Danger, Sweetheart Part 18

Twenty-seven.

"You whirled into our lives like a tsunami of tweed and tea, at once heartbroken and overjoyed." Good G.o.d, it was hot out here! "And you changed our lives for the better, but you've always watched and waited for the fall you feel is inevitable. You think blood will out, and you've spent years expecting us to expire in some s.e.x-related shenanigans, but we're not our father." His grandmother, it must be said, was getting on in years. That must be why her whole face was a blur; all he could make out were piercing eyes, rose pink lipstick, and face powder.

"Are you all right?" Natalie murmured.

He blinked down at her, surprised. "Fine, yes."

"Because you're screaming."

"Oh. Sorry." He made a visible effort to calm himself. He noticed he was standing. When did that happen? "Better?"

"Much."

G.o.d, she was so beautiful. And concerned! Possibly about him! Or just horribly embarra.s.sed to be there, like any right-thinking person would be.

"If you two don't mind," his mother said with raised eyebrows, "you were ranting about-"

"It's not just about me, Mom. The quarterly payments on the shelters are coming due."

"Shelters?"

"My grandson used part of his fortune-"

"That's right, my fortune," he emphasized. Sometimes there was no point to subtlety.

"-to set up shelters for single mothers all across the country."

"Shelters that aren't free. Well, for the residents they are, but they cost money."

"Yes, I see."

"Money I don't have."

"We get it, Blake."

"Because unlike Rake, I am not entirely a layabout lazy playboy reprobate. I'm only partly a layabout lazy playboy reprobate! Yes, my relations.h.i.+ps are all shallow and meaningless, but at least I'm helping people when I'm not indulging in meaningless s.e.x!"

Wow.

He peered down at Natalie, swaying ever so slightly. "Am I shouting again?"

"Little bit, yeah."

"Don't worry about the shelters," his mother began, and Blake turned on her quick as thought.

"Are you f.u.c.king kidding me?"

"Blake!" A trio of feminine reprimands. Reprimands in stereo.

"Well, are you? It's the only explanation. The whole reason I'm marooned here is because you think I'm not taking responsibility for my actions! So when I point out my other responsibilities the response is 'don't worry about it'? This is what is known as a mixed message, Mom! And what about the York Loans?"

"Like the White Rose of York, that York?" Natalie asked, which was adorable.

"Yes. I also provide loans to single mothers for low-income housing in the Vegas area. Loans I can no longer make good on. 'Dear Miss Smith, you and your baby will have to keep living in your c.o.c.kroach-laden studio apartment because I'm grounded.' I'm not signing those letters, Mother! You sign them."

"For cripes sake," Shannah muttered. It hadn't taken her long to revert to the local patois, Blake noted. Before last month, he'd never heard "cripes" out of her mouth. "And don't call me Mother."

"Maybe sit down while you rant," Natalie suggested, and he obeyed at once and got a smile for his trouble. Oh, she was a G.o.ddess.

"So you see," he said, and it was hard to say that for some reason. All those s words. He was slurring (another s word! curses!) for some reason. Well, he was tired. He'd been exhausted for a month. "'Snot just my dissolute lifestyle on the line. You really think I was mad because you took my allowance away? Okay, I was, but not just because of that. I'm mad-angry, I mean; 'mad' is British English for 'crazy,' which I'm not. Probably not. Nonna, Mother, while you're busy breaking me of habits you indulged for years, innocent families will lose their homes. But that's all fine, because I'll have learned my lesson, won't I?"

When there was no answer forthcoming, he tried again. "This! This is why I had to turn the key on the nuclear option!"

"The what?" Nonna asked.

"I got the idea from you!"

"You two intimidate each other by threatening to invite me to visit?" Ruth considered for a moment. "That is genius."

"My mom is unmoved by the plight of single mothers, which is absurd, as she is one! Was one, I mean. Although technically you still are, even though we're grown men. Grown men, Mom! 'Swhy I hadda bring out the big guns: the tweed tsunami! You have only yourself to blame. And you! Nonna! I get you all the way out here and then you've got the nerve to back my mother! You don' fool me; you think I'm a mess, too."

"At the moment, yes." Ruth turned to Natalie. "How much vodka would you say is in these-"

"A liter."

"Ah."

"Maybe two?"

"Oh."

He shrugged it off. Natalie had muttered something earlier about alcoholic punch, but that didn't apply to him.

Christ, he was tired. And when had he stood? Again?

His occasionally telepathic mother rose, took his hand, and gently eased him back into his chair. "You're tired, Blake; I know."

"I am not! Don't you dare send me to my room. Which is across town anyway."

"I should go. I'm finished eating anyway." No! Natalie the Wondrous was leaving! It wasn't to be borne.

"No, stay. I like you so much. It's awful without you, I don't want you to go home; please stay." And why were all the women staring at him?

Natalie colored, which deepened her natural tan and gave it rich rose undertones. "Blake, I like you, too-"

"You do?" Gasp! "Really?"

"-but I think you've had too much to drink. Being tired and working hard has kind of trashed your tolerance, so I think-"

"She's the best foreman in the world," he told his grandmother, who was looking at him with an expression he couldn't identify. "She knows everything about farms because she's a wonderful farmhand foreman."

"She's not a farmhand."

"And she knows more about financing and mortgages than any farmhand I've ever met. And I've met three!"

"She's not a farmhand."

His mother's voice seemed to be coming from a tunnel. What the h.e.l.l was the aggravating woman doing in a tunnel? And braying nonsense? "Of course she is. She's the one who taught me everything I still don't know."

"Um ... Blake..."

"Shush, Natalie. I must tell Mom more things about your wonderfulness. Wondrousness?"

"Son, she runs Sweetheart Trust. The bank in town."

He laughed and waited for Natalie to join in, or calmly refute his mother's senile implication. When Natalie didn't say anything, he beamed.

"See, Mom; see, Nonna? This is how wonderful she is: She won't even correct your doddering nonsense though she knows you're wrong, wrong, wrong."

"Stupid," Natalie was muttering. "So stupid."

Eh?

"I was stupid. My own fault. Lunch with your grandma seemed safe, dammit! She wouldn't know who I was. But I completely discounted the simple fact that everyone else would know who I was."

"Wait." The room had begun to tilt lazily. Someone should check the porch foundation. "It's true? You work for the bank?"

"I couldn't resist your invitation to lunch, okay? I wanted to hang out with you, and not as a function of our work."

"My work," he corrected.

"I knew it'd bite me in the a.s.s and I still couldn't say yes fast enough." She was shaking her head, her nearly dry hair curling under with lingering moisture. He caught more of her sweet scent, which was an unwelcome diversion.

"Then why were you even out there? I- I don't understand." He couldn't bear to look at his mother, who had known, or his grandmother, who likely thought he'd gone crazy on the prairie.

"I-I didn't trust you. I didn't know why you were really here. It sounded like some kind of contrived plot-you have to spend the night in this haunted house to get your inheritance; you have to work on this farm to save it ... like that. It just sounded like a load of s.h.i.+t. I wanted to see you up close."

"The whole time-" The porch had gone from a slow tilt to a lazy spin. He could barely look at her, literally and figuratively. "You watched me work and you just-" Laughed. Mocked. Judged. Laughed more. "An' that's not even awful enough. The worst part is, a fake farmhand is still a hundred times better at it than I was."

"I'm not a fake!" Natalie had gone from mortified to angry, which was hilarious. She was on her feet ... and so was he. Again. Still? He couldn't remember. Why do I keep standing only to sit right after? No wonder I'm dizzy. "I practically grew up on that ranch! I worked there every summer when my mom got sick and she had to quit her job. After she died I kept working to earn money for college. We had the funeral there and you don't care! About anything!"

"I cared about you, you deceitful shrew! I've been killing myself on Heartbreak in an attempt to earn the respect of a banker."

"I'm not the villain in this piece, pal." Probably. That was Garrett, right? Right? "If you keep on like this, pretty soon I won't be able to stand the sight of you!"

"And pretty soon I will adore the sight of you!" he snapped back.

"Don't you dare adore me! You take that back!"

"Never! I will adore you and you can't stop me!"

"Blake-"

"Son-"

He cut them off with a rough chop through the air. "Enough. I have no interest in discussing this any farmer. Further, I mean. That was a farming slip. Freudian slip. I've got nothing to say to either of you farmers. Ladies. Whatthe f.u.c.kever." He rounded on Natalie. "Or you! I am no longer speaking to you or spending time with you! You are dead to me, Natalie Lame. Yes! That's what Rake calls you because he is not terrible-"

"Don't say things you don't mean," Blake's mother had the gall to warn.

He ignored her, which he should have done starting about five minutes after exiting the womb. "Rake was wise! He knew the truth even though he had no idea what the truth was. I will not see you or speak to you or touch you again, Natalie Lane. Now come with me." He seized her hand, ignoring her startled squawk, seized his mother's sweater from the back of her chair, and rushed from the porch into the main house.

"Blake, first off, why did you just mug your mom? Second, this is the opposite of not seeing me, and third, what are we-"

"Here." He dug in his pocket and handed her the keys to his Supertruck. "My condition may be detrimental to driving."

"On account of how s.h.i.+t faced you are? Good call. What are we doing?"

He'd pulled her through the parlor, the hallway, and found the room with all the fainting couches. And ...

"Ah-ha!"

The White Rose of York, who had been stretched out snoozing in the afternoon sun, twitched, rolled over, saw him, trotted up to them. He wrapped her up in the sweater and she squeaked a greeting.

"Blake!" Natalie hissed. "That's cashmere! And a pig that doesn't belong to you. What do you think you're doing?"

"Not letting her be slaughtered and devoured. The scene of my humiliation is now the scene of the piglet's rescue. Take us back to Heartbreak."

"Then what?" Natalie stood in his way, clutching his keys in her small fist while he hugged the White Rose of York to his chest.

"Then I don't care what you do. And drive carefully. Do not startle her. A pig's scream can hit one hundred and fifteen decibels."

"I know, Blake!"

"Ah, yes, I forgot how bankers are required to take animal husbandry courses." She opened her mouth, then closed it at his cold stare. "Time to go."

Twenty-eight.