Can't Buy Me Love (13 page)

His laughter was rocky, covered in dirt. “Well he sure knew us, didn’t he. And he used the right kind of bait.”

She bristled, her feelings injured despite herself. “Your father was good to me.”

“I’m sure he was,” he said, insinuating and nasty.

“He never touched me. Never.”

His eyes skated over her body, carved figure eights around her chest. It was ugly and juvenile and she knew he barely meant it. He was a playground bully, and all he wanted was to see someone else bleed.

“Screw yourself, Luc. I’m leaving.” She stepped past him, into the heat of the afternoon.

He laughed, low and dry but without rancor, without the bitter edge that kept her on her toes, and the sound was so unexpected it was like finding diamonds in her breakfast cereal.

Their eyes caught for a moment. And then another. His body tensed, leaned slightly toward her, and she could feel the kiss in the air between them. She could see it in his dark, shuttered eyes, in the heavy set of his shoulders.

In another life, she might have let him kiss her. They were both grieving in their own way. He wasn’t quite the
devil she’d first thought he was, though she wasn’t sure he wasn’t a different kind of devil altogether. He was beautiful and she was weak.

But this was now. Now after Lyle died, giving her this security, and she didn’t have to kiss men to feel better. Even if she wanted to.

“I’ll see you on Monday.” She slid her aviator sunglasses down low over her eyes.

“I can’t wait.” His voice managed the high-wire act between threatening and inviting.

The pea gravel crunched and slid under the thin soles of her shoes, every stone a small pain, a reminder, until she couldn’t take it anymore and she stopped.

Tara turned to face him only to find him watching her.

Don’t do this
, she told herself,
you don’t care. Not really. And these people don’t care about you. If you were on fire, Victoria would drink the water rather than use it to put you out
.

But there had been so much grief lately, she didn’t want to witness any more.

“Your sister,” she said, and paused, not exactly sure what she wanted to say. Don’t break her heart? Don’t hurt her any more than she’s been hurt? Is one good shove away from losing it?

“You don’t need to worry about my sister,” he said, circling the wagons. Right then, she knew he wouldn’t leave. She was going to have to live with him for five months.

As her boss.

He stood there, just outside the doorway to her world, to everything she had fought and bled for. He was a creature of privilege. His sister, too. And boo-hoo, their daddy didn’t love them like they wanted to be loved. They’d survived. More than survived.

He had money. Safety.

Christ, Victoria had a son.

The two were on a totally different planet from the one where she lived. And while betrayal and pain and long, lonely nights might seem universal, it all depended on who was experiencing it.

“You’re right,” she said and left.

Luc couldn’t look at his sister without wanting to start tearing the ranch down brick by brick, so he went to the one place he was sure she wouldn’t be.

Celeste’s room.

Maman was propped up against the headboard, looking a mess. Well, as much of a mess as Celeste ever looked. Her jacket and shoes were gone. Her hair, rumpled on the pillows. Her lipstick smeared all over the glass of amber liquid in her hand.

Around her, like blue velvet islands rising from the white sea of the duvet, were the jewelry boxes.

They were all still closed.

“You all right?” she asked, looking at him over the rim of her glass as she finished her drink.

He nodded and grabbed the Scotch from the liquor cabinet, poured her another, and then put it back.

“You’re not joining me?” she asked, and he shook his head.

He was reaching an uncomfortable place, where frenzy and anger fed off each other until he didn’t have control. And he needed control.

He’d almost kissed Tara Jean. If that wasn’t an indicator that he needed to get his shit together, he didn’t know what was.

The woman was like that candy she was always eating. Sweet, but bad for him.

“What’s in the boxes?” he asked. He sat at her feet and his weight pulled the smallest of the blue boxes toward him.

“Go ahead,” she said, her negligence a thin veneer over an unexpected grief.

The box creaked open in his hands.

Heavy-duty bling. In ring form.

“My engagement ring,” she said, and she used her leg to sweep the rest of them toward him. “Open the others.”

There was a gold and diamond necklace that looked like something a queen might wear.

“When I caught him cheating. The first time.”

A thick diamond bracelet set with emeralds as big as his eyeballs.

“The day you were born. His heir. He was so excited.” Pearls.

“His grandmother’s. I wore them at our wedding.”

Dangly opal and diamond earrings.

“When Victoria was born. An apology. In very poor taste.”

A dozen boxes. All with a story to tell.

“The guy was a bastard,” he sighed.

“Not always. And not at first. He was, a long time ago, kind in his own way. I think … perhaps when I left, things got very bad.”

“It’s not your fault he hurt us, Maman.”

“I’m sorry, son, but I don’t quite believe you.” Her smile was cracked and broken, full of a lifetime of sadness. He put his hand over hers and she clutched his fingers.

He waited for her to say more, but she was silent and it felt good to sit there beside his mother, bathed in the familiar scent of Chanel N
^o
5.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

“I imagine you’ll be sticking around,” she said, and he stood back up. The frenzy, the hot dance of his nerve endings needed to be cooled off.

“It would be the right thing, wouldn’t it?”

“Are you thinking of doing the wrong thing?”

“Is it so hard to believe that it might be good for Victoria?” he asked. “That if she was forced to stand on her own two feet maybe she’d stop looking to other people to solve her problems?”

“You want to be the one to make sure she does it?” She took a sip, her cagey eyes missing nothing. “She’ll hate you, and it will probably be forever.”

It was the truth. He knew it, but knowing it didn’t make it sit better.

“And what about Jacob?” she asked, turning the screws.

“I know about Jacob,” he said. “I get it. I understand. All right.”

His words echoed into a silence that pounded at his head.

He had to get out of here, he had to burn off this anger or he’d lose it. He pulled his shirt out of his pants.

“Where are you going?” Maman asked.

“Running.” Dr. Matthews’s orders had been explicit. He needed to rest. No working out. No ice time, no physical exertion, for at least six weeks.

But he couldn’t just sit here and do nothing.

“Luc,” his mother whispered, and he paused to look at her before walking out the door. A gorgeous, ageless woman surrounded by all that was left of love.

Diamonds and regret.

“You can’t undo it,” she whispered. “Your decision right now, what you do with your sister, you can’t change it once it’s done. You … you can’t go back.”

Her pain ran headlong against his anger, doing nothing to cool it. Nothing to calm him. He nodded once and left. Buttons flew off his shirt as he yanked it free.

Goddamnit. Had he even packed his running shoes?

“Luc?”

His sister’s voice was a dagger between his shoulder
blades. He took two deep breaths before turning to face her.

So pale and resolute, she stood in the hallway, so thin and fragile a good wind would knock her over.

The men in her life had kicked her. Used her and betrayed her. Both of them. Father. Husband.

He couldn’t join their ranks.

“I’m staying.”

“You … you don’t have to do that.”

That she tried made him love her more.

“Yes, I do,” he said, and then, because everything in his life was falling apart and he couldn’t be trusted not to scream his rage into the face of his sister, he left.

To battle the demon of his anger on his own.

At five o’clock
on Monday morning, Tara Jean was ready to start her new life. She’d hibernated for twenty-four straight hours and woken up with a plan.

She simply wouldn’t deal with Luc. Not unless she absolutely had to.

Also, she decided, it was time to get rid of the crutch. The monkey on her back. She’d quit smoking two years ago, drinking four years ago, sleeping with inappropriate men six years ago—surely she could kick the candy habit.

Considering that this truly was the first day of the rest of her life, she wore the kind of leather that made the demon happy: short and tight.

A red skirt from her first design season that wasn’t much bigger than a Band-Aid, with an oversized white button-up shirt, which she didn’t bother buttoning much of. The black peep-toe heels and big chunky necklace classed her up a bit.

She’d make the Bakers forget they’d ever seen her bunny slippers.

The dawn was pearly and damp, the color of pigeons after a rain. But the moment she stepped outside, all of the hair on the back of her neck stood in terrified attention.

You’re being watched
.

She ducked back into the vestibule of her building,
pulling the safety door shut, unable to breathe until she heard the big lock catch. Her panicked breath bloomed against the cross-hatched glass as she peered out into the small parking lot, waiting for movement. But the cars didn’t even twitch.

She looked to the right and left of the door as best she could through the glass, and she was patient, but she didn’t see a thing move. Not for many long minutes.

You’re being paranoid
, she told herself. Her hand cupped the heavy pounding of her heart, holding panic in her palm. She’d changed her name. Used disposable cell phones, didn’t have a credit card. The apartment was leased under Lyle’s name, utilities paid for by the company.

But Dennis was out of jail by now. And he’d be looking for her.

She crushed her hair against the glass, resting her head on the door. Adrenaline made her stomach churn and her head fuzzy.

“Stop it,” she whispered. “Just stop it.”

What you should do is get in your car and drive away
, the demon said, sucking on a Virginia Slim.

“What the hell do you know?” she muttered.

She didn’t want to run. Not anymore. She had a new life, and this was the first damn day of it.

Taking herself in hand, she pushed open the door and held her head high as she walked to her car. She wasn’t going to cower. Not for the likes of Dennis Murphy.

The morning was already hot by the time she got to the ranch and the sun hadn’t even been up very long, which did not bode well for the rest of the day and its relationship to her hair.

Her body, against her express demands, tightened in expectation.

Luc.

As if to defy her body and those expectations, she
didn’t look around as she got out of the car. She didn’t glance over her shoulder, seeking him out.

Nope. She opened the greenhouse and the first order of business was taking every stash of candy—from the gummi bears in the supply cabinet to the Riesen in the bottom drawer of her desk, the Mike and Ikes in her purse, all of it—and dumping it in the garbage can.

It hurt, she couldn’t lie, but it was a new day.

After that bit of housekeeping, she unpacked the sleek laptop Lyle had bought her. She’d had wireless installed in the whole ranch last year, so it took only moments for her to access her emails.

Her business phone rang, distracting her from an email from a Nigerian prince who so desperately wanted to give her his money.

“Baker Leather,” she said, deleting the email.

“Hi, Tara Jean, it’s Randy Jenkins.”

She felt actual affection for Randy, who, during the process of her taking over operations for Baker Leather, never treated her with anything but respect.

“What can I do for you, Randy?”

“Well, I’m looking for Luc.”

“Luc?” She spun in her chair. “Why’d you call me?”

“Because he’s not answering my calls. And I know you’re still at the ranch. Is he?”

“Far as I know,” she said, though she had no real proof. A sense. That expectation low in her belly. Her skin buzzing with dim electricity.

“Well, I think you better hunt him down. I need him to come in and sign papers so the Crooked Creek and Baker Leather can actually do business.”

“I’m doing plenty of business.”

“Well, not for much longer if he doesn’t come in here and relinquish signing authority. You can’t sign a check for over five thousand dollars, Tara Jean. Not without a letter from me signed by Luc.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “I own forty percent of the business!”

“That doesn’t change things. Not unless Luc cooperates.”

She slouched back in her chair, staring up through the glass ceiling at the birds flying through the blue sky.