by J. R. Ward
"Who attends?"
"Your father." Over came two more pages. "The company's general counsel. The board chair and vice chair. CFO, COO. And then there are special guests, depending on the issues. I was called in once when they were debating changing the formula for No. Fifteen. I shot that bright idea down and they must have agreed with me because the folly never surfaced again. I was in that boardroom only long enough to be heard, and then I was escorted out."
"Do you know if they have an agenda in advance?"
"I would think so. When I went, there were four other people waiting in the hall with me, so they were working off some kind of plan. It's all run out of your father's offices at your house."
Lane started going through the papers that were still warm from having been through the machine. Minutes of the previous meeting. Attendance. Updates on operations that he didn't understand.
He needed a translator.
Who he could trust.
And greater access.
Mack went on to print out the previous three board meetings' worth of materials. Clipped it all together. Put it in files.
"I need to borrow your truck," Lane said as he stared at the pile.
"Drop me at home and it's yours. I should try to sober up, anyway."
"I owe you."
"Just save this company. And we are more than even."
As Mack put his palm out, Lane shook it. Hard. "Whatever it takes. No matter who it hurts."
The Master Distiller closed his eyes. "Thank you, God."
*
Like watching exotic animals at the zoo, Lizzie thought.
Standing at the very edge of the tent, she watched the glittering people wind in and out of the tables she and Greta had set up. The talk was loud, the perfume thick, the jewels flashing. All of the women were in hats and flats. The men were in pale suits and a couple even wore cravats and bowlers.
It was the kind of fantasy life that so many thought they wanted to live.
She knew the truth, however. After all these years working at Easterly, she was well aware that the rich were not inoculated against tragedy.
Their cocoon of luxury just made them think they were.
God, those spreadsheets that Rosalinda had left behind--
"Quite a sight, isn't it."
Lizzie looked over. "Miss Aurora--I can't believe you're out here. You never leave the kitchen during the brunch."
The woman's tired eyes surveyed the guests, the setup, the uniformed waiters with the sterling silver mint julep cups on sterling silver trays. "They're moving my food."
"Of course they are. Your menu is exquisite."
"The champagne flutes are holding."
Lizzie nodded and refocused on the crowd. "We've got about a hundred in reserve at the moment. The waiters are doing a great job."
"Where's your partner?"
For a split second, she almost gave the woman a Lane update. Which was crazy--and wouldn't have amounted to much. All she knew was that he'd left with Edwin MacAllan, the Master Distiller, about an hour ago. Or had it been two?
"Greta's over there." She pointed to the opposite corner. "She's riding herd on the flutes. Says finding the used ones that have been set aside is an Easter-egg hunt on steroids. Or . . . at least I think that's what she said. Her last report had a lot of German in it--usually not the best sign."
Miss Aurora shook her head. "That wasn't who I was asking about. It was good to see you and Lane in the same room again."
"Ah . . ." Lizzie cleared her throat. "I'm not sure what to say to that."
"He's a good boy, you know."
"Listen, Miss Aurora, there's nothing going on between him and me." Other than eight hours of sex the evening before. "He's married."
"For now. That woman is trash."
Can't disagree there, Lizzie thought. "Well . . ."
"Lizzie, he's going to need you."
Lizzie put up her palms to try to derail the conversation. "Miss Aurora, he and I--"
"You're going to have to be there for him. There's a lot that's going to fall on his shoulders."
"So you know? About . . . everything?"
"He's going to need someone with a level head to stand by him." Miss Aurora's face became very grim. "He's a good man, but he's going to be tried in ways he never has been. He's going to need you."
"What did Rosalinda tell you?"
Before Miss Aurora could answer, a tall, striking brunette woman came up out of the crowd. And instead of passing by, she stopped and put her hand forward. "Lizzie King, my name's Sutton Smythe."
Lizzie recoiled--but then got with the program and accepted what was offered. "I know who you are."
"I just wanted to tell you how incredibly beautiful these gardens are. Astonishing! You and Mrs. von Schlieber are true artists."
There was nothing lurking behind the woman's open expression, no falsity, no ulterior anything--and the lack of shady made Lizzie think of Chantal's fake lady-like stuff.
"That's very kind of you."
Sutton took a sip from her mint julep cup, and the massive ruby on her right ring finger glowed. "I'd love to have you over to my property, but I know better--and I respect those boundaries. I did have to let you know how much I respect your talent, however."
"Thank you."
"You are so welcome."
Sutton smiled and walked off--or at least tried to. She didn't make it far, people crowding around her, talking at her, the women sizing up her clothes, the men sizing up her non-financial assets.
"You know," Lizzie murmured, "she's a nice person."
When there was no reply, she looked over. Miss Aurora was heading back for the kitchen's door, her gait slow and unsteady as if her feet hurt--and why wouldn't they. Plus come on, she'd been in the ER how many days ago?
Lizzie was glad the cook had come out for once to see the grand finale of all their collective effort. Maybe next year, they could get her to stay for a little while longer.
Across the tent, Chantal was sitting at a table with seven other women who were versions of her, namely brightly colored, expensive birds with their plumage largely paid for by the men in their lives. In twenty years, after whatever children they had had washed out of their households, they were going to look like wax figurines of themselves, everything jacked up, and filled, and enhanced.
And actually, they did work: Their profession was breeding and remaining attractive to their husbands.
A lot like the mares that had given birth to the thoroughbreds who were racing on that track in a couple of hours.
Lizzie thought of her farm, which she had paid for herself. No one could take that away from her--she had earned it.
Far better than being a perpetual suck-up.
As she took out her phone and checked to see if Lane had texted her, she told herself it was different between the two of them because she didn't need his money, she didn't care about his position, and she wasn't going to be told what to do by anybody.
When she saw there was nothing on her phone, a stabbing sensation hit her chest--and she studiously ignored it as she put her cell away.
It was different between her and Lane--
Crap. Why was she thinking as if they were back together?
THIRTY-ONE
Samuel T. blew off the line-up of sheep at the base of Easterly's hill, shooting his Jag around the Mercedeses, Audis, Porsches, and limos, and waving at the parkers who tried to flag him down so he'd stop.
Nope. He did not ride in vans with the great unwashed. And he'd be damned if he'd leave his girl in the hands of some sixteen-year-old yahoo who was liable to strip her gears as the little bastard parked her in a marsh at the side of the road.
As he crested the rise, he floated another wave at the solitary attendant up top and didn't spare a glance at the people stepping out of the van that had pulled up in front of the house. Heading for the garages, he parked parallel to the mansion's eastern flank and killed the engine--and immediately, he hea
rd the party on the other side of the garden wall, the patter of talk forming a multi-layered sound rather like a symphony's preamble to some great, dramatic rise of a solo.
It was a long while before he got out of the car.
I love you, Samuel T. This is who we are, who we've been since we were teenagers.
Or something to that effect. He couldn't remember the exact words Gin had used on him because when she'd been talking at him, he'd been too busy trying not to lose his mind.
God, the things he'd been through with that woman. All those years of one-upping each other. And she was right, of course. He did date waitresses and hairdressers because they weren't like her, and he did compare every female he was around against her--and yes, they all came up wanting.
He hadn't slept for more than an hour, maybe two, that conversation running frontward and backward in his mind over and over again.
In the end, the one thing that stuck out most was tied to the passage of time: Over the years, he'd seen Gin in a hundred thousand different moods, but she'd only teared up once before. It had been . . . about fifteen years ago, when he'd been a junior at U.Va. and she'd been a freshman at Sweet Briar. He'd come home for Easter break, mostly because of his parents, only a little because of Gin. Naturally, they had seen each other.
It was a small world. Especially when you wanted to put yourself in the path of someone else in Charlemont, Kentucky.
And strangely, that was what he'd had to do. Gin hadn't been out at any of the parties their group went to. He'd had to use a pickup game of basketball with her brothers as an excuse--not that he'd spent any time at all on the court that had been behind the garages. Ditching Max and Lane as soon as he'd set foot on the property, he'd found her out by the pool, in a sweatshirt and shorts. She'd looked like hell--and she'd told him she was taking a break from Sweet Briar and moving home for a while. That she didn't like college. That she just wanted to rest for a while.
Not a surprise. Wild child that she was, it had been hard to imagine her faithfully adhering to any schedule independently, whether it was as part of an English major, or as a job. She was far better suited to the pursuit for which she had been bred: lady of a grand house.
They'd ended up in argument. They always ended up in an argument.
And he had stormed off.
He'd intended to just leave her, but as usual, he hadn't been able to pull a clean break: Before he'd gone through the gate to get out of the garden, he'd glanced back.
Gin had had her head in her hands and she was weeping.
He'd returned to her, but she had run into the house and gone so far as to lock the French doors behind her.
He hadn't seen her for about a year after that. Mostly because even at the ridiculously young age of twenty, he'd recognized they were no good together. He hadn't been able to make the separation stick, however. He never was able to do that.
Samuel T. thought about what she'd said the day before . . . about those tears of hers.
What if . . . she hadn't been playing him?
For some reason, that terrified him.
And what was just as shocking? He found himself ready to stop the fighting with her. For so long, his pride had demanded responses to what she did, who she did . . . but it wasn't a defeat if the other person put down their sword at the same time you relinquished your own.
The truth? He was kidding himself if he thought there was anyone on the planet for him other than that headstrong, spoiled, pain in the ass.
She'd had his heart in the palm of her hand since the first day he'd laid eyes on her.
Getting out of his car, he brushed his hair back and buttoned the front of his pink, pale blue, and yellow plaid sport coat. Then he bent down, took his straw derby hat from the jump seat and arranged the thing in perfect position on his head.
Using the nearest gate into the garden, he walked into the party.
"Here's the man!"
"Samuel T.!"
"Mint julep for you!"
Buddies of his, gentlemen he'd known since kindergarten, came up to him, clapping hands, talking about handicapping the race, asking about the parties to come later in the day, the night, Sunday morning. He responded with throwaways, his eyes searching the crowd.
"Will you excuse me?" he said.
He didn't wait for any permissions, but strode across the tented space, bypassing waiters with trays and more people who reached out to him and several women anxious to connect with him.
Finally, he found her, standing alone, staring out over the river.
As he approached, he traced the elegant lines of Gin's body, lingering on the way her shoulders were left exposed by the silk dress she had on. For some reason, she had a long scarf tied around her throat, the ends waving in the wind created by the tent fans, the ends trailing down to her unbelievable legs.
He hated the way his heart beat so hard in his chest. Despised the fact that he had to subtly wipe his palms next to his jacket's double vents. Prayed that his read on her was correct . . .that she had, for once, been speaking from the heart--and that they were ready, finally, to get real about each other.
"Gin?"
When she didn't turn around, but just stayed fixated on the river, he put his hand on her arm--
She wheeled around so fast that her mint julep splashed all over his jacket, leaving a damp line across his midsection.
Not that he cared.
"Jumpy much?" he drawled, trying to recover some of his mojo.
"I'm so sorry." She reached forward with a little monogrammed cocktail napkin. "Oh, I've ruined--"
"Please. I have a backup in the trunk."
Mostly because he always sweated at the boxes at the track and he'd be damned if he'd spend the rest of the night in that kind of mess.
"So, ready for the big day?" she said as he took off his jacket.
He was folding the thing over his arm when it dawned on him that she wasn't meeting his eyes.
"Well?" she prompted. "My brother has a horse in the running. Maybe two? Sired by that nasty bastard Nebekanzer."
Still no eye contact.
Under his breath, he muttered, "I hate jumping out of airplanes."
That got her to look at him. But only for a moment. "What?"
As those blue eyes of hers went back out to the river, he cursed. "Listen . . . Gin."
"Yes?"
She was so still, he thought. And so much smaller than he was. Funny, he never noticed the height difference when they were going at it--nearly a hundred pounds less and six inches shorter didn't mean a thing when that mouth of hers was going to hell and back.
He took a deep breath. "So I've been thinking about what you said yesterday. And honestly . . . you're right. You're absolutely right. About everything."
He wasn't sure what he was expecting to get in response--but the slump of her shoulders was not it. She seemed . . . utterly defeated.
"I'm not any better at this than you are," he said. "But I want to . . . well . . . goddamn it, Gin, I love--"
"Stop," she blurted. "Don't say it. Please . . . not now. Don't--"
"Good morning, Samuel T. How are you?"
The appearance of a third party registered about as much as a house fly passing through would have.
Except then Richard Pford put his arm around Gin's waist and kept going with, "Have you told him the good news, darling?"
For the first time in his life, Samuel T. felt the cold wash of horror. Which, considering some of the things he'd done in the last two decades, was saying something.
"And what might that be?" he forced himself to drawl. "You two opening a lucrative organ-selling business over the Internet?"
Pford's beady little eyes grew nasty. "You have such an active imagination. It helps your clients, I'm sure."
"With your sense of ethics in business, I wouldn't be casting stones in that glass house, Pford." Samuel T. focused on Gin, his chest turning to stone. "So, you have something to tell me, do you?"
By way of reply, Pford took her left hand and thrust it forward. "We're going to be married. On Monday, actually."
Samuel T. blinked once. But then smiled. "Marvelous news. Truly--and, Richard, let me be the first to congratulate you. She fucks like a wild animal, especially when you do her from behind--but I'm sure you already know that. Half the country does."
As Richard began sputtering things, Samuel T. leaned in and kissed Gin on the cheek. "You win," he whispered in her ear.
Turning away from the happy couple, he went back to his buddies. Grabbed two mint juleps from a passing waiter. Drank them as if they were water.
"What's on your face?" someone asked him.
"I'm sorry?"
"You're leaking."
He passed a hand over the eye that was itching and frowned as he saw the wetness. "I got splashed with a drink over there."
One of his fraternity brothers barked out a laugh. "Some female finally throw one in your face? About time!"
"I got what I deserved, all right," he said numbly as he grabbed his third julep. "But have no fear, gentlemen. I'm getting back on the horse."
The table roared, men backslapping him, somebody pulling over a woman and shoving her forward. As she put her arms around his neck and leaned in to his body, he took what was offered, kissing her deeply, feeling her up even though they were in public.
"Oh, Samuel T.," she whispered against his mouth. "I've waited for you to do this to me forever."
"Me, too, darlin'. Me, too."
She didn't know him well enough to recognize the dead tone in his voice. And he couldn't have cared less about the enthusiasm in hers.
He had to save face somehow . . . or he wasn't going to be able to live in his skin for one goddamn minute longer.
Gin was so much better at this game than he was. If she hadn't just succeeded in shattering his heart into a thousand pieces, he would have given her props.
*
As Lane pulled Mack's pickup truck through the stone pillars of the Red & Black Stables, the alley of trees before him seemed a hundred miles long, the cluster of stables and buildings so far off in the distance, they might as well have been in a different state.
Proceeding forward, dust kicked up behind him, boiling in the morning light.
He knew this because he kept checking the rearview to make sure he hadn't been followed.
The cobblestone drive circled in front of the biggest of the barns, and he parked off to the side, half on the grass. No reason to lock up as he got out. Hell, he left the keys in the ignition.
