Designed for Love (Texas Nights) (3 page)

“Let me try again.” He swiped the card again and received the same beep in response. “It appears your card has been rejected, Ms. Davenport.”

She ducked her head to dig into her purse again, but she couldn’t hide the flush rising over the collar of her flirty pink shirt. She pulled out another card. “Try this one.”

A minute later, there was another beep and
hmm.

By this time, Ashton was standing in front of the counter, her neck and face filled with color, but if he’d touched her, Mac had a feeling she would be pale as death beneath all that embarrassment.

“Third time’s a charm?” the manager asked. Snidely, if Mac’s ears were working right. And he’d damn well never had a problem with his hearing.

Ashton reached for Napoleon, and Mac passed him back. She took a deep breath, straightened her back and looked the manager directly in the eye. “Those are the only ones I have.”

“Surely, you don’t expect me to believe you can’t—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Mac cut in, shifting closer to Ashton’s side and skimming her shoulder.

Mouths half-open, both the manager and Ashton swung their attention to him. Yeah, he was a little surprised at his offer too. Especially since paying her bill would pretty much wipe out what he had scraped together in his account. He’d planned to send a payment to his drywall sub in Dallas, but the guy’d been waiting for months now. He could wait a day or two longer. After all, it wasn’t as if Ashton wasn’t good for the money.

“What did you say?” she asked.

Mac pulled his checkbook from the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll write a check.”

“You don’t have to—”

He leaned close, lowered his voice. “Do you want out of this place anytime in the next century?”

“More than you could possibly know.”

“It’s a technicality. Just paper.”

“Over ten grand worth of paper.”

“My account can handle it.” For a day or two.

Ashton rubbed a hand over her beautiful face as though warring with herself. Finally, she lifted her chin and made eye contact with him. “Fine, but I’ll pay back every cent.”

Something about her low but forceful tone set Mac’s oh-shit-ometer vibrating.

“I’m just not sure when.”

Chapter Two

Ashton hit her car’s brights to better light the cratered oil-top road she was bumping down. Within a half mile, the road dead-ended into twin dirt ruts bisected by weeds taller than her convertible’s hood. If those weeds weren’t listing to the left, proving someone had driven this path recently, she would’ve backed out, turned her butt around and taken Napoleon back to the apartment for a bowl of Frosty Paws.

Then again, they’d been out of the pricey frozen dog treats for three weeks now.

After the grocery store fiasco a few days ago, Ashton had been so humiliated and so damned thankful for Mac, she’d darted out of the grocery store before he could finish filling in the check to the Piggly Wiggly. And the name on his check...Michael E. McLaughlin. She hadn’t known his name was Michael. And that
E
initial was driving her crazy—Ethan, Edward, Earl?

Now that she knew his real name, she felt even more indebted to him.

“He’s not my type,” she told Napoleon. Never in her life had she been with a man who looked as though he could pull up a tree, roots and all, and carry it ten miles on his back. “He’s too big and burly. He probably has to siphon off the excess testosterone every morning. So my heart beats a little faster when he’s around. I probably have a cardiac problem. The man wears flannel shirts. With snaps, for God’s sake.”

She sat at the crossroads, her headlights shining into the woods surrounding Lily Lake, while Napoleon perched his fuzzy paws on the passenger side window and whined. She could normally read his moods easily, but the sound he was making was a cross between “I swear there are bears in those trees,” “I desperately need a pawdicure on these ragged nails,” and “You’re seriously hot for Paul Bunyan boy?”

“I know, sweetie. I’ve been a bad mommy. Maybe if Gigi can offer some advice—” or money, “—we can schedule a spa day.” She probably shouldn’t put that onus on her grandmother. And she’d learned not to make promises she couldn’t keep because Napoleon understood every word she said, and he’d hold her to them. After the filet fiasco and her subsequent scolding, he’d found his way into her makeup drawer. It had taken two baths to wash all the mascara and lipstick out of his fur. If he went at it again, she’d be forced to skulk around the local discount store in a trench coat and dark glasses to buy an all-in-one makeup kit for under twenty bucks. A shudder rippled up her spine. Napoleon even looked over at her as if to say
do not go there.

But the way things were, she might not even be able to afford an eye shadow-blusher combo.

She blew out a breath. If only she could blow her troubles away as easily. She’d thought moving an hour and a half north of Houston would improve her quality of life. Sure, she was no longer living off her parents, but dammit, eating was
not
overrated.

Her stomach did a grizzly bear imitation, and she eased off the brake. Her best chance for dinner tonight was down this stretch of dirt and grass.
I
hope Gigi packed a basket of Louis’s goodies.

Her low-slung car shimmied as it bumped through the potholes, and she rubbed a circle along the dash. “I’m sorry. This will be over soon.” No sense in breaking the news to the Mercedes that they’d have to drive this way again to get the hell out of here.

She crept along, and after another five minutes a yellowish light finally filtered through the branches. When she rounded the last bend, she was so focused on the hulking Buick Roadmaster parked by a squat but sprawling cabin that she didn’t notice the low-hanging pine branch until the stomach-sickening sound of it scraping down the right side of her car broke the silence.

“Dammit all to Houston and back.” Yeah, that was one place she couldn’t go again. If she belly-crawled back to River Oaks, she’d never hear the end of it from her parents. And if anything made her stomach hurt more than the shriek of that branch peeling paint off her car, it was the thought of listening to the elder Davenports telling her
I
told you so
for the remainder of her godforsaken life.

She parked behind her grandmother’s car, a source of eternal embarrassment to Ashton’s mother. Aka Gigi’s daughter. If Ashton had a nickel for every time her mom had said, “Mother, please buy a Mercedes,” she wouldn’t be scraping together pennies right now.

To which Gigi always replied, “I drive a Buick, and I’m damn well going to keep driving one until the day you pack my dead body into a plain pine box. Don’t you dare spend money on all that satin and velour shit. Do you hear me?”

That was normally when Ashton’s mother dove for the gin and vermouth. But just the thought brought a wide grin to Ashton’s face tonight. Adelaide Chappell might chap her daughter’s ass on a continual basis, but she and Jessup had been Ashton’s only sources of calm in the Davenport family storm during her childhood. Maybe if Designs to Die For croaked before she could really get it off the ground, Ashton could move up to Fort Worth. Keep Gigi company.

Yeah, as if Gigi sat around at home all day. That woman sped up and down I-35 to Austin several times a month to “jerk knots in legislators’ asses.”

Ashton scooped up Napoleon, tucked him under her arm and picked her way through mounds of pine straw to what she assumed was the cabin’s front door. This was her first visit to what Gigi referred to as her grandfather’s former sin wagon. He’d kept this place out on Lily Lake for years, claiming it was his hunting and fishing camp. But after his death, Gigi had discovered he used it mostly for drinking, gambling and philandering. Okay,
philandering
wasn’t the word Gigi used, but Ashton could not think about
that
word and her grandparents in the same sentence.

Now Gigi had decided it was time to finally clean out the place and make her own memories by throwing a party out here in the boonies.

Ashton readjusted a squirming Napoleon and tapped on the thick wooden door. “If you don’t stop all that wiggling, I’ll put you on the ground,” she told him. “Don’t come crying to me when you get your rear kicked by a possum, do you hear me?”

He went limp in her hold and sent her a pouting look that, in the past, had her scrambling for a dog treat.

“C’mon in,” Gigi called from inside.

Ashton pushed open the heavy door and entered a dimly lit living area decorated with massive leather couches and mounted animal heads. It smelled of decade-old cigar smoke, spilled beer, and a stale, sweet scent she didn’t want to speculate about, since her grandfather had been found here dead with his twenty-two-year-old mistress in hysterics and his Brooks Brothers boxers binding his wrists.

Ugh. Maybe those hunger pains wouldn’t be a problem after all.

She let Napoleon jump to the floor and scamper off to investigate what looked like a pile of shellacked fish in a woven basket.

Gigi hurried in from a hallway, wearing a turquoise hoodie and sweatpants with
Hot Chick
embroidered down the left leg. “Ashton, you look...” she trailed off as she approached, “...like you could use a stiff drink and some munchies.” She gave Ashton a strong hug, but her six-inch height deficit meant her arms hit Ashton at the elbows.

“Who am I to turn down a few of Louis’s creations?” She patted Gigi’s back awkwardly since her arms were pinned to her sides.

“About that...” Gigi leaned back, studied Ashton’s face. Probably checking out the dark circles and strain lines. “Louis had the week off. I’ve been in Austin bending the ear of anyone who would listen about that new women’s health-care bill. But I did stop by the grocery store.”

Napoleon came trotting over, a shiny, stiff fish clamped in his jaws. The trout or perch or bass or whatever-the-hell was as long as Napoleon, and he weaved to and fro trying to keep his balance. Gigi stooped down and wrestled it from him, but that fish was a goner, with needle-sized tooth marks up and down its body. She tossed it into the fireplace, cranked on the gas, and with a flip of a switch lit it up like a bonfire. “No better than what that stink bait deserves.”

Ashton had a suspicion Gigi wasn’t referring to the fish.

“I dropped everything in the kitchen before I changed clothes. Let’s see what we can find you to snack on before everyone else shows up to help me get rid of the cabin’s bad juju.” She waved to the ottoman Ashton had been about to sink onto.

Ashton’s thigh muscles contracted to keep her in a half-squat position, and she scrutinized the piece upholstered with fly fishermen.
Juju
could be Gigi’s code word for bodily fluids.
Blech.

Gigi led the way through an open doorway and into a kitchen that had last been updated in the Gene Autry era. Low ceilings, pine-paneled cabinets and a collection of cowboy-themed salt and pepper shakers lining the windowsill over the sink. So different from her grandparents’ colonial-style house in Fort Worth. “How could he stand it?”

A sly smile tipped up Gigi’s lips. “I have a feeling Bambi or Randi or Cherri probably made it a lovely home away from home for Gordon. Don’t get me wrong, I doubt she cooked, but your grandfather was never picky about where his...
vittles
...came from.”

“Did it hurt too much to face it before now?” Ashton wanted to bury her head in her hands just thinking about her grandfather and his affairs. Why would a man ever cheat on a woman as beautiful, smart and strong as Adelaide Chappell? Maybe those were exactly the reasons he did it. Ashton knew firsthand that some men just wanted arm candy. Gigi wasn’t arm candy, and damned if Ashton would ever be again.

“Hurt? I don’t know if that’s the word for it. I just didn’t want to clean up another of your grandfather’s messes, so I avoided it for way too long. Sweetheart, something’s making you awfully unhappy—” Gigi patted Ashton’s cheek, then turned to dig into a trio of grocery sacks, “—and it’s not your jackass of a grandfather. Talk to me.”

Good Lord, Louis would have a coronary if he could see what Gigi was unloading onto the scarred table. One leg was shorter than the other three, so every time she dropped another high-fat frozen appetizer on the top, the whole thing wobbled like a man with a peg leg. Fung-Ku brand egg rolls. Happy Tummy ham mini-quiches. Taquitos. A vat of artichoke dip. And a three-pound package of beer weenies. Gigi caught Ashton’s openmouthed inspection. “Don’t worry, I brought barbecue sauce to go with these.”

“You don’t cook.” Which was pretty much where Ashton got her lack of culinary talent.

“This isn’t cooking. It’s warming. Any idiot can throw weenies in a Crock-Pot.”

At that, Napoleon jumped up, braced his front paws on a chair and woofed his agreement. Ashton’s stomach rumbled along. Looked as if both she and her dog would walk away tonight with full bellies and a bad round of gas. “Then at least let me help.”

They each scrounged around in the cabinets looking for cookie sheets. No slow cooker to be found, so Gigi dumped the weenies and sauce into a pan and cranked up the gas flame beneath them. Ashton shoved a couple of blackened cookie sheets full of greasy treats into an oven smelling of burned cheese and what she feared was a roasted carcass.

“I figured the old goat still had booze stashed out here, but I wasn’t taking any chances.” Gigi pulled the real treasure from a box wedged in the corner. A bottle of fifty-dollar Cabernet. To hell with beer weenies, this was what Ashton needed. Gigi pointed at a chair with the neck of the wine bottle. “Now, sit down and tell me why you look like roadkill.”

Ashton slumped into a seat that also rocked on three legs, and Napoleon hopped into her lap to sniff at the bags on the table. “It’s not all I thought it would be.”

“What’s not?”

“Small-town living.”

Gigi whirled around from where she was wrestling with the stubborn wine cork, her brows lowering over her still-bright blue eyes. “Not enough shoe stores for you out here in the outback?”

“I’ve got more than enough Louboutins to last me a lifetime. I just thought it would be...you know...nicer.”

Gigi snorted out a laugh. “What the hell is that supposed to mean—nicer?”

“When I was a little girl, you used to tell me I could do anything I wanted.” The glass of wine Gigi handed her felt like red gold in her hands. She would savor every sip. “That I was smart and, dammit, people liked me. But I’m trying and it’s just not working.”

“You look like crap because you haven’t been voted Shelbyville’s Most Likely to be Liked?”

When she said it that way, it made Ashton sound shallow. Which may have been bull’s-eye accurate when she lived in Houston, but she’d moved to Shelbyville to change her life. Change who she was. But geographic location hadn’t miraculously made her life a bowl of plump cherries. She’d thought she would find purpose. Be respected because she was doing something with her life. But it was damned hard to gain respect when no one was hiring her to decorate their houses. Or anything else.

Besides, everyone in Shelbyville worked hard for a living. Ashton’s decision to become a productive member of society didn’t mean anything to them. “Dad makes running a business look so easy.”

The raspberry Gigi blew before she knocked back a mouthful of wine told Ashton exactly what her grandmother thought of her father. “That man lives to order people around and make a buck. Is that really what you want?”

“I’d like to have a buck.”
Oh.
Oh
,
shit.
That tidbit wasn’t meant to slip.

But Gigi’s eyes were already narrowing. “And what exactly does
that
mean?”

Ashton had always sucked at pedaling her bike backwards. “Oh, just that I’m continuing to build my client list.”

“Launching a new business takes time and an infusion of capital. Just earmark a certain amount from your trust and transfer it to your business account. By the time you’ve used up your initial investment, you’ll be on your feet.”

A scorched smell came from over Ashton’s shoulder, and she whirled around to find Gigi’s weenies boiling over on the stove.

“Hell and damnation.” Gigi jumped up to save them. “Next time, I’m bringing Louis out here with me.”

Amen to that. Wait a sec...next time? “I thought you were just here to purge the bad ju...uh...vibes. What in the world do you want with this musty old cabin?”