The Debra Dilemma (The Lone Stars Book 4) (20 page)

“Still trying to make up for yesterday. I figure you’re due a little charm considering I almost killed you and burned down your kitchen.” A wise man wouldn’t have reminded her about yesterday, but no one had ever accused him of being wise.

“You managed to get me here without running over me with your car, so I’m thinking that our luck has changed.” She slipped her right hand into her front jeans pocket and pulled out a key.

Gallantly, he took it from her, shoved it into the lock, and turned the key. He pressed the handle down, but the door didn’t budge.

“It sticks. Let me give it a try.” Debra held the handle down and gave the door a good shoulder shove, but it still didn’t budge.

“Together on three.” Warren positioned himself behind her. “One…two…three.”

They both threw their shoulders into the door. It sprang open and his forehead knocked into the back of her head with a crack.

“Ouch.” She rubbed the back of her head. “Wonder how you’ll try and kill me tomorrow?”

“You’re such a glass half empty kind of person.” He rubbed his forehead. “I guess I should be glad that you’re conscious and still going to let me see you tomorrow.”

“Now, who’s being negative?” She looked around and sniffed the air. “It smells the same.”

He sniffed. “Smells like Cuban cigars and rich people.”

The entry way walls leading to the double staircase that towered up three floors were done in aged mahogany, while the floors were black and white checked marble. It was
Downton Abbey
meets Tara. Now that he thought about it, this house had probably been built around the time the
Downton Abbey
castle was supposedly built, mid-19th century.

“This room always made me think that somewhere in the house there was a stodgy old man wearing a red velvet smoking jacket, seating in a navy blue velvet chair, and sucking on one of those big, curvy Sherlock Holmes pipes.” All of this hand-milled wood must have cost a fortune back in the day. God knows that it was worth a fortune now.

Laughter bubbled up Debra’s throat. “There’s a painting in my father’s trophy room of my great grandfather, Col. Beauregard Andrew Covington, sitting in a green velvet chair and smoking his pipe.”

“Colonel? Was he in World War II?” He’d always seen this house as more of a museum than a home.

“Are you kidding? I seriously doubt that any Covington has ever fought in any war. That’s way too much manual labor. As my father used to say, there are those who work and those who command. We are the commanders.” Her shoulders shook with laughter. “What an asshole.”

“Trophy room?” For like football trophies? Even his football players didn’t have entire rooms devoted to trophies.

“Yes, in addition to his private office, my father had a trophy room. It’s filled with the taxidermied remains of the various unsuspecting and innocent animals that had the misfortune to land on the business end of one of my father’s guns. Some of the trophies are just heads mounted on the walls while the larger creatures like bears and bobcats are poised to strike back. I’ve always hated that room. Why don’t we start with it first?” She turned to her left, walked over to the wall, pulled the brass wall sconce, and the wooden panel next to the sconce clicked open. A waft of cold, stale air drifted out.

This is exactly the moment that Scooby-Doo and Shaggy would have run away and hid under the ornate marble entry table.

“A secret room?” Okay, there was no denying that was cool.

“This house has lots of secrets and secret rooms.” She leaned into the dark room, felt along the wall, and flicked the light switch.

He followed her into the cavernous, windowless room. Shaggy and Scooby would have been right to run away. An eight-foot tall black bear, complete with sharp teeth and scary claws, stood at the ready to kill all who entered this room.

Debra shivered. “This room makes me want to write a big check to PETA and apologize to all creatures great and small.”

He put his arm around her. “Why don’t we start somewhere else?”

It’s not like they were going to find any furniture in here to use.

“It’s okay.” She stopped in front of an enormous walnut desk and looked around. “I’d love to donate this stuff, but come on, who’d want it?”

He counted no less than ten deer heads—all with at least eight points—two water buffalo, a giant longhorn, a reindeer, an elk, and something that might have been a ram, all mounted on the walls looking down like spectators watching a tennis match. A lion’s pelt complete with head prostrated itself in front of a massive stone fireplace while the pelt of the unluckiest zebra in the world had the sad fortune of being the carpet underneath the desk. On the walls, between the animal heads, hung various oil paintings of snooty white-haired men hunting or smoking pipes or just standing around holding guns and looking rich. His eyes landed on the smoking jacketed Colonel. “I have no idea where you’d donate all of this stuff either. I bet if you put it on Craigslist, someone would take all of it.”

He had no idea what someone would do with it, but people loved free stuff.

She walked behind the desk, felt around the bottom of the painting of the Colonel, and clicked a switch. The two-dimensional image swung open like the cover of a book. Behind it, was a large, gunmetal gray safe.

“Secret safe…makes sense in a secret room.” He couldn’t lie, part of him wanted to know what was in the secret safe.

“There are five secret safes in this house.” She spun the combination lock to the right and then to the left and then back to the right. The lock’s tumblers all aligned and she pulled the safe door open.

“I only have one secret safe in my house. I feel like the poorer bastard cousin.” All he could see in the dark space were three shelves full of boxes, stacks of money, and—he leaned closer—gold bars? Really, who had gold bars? Now, he absolutely felt like the poor relation.

“Don’t feel bad. At one time, this home housed four generations. Everyone liked to keep their own secrets away from the prying eyes of family.” Something in the back caught her eye, and she quickly shoved various files and wooden boxes out of the way, pulling out a royal blue velvet case. “I’ve always wondered what happened to this. It was my mother’s most prized possession.”

The glee on Debra’s face made his heart smile. In this horrible, dark, dank room, she’d found something that made her happy. It seemed that her life had been like that—little pockets of happiness sprinkled in a world of hurt.

He aimed to reverse that trend. She deserved a world of happiness and he was just the man to give it to her.

Tears burned Debra’s eyes. She’d always wondered what her father kept in his private safe. She smiled as she ran her hand over the worn blue velvet. This wasn’t what she’d expected. Sentimentality in a man who she’d long ago given up on was both sweet and heartbreaking. Or—she did a mental eye roll—more likely her father had simply shoved this in his safe and forgotten about it.

“What is that?” Warren nodded at the box as he leaned against the desk.

“My mother always called this my legacy.” She flipped the latch and opened the box. Inside, draped four times around, was seventy-two inches of clear Austrian crystal beads linked together with fourteen karat yellow gold chain. As a child, Debra remembered playing with the beads of this necklace as she’d sat in her mother’s lap.

“Your legacy?” Warren glanced into the box. “I don’t understand. These are glass beads.”

Even after all of these years, he still didn’t get it. Money wasn’t everything.

“This was my great, great Aunt Henrietta’s necklace. She was a flapper and lived her life by her own set of rules. Instead of marrying the nice young man her family had all picked out for her, she ran off to Paris and took a lover. Well, many lovers. She had a passion for both art and men. Many of her lovers…one in particular…was a very well-known painter.” She’d forgotten all of the good things about her family in favor of the bad. She had so many things for which to be proud, and none of them had anything to do with money or her father.

“Who?” His eyebrows bounced off of his hairline.

“When I show you the family Picasso collection you might note that several of the women bare a striking resemblance to my Aunt Henrietta.” She had history here. Her family had history and she found that she loved the fact that everything in this house had a story. Not every story had a happy ending—she glanced at the water buffalo hanging on the wall—but the things in this house were more than just things. “Picasso was famous for saying, ‘Women are either doormats or goddesses, which one are you?’ My Aunt Henrietta was definitely a goddess.”

Debra was coming into her own goddess-ness. She hoped that her great, great aunt would be proud.

“Picasso. Impressive.” His eyes went huge. “Did you meet your Aunt Henrietta?”

“I wish. No, she died a year before I was born. My mother adored her. My middle name is Henrietta.” Until now, she’d always hated that name. Now, she wore it with pride.

She nodded at the necklace. “This was my mother’s symbol of freedom. For the most part, she lived her life just the way she wanted.” She ran her hand over the cool, smooth beads. Well, the way Type One Diabetes would let her. In the end, there hadn’t been a lot her mother could do. “This necklace might not be worth a lot of money, but it was worth its weight in gold to my mother.”

And to her. Debra had taken the long path to figuring out that she needed to live her life on her terms, but she finally felt like she was coming into her own. It seemed fitting that she should find this necklace today. She was learning to live her life on her own terms.

“May I?” Warren took the box from her, set it down, gently took out the necklace and slipped it over her head. “Looks good on you.”

As the weight of the necklace and the promise of personal happiness that came with it settled around her neck, she couldn’t help the smile. “It feels good.”

She picked up a handful of the super long necklace. “Out of all of the jewelry that I inherited from both sides of my family, which includes my Great Aunt Tess’s diamond tiara from her first husband—who claimed to be a prince of some obscure European country—and the three safety deposit boxes that it takes to house the most expensive pieces of the collection, this is the most valuable. This was the thing that I searched for after I’d found out that my father died.”

“Freakin’ crazy-assed rich people. Who actually owns enough jewelry that it takes multiple safety deposit boxes to house everything.” His eyes narrowed. “I’m guessing that all of that ice you and Julia were wearing the day of the tea party was real.”

“Yes.” She tied the bottom of the necklace into a knot. “That was the cheap stuff.”

His faced turned a little ashy. “I’m guessing the fifty million or so that I have in the bank is chump change to you.”

“Nouveau riche are so gauche. If you actually keep track of how much money you have then it isn’t enough.” She winked. “Rich and entitled is all about attitude. You need to work on it. It starts by looking down on everyone with less money than you.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” He ran his index finger down the beads on the necklace. “All that money and the only thing you want is a cheap bead necklace.”

“Money doesn’t buy happiness. I know you didn’t grow up with it, but I don’t remember it making anyone in my family particularly happy.” She turned around, grabbed a small gold bar out of the safe and handed it to him. “Here. Feel better?”

He lifted the bar, surprised at its dense weight. “So different…we are so different.”

“Not really. Think about it. Do the happiest times in your life include something related to money?” Hers certainly didn’t. “The day Aunt June and I heard AJ’s heartbeat for the first time, we celebrated with takeout Chinese food. We paid for it with twenty dollars June had found in the pocket of an old coat. That gold bar wouldn’t have made that evening any more special.”

And when they got the food home, they realized they’d ended up with someone else’s order, which included five times the food they’d ordered. Back then, free food was cause for a celebration.

“No, but money buys security. That’s important.” He set the bar down on the desktop. “I couldn’t give you that before.”

“And you can now, so that brings something of value to the relationship?” She didn’t know when they’d gone from talking about money to talking about their relationship. In fact, did they have enough of a relationship to call it a relationship?

“Well…yes. Security is important.” He sounded like a defense attorney calmly making his case. “I couldn’t have provided for you then, but.…”

The “I can now” went without saying.

She could feel her ire building and knew that she’d gotten more than a necklace from great, great Aunt Henrietta, she’d gotten a good deal of the women’s independence. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I can do it on my own. While I may not have always made the best choices, I’ve done pretty well. I didn’t give up, I didn’t give in, and I made the best out of what I had. Stop judging me on how much money I have. When my father did that, you called him a snob.”

“It’s not the same thing.” Warren’s inner defense attorney was starting to use his outside voice.

“How is it any different?” She could yell too and realized that she hadn’t done it nearly enough in her lifetime.

“It’s different because.…” He thought about it. “Because it is.” Now he was using hi” ‘because I said so” dad voice.

She took a couple of deep calming breaths. “I realize that your view of the world is very different from mine and to a certain extent that we are products of our childhood, but judging someone based on their bank account is snobbish and it pissed me off.”

One of the things she loved best at work was the fact that she was just Debra and no one cared about her past or her family.

He took a deep breath too and let it out slowly. “When I first met you, sometimes I’d go days without eating because I was out of money. Most nights I slept in my car. I didn’t want that for you.” He shook his head. “Hell, I didn’t want that for me.”