The truth was he was desperate to revive his fortunes as a jockey for a number of reasons, chief among them being his disillusionment with Rachel and their so-called partnership. When she’d first floated the idea of buying the stud, he’d been all for it. Not only would it involve his receiving an immediate injection of cash—his mother would officially get the money, of course, but tapping Linda for a few thousand here and there had never been an issue—but he would also be guaranteed involvement in the business on his own terms, while simultaneously squeezing Milly out. Or so he thought.
In fact, Rachel had been stubbornly resistant to all his input from day one. It was almost as if she didn’t value his opinion, despite the fact it was patently obvious that what she herself knew about running a stud farm could fit comfortably on the back of a stamp. She’d already made a huge mistake, selling off some of Cecil’s most consistently high-earning sires and overspending on new, untried animals.
And it wasn’t just at Newells where he was being sidelined. Rachel’s success both as jockey and as a media star in her own right seemed to grow exponentially by the week. Right now she was still making noises about her commitment to promoting them as a couple. But with his own career in free-fall, he had a hideous, creeping feeling that the writing was already on the wall for the Rachel and Jasper show.
His paranoia probably wasn’t helped by the increasing amounts of coke he was taking. Since Cecil’s death, his open-ended line of credit at Bank of Linda, combined with the oodles of free time he had on his hands, made it easier than ever for him to indulge all his vices with free rein. Casual sex with girls like Amelia soothed his vanity and gave him a brief illusion of power in his relationship with Rachel. But the reality was that his life was slipping out of his control, and he knew it. He had to do something, anything, to make his own money and be his own man.
And that, he hoped, was where Ali Dhaktoub came in.
When they first met at Nam Long in South Kensington, a popular hangout among London’s young, spoiled rich, Jasper had dismissed Ali as just another Arab cokehead dilettante, playing at horse racing with his daddy’s money but with no serious interest in the sport and still less in employing him, a low-ranked jockey of minimal experience who he didn’t know from Adam.
But as the cocktails began to flow, and he listened to Ali talk, he swiftly revised this opinion. True, the guy knew nothing about horses. But he did understand gambling—and coercion—and the subtle balance of risk and reward involved in both. All of a sudden, he was speaking Jasper’s language.
What Ali wanted him to do was to stop his horses. To deliberately lose races on firm favorites, dead certs where he should have won.
It was match fixing. In a nutshell, fraud. If he was caught, he would be stripped of his license to race, fined, and quite possibly imprisoned. If he wasn’t, he stood to make a potentially huge amount of money.
In Nam Long, it had all sounded exciting and dangerous, a thrill. The Dhaktoubs operated in a shadowy, gray world where the lines between legitimate and illegal business were murky and vague, a world very far removed from his father’s upright and honest business practices and those of his English, establishment clients. But now, three weeks later, in the sober afternoon of a deserted London club, all the vagueness of that earlier, drunken conversation had been stripped away and the thrill replaced with a gut-gnawing fear as the specifics of what he was being asked to do hit home.
He was probably committing a crime of some sort just by having this conversation with Ali, he thought, feeling a cold sweat of fear forming all over his body.
On the other hand, if he weren’t caught, he’d be earning far more than he could ever hope to make as a legitimate jockey. More than Robbie Pemberton and Dettori and Jakey Forster, riders who he had grudgingly come to accept he would never be able to rival on the track. More than Milly, who he’d heard from various sources had dumped the cowboy and been talent spotted by Jimmy Price, of all people. Much to his fury, she actually appeared to be making a bit of a name for herself in America.
And, most important of all, more than Rachel.
“So. You have considered my proposal?”
Ali came sauntering back from the men’s room, grinning. With his slicked-back black hair, dark skin, and open-necked white shirt, he reminded Jasper of a pirate. All he needed was the cutlass between his teeth.
It bothered him that this guy his own age should so effortlessly assume the upper hand in their negotiations. But the reality was, Dhaktoub held all the cards, and they both knew it.
“Like I say, Ali, I really don’t know,” he said, playing for time. “It’s a lot to take in.”
“Is it?” Ali looked nonplussed. “It seems quite simple to me. I need somebody to stop General’s Boy at Bath in a fortnight’s time. It’s only a small meeting, but it would be a perfect opportunity to get you started quietly. If we were racing him to win we’d use Pemberton, but my father has a rotating group of jockeys, so it won’t arouse suspicion to slip you in.”
“I see,” said Jasper, looking green. He still wasn’t sure he had the stomach for this lark.
“You take the race. You lose,” Ali went on. “Twenty thousand cash, plus commission if you bring him in fourth and look convincing. It’s money for nothing, my friend.”
Jasper thought about it. The blow to his ego at the suggestion that he was good enough to lose races but not to win them was softened greatly by the prospect of twenty thousand quid cash in hand and the possibility of even richer pickings to come.
And what could go wrong, really? As far as his mother and Rachel and everyone in Newmarket were concerned, he’d be riding legitimately for the Dhaktoubs, and he’d just happen to lose. It wouldn’t be the first time. . . .
“I need some more time,” he said, draining the last of his scotch on the rocks. “A week. To think it over. You’re asking me to risk my career here, Ali. I have to be sure.”
Ali frowned and gave him a look that might have meant “what career?”
“You have two days,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a crisp wad of notes, which he left on the bar beside their empty drinks. Clearly, men as rich as Ali didn’t bother with trivialities like bills and change. “If you don’t want the job by Thursday, I’ll find someone else who does. You’ve got my numbers.”
He swaggered out of the bar without a backward glance. No handshake, no good-bye, no nothing. For a moment Jasper felt annoyed. Who the hell did this fellow think he was, some slave wallah from Abu Dhabi?
But he let it go. What did it matter, after all, what Ali did or didn’t think about him? Pocketing two of the ten-pound notes on the bar before the barmaid saw him, he slipped off his stool, and followed his soon-to-be employer out into the drizzly London evening.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dylan McDonald stood in Carol Bentley’s small, whitewashed gallery in Los Olivos, shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot.
“She’s been a long time, hasn’t she?”
Summer smiled and squeezed his hand reassuringly. “Not really,” she said. “She’s appraising it. That’s her job.”
She’d practically had to drag him out here today, but she was determined to show the local art dealer his finished portrait of Wyatt. Summer was no artist herself, but she knew when something was really, seriously good. Dylan had captured their dad’s spirit perfectly, whatever he might say to the contrary. But it was no good her telling him that. He needed to hear it from Carol.
“Yeah, but she’s taking forever,” he said, biting his nails as he worked himself into an ever deepening frenzy of self-doubt. “I mean, either she likes it or she doesn’t, right?”
It was a horrible thing to think, but in a way Summer was glad Dyl was being so nervous and needy this morning. It gave her something to focus on other than her own problems for a change. Plus, dragging him into town gave her the perfect excuse to get off the ranch. Bobby had a friend, Sean, arriving from LA for the weekend. The though
t of having to be sociable and chatty with some stranger, and make small talk around Bobby for hours on end, filled her with a deep, creeping dread that made her palms sweat and her head throb with anxiety. If it couldn’t be avoided, at least it could be delayed for a couple of hours.
Ever since her disastrous, failed pass at him in April, the weekend that Milly had gone off with Todd Cranborn, the tension between her and Bobby had been unbearable. They were polite to each other of course, and as far as she knew, no one else at Highwood had the slightest inkling that anything had happened at all. But she knew it, and he knew it, and that was quite enough to make her burn up with shame and mortification whenever she was around him, which was basically every single day. Only the prospect of starting at Berkeley had kept her going. But the weeks till her departure stretched ahead like years. Even making it through this weekend with Sean whatever-his-name-was seemed an insurmountable task from where she was standing.
“Do you have any more like this?” Carol emerged from the back studio smiling, cradling Dylan’s portrait in her arms. “Portraits, I mean.”
Dylan nodded. “A couple, ma’am. I do more landscapes, really. But I have one or two.”
“He has plenty,” said Summer firmly. Now was not the time for false modesty. “Willy, Mike, most of the hands up at the ranch—”
“Some of those are just sketches,” corrected Dylan hastily.
“Well, I’ll take whatever you’ve got.” Carol smiled. “Sketches, finished pieces, I really don’t care. If they’re anything close to this in standard, they’ll be perfect for the Santa Barbara gallery.”
Dylan frowned and rubbed his temples. Carol looked perplexed.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You do want to sell them, don’t you?”
“Sure he does,” said Summer, kicking her brother on the ankles. “Right?”
“What about Dad, though,” he whispered, pulling her aside for a moment and out of the dealer’s earshot. “You know how he feels about my art. Won’t he hit the roof?”
She gave him a look that was somewhere between exasperation and compassion. “He might,” she admitted. “Yeah, you know what, he might. But come on, Dylan. At some point you gotta make your own decisions about your own life. She wants your pictures.” She pointed back at Carol, who was watching their fevered little aside with interest. “Are you really gonna let that go?”
Seeing the boy was still wavering, Carol decided it wouldn’t hurt to weigh in. “I haven’t seen work of this standard for a very long time,” she said. “It’s different, but I think it could be very commercial. You could sell your existing work, build up a reputation, and then look to do commissions. This sort of traditional portraiture is a dying art, you know.”
Dylan took a deep breath.
Fuck it.
Bobby was training racehorses at Highwood, Summer was about to go to college. Even Milly was off following her dream, becoming a quarter horse star down in LA. Why should he, Dylan, be the only sucker still sacrificing his dreams to live up to some mythical, idealized vision of Highwood that didn’t even exist other than in his father’s mind? Even if it did exist, it was Wyatt’s dream, not his.
“All right, Ms. Bentley,” he said, nodding slowly. “All right. I’ll do it. I’ll give you the rest of my stuff.”
Back at the ranch, Bobby dumped Sean’s case in his room, the spare room at the big house that had once been Milly’s, and dragged him straight out to look at the stables.
“Not bad,” said Sean, with an appreciative whistle, as they came to the end of a handsome row of stone stalls and continued to the indoor school. He’d been meaning to visit Highwood for a while—Milly turning up at Palos Verdes had only heightened his curiosity about the place—but Jimmy very rarely gave him a whole weekend off and he hadn’t had a chance till now. “How many animals d’you have here?”
“Twenty-two liveried with us full-time,” said Bobby proudly, “and another six stabled locally that I train here. Four are my own.”
“Ah. A trainer and an owner, eh?” Sean looked suitably impressed. “And are they just yours or Cranborn’s too?”
Bobby’s face instantly darkened and he jammed his hands deep into his jacket pockets.
“Do we have to talk about that fucker?”
“Sure, no, of course we don’t,” said Sean, swiftly changing the subject. “I was only wondering where things stood. You know I can’t stand the sloimy little shit any more than you can.”
Bobby hadn’t spoken to Todd, or Milly, since that awful night in Bel Air back in April. He’d expected her to call him the next day and try to make up. She was always the one to make the first move when they fell out. She knew how stubborn he was.
But this time, it hadn’t happened. It took a few days before he finally realized she expected him to call. But by then enough time had passed to make it awkward, and he didn’t know what to say or where to begin.
Soon afterward, to his utter horror, he heard from a number of people in LA that she and Todd had become what Wyatt would have called “an item.” Distraught, he did what he always used to do as a child when he felt powerless—like when his mother took up with some unsuitable hippie asshole or other and turned his life upside down for the umpteenth time: He stuck his head in the sand and tried not to think about it.
But even now, months later, he still sometimes found himself waking in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, haunted by an image of Milly being pawed by that decrepit, perverted bastard. It made him feel physically ill.
Nor did it help that Milly was rapidly becoming one of the most recognizable faces in quarter horse racing, at least in California. Although she’d yet to win a major stakes race, with the awesome Price media machine like an unstoppable force behind her, her image seemed to prosper regardless. Advertising campaigns for Boot Barn and a handful of other cowboy-related companies had helped promote her faster than her racing career could keep up and would no doubt soon be followed by bigger, national sponsorship deals.
Not that she was doing badly on the racing front. Some sort of masochistic urge compelled Bobby to keep track of her results, and they were undeniably impressive. If she kept up her current form she and Demon were bound to be entered in all the Californian majors next season. From there she’d have a shot at a national career and the distance between them, already huge, would become a gaping, unbridgeable chasm.
Leading the way back across the yard toward the big house, he pulled his jacket tighter around him. Despite being noon in mid-August, there was a cool breeze blowing down from the hills behind them and he was glad of the warmth the battered old leather provided.
Sean followed him inside and along the hallway to the living room. After helping himself to a large bourbon from a tray on the sideboard he sank down on one of the couches. The room had been very little used since Hank’s death—Bobby spent almost all his free time over at the McDonalds’—and it showed. The decor was cold and drab to the point of sterility, all heavy dark wood furniture and gloomily ticking clocks. There wasn’t so much as a rug or curtains to warm the place up, and a thin layer of dust coated everything from the ugly low coffee table to the battered parquet floor.
“No offense,” said Sean, plumping up the cushion behind him and sending a cloud of dust billowing up toward the ceiling in the process, “but don’t you find it a bit depressing here?”
Bobby shrugged. “Not really.” He didn’t want to talk about his father’s taste in interior design, or lack of it. He wanted to know what was going on with Todd. The fact that they were not speaking, though a relief in many ways, had its disadvantages. The chief one being that he now had even less of an idea what his so-called partner might be planning with regard to Highwood. Clearly it was too much to hope that he’d simply forgotten about the place. The longer he heard nothing, the more nervous he became.
“Is he still around much? At Palos Verdes?” he asked.
“Cranborn?” said Sean. “Yeah. Like a bad smell. Su
pposedly he’s there to see Milly, but most of the time he’s either locked away talking business with Jimmy or sniffing around his missus like a dog with a hard-on. You remember Candy, right?”
Bobby’s upper lip curled like he’d just caught a whiff of rotting meat.
“Beach ball Barbie? How could I forget?”
“But as to what he’s up to, mate, I haven’t a clue,” said Sean, taking another sip of the deliciously smooth bourbon. At least old Hank provided that comfort for his guests. “Jimmy never talks business with me, other than the horses, of course. I’m down at the stables all day.”
“And Milly?” said Bobby in as casual a tone as he could muster. “You must see her all the time, right? Has she let anything slip?”
“No.”
It was horrible listening to Bobby talk about Milly, watching the light of hope click on in his eyes, despite everything. Poor bastard. He insisted he was over her, but it didn’t take Freud to figure out he was talking out of his arse.
Sean, who had never been in love himself, made a mental note never to try it.
“We’re not exactly bosom buddies, Milly and I,” he said. “And even if we were, I don’t think she knows anything about lover boy’s business dealings. She’s pretty well besotted with him as far as I can tell, but he keeps his distance.”
“What do you mean?” asked Bobby.
“You know,” said Sean. “He gives her the runaround, doesn’t he? Other girls, parties, keeping her hanging, all of that. He knows Jimmy’s got her working all hours, so she can’t keep tabs on him. Training, racing, more and more PR—she’s turning into a one-woman industry these days.”
Bobby’s face fell still further.
“I’d be surprised if Todd confides in her,” Sean finished hurriedly. “That’s all I’m saying.”