by J. R. Ward
There was no reason to fake the orgasm she actually had, her nails sinking into the smooth shoulders of his tuxedo jacket as she gasped, his old-fashioned Bay Rum cologne such a throwback, it made him way ahead of his time.
As she gave herself up to him, he was the only man she had ever loved--and the only one she would never truly have. Samuel T. was like her, just worse--a soul who could never settle down even as he strolled down the brick pathways of social expectation.
"Fuck me," she demanded against his lips.
He was breathing hard, his body rigid under that expensive suit, ready for her . . . but instead of giving her what she wanted, he stepped back, dropped her skirt, and stared at her remotely.
"Samuel?" she demanded.
With deliberate slowness, he raised his fingers to his mouth and sucked them in. Then he ran his tongue up and down and between them, licking her essence from his skin.
"No," he said. "I don't think so."
"What."
Samuel leaned in. "I'm going to go back to your father's party and sit down at his table. I went ahead and switched the seating arrangement so Veronica is next to me. You'll know when I put my hand between her legs--you're going to see her stiffen and try to keep her composure as I do to her what I just did to you. Watch her face, Gin. And know that as soon as we leave, I'm going to fuck her in the front seat of my Jaguar."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Like I said, watch me, Gin."
As he turned away from her, she wanted to throw something at the back of his head. Instead, she gritted out, "Isn't it Savannah?"
He glanced over his shoulder. "Like I care about her name? The only thing that matters is . . . she's not you."
On that note, he strode off, his fine patent leather shoes clapping out over the bricks, his shoulders set, his head up.
Wrapping her arms around herself, she noticed for the first time that the night was cold. Even though it was eighty degrees.
She should have told him about the lawyer, she decided. Then again, she had picked the doughy little man precisely because she knew that sooner or later Samuel T. would find out.
At least one thing was for sure. Samuel T. would be back. Somehow the two of them couldn't stay away from each other for long.
And eventually, she was going to have to tell him about Amelia, she thought. But not tonight. Not . . . anytime soon.
If that man found out she had hid his daughter from him all these years?
He might just kill her.
ELEVEN
After Lane left the conservatory, the idea of going back to his father's party was utterly unappealing--especially as he heard the quiet gonging that announced dinner was being served. But considering his other option was to go see Edward, he--
"Lane?"
Refocusing, he looked through the archway into the dining room. A tall brunette woman in a pale gray gown was standing in front of one of the antique Venetian mirrors, the view of her bare shoulders as lovely from the back as it was from the front.
Speak of the devil, he thought. But he smiled as he went over to her and kissed her smooth cheek. "Sutton, how are you?"
More like, what are you doing here? She and her kin were the "enemy," the owners of the Sutton Distillery, makers of the famous Sutton brand of bourbons and liquors--which was not to say he, personally, had anything against the woman. Traditionally, however, people from that bloodline were persona non grata at Easterly . . . in conversation . . . in nightly prayers.
And they were KU fans. So they wore blue, not red, at games.
Now that was something he could actually get worked up about.
As they embraced, she smelled like the rich woman she was, her delicate fragrance lingering in his nose as he stepped back, just the way her perfect body and couture gown flashed again when he blinked.
But that wasn't because he was attracted to her. It was more in the way he'd remember a museum-quality painting or a Duesenberg.
"I didn't know you were coming down this weekend." She smiled. "It's good to see you after all this time. You're looking well."
That was funny, he felt like shit. "And you, beautiful as always."
"Are you staying through the Derby?"
Over Sutton's shoulder, he caught sight of Chantal entering the dining room, her floor-length, brilliant yellow dress sweeping in along with her butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth attitude.
Only long enough to get papers filed, he thought.
"Lane?" Sutton prompted.
"Sorry. Actually, I have to go back up to New York soon." After all, those poker games weren't going to play themselves. "I'm glad to see you--surprised it's at Father's dinner, but glad."
Sutton nodded. "It's a bit of a surprise for me as well."
"Here on business?"
She took a sip from her glass of wine. "Mmm."
"That was supposed to be a joke."
"Tell me, have you seen . . ."
As she trailed off without throwing in a proper noun, there was, once again, no reason for her to finish the sentence with "Edward." For a number of reasons.
"Not yet. But I'm going to go out to the farm."
"You know, Edward never comes into town." Sutton took another delicate draw off the razor-sharp lip of her glass. "I used to see him a lot back before he was . . . well, we were on the University of Charlemont board together even though I'm a KU fan, and . . ."
As the woman continued on, he had the sense she was not so much informing him of things he already knew, but reliving a period of her life the loss of which she mourned. Not for the first time, he had to wonder what had really happened between his family's golden boy and their competitor's lovely daughter.
"If it isn't the prodigal son returned."
The sound of his father's voice was like a warning shot across his bow, and Lane covered his distaste by taking a drink of his bourbon. "Father."
William Baldwine was almost as tall as he was, with the same dark hair and blue eyes, the same jaw, the same shoulders. The differences were in the aging details, the gray at the temples, the tortoiseshell bifocals, the furrow at the brow from decades of frowning. Somehow, though, those AARP-isms didn't lessen his father's stature. If anything, they just backed up the aura of power.
"Do I need to have a place set for you." Behind those glasses, his father's eyes regarded Lane's clothes with the kind of disdain more appropriate to dog feces in the parlor. "Or are you leaving?"
"Let me think." Lane narrowed his stare. "As much as I would enjoy degrading your table in this button-down, I'd have to be in your presence for at least three courses. So I think I'll take my leave."
Lane put his Family Reserve down on the nearest sideboard and bowed to Sutton, who was looking like she'd prefer to go with him rather than stay.
"Sutton, as always, a pleasure." He glanced at his sire. "Father, fuck you."
With that grenade having been lobbed, he strode through the gathering crowd, nodding at the politicians and the socialites, those two actors from that HBO series he was addicted to, and Samuel T. and his girlfriend of the nanosecond.
Lane made it out to the front foyer, and was almost at the grand door, when a set of stilettoes came after him.
"Where are you going?" Chantal hissed as she grabbed his arm. "And why aren't you dressed."
"None of your business." He shook off her hold. "On both accounts."
"Lane, this is unacceptable--"
"Those words should never pass your lips, woman."
Chantal shut her perfectly lined mouth. Then she took a deep breath like she was having a problem tucking her anger into bed for the night. "I would like to spend some time with you this evening to talk things over, and discuss . . . our future."
"The only future you need to think about is how many Vuitton suitcases you're going to have to pack to move out of here."
Chantal kicked up her chin. "You have no idea what you're saying."
He leaned in and dropped his voice to a whisper
. "I know what you did. I know that you didn't 'lose' the baby. If you'd wanted to keep that abortion of yours quiet, you shouldn't have taken one of my family's chauffeurs up to Cincinnati to that clinic."
As she blanched, he remembered exactly where he'd been when the man who'd taken her there had tenderfooted around the reveal.
"No response? No denial?" Lane chided. "Or will those come after the shock of having been found out passes."
There was a stretch of silence, and he knew she was weighing her options, trying to figure out which approach would work in her best interests.
"What was I supposed to do?" she finally said in a hushed voice. "You left me here with no explanation, no support, no money, no way to contact you."
He motioned around at the oil paintings and the Oriental rugs. "Yes, because this is such a damned depraved wilderness."
"You abandoned me!"
"So the solution was to get your figure back and try to seduce someone else, right? I'm assuming that was why you did it--you needed to fit into your size fours again, didn't you, my darling wife."
"Lane, you are saying things you don't mean--"
"You killed an innocent--"
Reginald came out of the parlor with a silver tray of used glasses, took one look at the pair of them, and backtracked, disappearing once again into the now-vacant room.
Ah, yes, life at Easterly. Where privacy was less common than diamonds and doled out only in relative terms. But at least he knew he could trust that man even more than he could his own family.
Not that that was saying much.
"I'm not doing this with you here," Lane rasped. "And you are leaving this house. As soon as the Derby's run, your free ride is over."
Chantal arched one of her perfect eyebrows. "Divorce me if you want, but I am going nowhere."
"You have no right to be under this roof after that ring is off your finger."
The smile she gave him was chilling. "We'll just see about that." She nodded to the front door. "Go wherever you like, run away--that's your thing, isn't it. You can rest assured, however, that I will be here when you get back."
Lane narrowed his eyes. Chantal was a lot of things, but delusional had never been one. She was too much of a self-promoter for that.
And she was staring back at him as if she knew something he didn't.
What the hell else had been going on while he'd been gone?
*
Out at the Red & Black, Edward sat in an old leather armchair in front of a television that was so ancient it still had bunny ears poking out on either side of its cereal-box-sized screen. The room he was in was dim, but gleaming--the result of the countless racing trophies that were crammed into the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves across the way.
The stables' cottage had one bedroom, a bath with a claw-foot tub, a galley kitchen, and this area here, which was a library, study, living room, and parlor all rolled into one. There was no second floor, only an attic full of old horse-racing memorabilia, and no garage. Total square footage was less than the dining room of Easterly--and ever since he'd moved in, he'd learned the value of having a place small enough so you could hear and see almost everything. Back at the mansion, you never had a clue who else was in the sprawling house, where they were, what they were doing.
For someone like him, whose only mistress was night terrors and whose primary job was attempting to keep his brain from cannibalizing itself, the tight quarters were much easier to handle--especially around this time of the year. Such a shame he'd been down in South America right before the Derby when he'd been kidnapped. The anniversary of him getting held for corporate ransom ruined what had always been a most enjoyable weekend.
He checked his watch and cursed. Now that the sun was down, the evening hours presented themselves in a hazy twist, minutes lasting a century and a second at the same time. His night job? To somehow make it to sunrise without screaming.
At his elbow, the bottle of vodka was nearly finished. He'd started off with five cubes of ice in his tall glass, but they were long gone and he was drinking things neat at this point. Last night it had been gin. Two evenings ago he'd had three bottles of wine: a pair of reds and a white of some variety.
During the initial, acute stage of his "recovery," he'd had to learn the ins and outs of pain management, how you timed your pills and your food so that riding the nerve impulses of a ruined body was not worse than the torture he'd endured to earn his wounds. And that Master's in Medication Management had translated nicely over to this second, chronic part of his "recovery." Thanks to the early trial and error he'd had with the bottles of pills, he was able to arrange things for optimal sedative effect: Every afternoon, he would have a meal of some sort around four p.m., and by six o'clock, when the stables flushed out of employees, he could start drinking on an essentially empty stomach.
Nothing set his quick temper off faster than someone getting in the way of his buzz--
When the knock sounded out, he reached for the handgun beside the Grey Goose and tried to remember what day it was. The Derby was the day after tomorrow . . . so Thursday. It was Thursday night at some hour past sunset.
So this was not one of the prostitutes he paid to come service him. They were Friday. Unless he'd scheduled a twofer this week--and he hadn't done that.
Right . . . ? Or had he.
Reaching for his cane, he pushed himself off the chair and shuffled over to the front window. As he parted the drapes, the gun in his hand was steady, but his heart was pounding. Even though logically he knew there were no mercenaries here in Ogden County looking for him, even though he was aware that he was safe behind all of the locks and the security system he'd installed, and in spite of the forty millimeter against his palm . . . his brain had been permanently rewired.
When he saw who it was, he frowned and lowered the weapon. Going over to the door, he undid the chain, three dead bolts, and the latch and opened up, the hinges squeaking like mice--another warning mechanism for him.
"Wrong client," he muttered dryly at the small blond woman wearing old jeans and a clean muscle shirt. "I order brunettes. In ball gowns."
For a reason he preferred to keep to himself.
She frowned. "'Scuse me?"
"I only take brunettes. And they are supposed to be dressed properly."
He wanted long dark hair that curled at the end, a gown that reached the floorboards, and they had to wear Must de Cartier. Oh, and keep their mouths shut. They weren't allowed to speak to him as he fucked them: Although the whores could get the outside almost right, the fragile illusion would be broken the instant their voices didn't sound like the woman he wanted but could not have.
He had enough trouble keeping an erection going as it was--in fact, the only way he could get it up at all was if he believed the lie for the duration it took him to pump his way to an orgasm.
The woman standing on his doorstep put her hands on her hips. "I don't believe I know what you're talkin' 'bout. But I know I'm in the right place 'chere. You're Edward Baldwine, and this is the Red and Black."
"Who are you?"
"Jeb Landis's daughter. Shelby. Shelby Landis."
Edward closed his eyes. "Goddamn it."
"I'll appreciate you not takin' the Lord's name in vain in my presence. Thank you."
He cracked his lids. "What do you want?"
"My father's dead."
Edward focused over her head, at the moon that was rising above Barn C. "You want to come in?"
"If you put that weapon away, yes."
He tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans and stepped back. "You want a drink?"
As she came in, he realized how truly short she was. And she probably weighed ninety pounds tops--soaking wet while holding a bale of hay.
"No, thank you. I do not abide by alcohol. But I would care to avail m'self of your facilities. I've had a long trip."
"They're over there."
"Thank you kindly."
He leaned out his door. T
he pickup truck she'd evidently driven here from God only knew where was parked on the left, the engine still ticking after she'd turned it off.
As he shut the heavy weight and went through the procedure of relocking things, a toilet flushed in the back of the house and the water ran. A moment later, the girl emerged and went over to look at the trophies.
Edward returned to his chair, grimacing as he arranged himself. "When?" he asked as he poured the rest of the vodka into his glass.
"A week ago," she replied without looking over at him.
"How."
"Trampled. Well, the doctors say his heart gave out, but it was caused by a trample. That how you got maimed?"
"No." He took a long drink. "So what are you doing here."
Now she turned around. "My father always said I was to come and find you if anything ever happened to him. He said you owed him. I never asked for what."
Edward regarded her for a long time. "How old are you? Twelve?"
"Twenty-two."
"Jesus, you're young--"
"Watch your mouth around me."
He had to smile. "You're just like your old man, you know that?"
"So people say." She put her hands back on her hips. "I'm not lookin' for no handouts. I need a place to stay and work to do. I'm good with horses, just like my father, and bad with people--so you're warned up front on that one. I got no money, but my back is strong and I'm not afraid of nothing. When can I start."
"Who says I'm looking for any help?"
She frowned. "My dad said you'd need it. He said you'd have to have more help."
The Red & Black was a big operation, and there were always vacancies. But Jeb Landis was a complicated blast from the past--and his kin was contaminated by association.
And yet . . . "What can you do?"
"It's not rocket science to muck stalls, keep the horses in shape, watch the pregnancies--"
He waved away her words. "Fine, fine, you're hired. And I'm just being a prick because, like you, I can't get along with people anymore. There's a vacant apartment next to Moe's over in Barn B. You can move in there."
"Point the way."
Edward grunted as he got back to his feet and he purposely brought his glass with him as he led the way to the door. "Don't you want to know how much I'll pay you."
