Page 32 of Silver-Tongued Devil
“Darlin’, you did awesome. That’s what I’m talking about. And, yeah, I said the word again. Guess I’m a slow learner.”
“Oh,” she said, “I don’t think so.”
He was still grinning like a fool, and the planes and angles that made up her remarkable face had softened some, too. She looked great, though she’d look a whole lot better if he could take her hair down. He asked, “How about my flower and my eagle? Going to sell them to me?”
“Oh. I wasn’t—” She cut herself off. “If you’re willing to pay what I’m asking.”
“Tell me the damage. Tell me what to give you to get you started on the paint, too.” He pulled his checkbook and a pen out of his pocket. “Go.”
“Twenty-four hundred for the eagle. Fifteen hundred for the iris. Thirty-nine hundred for both. No discount.” The words spilled out fast.
“Now, how hard was that to say?” he asked, starting to write.
“You’ll never know.”
“Betcha I would.” He signed his name, ripped the check out of the book, and handed it over. “Paint.”
“Um… five hundred twenty-five to start. Ten percent.” She was looking at the check, sounding breathless. “I’ll bill weekly, and bill separately for the paint. Pay within ten days on the labor, and you get a two-percent discount.”
“That’s good business. That you, or Evan?”
“Me.”
He nodded and wrote the second check. She took it, too, folded it up with the other one, stuck it in her bag, and said, “Wow. I would’ve taken half that for the stained glass. I would’ve beenthrilledto take half.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Here’s something to chew on. I would’ve paid double.”
She was hanging onto her purse like the checks would blow away. “Don’t tell me that. It annoys me.”
He laughed. “I’ll tell you this instead. I’m taking off this afternoon, and I won’t be back until Monday night. So if you want to get started right away, go for it. If I’ve got to wait for you to finish your glass piece, don’t tell me. It’ll annoy me to know I don’t come first with you.”
She smiled sweetly at him. “But you know… I’ve decided I like annoying you. It’s a very powerful feeling.”
Blake wished he could look at his watch. It was Monday. That much, he knew. He’d flown to Denver on Friday afternoon, then down to Dallas and on to Houston last night before returning to Wild Horse this afternoon. He’d come into the resort straight from the jet again, and he had restless feet. And restless hands.
He stood in the middle of the largest of the retail spaces at the resort, all blank white walls and echoing emptiness, frowned absently at Melody Farnsworth, and clicked the volume buttons on his phone up and down while his assistant Jennifer typed on her own phone beside him.
“We’ve got leases signed and ready to go on all but a couple of the retail spaces,” Melody said. “And we’ve got a few companies on the fence for those. I’m confident they’ll be rented and set up by the time the resort opens, even though the time frame’s getting tight. To be honest, some of them have been a little hesitant about how much draw the resort will have in such an unknown area, although of course your celebrity and that NFL-studded opening weekend has helped to convince them.”
Melody had a sheet of the straightest, shiniest dark hair you could imagine, and now, she smiled at him and shoved it back over her shoulder, where it fell into place in a way that seemed too perfect to be real.
His ex-girlfriend Courtney had explained to him once in eye-glazing detail how you got your hair to do that. He’d zoned out, to be honest, as he did through most of Courtney’s beauty and fashion critiques, but it had started out with, “I was out at the mall today, and I’ve decided to do a post dedicated to hair improvement. Not maintenance—improvement.It’s an investment of an extra half-hour a day, a salon visit, and a couple hundred dollars a month, that’s all. Women would be surprised how fast it would pay off, because good-looking peoplealwaysmake more money. If womengotthat, maybe they wouldn’t let themselves go like they do. As it is, they let themselves go gray and gain weight and don’t update their makeup for the new season, and then they wonder why they don’t get ahead. It’s justgrooming.”
She’d followed up with specifics, but that was when he’d stopped listening. He’d been too busy imagining his mom or sister spending an extra couple hundred dollars a month on their hair and going to some website to figure out how to update their makeup for Spring.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t been quick enough—or been too blitzed on those pain pills—to catch that one when he and Courtney had gone to visit his folks over Christmas. And sure enough, his mother had skewered Courtney in the nicest possible way, starting with, “Is that the best use of a woman’s time, though, do you think?” and “I wonder if we don't have to be careful about telling women that their best path to success is focusing on their looks.” His sister had stared at Courtney as if she were analyzing her DNA and it was coming up lacking, and his dad had said, “You both make interesting points. Fascinating subject, grooming, all the way into prehistory. Now, the Egyptians…” And Courtney had cried in the bedroom later, telling him, “Your family hates me. I can tell.” And then there’d been his mother the next day, saying, “Honey, I don’t like to interfere, and of course you’ll choose your own partner, but…”
Fortunately, there wouldn’t be another Christmas like that one, because Courtney was explaining her beauty secrets to another lucky guy now. But that was why he was on the new track. So much less aggravation in every way if he had the well-bred, ladylike type who’d pick up on social cues and steer the conversation onto safe ground and all that good stuff. So much calm, orderly structure at home, too. The way it was supposed to be when you were raising a family.
“How about interest in the possible expansion?” he asked Melody, getting back to the topic. If the resort went the way he was hoping, he was going to open up a destination mini-mall beside it, a pedestrian space full of the kind of upscale boutiques people enjoyed wasting their money in while they were on vacation. Some people, anyway. Courtney had cured him of any hidden shopping desires he’d ever possessed.
“Interest is strong,” Melody said. “I can send you a summary.”
“Do that.” She should have done it already. “And then update it every week,” he added. “Business name, what they do, website, revenues.”
“Spreadsheet,” Jennifer murmured beside him.
He glanced at her. Wasn’t that obvious? “Yeah. Spreadsheet.”
