The Charmer in Chaps Read online

  Luca could remember shooting a panicked look at Brandon. Brandon had turned red and sullen, and had slid down in his seat, afraid to confront his older brother.

  “What’s the matter, boy? Can’t you read? Cuz we’re going to sit right here until you read me that sign.”

  Luca couldn’t recall any longer how that particular day had ended, but he remembered clearly the humiliation he’d felt. Blake was still that bully, but he’d gotten good at putting on a public face and playing the role of public servant, here to protect us all. Brandon, on the other hand, was not like Blake or his father. He didn’t have the physical stature or the killer instinct those two shared. When they were kids, Brandon opted to stay home with his mom when Mr. Hurst and Blake went hunting. He read books while his brother shot deer.

  “What’s going on here?” Blake asked congenially.

  Brandon introduced him to Dr. Castillo and told him a little about what they were discussing. Blake laughed. “Still determined to find some land for tree huggers and liberal flower children, huh?”

  “You like to hunt, Blake,” Brandon pointed out.

  “Yeah, we’ll see if there’s anything out there to hunt other than bunnies,” he said, and chuckled as he settled himself into a seat and picked up a magazine.

  “I should go,” Dr. Castillo said, looking at his watch.

  Brandon showed the professor out, leaving Luca alone with Blake.

  Blake never looked up from his magazine.

  When Brandon returned, he was holding a couple of beers. “That went well, don’t you think?” he asked Luca.

  “I do,” Luca agreed. He didn’t say more—he didn’t want to talk about their plans and listen to Blake’s negative opinions.

  “This fund-raiser is going to be fantastic,” Brandon said, and tapped his beer to Luca’s. “Is Ella coming?”

  “I think she will.”

  “Who’s Ella?” Blake asked, looking up from his magazine.

  “You met her at the Magnolia,” Brandon reminded him. “She moved out to the old Kendall place.”

  Blake seemed surprised and then thoughtful. “The Kendall place,” he repeated. “I thought it was abandoned. Ella Kendall?”

  “Right,” Luca said, feeling strangely uncomfortable. “Do you know her?”

  “Nah,” Blake said, and looked at his magazine. “But I know someone who talks about her a lot.”

  “Who’s that?” Brandon asked curiously.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Blake said.

  Brandon rolled his eyes. “So, Luca, I’ve got some time tomorrow if you want to go through the presentation. Are you free?”

  “Sure,” Luca said, and stood up. He didn’t like being around Blake and his strangely aggressive energy. “I’ll call you,” he said to Brandon.

  “You didn’t finish your beer,” Brandon complained.

  “Sorry, man. I didn’t see the time.” He left as Blake pretended to casually peruse his magazine.

  On the drive home, Luca phoned Ella, but the call rolled to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message—she would see he called, and he would try again in a couple of hours.

  He called Hallie next, who was meeting with her wedding planner about the finishing touches for the fund-raiser. “Luca!” she said excitedly. “This fund-raiser is going to be dope!”

  Luca held his phone away from his ear and looked at it. “Dope?” he said, and put the phone to his ear again. “I’ve never heard you use that word.”

  “You don’t understand, Luca. There will be trees and lights and two bars, and the food will be to die for!”

  “Wait,” Luca said, feeling a small tic of alarm. His sister could spend money like it was her job. “How much is this going to cost?”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll make it back in spades with all the money that’s going to roll in.”

  “We are not making money, Hallie. We are asking for grants for specific purposes.” But Hallie was still talking, oblivious to the fact that Luca wasn’t on board with everything she had planned. When Hallie took on a project, she took it on.

  She was still talking when he pulled up to the house at Three Rivers. “Hallie. Hallie,” he said, a little louder.

  “What?”

  “I’ve gotta get off the phone. My ear is burning.”

  “Fine, go. I’ve got this, Luca!”

  That’s what he was most afraid of.

  His intent was to make a quick change of clothes and then go to Ella’s. But as he walked through the garden, he came upon his mother and grandmother. His grandma was sitting at a table under an umbrella, sipping lemonade and reading People magazine. Her hair was pink now, he noticed, and she had taken to wearing shiny gold Nikes.

  But it was his mother who really caught his attention. She was down on her knees, planting something in a freshly emptied bed. He had never seen her garden before. Ever. They had staff for that sort of thing. Or, at least, they had before his father had died. “What are you doing?”

  “Planting the roses I wanted here and your father didn’t, that’s what,” she said pertly.

  “He didn’t want them there because they won’t get enough sun, Delia,” his grandma said without looking up from her magazine.

  “Says you,” his mom responded.

  “Says me and the landscaper Martin hired to create this garden.”

  “They’ll grow,” his mother said stubbornly. “Just you hide and watch.”

  “Frankly, I’d rather watch dust collect in my navel,” Grandma said, and put down her magazine. She propped one gold foot on the table. “Lucas, did I ever tell you about Maria Ford? She lived down Parker Lane.”

  Luca and his mother looked at each other. “There’s nothing down Parker Lane, Grandma. It’s just a pass-through,” Luca said.

  “Exactly,” she said, with a nod. “That’s how spooky she was. She lived down there somewhere, no one knew where, and she grew these giant roses the size of salad plates. Everyone said it was impossible to grow them that big, but here she’d come to Saturday market with ’em.”

  “And your point?” his mom asked as she dug another hole.

  “Just that there is nothing but sun down there. She grew those roses in sun. You know what else she grew down there, don’t you? Wacky weed.” She laughed. “I swear on the grave of my husband you could smell it all the way over here.”

  Luca’s mother used the back of her hand to wipe perspiration from her brow. “That’s at least five miles from here,” she said. “You couldn’t smell it.”

  “Damn sure could. Had to send my kids to bed early so they wouldn’t notice it. They say that weed is a gateway drug, you know.”

  “Well, Luca, it looks like your grandmother is now an expert in gateway drugs,” his mother said.

  “Now, truth be told, Grandpa and I didn’t mind a little bit of the wacky weed now and again.” She waggled her brows at Luca. “That was the sixties for you.”

  “And that’s your grandson you’re bragging to,” his mother said.

  “Well, I know, Delia. I can see him plain as day. Anyway, Lucas, roses need sun, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Okay, Grandma,” Luca said with a grin.

  His mother looked at him, eyeing him curiously. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to change clothes, then head out. I’ve got some things I need to do.”

  “Hallie says you’re seeing someone,” his mother said bluntly.

  Great. He would thank Hallie for this later. “Mom? I’m thirty. I see lots of people.”

  “What, I can’t want my son to have a love life? When do I get to meet her?”

  “Maybe when you stop taking naps on Dad’s grave and planting rosebushes where they don’t get any sun,” he suggested.

  His mother blinked. She turned her attention back to the flow
erbed, and she looked a little stung. Luca instantly regretted his tone. “I’m bringing her to the fund-raiser,” he said.

  “Oh, goody,” his grandmother said. “I can’t wait. I like to cut a rug.”

  “It’s not that kind of party, Grandma.”

  “Who says we can’t make it one?” she asked cheerfully.

  “I do,” Luca said sternly. “No shenanigans from you, Grandma. This is a big deal for me.”

  “I guess it is for me, too, if you’re bringing your girlfriend,” his mother said, and began to dig with a vengeance. “You never bring anyone around. I wish I’d known it was because of my flower beds, because I would have put them on hold.”

  Luca sighed. “I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have snapped. I better go. I’m running late,” he said, and walked on to the house.

  “Chicken!” his mother shouted after him, and his grandmother laughed.

  After he changed, Luca tried Ella again and still got no answer. He decided she must be working. He’d try her again after he ran by the Saddlebush offices. He’d made an appointment with Charlotte, the office manager, to go over some of his finances.

  In the foyer of the Saddlebush offices—made to look like a rustic barn at a cost Luca could not possibly fathom—Charlotte met him with a smile. “Hey, Luca, it’s so good to see you,” she said. “It’s like old home week—your uncle is here, too.”

  “Chet?” That would save Luca a trip—Uncle Chet was his second errand of the day.

  “Yep. He’s in with Nick.”

  Luca walked back to his dad’s old office. The door was open, and he could see Nick in the chair his father had once occupied, one boot up on the desk, his cowboy hat tossed onto the desk. Luca had never really noticed how much Nick looked like their father.

  Uncle Chet was sitting across from Nick in one of the leather seats. “Hey!” he said when Luca entered. “Look what the wind blew in, will you?”

  “Hey, kid,” Nick said.

  Luca sat down and asked how they were. The three men chatted about the family business—Nick’s angst had been quietly ratcheting up, and he was in the midst of asking Uncle Chet for advice to improve their cash flow.

  Uncle Chet ran through various options, then said, “It all comes down to diversification, Nick. Just like our boy, Luca, here,” he said with a grin.

  “Yeah, about that,” Luca said, and dug into his pocket for a key. “I was coming to see you today, Uncle Chet. I’ve got something for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  Luca handed him the key to the dealership. He didn’t know if it was a symbolic key or real—he’d never been in the office before or after hours—but it was the one Chet had given him when he’d gifted him the Sombra dealership.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Uncle Chet asked.

  “Yep.”

  Uncle Chet sat up. “Why are you giving it to me?”

  “As much as I appreciate what you did for me, I have to give it back to you, Uncle Chet. I’m not running it. You and Victor are running it. And Victor is great at his job. He should be the general manager. Not me.”

  “Luca,” he said, already sounding disappointed. “You’d be great at it, too, if you’d show up—”

  Luca shook his head. “It’s not for me.”

  Uncle Chet frowned. “Luca . . . you need something. What’s better than the electric car that’s going to rival Tesla? It can be lucrative, and it conserves energy like you like—”

  “But I’ve already got something,” Luca calmly reminded his uncle.

  “Is it the reading thing? Because if it is, Victor can brief you.”

  Luca glanced at Nick, whose expression suggested that he, too, wanted to know if it was the reading thing. Luca swiped up a paper from the desk and read, haltingly—but read, “Hey . . . Nick ran into . . . Thompson last week,” he read. Was that how you spelled Thompson? What was the H for? “He said you’ve got a deal on some . . . pal . . . pal-o-minos.”

  His reading was met with silence for a moment. Then Nick lowered his foot, planted his arms on the desk, and said, “Knock me over with a feather. Are you kidding me, Luca? Did you just read that?”

  Luca tossed the paper down and looked at his uncle. “It’s not because I can’t read. It’s because I hate it. I’m not a car guy, Uncle Chet. I’m not a salesman.”

  Chet’s mouth gaped.

  “That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate all you’ve done for me,” he hastened to assure his uncle. “In fact, I can’t ever thank you enough for it. But it’s not my thing.”

  “What is your thing, Luca?” Uncle Chet asked. “Letting two thousand acres go wild? I get it, son, but you can’t make a living that way. You’ll go broke before you’ve turned it around.”

  “I may already be broke after letting Hallie plan the fund-raiser,” Luca said with a wry laugh. “But I don’t think I will. I can make money with hunting and recreational leases.”

  “Those won’t pay enough,” Uncle Chet said with a flick of his hand.

  “I agree, they won’t pay the kind of money the Princes are used to. But I ought to make enough to get by. And if I lose it? Well, I will have lost it on something that means a lot to me. It’s mine to lose.”

  “Luca,” Uncle Chet said, and rubbed his face with his hands in a manner that suggested he was trying to keep his cool. “For heaven’s sake, I wish Charlie was here to talk some sense into you. Listen, kid, all your life you’ve been flitting from one thing to the next. This is the craziest yet. Tell him, Nick.”

  Luca braced himself to hear Nick’s opinion. But Nick looked at him and shrugged. “I think if Dad were here, he’d say do whatever makes you happy, Luca. A lot of us don’t get the chance to do what we love.” He gestured to himself in that chair. “You’ve figured out how to have your chance, and I say, go for it.”

  Uncle Chet glared at Nick. “Are you yanking my chain?”

  “Nope,” Nick said. “I’m disagreeing with you.”

  Luca gave his brother a smile of gratitude. “Thanks, Nick. See you at the fund-raiser?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Nick said.

  Luca stood up and hugged his uncle to take some of the sting out of his disbelief. He left the two men to meet with Charlotte. Two hours later, he walked outside and called Ella. No answer.

  She didn’t answer that night either. Or the next day. Luca tried not to read too much into it. It had only been a couple of days. They’d gone that long without speaking before. But the difference was they’d gone that long without speaking before the night in San Antonio.

  It seemed off.

  He began to imagine all kinds of things, like she’d gotten hurt out there by herself, or her car had broken down somewhere and she was stranded. So the following day, he rode out to Ella’s house, traveling through cedars and the marshy part of the river. He was wet to the knees and sweating when he finally rode across the dead pasture to the Kendall house.

  Buddy saw him first and came bounding off the porch, eager to see his old pal, Ranger, the horse. Buddy loved horses. He probably thought he was one.

  A moment later, Ella walked out onto the porch barefoot, in a summer dress, and with her hair piled on top of her head. His heart skipped around, relieved that she was all right. He was eager to touch her.

  She smiled as he swung off his horse and looped the reins over the fence.

  “You’re okay,” he said. “I thought something might have happened. You haven’t returned my calls.”

  “What?” She laughed. But it was a laugh Luca had never heard from her before. “I’m fine!”

  “Then maybe you’ve been avoiding me,” he said, and smiled.

  She laughed again in that strange way, too loud, too much. It was odd. “Not at all. I’ve been busy.”

  That phrase sent a paroxysm of dread straight through
him. He walked up to the porch steps, his smile gone. “Super busy?”

  “You would not believe,” she said with a shake of her head. “I had to watch some paint dry yesterday. Took all day.” She smiled thinly and looked down. To avoid his gaze?

  “You must be exhausted,” he said, and rubbed his hand on his nape. “Any reason why you couldn’t pick up a phone while you were watching it dry?”

  “Oh.” She plucked at the seam of a pocket on the front of her dress. “It was dead. I didn’t know it was dead.”

  He didn’t believe her. But he also couldn’t believe she would lie to him about something so benign. A thousand thoughts riffled through his head, and he rubbed his nape again, trying to work it out. She wasn’t talking, just watching him, fiddling with the seam of that pocket. “Mind if I have some of your good well water? It’s getting hot.”

  “Oh.” She glanced over her shoulder at the house. “Sure. Come in.”

  She acted as if she was hiding something. It was bizarre—what could she possibly have to hide? Luca followed her inside and looked around. Everything looked the same. The door to her bedroom was closed, maybe to keep Buddy out of there. There was a purse on the kitchen table and one in a chair, which seemed like one too many purses to him, but who knew with women and their purses? Hallie had dozens.

  He followed Ella into the kitchen. She turned on the faucet, and he put his arms around her middle and kissed her cheek. “I’ve missed you,” he murmured.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” she whispered.

  He kissed her neck. “Why are you whispering? Is it a secret?”

  She just laughed and turned around, handing him the glass of water. But Luca put it aside and kissed her. She felt the same, tasted the same, responded the same by curving into him and sighing into his mouth. What was happening? What was so different about her? Luca lifted his head and took her by the hand. “Come on,” he said, and tugged her away from the counter, intending to take her to bed.