Trouble in High Heels Read Online Free

support of their family.”
    “Then where do you propose to get the money?” he asked.
    Lori drew a blank. The truth hurt, but the truth was she knew much more about spending money than making it. “That’s part of your job, isn’t it?”
    He raked his hand through his hair. “I’m gonna have to think on this. The general rule is you don’t expand expenditures when you’re short of cash.”
    “There’s got to be a way. Maybe a loan.”
    He shook his head. “Yeah, you need that like you need a root canal. There’s always the alternative condition your father left…”
    Lori felt bitter disgust back up in her throat. “You mean that archaic, chauvinistic, insulting clause that if I get married and remain married until I’m thirty, then my husband and I can have more access to my inheritance, but my husband will have to approve major purchases.” She gritted her teeth. “I still think Daddy must have been mentally half-gone when he put in that provision.”
    Not only was it insulting, it was also embarrassing. The ultimate no-confidence vote. Her father had loved her with all his heart, but he obviously hadn’t believed she was capable of looking after herself. The terrible question whispered in her brain like a hissing poisonous snake.
    What if she wasn’t?
    Before Lori Jean Granger drove him completely out of his mind, Jackson decided to drive his Chevy Blazer to a barren area past the outskirts of Dallas. This was where he came when he felt the corporate demands sliding around his neck to choke the life out of him. With his jacket already ditched, he tugged his tie loose and undid the top button of his shirt. It was still hot as hell outside, and even though he’d been wearing suits since he graduated from college, he’d never grown accustomed to it. No matter what brand he wore, he always felt as if he was wearing a straitjacket and a silk noose.
    He got out of his truck and watched the sun ease down the horizon. Two hundred acres of scrubby land. The only good thing about the acreage was the accessibility to the highway. Anyone else looking at the expanse of barren land would see an ugly, useless plot of real estate.
    But not Jackson. Jackson saw well-manicured lawns with houses that oozed comfort. He saw paved driveways and neighborhood streets with lights. He saw a playground for children and a community clubhouse and swimming pool. He saw everything he had wanted as a child and didn’t have.
    An image of the shack he’d grown up in flashed through his mind. He heard his father’s anger and his mother’s tears. He smelled the alcohol on his father’s breath and felt his rough slap across his cheek as if it were yesterday. He saw the bruises on his mother’s face and felt the horrible helplessness.
    Something inside him hardened like granite.
    He would never be helpless again. He would make his own way.
    The rest of the firm would fall out of their chairs if they knew that Jackson James had every intention of becoming the next real-estate tycoon of Texas. The partners and everyone else thought he was a heartless sonovabitch determined to make his living through accounting, but Jackson had always known accounting was just a means to an end. The kind of success he wanted required a vision and heart his peers thought he didn’t possess. It also, however, required financial backing, and that would take some time. He sucked in a draft of hot summer air and narrowed his eyes. It may look like a piece of crap now, but this was going to be one building block of his fortune. Jackson owned a couple of houses in town that he rented and added the monthly payments to the special account for Jackson Place.
    “ Jackson Place,” he echoed, and his lips twitched with self-derision. It was egotistical as hell to name a real-estate development after himself, but he didn’t want anyone mistaking who founded this successful venture.
    Jackson Place would be the first of many successful ventures. He knew it in his