“Probably a silly question,” she said eventually, “but it is illegal, isn’t it?”
“Abducting people and beating them up?” snarled Jasper. “Yes, of course it’s illegal.” He scowled at his reflection again. “Do you think my nose could be reset?”
“No, not that,” said Rachel tetchily. “I mean you, placing all those bets.”
“Well, yes, technically,” said Jasper. “But it’s damned difficult to prove. And there’s a lot of money in it, if you’ve got the balls. How do you think I’ve been paying for all the holidays and the Porsche and that ruby pendant I bought you?”
Rachel’s mind was working overtime. The truth was, she neither knew nor cared how he’d paid for them until now, although with hindsight she supposed it was rather odd that his racing career had been going one way while his bank balance went the other. Certainly this new, daring, rich Jasper who dabbled with dark criminal forces was a lot more interesting and exciting a boyfriend than the old dull and lazy version. But she had to be careful. Enjoying his money was one thing, but she couldn’t afford to let her own image get tarnished if somehow he got caught.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked him. “D’you think . . . I mean, will Ali still want you to work for him?”
“Probably.” Jasper nodded with an involuntary shiver. “I’m too far in to go back now.”
This was true. And even if it hadn’t been, he didn’t see much of an alternative to going back to work other than playing it straight, facing up to his lack of talent as a jockey, and crawling back home to Linda, none of which was an option.
“Is there anything I can do?” murmured Rachel, already lost in a fantasy of herself as a gorgeous gangster’s moll, loyally watching Jasper battling it out with gangs of East End thugs in order to keep her in illicit furs and jewels.
“Well, first of all,” he sighed, relieved that she seemed to be taking it all so well, “I need a decent cover story for my mother. Something to distract her from the bruises, stop her asking too many questions.”
Rachel’s eyes lit up. Dashing back into the bathroom, she retrieved the Playboy and handed it to him.
“Page twenty-two,” she said triumphantly. “If that doesn’t distract your ma, nothing will.”
“Jeeeeeeeesus!” said Jasper, the pain in his face momentarily forgotten as he stared, stunned, at his sister’s pictures. The last time he’d seen Milly was right after their dad’s funeral. She was barely recognizable as the same girl, and not just because she was naked. Rachel might not want to admit it, but she looked good. Damned good.
“After all the fuss she made about my Loaded shots, too.” Rachel pouted. “What do you think?”
“I think,” he said slowly, still unable to tear his eyes away from the pictures, “that for once in her life my little sister might actually have done me a favor. Mummy’s going to hit the roof. And you”—he kissed her, wincing at the stinging in his lips—“are a bloody genius.”
In New York for his annual end-of-summer trip, Jimmy Price was in a foul mood.
The city had awoken to a beautiful September morning. Bright rays of sunshine broke through the few solitary clouds, as clear and tangible as strands of copper, and the lingering fall blossoms on the trees outside the Four Seasons were still bursting forth in a candy-cane riot of pink and white, as if unwilling to admit that the long hot summer was finally over.
But Jimmy was oblivious to the beauty surrounding him.
Thanks to yesterday’s unexpected rise in interest rates, he’d woken up to find his share price had fallen by 5 percent overnight, and spent the first two hours of his day on the phone, trying to reassure worried investors. He really ought to fly back to California and sort things out in person. But he’d been looking forward to this New York trip for months and was damned if he was going to miss today’s racing.
“Can I get you anything, sir? More toast?”
The waiter was unobtrusively polite, a mascot for the impeccable service that kept Jimmy coming back to the Four Seasons when he could so easily have bought and furnished a permanent town house in the city. Candy was always on at him to get them a place in New York. But Jimmy liked hotels. They were efficient and impersonal, rather like him.
“No thanks,” he said, not glancing up from the New York Times’s sports pages. “Just some fresh coffee. Very hot.”
Ever since he bought his first horse, Lost and Found, over a decade ago he’d become addicted to racing, to the degree that numerous members of his board complained frequently and vociferously about the amount of time he spent at the track. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what it was—the exhilaration of winning, of course, was always a high; but he loved the social side of horse racing too, the kudos that being a successful owner brought him in the sort of smart, old-money circles where being a billionaire press baron didn’t necessarily cut it. Owning racehorses legitimized his wealth. It socially laundered and gentrified it. Plus, it provided a unique escape from the pressures and problems in the rest of his life.
After his first wife killed herself, he’d started coming to the track to forget and block out his guilt, pouring all his emotional energy into his horses—Thoroughbreds first, and later American quarter horses. As the years passed, and the hideous train wreck of his first marriage faded to a faint memory, he kept coming. Now it was the rush of being envied that gave him the biggest thrill. Walking into a stadium or a party with the radiantly beautiful Candy on his arm, knowing that every other owner wanted her: It was a buzz beyond anything he’d experienced in his business life.
If it hadn’t been for Amy, he might have succeeded in blocking out the past altogether. But every time he looked at his daughter’s overweight, unhappy face, he saw her mother staring back at him. Her very existence was like a reproach, a daily reminder of all the mistakes he’d made, all the damage he’d done that could never be undone. Some days he could barely bring himself to look at her.
He wouldn’t have let her tag along to New York if Candy hadn’t insisted that they needed her help with the boys. Yet another nanny had quit a few days ago—the fifth this year—so if they wanted Chase and Chance with them, it was Amy or nothing.
If only she could have been a little more like Milly. Disciplined, focused, and ambitious far beyond his expectations, Milly had moved mountains to lose her extra saddle weight and had already proved herself totally committed to her training as well as to building her commercial value with the media. He could have used a daughter like that.
Though it wasn’t to his personal taste, the Playboy shoot had been one hell of a coup so early in her career. He was proud of her—although, of course, it was Todd Cranborn he really had to thank for that.
Todd had also turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Most of these property guys were all piss and wind, but Cranborn had already gotten him in on the ground floor of two very interesting real estate propositions—one of which, a deal to build a bunch of condos out in Orlando, he was seriously considering financing in its entirety.
Unfortunately, dabbling in real estate was small fry in comparison to the grim prognosis for Price Media, Inc.’s stock price. Fucking bank rates. Why hadn’t his economists seen this coming? What the fuck was he paying those bozos for anyway?
Spearing the last morsel of crispy bacon dripping with egg yolk onto his fork, he gazed out of the window at the bright sunshine of the morning and frowned.
The share price free fall wasn’t the only thing bringing him down this morning. Last night he’d embarrassingly lost his erection halfway through making love to Candy. She’d seemed unfazed by it at the time, rolling over and falling back to sleep as though nothing had happened. But he fervently hoped this lapse didn’t mark the beginning of the end for his virility. Most of his contemporaries, he knew, now relied heavily on Viagra to keep their much younger second or third wives satisfied. But due to an inherited heart condition, he was unable to resort to the magic blue pill. It worried him.
Losing hi
s wife was the worst thing Jimmy could possibly imagine. Worse even than losing his company or, God forbid, his horses. In his eyes, Candy was the pinnacle of womanhood. Marrying her had been his finest single achievement, payback for all those girls who’d rejected him in college when he was just a nerdy, ginger-haired kid without two bucks to rub together.
Buffy, his first wife, had loved him back then. Back when he’d had nothing. But she’d never made him feel as confident, as fucking triumphant and elated, as Candy did.
She’d be upstairs in their suite right now, he reflected. Showering, most probably. The thought of his wife’s naked, dripping, soap-covered body made his dick start to harden.
“Great,” he mumbled bitterly, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin and waving to his server for the check. “That’s just great, buddy. A fat lot of use you are to me now.”
In fact it was Amy, not Candy, who was still in the shower.
The twins had been driving her insane since daybreak, shrieking the place down, demanding their mother, and generally wreaking havoc. Their favorite trick was to run amok among the priceless Japanese vases and early American sculptures in the Presidential Suite, no doubt chosen by some childless, gay interior designer who’d be horrified to see his objets d’art being used as makeshift footballs.
Candy, as usual, was no help at all. She’d spent the last hour and a half locked in the bathroom, adding the finishing touches to her already flawless makeup. She wanted to look perfect, if not better, when they got to the track, knowing every eye would be on her.
Amy longed to start getting ready herself. Today she would finally see Garth again, for the first time in almost a year. She hadn’t slept a wink all night for thinking about it. But, unfortunately, not even SpongeBob SquarePants, usually a fail-safe pacifier, had calmed the boys down this morning, and she’d had to wait till they burned themselves out and fell asleep on the couch before she could at last make a dash to the bathroom.
Sitting on the stone ledge of the enormous power shower, she let the blasting jets of hot water soothe her, rinsing away shampoo suds along with all the aches in her muscles. She was so tired, all she wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep.
Yesterday had been a terrible day. Her long-anticipated meeting with the publisher in midtown was a crushing disappointment. They said they liked her poems, but it soon became clear that their real interest was in getting her to pen some sort of exposé of her father.
“How did it feel to lose your mother in your teens and in such a cruel way?” the hard-faced, hair-sprayed harridan from nonfiction had asked her, reaching out and placing her emaciated, crone’s hand on Amy’s knee, presumably in an attempt at sympathy.
I mean, what sort of a person did they think she was?
She would never betray her dad like that, in print or otherwise. Never.
Grabbing the loofah, she began scrubbing at her butt and thighs—she’d read somewhere that scrubbing was good for the circulation and reduced cellulite—gently at first, but then harder and harder, until big red welts began to appear on her flesh. Somewhat to her own surprise, she found herself starting to cry.
Sometimes she wanted to rub herself out. Just scrape off all the fat and fear and failure and start again.
She must have been crazy, thinking anyone would actually want to buy her poems. Why would they? As for getting Garth to love her again—as if he ever had in the first place—that was even crazier. With a body like hers she couldn’t hope to attract any man, let alone one as beautiful and talented as he was.
If only Milly were here to talk to. Milly was forever telling her she was lovely and worth a million Garths and that if people couldn’t see past a little extra weight it was their problem.
Easy to say when you had a Playboy-perfect body yourself, of course.
Wiping away her tears, she made an effort to pull herself together. Milly was her friend. She must not be envious. It was far too mean-spirited.
She’d just have to do the best she could to smarten herself up before the twins woke up. After that, whatever happened with Garth would be in the lap of the gods.
They were late arriving at the Aqueduct, plunging Jimmy into an even more toxic mood as they filed en famille into his private box. He was still grumbling about the terrible Queens traffic as he took his seat next to Candy.
“Honey, do you mind if ah run to the restroom?” she asked, interrupting another rant. Immaculate in a demure white Armani skirt and blue silk shirt, she smelled of Rive Gauche and rose oil, and he could feel her silken blond hair brushing the side of his cheek as she leaned close to speak to him. Fuck, she was beautiful.
“Sure.” He smiled at her indulgently. “Just don’t be long, okay? The next race should be a good one. And you know how I like to show you off.”
“Awww, baby.” Getting up from her seat, she planted a kiss in the middle of his carefully blow-dried and lacquered ginger bouffant. “My little Jiminy Cricket. Course I won’t be long.”
Eeeugh, thought Amy. Somebody pass me a bucket.
Chase and Chance had finally stopped crying and were munching their way through peanut butter and jelly sandwiches beside her, excited to be out watching the “hosees.” It had taken so long to get them ready, she’d had next to no time to dress herself. In the end she’d grabbed the nearest thing at hand: a shapeless cream linen dress, which did her absolutely no favors, and flat pumps. Her pale blond hair still hung damp and limp to her shoulders—there’d been no time to dry it, let alone style it—and the bronzer and mascara she’d hurriedly applied before running out the door failed to hide the telltale traces of exhaustion on her face.
“Is that the best you could do?” Jimmy observed viciously, as she got into the limo. “You could’ve at least dried your hair. It’s embarrassing.”
Biting back her tears—streaky mascara would be adding insult to injury at this point—Amy felt the last vestiges of self-esteem crumbling.
Why did he have to be so cruel?
“You know what, Dad?” she said now, lumbering to her feet at the back of the box a few minutes after Candy’s exit. “I think I need the restroom too.”
Against her better judgment, she planned to take a walk down to the paddock in the hope of seeing Garth. In her mind’s eye she pictured herself accidentally-on-purpose bumping into him and delivering her carefully prepared, nonchalant line about what a surprise it was to run into him before the race.
“Now?” said Jimmy testily. “What about the boys?”
“Oh, they’re fine for a minute,” she insisted. “Anyway, I need to pee. I won’t be long.”
Before he could raise any further objections she slipped out and hurried down through the stands toward the paddock. Garth, unfortunately, was nowhere to be seen.
Damn it. If she had to wait till after the race, he’d be surrounded by people and she’d never get a chance to speak to him alone.
Looking around, she saw the large, trampled, muddy area to the left of the stands and behind the winners’ enclosure that served as a makeshift parking lot for competitors’ trailers. It was closed to the public, cordoned off with a sagging line of rope and manned by a couple of racecourse officials. But they all knew Amy was Jimmy Price’s daughter and cheerily waved her through.
Hitching her dress up above the worst of the mud, she picked her way through the trailers, ignoring the curious looks and sniggers from other jockeys and trainers as she passed. If anyone stopped her she would simply say she was lost and looking for the ladies’ room. No one needed to know she’d been searching for Garth like a lost puppy.
She was on the point of giving up and heading back to the box—Jimmy would go ape shit if she left the twins alone for too long—when she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks.
For there, not ten feet in front of her, was Garth.
Sitting on one of those portable, folding chairs behind one of her father’s horse trailers, he had his breeches around his ankles and was being straddled b
y an enthusiastically moaning Candy, whose white Armani skirt was pushed up around her hips as she bucked and arched on top of him.
“Oh, Garth! Garth!” she panted, as the taut, toned globes of her pantyless buttocks slapped down audibly and rhythmically against the tops of his thighs. “Harder! C’mon, baby.”
Amy stood transfixed. Bizarrely, all she seemed able to think about in that instant was that her stepmother sounded just as bossy and demanding during sex as she did normally.
If it hadn’t been Garth, she’d probably have laughed. The whole scene was so sordid and ridiculous. But it was Garth—her Garth, the Garth who she remembered making love to her last summer as if it were yesterday. The expression of selfish urgency and concentration he wore on his face now as he tried to make himself come was hideously, grotesquely familiar.
Then suddenly, with no warning, he opened his eyes and looked right at her. Amy’s stomach lurched.
She could feel her knees shaking and hoped she wasn’t going to sink ignominiously into the sodden ground, but the feeling of faintness wouldn’t go away. Pain, embarrassment, and shock welled up simultaneously within her till her vision blurred and her head began to throb.
This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.
Candy could have any man she wanted.
Why did the heartless bitch have to pick Garth?
Now she was looking right at him, waiting for a look of guilty surprise to register on his face. She had, after all, caught him in flagrante with her father’s wife. Surely that concept must worry him just a little?
But instead, without breaking the rhythm of his thrusts for so much as a second, he smiled at her.
The bastard actually smiled.
The next thing Amy knew she was running, blinded by sobs, back through the maze of trailers and out into the crowds thronging around the paddock, preparing to place their bets. Dabbing her eyes and gulping big, deep breaths of air into her lungs, she willed herself to get a grip.