Travis's Appeal

“With the right wording, Mr. O’Reilly, I can include just about anything in that trust,” Travis assured him. “Provided I have the proper documentation.” He couldn’t help wondering how open the man was to having a stranger go through his things. He sounded friendly enough, but privacy was an issue for some, despite the lawyer-client privilege so frequently cited.

Shawn cocked his head. Travis was reminded of an old painting he saw where Santa Claus was studying a list, deciding who was naughty or nice. “You mean like ownership papers?”

Travis nodded and instantly regretted it. “Those—” he said with a vain effort to will back the pain “—and the deed to your house as well as all your banking information. I’m going to need to review all of that if you want it to be covered in the trust.”

“Hell, yes I want it covered,” Shawn informed him with feeling. “Otherwise, there’s no reason to be going through this, is there?” He cleared his throat. “No offense, but lawyers aren’t exactly my favorite kind of people.”

“None taken,” Travis murmured. He heard that a lot, too. His headache was at the point where it could become blinding at any second. He needed more aspirin. “If you’ll excuse me for a second.”

Getting up, he saw Shawn and Shana exchange glances but couldn’t guess at what they might be thinking. He needed a clear head for that, or at least one that didn’t feel as if it were splintering into a million pieces.

Travis crossed back to his desk, took out the bottle of aspirin and shook out another two tablets. He downed them with the now cold cup of coffee that was standing, neglected, on his desk.

When he turned around again, he noticed Shawn eyeing him curiously.

“Too much partying last night?” the man guessed genially.

The expression on Shana’s face belonged to that of a mother whose child had suddenly misbehaved.

“Dad, that is none of our business,” she reprimanded softly.

“If he’s gonna be my lawyer, it is,” Shawn insisted, but his tone wasn’t judgmental. He turned inquisitive blue eyes on Travis.

“Too many writs,” Travis corrected, turning his words back around on him, and returning to his seat.

Shawn’s eyes narrowed beneath his deep gray eyebrows. “Too many what?”

“I worked late,” Travis explained. “I wound up catching a catnap on the sofa. It really wasn’t made for sleeping.”

The older man studied him. “You do that often? Work late?”

Travis couldn’t gauge if that worked in his favor or not. The man’s expression was unreadable.

“If something needs to be finished,” Travis told him without fanfare. “I don’t like falling behind.” The latter sentence dribbled from his lips as he tried to follow Shana’s movements. She’d risen from the sofa and was now circling behind him. “Can I help you?” he asked. Twisting around to look at her sent another set of arrows through his temples.

“No,” she answered simply. “But I think I might be able to help you.”

“I don’t—”

He was about to say that he didn’t understand what she meant, but the final words never materialized. They stopped, mid-flow, drying up on his lips as he felt her fingertips delicately touch the corners of his temples. Ever so gently, she slowly began to make small, concentric circles along his skin, pressing just enough to make contact, not enough to aggravate the tension and pain that were harbored there.

“What are you doing?” he finally asked, the words coming out of his mouth in slow motion. When he received no answer, his eyes shifted to Shawn who seemed content just to sit and wait. “What is she doing?”

“Making you better,” Shana’s father answered matter-of-factly. “Don’t fight it, boy, the girl’s got magic hands. You should see what she can do to a man’s spine. Make him feel like a kid again. ‘Course, in your case, that’s not much of a trip, but for someone like me…” He chuckled. “Well, it covers a lot more territory than I like to think about. But she can make you feel brand new.” There was unabashed affection in the man’s eyes as he looked at Shana. “Don’t know where I would be without her.”

“You’d be fine, Dad,” she assured him. Travis could hear the smile in her voice.

“Not by a long shot.” The tone of his voice changed as he added. “Susan would have never looked after me the way you do.”

“Susan?” Travis asked, looking at Shawn. “Is that another daughter? Or your wife?”

“My wife passed two years ago,” Shawn informed him stiffly. Travis had a feeling the shift in tone was to keep the emotion from gaining control of him. But he could see the pain in the man’s eyes. Two years and he still missed her. It was nice to know that love actually did enter some people’s lives for more than a weekend. “Susan’s my daughter.”

“How many do you have?” Travis asked, desperately struggling to focus on the conversation and not the woman whose fingertips still moved seductively along his temples.

“There’s just Susan and Shana,” Shawn said, “now that Grace’s gone.”

“Grace?”

“My wife,” Shawn clarified. He nodded toward Shana behind him. “How’s that feel?”

“Good,” Travis admitted.

But he knew nothing could be done for the pain he was experiencing. The headache had to run its course. He still fed it aspirins because a part of him was ever hopeful that, this one time, he could beat it back with pills. It was mostly a useless endeavor.

“But I don’t want to waste your time,” he added, intending the remark for Shana. He tried to turn his head, but paid dearly for that. The resulting pain shot through the top of his head, his nose and his jaw.

To his surprise, Shana didn’t withdraw her hands but continued massaging, making her small circles against his temples, sliding her fingertips in progressively larger and larger areas.

“Shh,” she soothed. “You have to give it a little time,” she advised. “The pain will go away soon, I promise.”

Not soon enough for him, he thought sarcastically. Hopefully before he liquefied right in front of her. It became increasingly more difficult to concentrate on what the woman’s father was saying when she stood behind him like that, wrecking havoc on his temples as well as his system. Her perfume, something light, heady and seductive as hell, seemed to seep into all his senses.

Ordinarily, in his present condition, the scent—any scent—would just contribute to his headache. But for some reason, hers didn’t. Instead, it soothed him even as it aroused him.

How was that possible?

“Dad, you and Mr. Marlowe go on talking,” Shana was saying. She’d bent forward ever so slightly as she spoke, just enough for him to feel her leaning lightly against his back.

Every nerve ending in his body felt as if it as hot-wired.

“You familiar with my restaurant?” Shawn was asking him.

With effort, Travis focused. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “What’s it called?”

Right now, if the man called the restaurant after himself, Travis wouldn’t have been able to make the connection. His brain was taking a definite time-out. He was struggling not just with an all-invasive headache, but with a sudden, startling desire to pull Shana onto his lap. Not just to pull her onto his lap, but to kiss her, as well.

Definitely not his style.

Not that he aspired to the role of hermit or someone who lived and breathed work to the point that he did nothing else, but he had become the controlled one in his family. The one who always thought things out, looked at the consequences of any action. He was no longer given to the rash behavior of his childhood.

So what were these urges doing, suddenly dancing through him with reckless abandon?

“Shawn’s Li’l Bit of Heaven.” Travis realized that he had been staring at the man, because Shawn added, “That’s the name of the restaurant. I named it for my daughter,” he confided.

“Shana?” Because if that was the case, Travis couldn’t help thinking, the man was given to serious understatement.

Shawn flushed and his complexion instantly turned a ruddy shade. “No,” he corrected, “Susan. That’s…my older girl,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. And then, because the woman’s presence was conspicuously absent, he added, “She couldn’t come. She’s been too busy to take time out for her old man these days,” Shawn grumbled. The frown on his face seemed to go deep, down to the very bone.