Page 1 of A Murderous Crow
Prologue
Corvus…
I dropped the paperwork onto my desk and sank into my seat behind it, feeling mixed emotions.
Savvy Savannah Davenport washot– sure, but just about everything about the bitch annoyed me. Not least of which was that she was doingbetter than I waswhen it came to the real estate game here in Savannah, Georgia.
She was tall, and elegant, and a royal pain in my ass.
Just about every time our agencies clashed, I was the one to deal with her – partially because she was easy on the eyes, and partially because Ilovedriling her up.
She was a rich bitch, just like every other disposable darling that’d come in and out of my life. There was no substance there. No passion. Just a competition and a certain amount of ruthlessness.
I could appreciate the last, especially in a pretty package.
I stared at her smiling face in the full-page ad lying on the corner of my desk, about to fall off it and into the trash, and tsked to myself.
She was old man Beauregard Calhoun’s cash cow, and she had come out of nowhere from some elite place with a fake-as-hell steel magnolia personality and exaggerated southern drawl with her kitschy-as-fuck tagline –SavvySavannah.
From the moment she’d introduced herself, all saccharine sweet, holding out her hand with its gold watch and its tiny, barely readable face. Her nails were manicured to perfection and painted with a classic French tip, but with a thin gold line between the white and the natural color of her nail bed. I had instantly disliked her.
My dislike had turned me cold, and her competitive when it came to the real-estate race. She seemed determined to show me up every chance she got, and that had just made me dislike her even more – but at least she was good for two things – looking good, and being a good sport. She tended to turn the usual game of checkers that was real estate in this town into a game of chess, and I could appreciate the challenge.
So, she did have her uses. I’d give her that.
Chapter One
Savannah…
“Aggravating prick,” I muttered under my breath, and set my phone aside on the linen by the sparkling cutlery.
I hated dealing with Corbett Prescott. The douchebag was old money – born with a silver spoon in his mouth, with a line going all the way back to some of the first settlers and maybe some Vanderbilt blood built in. Whatever it was about his lineage, it was all theworstparts of the American aristocracy flowing through his veins.
Arrogant, insufferable, brash, and cocky.
Ihatedworking across from him on deals, but alas… it’s where we were on the Duffy listing. My clients were the homeowners. His were looking to buy, and they were picking on things to the nth degree, stalling literallyeverythingateveryturn, to the point it was just turning into one big quagmire.Ugh…it was only around a 900k listing, and he was making mework for it.
I sighed and checked my watch. It was gold and had diamond chips at the 12, 3, 6, and 9.
A gift from my grandfather to my grandmother on their wedding day. I flipped over the face, and on the back was inscribed,never enough…as in there would never be enough time spent with her.
I hoped that someday someone would think of me that way, but I wasn’t counting on it.
I heaved a sigh and was just about to consider this meetingdead on arrivalwhen a harried man, led by the maître d’, arrived at the table.
“I am so sorry I’m late,” he rushed out with a clipped, foreign accent, as the maître d’ held out his chair for him and he slid into it. I gave the maître d’ a nod, and he snapped a curt bow and strode back to the front of the house.
Yes, this place wasthatkind of place.
“No trouble at all, sugar.” I put on my award-winning smile, as much as it pained me to do so.
“Please,” he said. “I mean it. I do apologize. I was held at a rather volatile board meeting. Anyway, I’m Hal Lindstrom. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” He held out his hand.
I gave it a light, girly shake and said, “Savannah Davenport, and the pleasure is all mine.” I laid my southern accent on thick. Hal here was from Sweden or Norway or some such country. He was looking for that slice of Americana that was in the movies.
He’d likely watchedMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evilone too many times, and had been enamored by the whole southern hospitality and weird sort of vibe that was Savannah in the 1980s and early 1990s… but I was twenty-nine. Born in nineteen ninety-five, so all that sort of culture was lost on me.
Savannah had settled some. All the women who’d made it a wild place back then were in their fifties and their sixties now. Some were pushing into their seventies. There was a reason thatSlow-vannawas what she was called today. The city had mellowed considerably in the intervening years, but there wasno big Hollywood blockbuster film out there to reflect that nowadays. It was all the ballad of ornery old Jim Williams and the lore of the Mercer-Williams house.
