Free Brown Eyed Girl by Lori Leger

family. I honestly don’t know where it comes from,” she said.
    He ran his right thumb and fingers lightly over his five o’clock shadow and seemed to contemplate her answer. “Do you play any kind of instrument?”
    “ Mother forced me to take piano lessons, but I never took to it. I can play enough to bang out a few Christmas carols at the children’s ward hospital parties but that’s about it. Now my brother, Drake, on the other hand, is truly gifted. I guess he still plays,” she finished in a low murmur.
    “ Don’t you see him?”
    “ I see him twice a year, when we go to our parents for the two parties they require us to attend. One is for Christmas and the other is an annual fundraiser.”
    “ So, you’ll be in Houston for Christmas,” Red commented.
    “ The Christmas party is always the weekend before.” She crossed her arms and looked down at her shoes. “God, we both hate it.”
    “ Then don’t go.”
    “ I have to.”
    “ Why?”
    “ Good or bad, they’re still my parents.”
    “ Will you be disinherited if you don’t go, or something?” he asked.
    She turned to him. “Now, why would you ask that?”
    He readjusted his stance under her scrutiny. “I’m wondering how important money is to you.”
    Her brow furrowed in annoyance. “I don’t need an inheritance. I make out well enough on my own.”
    “ Me too,” he said, shrugging.
    “ What exactly do you do?”
    “ I’ve owned a string of business over the years, but I currently own a club in Lafayette and I’m about to open another one here in Lake Coburn.”
    “ What club?”
    “ Oh, you may have difficulty remembering the name,” he said, grinning. “It’s called Red’s .”
    She stared up at him, unable to hide the impressed look on her face. “You’re that Red?”
    He laughed. “I believe I’m the same Red I’ve always been.”
    “ Some co-workers went and told me how nice it was. No smoking right?”
    “ That’s right.”
    “ What made you do that when Louisiana still hasn’t passed the law?”
    Red walked over to a flower bed and bent over to pull a stray weed. “My Uncle Ben, dad’s brother, died from lung cancer due to smoking. It’s the one thing I can do.”
    Tiffany followed him to the bed of pansies and leaned over to pluck some winter grass from between the bright purple and gold blooms. “Doesn’t it hurt business?”
    “ There are a lot more non-smokers out there than smokers. I have four rules. No cigarettes, no drugs, no fighting, and no drunk drivers—we’ll call them a cab. We ask for a decent sized cover charge, and in return people have a nice time. So far, we have a lot of repeat customers.”
    “ You said you went to LSU, right?”
    “ Yes, business degree.”
    “ Bachelors?”
    “ Initially—I got my degree summa cum laude. I got a job after graduation and went to night school for my Masters.”
    “ Top honors while playing Tiger baseball?” she asked.
    “ You sound skeptical,” he said, flashing that devilishly handsome grin of his. “Would you like to see my degree? It’s framed and everything.”
    “ How would I know it’s real?” she teased.
    He grinned down at her. “I’ve got the documentation to back it up. We had several Magna cum Laude graduates in my family, but you are looking at the one and only Summa cum Laude of the McAllister family, honey, and don’t think my mom wasn’t above throwing that around at the Garden Club meetings.”
    Tiffany smiled, imagining Mrs. Vivienne doing just that. “Did you study harder? Did you do less partying than the rest of your siblings?” she asked, curious to know more about this man.
    He chuckled. “I partied plenty—the truth is I have this ability to retain and recall information. Facts, numbers, notes, quotes, music, and lyrics, it all comes easily to me. If I read or hear something once, I remember it.”
    She snorted. “That’s the kind of thing that annoys a roommate.”
    “ Yeah, it used to irk the hell