Seducing Abby Rhodes Read online

  She had no idea why the picture of the woman fascinated her, but it did. Abby got dressed, stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans, and drove to Marlowe’s to see if she could provide any psychic insight into the matter. Abby expected that Marlowe would have to touch the picture or something to get a good read on it.

  It was getting late in the day, but Marlowe had her boo thang on top of the house fixing her roof.

  “Hey, Plato,” Abby called out, climbing out of her truck. “How’s it coming along?”

  “It’s coming.”

  Plato just kind of showed up and saved Marlowe’s life, and the two of them had been inseparable ever since. No one knew the details, and no one probably ever would. Like Doug, Plato was a man of few words, and Marlowe just smiled a lot these days. Abby had just placed her foot on the first step leading to Marlowe’s front door when all of a sudden, Marlowe’s blind and seventysomething-year-old aunt Shou Shou came bursting through the front door with Marlowe right behind her, catching her by the elbow before she tripped stepping out onto the front porch.

  “Don’t you bring that into this house,” Shou Shou commanded.

  Abby stopped dead in her tracks and immediately lowered her foot back down to the ground. “What?”

  Shou Shou was so overwrought that she was shaking.

  “Auntie,” Marlowe said, “calm down.”

  Shou Shou pointed her white cane in Abby’s direction. “Why’d you bring it here? You shoulda left it where it was.”

  Abby was confused. She had known Shou since she was a little girl, and she’d never seen the woman so angry.

  “I-I don’t know—”

  “Yes, you do, Abigail,” Shou retorted. “You do know.”

  Abby had that picture in her pocket. Was that what Shou Shou was referring to? The old woman was really sweet, but she could be creepy as hell when she wanted to be.

  “What do you have, Abby?” Marlowe asked, still holding on to her aunt.

  Abby reached into her back pocket and held out the photograph. “It’s just a picture,” she said sheepishly. “I found it in the house.”

  “And that’s where you shoulda left it,” Shou Shou said tersely, jerking away from Marlowe.

  “I just wanted to know if maybe she’s the ghost, Marlowe,” Abby quickly explained. “I was hoping you could touch it or something and tell me.”

  “I’m not touching that, Abby,” Marlowe said gravely.

  Shit. Abby had touched the hell out of it.

  “You need to take it back to the house, Abigail,” Shou explained evenly, more calmly this time. “You need to hurry up and put her back. You hear me? You take her home, and don’t take her out again before she’s ready.”

  Shou Shou’s words resonated with Abby like bee stings. “Yes, ma’am,” Abby murmured.

  The older woman turned to Marlowe. “Do me a favor, baby,” she said unexpectedly tender.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Go in the house, fill a plastic bag with ice, and wrap it in a dish towel.”

  Marlowe tilted her head to one side and stared back at her aunt. “Ma’am?”

  “Gotdammit! Fuck!” Plato cried out from the roof. He’d been hammering, when the hammering abruptly stopped. “Marlowe?” he called out.

  “Hold on, baby!” she yelled back. “I’ll get you some ice,” she said, disappearing inside.

  Shou Shou started to follow her.

  “Miss Shou,” Abby said, stopping her.

  She turned to face Abby.

  This whole meeting had left Abby absolutely terrified. “Am I in danger?”

  Shou sighed and hesitated before finally responding. “Well, there’s danger, and then there’s danger, Abigail.” She paused again. “Depends on your perspective.”

  Abby swallowed.

  “You take her home, and don’t take her out again until she’s ready.”

  It was a strange statement to make. “H-how will I know when she’s ready?”

  “He’ll come for her and she’ll go.”

  Abby stood out in front of that house long enough to see Shou find her way back inside, and Marlowe coming out carrying a bag of ice for her man taking a seat on the steps.

  “That old lady scare the shit out of you?” Plato asked while Marlowe took his hand, placed it in her lap, and pressed the ice bag onto it.

  Abby nodded. He looked at her as if he understood.

  Marlowe smiled. “Get her home, Abby.”

  Where You Are

  JORDAN WAS ON HIS WAY out of his penthouse and headed to his ranch when he got the call. All the key players filed into the conference room: Vince Wilkins, Gatewood Industries’ chief of operations; Mike Stevens, chief financial officer. Jordan’s right hand and personal assistant, Phyl Mays, sat down next to him. And finally, newly appointed Dave Morris, director of federal acquisitions, followed by his lead attorney, Robin Sinclair, who coolly entered the room and sat down, exchanging a brief glance with Jordan.

  “So, what’s going on?” Jordan asked without wasting any time.

  Dave cleared his throat. “First, I’d like to thank you for taking a chance on Robin and me to head up this new division, Jordan. An opportunity like this doesn’t come around often, and when it does, well, it’s truly an honor to have been trusted with—”

  “Get to the point, Dave,” Jordan interrupted.

  He didn’t need his ass kissed today.

  “We received word ten minutes ago that the Department of Defense has narrowed down consideration from the dozens of bid packages they received for the research and development of the new rocket engine to three contenders.”

  “As you know,” Robin added, “we worked day and night putting together a tight and compliant proposal bid package, Jordan. We’ve collaborated closely with procurement and sales to pull together numbers as fair and as tight as we possibly could.”

  “Robin’s poured damn near all her blood, sweat, and tears into all those terms and conditions and flowdowns and”—Dave laughed and looked at her—“shit. They’ve thrown everything into this proposal request but the kitchen sink.”

  “What’s the bottom line?” Vince Wilkins interjected.

  Dave took a deep breath. “Ours is one of the bids in the running.”

  Dave looked at Robin, who suddenly smiled so wide it was blinding.

  “Damn!” Jordan blurted out amid applause and whoops. He shook his head, leaned back in his chair, and grinned.

  Jordan had gambled big-time on a fucking impossibility. He’d established a whole new division in Gatewood Industries, a division focused solely on contracting opportunities with the feds. He’d had a headhunter track down Dave Morris and had practically stolen him from a competitor. Dave had searched high and low for a government contracts attorney with a stellar résumé, and he’d found Robin.

  He relished what this could mean for his corporation. The competition for this endeavor had been incredible. All the big dogs had thrown their hats in the ring—Langson, NiVan, Brewster, giants in the industry of aerospace and transportation. Jordan was a guppy in a sea of killer whales, and he was not supposed to even be able to play in this game.

  It took a few moments for him to realize that all eyes in that room were suddenly on him.

  “We can do this,” his CFO, Mike Stevens, said. “We can fucking do this.”

  “Who are the other two?” Jordan finally asked, looking at Dave and Robin.

  “Langson and Brewster,” Dave told him.

  “Langson worries me the most,” Jordan admitted. “They’re so in bed with the feds it’s not even funny.”

  “Yeah, but the feds are getting pressure to let go of some of those incestuous relationships they’ve been having for decades,” Robin added. “And besides, we’re the little guy.”

  “A little guy worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” Vince reminded her.

  “Langson and Brewster are worth billions,” Mike said. “Either one of them could swallow us whole like we were nothing
more than a snack cracker.”

  He was right, and everyone in the room knew it.

  “They’re not taking us seriously,” Jordan said introspectively. “Langson and Brewster are looking at each other, convinced that one of them will be awarded this contract.”

  How many times had Jordan been down and nearly counted out? How many times had he gotten back up to fight another round? He was a fighter. And he was convinced that he had a real shot at this.

  “We’ve formed some serious partnerships with engineering and physics rock stars,” he reminded them. “Those motha fuckas at Langson and Brewster have no idea how serious we are, how prepared we are to win this gotdamn bid and to deliver.”

  Everyone nodded. Jordan had gone into this endeavor knowing that it would catapult Gatewood Industries to a whole new level. Oil and gas were one thing, but it wasn’t enough. Not anymore.

  “We’re turning this corner and taking this corporation to a whole other level. And I don’t care if it’s this contract or the next,” he said emphatically, “but we will not stop until GII casts a shadow over anyone who currently considers themselves my competitor.”

  * * *

  Jordan owned at least a dozen vehicles, most of them exotic, but his favorite was a beat-up 1998 Chevy pickup truck that he usually drove when he went to his ranch.

  “I’m disappointed,” Robin said over the phone as he drove. He’d put her on speaker.

  Needless to say, he wasn’t surprised she’d called.

  “I thought you and I would be celebrating this weekend,” she said softly.

  Of course that’s what she would think. It seemed like the thing to do for two people intimately engaged in business as well as their personal lives.

  “And we will when there’s something to celebrate,” he casually explained, hoping that he wasn’t being too harsh. Evasiveness was a tactical skill he liked to think he’d perfected through the years. It wasn’t that her company wasn’t wanted, but Jordan had a lot on his mind, and getting away from the distractions of Dallas, the office, and Robin was necessary sometimes.

  “Maybe I should rephrase,” she countered. “I thought that you and I would spend time together this weekend whether we had something to celebrate or not.”

  So, he’d failed. Apparently he was rusty in the area of tact, because Robin sounded a bit put off.

  “I have some things that I need to take care of at the ranch, Robin,” he responded coolly. “I’ll see you as soon as I get back in town.”

  A long pause filled the air.

  “Promise?” she finally asked.

  “I do,” he said before saying good-bye and hanging up.

  The harder she pushed, the further back he seemed to move. It wasn’t intentional. Jordan couldn’t think of one reason why he shouldn’t want to spend every waking hour with that beautiful woman. Intelligent, witty, soft, and polished, she was exactly the kind of woman a man in his position should want to spend his life with. She hadn’t come out and said it, but he knew that Robin had marriage on her mind. The thing is, marriage was the furthest thing from his.

  Once again, he drove past the exit leading to his ranch, but instead of turning around, Jordan kept driving until, an hour and a half later, he came to the exit for Blink, Texas. It didn’t make sense for him to come back here. There was nothing for him in this town, not the meaning of life from his dead father or the explanation for why Jordan lived when he should’ve died a year ago. He’d found no enlightenment inside that old house of Ida Green’s, but still he drove, compelled by curiosity, by some unexplainable desire just to see if this strange obsession was a fluke, some odd and temporary fascination that would disappear the moment he saw her again.

  The best thing that could happen, he thought as he stopped and parked in front of that house, was that he’d realize that the woman, Abby, was nothing more than a pretty, petite country woman that had caught his whimsy for a brief moment. The worst thing that could happen was, well, the same thing.

  And She Was

  “YOU KNOW HOW MISS SHOU is,” Abby said to Skye over the phone. “She can scare the hell out of you if you let her.”

  “I don’t go near that old crazy witch,” Skye said. “My momma told me she was evil and put a spell on my uncle Jake years ago for killing her cat.”

  Abby stopped pouring soil into a planter, set the bag down on the table, and put her hand on her hip. “Well, if he’d killed my cat, I’d would’ve cursed him, too, Skye.”

  “He didn’t kill it on purpose. Damn cat ran out into the road at the last minute while he was driving. It was either hit the cat or run into a ditch and tear up his daddy’s car. Shou found out he did it, and he’s been prone to boils ever since. Never had a boil in his life until she found out he killed that cat. He said she said some gibberish, waved her hands around in the air, and bam! All of a sudden, boils came out of nowhere and erupted all over his back. They went away, but every now and then one will just pop out of the blue.”

  “Well, she scared me so bad I put that picture back in this house and left. Stayed away for nearly a week, but I’ve been staying here for three days now, and I ain’t had no problems with the ghosts.”

  “How you can even think about staying in a haunted house is crazy to me, Abby. Sane people don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  The truth was, Abby loved this house. She hated being away from it, but for some reason, she felt a sense of loneliness and longing that left her melancholy and sometimes even sad. She was about to turn thirty-seven soon, and for the first time in her life, she felt grounded in a place. Everywhere else she’d lived she’d always felt like she was just passing through, but not here. This was home.

  After hanging up from talking with Skye, Abby started potting small plants into the large vases she’d bought to put on her deck by her back door. You’d think she’d stolen her daddy’s playlist with all that old-school blasting from her small speaker on the table—Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke among others. On rotation now was Johnnie Taylor’s “Who’s Making Love,” which Abby sang at the top of her lungs. She was so busy singing and planting that she didn’t hear him the first few times he’d said her name.

  Abby turned abruptly and froze. Dear Jesus Lord! Tall, beautiful cowboys only show up in dreams. Don’t they?

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said in a voice that rolled with the rumbling of thunder behind it. “I was here about a month ago,” he reminded her. “You and your friend let me take a tour of the house.”

  For a moment, Abby had forgotten how to speak. This man in a cowboy hat held some kind of magical power over her, and all she could do was stand there with her mouth hanging open, gawking at him.

  “Jordan,” he said. “Um … Abby, isn’t it?”

  She thought she felt herself nod, but she couldn’t be sure. Say something, Abby. Speak! “Yes,” she finally responded, startling herself a bit. Keep going. “I remember you.”

  He looked past her to the large ceramic pots on the ground around her. “I’m interrupting.”

  Without thinking, she glanced at them, too. “Yes. I mean, no,” she said, turning quickly back to him.

  “I knocked, and when I heard the music coming from back here … well, I don’t mean to be intrusive.”

  She wished Marlowe were here, or Skye, or somebody who could be the buffer between him and her. It wasn’t that she was shy or anything. Abby worked with men, big, strapping men, all day long. Her industry was filled with them, and so she wasn’t so easily swayed by muscles and good looks, because she was always too preoccupied with trying to get them to take her little five-foot-two-inch ass seriously. But he was different.

  Abby had to make a hard mental shift to her business mind-set and get far away from her lustful thoughts right now.

  “What can I do for you, Mr.…?”

  “Jordan. You can call me Jordan.”

  Calling him Mr. Something-or-Other would’ve made this whole encounter much more comfortable and
impersonal.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Jordan?”

  Was he this tall the first time she’d seen him? Was he this exceptionally handsome?

  And just like that, the tides turned, and he seemed to be the one at a loss for words. All of a sudden, Abby realized just how tightly she was gripping that trowel, when it dawned on her that she was alone in her backyard with a stranger who could easily snatch her up and have his way with her and then kill her.

  He seemed to sense that Abby’s internal alarm was starting to go off, and he took a hesitant step back.

  “My father died in this house,” he admitted after a long pause. “Thirty years ago, he was shot and died in the living room.”

  The man seemed taken aback by his own admission as much as Abby was. The first thoughts that came to her mind, of course, were the ghosts Marlowe had said lived here and Marlowe’s strange reaction to him showing up that day. This was all getting to be way too creepy, and Abby would be kicking herself in the ass later for buying this place.

  “I came here the first time, out of curiosity,” he finally continued. “I’d never been here before, and I just … well, I needed to see it.”

  Abby studied him. “So, you came back to see it again?”

  So was this man’s daddy haunting her house? And thirty years later, his son shows up out of the blue to finally see the place. Had his daddy somehow called to him from the grave and told him to come here? Dammit, she needed Marlowe here.

  “Some very personal and dramatic events have happened in my life recently that have compelled me to … my father and I weren’t close, but for some reason, I feel a need to…”

  “Find some closure,” she said, summarizing his torment.

  Yes, he was tormented. Abby could see it in his eyes. Even though she wasn’t psychic like Marlowe, she did have a strong intuition about people that was usually dead-on. Something bad had happened to this man, and he was looking for closure and maybe some peace. Abby decided to try to put aside the ghost aspect of all of this, and focus on a more reasonable, rational explanation for him being here. She was good at being rational. It was more in line with her nature. Gradually she began to relax.