Personal Assets (Texas Nights) (3 page)

Fifty minutes into the group session, Allie checked her watch. “I hate to break up the party, but we only have ten more minutes.”

Four of the women sitting around the oak conference table groaned.

“Already? We were just getting started,” Suzanne Jensen complained, but her grin was good-natured.

“Before we leave, does everyone have an idea for the special assignment?” Allie looked around the room, and everyone was nodding except Emmalee. Of course she had no idea what Allie was talking about since the group had discussed it last week. “Emmalee, I challenged everyone to set a bold sexual goal, something outside her comfort zone, and achieve it within the next month. An example might be exploring a long-held fantasy or even taking a new lover.”

Emmalee sank a little lower in her chair.

“If you’re not ready for a special project, you can participate by learning from the other ladies’ projects.”

“Consider me a spectator.”

Fine. Allie wasn’t going to push Cameron’s mom to declare a project. Not this soon. “For those who are comfortable sharing, we’ll discuss plans at our next session.”

The women chatted and Allie straightened her papers until the edges lined up, then slid them into a plastic envelope. Her thoughts drifted back to Cameron. His hands were huge, with wide palms and thick fingers. How would they feel on her skin?

“What about you?” Suzanne asked.

Probably rough and hot and—

“Allie.”

Crud, what had she missed? “Hmm?”

“I said, what about you?”

“What about me, what?”

“Do you have a special project in mind?”

Everything inside her stilled.

“Yeah, unless you’ve been trotting off to Houston to do your
homework
,” another woman chimed in, “then I’m pretty sure our fearless leader isn’t walking the walk she talks the talk about.”

Caught. Why hadn’t she anticipated this?

“What about that nice young man at the bank? Nelson something-or-another.”

Nelson Bramhall. Allie suppressed a shudder at the thought of getting physically involved with her dad’s second in command.

Suzanne scoffed. “He’s a Yankee.”

“Last I checked, Yankees have working parts too,” the other client said. “Maybe not as good as a Texan’s, but something’s better than nothing, right, Allie?”

Hot and cold. Light and dark. Sweat bloomed under her arms. She was screwed and not in the way she recommended to her clients. “We should focus on your relationships, not—”

“What d’you say, gals?” Suzanne winked. “Should Allie have to take her own advice?”

Allie glanced at Cameron’s mom, but Emmalee gave her a little shrug and a barely noticeable smile. How could Allie expect to motivate her clients if she wasn’t willing to take a spoonful of her own medicine? “I’ll come up with one between now and the next session.”

Cheers rose from the table. The women gathered their bags and filtered out the door and into Red Light. Only Emmalee remained in the room. “Thanks for letting me sit in today.”

That didn’t sound promising. “This group is a little more outspoken than some of the others. If you’d rather try individual counseling or a workshop—”

“I’ll think about it.” Emmalee rose and squeezed Allie’s hand. “I’m not sure I’m brave enough for all this yet, but I
know
you are.”

Chapter Two

Midday, Cameron’s stomach grumbled, reminding him he’d only eaten a bowl of tap-water-drenched cereal and slugged back one cup of black coffee before Allie Shelby clobbered BB this morning. When the spicy smell of barbecue hit his nose, he inhaled the smoky scent until it filled his lungs. “If this is some kind of olfactory dream, I don’t wanna wake up.”

“Olfactory. Now that’s a ten-dollar word if I ever heard one.”

Cameron turned from the workbench at the back of the garage to find Beck Childress standing in the bay door holding a brown paper bag. “So says the Stanford grad. I wondered when you’d show your ugly face.”

“This brisket is going to taste damn good.” Beck crumpled the top of the bag. “Too bad I only bought enough for one.”

“Even you aren’t that stupid.”

“Why should I feed you lunch when you can’t even haul your ass by to see me?” They’d been friends since middle school when Mrs. Satterwhite busted them both for smoking stale Marlboros behind the gym.

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but this place needs work. Got no time to run all over town making social calls.”

Beck scanned the marginally improved garage. Cameron had been cleaning since midmorning, but except for a pile of trash thrown out the back door and a cleared, grease-stained concrete floor, he didn’t have much to show for it. He washed up in the cracked porcelain sink attached to the workbench.

Beck’s attention caught on the magazine pages taped all over the grungy cinder-block walls. “Always did like Scoot’s gallery.”

“He had an eye, I’ll give you that.” Cameron walked over, gave Beck a one-armed back-thumping guy hug and grabbed the sack from his hand. “I’ll take this. Wouldn’t want to get sauce down your uniform.” The creases in Beck’s khaki chief deputy shirt were so sharp, they could’ve sliced the brisket for their sandwiches.

“Hey, asshole.” Beck snagged the barbecue bag back.

Cameron led the way into a neglected office where Led Zeppelin blared from an old clock radio Scoot had left, as well. When he sold, he’d handed the place over lock, stock, barrel and filth.

“Any big crimes in Shelbyville lately?” he asked.

“I hear you had murder in your eye at the corner of Main and Gordon this morning.”

Cameron winced. “It was her fault.”

“I don’t give a good crap whose fault it was. You both left before my guys arrived.”

Yeah, and he was the one who’d hauled his dislocated bumper into the garage after driving through town with it sticking out of his backseat like a big silver Fuck Off sign. That wasn’t exactly the kind of advertising he had in mind for his paint and body business. Good thing his mom and Jamie didn’t rely on him to pay the bills anymore because, so far, this moving-home thing was a cluster and a half.

He drew in the scent of beef, potato salad and hotter-than-hell barbecue sauce and tried to release the tension knotted in his shoulders. He could survive a few lean months. He just needed enough paint and body business to give him the time and money to drum up the work he really wanted to do—restore cars like BB and that fantasy GTO.

“I stopped myself from killing anyone.” But he’d been tempted. Dodging cars, bikes and people gathered at the intersection had cost Cameron another fifteen minutes this morning. Damn place had looked as if the annual Crockett County street dance had kicked off four months early. By the time he’d made it to the garage, Scoot was already gone and had left the keys dangling from the doorknob.

“That’s the only reason I’m feeding you instead of hauling you in.” Beck up-ended the bag, spilling out paper-wrapped packets, sliced onion, dill pickles and soft white bread.

“Took me a while to get out of there, which means you’ve got bigger problems than me.”

“Hell, we’re shorthanded right now.”

Cameron adjusted the radio so Rush’s “Working Man” rasped out at reasonable volume. He grabbed a paper plate and slapped together a sliced beef sandwich doused with sauce and topped with pickles and jalapeños, along with sides of ribs and potato salad. He gestured to a small cooler next to his desk. “Got beer or Coke.”

Beck rummaged through the ice and grabbed two soft drinks. “Wayne was calming Widow Pritchett because she was convinced her flying squirrel was stuck in the pine tree in her front yard. I was in the middle of a bicycle safety presentation at the elementary school. Made it to the intersection a few minutes after you left.”

“The life of a sheriff’s chief deputy.”

“Not as glamorous as it sounds, huh?”

Probably not as glamorous as whatever the hell he’d done up in New York for a few years, but that uniform fit him as though it had been custom-made. Beck was law down to the tips of his black boots.

“Wasn’t a big deal.” Except for his bumper, his jeans and his pride.

“I hear BB was the only casualty.”

“My bumper was brand new, polished and perfect. Until Allie Shelby invaded my backseat.” Thinking about her sitting up in that Escalade looking down on him had aggravation crawling all over Cameron again. “Tapping her pink fingernails on her phone. Chatting about softball practice.” Ignoring him while he’d stood there in a puddle of his own drool.

Beck chuckled and sprawled back into the seen-better-days recliner Scoot had generously left behind. “Apparently, you don’t know a thing about the new and improved Alice Ann Shelby.”

“I know a princess when I see one. She was perched up in that Escalade like it was a damn throne. There’s only one way to describe Robert Shelby’s daughter. Spoiled.” Lunch had cured his hunger and his headache, but the pain stomped right back into his frontal lobe at the mention of Shelby, president of Shelbyville Bank and Trust.

“You should know better than anyone that the sins of the father don’t always trickle down to the kid.”

Cameron bit into his sandwich so hard that sauce squirted out either side, hitting both his T-shirt and the 1960s-era teacher’s desk he sat behind.

“Shelby was an asshole to your mom when your dad left. Don’t take that out on Allie.”

Cameron coughed away the curdled flavor sitting at the back of his throat. “I plan to avoid them both, at least once Allie makes things right with BB.” He would reattach the bumper himself, but he’d charge Allie his going rate. “I’ll head to the softball fields this afternoon and get it squared away.”

“You should know a thing or two first. Allie’s not the girl you remember. You’re gonna find you’ve met your match if you go toe-to-toe with her.”

“I’m not interested in going toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose, or anything-else-to-anything-else with her.” Yeah, like he hadn’t stood there this morning thinking about mouth to breast. Or hand to ass.

Nice fantasy, but Allie was a test-drive-and-park-it-back-on-the-lot model rather than a take-it-home-and-keep-it-in-the-garage model.

“Have you heard anything about Allie’s business?” Beck asked casually. Maybe too casually.

“Why should I care unless she’s gonna give my body shop a run for its money?”

Beck passed Cameron a business card and grinned like he expected one of those springy snake things to leap out any second.

Cameron rubbed his thumb along the edge of the parchment-colored card stock and the scent of cinnamon drifted up. Damn, now he knew how she smelled. He flipped the card over, read the business name and flinched as though something
had
sprung from the paper. “What the hell?”

With only two years of college, he might not be educated, but he had a brain rattling around in his skull. Regardless, Allie’s business slogan had it spinning off track. He read the words aloud, “
Personal Assets.
You deserve perfectly stellar sex.
”

When Cameron finally looked up, Beck’s grin had turned into a full-on smirk. “Not exactly what you expected, huh?”

“I don’t believe for a minute that Allie Shelby is a high-class hooker and advertises publicly in her hometown.”

“No, she’s not a hooker, high class or otherwise.” By this time, Beck laughed outright. “Her business is legit. I don’t pretend to understand it, but from what I’ve been told she counsels women. Helps them work on sexual insecurities and hang-ups and fantasies.”

All Cameron heard was
sexual
and
fantasies.
“You’re not serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

Allie Shelby, the Goody Two-shoes cheerleader his brother took to homecoming his sophomore year in high school, was some kind of Dr. Ruth? Only a helluva a lot sexier. Where had she gotten the kind of experience needed to teach other women about the ins and outs of sex?

Cameron rubbed at the pain dead-center in his chest, trying to coax out a belch. Because sure as hell that feeling was indigestion and not jealousy. He didn’t even know Allie, not really. What did he care how she made her living? Still he asked, “How does a person prepare for a career like that, major in sex ed or something?”

“All I know is her dad let her go as far as Southeast State and she earned several degrees.”

“She thinks this kind of business will fly in Shelbyville?” Robert Shelby had lost his hard-ass edge if he was allowing his only daughter to even say the word
sex
in public, much less teach people how to do it.

“Seems to be doing okay so far. I mean, she doesn’t publicize her client list, but it’s pretty easy to figure out who attends her workshops even when they hide their cars behind the building. And since Roxanne Eberly’s lingerie store is next door, I think they do a decent referral business.”

“I’ve been gone longer than I thought if Shelbyville can support two sex businesses in one city block.”

Beck stood, crushed his Coke can in one fist and wadded his lunch trash in the other. He made a three-pointer with each into the trash can. “I’ve gotta get back to the office before all hell breaks loose with someone else’s feral pet. Let me know how your talk with Allie goes.”

Nothing had gone down the way Cameron expected today. And something told him the day was far from over.

* * *

Allie grabbed her softball equipment bag and hustled into Roxanne’s shop. “I’m out for the day.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m due at the field in fifteen minutes.”

“Then you’ve got ten to finish our conversation from earlier.” Roxanne was dressing another mannequin, one with a creamy café au lait complexion, in a filmy blue genie outfit. “What’s the story with Emmalee?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“I know she and her boys had a hard time of it when her husband took off.”

The gossip train in Shelbyville was still running right on time. Allie let her bag slide to the floor. Roxanne wouldn’t let her out of here until she came clean. “After his dad left, Cameron pretty much took over as man of the house.”

“That sucks.”