Twist (Siren Publishing Allure) (3 page)

“If we hurry up and eat our meal, we will have just enough time to drop off your car and get to the movie.”

She stuck a fork full of lobster into her mouth, the stuffing divine, as always. As she chewed, she stared at him thoughtfully. He didn’t take his eyes from hers as he sucked a shrimp into his mouth, ripping off the tail shell.

“Okay. How do you know where I live?”

“What makes you think that I do?”

“Because it would be impossible to calculate making it to the movie on time if you didn’t.”

“Good point. I’m a computer geek, remember?”

“Yes, I remember. Did you run an in-depth history on me?”

“Just a partial one while I was sitting in the parking lot. It gave me the details that Facebook didn’t.”

Lana knew that her friends often ran profiles on prospective dates and she probably should have done one on Fred. “You’ll have to show me how to do that.”

He smiled, finishing off his shrimp as she ate her lobster casserole. They skipped coffee and dessert. Fred suggested that he could stop at a coffee shop for two cups to go, to save time. Lana drove straight home, putting her Yaris in the garage and then sitting on the front stairs to wait for him. When her phone rang, she figured that he had gotten lost like everyone else.

“Where have you been?” asked her stepdaughter Mona in a cranky voice. “I stopped by with the kids, and you weren’t home. They wanted to see you. You didn’t answer your phone either.”

“I was in a restaurant and I turned it off.”

“You were
where
?”

“I went out to dinner.”

“
With who
?” Her tone gained volume in anger.

Fred’s car turned into the driveway, and she grinned as he got out, shrugging. “With the same person I am going to a movie with. I gotta go, my chariot just arrived.”

“
What
?” she demanded.

“I’ll talk to you later, Mona.” Lana hung up the phone, turning it back off.

“Was that suspicious? Do you have an unspoken boyfriend or something?”

Lana rolled her eyes, slowly shaking her head in exasperation. “That was my stepdaughter, Mona. She is bent because I wasn’t home to watch her kids. Whenever she says the kids want to see me, it means she has a date and wants to dump them on me for the night. C’est la vie.”

“That was vicious.”

“No. That was reality. She
wants
!” Lana took a deep breath, trying to calm her irritation. “My relationship with Mona is kind of weird. She was four when Joe and I got married. Mona went back and forth between living at our house and living with her mother. I never tried to replace her mother, and I always treated Mona with understanding. I accepted the fact that she was rather self-centered, without allowing her to be a brat in my home. As she got older, she came to me for advice and I always tried to help her when I could. Now she’s twenty-seven and I suppose that I expect her to act like an adult. I have become less tolerant about the fact that she seems to have no consideration or respect for my feelings. I broke my leg three years ago and I was on crutches forever. She knew. She called her father twice because she needed money to fix her car but never so much as asked how I was doing. When her father died, she was livid because she didn’t get the ton of money that she figured she was entitled to. Joe and I used our equity line to give Mona a loan toward a house four years ago, and I paid off the loan, but that wasn’t good enough. Now she is trying to nickel and dime me to death. Plus, she suddenly can’t afford daycare and is dropping her kids off four or five times a week. If I’m lucky, she picks them up by eight or nine at night. Forbid I have something to do and tell her that I can’t take them. I’ve been doing that more and more lately. I love my grandchildren, but I want a life of my own. I don’t owe her anything.”

He held his palms up to ward off her irritation. “Fair enough. Didn’t mean to hit a sore spot with my comment. Do you still want to go to the movie?”

“Yes!”
Air hissed through her teeth as she tried to calm herself. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dumped that on you.”

He offered his hand and pulled her off the stair. “No problem.”

Lana smiled, and he returned the expression.

“What would you do if someone handed you a million dollars and told you that you had one year to spend it? Whatever you didn’t spend would be taken back.”

Lana shrugged. “Could I invest it?”

“No.”

Fred opened the door for her, and she slid into the seat. Fred waited for her to get settled and then shut the door. “Wow, chivalry is not dead,” she whispered as a smile crept over her lips. When Fred got into the car, she asked, “Can I give it away to charity?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I would have an addition put on my stepdaughter’s house for the kids. They really need more room. I would redo my kitchen. Joe had been promising for years that he would change the floor and the counters, but he never did. I would have work done to my yard. I would have a greenhouse window put in my study. I have always wanted to go to Japan or maybe to the Brazilian rainforest.” She hesitated and then said, “No. I would go looking for dinosaur bones. That would be so cool. I saw something on television about that. Whatever I couldn’t spend, I would donate to D.E.L.T.A. animal rescue. I would like to go there and give them the check personally.”

“What about clothes, shoes, jewelry, cars?”

She shrugged. “I might buy a motorcycle. I like the ones with the two wheels in front. I’m not big on designer stuff. I would rather wear a shirt and pair of jeans. I don’t go to fancy functions that require me to dress up. I love jewelry, but I already have more than I can wear. What would you do?”

“I would give it to you.”

She groaned at his comment, but the expression on his face said that it was exactly what he would do. “You don’t have anything you could spend it on?” Lana asked suspiciously. Was Fred trying to lull her into a false belief that he didn’t care about money? If he was being truthful, then she was touched by his generosity, but it seemed odd to her that he would say such a thing on their first date.

“No,” he replied in a soft, honest tone.

* * * *

They walked out of the movie two hours later, Lana bouncing with adrenaline. “That was the best 3-D movie I have ever seen. I loved it when the fireballs came at us or when the falcon flew at us and then turned at the last minute. I thought his wings were gonna hit my face.”

“I agree. That was a rush. What now? Your turn to pick.”

She stopped, staring at him. “It’s eleven o’clock. I was figuring on going home.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you have work in the morning or something?”

“As my Facebook page said, I’m a troubleshooter. If there is no trouble, there is no work.”

“Okay. Umm,” she said as she slid into the car and waited for him to get in. “It’s a full moon, how about a walk on the beach?”

“Cool. How about a swim under a waterfall?”

Lana hesitated, thinking it sounded a bit dangerous. “Whose waterfall?”

“My brother’s. It’s in the forest behind his house. There is a path to get there. I’ve been there at night.”

“Okay. Want to stop at my house?”

“Nope.” Fred winked, his tongue clicking against the floor of his mouth to accent the gesture. He turned to back out of the spot and a moment later was on the main road, his attention focused on driving. He said nothing else, and Lana leaned back in the seat, her mind racing with thoughts as she tried to rationalize the sweet but completely mystifying man who sat beside her. He was incredibly young and amazingly sexy, but even more important to her was that they seemed to click on a baseline level. He was everything she could have wanted in a man, and she was oddly at ease in his presence. As she stared at the shadowy silhouette of his face, Fred reached out and began to trail his fingernail lazily over her arm, his eyes never leaving the road. It was a simple touch, compelling and arousing, and Lana couldn’t help but feel that between the lines of his vibrant sweetness was a dangerous man who had the ability to bring life to things that had only touched her in dreams.

* * * *

Fred shook her lightly, smiling as she opened her eyes. “I fell asleep?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Falling asleep. Where are we?” she asked, taking his hand as he helped her from the car. Lana looked at the sprawling ranch, noticing that the house and the driveway were completely surrounded by trees.

“At my brother’s house. He isn’t here, no Mercedes.” He kept hold of her hand as they walked to the front door. Fred keyed in the password and led her inside. Without hesitation, he walked through the house, keeping her at his side as he stopped next to the bathroom, taking two extra-large towels from a shelf in a storage closet. He turned and walked into the kitchen, releasing her so she was standing in front of a set of wide sliding-glass doors. The living room and kitchen were sprawling, open areas, separated by only an island with tall barstools surrounding it. She heard the whoosh of the freezer seal being broken and turned to Fred. He was removing a brown-paper-wrapped package. “Water, wine, or coffee?”

Lana smacked her lips. “Coffee and water.”

He chuckled and opened the fridge, pouring her a glass of water and handing it to her. Fred took down two travel mugs and chose two coffee pods, quickly filling the cups. He added milk and handed one to her. Fred flipped the towels over his shoulder and smiled, moving to the back door. He grabbed a lantern from a shelf on the wall and headed outside, shutting the door behind him.

The sprawling ornamental garden had an Oriental flair, and the stone pathway was lined with solar lights. “This is beautiful,” she commented as her eyes wandered across the yard. “Your brother won’t mind?”

“Mind what?”

“That you walked through his house, used his coffeepot, and such.”

He shook his head, his blond hair swaying around his cheeks. “Of course not. He can go in my house anytime he wants. He has the key code, just as I do for his. He will come home, see my car, and figure that we went to the waterfall.”

“You do this often?”

They reached the end of the stone walkway and he turned on the battery-powered light. “Yes, but I come here alone. I like the quiet of the forest, the continuous rumble of the waterfall, and the cool feel of the water. It’s relaxing. I came here a lot after Sue died. On more than one occasion, I fell asleep on the shore.”

“You miss her, don’t you?”

He smiled. “I miss her less tonight than I have since she died. There is something about you. I have an urge to hold on to you. Not to let you get away from me. The more I get to know you, the more afraid I am that someone else will steal you away.”

Lana stopped in mid-step, and he turned to her. “What?”

She stared at him, wondering if she had lost her mind. She was walking down a tree-lined path, without another house in sight, with a man she had just met. “Are we getting into that weird, scary place again?”

His smile was like the sun. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean it that way. I could have easily hogtied you while you were sleeping if I was a psycho. I just feel right with you.”

A soft sigh escaped her lips and she began walking again. Fred shifted his coffee to the hand with the light and used his free hand to take hers, weaving his fingers tightly between her own. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that it is totally insane for me to feel the same way. How many girls have you dated since Sue died?”

“I don’t know. Off the top of my head, maybe fifteen or sixteen. Most didn’t go past the second date. I asked them the million-dollar question and they got the answer wrong.”

“I didn’t know there was a right or wrong. What is a wrong answer?”

“Answers that are self-centered and display a lust for money. Answers that tell me that the woman is frivolous and could waste a million lifetimes of money given the chance. Your answer was none of those things. Your answers were practical and generous.”

“A vacation is practical?”

“Yes. You didn’t tell me that you wanted to fly around the world. You want to go dinosaur hunting. I think that sounds fun and we should go.”

“Okay,” she replied with a laugh. “Did someone give you a million?”

“Four million.”

She missed a step, her mouth falling open as she stared at him in stunned disbelief. “What?”

“I have two brothers. All three of us were adopted. Our parents were killed in a plane crash. They left us an estate worth approximately twelve million after taxes. Their will stated that we would divide their estate equally between the three of us, which we would have done anyway. We have all made investments and are worth quite a bit more than that. It is why I ask the question. I have no problem spending my money, but I don’t waste it either.”

A frown darkened her face. “And you are telling me this why?”

“Because I want you to know up front. You offered to pay for the movie and I wouldn’t let you. I don’t ever want you to think that I can’t afford something if I choose to buy it. I also don’t want you believing the little lie I told on Facebook. When you realized in the future that I was rich, it would bother you because I hadn’t trusted you enough to tell you the truth.”

“I suppose. Although it doesn’t really matter.” His honesty was unnerving. Lana frowned, but he smiled and she had no choice but to smile back. She suddenly wondered if he was only trying to get a reaction from her. “So! Are you still going to give me a million?”

“I would if you asked.”

“I was kidding!” she replied in a voice that sounded far too loud for the quietly wooded path. “I have plenty of money to get by.”

“I know that you do. Remember, I
am
actually a computer geek.” He stuck his tongue playfully through his teeth.

The childish gesture took the edge off her uneasiness and made her laugh. “I
am
actually very confused.”