Chapter Six #2
“Not at all, but being rich is who you are. You can’t change that.” He cleared his throat. “Well, you could, but I hope you don’t.”
This time the silence seemed to stretch for an eternity. Rhett slouched so deep in the overstuffed chair Garrett feared he had passed out or fallen asleep, except for the fact Rhett’s glass remained upright.
“Remember Lucy Conover back at Princeton?” the slurred voice sounded from deep in the chair.
“The girl you were madly in lust with during our freshman year? The only girl you ever dated for long in college? Of course, I remember.” Garrett took another hit off his scotch.
“I was homesick for my grandfather's ranch, and you, my new dorm roommate, were never there to keep me company. You were constantly out with Lucy. I always wondered why you dumped her. She was hot if my memory serves me correctly.”
“It does, and she was. Except she dumped me.”
“What? You’re kidding.”
“Damn near made me leave school. I thought maybe I loved her, young fool that I was.” The cubes rattled hard again.
“So, what happened?”
“I let Lucy think I was at Princeton like everyone else, bought and all paid for by someone back home. And one Friday night, near the end of the semester, she and her friend Kersey Weldon wandered into the pizza parlor where I bussed tables and washed dishes. At first, Lucy just looked shocked when she saw me, and then the two of them laughed and pointed at my apron. As they were going out the door, Lucy said, ‘At least you screwed like a rich boy. I couldn’t tell.’”
Garrett winced. “What made you think of her?”
“A year ago, I ran into her at a charity event in Palm Beach.”
“I didn’t know she lived down here.”
“Well, we got to talking that night, and she apologized for dumping me at Princeton, something about being young and foolish. Said she had learned her lesson, married badly and for money. I had my investigator check her out. She got enough money in her settlement, I figured she didn’t need mine.
One thing led to another, and I convinced myself the old spark might still be alive. ”
Garrett hated hearing all this personal stuff and would hate it more in the morning when Rhett realized he had confessed all this.
The man kept everything tight to his vest concerning himself.
The only personal tidbits Garrett had ever heard had come at the few times in Rhett’s life when he had gotten drunk.
Rhett held out his glass. “Another drink, barkeep.”
This time, Garrett gladly refilled the drink in the hope Rhett wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow. Common sense took hold and stopped him before he handed the drink over. “Come on, Rhett, no more. You’ve had enough.”
“I’m not driving, and I haven’t had nearly enough.”
Still Garrett didn’t carry the glass back to him.
“Do you want to hear the end of my tale or not?”
He needed to hear this if he was going to figure out how to help Rhett. He nabbed the glass off the counter, added some water to it this time, and carried it back.
“All right, finish it. Your story, not your drink,” Garrett ordered. “You better make that one last. I’m not fixing you another.”
Rhett already had the glass up and the cubes rattling. “It’s better with some water.”
Garrett rolled his eyes.
“A few weeks passed, and I felt like that college freshman again on my way to falling in love. Lucy and I attended another charity cocktail party and ran into her friend, Kersey Weldon.”
“Those two are together here too?”
Rhett nodded. “Lucy went off to powder her nose or something, and Kersey came over to visit. She’d had a little too much to drink and told me how glad she was Lucy and I had hooked up again. ‘Lucy has the hots for you,’ she said.”
Garrett waited what seemed an interminable length of time for Rhett to continue.
“Then Kersey laughed and said, ‘Lucy is such a scream. She told me you always were a good lay, and now that you can afford her, she thought she’d let you have her.’” He took a long slug of the watered-down scotch. “Imagine. She’d let me have her.”
Damnation. That sucked.
“You know what I always thought of those two little bitches,” Garrett told him angrily. “You had a date planned with Lily tonight. Where were you going to take her?”
Changing the subject was all he could think of to get Rhett’s mind off that witch Lucy Conover or whoever the hell she was now. He intended to strangle the woman if he ever ran into her.
“The liar could have picked anywhere she wanted for dinner tonight,” Rhett slurred. “I’d have taken her to Atlanta or Miami for dinner if she wanted.” He took another pull on his scotch. “And she picked Jetty’s.”
Garrett’s head snapped up. “That doesn’t sound like someone after your money, Rhett.” He paused a moment and waited for the fallout. Getting only silence, he added hopefully, “And you’ve been different since you met Lily, happier than I’ve ever seen you.”
“She lied to me.” He raised agonized eyes to stare at Garrett. “It was all a scam to get me to fall for her, and she was only after my money. She lied just like Lucy.”
“You don’t know that. Maybe this was all a misunderstanding.”
“Women are all after my money. You said yourself you didn’t know how that nursery of hers stayed afloat, charging such low prices.”
“What I told you was the nursery was eccentric and looked for the right buyers for their material, people who would care for the landscaping like they did.”
Rhett waved him off. “Do you know the liar can’t even afford her own place? She lives in a little house at the nursery.”
“How do you know that?”
“I had her checked out.”
“In the last few hours? By whom?”
“I’m a wealthy man, my friend, and I have people at my disposal at all hours. She’s a fake and a liar. And I thought she was—” He took a good hard slug of somewhat-diluted scotch, drained the glass, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and stared at the floor at his feet.
“You thought she was what?”
“Innocent,” Rhett said softly.
“Well, then why are you—”
“Pure!” he snarled at Garrett. “Don’t you get it?”
Garrett put up both hands again. “I get it. I get it.”
Rhett stared out through the glassed terrace doors for several minutes.
“Do you know when I asked her to go to New York, she had to stop and think about it.” He stabbed finger at Garrett.
“Now that was good acting. I had to promise her her own room. Can you believe that? And she actually used the extra room.” He shook his head. “I must be slipping.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
Garrett stifled a smile.
“I could tell when I kissed her, she hadn’t . . . Or she wasn’t very good at . . . Or it had been forever . . .” The ice cubes rattled as he waved his hand. “She was just too timid.”
He turned his head and stared at Garrett. “They can’t fake timid, can they?”
Garrett shook his head. “No, not timid. Too easy to tell.”
“That’s what I thought.” Rhett said, slurring more now.
Garrett hoped the end was in sight.
“You have one job tomorrow, and that’s to get all these damn plants the hell out of my house.” Rhett set his glass on the end table and settled back in the chair. Moments later, he snored softly.
Garrett got up to lock the French doors, but the sight on the terrace made him pause in disbelief.
He opened the center doors and stepped outside. Plants lay strewn all over the terrace, potting soil spewed across the tiles. The twisted and broken shapes of a half-dozen palms lay in the bottom of the pool, illuminated by the underwater lights, and vermiculite floated at the water’s surface.
“Holy hell,” he muttered under his breath. This was worse than he ever dreamed. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to fix this.
Stepping back inside, he locked the doors and took the glasses back to the bar. One thing was for certain—there was more to this supposed charade than met the eye. Garrett had only seen Rhett drunk two other times, once in college and again a year ago, and now he knew why.
Rhett wasn’t asking too much. The guy deserved to have someone love him after the childhood he had suffered with that no-good uncle of his. But no woman could have convinced Rhett Buchanan of her innocence unless . . .
He straightened and headed for the front door.
He had two jobs tomorrow: Get rid of these plants and straighten out this mess between Lily and Rhett.
He locked the front door and closed it quietly behind him.
Tonight had left Garrett certain of one thing.
Rhett Buchanan was head over heels in love with Lily Foster, and come hell or high water, Garrett intended to get them back together.
He finally had a chance to pay back his debts.
~ ~ ~ ~
The mess at Rhett’s mansion took half the next morning to clean up, but Garrett understood why Rhett had asked him to handle the situation.
Rhett didn’t want anyone to know he’d lost his temper so badly there was collateral damage, and he damn sure didn’t want to be here when Bloom & Grow came to pick up their plants.
Unlike other billionaires, Rhett didn’t keep a butler or permanent house staff underfoot.
He claimed he’d taken care of himself his whole life, and he didn’t intend to stop now.
His one concession was a housekeeper he brought in three days a week to clean and leave him a hot meal if he was in town.
Ancient Edna Burkhart fit that bill perfectly though she shook her head when she let Garrett in that morning.
“He’s not himself, Garrett,” she said simply. “I’m worried about him.”
Garrett agreed and knew she wouldn’t say a word to anyone.