Mesmerized Page 10

  Nothing was going as planned. I was totally off-track as far as Pennington’s went, because unless she’d changed her mind without mentioning it, Gretchen was still determined to keep Auras, and I was still missing the last property we needed to break ground.

  Her explanation about what the little shop and its upstairs apartment meant to her was transparent enough for me to recognize that the biggest reason for her constant refusal was because she couldn’t fathom putting a price on her memories. It was an understandable position, but it didn’t help me in moving forward with my plan.

  Developing a friendship with the eccentric young beauty was the only part of my plan I saw succeeding, but I’d dovetailed off that into an unplanned romance, and I was surely in the shit now. Once feelings were involved, everything became stickier, and I couldn’t see a light through the fog that would guide me toward a happy ending for both of us.

  The most jarring part for me was how dramatically the kiss had altered my priorities. Truthfully, it was probably more than the kiss, because finding out about her grandmother’s bakery and her years of growing up in the apartment was certainly relevant, but the kiss had made me more invested than simply hearing her story did.

  In the space of a night, I had done a one-eighty. My determination to successfully bring back to the board the deed to Auras took a back seat, and my desire to make sure Gretchen didn’t feel like she was losing everything important to her took the wheel. I knew what it was like to have nothing that I could look at or hold that would bring me fond memories — though, in my case, it was because no fond memories had ever been made — and I didn’t want her to suffer the same fate.

  “She’s got you messed up, man.”

  I was the one who said it, but it still surprised me to hear. It was true, though. While my father and I didn’t see eye to eye on much, something we had in common was our ability to close ourselves off to the wants and needs of others in favor of fulfilling our own.

  He taught me the benefits of selfishness without even realizing he was doing it, and I’d put it into practice at a very young age. The very concept of me possibly ruining my chance at being the CEO I was bred to be for the happiness of a woman was ludicrous, but I couldn’t imagine throwing Gretchen to the wayside for a handshake and a clap on the back.

  The dream I’d had about her morphing into a witch snapped into my mind for the umpteenth time since I’d had it, but I didn’t brush it off so easily this time. Maybe I’d had that dream for a reason, like one of those predictions or premonitions or whatever they were called. It would have explained a lot. She probably cast a spell over me, and I was being magically driven into a lustfulness that blurred the lines of sanity.

  “God.” I threw the covers off and stomped my feet on the floor. “Don’t be stupid, Cash.”

  I stomped into the bathroom to brush my teeth and contemplate what the hell was wrong with me, took a distracted shower, and threw on a pair of jeans. I probably should have put on a suit and gone over to Auras, but the idea of seeing Gretchen while I was so scattered was too uncomfortable, so I figured it would be safer to remain holed up in my suite for the day.

  Plopping onto the bed again, I let my eyes drift lazily around the room in hopes of seeing something that would jar me into focus. The desk, my computer, the curtains, the nightstand, my cell phone…

  I grabbed my phone, berating myself for being such an idiot that it hadn’t occurred to me to call the one person I could talk to when my head was screwed up like this, and I scrolled to the number I wanted.

  “Good god, man, do you know what time it is?”

  Drew’s voice was coarse, sluggish, and muffled, like he had the phone pressed between his mouth and a pillow. I looked at the old-fashioned alarm clock on the nightstand.

  “It’s seven-thirty. You’re still sleeping?”

  He groaned. “Yeah, I’m still sleeping! It’s seven-thirty.”

  “You’re usually two hours into a job by now.” I reclined back against the headboard. “Late night?”

  “Man…” There was a rustling sound similar to static. I figured he’d sat up. “You missed a good one last night. Warren hustled this big out-of-towner for fifty bucks playing pool, and the whole bar had to jump in because the guy was ready to carve Warren a headstone. Over fifty bucks, man. And then these two little honeys showed up, and Hucklebee was on’em like flies on shit. Come to find out they were lesbians. And he still tried to take’em home!” Drew chortled to himself. “Wish you could’ve been there.”

  “Me too.” It was a lie because I wouldn’t have traded that kiss for all the barfights and failed pick-ups in the world, but I knew it was what he wanted to hear.

  He coughed, and I heard him messing around with something. When he spoke again, his words were clumsier. He’d put in a pinch of chew. “So, what the hell are you doing calling me at this hour?”

  I sighed heavily and rocked my head back against the wall. “This might not be the job for me, Drew.” I hated saying it, but I needed to get it out.

  “What do you mean?”

  “My dad would have had this land and been back in Oklahoma trying to find another one to buy right now. I’m not even close.” I shut my eyes and relished the darkness it brought. “Gretchen, the owner, is really attached to the property. It used to belong to her grandmother, and she lived there for a while when she was a kid. The board wants to keep throwing money at her until she can’t say no anymore, but I don’t think that will do it.”

  He listened without interruption. Drew was well-aware of my struggles with my father. He was there when I was desperate for my dad’s approval, and he was there when I came to the realization I was never going to get it. In fact, Drew was a big part of the reason my dad and I had butted heads so much, especially when I reached my teenage years, because we were a troublemaking duo whose antics Dad tended to blame on Drew. Until he discovered I wasn’t the gullible, mindless kid he thought I was.

  “Your dad built that company, man. He knew it inside and out. You can’t expect to do everything as well as he did this soon.”

  I laughed dryly. “You’re the only one who thinks so. Everyone at headquarters talks about Dad like he was Jesus in Brooks Brothers. They remind me all the time how much I have to live up to.”

  “Yeah, but that’s because you’re his kid. If anyone can be what he was, it’s you.” I heard him spit a dose of tobacco juice, and I wrinkled my nose. It was one of Drew’s habits I’d never gotten on board with.

  “You know I never wanted this, though.” There it was, the stark truth I’d never had the balls to say to my father.

  Drew snickered. “Yeah, I know. We wanted to fish for a living, remember?”

  The question brought me back to my conversation with Gretchen, and I hummed an acknowledgment in lieu of a proper response as I recalled how animated she had been while we talked. Damn, that woman was beautiful.

  “I told her about that,” I confessed.

  “Told who?”

  “Gretchen. The property owner I’m trying to buy off.”

  He paused, and I swore I heard him grin. “Pretty sure that’s not in the Business 101 handbook, man.”

  “No, it’s not, but I can’t help it. She’s so easy to talk to, and she gets me.” I clapped a hand to my forehead. “Jesus Christ, I sound like a tool.”

  “Yeah, you do. What the hell is in the water up there?” He let out one short laugh at his own joke. “This doesn’t sound like your MO. You don’t talk to women about anything deeper than a puddle, and that’s even a little much because you don’t date or hook up. I’d make one of my usual jokes here, but I’m worried you’re going over to the dark side.”

  I opened my eyes just to squint them in confusion at the wall opposite me. “What’s the dark side?”

  “Commitment, man! Marriage and wives and forever and shit.”

  I switched from squinting to rolling. “You’re a dumbass.”

  “Hey, all I’m saying is you go up
to Michigan for work and all of a sudden you’re talking to some woman who gets you. Sounds like reason for alarm to me.” He spat again.

  “Yeah, well, it’s bugging the hell out of me too, which is why I called you for some support.”

  “You want support?” He didn’t wait for me to answer before plowing ahead. “Just keep thinking about what your dad would’ve done. Get that property, don’t worry about the tail, and come back to Oklahoma where you’ll get a fat check for a job well done, and there are plenty of girls to talk to.”

  I frowned, but I wasn’t exactly surprised. Drew might have known me longer than any of my other friends, and he might have had more firsthand experience with my problems, but he and I thought very differently on some critical issues. Women, to name one.

  “What my dad would’ve done is insist she sell the land with a veiled threat worded in a way that protects him from legal recourse.” I scowled at the idea of doing something so heartless to Gretchen. “And if that didn’t work, he’d use an eminent domain loophole.”

  “So, do that.”

  My temper was beginning to flare, but I tamped it down as best as I could, so I didn’t end up thundering my frustrations all over Drew. “I know I should do that for Pennington’s, but I don’t think I can.” I mulled over my words for a second. “No, you know what? It’s not that I don’t think I can. It’s that I don’t want to. I don’t want to be the kind of man my father was.”

  “He wasn’t the friendliest guy,” Drew agreed.

  “It’s not even that. I don’t want to build an empire by stepping on everyone else. He started somewhere too, and he should’ve been grateful nobody crushed him in the early stages. If I’m ‘destined’ to be the next head of Pennington’s, I want to do it the right way, not the easy way.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with that, but it sounds like you want to do it the right way when it comes to this girl… but not the whole world.” Sometimes I forgot that my friend was more than a beer-slugging guy who refused to mature past his twenties, but this was one of those times when I was reminded with a hard slab of wisdom right in the face. I fell silent, considering his point. “You gotta figure out if this Gretchen is worth forgetting everything your dad wanted. I know he was an asshole, man, but he was still your dad. His memory has to mean something to you.”

  That was the problem. It did. I just didn’t know how to blend it with my own set of ideals.

  Drew went on while I thought. “You don’t want to take away her memories, which is noble and all, but you don’t really have a choice if you’re going to be the face of this new addition to the corporation. Maybe you should set her up in a new location, do all the work for her. Give her something to be excited about so she forgets what she’s giving up.”

  “She’ll remember eventually.”

  “Yeah, but hopefully by then she’ll be happy enough in her new place that it won’t matter.”

  The idea wasn’t terrible, though I wasn’t sure if it would be a manipulative or a kind gesture. Nevertheless, it was something I hadn’t tried, and it had the potential to satisfy both parties involved.

  “All right. Thanks, man.” I swung my legs off the bed and moved over to the desk to fire up my laptop. If I was going to give this a try, I would have to start finding available buildings in the area, or even vacant property with potential to build commercially right away. “I’ll let you know what happens.”

  “Appreciate ya.”

  We hung up, and I placed the phone next to the computer as I pulled up the web browser. I wasn’t necessarily confident in Drew’s idea working because everything else I’d tried had thus far fallen flat, but I didn’t have anything to lose at this point.

  Or did I?

  I cared now. I wanted Gretchen to be happy. That was something to lose, and it weighed more heavily on me than I ever thought it would have.

  There was the chance I could present her with this offer, and she’d feel like I hadn’t listened to a word she’d said about the sentimentality of her shop, and that might mean the end of whatever we had going on between us. It would also mean I had, yet again, failed to acquire the property, so not only would I lose Gretchen, but I’d also lose whatever reputation I had in name alone with the Pennington’s board.

  That was a hell of a lot to lose.

  I pushed the heels of my hands against my eyes and groaned. I had no idea how much my life was going to change after Chaz Pennington died.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Gretchen

  All weekend, I was floating on cloud nine even as I handled the herd of Halloween shoppers who thought my metaphysical store would provide them anything from witches’ spells to toilet paper they could toss into trees.

  Even through the rush, I was cheerful, I smiled often, and I was happy to perform even the most menial tasks around Auras. The world around me, however, hadn’t gotten the message that I’d kissed Cash and everything was wonderful.

  Fawn was tense with preparations for the looming winter, and people were less neighborly than usual. Although the fall weather had been perfect so far, it was now refusing to cooperate with my sunshiny mood. A blanket of silvery clouds draped over the town without so much as a glimpse of golden warmth, and the comfortable fall temperature had reverted to the crispness of late winter even as I sat a beautifully carved jack-o’-lantern by the door.

  Today, it was all coming to a head. The sky was finally starting to release its heavy burden of rain in sheets of cold drizzle, the chimes on my door didn’t ring once with the arrival of an idle browser, and the street was full of the shouts of business owners trying to get their extra unsold inventory into box trucks before it really started to downpour. I stayed clear of the looming tumult by hunkering away in my shop with a hot mug of tea and the company of my best friend.

  Elena had the day off from Bullfrog Bay. She was bored and tired, which she’d loudly announced the second she walked in.

  “There’s nothing to do in this town when it’s gross outside. You better have a good story to tell me about that hunky Pennington’s guy, because I’m about to go flirt with Marshall Dodd just for something to do.”

  Luckily, I had a good story to tell her, and we’d reveled in every detail while unboxing a new shipment of Himalayan salt lamps on the floor.

  “…and then we kissed.”

  “Hold on.” She pointed the plug of a squat orange lamp at me. “Did you kiss him, or did he kiss you?”

  I chewed on the inside of my lip as I recalled the exact moments our lips touched. I’d gone over that very moment a hundred times since it happened because I’d wondered the same thing, but I still didn’t know the answer. “Well, I think he kissed me, but I can’t remember for sure. I’m the one who ramped it up to eleven, though.”

  She crowed her approval and rocked back onto her tailbone, flailing her feet wildly in delight. She looked like a cartoon character. “I can’t believe it! You, Miss Prude? Oh my god!”

  “I’m not a prude!” I smacked her lightly with a thick, black cord. “Just because I don’t make a scene every time I’m out with a guy doesn’t mean I’m uptight.”

  “You say that like you’re out with a guy often.” She grinned, and I took a second shot at her with the cord. She dodged it by scrambling to the side like a crab, though she knocked over a pair of lamps in the process. “Let’s be honest, Gretch. This is a rarity for you. And I’ve never known you to be so into someone that you make a move. You must really, really like him.”

  I waved a hand at her dismissively. “Oh, please.”

  “Really, really, really like him.”

  “Knock it off.”

  “God, you’re turning red and everything!”

  I ripped open the next box like King Kong ripping open the roof of a building, then blew a thick stream of air out of my mouth to waft stray hairs from my face. “All right.” Elena clutched a lamp to her chest dramatically, waiting on tenterhooks to hear me admit it. “I might be interested in him.”


  “I knew it!” She squealed and rolled backward again, taking the lamp with her. I darted forward on my knees to snatch it from her before she lost her grip and dropped it on the floor.

  “But that doesn’t mean anything,” I added.

  She stopped her manic movements and looked at me through narrowed eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Auras.” I placed the lamp I’d rescued from her gently down beside the other six I’d already unboxed. “Just because I like him doesn’t mean I plan to give him what he wants.”

  “It sounds like you already did.” She leered at me, wiggling her eyebrows up and down suggestively. “Or you started to, anyway.”

  “Not that! Selling him the store, you nympho!”

  Elena cackled. “I wonder if he has that hot accent when he’s having sex.”

  She was being impossible, which was so characteristic that I ignored her remark and continued as though she hadn’t decided to roam into piggish territory. “For all I know, he could be trying to seduce me to get me to agree to his offer. Hopefully, that’s not the case, but you never know, and I won’t be the dummy who falls for it.”

  With a much more serious expression, she pointed her finger at me and looked out from beneath her dark lashes. “You’re getting paranoid. Men don’t think that deep. Besides, the whole femme fatale thing is a woman’s trick because men put sex, or the idea of getting it, before anything else. Women don’t put enough stock in sex for that to work on us.”

  “Could’ve fooled me.” I cast her a snarky smirk.

  She made a lewd gesture with her fingers and her tongue, and I scrunched up my face in disgust. The momentary lapse in banter was just long enough for us to catch the tail end of distant thunder. I clambered up onto my knees to peer over a table of altar cloths at the window.

  “How’s it looking out there?”

  “It’s getting really dark.” I shifted my gaze to the wall clock. It was only two in the afternoon, but the overcast sky was so dark it could have passed for eight at night. “We’re probably going to get hit any minute.”