.

He suspected Shannon was nothing like them. Though she had told him numerous lies, she came across to him as being honest to the core. Then what he liked about her dawned on him. She had a raw instinct and an innate fearlessness, a self-confidence that came from a place so deeply ingrained, she didn’t even know she had it. Gut-level traits he couldn’t keep from admiring, especially in a woman. She reminded him of himself. And that could be what had him so antsy about her.

Be cool, Lockhart
, he told himself.
Just be cool.
Just take one step at a time. He could play her game for now. If sex was all she wanted, he could handle that with pleasure. He already knew she liked fucking and because of that, if for no other reason, she
would
call him. And she
would
figure out a way to meet him at Stone Mountain Lodge tomorrow. He had already made her howl at the moon. And he could do it for as long as necessary.

Necessary? Necessary for what? What did he expect from this?

Chapter 22

Okay, now what
? Was Shannon’s first thought when she awoke early Friday. Sleeping all night with a guy and waking together was different from just having sex. And those cabins at Stone Mountain Lodge were really small and really close quarters.

She shut down those thoughts and veered to the logistics of spending Friday night away from home. These days, because of Grammy Evelyn and Arthur, Shannon was rarely away from home at night. Her grandmother didn’t really need a babysitter, but Shannon wanted someone to look in on her in the evening in case she went outside to look for Arthur and fell.

Christa usually did her this favor if needed, but Shannon knew she was leaving work early on Friday to take her boys to a football game and wouldn’t be home until late.

Shannon tried to keep her private life out of her office. She never asked the women who worked there to do something personal. One thing she had learned in six years was that unlike relatives, real estate agents came and went. And just as they brought gossipy tales with them, they took them when they left.

Shannon’s next choice was her uptight older sister. Colleen would keep a secret, if for no other reason, because she feared Shannon’s social life might affect her or Gavin in some negative way. Not a nice thought about her own sister, but a fact nevertheless.

Shannon sat up and looked at the clock on the bedside table. Colleen’s husband usually went into his office early. By the time Shannon was ready to leave the house, he would be at work. She hurried through her morning ritual and breakfast with Grammy Evelyn, then headed for her sister’s house fifteen miles out of town in one of Camden’s several gated lakeside communities. As one of the few lawyers in Camden, Gavin, as well as Colleen, felt they had a certain cachet to uphold.