Authors: Anna Jeffrey
The Tycoon (5 page)
“I understand, Dad. I don’t know all I need to yet. What I do know is that wind energy has support. And a manufacturing plant in that part of the state would mean a lot to the local people.”
“So what?” Dad said. “You into social engineering now? Not a damn one of those green energy companies has come up with anything that’ll get a Boeing 747 off the ground. And until they do, I’m not impressed. This family’s gonna just keep pumping oil as long as they’ll let us.”
During his week-long visit, Drake had had a year-end meeting with his whole family. The Double-Barrel was a family corporation and they got together several times a year to discuss the state of the ranch and plan for the future. He always had positive news to report at the year-end meeting, but this year, the atmosphere had been grim. The ranch wasn’t falling apart yet, but Mother Nature had not been kind. Everybody had to tighten his belt in the coming year. Or years.
“You don’t have to worry,” Drake said. “I’m not going to do anything that’ll sink the ship.”
“I know that, Son. I’m just reminding you I don’t like those damn windmills. They’re killing high-flying birds. A balls-out effort has been made to save the eagles and now they’re getting killed flying into windmills. Besides that, every time I turn on the news, I hear that another one’s gone broke. But I do like those energy company leases.”
“I say just keep leasing the land,” Pic put in. “Let somebody else take the risk of building the windmill engines.”
Drake tamped down his annoyance. Often these days, he found his vision of the future in conflict with that of his father and brother. He had confidence in his own judgment. He always had, even when he was younger. No matter what might be going on in the economy in general, he had never feared risk, had always had an expectation of success. Most of his gambles had been spot-on and profitable.
As for the windmills, as far as Drake was concerned, the jury was still out on large-scale green energy production. Though he hadn’t seen much success or profit in it so far, he wasn’t opposed to it. At this year’s family meeting, he had reported that the windmill construction was about half-finished and he was in talks with TXE about leasing more land. If he continued, at some point, all of the Lockhart West Texas holdings would be under lease for windmill sites.
“Speaking of socializing,” Pic said, preventing the conversation from escalating into an argument, “I meant to show you something.” He left the table and returned with a newspaper folded in quarters. “You made the paper. The
Dallas Morning News
no less” He slid the paper across the table toward Drake.
He recognized the background in the picture as the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, where last week he had accompanied Donna to a function held by one of the many organizations she supported. He hated seeing himself in the newspaper, but as the only daughter of one of the richest, most powerful men in Texas, Donna made the paper if she sneezed. He’d had to learn to live with that, but he hadn’t learned to love it.
“She told the reporter that wrote this story that you and her are about to get hitched.” To Drake’s aggravation, his younger brother chortled. “She says you’re out shopping for a ring.”
“The hell,” Drake said and continued to read. Sure enough, the quote from Donna was there. A fresh annoyance niggled at him. He had never proposed to her. He hadn’t said he loved her. Except for his fiancé of thirteen years ago, when he was a dumb kid, he had never loved
any
woman.
“You got some news you’re not sharing, Son?” Dad asked. Now, he, too, was grinning. “Your mother says she’s Don Stafford’s daughter.”
Mom.
Drake did a mental eye roll. His mother had heard about him and Donna on some golf course and had been practically breathless when she had quizzed him about it.
Everybody in Texas knew Don Stafford, either directly or indirectly. He had owned an oil company that he sold for a fortune, but continued to hold a major interest in. Now, semi-retired, he sat on many boards, owned a Cadillac dealership among other things and a part of the Texas Rangers baseball team. His influence had long tentacles.
Drake had never asked his father if he and Don Stafford were acquainted because he rarely discussed his social life with his family. But he was sure Pic and Dad both knew that if he were planning on getting married, he wouldn’t keep it a secret from them. They were just having fun needling him.
“Don’t forget, Mom’s planning your wedding,” Pic added, still laughing.
Mom again.
He had ended his affair with Donna twice, most recently a month ago. Then,
somehow, influenced by his own mother and Donna’s father, he had let himself be dragged back into it. But he wasn’t happy. Donna was spoiled, self-centered, petulant and aggressive. She drank too much and he suspected she engaged in other substance abuse when she wasn’t with him.
He had been growing ever more vexed with her drinking, her aimless lifestyle, her superficial friends he viewed as being equally aimless, and her in general. He had difficulty relating to people who had nothing productive to do or who couldn’t carry on a conversation about anything more interesting than what somebody wore to some party or who’d had the latest plastic surgery.
For weeks, he had been thinking he and Donna had reached a dead end, wasn’t sure why he had stuck around this long. Six months was longer than his affairs ever lasted.
He slid the newspaper back toward his little brother. “That’s garbage. It should go in the trash.” He left his seat and walked over to the counter and the coffee maker for a refill, leaving Pic chuckling behind him.
“I can’t trash it yet,” Pic said. “I’ve got to show it to Mandy. She’ll get a kick out of it.”
Amanda Breckenridge had been Pic’s girlfriend off and on since they were all in Drinkwell High School together. The fall after graduation, Pic had gone away to college, leaving her behind in high school. The next year Pic had met his future wife and eloped.
Before the midterm and before Pic brought his bride back to the Double-Barrel to meet the family, Mandy moved away to live with an aunt in West Texas. The Treadway County grapevine had blabbed about how she had left town because her heart had been broken by Pic’s choosing another girl. Drake didn’t know if that was true.
A few years later, she returned to help care for her widowed and ill father. At the same time, she went to work as a teacher and the girls’ swim coach in the Drinkwell school system. By that time, Pic had been divorced several years.
Pic and Mandy had been dating again. They appeared to be in love, or at least something like it. Neither of them saw anyone else, yet Pic never mentioned marrying her. That could be because Mom constantly ragged on him, telling him he could do better than Mandy. Drake had no idea what drove their mother’s thinking. After Pic’s disastrous marriage, why wouldn’t a mother want her son to marry someone who cared about him as much as Mandy obviously cared about Pic?
Having lived his adult life in a world apart from his brother, Drake’s history with the fairer sex was different. After Tammy, he had kept tight control of his relationships. Consequently, unlike his brother, no woman had ever led him down the garden path. His various female acquaintances had called him a litany of colorful names—rogue, commitment-phobe, self-centered bastard, among others. He let most of that roll off of him. He had trained himself not to worry about people’s opinions and name-calling.
Yet, a small part of him envied what his little brother had going on with Mandy. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have a woman who cared about him simply for the man he was. Most of the women he had known liked his local celebrity and his reputation as a business success, liked the Lockhart money and his status as an heir in a wealthy old Texas family, but he had never been convinced that any of them liked
him
all that much. What most women liked, he had concluded, was money and the power they could gain from marriage to a man with the right connections.
At some point, he chosen for marriage not to clutter his life and distract him from his goals. Maybe deep down, at the bottom of it all, he hung on with Donna because she was unimpressed by someone else’s money and power. Few men in Texas, not even the governor, could compete with her own father. And she was a wild woman in bed—when she wasn’t drunk.
“You won’t be back ’til Christmas, I take it?” his dad said.
“Not planning on it.”
“You’ll be bringing your mother with you, right?”
“If that’s what she wants.”
“Humph,” Pic grunted. “It’d probably stay a helluva lot quieter around here if she made up her mind to either come back for good or stay away altogether.”
“Don’t be disrespectful, Son,” Dad said sternly. “She’s your mother. And she’s still my wife.”
Pic got to his feet. “I told Smokey I’d ride with him to check on the windmill up on Windy Ridge. See ya tonight, Drake.” He walked out.
For years now, Pic had been vocal about his anger at their mother. He and Kate both believed she was responsible for most of the chaos that existed around the Double-Barrel.
Looking after him, Dad shook his head slowly. “If she came back, I guess Pic would move out of the ranch house.”
No doubt
, Drake thought, but he kept that opinion to himself, along with the fact that their mother still had the male friend in Fort Worth she had been seeing since before she moved there. And their friendship was not platonic.
But Drake had never been one to knowingly contribute to the family discord. Enough of it thrived without any help from him. He confined his energy to trying to help the Double-Barrel financially. And right now, it needed a lot of help.
****
Shannon’s week passed quietly. On Friday morning, she called the Dallas real estate broker and followed up on the bid she had made on the five-acre corner. He told her he was expecting another offer, probably by Monday.
Damn.
She bit down on her lower lip. She had so hoped for no competition.
Chapter 5
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack…
Shannon quickstepped toward the Worthington Hotel in downtown Fort Worth, her shoes clicking like castanets against a wet sidewalk.
Like fairy fingers a fine mist peppered her face and hair. A north wind gusted through the canyons of multistory buildings, bringing tears to her eyes and penetrating the thin skirt of her evening dress as if it weren’t there. Her feet had become blocks of ice. Silver sling-backs were lousy winter footwear. She berated herself for parking two blocks away, rued that she had been too cheap to park in covered parking closer to her destination.
The hotel entrance loomed just up the block and across the street in an ocean of bright lights. She shoved her evening bag under her arm, clutched her jacket collar against her throat with one hand, lifted her flimsy skirt to her knees with the other and quickened her pace to a trot.
…
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack…