They rewound the tape, and now Avery was back at the beginning.
Brenda would do the move first, have Avery respond, and then have Liam be the aggressor. This time, he wore more than a jock. He barely fit in the padding needed to protect his head. The first time he wrapped his arms around her as if he were snagging her off a street corner, she barely felt his strength before she dropped her weight, pulled him off balance, and started elbowing his face from behind her.
He let go.
Once Brenda explained the moves Avery was doing, Liam attempted to adjust his attack to challenge her from escaping. Anytime she struck just shy of his junk, he hesitated. In reality, she knew he would do more than pause if someone boxed his goods. After a while, he learned to keep his hips far enough away, or too close, to avoid being a target.
There were times Avery got away . . . and there were times Brenda stopped their sparring when it was obvious that Avery wasn’t going to win.
As much as Avery hated to admit it, when they were done she felt stronger, even in light of the weakness she demonstrated in Liam’s shadow. The fact was she did manage to get away from him several times. Like when she’d taken the guy down at the bar, she felt empowered.
When they were done and Avery was wiping the sweat from her shoulders with a towel, Brenda approached her. “Liam agreed to come every Friday.”
Avery glanced at Mr. Hulk. He sat on a bench, water in hand. “Works for me,” he told her.
Avery nodded.
“Good. This was good. You’re better for it, Avery.” Brenda turned away. Avery knew surprise was written on her face.
“That was almost a compliment.”
“I take it those don’t come often from that one.”
Avery grinned. “Never.” She had questions. Lots of them. “About that drink we didn’t have last week.”
That little-boy smirk on that big-boy face peeked out. “I don’t know . . . I have a lot to do.”
Was he turning her down? “Suit yourself.”
He stopped her halfway to the showers.
“Meet you outside in fifteen.”
She didn’t turn around. Smiling, she waved a hand in the air, felt the heat of his eyes on her ass, and disappeared into the locker room.
Pug’s was busy, it being Friday night and all. They found a small table tucked in the back, away from the majority of people.
Liam grabbed a couple of bottles of beer and sat across from her.
He’d barely sat his ass in the chair and she was asking the questions that had been swimming in her head for hours. “Why? Why are you doing this?”
He struggled with his answer for half a second. “I’m attracted.”
Avery should have been prepared for his answer.
She wasn’t.
“That’s the short answer.”
She took a drink from her beer. “And the long answer?”
“I need a challenge, a change in pace. Something tells me pursuing my attraction isn’t going to be easy. Not from a woman who has no problem kicking my ass . . . repeatedly.”
She forced her lips from smiling but knew her eyes lit up. “All this for a date.”
“That’s why it started.” He leaned on his elbows and stared. “Now I’m genuinely fascinated. Who is this beautiful, guarded woman, and what drove her to master a class in kicking someone’s butt?”
He blinked a few times as he spoke, and a voice told Avery that he was well practiced in throwing women off his scent of seduction. “Do women fall for that? The ‘fascinated’ line followed by a compliment and a smile?”
He lifted his eyebrows, leaned back. “Yup. All the time.”
Avery laughed and grabbed her drink. “I think I might have written a book on lines that get me what I want from a man. So you’re going to have to do better than that.”
He lifted his beer in the air in a silent salute. “I’ll work on it.”
“I don’t want any of it.”
Avery took in the dark hall of family portraits professionally painted on canvas. “Not even the artwork?”
Sheldon Lankford considered the paintings and shook his head. “My parents waited until they were fifty to adopt me. I never met any of these people. I was raised by a series of nannies and knew my parents through weekends and the occasional summer vacation.” Sheldon kept looking up at the vast walls that filled the room, which hosted thirty-foot ceilings. “Did you ever go to boarding school?”
Avery sighed. “Yes.”
Sheldon focused on her as if surprised. “Then you know.”
At thirty-five, Sheldon inherited his parents’ wealth with the passing of his mother.
His father had died eight years prior from a sudden heart attack. His mother had lived out her years in a mausoleum of a home with a full-time nurse and a truckload of medication. From what Avery knew, Sheldon made sure his adoptive mother was being cared for and that no one was squandering the accumulated wealth of the Lankford family fortune.
And it was quite a sum.
Sheldon had learned of her services through her ex-husband. When Bernie heard that she was working, he offered to cut her another check. As tempting as that sounded, Avery liked that she was providing a service and being paid for it. Since most of her clients were in the upper ends of the tax bracket, her payday matched her spending habits . . . or it was getting there.
“Family photographs?”
Sheldon shook his head. “I’ve already taken what I want.”
“Okay, then. A house this size will take some time to go through. I have a questionnaire.”
Sheldon frowned. “Homework?”
She smiled. “People collect crazy stuff in their lives. I need to know what your parents held value in. Did your mother collect art? Did your dad have a habit of buying antique flasks or pens? I’ll bring in the experts needed to place the pricey items in the correct auctions. You’re paying me a percentage to take the burden off of you. A few questions and I’ll make sure the overlooked frame old Grandma Beth is in isn’t discarded. Once I’ve farmed the stuff of known value, I’ll hold the estate sale.”
Sheldon nodded. “What about the house itself?”
“You’re selling?”
“Could you live here?”
Dark, dingy . . . full of spiders—she cringed at the thought it was the exact opposite of how she lived. “Do you want to sell as is or get top dollar?”
“Are you suggesting remodeling?”
“I don’t think dark paneling and dated kitchens sell homes. But the location would bring in investors and people who can’t afford to come into the neighborhood at a high dollar. That said, it is Brentwood. You’ll make millions walking away, regardless.”
Sheldon took a breath and Avery cut him off. “But since you’re hiring me to go through the interior, I would urge you to get as much as you can from the home itself.”
“I don’t want to deal with any of it,” he confessed.
“Then we sell.”
“I’m also allergic to work.”
Avery grinned. “Let me come up with a couple of contractors and bids for the basics. Do you have a Realtor in mind?”
Sheldon shook his head.
“I’ll find a couple . . . get an idea of what we’re talking about. Money invested, time . . . and bottom line, money in your pocket.”
“What do you charge for that?”
“I can’t say I’ve done it before. So nothing. I have to be here to sift through a lot of stuff, so inviting a real estate agent or two over to give their opinions on things isn’t going to take any more time from me. You’ll have to pick who you like and what you ultimately want to do.”
“You’re obviously not allergic to work.”
“I used to be. Then I bored of spending money . . . or more importantly, I realized that I needed to work in order to shop the way I wanted to. Growing up in a world of boarding schools and pretentious parents made this job perfect for me.”
Sheldon turned on his leather loafers and tugged on the silk sleeves of his two-hundred-dollar shirt and looked her up and down as if for the first time.
For a brief moment, Avery felt a chill.
“How long is this going to take?”
“You want it done right or fast?”
“Right.”
“It’s an eight-thousand-square-foot house with fifty years of living.” She set out a timeline they could both work with, taking into consideration the smaller estate she was working with in Seattle that she was wrapping up. At least Brentwood was closer to home.
By the time Avery left the Lankford estate, she had the keys and a signed agreement for her services. Services that apparently now included obtaining a Realtor and a contractor. It was time to start hitting the networking circuit and finding contacts.
Chapter Seven
“I used to hate these things,” Shannon told Avery as they walked into the mixer wearing professional, I’m more than just arm candy attire.
Of course the designer shoes, clothes, and attitude completed their professional yet high-class facade.
They approached the reception desk and gave their names. The intern wrote each name on a standard sticky label and handed it to them.
Avery looked at the tape disguised as a name tag. “This is Chanel.”
Shannon laughed. From her purse, she produced a magnetic name tag that she attached to her dress jacket without tape or a pin.
“That’s cheating.”
“Good thing I had one made for you, too.”
Avery wadded up her paper name tag and tossed it in a nearby trash can before placing the nondestructive tag on her blouse.
“So how do we do this?”
“It’s a mixer. We mix.”
“Looks like everyone is just standing around drinking.”
Shannon led them to the bar and asked for two glasses of chardonnay. “One glass, and make it last all night.”
Avery dropped the glass from her lips. “So it’s a prop.”