Showdown

  Squirting another dollop of sunscreen into her hand—it was only SPF six, but she figured she wouldn’t get any color at all if she went much higher—she slathered it onto her roasting shoulders and tried, once again, to relax.

  If only she had a place of her own. Somewhere where screaming children and nightmare stepmothers didn’t exist, or could at least be switched off like a bad episode of Jerry Springer.

  But at the age of twenty-four, she had never lived away from home. Jimmy, embarrassed by her weight problem and lacking the sensitivity to know how to talk about it, not only neglected her shamefully but showed a consistent, casual cruelty toward her that made all the staff at Palos Verdes wince. But despite it all, Amy loved him. Despite his behavior, despite his bitch of a wife, despite his blatant favoritism toward his baby sons, he was all the family she had. One day, she was sure, the fantasy world he had built for himself around the vicious, gold-digging Candy (Jimmy was convinced his wife loved him and was faithful and wouldn’t hear a word said against her) would come crashing down around his ears. And when it did she, Amy, would be there to pick up the pieces.

  In the meantime, her life in the gilded prison of Palos Verdes was a deeply lonely one. Donny, her real brother (Candy’s evil IVF spawn would never be true brothers to her), had never forgiven Jimmy for their mother’s death. He moved to Manhattan the day he graduated college, and since then rarely called, and never visited. He made no secret of the fact that he considered Amy to be betraying their mom’s memory by living under the same roof as Candy, and he flatly refused to understand her loyalty to their bastard father. Though she tried to brush it off, Donny’s abandonment hurt Amy dreadfully.

  Every now and then, when life at home became unbearable, she would venture out into the LA social scene, but inevitably she got her fingers burned, and/or her heart broken. Constantly seeking the love and affection she had been starved of growing up, she embarked on a string of disastrous affairs with handsome young actors who were only interested in her money—why else would they be dating a fat girl in a city full of some of the best-looking women in the world?—or playboy jockeys like Garth. Each time she was used or abandoned by one of these chancers, she would retreat to Palos Verdes to lick her wounds like an injured animal, taking comfort in the one thing that had been a constant in her life since her early teens: food.

  Over the years Amy had tried every diet, exercise program, and psychotherapy under the sun to try to shed the pounds. But in the end, none of them had worked. Even her beloved poetry hadn’t helped. Her need for the comfort and security that chocolate gave her overrode everything else. She had long ago accepted that she was destined to be a big girl and that there was really nothing much she could do about it.

  “You’re burning.”

  She looked up to see Sean standing over her, his short, stocky body casting a shadow over her reddening back.

  “Shit. Am I?” She sat up, blushing, and hastily covered herself with a towel. Like everyone else at Palos Verdes she thought her father’s head vet was utterly gorgeous. But unlike most good-looking men she knew, he was also a sweetheart: kind, funny, never dismissive of people simply because they were poor or fat or in some other way less than perfect. He’d become quite a friend since he moved onto the estate last year, one of the few people she could relax and be herself with.

  “What are you doing up here?” she teased him. “Shouldn’t you have your arm thrust up a horse’s backside somewhere?”

  “Now, now.” He grinned. “Enough of your dirty talk, Miss Price. I come with orders from on high. Your father wants to see her majesty over there. Pronto.”

  He nodded toward Candy, whose discarded orange bikini top lay by the side of the pool, so tiny it would barely have covered one of Amy’s nipples. Standing topless and waist deep in water like an Amazonian goddess, she was trying and failing to keep control of her sons.

  “Looks like they’re trying to drown her,” said Sean.

  “Good luck to them,” said Amy with feeling.

  Chase and Chance, both ensconced in more orange, inflatable devices than the Michelin man and covered with so much white sunblock they looked like they were preparing to swim the Atlantic, were happily splashing as much water as they could onto their mother’s carefully pinned-up bird’s nest of gleaming blond hair. She looked far from happy.

  “Amy. Amy!”

  Christ, thought Sean, what a voice. Fury had transformed her sexy, Southern drawl to a harpylike screech that could strip paint off the walls.

  “Don’t just lie there sunning yourself like a beached whale. Come help me with your brothers.”

  “You stay where you are,” said Sean firmly. “Don’t jump every time she says jump. I’ll do it.”

  Striding over to the pool, he lifted both boys effortlessly out of the water, one under each arm. Much as he despised Candy, he couldn’t help but admire the view of her pert, apple-round breasts as she rose, dripping, to greet him, reveling in her nakedness like a young Bo Derek.

  “Thanks,” she said, looking him right in the eye and making no effort to look for a towel. The sexy drawl was back with a vengeance now. “You’re an angel.”

  Eeeeugh! And you’re the devil, thought Amy, staring enviously at her stepmother’s smooth, slender thighs, unsullied by even a hint of cellulite. She knew it was shallow and pathetic, but she did wish that her own thighs didn’t look quite so much like two vats of porridge squeezed into plastic wrap.

  Still, she mustn’t envy Candy. She refused to. The woman was everything she despised.

  “Jimmy wants you,” said Sean, dropping the screaming, wriggling boys down into their poolside playpen. They both needed a good old-fashioned clip round the ear if you asked him. “He’s in his study. Something about arrangements for New York, I think.”

  “Hmmm.” Candy looked supremely bored but wrapped herself in a peach silk kimono anyway and prepared to go inside. “Well. If his lordship’s calling, ah guess ah’d better go.” She pouted.

  Jimmy was the perfect sugar daddy in many ways—indulgent, generous, unsuspecting. But he did have a thing about not being kept waiting. Besides, a half hour in her children’s company had more than exhausted her earlier rush of maternal enthusiasm.

  Once she’d gone, Sean reached into his back pocket and, pulling out a small white envelope, handed it to Amy.

  “This came for you, by the way,” he said. “It was under a bunch of flyers and crap in the office. I almost threw it away.”

  “Thanks,” she said, examining the hand-written address and the New York postmark stamped in the top right corner. For one brief, crazy moment her hopes soared that it might be from Garth, but she soon got a grip on herself. Why on earth would Garth be writing to her now?

  Shoving it under her pile of clothes—she’d open it later, after Sean had gone, just in case it was something personal—she smiled up at him.

  “You know we’ve got guests tonight,” she said. “That guy Todd, your buddy Bobby’s friend. It’s the third time he’s been here in a month.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” said Sean skeptically. “I don’t think Bobby likes him much, actually. Neither do I, as it goes. He’s a smarmy bastard, don’t you think?”

  Amy giggled. “Maybe. I don’t really know him. Anyway, he’s bringing some girl with him apparently, a quarter horse jockey that Daddy wants to promote. Jilly or something, I think her name was.”

  “Noooo!” said Sean, putting two and two together. “Not Milly? The girl Bobby brought over from England?”

  “That’s it,” said Amy. “Milly, yes. She’s English.”

  “Holy shit.” Sean shook his head. “I wonder if Bobby knows she’s coming here? And with his partner too . . . that’s gratitude for you. After everything he’s done for that girl.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, no offense to you, angel, but Bobby’s not the biggest fan of your old man.”

  “Oh,” said Amy, “I see.”

  “And my g
uess is that Milly must know that. It’s a shame. Bobby’s nuts about her, so he is. He’s been a changed man since he met her, and not for the better.”

  “Well, all I know is that Daddy saw her ride last weekend and says she’s phenomenal,” said Amy. “I wouldn’t want to hurt Bobby, but I hope she does train here. It’ll be nice to have another girl around.”

  “Hmmm,” said Sean. “We’ll see. At least I’ll finally get to see what all the fuss is about.”

  Walking up the stone steps to the Price mansion later that evening, her newly darkened hair contrasting dramatically with the shimmering silver sliver of a cocktail dress Todd had bought her as a congratulations present, Milly could feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins like electricity through a wire.

  Normally, she’d have been nervous at the prospect of spending an evening with a new sponsor, especially one as awesomely powerful and major league as Jimmy Price. But her conversation with Bobby two days ago had left her so angry—who the hell did he think he was, anyway, ordering her around like a bloody sergeant major—that she was still wound up now and ready to take on just about anyone.

  She’d expected mixed feelings from him. Hoped, though she dared not admit it, that he’d feel sadness at the prospect of her moving out of Highwood, mingled with pride that her career was at last taking off. Secretly, she’d imagined that by moving away and striking out on her own, she might finally prove to him that she was in fact an adult and a woman and not the untouchable, innocent little girl he seemed to see her as.

  But instead of pride and affection, what she’d gotten was pure indignant rage. Not only had he accused her, quite unfairly, of betrayal and ingratitude toward him. But he’d implied that Todd was somehow using her and that, far from being mature, she was actually being naïve.

  The hypocrisy was breathtaking. It was fine for him to obsess endlessly about Highwood, neglecting everything, including their friendship and her training, in his increasingly desperate attempts to get the entire ranch both profitable and back under his sole control. But when it came to her trying to earn the money to buy back Newells, he was dismissive almost to the point of ridicule.

  “Have you any idea how much that stud was worth?” he’d snapped derisively on the phone. “You know nothing about the value of money, Milly, nothing. Do you really think you can earn enough from race winnings to buy the place back? It’ll take you a lifetime.”

  Well, she’d show him. He could hate Todd and Jimmy as much as he liked. He could even hate her if he wanted to. She was, she told herself defiantly, if not entirely truthfully, past caring. She was going to make it as a quarter horse star. And she was going to get Newells back too, with or without his support.

  In a way his anger, and his unreasonableness, had made the whole thing easier, incinerating whatever guilt she might have been feeling and replacing it with a steely resolve. It was almost liberating, to finally be able to feel something for him other than hopeless, unrequited love. She nursed her resentment deliberately now, as she followed Todd into Jimmy Price’s lair.

  Relinquishing her coat in the same marble hallway where Bobby had stood with Todd only a few months earlier, she found herself being led into a dining room so exquisite she couldn’t help but gasp. Lit entirely by candles, their flames flickering into a million refracted shards of light that ricocheted off the crystal and silverware like silver bullets, the table looked as though it had been spread for Titania’s banquet. Wine glowed rich red in glass decanters capped with burnished silver tops, and bowls overflowing with fruit made elaborate centerpieces, surrounded by squat, square onyx vases crammed with white roses.

  “Ah, at last. Come in, my dear. Come in.”

  Jimmy sat at the head of the table, very much the king of his own castle. The aura of power and authority around him was even more palpable than it had been at Mandeville Canyon, despite his almost clownlike features: the shock of ginger hair, the eyes sunken into his fleshy face like wizened chestnuts pressed into dough, the arms apparently composed of rolls of fat stuck together like a line of raw Sunday joints pressed end to end. For some reason Milly hadn’t focused on his physical ugliness at the weekend. But this evening it was thrown into even sharper relief by the beautiful girl sitting next to him, who she assumed must be his wife.

  “Sorry we’re late,” said Todd, looking anything but sorry as he flashed a confident smile to the table at large. “Traffic.”

  “Forget about it,” said Jimmy. Without getting up, he extended a hand in greeting toward Milly, who shook it firmly. “You’ve missed the appetizer, but you’re right on time for the main event. Please, sit down. The both of yous.”

  She looked briefly at Todd for direction, and he gestured toward the empty chair at Jimmy’s left. He, meanwhile, took a seat between Candy and a terribly overweight girl in a truly awful lobster-pink caftan, who Milly recognized from Bobby’s description as the sweet but put-upon Amy. Her dress seemed designed to draw attention not only to her size but to the shiny pinkish sunburn that was spread all over her face, culminating in the peeling red tip of her nose.

  Instinctively, Milly smiled at her, and was immediately rewarded by a beaming grin in return.

  Amy, in fact, had more reasons to be happy than Milly or anyone else suspected. Her letter from New York wasn’t from Garth, but it was the next best thing: a note from a small but respected publishing house expressing interest in her poetry! Of course, they hadn’t actually said that they would print the poems she’d sent in—not in so many words, anyway. But they had asked to meet with her when she was next in New York. That alone was enough to put a smile on her face that not even the thought of a formal dinner with her father could completely extinguish.

  “Let me introduce you,” said Jimmy, putting one arm around Milly’s shoulder while waving the other magnanimously around the table. “Everyone, this is Milly Lockwood Groves. She’s gonna be training here and, I hope, riding for me next season.”

  Milly flushed with pleasure. Hearing him say it again made it even more real and wonderful.

  “And Todd Cranborn,” he added, “who most of you already know.”

  Milly noticed that Candy shot Todd a knowing glance, and that he returned it with a flirtatious wink. For some reason this annoyed her intensely. For the last day and a half she’d gotten used to being the sole object of his attention, and having some melon-breasted tart swan in and steal it pissed her off more than it ought to. She couldn’t think why it didn’t bug the crap out of Jimmy, too, but it didn’t seem to.

  “This is Candy,” he said proudly, unperturbed by the miniseduction going on opposite him. “My very lovely wife.”

  “Hiiiiiii,” rasped the blonde, tearing her attention reluctantly away from Todd for a split second and giving Milly the sort of imperious look that incredibly beautiful women always give to lesser mortals—a sort of patronizing, Rachel Delaneyesque sneer.

  Witch.

  “And this is Amy,” Jimmy went on. “My daughter.”

  He couldn’t have sounded less enthusiastic if he’d been introducing a wart on his foot. Poor girl. Milly watched her blush miserably, and her heart went out to her. How could Jimmy be so warm and friendly to her, a complete stranger, and so harsh to his own flesh and blood?

  “Hi,” she said, trying to think of something kind to say that wouldn’t be an outright lie and eventually opting for, “I love your earrings.”

  “Thanks,” said Amy, genuinely grateful. “They’re new.” Milly, she’d decided, was quite lovely.

  “This,” said Jimmy, gesturing toward the small, darkly good-looking man directly opposite her, “is Sean O’Flannagan. Sean takes care of all my quarter horses.”

  “Oh. Hi,” said Milly brightly. “Sean. You’re Bobby’s friend, right? He’s told me so much about you. Although I expect I got the edited version,” she joked.

  “Likewise,” mumbled Sean, with a look that could only be described as withering. The smile died on Milly’s lips. “Charmed, I’m
sure,” he added sarcastically.

  That was odd. Why was he being so hostile?

  Before she had a chance to think of any sort of comeback, or to probe him any further, Jimmy was demanding her attention and introducing her to his trainer, Gill, a butch, dour-looking woman in her fifties. She had closely cropped gray hair and wore a man’s riding jacket, but unlike most trainers Milly knew, she at least was polite, giving her a brief but friendly nod of acknowledgment.

  “And last but not least,” said Jimmy, smiling to the man on Milly’s immediate left, “I’d like you to meet Brad Gaisford. What Brad doesn’t know about PR ain’t worth knowing.”

  “Actually I’m, er, I’m more of an image consultant than a PR guy,” said Brad pretentiously. “Some people call what I do holistic PR, but that’s not really me. I’m all about image generation.”

  “Oh,” said Milly blankly. “Right.”

  “Hey, Brad,” said Todd from across the table, talking to him as though he were an old high school buddy rather than a man he’d just met. “Whaddaya think of Milly’s accent? Great, isn’t it?”

  “Hell, yeah.” Brad nodded. “Dig the accent. Dig the name. She’s vibing on Austin Powers, man. Exactly what we’ve been looking for.”

  Milly frowned. He was a nerdy-looking guy, Brad. Probably around forty but trying to dress younger in combat pants and a too-tight long-sleeved cotton T-shirt that he obviously believed showed off his pecs to some sort of advantage. With his rimless glasses and weak little beard, he reminded her of a middle-aged version of the Fonz. What sort of man still used the word “dig,” for God’s sake? And as for “vibing”—she hadn’t heard anything quite so tragic since Justin Timberlake started trying to sound black. It was cringeworthy.

  “I’ve decided to use Brad to handle all your press and promotion,” said Jimmy, in between stuffing vast hunks of oil-drenched bread into his blubbery, wet-lipped mouth.

  Why? Milly wanted to ask, but she thought better of it. Instead she simply stared at his mouth and tried to imagine it locked in a kiss with the beautiful Candy. It was tough.