Showdown

  “I was sorry to hear about your father,” Barty said, hastily changing the subject.

  “Thanks,” said Bobby. Under other circumstances he’d have liked to open up to Barty about his apparent inability to grieve for Hank and the problems he was facing at Highwood. Beneath that dapper, wry exterior, Barty was a kind, sensitive man, and Bobby felt instinctively that he’d have understood. But he was damned if he was going to show an iota of vulnerability in front of Jimmy Price. He’d only known the man for about twenty seconds, but every one of his prejudices and preconceptions about him had already been confirmed.

  Reaching into his jacket pocket he pulled out one of the new business cards that Tara had had made up for him while he was in France and handed it to Barty. “I’m flying out to England in the next couple of days,” he said. “But we should talk when I’m back. These are my numbers.”

  Barty nodded, pocketing the card.

  “I’ll be completely snowed at the ranch till Christmas, so I’m not sure when I could get out to Kentucky . . .”

  “The ranch?” Jimmy’s ears had suddenly pricked up. “You a breeder, son?”

  “Bobby’s from an old cowboy family,” explained Barty. “His father, God rest him, passed away a few weeks ago, so my man here is taking over the family cattle ranch. One of the most beautiful properties on the West Coast, so I’ve heard.”

  Bobby tipped his hat in gratitude for the compliment.

  “A cowboy?” sneered Jimmy, lighting his cigar and ostentatiously blowing a puff of smoke right into Bobby’s face. “You’re kidding me, right? Like, cattle drives and corrals and all that shit? You still do that?”

  Bobby felt his knuckles tightening. Who the hell did this asshole think he was?

  “Yes, Mr. Price, I do.” His tone was ice-cold. “Why? Do you find that funny?”

  It was one thing for him or Dylan to complain about ranching and how much more there was to life than raising cattle. But for an outsider like Price to disrespect the cowboy culture, that was something else entirely.

  Jimmy noticed Bobby’s aggression, but he wasn’t a man to be easily intimidated. Taking a long, slow lungful of smoke, he blasted it out through his nose like a dragon before replying.

  “I guess I find it quaint. You don’t expect to meet many cowboys out here in Palm Beach, do you, Bart? Unless of course you count the real estate developers!”

  He threw his blubbery head back and laughed at this, unashamedly impressed with his own brilliant wit, his fat jowls shaking like Jabba the Hutt.

  “I’ll call you,” said Barty. He’d sensibly stepped forward, inserting himself between the two men before, heaven forbid, they should come to blows. “As soon as you’re back from Merry Olde, okay?”

  “Yeah,” said Bobby, backing away but allowing himself one more scowl at Price before he left. “Do that.”

  A couple of minutes later and Sean had reappeared at his side out of nowhere, like a drunk Irish genie of the lamp. He had two girls with him, one on each arm, both of whom looked Argentine. That almost certainly meant they were here with polo players; which meant they were strictly off-limits for anyone who didn’t want to be beaten to a pulp by their jealous husbands before daybreak tomorrow.

  “What was all that about with Jimmy?” he asked nervously. “You didn’t let the cat out of the bag about me being at Kravitz’s, did you?”

  “No,” said Bobby tersely. “I almost took a pop at him though. The guy’s a jerk. Makes my flesh crawl. How can you stand to work for him?”

  “If you’d seen his horses, you wouldn’t need to ask me that question,” said Sean, ever the pragmatist. “I’d work for Adolf Hitler if he had stables like Jimmy.”

  “You don’t mean that,” said Bobby.

  “Oh, I’m afraid I do,” said Sean. “But enough about my prostituting my talents. You must meet my friends. Maria, Conchita”—he turned to the two Latin lovelies beside him—“this is my good friend Bobby Cameron.” The girls nodded and smiled. Clearly neither of them spoke a word of English. “I’m afraid Bobby suffers from a very serious case of principles. He only works for the good guys, you see. He’s actually been diagnosed torminally morally uproight. Isn’t that roight, Bobby?”

  Before he had a chance to clip Sean around the ear, Bobby found his arms full of nubile Argentine woman. One of the girls, taking Sean’s speech as her cue to introduce herself, had bounded into his embrace like an affection-starved Labrador.

  “Pleased to meet you.” He laughed. He noticed that her friend had thrust one red-taloned hand quite blatantly down Sean’s pants and was rummaging around down there now, in full view of all the other, passing guests. “Not shy, are you?”

  Allowing himself to be smothered with kisses, he had almost forgotten his annoying encounter with Jimmy Price, and was finally starting to enjoy himself when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  “Husbands, to your left, forty-five degrees,” Sean hissed.

  Spinning around, Bobby caught sight of two Argies, both built like brick shithouses, advancing menacingly toward them.

  “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said, disentangling himself from the girl and making a somewhat undignified bolt for the door. “Gotta run.”

  Crouched down behind Sean’s BMW a few minutes later, gasping for breath, both boys waited in the shadows until the irate polo players finally gave up the chase and went back inside.

  “Fuck, that was close!” said Bobby, laughing now that the danger was past. “How much steak do those sons of bitches eat? The one on the left looked like a sumo wrestler.”

  “Soch a shame, too,” Sean sighed. “Gorgeous girls, those two, and up for anything. We could have shared them.”

  In the darkness, Bobby’s eyes widened. “Nice thought,” he said, “but I’ll leave the gang bangs to you. One girl at a time is more than enough for me.”

  Sean shook his head ruefully. “You need to start broadening your horizons, Dorothy,” he said. “You’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  Bobby chuckled, brushing the dust off his sleeves. He tried to imagine what his father or Wyatt or any of the hands back home would have thought of the idea of four-in-a-bed sex with other people’s wives—but it was literally beyond imagining. Things like that simply didn’t happen in the Santa Ynez valley.

  “No, I guess I’m not,” he said. Helping Sean to his feet, a wave of tiredness washed over him. Suddenly he felt fit to drop. “And sorry to disappoint you.” He yawned. “But the only bed I want right now is my own.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jasper sat scowling in the passenger seat of his father’s dark blue Range Rover, halfheartedly rearranging his hair in the rearview mirror. He’d recently taken to growing his fringe out longer and gelling it into semirigid spikes, boy-band style. Most of the girls who hung around the jockeys’ changing rooms seemed to dig the new look. But ever since Rachel had told him two nights ago during sex that it looked like a hedgehog had crawled onto his head and died there, he’d started to feel a bit self-conscious about it.

  He and Cecil were on their way to Heathrow to pick up Michael Delaney’s much-hyped Californian trainer, their soon-to-be houseguest.

  “I don’t see what’s so special about this bloke anyway,” he complained bitterly for the third time in as many hours. He resented the fact that his dad had dragged him all the way out to the airport just to do a meet and greet. Bobby bloody Cameron was already becoming a right royal pain in the arse. Rachel had been boring him to tears for weeks about how brilliant the guy was supposed to be with horses. As if he gave a shit!

  “Truthfully, Jasper,” said Cecil, “nor do I.” Pulling back out into the fast lane, he overtook the filthy, fume-belching lorry in front of them. “Michael’s already got one of the best trainers in the country, and all his colts have performed well this season. Why he thinks he needs to fly John Wayne over, I have no idea. But the bottom line is, we make a lot of money from Delaney’s stallions. It won’t kill us to put the lad up for a few weeks.”
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  “Hmmm. Well, I think it’s damned cheek,” grumbled Jasper. “I haven’t got time to babysit some fucking self-styled horse whisperer mid-season. He’s bound to get under our feet around the yard, isn’t he? Fannying about with his lasso up at the gallops, or whatever it is he does.”

  Cecil bristled silently. Under our feet? That was a joke. The only time J. showed his face around the yard was if he needed money or wanted Cecil to pull even more strings with his clients to try to get him rides. He’d even had the nerve to make a fuss this morning about coming along to Heathrow. As if he had anything better to do.

  “Well, let’s give the fellow a chance, shall we?” was all he actually said. “If he’s as good as Michael says, you might actually learn something from him. Let’s face it, your performance hasn’t been as good as it could be lately.”

  “Learn something? I doubt it,” said Jasper with breathtaking arrogance, re-forming his spiky fringe in the mirror for a fourth and final time and pouting at his improved reflection. “I’m not interested in making lonesome treks across the open plain, am I? I’m interested in winning races. I don’t see how some jumped-up, mustang-riding cowboy from hicksville is going to help me do that. Do you?”

  Back at Newells, Linda was busy preparing the Sunday welcome roast for their illustrious new houseguest. (In her eyes, Bobby was illustrious by association, as indeed was anyone connected with Sir Michael and Lady Delaney, however loosely.)

  Milly had come in from the stallion barn with only muted complaints, anxious to keep on her mother’s good side since their uneasy truce had been reached. She was upstairs now, making up the guest bed with fresh sheets and putting the best matching blue towels in the bathroom.

  With an inward wince of shame, she noticed the strategically positioned pictures of her parents meeting the Queen at Ascot, and the Queen Mother at Goodwood, shoved right to the front of the dresser. Her mother must have moved them from the drawing room, to make absolutely sure that these two snapshots of social triumph would not be overlooked by their American guest.

  And, oh God, what was that doing there?

  Shuddering with horror, Milly removed the black-and-white picture of herself as one of the chorus in last year’s ADC carol concert and shut it in a bedside drawer. The camera had captured her in a truly vile peach velvet dress, mouth wide, belting out “Once in Royal David’s City.” If she were to have any chance at all of getting this hotshot trainer to see her potential as a jockey, she didn’t want that to be the first image he had of her.

  Ever since her dad had told her that Bobby would be staying with them, a plan of sorts had begun forming in Milly’s mind. Cecil had as good as admitted that he didn’t have time to spend babysitting the American. So it should be the easiest thing in the world for her to assume the role of hostess, out at the stables, anyway. Which would mean plenty of unsupervised time with both her father’s and Delaney’s horses. She could acquaint Bobby with Sir Michael’s colts, smooth things over between him and Victor, and generally make herself useful—in return for which, she hoped, he would turn a blind eye to her riding and perhaps even agree to give her some secret training sessions. If he thought she was good enough, of course.

  But he would. She’d make sure he would.

  Perhaps an outsider could succeed where she had failed and convince her father that it was safe for her to ride?

  She’d finally made the decision—to take the forbidden step and defy her parents’ ban—about ten days ago. Arriving home exhausted from her hated flower arranging course, she’d walked into the kitchen to find Rachel Delaney sitting in her favorite chair, chatting away chummily to her mother about the day she’d spent riding her horses. Milly would never forget the look of spiteful triumph in Rachel’s eyes that day—a look that seemed to say: Face it, Milly, you’ve lost. I’ve got everything you’ve ever wanted. Even your own mother loves me! And there’s nothing you can do about it.

  Well, she was damned if she was just going to roll over and take it. If Rachel wanted war, she could have it. Milly was going to ride again, and she was going to ride the pants off that bitch too. Somehow.

  All she needed was an opportunity. And Bobby Cameron’s visit, she’d decided, might be just the thing to provide it.

  Having finished making up the bed, she began carefully arranging the assortment of lilies and white roses that Linda had brought back from the flower shop in Newmarket. After two miserable weeks at Madeleine Howard Home Skills, she at least knew better than to plonk them willy-nilly into a vase.

  “Oh, Mill, those look lovely.” Linda had come upstairs to check on her progress, and beamed when she saw the flowers. Happily she had failed to notice the missing picture. “And so does the room. Thank you, darling. Now I think you’d better go and get changed.” She glanced at her watch. “Dad called me from the M11 about five minutes ago, so I’m expecting them back fairly soon.”

  “Changed?” Milly frowned. She’d been hoping to get back out to the barn and check on Easy before lunch. “Can’t I just wear this?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Linda, giving a little shudder at her daughter’s grimy jodhpurs and shapeless, graying T-shirt. “Go and change. And do try to find something vaguely feminine.”

  For fuck’s sake, thought Milly a few minutes later, rummaging through her messy drawers for something clean to put on. As if Bobby Cameron was going to give a shit whether she looked “feminine” or not. Grudgingly she washed her face with soap and water and rubbed in some of the moisturizer her mother had bought her. She drew the line at makeup, but she did at least brush her hair, tying it back neatly in a ponytail, and sprayed some Penhaligon’s Victorian Posy on her neck and wrists.

  No way in the world was she wearing a dress. It was bad enough having to do it for parties, but she wasn’t about to start at home too. Still, she didn’t want to antagonize her mother too much at such a crucial juncture. Gritting her teeth, she plumped for a compromise option of white Top Shop trousers and the flowery blue shirt from Ralph Lauren that Cecil had bought her two birthdays ago and which she had never yet worn (it still had its price label attached). Biting through the plastic tag, she ripped it off and, without bothering to undo the buttons, pulled the offending garment on over her head.

  A few minutes later and a cacophony of barking from Cain and Abel, the Lockwood Groveses’ two ancient, arthritic Jack Russells, announced that the airport welcoming committee had returned.

  Linda had already opened the front door and was kissing the tall, blond figure of their new guest on both cheeks when Milly appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “Bobby, this is my daughter, Millicent,” she said, stepping aside so that the two of them could see each other.

  Milly stood frozen at the top of the stairs like a statue, her fingers locked around the banister rail. It wasn’t like her to be shy or to pay much attention to members of the opposite sex. But for once she found herself wishing fervently that she’d worn something sexier or put on some makeup. At the very least, she should have washed her hair! Because standing below her was, without doubt, the most handsome, exquisite-looking man she had ever laid eyes on. And here she was, dolled up like a poster girl for the Women’s Institute, complete with huge flowery bosom and shiny cheeks. Why did these things always happen to her?

  “Hello, Millicent.” Stepping toward the foot of the stairs, Bobby extended his hand, his big, open smile flashing up at her like a beacon.

  She knew from Jasper, who knew from Rachel, that Bobby was twenty-three. That was only three years older than poor little Harry Lyon. But the Adonis in front of her seemed far, far older than that: a real, grown-up man. Suddenly the whole idea of winning him over as an ally against her father seemed far-fetched and ridiculous. Childish, even. And Milly realized in that instant that the last thing she wanted this man to see her as was a child.

  “It’s Milly, actually,” she stammered. She wanted to sweep downstairs with all the poise and elegance of Grace Kelly, but her lower body
seemed to have developed a mind of its own and remained stubbornly rooted to the spot. “Everyone calls me Milly.”

  “I’m Bobby.” Oh, that smile again! “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Yes. Very good. Hello. Excellent.” To her horror, the words came spilling out of her mouth at random. She sounded like one of those awful, pull-string talking dolls she’d had as a girl. Feeling her cheeks burning, she prayed she wasn’t blushing quite as violently as she imagined.

  Bobby smiled inwardly. The poor kid looked terrified. And she’d obviously gotten dressed in the dark. Cecil had told him in the car that he had a horse-crazy seventeen-year-old daughter, but this girl looked much younger.

  “Shall we go through for lunch?” trilled Linda brightly. “You must be famished, Bobby.” She seemed oblivious of the trouble Milly was having putting one foot in front of the other as she staggered downstairs to join them. “Jasper can show you up to your room afterward.”

  “And then I can give you a tour of the stud. If you’re up to it, of course,” said Cecil.

  “Sure,” said Bobby. “That’d be great. Something smells absolutely delicious.”

  “Thank you.” Linda flushed at the compliment like a schoolgirl. Apparently Milly wasn’t the only one to have fallen for Bobby’s charms. “I only hope it tastes as good as it smells. You can never be sure with lamb.”

  Offering Bobby her arm, she led him through into the dining room.

  “Shall we?”

  Lunch was, predictably, delicious, although Bobby found he was too tired to muster much of an appetite. In any case, he was a lot more interested in figuring out his hosts than in the food.

  He’d be in England for six weeks, the longest he’d ever spent on a single job. The thought of not seeing his beloved Highwood again till mid-fall was keeping him awake nights, but he’d have been crazy not to take the obscene amount of money Sir Michael Delaney was offering. Wyatt would have hit the roof if he’d turned the job down. Besides, he’d heard amazing things about Newells Farm from some of the Kentucky breeders. The chance to stay there and check out Lockwood Groves’s horses for himself was too good to pass up.