So? She was a liar. And, so, her heart galloped when she thought about Jack. Big deal. It wasn’t going anywhere. She was here for a few more days. She’d given him her number thinking it would be fun seeing him again. Fun to hang out with him, laugh with him, kiss him. He embodied every man she’d ever dreamed up in Oak Stand while lying in her lonely bed in the wee small hours of the morning. Why shouldn’t she embrace the opportunity to be with a guy like him? For even a short time?
It would be a weekend romance she’d always remember. After all, what would it hurt? She would deal with any letdown when she got back to Oak Stand. When she went back to being the real Nellie Hughes. For a few more days she would take her friend’s advice and play the consummate, sophisticated Texas party girl Elle Hughes.
A knock on the dressing room door interrupted Nellie’s mental pep talk. The door opened a crack and in swung a sexy blue strapless dress.
“May I suggest this for procuring his interest? I’ve been told it inspires ‘getting laid.’” The saleslady’s twinkling brown eyes appeared over the top of the dress. She swayed the garment back and forth like a Delhi street vendor tempting tourists with his wares.
Nellie laughed while Kate pulled a credit card from Nellie’s purse and held it up. “I assume we’re gonna need this?”
The saleslady’s eyes glossed over. “Oh, yeah.”
“Elle Hughes.”
“Huh?”
Jack ripped himself from his vivid daydream of Miss Hughes’s lips beneath his own and looked up at his business partner, Dave O’Shea. Dave had just popped his balding head into Jack’s office.
“Uh, nothing,” Jack muttered, picking up the contracts from his desk, stacking them together and shoving them into a thick file folder. “I can’t really get to these today, Dave. I have to talk to Rudy about a few clauses before I sign.”
“You gotta problem with ’em, Jack?” Dave’s bulldozer frame filled the doorway as he shifted from one motorcycle boot to the other. For a big mountain of a guy, he looked nervous.
“No, no. Just some personal stuff on my plate. Don’t worry. We’ve finally got the numbers right on this. I’ll have them complete before next week.” Jack hated putting the deal off, but it was important and needed his full attention. At the moment, he couldn’t give that. Why, he had no clue, but he was pretty sure it had to do with a certain sassy Texas beauty and her mysterious effect on him, which was crazy. A woman had never caused him to lose focus on a business deal.
The intercom on his desk buzzed and his secretary droned, “Jack, your father’s on line one.”
Jack shrugged at Dave. “Got to take this.”
Dave threw Jack his own shrug and shuffled back out the door. “Let’s get going, Jack. I’ve been patient, dude, but I’m starting to run low on the stuff. Sign the damned papers already.”
Jack released a pent-up breath, not really wanting to talk to his father, but grateful for the call so he could get rid of Dave. Selling his business to O’Shea made him feel queasy.
Not because Dave wasn’t good. The hulking man had a shrewd business mind lurking beneath his construction worker demeanor. But Trojan Works, Inc. had been Jack’s baby since its conception. He would still own stock in the company, but not the majority. And he would no longer run the nightclubs. The idea of not being in the clubs, especially Agave Blue, made him twitchy. A little scared.
Agave was his identity.
Jack jerked the phone to his ear and pressed the blinking button. “Hey, Dad.”
“I just got the new horse, and by God, he is a big son of a bitch!”
Jack smiled at his father’s enthusiasm. “Everything go all right?”
Tom Darby launched into details of the horse’s ride from California, giving Jack no room for any other questions about the stallion they’d just purchased from a top-notch breeder. The mustang, a proven producer of strong broncs, would serve as the stud for their horse-breeding business. Despite the fact that his father was talking about their newest venture, Jack couldn’t stop the visions of Elle from invading his thoughts.
“So what do you think?” His father sounded impatient.
“Huh?” Jack asked, ripping himself away from memories of last night.
“I said, what do you think?” Tom Darby growled, obviously perturbed at his son’s lack of attention.
“About what?” Jack kicked his chair away from the desk and stared out at the world churning beneath him.
“Why the hell weren’t you listening in the first place? This is important, son. I am too old to do this by myself. You said you’d do this with me. I need you, Jack.”
Jack closed his eyes. “I know, Dad. I’m in this thing. Didn’t I just spend three days in Texas scouting out locations? But I have a lot on my mind with this buyout.”
The line grew quiet. Jack could almost hear his father chewing on his thoughts, measuring his words, trying to rein in his excitement over the horse and be a supportive father at the same time. “Understandable, son.”
“Listen, I’ll try to get out next weekend to take a look at the stallion. I’ve been reading a couple of articles on breeding techniques we may want to try. By the way, have you broken the news to Mom?”
The line was silent again.
“Dad?”
“We’ve discussed it. As much as she wants to see her grandbabies, she can’t tolerate the thought of leaving the dairy.”
Jack could hear the frustration in his father’s voice. Tom had given up his career in the rodeo for the sweet Lila and her family dairy with the promise that one day he could pursue his dream of raising broncs. His mom just hadn’t realized her sixty-three-year-old husband would remember the promise or that it would involve moving to Texas, where her husband had been raised and where, ironically, both her daughters lived. Lila could be a mule.
“Don’t worry,” Tom said. “And your mother’ll be looking forward to seeing you. It’s been a couple of months and it’ll give Lila an excuse to try some of those new recipes she’s been downloading off the computer. I can hardly find the keyboard under all these papers she’s been printing.”
Jack hung up and rubbed his churning gut. God, what had he gotten himself into? Breeding tough-ass rodeo broncs?
Why had he agreed to do this?
He was Jack Darby.
Love-’em-and-leave-’em Jack.
Bright-lights, big-city Jack.
Wonder-boy-of-the-strip Jack.
Not shoveling-horseshit Jack.
Hell, he’d only been to a rodeo once. He spun his chair around and faced the huge window. Cars were crawling down Flamingo Road, little beetles going to battle, streaming toward the setting sun like sacrificial soldiers.
Jack rubbed his hand over his face, allowing a heavy sigh to erupt. He just wasn’t himself. Wasn’t that devil-may-care playboy with the killer smile and Midas touch. And he hadn’t been that man in several months.
It wasn’t just that he had agreed to go into partnership with his old man. He could have done that without too much risk and still pacified his father. Jack had the capital; he could have easily been a silent partner. But when his father put all the figures together and asked, “Will you do this with me?” Jack found himself nodding.
The decision still stunned him. Yet, he knew it was the right thing to do. His heart wasn’t in running the business anymore. Wasn’t fair to the guys who’d bought into the business or to the patrons who’d come to expect superior service and atmosphere from the nightclubs.
And his behavior in the business world wasn’t the only thing puzzling him. Just last week he had turned down Greta Palmer, the flavor of the month in starlets, when she had blatantly propositioned him during a celebrity poker game. What man turned down lips like that?
Then to further bewilder himself, he had gone to church last Sunday. To church! Why? He had no idea. He hadn’t been to a church since he wore short pants, but he’d been looking for answers to why his life had suddenly become so dissatisfying. And then on the street someone had handed him a flyer. It read Is your life empty?
And it was, so he went.
Frankly, he’d been surprised the whole place hadn’t caved in as he walked up the aisle. He sat down, looked up at the cross affixed to the wall, and then got up and left before they could hand him a visitor tag. He felt like a hypocrite, wanting God to give him answers when he’d done nothing worthy to merit them.
Jack was stumped by his own sense of confusion. He felt lost, floating around, unanchored and unfulfilled. Lonely.
Until last night.
Until he met Elle.
Something about her felt right. The way his father said it would when the right girl came along. The way it had been with his parents.
Jack snorted when he thought about his parents and his dad’s conviction that love could slam into you like a two-ton truck.
He could still remember scoffing as a teenager when his father first told the tale of falling in love with his mother. The two of them had been sitting in his father’s old farm truck, waiting for Miss Kitty, their best milk cow, to deliver her second calf.
“Mark my words, Jackie boy, one day she will come in and, whoosh, it will hit you like a ton of bricks.”
“What will hit me?” A fourteen-year-old Jack scowled, peeling the price tag off the side of his root beer bottle.
“
L-O-V-E,
that’s what. Just like it was with your mother.”
“Aw, Dad, please, this is just lame,” Jack moaned, rolling the sticker into a cylindrical sticky projectile. He flicked it out the open window. Crickets chirped in the warm California night air, and Jack wondered why he was stuck in the musty cab of the Ford with his father instead of playing Sega at his best friend’s house.
Tom Darby chuckled. “One day you won’t find anything lame about girls or about love.”
Jack had thought about Christie Jenkins and the way her wrap shirt pulled against her breasts when she leaned over to slip her calculator into her backpack. Did his dad think he was a dweeb? Or worse? Oblivious to girls? Shit, he’d already been to third base with Courtney Arnold. Or at least he thought it was third base.
“Yep, your mama walked into the co-op, and I about dropped that thirty-pound bag of seed I was loading. She was as pretty as a buttercup. My whole body just kinda froze up. Couldn’t decide whether I wanted to run laps around the store or just throw up. But I knew it. Knew it like I knew the sky was blue or the grass was green.”
“Well, sometimes the sky is gray, Dad. And grass turns yellow in the winter.” Jack knew he was being a smart-ass, but what could he do? His old man was loopy.
His dad just chuckled. “Good point, son. Never said it was a cakewalk. There were hard times, times where the clouds grew mean and the grass got beat down, but it’s always been worth it.” He rubbed his Levi’s-clad thigh and then reached for his thermos of coffee. “I knew Lila was the one for me the first time I saw her. And one day it will happen to you. You’ll take one look and that’ll be it.”
Jack had watched his father take three long gulps of coffee, his strong muscles moving in his massive neck, and wondered if he ever wanted to feel that way. Love? Sounded kinda stupid. Sex, well, that sounded good. Way good. But love? That Romeo-Juliet-till-the-death crap? Stupid.
As a teen, Jack had been convinced love was for the weak, the poets, the guys who couldn’t get laid. Even if his old man was one of them.
But at thirty-two, Jack wondered if his old man hadn’t been right. Was Elle his blue sky? His green grass? The breath of air he’d been searching for these many months? Or was it just that everything else in his life felt so topsy-turvy? Maybe she was just a diversion—someone to prevent him from thinking about the road ahead?
Not sure.
But he was damned sure going to find out.
Jack reached for the cellphone he’d left on the edge of the desk. Elle had given him her number last night right before he’d pulled away from the hotel. He’d tried to be casual about it. Gave her the old “let me get your number and maybe we can get together again before you leave town” routine, knowing all the while he’d call her. Her eyes said yes even though she’d dropped the phone twice while trying to peck her info into his phone.
He pressed the button on his desk.
“Yes, Jack?”
“Marie, call Marcelle at L’Esperer and get me a table. Tell him I want the best. And a limo. Don’t forget a bottle of Cristal.”
“Of course, Jack.” Marie responded in her normal tone, but he could hear the question in her voice. It had been months since he had been to the trendy French restaurant, months since he had ordered flowers, months since he’d even thought about a date.
Jack leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. Tonight he wanted the best for Elle. He wanted to see if the feeling was still there or if it was just something conjured up by the full moon and a belly full of Earl’s pancakes.
The knot in his stomach loosened.
Elle Hughes.
Was she his match?