Free Wayward Dreams by Gail McFarland Page A

out? How about this? If I get the utilities on in seven days, can I stay?”
    â€œThat mess? In seven days?” Butcher flapped the lease against his leg and looked back at the door. “I don’t know…Seven days would take a miracle…an absolute miracle…I suppose I can put you out in seven days just as easily as I can today.” He flapped the lease again when she lunged forward, throwing her arms around his neck.
    â€œKilling me with kindness is not going to save you, Miss Missy,” he sputtered, freeing himself and looking Bianca up and down. “You don’t look like yourself.” His eyes went from her tennis shoes to her face. “Those shoes really don’t look like you.” He flapped the lease at her. “Do you really think you can get this together in seven days?” Bianca nodded. “You can have the rest of the month, Miss Scarlett, but if you open your mouth and give me one of those, ‘…as God is my witness…’ speeches, you’ll be gone with the wind. Capiche ?”
    â€œGot it.” Relief weakened her knees as Bianca watched Martin Butcher climb into his jeep and drive away. He had barely cleared the parking lot when the enormity of her promise hit her. Seven days might just as well be seven years. Lord, where is the money going to come from? Turning the door knob, she pushed hard and stepped into Vive la Reine.
    Behind the boarded windows, a heady musk of dust and fast-growing mildew assaulted her, and she could have sworn she heard something skitter across the floor. Spiders had taken up residence, as evidenced by the cobwebs festooning the doorway leading into what had been her showroom, and she knew there was little left to salvage.
    â€œMs. Coltrane?”
    The man’s voice made her gasp and look for a weapon. Unfortunately, all she had was her oversized purse when she stumbled backward, nearly falling over a pile of still-soggy clothing. The man’s hand caught her elbow.
    â€œWho are you?” she screeched.
    â€œAldrich Christian.”
    Putting the name with the face, she immediately remembered him. He was the tall, slender attorney with the peanut butter-colored skin and graying goatee, the one who wrote the contracts for Vive la Reine. Righting herself, Bianca snatched her arm back and glared at the man. Realizing that he couldn’t see her glaring, she pulled off her shades and moved toward the open door. He deserved the full effect. Standing in the slash of sunlight, she propped her hands on her hips and glared again.
    â€œHow can I help you, Mr. Christian?”
    Following her to the door, he pulled an envelope from his breast pocket. “I’m here to deliver this.”
    Now what? Bianca shot him another glare, just in case, as she took the envelope and tore it open. The letter she unfolded referenced the loan documents she’d signed and said that KPayne was exercising his right to take everything, including any surviving stock and all fixtures, if she didn’t pay off the loan immediately and in full.
    Surviving stock? “Is he serious?”
    â€œI believe so,” Christian said, failing to realize that the question was rhetorical. When Bianca’s hazel eyes speared him like a small fish, he said nothing more, not even when she twisted the letter into a knot and dropped it to the moldering floor. Unmoving, the attorney stood in front of her like a place holder, trying to do his job—enforce Kelvin Michael Payne’s will.
    The space around her felt preternaturally still, and the only sound Bianca heard was her own breathing. “You tell him,” she finally said, “tell him I don’t have the money he’s asking for. I don’t have it any more now than I did when he called me. You tell him he will have to abide by the original agreement and wait like all of my other creditors, or he can take nothing at all. I don’t care about the immediate-demand