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Chapter One

“I want to see Malcolm.”

Maybe she wasn’t having what her grandmother called a conniption fit, but Dorian Burrell had worked herself into a fine fizz during the nasty little scene at the bank. Normally she met with her financial manager over lunch at the country club. Driving through Dallas’s frenetic lunch hour traffic to his high-rise office building had only enhanced her already impressive head of steam.

She breezed past the startled receptionist, in no mood to wait for the woman to acknowledge her. She had questions. She wanted answers. A big-haired girl in a knockoff DKNY blouse would not have them.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry. Miss Burrell?”

Dorian paused and deployed her most withering look. The one calculated to strike terror into the hearts of waiters, sales clerks and secretaries who dared to challenge her. “Yes?” Her tone was chilly enough to wilt the potted philodendron.

The young woman behind the desk flushed an unbecoming shade of red and ducked her fluffy head to scan an open appointment book. The poor girl really should see a professional about those split ends.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to find your name on the schedule. Is Mr. O’Neal expecting you?”

“Don’t worry, he’ll see me. Tina.” By emphasizing the receptionist’s name, Dorian let her know she would be ill-advised to displease a kid-glove client.

“Wait. Please. I’ll announce you.” In a desperate attempt to carry out her duties, Tina reached for the intercom phone on her desk.

“Don’t bother, I’ll surprise him.” This was a day for surprises. She’d had a few herself, none of which had been particularly pleasant. Dorian turned on three-inch heels and plowed through the heavy doors separating O’Neal’s luxurious office from the richly paneled public area.

Malcolm was on the phone but smiled at his unannounced visitor and motioned her in. She’d like to see him stop her. He made excuses and wrapped up his conversation, as though eager to give his favorite client his undivided attention. “Why, Dorian, dear. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

“Cut the chitchat, Malcolm.” She smoothed the short skirt of her ice-blue linen suit, folded her arms across her chest and perched on a corner of his massive teakwood desk. A long, silk-clad leg swung impatiently. “What the hell is going on?”

The man closed a folder, pushed his trendy little glasses up on his nose and frowned. “What do you mean?”

Malcolm O’Neal had a string of professional letters after his name and had handled the Burrell family’s personal finances for years. He might be preternaturally astute about investments and stock portfolios, but his smooth, self-serving manner was mildly annoying.

“Okay, now you can cut what is known on the street as crap. I have a lunch date with Tiggy Moffatt at the Venetian Tea Room in—” she checked the diamond-encrusted watch on her wrist “—less than half an hour. I don’t have time for games.”

“You know I’d be happy to help you, Dorian, if I knew what the problem was.” Malcolm frowned and brushed invisible lint from his lapel.

What a vain, dapper man. His tailored designer suit, fine cotton shirt and carefully knotted silk tie had been purchased with the fees he charged her family. His dark hair was combed straight back, every thinning strand in place. He was clearly fiftysomething, yet there was no flash of silver there. He had to be coloring it.

“I’ll tell you the problem,” she said. “I stopped by the ATM to get some cash, and the machine ate my card.”

“Really?” Despite efforts to sound concerned, Malcolm simply did not act sufficiently surprised.

“Yes, really.” His underlying condescension grated on her already taut nerves, and she reined in the impulse to fling his Financial Planner of the Year paperweight across the room. “I figured the problem had to be a mistake or a glitch in the system, so I went inside.”

“And?”

“The teller summoned a weasel-faced vice president who informed me my account is overdrawn. Can you believe that?”

Malcolm tapped his pursed lips with a long, elegant finger. “Well, you have been overdrawn before.”

“I have not!”

“Perhaps you weren’t aware of the problem because your grandmother arranged with the bank to cover overdrafts in the past.”

She ignored the subtle yet pointed criticism. He was an employee, after all. If not hers, her grandmother’s. “It’s a couple of weeks until the next deposit from my trust fund, so I decided to get a cash advance on one of my credit cards. But weasel man confiscated them and would not give them back. Who does he think he is? I spent more money on shoes last year than he earned.”

“Please sit down, Dorian.” Malcolm waved her off his desk and into one of the straight-backed client chairs. “We need to talk.”

“Yes, we do.” She dropped into the chair, more confused now than angry. “Why would the banker do such a thing?”

“I’m afraid he was just following orders.”

“Whose orders?”

“Pru’s.”

Dorian’s eyes widened in disbelief. “My grandmother told some snotty little man to cut up my credit cards?”

“I’m afraid so.” Malcolm leaned forward and steepled his fingers on the parchment blotter. “And it’s not a ‘couple of weeks’ until the draft from your trust is deposited. It’s twelve weeks.”

“I’ve run out of money before. Granny Pru always covers my checks.” She pulled an iridescent red cell phone from her tiny designer bag. “I’ll just call her right now and get this mess straightened out.”

Malcolm frowned. “I’m afraid you can’t. She’s out of the country.”

“At the ranch?”

“She’s not out in the country, dear. She’s out of the country.”

“As in…” Dorian prompted impatiently.

“At the moment she’s on a Greek yacht in the Mediterranean, on the first leg of a rather long sea cruise. She instructed me to inform you she will be incommunicado for the next three months.”

Stunned by the financial manager’s bombshell, Dorian dropped the phone into her lap. “I don’t understand.”

“I believe your grandmother has cautioned you about your spending. Has she not urged you to live within your more than ample means?”

“Maybe. But she’s always advanced me money before when I ran out.”

Malcolm straightened his tie. “She said she warned you no more funds would be forthcoming if you were imprudent again.”

Dorian glanced at the ceiling and sighed. True. Two weeks ago she’d been summoned to the North Park town house and reprimanded for what Granny Pru called “living too high on the hog.” Having been dressed down before about her spending, she had scarcely listened. She’d been in a rush to meet her friends and make the opening of an exclusive new West End club.

“So what are you telling me, Malcolm?”

“You want the nutshell version?”

“Please. I’ve already had the lecture, parts one, two and three.”

“Simply put, you are out of money.” At her disbelieving look, he elaborated. “Strapped. Flat broke. Busted. The industry term for your current condition is insolvent.”

She laughed, relieving the tension that had built inside her. If she didn’t laugh, she might cry. And Dorian Burrell did not cry in public. She saved her tears for the lonely darkness. “You’re kidding, right?”

Malcolm’s brows lifted, reminding her he rarely dabbled in kidding.

Broke? She slumped in the chair. Having known nothing but wealth and privilege, she could scarcely conceive of the concept. Icy fear snaked through her. She was broke. “So what am I supposed to do now?”

“That’s what we have to figure out,” Malcolm said gently.

Her thoughts raced to make sense of an impossible, improbable situation. Would she be forced from the apartment her grandmother had given her when she graduated college? Part of a luxury West End renovation project, the penthouse commanded a fantastic view of the city and was close to the trendiest restaurants and night spots. Maybe she didn’t hold the deed or pay the bills, but she had personally chosen every item in her home, the only place she felt secure.

The houses she’d grown up in had never been homes. They’d been cold and empty, decorated by professionals, managed by housekeepers and cleaned by maids in gray uniforms. Her mother had floated through the artfully arranged rooms like an amorphous spirit, beautiful and not quite real.

Always untouchable.

“What about my apartment?” Dorian voiced her concern.

“Pru was explicit. You’re to continue living there.”

Relieved, she blinked back another sting of tears. This time they were tears of gratitude—even rarer for her than those of sadness or self-pity.

“But I have no money?” She would have figured her chances of uttering that particular combination of words in her lifetime were considerably less than, ‘I’m catching the red-eye to Mars.”

“Not until your next trust deposit.”

“Which is in September.

“Right.”

“This is June.”

Malcolm consulted his fancy desk calendar. “Correct.”

“I don’t believe this. What am I supposed to do until then? Did Granny Pru leave any words of wisdom before going incommunicado?”

“She said she was confident you could solve this problem on your own. You do come from strong stock, you know.”

“Please, spare me the salt-of-the-earth story. I know all about how great-grandfather Portis started out with nothing but a hundred dollars and a wildcatter’s dream. How he pulled himself up by his bootstraps to build one of the biggest, richest oil companies in Texas.” She pushed out of the chair and paced in front of the desk, her blond bob swinging.

As heir to the Chaco Oil fortune, currently controlled by her seventy-nine-year-old grandmother, she was well acquainted with family propaganda. “What the hell are bootstraps anyway?”

He shuffled papers in an attempt to hide his smile.

“I’m glad you think this is funny, Malcolm. Because I don’t.”

“I think your grandmother hoped you would look at the next ninety days as a learning experience.”

“Right.” Uncertainty coursed through Dorian, an unfamiliar emotion for someone who’d always been sure of her place in the world. Now that world was threatened. How could she manage without her grandmother’s love and support? Her father was dead. Her mother barely deserved the title. Granny Pru was the only person she could depend on. “Does she hate me?”

“You know better,” Malcolm said. “She loves you. Always has.”

“Is she trying to punish me?” Other than being born into the right family, Dorian had done nothing to deserve the advantages handed her on an heirloom silver platter. She had always stuffed the feelings of unworthiness down in the place where she stored all unacceptable emotions.

“I’m sure that’s not the case.”

“Oh, my God.” She stopped pacing and whirled to face him. “Has Granny Pru gone senile? Please tell me she hasn’t lost her mind.”

“No, of course not.” Malcolm dismissed the idea as absurd. “Prudence Channing Burrell is the sharpest, most savvy and sensible woman I know.”

“Then I give up. Did she mention why she feels compelled to turn her only grandchild’s life into a waking nightmare?”

“Actually, she said if you asked, I was to give you a one-word answer.”

“Which would be?”

“Cassandra.” He leaned back in his chair, apparently pleased with his cryptic response.

What did her self-absorbed mother have to do with anything? Pru and Cassandra had engaged in a bitter mother-in-law versus daughter-in-law battle for over two decades. Since John Burrell’s death thirteen years ago, his merry widow had maintained a palatial home in Dallas, but spent most of the year jetting around the country with her snooty, old-money friends. The last Dorian heard she was summering at Hyannis Port, still trying to worm her way into the Kennedy enclave.

Cassandra Burrell hired out unpleasant tasks. She had gardeners to clip hedges, chauffeurs to drive cars, cooks to prepare food and maids to clean up. She would have rented a womb if she hadn’t accidentally gotten pregnant first. Since she found motherhood an especially odious chore, she’d brought in a succession of nannies to perform the duties she found distasteful.

Early on, Dorian had learned to torment and manipulate the poor women paid to care for her. All in the foolish hope that if she could drive them away Cassandra would become a sweet, loving mother who gave hugs and kisses and cuddles. Dorian’s childhood tantrums were legend. If she wanted a bed-time story, she ordered the nanny to read. If she wanted a cookie at five in the morning, she sent the nanny to fetch one. If she flung her expensive clothes from drawers and closets, she waited for the nanny to put them away.

The one thing Dorian had not been able to order was the thing she had longed for most of all. Her mother’s love. She’d given up that dream years ago. “Since when has my mother helped anyone? Especially me.”

“I don’t think Pru meant for you to seek Cassandra’s assistance, Dorian. I believe your mother is meant to be an object lesson for you.”

“A what?”

“Think about it.”

She was thinking, but not about her narcissistic, emotionally distant mother. “Wait. I know! I’ll liquefy something.”

“I assume you mean liquidate.”

Dorian waved her hand. “Whatever. I’ll sell the Mercedes and buy something cheaper, like a Lexus.”

“I don’t think the leasing company would approve of you disposing of their property.”

“Oh. Right.” She flipped a strand of chin-length hair behind her ear. “Tell me again why I lease?”

“Because you like to drive a new vehicle every few months.”

She knew there had to be a reason. “Then I’ll just take out a loan that I can repay in September.”

“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear.” Malcolm leaned forward. “Your grandmother has pulled the plug, so to speak, on your finances. All your credit cards have been suspended, including your retail charge accounts. Even if you qualified for a loan, which you don’t since you have no credit history, you could not get one.”

“Why not? I’m a responsible adult.” Legally, at twenty-six she was an adult. But responsible? Dorian tried to recall the name of a girl she’d met in college. She’d worn discount-center clothes and ridden a rusty old bike, but she’d had goals. Purpose. She’d been a responsible adult at seventeen.

Mallory Peterson. Dorian hadn’t thought about the quiet, mousy honor student in years. They’d only spoken once, in the library, when Dorian had asked for help locating a book.

The girl had seemed eager to cultivate Dorian’s interest. Her mother waited tables, her father drove a truck. And yet she wanted to be a doctor, the first in her nowhere, west Texas town. Every month she received a small stipend, donated by townspeople, so she could stay in school and realize her dream. When she earned her medical degree she planned to return to take care of them.

Having earned a full scholarship, Mallory had received her good-faith money because people believed in her. Dorian, on the other hand, had done nothing to deserve the generous allowance her family deemed her due. She was in school because of her grandmother’s influence.

The earnest premed student had made Dorian feel so ashamed she had retreated to her shallow sorority sisters, spurning what might have become a real friendship with a person who could have taught her something about responsibility. Regret weighed like a stone on her mind as she refocused on what Malcolm was saying.

“I think you can forget about a loan, dear. Prudence Burrell’s influence is far-reaching. There’s not a lending institution, pawnshop or loan shark named Guido in the Dallas-Fort Worth area who’d risk giving you a nickel now.”

“She can do that?” Dorian knew her grandmother was powerful, but hadn’t realized just how powerful until now. She sank back in the chair, unable to decide if she was frustrated, angry or simply terrified of what the next ninety days would bring. Then there was the regret thing. And the awful suspicion that without money Dorian Burrell did not amount to much.

“She already has. There is something you can do,” he suggested tentatively.

“What? Jump off a bridge?”

“You could get a job.”

She laughed. “What in God’s name could I do?”

“I’m sure you could find something. You’re a college graduate.”

“From a school whose art history department is housed in Burrell Hall, and whose scholarship program is endowed by my grandmother. The dean was grateful enough to overlook things like grades.”

“Still, you must have learned something in four years.”

“I majored in art history,” she reminded him. “Which really only qualifies me to visit museums. I minored in classical mythology. Seen any openings for a CEO of myths lately?”

Dammit. How had she let this happen? She was smart. She had money. Why hadn’t she done something with her life? While shopping, lunching and partying filled time, they did not fulfill much purpose.

She hadn’t always been without goals. Once in seventh grade one of her boarding school instructors told her the poetry she’d written had merit. One night at a rare dinner with her mother, she had announced her desire to be a teacher. Shaping young minds had seemed like a worthy vocation.

Cassandra had laughed.

“There are always entry-level jobs,” Malcolm pointed out.

The idea filled Dorian with the same curiosity and disgust she’d felt while dissecting fetal pigs in high school biology. “I don’t think so.” She’d been far too hard on waitresses, clerks and receptionists over the years to try and join their ranks now.

“Face the facts, Malcolm. I have no marketable skills. No experience. I don’t even have a résumé. If I did, I’d have to list debutante as my former occupation.” Why had she never realized before today that she was practically useless to society?

Malcolm glanced at his gold Rolex. “I’m sorry to cut this short, but I have a new client due. You have a lot to absorb, Dorian. Go to lunch with your friend. Think about what we’ve discussed and call me later.”

“I will.” She dropped her phone back into her bag and rose as the receptionist buzzed to announce Malcolm’s next appointment. She paused at the door. “I can’t do lunch. I have no credit cards or cash.” The words felt as strange and distasteful in her mouth as a jalapeño lollipop.

Malcolm pulled out his wallet and extracted four crisp twenties. “I’m not supposed to do this. Pru would have my head if she knew, but I think you need to meet your friend as planned.” He handed her the money. “It’s not much, but should cover lunch.”

“Thanks.” Dorian tucked the bills into her bag. Never had she felt so grateful for so little. What would eighty dollars buy? A few meals. A couple of tanks of gas. A massage. A manicure. A small jar of her favorite moisturizer. Not all of those things. One. She’d never had to make hard choices before.

Stepping into the outer office, she eyed the rough-looking man perched uncomfortably on a chair in reception. He rose when she entered, as though someone who had taught him good manners dictated he do so. He grinned, and his long-lashed blue eyes crinkled at the corners.

He obviously liked what he saw, but Dorian was accustomed to that reaction from men. She gave him her patented “in your dreams” look, expecting him to turn away.

He didn’t flinch. He stood on Malcolm’s silver-gray carpet with his hands clasped behind his back and looked her right in the eye. He forced her to avert her glance. The nerve! This Neanderthal couldn’t be the new client. He wouldn’t know what a financial manager did, much less require the services of one. He had laborer written all over him and couldn’t have gotten past security unless he was here to change the air-conditioning filters or unclog the toilet. Clearly blue-collar, he looked as out of place in the plush office as a frog in a punch bowl.

But not nearly as nervous.

Tall and sinewy, he sported the kind of muscles a man got by working hard, not from working out. And chances were he hadn’t paid to have his skin bronzed. His tan had the natural look of one acquired the old-fashioned way, by spending a lot of time outdoors, far from a tennis court or swimming pool. He exuded a hard-core masculinity so raw and elemental Dorian could almost hear him sweat.

She was inexplicably drawn to his blatant virility, then shocked by the gut-punch power of her response. Ridiculous! She needed some serious aromatherapy to clear her head. Raw and elemental was not her style. No way could she be attracted to anyone so…inappropriate.

The object of her short-circuited desire was dressed in a stiff pair of jeans that hugged his narrow hips, long legs and taut rear. His blue shirt still bore creases from the packaging, the sleeves rolled back on his brawny forearms. His drooping Magnum P.I. mustache was straight out of the seventies and his dark hair was cut like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, distinctive but passé. At least his ’do was a decade less dated than his facial hair.

Dorian glanced down as she passed. Shoes revealed a lot about a man, and his were brand-new, pointy-toed cowboy boots. Figured. She favored Italian loafers herself, and the kind of men who wore them, but she caught Tina ogling Mr. Pheromone appreciatively as she ushered him into Malcolm’s office. Yeah, he was definitely the type who’d make the receptionist’s heart go pitty-pat. All hormones and hair.

New boots and no future.

By the time she arrived at the Venetian Tea Room and kissed the air beside Tiggy Moffatt’s cheek, Dorian had already forgotten Malcolm’s caveman cowboy. For the first time in her life she had real problems.

Best friends since grade school, Tiggy sized up Dorian’s mood with the experience of many years of shared confidences. “Who spit in your wheat grass protein shake this morning?”

“I have had the most incredibly horrible day.” She accepted a menu from the eager waiter, who was already flirting to increase his tip. She was not in the mood. “And it’s only noon.”

“What happened?” Tiggy folded her arms on the table.

They ordered, and Dorian relayed the story while they waited for their food. She even included the part where she had to accept Malcolm O’Neal’s paltry wad of twenties. A minor humiliation really, compared to the major disaster her life had become. Tiggy was sympathetic but on a tight allowance herself. Her trust fund was a mere shadow of Dorian’s, and since she wasn’t exactly the creative type, Tiggy had little to offer in the way of suggestions.

“Is there a problem with the Cobb salad, miss?” The waiter hovered at Dorian’s elbow.

Yes, there was a problem. She hadn’t wanted a salad. Compelled to scan the right side of the menu, she’d chosen the least expensive item listed. Then she’d lost her appetite when she realized for the first time that many people probably couldn’t afford anything on any menu. She’d had a disconcerting flashback to the night she and her friends had cut through an alley and seen a dirty man digging through the restaurant’s trash cans. They’d shuddered, joked and gone on their irresponsible way. Why hadn’t they given the poor soul some money?