by J. R. Ward
Jeff undid the first button. The second. The third. Her bra was black, just like the thigh highs.
Bending down, he kissed her neck, and as she arched back, he slipped his arm around her waist. Condom. He needed a condom--and knowing Lane's old reputation, there had to be one around here . . .
As he pulled the top of the uniform wide and released the front clasp of her bra, her tight nipples were exposed and oh, yeah, they were perfect. And at the same time, he looked around her and opened the first of the drawers.
Good job, he thought as he found a three-pack of bright blue foiled Trojans.
Next thing he knew, he had the maid naked except for the thigh highs. She was magnificent, all real breasts and good hips, supple thighs and sweet flesh. He stayed clothed, and slipped one of those condoms on without losing a beat.
Tiphanii, with two i's at the end, knew exactly how to wrap her legs around and lock her ankles behind his hips, and oh, yeah, the sound she made in his ear. Planting one palm next to the antique mirror on the wall and holding her waist with the other, he started thrusting. As she grabbed on to his shoulders, he closed his eyes.
It was so damned good. Even though this was anonymous, and obviously the result of his foreigner status making him seem exotic. Sometimes, though, you had to take advantage of what crossed your path.
She found her release before he did. Or at least she put a show on as if she did; he wasn't sure and wasn't bothered if it was an act.
His orgasm was for real, though, powerful and racking, a reminder that, at least for him, flesh and blood was better than the alternative every time.
When he was finished, Tiphanii snuggled up to his chest as he caught his breath.
"Mmm," she whispered into his ear. "That was good."
Yes, it was, he thought as he pulled out.
"Then let's do it again," he groaned as he picked her up and headed for the bed.
*
Downstairs in the parlor, Lane let Ricardo Monteverdi talk everything out even though Lane knew exactly how much was owed and how much of an emergency it was going to be for Monteverdi if those millions weren't paid back.
A glass of Family Reserve helped pass the time--and cut the retinal burn from that photograph of Rosalinda's son. The hair, the eyes, the shape of the face, the build of the body--
"And your brother was not helpful."
Okay, so the speech was wrapping up. "Edward isn't really involved in the family anymore."
"And he calls himself a son--"
"Watch yourself," Lane bit out. "Any insult against my brother is an offense to me."
"Pride can be an expensive luxury."
"So is professional integrity. Especially if it's built on falsity." Lane toasted the man with his bourbon. "But we digress. I haven't been back here for two years, and there is a lot to wrestle with in light of my father's unfortunate demise."
There was a pause, during which Monteverdi was clearly calibrating his approach. When the man finally spoke again, his voice was both smooth and aggressive at the same time. "You must understand that this loan has to be paid back now."
Funny, there had been two weeks only a week ago. Guess the Prospect Trust board had gotten wind of something, or somebody had caught the trail of the loan.
Lane had wondered how the guy had managed to make the deal without getting caught.
"The will is being probated," Lane said, "and I don't have access to any of the family accounts except for my own as I have no power of attorney for my mother, and my father named his personal attorney, Babcock Jefferson, as his executor. If you're looking to be paid, you should be talking to Mr. Jefferson."
When Monteverdi cleared his throat, Lane thought, Ahhhh, so the man had gone that route already and been shut down.
"I should think, Lane, that you'd prefer to take a more personal interest in this."
"And why is that?"
"You have enough to keep out of the press as it is."
"My father's death is already on the news."
"That is not to which I refer."
Lane smiled and got up, heading back to the bar set-up on its brass cart. "Tell me something, how are you going to release the information that my family is broke and not send yourself up the river?" He glanced over his shoulder. "I mean, let's get it all out in the open, shall we? You're threatening me with some kind of reveal, and even if it's an anonymous tip on your part, how exactly is that going to play out for you when your board learns about this loan you and my father thought up together? We're not a good bet right now, and you must have known that going into the loan. You have access to all the trust information. You knew damn well how much was, and was not, in those accounts of ours."
"Well, I would think you'd want to spare your mother the ignominy of--"
"My mother hasn't been out of bed for almost three years. She's not reading the newspaper, and the only guests she has are her nurses--all of whom will adhere to any gag order I give them or they'll lose their jobs. Tell me, did you try that one out on my brother, too, when you spoke with him? I don't imagine it got you very far at all."
"I did nothing but help out an old friend. Your family, however, will not survive the scandal--and you must know that your mother's trust is severely depleted. Unbeknownst to me, your father made a withdrawal of nearly the entire corpus a day before he died. There is less than six million remaining in it. Your sister's trust is gone. Your brother Max's trust is empty. Edward's assets are at zero. And lest you think this is all our mismanagement, your father became the trustee on all of them as soon as he had your mother declared incompetent. And before you ask me why we allowed him to do what he did, I will remind you that he was acting within his legal rights."
Well. Wasn't all that a lovely little news flash. Sixty-eight million had seemed like a big deal. And then the hundred and forty million. And now . . .
Hundreds of millions were gone.
Lane turned his back to Monteverdi as he lifted his glass. He didn't want the other man to see his hands shake.
The six million in his mother's trust was a fortune to most people. But with Easterly's household expenses alone, that figure would be gone in half a year.
"I would have explained this to your brother," Monteverdi murmured, "but he wasn't inclined to listen."
"You went to him first and then to Babcock."
"Can you blame me?"
"Did Babcock tell you where my father put all the money?" Lane shook his head. "Never mind. If he had, you wouldn't be here."
Lane's brain skipped around, and then he looked at the liquor bottle he'd just had in his palm.
At least he knew where he could get his hands on some cash.
"How much time will ten million buy me?" he heard himself say.
"You don't have that--"
"Shut up and answer the question."
"I can give you another week. But I'll need a wire. By tomorrow afternoon."
"And that will reduce the debt to forty-three million."
"No. That is the price for me risking my reputation for your family. The debt level will remain the same."
Lane shot a glare over his shoulder. "Aren't you a gentleman."
The distinguished man shook his head. "This is not personal, Mr. Baldwine. It's business. And from a business perspective, I can . . . delay things for a short period of time."
Thanks, you bastard, Lane thought. "You'll get your blood money. Tomorrow."
"That would be much appreciated."
After the man gave him the details of where the funds needed to go, Monteverdi bowed at the waist and showed himself to the exit. In the quiet that followed, Lane took out his phone.
He knew where to get the money. But he was going to need some help.
FOURTEEN
"Ineed you to do this."
As Edward held the receiver to his ear, his brother Lane's voice was grim--and so was the news. Everything gone. Trusts drained dry. Accounts wiped out. Generations of wealth dematerialized.<
br />
"Edward? You have to go see her."
For some reason, Edward glanced around into the kitchen proper. Shelby was at the stove, stirring something in a pot that smelled shockingly good.
"Edward." Lane cursed. "Hello?"
Shelby had a strand of hair that had gotten loose from her ponytail, and she shoved it behind her ear like it was irritating her as she stared down into the soup. Stew. Sauce. Whatever it was.
She had changed her jeans, but not her boots, her shirt but not her fleece. She was always covered up, he noted absently, as if she were cold.
When had he started to catch these little things about her?
"Fine," Lane snapped. "I'll go and take care of it--"
"No." Edward shifted his weight and turned away from the kitchen. "I'll go."
"I need the wire by tomorrow. Monteverdi gave me the routing and account numbers. I'll text them to you."
"I don't have a cell phone. I'll let you know where to send the account details."
"Fine. There's another thing, though." There was a pause. "They found something. Of Father's. I tried to call you earlier."
"Oh? A little piece of the man left behind? Does it have a monetary value? We could use any help we can get."
"Why do you say it like that?"
"You just told me that there is no money anywhere, essentially. Fairly reasonable optimism given the cash constraints."
There was another period of quiet. And then Lane explained what had been found in an ivy bed.
When Edward said nothing, his brother muttered, "You don't seem surprised. About any of this, actually."
Edward's eyes went to the drapes that were pulled over the windows.
"Hello?" Lane said. "You knew, didn't you. You knew the money was gone, didn't you."
"I had my suspicions."
"Tell me something. How much life insurance did Father carry?"
"Seventy-five million," Edward heard himself say. "Key man insurance through the company. At least that's what he had when I was there. I'm going to go now. I'll call you."
Edward hung up and took a deep breath. For a moment, the cottage spun around where he stood, but he willed things to rights.
"I need to leave," he said.
Shelby glanced over her shoulder. "Where are you going?"
"It's business."
"The new mare you were talking about to Moe and his son?"
"Yes. Save me dinner?" As her brows lifted, the center of his chest hurt as if he'd been stabbed. "Please."
"You gonna be real late?"
"I don't think so."
Edward was halfway to the door when he remembered he didn't have a car. His Porsche was gathering dust back in Easterly's bank of garages.
"May I please borrow your truck?" he asked.
"Aren't you going with Moe or Joey?" When he just shrugged, Shelby shook her head. "It's a stick."
"I'll manage. The ankle's already doing better."
"Keys are in it, but I don't think--"
"Thank you."
Limping out of the cottage, he had no cell phone, no wallet, no driver's license and nothing in his belly to sustain him, but he was sober and he knew exactly where he was going.
Shelby's old pickup had a steering wheel that had been worn smooth, a faded dashboard, and carpets in the wells with so little nap that they were all but tile. The tires were new, however, the engine started with no problem and ran like a top, and everything was neat as a pin.
Hooking up with Route 42, he headed into the suburbs. The clutch wasn't all that stiff, but it killed his ankle and knee nonetheless, and he found himself spending a lot of time in third. Overall, though, he was numb as he drove along. Well, emotionally numb.
After many miles, the houses started to get big and the land began to be professionally tended as if it were an interior space, not an exterior one. There were fancy gates, stone walls, and pieces of sculpture on rolling lawns. Long drives and specimen trees. Security cameras. Rolls-Royces and Bentleys on the road.
Sutton Smythe's family estate was up on the left. Its hill was not as tall as the one Easterly had been built on, and the Georgian brick mansion had only been constructed in the early 1900s, but the square footage was well over thirty thousand square feet, making it bigger than Edward's old haunt.
Approaching the gates, he rolled down the window by hand and then stretched out and entered in the pass code on a keypad. As the great iron bars split down the middle, he headed up the winding lane, the mansion unfurling before him, its tremendous footprint sprawling over the cropped grass. Magnolias framed the house, just as they did at Easterly, and there were other massive trees on the property. A tennis court was off to the side, discreetly hidden behind a hedgerow, and the garages disappeared off into the distance.
The driveway circled in front of the mansion, and there was a black Town Car, a Mercedes C63, a modest Camry, and two SUVs with blacked-out windows parked in a line.
He halted Shelby's four wheels and a bed as close as he could to the front entrance and then hobbled out and over to the mansion's carved door. As he put the brass knocker to use, he remembered all the times he'd come here in black tie and just walked right in. But he and Sutton weren't like that anymore.
The Smythes' butler, Mr. Graham, opened things up. As composed as the man was, his eyes peeled wide and not just at the fact that Edward was in jeans and a work shirt instead of some suit.
"I need to see Sutton."
"I'm sorry, sir, but she is entertaining--"
"It's business."
Mr. Graham inclined his head. "But of course. The drawing room, if you will?"
"I know the way."
Edward gimped his way in, passing through the foyer and by a study, heading in the opposite direction of the cocktail hour that was rolling out in the main reception room. Given that matched set of SUVs, it was likely that the Kentucky governor had come for dinner, and Edward could only imagine what was being discussed. The bourbon business. Maybe it was fundraising. Schools.
Sutton was very connected with just about everything in the state.
Maybe she would run for the big seat someday.
He would certainly vote for her.
As he entered a grand space, he glanced around and reflected that it had been a long time since he'd been in this particular room. When had he last walked in here? He couldn't quite recall . . . and as he measured the lemon yellow silk wallpaper, the spring green damask drapes, the tasseled sofas, and the oil paintings by Sisley and Manet and Morisot, he decided that, like luxury hotels, there was a certain anonymous quality to homes of pedigree: no modern art, everything perfectly harmonious and priceless, no clutter or knickknacks, the few staged family photos set in sterling-silver frames.
"This is a surprise."
Edward hobbled around, and for a moment, he just stayed quiet. Sutton was wearing a red dress and had her brunette hair up in a chignon, and her perfume was Must de Cartier, as usual. But more than all that? She had on the rubies he'd bought her.
"I remember those earrings," he said softly. "And that pin."
One of her long hands snatched up to her earlobe. "I still like them."
"They still suit you."
Van Cleef & Arpels, invisible-set Burmese beauties with diamonds. He'd gotten the set for her when she'd been made vice president of the Sutton Distillery Corporation.
"What happened to your ankle?" she asked.
"Going by all the red, you must be talking about UC tonight." The University of Charlemont. Go Eagles. Fuck the Tigers. "Scholarships? Or an expansion to Papa John's Stadium."
"So you don't want to talk about your limp."
"You look . . . beautiful."
Sutton fiddled with her earring again, shifting her weight. That dress was probably by Calvin Klein, from his maison de haute couture, not the company's mass-produced sector, its lines so clean, so elegant, that the woman who had it on was the focus, not the silk.
She cleared her throat. "I
can't imagine you came to congratulate me."
"On what?" he asked.
"Never mind. Why are you here?"
"I need you to perform on that mortgage."
She arched a brow. "Oh, really. That's a shift in priority. Last time you brought it up, you demanded that I rip the thing to shreds."
"I have the account number for the wire."
"What's changed?"
"Where do you want me to send the account information?"
Sutton crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. "I heard about your father. On the news today. I didn't know that he'd committed . . . I'm sorry, Edward."
He let that hang where it was. There was no way he was going into the death with anyone, much less her. And in the silence, he measured her body, remembered what it felt like to touch her, imagined himself getting up close to her again and smelling her hair, her skin--only this time, he would know it was really her.
God, he wanted her naked and stretched out before him, nothing but smooth skin and moans as he covered her with himself.
"Edward?"
"Will you perform on the mortgage?" he pressed.
"Sometimes it helps to talk."
"So let's discuss where you can send that ten million."
Footsteps out in the hall brought his head around.
And what do you know, he thought as the governor himself came into the ornate archway.
Governor Dagney Boone was, yes, a descendant of the original Daniel, and he had the kind of face that should be on a twenty-dollar bill. At forty-seven, he had a full head of naturally dark hair, a body honed by hours of tennis, and the casual power of a man who had just won his second term by a landslide. He'd been married for twenty-three years to his high school sweetheart, had three children, and then had lost his wife four years ago to cancer.
He'd been single ever since, as far as the public knew.
As he looked at Sutton, however, it was not as a politician would. That gaze lingered just a little too long, like he were respectfully enjoying the view.
"So this is a date," Edward drawled. "With state troopers as chaperones. How romantic."
Boone looked over--and did a double take, as if he hadn't recognized Edward in the slightest.
Ignoring the jibe and smothering his shock, Boone strode forward with an outstretched palm. "Edward. I didn't know you were back in the Commonwealth. My condolences on your father's passing."
