The Tycoon (56 page)

Shannon hadn’t been to the Fort Worth rodeo in years, but she would be more at home at the Stock Show than on a golf course. She didn’t consider saying no. The Hawaii trip had sealed a bond between them. And anticipating the weekend went a long way to quashing her pain over the five acres.

****

The next day, Betty waited for Donna at LeFleur, a cozy sandwich shop near Betty’s neighborhood. She had chosen a partially hidden table in the back corner of the small dining room. Donna showed up at one o’clock wearing high-heeled boots, beaded and sequined denim that could only be Brazil Roxx and a casual fur jacket. The jeans fit her trim body as if they had been glued on. Her long hair was held in an up-do by a jeweled clip. Her diamond rings and earrings glinted. She looked every inch the heiress she was. Betty would never understand why Drake hadn’t hung on to her.

They talked about the cruise, talked about what Donna had been doing. Then Betty did the dirty deed—over a cup of coffee and a steaming bowl of delicious French onion soup topped with baked cheese, she betrayed her son’s trust. She gave Shannon Piper’s name to Donna, with the agreement that Donna would let her know anything she discovered. Drake might hate her if he ever found out, but in the end, she believed he would understand that she had done it for his own good.

Donna had her own motives, Betty knew. But Betty had news for her. Nothing she could do would rekindle Drake’s interest in her. Once Drake made up his mind about anything, wild

horses couldn’t change it.

Betty had a motive, too. After having supper with Tammy McMillan the night before leaving on the cruise, Betty knew Tammy had recently gotten a divorce from her golf pro husband. She believed it was possible to restore the former bond between Tammy and Drake. Tammy had said in code words that Drake was why she had returned to Texas. And Betty believed her. Otherwise, why would she have contacted Drake’s mother?

Despite the friction that sometimes existed between Betty and her son, she knew him. She had long thought that the reason he had never settled down and married was because he had never gotten over Tammy McMillan.

****

Shannon’s period started on Thursday. Now, all she and Drake would be doing on Saturday night was sleeping.

A good test of his character
, her ornery alter ego said.

As if he needed one
, the persona she feared had fallen in love with him snapped back.

After what had happened in Hawaii, and the week before, she was relieved to see her menses. They hadn’t used protection at all in Hawaii. She was sure she had been past ovulation and the whole trip had been such an out-of-this-world experience and the passion between them had been so hot, a little thing like safe sex had seemed too ordinary deal with.

If this was going to continue, she had to get to a doctor and get birth control pills. Condoms were too unreliable and the rhythm method was too risky.

She drove up to Fort Worth early on Saturday morning, met Drake at his condo and he drove them to the coliseum where the annual rodeo and stock show was held. When she teased him about driving them in his truck, he said, “You’ve got to have the right vehicle for the right job, Miss Smarty Pants.”

They ate junk food and viewed most of the animals on exhibits. He used his phone to take a picture of her with a giant Brahma bull named Tabasco. When she admired a beautiful bear claw necklace made of silver and green turquoise, Drake pulled out his credit card and bought it for her.

“I just said I liked it,” she said. “I didn’t mean for you to buy it.”

“Turn around and let me put it on you.” He turned her around. “It goes with your eyes.”

“But just because I said I liked it didn’t mean I wanted you to buy it,” she repeated, still trying to make a point.

He hooked the necklace, then turned her back to face him and gave her a quick kiss. “Shh. Don’t talk. I’m a control freak, remember.”

She looked down and touched the large center stone. Against her black turtleneck, the silver and turquoise piece was truly beautiful. She had nothing like it and would have never spent the money to buy it for herself. She looked up at him. “Can I just say thank you?”

He rested his finger on her lips. “Yes. But that’s all.”

When evening came and the rodeo began, they did indeed have good seats, right near the action. Just as at the golf tournament, Drake knew many of the performers and stockowners and he introduced her to all of them. She saw yet another world she had never seen before.

When they returned to his condo, he grumbled about no sex, but not seriously. “It’s not all about that,” he said. “I just want you with me.” As they settled into his king size bed, he caged her with his long arms and legs. “Next weekend we’ll go down to the Gulf and I’ll get even with you.”

“Promises, promises,” she mumbled as she drifted off to sleep in total contentment. The five acres in Camden seemed a million miles away.

Chapter 33

The following Monday, Drake’s day went to hell early. A weeping phone call came from his construction foreman’s wife reporting that he had been severely injured in a grinding collision with an eighteen-wheeler on I-35. Drake dropped everything and rushed to the hospital in Denton to check on Buzz Grayson’s condition and offer support to his family. Once there, he learned that Buzz would be out of commission for a long while.

Like it or not, Drake was now the foreman on the construction of his five-hundred unit apartment complex. He had a multimillion dollar construction loan with interest accruing daily and the deadline for the Phase II inspection had already been missed by weeks. He could afford no more idle time.

The project consisted of multiple buildings, all still in the framing stage due to inclement weather. Long hours and unknown overtime would be needed to catch up. Bringing a new Class A foreman onto the job would take several days or even a week or two.

Now it was Wednesday and he could see that even with doing it himself, he was still losing money. He knew of only one man who could get the job going again and bring it back on schedule. He called an old friend who now lived in West Texas, Terry Ledger.

Terry had bought a West Texas ghost town on eBay and replaced it with a senior citizen community. Everyone had thought he had gone off his rocker, but he had turned the project into a roaring success. The foreman who had handled that construction job for him was a wizard named Chick Featherston. Terry told him how to get in touch with Chick.

Pic had left a message on his voice mail, but his next call was to Shannon. He explained the situation and postponed the upcoming trip to the coast. She understood his dilemma, which was something few, if any, of the women he had known would have. His mother didn’t even understand.

After he disconnected, his thoughts lingered on Shannon and how much he enjoyed her. Hell, he liked just hearing her voice. He could barely wait to see her again. He had to do something about her. But what?

Back in his office, he asked Debra to pick up some lunch for him at the deli downstairs. While he ate, he ran through the list of messages and calls he had put off or ignored all morning. As soon as he finished his sandwich, he keyed in his brother’s cell number.

“Hey, Bro,” Pic said. “Where you been?”

“Up in Southlake. I’ve got a construction job falling apart up and I lost my foreman.”

“What happened?”

“Truck wreck. A bad one. Looks like I’m it until I can find somebody else.”

“Ouch,” Pic said. “Hope he’s gonna be okay.”

“Touch and go, but the guy’s tough. We’re all saying a prayer. How’s Dad? Is he behaving himself?

“He hasn’t been lost anywhere, if that’s what you mean. Wish you could come down here. Blake and his partner came over and Dad and I had a long talk with them. They’ve got a new theory about Kate’s barn. They think the motive could be revenge.”

Nonplussed, Drake left his chair, walked to the window overlooking downtown and watched the bundled up pedestrians on the sidewalks below. “Revenge? What the hell has Kate done that would trigger revenge?”

“It’s not just Kate. He thinks somebody’s got it in for the whole family.”

“The hell,” Drake said, astonished.

“Remember that little bunch of calves that got shot last year? We thought it was teenage vandals, you know? Blake says maybe not. And you know all the rustling that’s been going on.”

Drake’s memory spun backward to when a dozen six-month old calves had been shot and left to bloat in an outpost pasture. As for the cattle rustling, those statistics were up all over the state, so that could be coincidental.

“And remember when the brake line on my truck got cut when I went up to Fort Worth to the cattle sale that time?” Pic said. “They never did figure out who did that and it just sort of went away, but I’ve always worried about it. And there’s been other stuff. Anyway, Blake thinks he sees a pattern.”

“The hell,” Drake said again, shaking his head. A cut brake line couldn’t be a coincidence.

“Blake wants us to get together and talk about things that’ve happened to us. Things that’ve done us harm or cost us money. He wants to know if you’ve had anything happen up there on your end.”

Drake’s thoughts swerved to Buzz Grayson’s accident. Buzz could have been killed. As it was, he could possibly be injured for life. A little flutter began in Drake’s stomach. For someone to have nearly killed his foreman out of revenge against the Lockhart family was too diabolical to accept until he knew more facts. “I don’t know, Pic. But I’ll give it some thought.”

“Tom Gilmore arrested a kid named Billy Barrett for Kate’s barn. I didn’t mention it to you because I don’t think that’s going anywhere. You know Tom. He’s just showing off, trying to look like he knows what he’s doing. What’s the insurance company saying? When are they going to pay Kate’s claim?”

“They’re not saying much of anything. They’re still investigating. Kate’s still on their person of interest list. I’ve turned it over to the lawyers.”

“So they’re not gonna ante up any time soon,” Pic said.

“You and Dad should put up a pole barn for her until we figure out something else. She can’t keep boarding her horses over at Will’s place forever. That stresses his pasture as well as his facilities and his pocketbook.”

“I know,” Pic said. “We’re paying him boarding fees. He doesn’t mind helping Kate out though. Wish to hell she would take an interest in him instead of some of these other losers she comes up with.”

“Well, you know our little sister. She might be a sweetheart, but she doesn’t always exercise the best judgment.”

“Don’t I know it. She’s liable to drag home another Jordan Palmer.”

****

Shannon’s week had begun busy. Monday and Tuesday had been taken up by one of Kelly’s customers closing on a quarter-million dollar house and Terry had brought in a new listing on one of the historic bed and breakfast homes near the town square. The new year was starting off right.

Now, more than a month and a half after Shannon had made her initial offer on the 5.17 acres, she heard from the Dallas broker that the competing buyer for the five acres had upped his bid by a lot and the owner of the property had agreed to the deal. Fighting back tears, she hung up. She got control of herself and texted Christa:
I lost the corner.

A minute later, her desk phone warbled. “Oh, hell,” Christa said. “What happened?”

“I got outbid. Probably someone from Dallas. Can you find out who?”

“Only if the sale closes in our office. There’s probably a confidentiality agreement.”