Drop Dead, Gorgeous Part 21

He spent most of his time alone, watching television in his place. He shopped at a local convenience store around the corner from him. But the time he spent alone, he spent figuring out how to get Gatewood to stand up and pay attention this time. And the fact that he had cops watching him every hour of the day and night actually played in his favor. The last time he had approached Gatewood, Jordan had sent three muscle heads to rough Frank up, and to drag him unconscious out on his back. Frank had his own built-in security force sitting outside his place in an unmarked car.

Frank had called Jordan's private number and left a message. "In case you haven't heard, s.h.i.t's. .h.i.t the fan in my neck of the woods. If you didn't want it getting out before, I know you sure as h.e.l.l don't want it out now. Call me back."

Frank had placed that call during his fifteen-minute break one night while he was working. They might have had his place wired for sound, so he didn't risk making the call from there. Thirty minutes later, Frank's disposable cell phone rang.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing calling me?" Jordan blasted him over the phone.

Frank propped his mop up against the wall in the bathroom. "I called to let you know that I ain't going away, man!" Frank growled. "That s.h.i.t you pulled before ain't working this time. Them three motha f.u.c.kas can't touch me, Jordan, man, and you need to wake up and see and hear what I'm selling!"

"Have you lost your G.o.dd.a.m.ned mind?"

"Shut the f.u.c.k up and listen!" he said, trying to keep his voice down just in case anyone happened to have been working late. He hadn't seen anyone, but he wanted to be safe, rather than sorry. "I told you what I needed!"

"Yeah, you told me, motha f.u.c.ka."

"s.h.i.t's. .h.i.t the fan, Jordan. My a.s.s is facing murder charges, and the last thing you want is for me to open my d.a.m.n mouth and link you to a f.u.c.kin' murderer. I'm not asking again, man."

"Well, why don't you tell me what you want then, Frank?" Jordan asked too d.a.m.n cordially.

"Half a million," he shot back. "And I want you to fire up one of those d.a.m.n jets you got and fly my a.s.s out of the d.a.m.n country!"

"Anything else?"

This a.s.shole was playing games. "I'm serious, Jordan. I will tell the world that we're brothers. I'll tell them that Joel Tunson is your daddy and mine, and point those d.a.m.n reporters to that old man's house and let him tell it his d.a.m.n self! Don't f.u.c.k with me, man. I'm serious. All of a sudden, you won't be s.h.i.t. The board of directors will s.n.a.t.c.h that company out from under your a.s.s and leave you swimming in a sea of drama of my a.s.s on trial for murder."

Jordan Gatewood had known what it was like to be neck deep involved in a murder trial. He'd managed to survive the scandal with the murder of his father by Julian's girlfriend's daughter, but that was a long time ago. Frank wasn't high on Jordan's priority list of family members, but the fact that his name and Frank's name were tied together by Tunson would be more than enough to soil this pretty life of his.

"How about this, Frank," Jordan offered. "I'll give you everything you've just asked for, if you give me back my d.a.m.n bail money and the bill I'm footing for that expensive attorney of yours."

The bottom dropped out from underneath Frank. Jordan's bail money? His lawyer. No! No! Why would he ... "f.u.c.k you, man! You didn't pay for s.h.i.t!"

"Then who did?"

Frank swallowed, but that lump in the back of his throat swelled to the size of a cue ball. "Lonnie said..."

"Whatever Lonnie said to you was a lie, Ross. I'm the reason you're not sitting in jail right now, man. I'm the reason you probably won't ever go to prison for what you did as long as you sit your a.s.s down and do what you're told."

Lonnie had told him that she'd paid his bail-that she'd called in a favor for that lawyer.

"She played the f.u.c.k out of you, Frank. That's all she's been doing since she found out who you are."

This wasn't making any sense. Frank fell back against the wall and tried to put the pieces of what was happening together in his head to make them fit. "Why the h.e.l.l would you ... Why would you put up my bail, Jordan? Or hire me an attorney? What the f.u.c.k?"

Jordan was quiet for a long time. Frank had almost thought the man had hung up on him.

"Now you see what you're working with?" Jordan asked calmly. "Lonnie's a liar."

"Why would you do this? Why would you help me?"

Again, Jordan took his time answering. "I don't know," he said, barely audible to Frank. "I met Joel a few weeks back," he admitted. "I'd never even seen the man."

Frank couldn't believe it. This motha f.u.c.ka was helping Frank because he had had a Kodak moment with his biological?

"I could give a s.h.i.t about you, Frank," Jordan said, sounding like the man Frank expected him to be. "But we're blood. Not brothers, just blood. I saw you were in trouble."

Frank couldn't believe it. "That's it? You acknowledge that we're related because you talked to that old man, and all of a sudden you decide to step in and help me?"

"I can stop."

Frank paused. This was not what he expected. This was not the conversation he ever thought he'd have with this man. And all of a sudden, Frank was a ball of confusion standing in that men's room, scratching his head.

"Alex is one of the best, Frank. He's got a whole team working on this, and if you listen to him, and do what he says, your chances of walking away from this situation are d.a.m.n good. But make no mistake, you will owe me. One way or another. You will repay this debt, and it won't be cheap."

So much for brotherly love or whatever.

Super Cool, Super Mean "How did you get this number?"

"It doesn't matter how I got it. I got it. And we need to talk."

"Talk," she huffed. "What makes you think I have anything to say to you?"

"I have plenty to say to you, Lonnie. Meet me at the Jolt Bar in the Joule Hotel on Main Street tomorrow at six."

"And if I don't?"

He paused, and sighed. "Six. Please."

Jordan had been out of town the last few days on business in Colorado. He'd told Claire that he wouldn't be home until Sat.u.r.day afternoon, but that wasn't true. He'd come back Thursday night and checked into a room at the Joule. He needed time and he needed to be completely alone so that he could think and put together these pieces of a puzzle started by Lonnie Adebayo that were gradually coming together.

June had been right. Jordan had been preoccupied lately by too many strange nuances going on in his life all at once that were gnawing away at him, bit by bit, biting him like mosquitos, until he found that he wasn't fully engaged in any one thing. Lately, he'd been scattered all over the place, his mind pulled in what felt like a hundred different directions all at once. The Anton deal needed his undivided attention, but Jordan hadn't been able to give it. More and more, he was beginning to understand what was happening.

Frank Ross had been a p.a.w.n for Lonnie-that piece in a chess game that you didn't mind sacrificing if it meant getting that all-important checkmate. She'd waved him in front of Jordan's face like a red flag, knowing that-at least momentarily-Jordan would be sucked into the potential drama that could come from Ross revealing the truth that he and Jordan were brothers and had the same father.

It was weak. In the beginning, Jordan hadn't realized just how weak, but as time went on, he knew that it would be Ross's word against his and a copy of a doc.u.ment that someone could've easily bought off the Internet for a few bucks. He could make the Frank Rosses of the world vanish, taking their accusations with them, just by snapping his fingers. Lonnie knew this.

His intention to take over Anton Oil and Gas was public knowledge, and Jordan had been foolish long enough to not take into account that Lonnie would be paying attention to what was going on with Gatewood Industries and his role in it. The Anton deal was at the center of all of this. And while he was focusing all of his attention on Ross, she was searching long and hard for a way to get to him, through the AntonGatewood Industries merger. Lonnie had found it-courtesy of Edgar Beckman.

"I'm sorry, Jordan." June had called him while he was in the air. "But we couldn't put it off any longer. Three other companies, including Exelon, the British oil company, put in bids to buy Anton. We had no choice. We had to act fast, and so the board voted unanimously to move forward. Needless to say, we won. We won the bid, Jordan. Anton is ours."

With news of the merger, the value of GII stock tripled overnight. Those who invested in Anton days before the merger bought Anton stock for pennies on the dollar. One of those investors rolled over him like a herd of cattle. It was Desi Green, which meant that she was a Gatewood stockholder and she'd just made millions off of this deal.

Lonnie walked in looking like she'd stepped out of his dreams, wearing tight jeans, high heels, and a red blouse that draped low in the front and outlined the curve of her hips. He still hadn't gotten used to the longer hair on her, but he understood why she wore it that way.

The waiter appeared at the table at nearly the exact moment as Lonnie. "I'll have a Riesling, chilled," Lonnie told him as she sat down across from Jordan.

"You rang?" she asked sarcastically.

"Thank you for coming," he said cordially. Jordan had no fight left in him. She'd played him like a guitar and made a fool out of him, out of his whole G.o.dd.a.m.ned corporation, and there was nothing left for him to do but to congratulate the winner.

Jordan raised his hands and began to clap. Lonnie stared at him, confused, but what else could he do? "That was one well-played game, Lonnie," he commended her. "Had me looking left while you were making your move on the right."

Lonnie remained expressionless.

"I have to say," he continued. "I haven't had my a.s.s handed to me like that in many, many years. I didn't think it could happen. Not to me. Not like that."

Lonnie didn't say a word, and she didn't need to. Jordan remembered now what it was he'd always seen in her. As beautiful as she was, that wasn't the reason he'd fallen in love with this woman. Lonnie was brilliant and capable and cunning. She was a problem solver, a bulls.h.i.tter, a liar. She was him in a dress, and the narcissist in him loved her for it.

"How'd you get her to do it?" Jordan asked. "How'd you talk Desi into buying in to Anton?"

She hesitated for a moment and then smiled. "I reminded her that she owed me a favor."

"And told her that she could make a fortune?"

She shrugged. "A win-win for both of us."

He paused and studied her carefully. "Are we even now?"

One corner of her lips turned up into a smile. "As even as we'll probably ever be, Jordan. My life changed that night you tried to kill me, and I'll never get back to who I was before then, but maybe I can build a new me, a better one."

Jordan shook his head. "G.o.d! I can't believe what I did to you." He shamefully dropped his gaze, but recovered and stared deep into those dramatic eyes of hers. "It's a shame," he admitted.

"He was so much more than that."

He cleared his throat. "I loved you, Lonnie. h.e.l.l, I-think I still do."

"I don't want to hear that," she said, shaking her head.

"But I have to say it because despite that night, and what happened-I have never felt any other way." He needed to say this. He needed for her to hear it even if she couldn't bring herself to believe it.

She stared blankly at him, almost as if she were waiting for the punch line.

"So, what's next? And don't tell me that Frank Ross is going to go forward to the media with the truth about who my father is, because that's not going to happen. He's knows now that it wasn't you who bailed him out of jail, Lonnie." Jordan laughed. "But, nice move on making him think it was." Jordan stopped laughing. "I own him now. He owes me."

She shrugged. "No big deal. Frank served his purpose," she said indifferently. "You can keep him."

He nodded. "Like a pet." He locked gazes with her knowing that she was thinking the same thing. "You going to be leaving town now?"

Lonnie hesitated before responding. "You going to let me?"

Jordan shrugged. "All's fair in love and war, baby." He raised his hands in defeat. "I concede. It's the least I can do."

"Then my work here is done," she said and sighed, "and I'll be on a plane first thing in the morning."

His gaze lingered long enough to make her uncomfortable.

"I will miss you," he said sincerely.

Lonnie managed to smile. "I almost believe you will."

The two of them finished their drinks, and left the hotel together. Jordan held the door open for her and then followed her outside. Lonnie stopped abruptly, and turned toward him, standing inches away from him. The light breeze in the air carried the scent of her perfume toward him.

"I'm going to take my toys and go, Jordan," she said, as she reached up and touched his lapel. The gesture seemed strange to him, but nothing about their relationship had ever been normal. "War is h.e.l.l," she said, looking up at him. "I would tell you to take care of yourself, but it would just be words."

"Not for me," Jordan said, giving in to the urge to lean toward her and kiss her forehead.

Lonnie surprised him, put her hand around the back of his neck, and pulled his lips to hers. "Now, we're even," she whispered, sweeping her tongue into his mouth, and kissing him the way she used to. Moments later, she broke the seal of her kiss, smiled at him, and glanced one last time over his shoulder, setting off a strange alarm inside him. Jordan turned and saw his wife, sitting parked across the street, watching with horror the scene that had just unfolded. By the time he turned around, Lonnie was pulling away from the curb in her car.

Feeling It Deep Tonight and I'd Rather Die "I know you don't believe me, Claire. Be outside the Joule at six thirty and you'll see that I'm telling the truth."

The only sound Claire could hear was the sound of her own breathing. She sped away before Jordan could reach her because there was nothing he could say anymore, nothing else he could do to make her believe that he gave a d.a.m.n about her.

"Claire!"

There would be no babies! There would be no more of her believing his lies! No more hoping that somehow he had changed! No more of her pretending that the two of them would recover from this mess called a marriage!

"Claire!" Jordan burst into the bedroom. "Claire-?"

She had packed some of her things by the time he'd gotten there. Claire had to get out of this house and as far away from him as she could.

"Claire! Baby-"

He touched her! Claire jerked away from him. "Put your hands on me again, Jordan and I'll-"

Claire didn't recognize the sound of her own voice. But that was because she wasn't the same woman. A moment, that one moment when she saw him kissing that woman, everything about Claire changed into a complete and total stranger. Inside she was different! Just different, hollow and different, angry and different.

"Claire! She set this whole thing up!" he argued. "She directed that scene like a movie! Claire!" He grabbed her again, and Claire spun around and hit him hard across the face.

Jordan stood there. A moment flashed in her mind that he would do to her what he did to Lonnie in that house, but he just stood there. She hit him again, and again, and again.

"Enough!" he said, grabbing her by the wrists.

"I know what you did!" Claire exploded. The words burst through her mouth like water through a dam and she realized how relieved she felt to finally say them. "I know what you did to her." She was crying now. Claire jerked away from his grasp, and backed away from him as if she were truly seeing him without the mask he'd always worn with her. The truth flooded her gut and burned her lungs. It scratched at the back of her throat, and Lord, she had to say it! She had to tell him everything.

"I went to the house that night, Jordan!"

Claire's mind flashed back to how fragile she had been that night. She'd tried to take her own life over him. She'd loved him so much that she'd have rather died than live without him, and he just left her there! He left her alone in that hospital, discarded and dismissed like she was a nuisance to him.

"I saw her lying there on the floor!" Claire said, turning her nose up in disgust. It was as if she could smell the funk of what had happened in that room all over again. "b.l.o.o.d.y and beaten and almost dead!" Tears streamed down her cheeks. Claire's hands shook, her whole body shook as she wrestled against completely falling apart long enough to get away from him and to get out of that house.

The look on his face was cla.s.sic.

"I got Lonnie out of that house and I took her to the hospital and I begged her not to call the police." She sobbed and struggled to catch her breath. "I'm the reason she's alive, and I'm the reason that you didn't go to jail, Jordan! Don't call the police! Don't call the police! I begged her!"

He looked at Claire like he didn't recognize her. But Jordan had no choice but to believe her. She'd given him every ounce of her, every inch of her body and soul and still, he wanted that b.i.t.c.h! He could have her!