The Tycoon (39 page)

Shannon looked up from setting the table, now eager to pick her grandmother’s brain. “Do you know any of the younger family members?”

Grammy Evelyn was back in the kitchen, lifting the roast out of its gravy. She set it on a platter and picked up a knife.

Shannon walked over and took the knife from her. “Let me slice it, Grammy,”

“I never knew any of the other Lockharts,” Grammy Evelyn said. “Bill Senior had only the one son. He and his wife thought they couldn’t have children, you see, so their boy came along when they were older than most starting a family. Some people thought Sarah Lockhart never got pregnant because Bill Senior didn’t spend enough nights at home.”

Shannon laughed. “Grammy, you wicked thing.”

“Well, that’s what people said, dear. And when they finally had their son, they called him Bill Junior. People still call him that to this day. Imagine that. Couldn’t even give him his own name.” She shook her head. “So much arrogance.”

As Shannon carried the platter of sliced roast to the table and set it alongside the bowl of vegetables, her grandmother walked over to the dining room window and looked outside toward the square. Shannon could almost see her memory spinning backward. “Bill Junior was a golden child all right,” Grammy Evelyn said. “The sole heir to the whole Double-Barrel Ranch. The land, the cattle, the oil wells, the cotton farms. And everything else that went with it.”

“Wow,” Shannon said, imagining the barrier between her and Drake growing higher yet.

“Bill Senior was ruthless. There was always talk about how he cheated his brother and sisters out of their share of that ranch.
He
was
not
an only child, you see. He had a brother and two sisters. I don’t think a one of them still lives in Treadway County.” Grammy Evelyn’s head slowly shook. “There was a lot of bitterness. Even some lawsuits.”

She sighed and played with the edge of the crocheted curtain that covered the window. “But I lost track of them after Lloyd died and the farm left our family.”

Grammy Evelyn rarely said anything about the Lloyd farm, which Shannon knew had consisted of hundreds of acres on the banks of what was now Camden Lake. She picked up the salad she had made and carried it to the table. “What happened with the hay? Did they just stop buying it?”

“There wasn’t any to buy. Lloyd passed away and your daddy and I leased out the farm. And that was just a terrible mistake. The tenants didn’t know much about farming in this area. They didn’t want to grow hay. They tried several other crops, but it didn’t work out. They were so inept they couldn’t have grown weeds, much less good hay. They forfeited on the lease and we had to sue them. With Danny sick, it was a great hardship and very stressful.”

“I’ve never heard you say you leased the farm,” Shannon said, back in the kitchen and dumping ice cubes into glasses and pouring tea. “If my dad was still alive then, why didn’t he take it over and farm like Grandpa did?”

“Your daddy never did want to farm, dear. He went to college to be an engineer. He was more interested in his job at the bomber plant in Fort Worth than he was the farm.”

Shannon thought about her father, Dan Piper. She could scarcely remember him, but everyone who did still talked about how smart he was. And how selfish. He had contracted pancreatic cancer and passed away not long after Shannon’s grandfather’s death. She was fifteen when he died, but her mother had divorced him several years before that.

“When those tenants finally gave up,” her grandmother continued, “Danny’s doctors weren’t giving him any hope. So with Lloyd already gone and Danny soon to leave me, I just sold the place. We needed the money. We had a big farm auction and got rid of all the equipment. Then I sold the land to those Dallas real estate people.”

Shannon had to laugh inwardly. Grammy Evelyn always said “those real estate people” as if she had just bitten down on a bug. Shannon was certain that when the tiny elderly woman made remarks like that, she never considered that Shannon was now one of them. “Grammy, don’t forget, you have a good friend who’s a real estate person and I’m one, too.”

She turned away from the window and planted a skinny hand on one hip, defiance showing in her eyes. “Well, I hope you aren’t like them. They nagged Lloyd for years. We had several miles of frontage on the highway through town on one side, you know, and the lake on the other. They were pushy enough when he was alive, but after he went, they were like starving dogs after a big bone. I’ve always believed they took advantage of me.”

“Sit down and let’s eat,” Shannon said, eager for her grandmother to keep talking. She knew so little of her family’s history.

“I was so weak then,” Grammy Evelyn said, taking a seat at the table. “All I could think of was trying to get Danny well. I wasn’t very smart either. Lloyd always took care of our business.
” A wistful expression crossed her face as she spread her napkin in her lap.“We had beautiful land. Such bountiful peach trees and pecan trees. Big ancient live oaks. Those real estate rascals were just itching to get their hands on it so they could put buildings on it. And now look at what they’ve done to it.”

Camden’s only strip mall sat on part of what had been the Piper farm. So did several big box retail stores, as well as smaller businesses. At some point, Grammy Evelyn must have been paid a lot of money for such valuable real estate. But now, she had nothing but the roof over her head and wouldn’t even have that if it weren’t for Shannon. “If it made you unhappy, I’m sorry it worked out that way, Grammy.”

“Your daddy’s passing showed me how short life is, Shannon. He was only forty years old. You probably don’t remember those days. Your mother wasn’t speaking to us and she didn’t allow you to come around us. She thought we were backward old farmers. Hicks, she called us.”

Shannon recalled hearing those very words, among others, about Lloyd and Evelyn Piper from her mother. During her years growing up, she’d had almost no acquaintance with the Pipers. After she became an adult, she had learned that much of what her mother had told her about her father’s family wasn’t true.

Now that Grammy Evelyn had started talking, she didn’t appear to want to stop. “Danny’s treatment cost us so much. The insurance we had didn’t begin to cover it. I took him everywhere, trying to save him. After he passed, I tried to make some of the money back with investments. I lost so much money. I didn’t know how to invest. I didn’t know where to go to get advice. In those days, there weren’t any smart financial people in Camden. I gave up being an investor before I lost everything. I took what was left and tried to enjoy life.”

As Shannon recalled, she had indeed enjoyed life and had little contact with her only two grandchildren. She traveled everywhere, bought expensive clothing and jewelry, went on luxury cruises. And that was what Shannon was aware of. She couldn’t guess what Grammy Evelyn had done that no one knew about. There had been times when Shannon barely had enough money for food, but all she had heard from her grandmother was that she had gone to the Mediterranean or New Zealand or some other exotic place.

Still, Shannon held no resentment. After all, the money belonged to her grandmother to spend as she wanted to. She reached over and covered her grandmother’s aged hand with her own. “I hope you did enjoy it, Grammy.”

A little old lady heh-heh-heh erupted. “Oh, I did, dear. I surely did. Unfortunately, I’ve outlived the money. And now you’re having to take care of me.”

“I’m not complaining. This is as close to home as I’ve ever had.”

Grammy Evelyn gave her a direct look. “I like hearing you say that, Shannon, but I know I didn’t do right by you and Colleen when we were all younger. After Lloyd, then Danny, passed so close together, I was a lost person for a long time. I lived in a fog of grief. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time. And now, taking me on is keeping you from enjoying your life. You work so hard. You have no social life. You should have a man in your life while you’re still young.”

“No time,” Shannon said. “Maybe I’ll get around to that later.”

And after hearing about the Lockhart family, it would be
much
later. She no longer felt so guilty about not making it to Stone Mountain Lodge.

****

Mid-afternoon, Drake stopped at Stone Mountain Lodge’s registration desk and arranged to be driven to the airstrip where the family’s Gulfstream awaited him.

The driver said little, leaving Drake alone with his black thoughts. He had checked his cell phone for messages this morning for the first time since Friday, and seen two from Shannon. She had sent him a text message last night and a voice mail this morning. When he keyed into the voice mail box, he heard a rushed message: “Hi. Sorry, but I couldn’t make it. I got tied up.” Then the line went dead.

He had intended to call her when he returned from his hunt, but his cell phone had fallen from his vest pocket and he had stepped on it and crushed it, adding to his frustration. So as soon as he got back to Fort Worth, he would have to find somewhere to get a new phone. “Where can a guy get a new phone on a Sunday?” he asked his driver.

“Walmart in Camden,” the guy answered. “But that’s fifty miles from here.”

Five minutes later, Drake was buckling himself into the plane’s seat. He rested his head against the cool leather headrest and closed his eyes. The flight to Fort Worth would be short, but with no phone to disturb him, he hoped to catch forty winks.

His head felt like a basketball. He and his hunting pals had closed the bar last night, all five of them getting shitfaced. These days, he rarely drank enough to get drunk, but last night, he had sought a change of mood in a well of whiskey. Bad idea.

He was taking packages of frozen quail home with him—his own that he had shot and

those of some of his buddies’. Their motives for coming to Stone Mountain Lodge were different from his. He came to shoot, but with all of them married, they had been on the loose on an all-male weekend. Had they been in a place populated by flocks of women instead of birds, at least a couple of them would have been on the make.

If he were a married man himself, Drake wondered if he would behave that way. He wanted to believe he wouldn’t. God knew, he had seen the aftermath of his parents’ cheating and had heard about it in his grandparents’ marriage. He wanted to believe marital infidelity and family dysfunction were not programmed into the Lockhart DNA. He wanted to care enough about the woman he married not to cheat on her.

All of his pals had heard the rumor about his marrying Donna. Last night, there had been plenty of jokes and hoo-rah around the table about his association with her and her elite family and what it held for his future. Drake absorbed their teasing without bothering to discuss it. What went on between him and any woman was none of their business. And as for his future, nothing he did in his professional life had anything to do with Donna’s wealthy father.

As the engines revved and the plane began to taxi, his swirling thoughts finally circled back to the source of his irritation. Shannon. That woman had gotten under his skin in a big way.

I’ll call you and let you know.

Well, she had called all right. More than twenty-four hours after he had expected her to. Not only had that been frustrating, it was why his cell phone had gotten broken. Expecting to hear from her, he had carried it with him when he went out to shoot yesterday, something he never did.

A frown tightened his brow. Meeting her had been fucked up from the git-go and now she was fucking him up, too.

Fortunately, he didn’t have time to dwell on it. The end of the year dictated tasks he had to accomplish on his various projects to avoid tax disasters. He had to put Shannon—and all women—out of his mind for now.

He wouldn’t call her. Wouldn’t even think of her. What he had to think of now was getting as much as possible wrapped up by Christmas so his mind would be free and he would be able to enjoy the holiday at the ranch with his family. This year’s Christmas was shaping up to be great. His parents might be on the verge of putting their marriage back together after seven tumultuous years. If he could contribute anything that would expedite their reconciliation, he wanted to do it.