Authors: Robyn Roze,Peg Robinson,Patricia Schmitt (pickyme)
Chain of Title
CHAIN of TITLE
By Robyn Roze
PUBLISHED BY:
Robyn Roze
CHAIN of TITLE
****
Kindle Edition
****
Copyright © 2013 by Robyn Roze
Cover design by Patricia Schmitt (Pickyme)
Edited by Peg Robinson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the
publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places,
events or locales is purely coincidental.
ADULT READING MATERIAL
AUTHOR NOTE
CHAIN
of TITLE
blends the following
genres: Women’s Fiction, Romance, Suspense, and Thriller—and yes, there is
some sex, too.
CHAIN of TITLE
has it all,
EXCEPT
a cliffhanger
ending. This is a standalone novel, but there is more to the story, as you
will discover. However, I am leaving it up to my readers to decide whether
it’s a story that needs writing.
And
for those that like to know in advance if there’s an
HEA
, the answer
is...yes and no.
Contact Robyn Roze at:
http://www.robynroze.com
http://www.facebook.com/robynrozeauthor
http://www.twitter.com/robynrozeauthor
Other Books by Robyn Roze:
Keeper
Keep Her
Find Her Free Her
That
was the end. Everything neatly lined up and inventoried into banal columns of
pots and pans, furniture, artwork, cars, and other meaningless, cold, silent
property. Not the end she had envisioned all those years ago, but rather the
end life had taken its sweet old time revealing as it winked and nodded along
the way.
Shayna had spent twenty-five
years married to Frank Chastain. A quarter of a century. They had undeniably
been the best years of her life, she lamented, as she stalked, heels clicking,
across the marble floor toward the bank of elevators. Oh, not just because of
her marriage to Frank, no, no, no. That quarter of a century amounted to her
peak years, her
best
years,
now erased as her signature dried on legal
documents.
Divorce was a cruel specter,
with its public display of failure. She had begun to feel that it might even
be worse than the death of a first love. Shayna never would’ve believed that reality
twenty-eight years ago, but life lifted the veil once the downhill slide began
toward one’s final destination. And, boy, that slide seemed to be progressing
faster these days, seeming at times as if someone had cut the brake line.
Shayna Chastain waited for some
of the occupants to unload from the elevator before gracefully stepping inside.
As the shiny golden doors, peppered and marred with scratches and smudged
fingerprints, pressed to a squeaky close, Shayna assessed her reflection
honestly. The black sleeveless shift accentuated her still shapely, firm legs,
slender waistline, and the curves she still had in all the right places.
However, even black didn’t do much to diminish her D-cups. She winced. God,
she hated gravity—except, of course, for that whole deal about not flinging off
into outer space.
She smiled at her image.
Cutting her blonde hair into a short-flipped shag had been an excellent idea.
She didn’t care what Dani said. Shayna couldn’t do anything right in Dani’s
book anyway—at least not anymore. Wasn’t that the curse of mothers and daughters?
Shayna rolled her eyes. She wouldn’t know the answer to that.
As the elevator continued its
descent, she focused a more critical lens; she could see some soft lines making
an appearance here and there. The obligatory elevens, which she found herself
reflexively fluffing her bangs to cover, and the expected laugh lines, but they
really weren’t that bad yet and besides, it just made her smile more so they
weren’t as noticeable. She had seen women ten years younger with more
prominent, deeper lines than she had.
She nodded approvingly at the
woman standing confidently in front of her. Not bad. Most of the credit
probably went to good genes and the liberal application of sunscreen, but she
allowed herself some accolades for maintaining it. After all, going to the gym
seven days week counted for something, and at this stage of the game it seemed
that things were falling faster than she could put them back where they
belonged.
None of it was due to plastic
surgery.
She had made that idealistic pledge
in her youth, determined that she would age gracefully and not be ruled by
vanity. Like she had known
anything
in her youth—obviously, that had
been the raving of an age-challenged lunatic. She rolled her large, stormy
gray eyes heavenward and realized, from the pinched brows and sideways glances
of the other riders reflected back at her, that she had snorted out loud and
not in her head.
Just then, the chime for the
main floor dinged its release, and Shayna Montgomery Edwards Chastain exited
the elevator from the law firm of Hopper, Horne, and Smythe for the last time.
Walking tall in black suede heels, shoulders back, with purpose and confidence,
she was now a free woman, unleashed into the world. More likely to be struck
by lightning than to ever again wrangle a man into marrying her.
A sly grin lit her face. She’d
rather be hit by lightning any day of the week.
Smoothly exiting through the
revolving door, Shayna shook her head in deep thought. Who did Frank Chastain
think he was, anyway? He was almost sixty-five years old and might very well marry
his twenty-four-year-old mistress—a
girl
half her age. Shayna was no
fool. The superficial allure of a woman in her twenties was obvious, but there
had to be more to it, and that troubled her more than anything did.
What was it? How had youth
beaten out what Shayna had always known to be a loving marriage built on trust
and mutual respect? Their history was rich and layered with all of the complex
subtleties not afforded to the young. You had to spend time developing and nurturing
a long-term relationship that you wanted to last forever. It didn’t happen
overnight and the payoff was wonderful when it worked out, or so she suspected.
The answer had been swimming
around in her head for some time and she didn’t like it. At some point, Frank
stopped wanting the same thing, stopped feeling the same way. Their paths
diverged, and apparently he preferred the always agreeable, constantly smiling
young girlfriend at his side. At least that’s how Shayna imagined it when she
was alone at night.
Her lips twitched to a smirk.
He just didn’t want a woman with opinions who was closer to menopause than
puberty. She laughed aloud, not caring whether passersby believed she was off
her meds.
He must have decided it was
time to steal someone else’s youth, she decided ruefully. She hadn’t given
their age difference much thought when she married Frank. He had been so
charismatic and vibrant. He still was, but hindsight had her second-guessing a
lot of things these days. She had become filled with more self-doubt and
trepidation than she had felt since she was a child. The last three years had taken
their toll, maybe not evident on the outside, but she could feel the hefty cost
on the inside.
Shayna stopped to peer
longingly at the Victoria’s Secret display window. Yeah, she knew Victoria’s
secret all right: she didn’t use models over twenty.
Shayna giggled inwardly.
Wonder
what the effect on sales would be if Victoria used middle-aged models?
Imagining the reengineered
display, she caught sight of her laughing, quaking frame in the glass pane. Although,
Shayna had to admit, she felt confident that she could still pull it off—with
the right lighting. She knew she only had seconds left before it all
disintegrated and came crashing down around her ankles, but the window of physical
beauty had not slammed shut just yet.
Leaving her musings behind,
Shayna continued on her way to Gaetano’s, a fantastic Italian restaurant with a
great lounge and bar. The atmosphere and décor were all very Tuscan, with calming
water features and soft, sexy lighting throughout. Shayna appreciated the forgiving
lighting more and more as time steam-rolled over her. But, hey, lower watts
were good for the environment, too. She wasn’t totally selfish.
Her favorite part of
Gaetano’s was that rumor alleged a local Italian family owned it. She had
become good friends with the owner over the last eighteen months. His name was
Sean Parker. That always made her giggle. Parker? Really? Didn’t there have
to be an ‘o’ or an ‘a’ at the end of that to make it sound
remotely
Italian? Shouldn’t his first name at least be Tony or Alfredo? She had loved
harassing Sean about that while they’d spent time getting to know each other.
Shayna had never been to
Gaetano’s until her initial visit to Hopper, Horne, and Smythe. Leaving her
attorney’s office in a dazed state after that first high-billable-hour meeting,
she had stumbled upon the little gem among the monotonous and pervasive chain
eateries and had immediately fallen in love with the quiet, unassuming
atmosphere. Of course, Sean Parker was part of the appeal, too. She thought he
was a good ten years younger than she was, though that was only a guess,
because neither of them would divulge their age to the other.
He was a striking man: tall,
very fit, with chocolate-brown hair and soft green eyes, and, of course, he had
those lush, enviably-long, dark lashes that women would kill to have or pay
good money to glue on.
The two had been verbally
jousting and teasing one another since they first met. Shayna didn’t lie, so
she would readily admit to a friend, if pressed, that she had found herself
fantasizing about Sean Parker more and more as she had gotten to know him
better. Of course, in her fantasies, she was always a much younger version of
herself. Why did she do that? Why did she feel the need to airbrush her own fantasies?
Now
that
was ridiculous. Men certainly didn’t do that! She chided
herself as she pushed into her little Tuscan oasis, hoping that the owner would
have time to celebrate her emancipation in a quiet, dimly lit booth.
She hadn’t invited any of her
girlfriends, and she couldn’t decide if it was because she wanted Sean to
herself or because she didn’t want to hear their recriminations later. Maybe
it was a bit of both. Why did she even bother worrying about her friends’
opinions? Men high-fived each other when one of them snagged a younger woman,
but women? Not so much, at least not her group of friends. Maybe she just
needed a new group of friends. The wheels began cranking and grinding around the
feasibility of that idea.
Oh, it didn’t matter anyway.
Shayna didn’t think for a second that Sean was really interested in her in
that
way. She had felt an instant connection with him, but that was just lust, she
told herself. He hadn’t so much as made a move on her the entire time she had
been patronizing his restaurant. That said a lot, in her book. They just
liked flirting, picking at, and teasing each other. It reminded her of the way
she and her two older brothers pestered one another. That is, when they
actually used to spend time together.
Besides, men Sean Parker’s
age were
definitely
not interested in women her age. For crying out
loud, men Frank Chastain’s age weren’t even interested in women her age!
Not only that, she had never
been into one-night stands, which was all it would ever amount to with someone
like Sean. She had only ever had sex with two men her whole life—as
embarrassing as that was to admit. She was pretty sure Dani already had her
beat on that. Not that it was a competition. God, no. It was just further
recognition of how she had squandered her own peak years.
“Hi, Vlad.” Shayna waved to
the bartender as she took a seat at the highly glossed mahogany bar. Vladimir
Anosov.
Thick
Russian accent. Not that accents or ethnicity had jack
to do with who could mix a great drink. It just served as another reason to love
this place: an allegedly Italian family with the last name Parker, touting
their Italian heritage and food, had a chef named Skip Wu, and a Russian
bartender who could pass as Yakov Smirnoff’s twin brother.
And by the way, who the hell
was Gaetano? Had there really been a Gaetano Parker on one of those family tree
branches? She still hadn’t gotten a clear answer on that one, she giggled to
herself.
Nothing made sense here, and
yet for that very reason it did. Probably because most of her life didn’t make
sense, and she had grown accustomed to the necessary and unnecessary
incongruities surrounding her. Oh, how time loved playing tricks.
“Mr. Parker is not here
tonight, Miss Shayna,” Vlad offered, while preparing her signature drink, a sparkling
water with lemon and lime wedges.
“Don’t sell yourself short,
Vlad. I’m here to see you, anyway.” She winked. “Parker just gets in the
way,” she said with a purr, leaning in as the curly haired barkeep handed off
her drink.
“Oh, now, Miss Shayna. You
know that I am a happily married man,” he teased. His twinkling eyes gleamed
as he wagged his finger at her and returned her wink, playfully.
“Stop rubbing it in, Vlad. I
already know all the good ones are taken!”
They laughed and teased some
more, before Shayna carved a path to her favorite booth in the dining room. It
was near the back, with a central view of a beautifully painted fresco of a
pale yellow villa, cypress trees, and the surrounding gardens. Nearby, a
fountain with a bronze patina echoed its soft, murmuring rhythms along with the
flowing, smooth jazz filtering from the inconspicuous sound system. The warm, creamy-toned,
amply padded booths provided privacy and intimate dining with their high-backed,
semi-circular design.
As Shayna slid into her prime
location, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed by the news that her handsome
friend wasn’t working tonight. Maybe it wasn’t too late to call a couple of girlfriends.
She exchanged pleasantries with her server and perused the evening’s menu.
Decisions, decisions. Appetizer, entrée, and then dessert, or just skip the
first two and head straight for the good stuff?
Just then, Shayna felt the
luxurious padding in the booth shift and a familiar spicy scent tickled her
senses. When she looked up, she saw Sean Parker smiling expectantly at her.
She would have been lying if she’d said her heart didn’t skip a beat.
She couldn’t suppress her
smile. “Vlad said you weren’t working tonight.”
“Oh, you know I’m always
working,” he murmured, in a soft rumble.
