Page 4 of Liar & Champion
“Not you.”
His smile twinkled. “I’m too responsible not to place bets on both sides. Be careful with my car. It’s from my personal collection.”
“Does she have a name?”
“Cinnamon Bear.”
I stared at him. Daniel was one of the most cold-blooded, psychotic people I knew, and I knew my mother. “Cinnamon Bear? That’s downright wrong.”
“You’ve gotten soft if that bothers you.”
“No, that’s just unnatural and disturbing.”
He put a large hand on my shoulder, squeezing just enough to give me an idea of his hidden strength, the one he didn’t keep very well hidden. “You are easily disturbed. Enjoy your drive.”
“Not my visit?”
He shrugged and pulled out a pack of peanuts. “No one bet you’d enjoy that. I have money on the Ming vase. Make it at least fifty pieces, and I’ll split the winnings with you.”
I waved him away and got in the GTX Cobra. I’d enjoy this ride in spite of myself. It was a beautiful day, blue sky with a few puffy clouds in the Alabama sunshine. The road was freshly paved with plenty of winding turns. Concentrating on driving helped me separate my emotions from the reason I was here.
By the time I pulled through the iron gates of the old antebellum mansion, I mostly had my head together. I was hereto save my business, not break Ming vases. I would lose the red tape, not my temper.
I took a deep breath as I parked the sweet little goer in front of the double doors. The dark green paint was clean, crisp, in perfect condition like the rest of the property. She’d kept it up perfectly for the historical society that would love it after she kicked the bucket. Maybe someone would turn it into a bed and breakfast. The idea of unruly kids and dogs running around and scratching the wood and marble made me smile. Smiling was a good idea. I wasn’t the same eighteen-year-old that broke her butler’s nose and stole a car on my way out, and I wasn’t the twenty-one-year-old who came back for Thanksgiving with a prostitute I had dance on the table during dinner.
The memory made my smile slip, but at the time it had seemed necessary to confront her about my birth father and disrupt her world in the most unapologetic way possible.
Old Benton met me at the door, his expressionless face not showing any of the distaste he must feel for the person who gave him the scar over his nose.
“Benton. Aren’t you dead yet?”
“Not yet, sir. I do feel urges to feed on blood now and then, so perhaps I have and didn’t notice it yet.” He bared his teeth in a smile then turned and led me down the bright and airy hall. “This way, sir.”
“You can call me Nix,” I said with a friendly smile at his back. It wouldn’t be any trouble at all to stake him through the heart.
“I appreciate the gesture, but to me, you will always be Master Hammer.”
I gritted my teeth. I could suggest in more strong terms that he call me Nix, but I wasn’t getting distracted by nonessentials. “Whatever floats your boat. Mm. This house is beautiful, like a woman lives here with a herd of cats. And the parlor? She always disliked that room.”
He didn’t answer, just led me to the pastel blue room with an ancient oriental carpet that I’d rolled around on with whoever and whatever I could get. Wrestling, fighting, it was always my first love, my first nature.
My mother, the Crocodile of Alabama, wore a matching pale blue suit, holding a cup of tea and gazing out the window at the azaleas. Her pale hair was up, like always, in an elegant chignon that made her look taller and more regal than she actually was. It always surprised me to see that she wasn’t more than five four, not when she stood over so many forces with so much indomitable will.
“Welcome. Would you like a cup of tea?”
I glanced at the table set with a perfectly elegant set. “No, thank you. How have you been?”
She turned to face me and I got to see the lines on her face that she was too proud to remove with surgery. She’d never used beauty as one of her weapons, however beautiful she had been, but she was still a handsome woman. “I’m getting tired,” she answered, as if I actually wanted to know and wasn’t just being pleasant.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She smiled slightly. “You aren’t as honest as you used to be.”
“I’m more practical in my old age. What do you want?”
She went to the table and picked up a piece of paper, frowning at it before she walked over and handed it to me. “You would like me to sign this.”
I read through the papers, and she was right, I did want her to sign it. She wouldn’t interfere in my life, with as many guarantees she could give, naming assets and stocks if she should slip up.
