Showdown
He was racking his brains, trying desperately to think of any news from LA that might comfort Bobby even marginally, when he was distracted by the entrance of a Christie Brinkley circa 1984 lookalike.
“Lunch is ready,” the vision announced, tossing her hair back out of her eyes with the same sort of casual flick the girls in the shampoo commercials used. He noticed that, although she addressed herself to Bobby, she seemed reluctant to look him in the eye and that he seemed equally awkward in her presence, replying in little more than a mumble.
“Really?” He looked at his watch. “It’s only twelve thirty.”
“I know.” The girl shrugged. “Dyl and I only just got back from town, but Mom says we all have to eat now.”
“I’m Sean.” As soon as he’d recovered the power of speech he was on his feet, grabbing her hand and kissing it enthusiastically before Bobby had had a chance to introduce him. “Sean O’Flannagan. My God, is it a pleasure to meet you.”
Summer laughed. “Summer McDonald,” she said, adding politely, though completely untruthfully, “I’ve heard a lot about you from Bobby.”
Sean looked panic-stricken.
“All lies, every word of it,” he said, slipping his arm around her waist in a semiprotective, semiflirtatious manner. “You can’t believe what this fella tells you.”
“Don’t worry,” said Summer with a knowing look at Bobby that he pretended to ignore. “I don’t.”
A few minutes later, once she’d disappeared to the office to fetch Tara, the two boys made their way over to the McDonalds’ alone.
“Is there something going on between you two?” asked Sean.
“Going on? Of course not,” said Bobby, rather more tersely than he’d meant to. “What makes you say that?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Sean, recognizing a land mine when he trod on one. “You just seemed a bit distant, that’s all.”
“Summer’s like a sister to me,” said Bobby.
“Roight.” Sean nodded. “Sure. I can see that.”
“She’s only eighteen, she’s much too good for you, and you can’t have her,” Bobby added for good measure.
“Roight,” said Sean again, failing to suppress a big grin. “Gotcha.”
It was two weeks after Sean’s weekend trip out to Highwood, and Milly was standing in front of the mirror in Amy Price’s dressing room trying on outfits she’d brought over from Bel Air. Todd was taking her to a party at the Playboy mansion tonight, something she’d been in a thorough state of overexcitement about for weeks—although the shine had been slightly rubbed off this morning when she learned that Sean, now her sworn enemy at Palos Verdes, was also invited.
“I mean, why?” she moaned, pouting despondently at her reflection in the antique French mirror. The backless emerald-green dress that Todd bought her only last month, a guilt present for his having failed to turn up at Santa Rosa, was already far too big for her, thanks to the strict, low-carb diet Jimmy insisted she follow. It hung shapelessly from her bony shoulders now, making her look like a cast member from Les Misérables who’d fallen into a vat of glitter, or a Vegas showgirl with severe malnutrition. “Why does he have to come? He’s such a total pain in the arse. And why do I look so bloody hideous in everything?”
“You’re crazy,” said Amy, chomping her way through a big bowl of pistachios on the bed while dispensing her sage style advice, and ignoring the jibe about Sean. Personally, she liked him, although she could see why Milly didn’t. “You always look beautiful. All you need to do is pin it in a little with a brooch or something. What I wouldn’t give to have your figure.”
Though they were as different as chalk and cheese, Amy and Milly had become like the sisters they had both wished for growing up. As the only jockey training full-time at Palos Verdes—Jimmy’s other racing stars, Garth Mavers and Michael Shaw on the Thoroughbred circuit and the quarter horse jockey Ricky Crawford, put in occasional appearances when their hectic race schedules allowed—Milly was pretty lonely most of the time, with nothing but the unspoken envy of the grooms and Sean’s outright hostility for company down at the stables. Amy’s friendly face and constantly chirpy, bubbly spirit had been a godsend.
For Amy, Milly was a breath of fresh air. Confident, talented, beautiful—in short, everything that she herself was not—Milly was nonetheless down-to-earth and never treated her like a second-class citizen the way that other pretty girls did. Better still, she was funny. Her bitchily brilliant impressions of Candy frequently reduced Amy to tears of mirth, and the two of them spent many happy hours between Milly’s training sessions, giggling together about the absurdities of LA life and the racing world.
Only two subjects were taboo between them: Bobby (because Amy thought he was gorgeous and romantic beyond belief and that Milly was crazy to have left Highwood and fallen out with him) and Todd (because Milly clearly still thought the sun shone out of his ass, while Amy considered him pond scum of the lowest order).
Today though, unusually, both conversational minefields had come up at once. Milly thought she’d overheard Todd on the phone a few nights ago talking about Highwood’s oil rights and had made the mistake of challenging him about it.
“All I did was ask what was going on,” she complained to Amy, hoping no doubt for some sisterly support. “But he absolutely bit my head off. He said I’m always cross-examining him about Bobby and the ranch, which is completely bloody ridiculous. We never talk about Bobby. Never.”
“What do you think is going on?” said Amy. She knew from Sean that Bobby suspected Todd was up to something at Highwood but that he didn’t know exactly what. “Is he after the oil, do you think?”
“Todd? Oh no.” Milly shook her head vigorously. “Definitely not. There’s a clause in their contract about not drilling up the land. I remember Wyatt forcing Bobby to put it in.”
“Good for Wyatt,” said Amy. She had never met any of the McDonalds, but Milly and Sean’s vivid descriptions made them feel like old friends. She could picture Wyatt now, struggling to rein in the headstrong Bobby and protect him from sharks like Cranborn.
“Anyway, Todd wouldn’t do a thing like that. I know he doesn’t like Bobby very much but . . . no. No, he would never do that.”
Amy wasn’t sure whether it was she Milly was trying to convince or herself. Either way, it didn’t seem to be working.
“You think the gold earrings then? Or the blue?” asked Milly, changing the subject. She’d settled at last for a pale-gold, flapper-style dress that made her look marginally less gaunt than the others. She wouldn’t mind the thinness if it weren’t for the fact that her tits seemed to have completely vaporized, and half the girls at the party tonight were sure to have breasts that weighed more than her entire body. Every time she and Todd went out in LA, there was some bottle blonde or other flinging her beach-ball mammaries at him like trophies. It made Milly’s blood boil.
“I think the blue,” said Amy firmly.
No one had ever asked her advice on matters of beauty or style before, and she was absurdly gratified that someone as beautiful as Milly should be seeking her opinion. Just being around Milly seemed to make her more confident.
If only she could bring her to New York next month as a magic talisman for when she met the publishers and, perhaps, saw Garth again. But she knew Milly’s race schedule wouldn’t permit it. And in any case, Amy hadn’t told her, or indeed anyone, about the interest in her poems. It seemed too much like tempting fate.
“Milly!” A cacophony of horn tooting started up beneath Amy’s window. Heaving herself up from the bed, she got up to have a look. Todd was standing in the graveled forecourt, pointedly looking at his watch in between beeps and yelling Milly’s name bad temperedly. Amy was gratified to see that from directly above he had a small but distinct bald spot forming. Hopefully it would soon grow into a full tonsure, which would serve him right, the vain so-and-so.
It took a lot to make Amy really dislike someone, but Todd Cranborn had achieved th
e feat in record time. If it had just been his rudeness to her, the sneering looks and endless stream of barbed comments about her weight, she might have found it in her heart to forgive him. But the way he lorded it over Milly, bossing her around and playing on her insecurities, especially with other girls, made her stomach churn. As did the patently sycophantic, self-serving way he hung around her father, scavenging for scraps from the Price table like the bloodsucker he was.
But as always, Milly’s face lit up like a beacon as soon as she heard his voice.
“Hi!” she yelled, waving at him brightly and choosing to ignore the testy scowl she received in return. “I wasn’t expecting you to pick me up. Why don’t you come up to Amy’s room. We’re just finishing up.”
“I’ll pass, thanks,” he said, checking his watch for the fourth time. “We’re kinda pushed for time, you know, baby.”
If Amy disliked Todd, the feeling was entirely mutual. As far as he was concerned a woman’s primary duty was to be thin and beautiful—and if they couldn’t manage that, then they should be quiet and useful. Amy Price was none of these things, which rendered her existence wholly pointless. He had no idea what Milly saw in the fat slug.
“I’d better go,” said Milly apologetically, slipping the dress off over her head and pulling her jeans back on. “He hates it when I keep him waiting.”
“Well, we couldn’t have that, could we?” said Amy archly, but immediately regretted it when she saw Milly’s crestfallen face. “Look, sorry. Just, make sure you have a good time tonight, all right? And don’t let Sean or”—she edited herself—“or anyone else get you down.”
“I won’t,” said Milly, scooping up an armful of clothes and shoes and heading for the door. “And have a good night yourself.”
Yeah, thought Amy. Right. Just me, Candy, and Dad. It’ll be a ball.
But she didn’t care. This time in three weeks she’d be in New York, with Garth. Beside that, nothing else mattered.
Milly couldn’t remember whether she’d actually seen pictures of Shangri-la, LA’s fabled Playboy mansion, before or whether her imagination in this instance was just amazingly accurate.
Either way, as Todd nudged the Ferrari forward and announced their names to the infamous talking rock intercom, a faux granite boulder set to one side of the huge, wrought-iron gates, and they swung open obligingly to let them through, the scene that unfolded in front of her was almost exactly as she had pictured it—like a cross between the Garden of Eden and a Benny Hill set.
“Wow,” she said, fiddling yet again with her tit tape to make sure her dress wasn’t about to come unglued. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
But Todd, already busy waving and smiling to gaggles of girls as they drove by, wasn’t listening. He’d been to the mansion so many times, nothing here amazed him anymore.
Originally built in the twenties for the heir to a Broadway department store fortune, the Gothic house had been comprehensively Heff-ed in the mid-seventies, its gardens transformed into a kitsch shrine to sex and hedonism. Amid the undeniable beauty of the six-acre grounds—rolling hills sat side by side with mini-Tolkienian forests; an aviary; and, of course, the notorious grotto—seminaked women and besuited middle-aged men strolled past signs reading CAUTION—PLAYMATES AT PLAY.
“How often do they do these parties?” Milly hissed in Todd’s ear, trying to get his attention as he handed their keys to an improbably proportioned valet girl. The gold flapper dress that had earlier seemed passably sexy now made her feel more flat chested and androgynous than ever. She should have gone for something vampy and red and solid enough for her to shove a padded bra underneath. “Oh, my God. Did you see that?”
A woman who must have been seventy if she was a day wandered past the valet parking in the direction of the grotto, wearing nothing but a silver lamé bikini. Above a body draped in folds of crepey skin, which spilled over the shiny fabric of her outfit, shaking slightly as she teetered along, sat a spooky doll’s face: smooth, almost waxy white skin; orange, drawn-on eyebrows; and fake lashes that looked like they’d been glued on in 1957 and left there ever since.
“Heff might be sexist, but he’s definitely not ageist,” said Todd, laughing at Milly’s horror-struck expression. There was nothing unusual about seeing decrepit former starlets at these events. In a funny way, he’d always thought they rather added to the whole debauched, Hieronymus Bosch atmosphere.
“And try not to look quite so much like Dorothy in Munchkinland, would you? You’re going to see a lot worse than that tonight, believe me.”
He was right. If the grounds were what she had expected, nothing could have prepared her for the bizarre, circuslike melee of freaks and fashionistas, bunnies and businessmen, gathered on the mansion lawns. To the left of her, two suits were calmly conducting business, tapping figures into their Palm Pilots as they sipped their mineral water, while to her right a completely topless teenager escorted what looked like, but Milly could only pray was not, her grandfather to one of the hot tubs where a mini orgy was already in full swing.
But most disconcerting of all was how many people, and in particular how many girls, seemed to know Todd.
One after another, women came bouncing up to him—she was starting to see why people called them bunnies—flinging their arms around him like he’d just gotten back from years at sea and whispering in his ear right in front of her, as though she didn’t exist.
In Newmarket, or even up in Solvang, people at a party would have asked her where she was from or what she did. Even if they’d never heard of quarter horses, most people would be interested in the fact that she was a jockey—especially now that she’d finally started to become successful.
But here, no one asked you what you did. No one asked you anything, in fact, unless you were a recognizable actor, a billionaire, or prepared to cart your bare breasts around in front of you in a wheelbarrow.
“What the fuck was her problem?” she said, finally losing it when a drop-dead gorgeous Latina called Mia, who’d been all over Todd like a rash, suddenly spotted someone richer across the lawns and zoomed off like the Road Runner.
“What do you mean?” He shrugged. “It’s a party. The girls are paid to make people feel welcome.”
“Well, she didn’t make me feel very welcome,” fumed Milly. “Honestly, these bloody bimbos look right through me. Don’t they realize we’re together?”
“Relax.” Smiling, Todd pulled her to him and ran a leisurely finger around the nape of her neck, making her hairs stand on end. It was so ridiculously easy to make her jealous, although he still derived a satisfying rush of power from the experience.
Rather to his surprise, he still found her very physically attractive, despite the fact that they’d now been together five months, a personal best for him. Even after the thrill of stealing her from Bobby had worn off, he still found her combination of innocence and eagerness to please, particularly in bed, a phenomenal turn-on.
“Why don’t you get yourself another drink?” he said, pulling away from her and wandering off yet again. “Go mingle. I’ll catch up with you a bit later.”
“Mingle?” Milly yelled furiously after his retreating back. “How am I supposed to mingle with these half-wits? I don’t know anyone. Todd!” But he’d already been sucked into a group of giggling girls. Trying to pry him out would be as impossible as it was humiliating.
“Lost control of him already, have you?”
Milly spun around, the beaded tassels of her flapper dress swinging behind her. She’d have recognized that mocking Irish accent anywhere.
“Dear, oh dear. That’s not a good sign.”
“Sean,” she said caustically. “What a nice surprise.”
Always a thorn in her side, since his recent trip to Highwood he’d been particularly unbearable, waxing lyrical about the place and the people, as if he knew them better than she did. Her nuclear fallout with Bobby meant she hadn’t spoken to anyone at the ranch, not even Dylan, since the day she
left. But she still had an immense, proprietorial fondness for the place. It bugged the crap out of her to have to hear Highwood news from Sean self-righteous O’Flannagan, of all people.
Sean, for his part, was happier than usual to have run into Milly. At least winding her up would provide a welcome break in the tedium of the night’s proceedings.
No one could accuse him of not loving a good party or of failing to see the charm in crowds of seminaked women. But he’d been to a few of these Playboy bashes now, and they always depressed him. There was something so forced about the smiles, so wooden and rehearsed about the girls’ come-ons, that left him with a bitter taste in the mouth. It ought to have been erotic, but somehow it just wasn’t.
It didn’t help that he couldn’t seem to get Summer McDonald out of his mind. He’d failed woefully to make any progress with her whatsoever during the rest of his stay at Highwood, though God knows he’d tried: every line, every technique, from shoulder to cry on to laugh-their-knickers-off jester. Nothing had worked. She continued treating him with the same polite detachment, then disappeared off to the library on his last morning without so much as a good-bye. He was obviously losing his touch.
“Don’t you have some plastic tits you should be burying your face in?” asked Milly, trying to look past him for Todd, only to find he had now completely disappeared from view behind a throng of bimbettes.
“I did,” Sean said drily, “but your boyfriend seems to be borrowing them just now.”
Milly glowered at him.
“I understand he’s a regular at the mansion?”
“You should know,” Milly shot back, not missing a beat.
“Or perhaps I’m leaping to conclusions?” said Sean. “Perhaps you were the one invited tonight, and he just tagged along? I mean, your latest Boot Barn ad wouldn’t be out of place on the Playboy Channel, would it? Tell me, how do they airbrush in cleavage? I’ve always wanted to know.”
“Fuck off,” snapped Milly. She’d never understood what Bobby and Amy and everyone else seemed to see in Sean. He’d never been anything less than poisonous to her.