Neck & Neck (33 page)

Not even the one person in the world he should know without doubt he could trust with anything. With everything. With all his heart and soul.

 

 

FINN WATCHED NATALIE COLLECT HER CLOTHES AND disappear into his bathroom, telling himself he didn’t feel a thing. Because he never felt anything the morning after having sex with a woman. Except physically satisfied. Problem was, he didn’t feel that, either, even after an entire night of what had to have been the most extensive, exhaustive, experimental sex he’d ever had. Of course, his mornings after always came to an end when the women were still sleeping, so he never had to have any conversation with them. So it must have been the conversation with Natalie, he told himself, that was making him feel the way he was at the moment.

Crap. Maybe he wasn’t feeling physically satisfied, but he was feeling a host of other things. Things he really didn’t want to feel. Concern for Max and Russell after realizing there was a possibility that Natalie had stumbled onto something she shouldn’t have. Fear that Natalie knew more than she was letting on. Worry that he couldn’t trust her.

Though, when he gave that more thought, he realized he actually wasn’t too worried about that last. Not because he knew he could trust Natalie, though. No way. Finn couldn’t trust anyone. It was just that there was no way she could find out the truth about Max, no matter where she looked or how hard she tried. That secret was ironclad and unknown to anyone other than Max, Russell, Finn, and a couple of extremely well-trusted—and even better-paid—attorneys. There wasn’t enough money—or feminine wiles—on the planet that could get any of them to talk.

Not even Natalie Beckett’s.

As if cued by the thought, the shower kicked on in the bathroom, and Finn was assaulted by a vision of Natalie, pink and naked and wet, with water cascading over her smooth flesh, and soap bubbles gliding between her lush breasts and over her flat torso, lingering in the dent of her navel before circling down into her . . .

He smacked his head against the headboard to dispel the image. Hard. Oh, man. How long was it going to take to get her out of his system? Instead of scratching an itch last night, all he’d done was wallow naked in poison ivy. His desire for Natalie now was a million times stronger than it had been mere hours ago. And there was no way she was going to let him get close to her again. Not after everything he’d just said to her.

But what was he supposed to say? He didn’t know her that well. Just because he’d been to her house and driven her car, and met her cat, and just because she’d told him things like where she’d gone to school and how she didn’t feel comfortable in the society where she’d grown up, and just because she’d woken up in his bed—twice—and just because he knew the exact place to touch her to make her utter that incredibly erotic sound . . .

None of those things necessarily generated trust. Yeah, maybe her cat liked him. And yeah, maybe they shared a love of some things, like hockey, and a disdain for other things, like Waterman. And okay, maybe she could relish a good beer as well as he could, never mind garlic and peppers on a burger. Those were little things. They were noth ings. They damn sure weren’t things that would make a woman say she wanted to wake up every morning next to a guy. What the hell was Natalie thinking?

More to the point, what the hell was he thinking? Because instead of getting out of bed and getting dressed and getting the hell outta Dodge, the way he should be before she got out of the shower, he was still sitting in bed, as if he wanted to be here when she got out. As if he wanted to pick up the conversation where they’d left off. As if he wanted to explain himself a little better. Make things a little clearer. Tell her she had the wrong idea about him.

She had exactly the right idea about him. Once a street rat, always a street rat. He might wear better clothes now and live in a nicer place, and he might not break windows or steal
Playboy
from the drugstore anymore, but deep down, he hadn’t changed at all. Deep down, he was still that street rat who didn’t want anyone getting too close. Not just because letting people close meant they learned more about you, but because it meant you learned more about them. And learning about them—some of them, anyway—meant caring about them. And Finn didn’t want to care about anyone. Bad enough he felt responsible for Russell and Max. Caring for those two made him crazy enough as it was. If he let Natalie in, feeling the way he did about her . . .

But he didn’t feel any way for her, he reminded himself. He didn’t. Not a single thing.

To prove it, he slung his feet over the side of the bed, gathered up his clothes from the night before, and hurriedly tugged them on. The shower cut off just as he was buttoning the last button on his shirt, so he grabbed his shoes, his wallet, his phone, and his hotel key and beat a hasty retreat through the door.

Natalie could find her own way, he thought as the door clicked softly closed behind him. The same way he always would.

THE PARLOR OF THE HOTCHKISS HOME WAS AS magnificent and majestic as the ballroom, Natalie noted late Sunday afternoon as Clementine’s maid invited her to take a seat on the sofa while she summoned her mistress. Except that instead of evoking the court of Louis XIV, this room was more reminiscent of what his granddaughter-in-law, Marie Antoinette, probably would have liked. The color scheme and furnishings were unapologetically feminine, from the minty fresh walls to the powder-puff pink chaise in the corner, to the pastel pastiche of Aubusson rugs, to the flowered damask chair into which Natalie eased herself to wait. There were even little flowered tea cakes on the French Provincial coffee table, perfectly arranged on a china tray painted with red and pink roses. A matching tea set awaited serving, its delicate little cups limned with what Natalie would bet was fourteen-carat gold. It was all so elegant and beautiful and gracious. Even her mother didn’t entertain with this kind of refinement. And Dody Beckett for sure wouldn’t do anything like this for someone she’d hired to work for her. Clementine clearly thought very highly of Natalie, to provide for her like this.

So why was nausea rising in her belly and threatening to jump out of her mouth to say howdy-do in the most
un
refined way imaginable? Why did she suddenly feel not like a member of Louis’s court, but like a prisoner who had just been led into the dankest, moldiest part of the Bastille? Why did she fear the petit fours and tea were just for show, and that she was actually about to be fed weevil-infested hardtack and fetid water from the Seine? And why did Rolondo, Clementine’s little Westie who cheerfully patrolled the room, suddenly seem like a big ol’ rat who wanted to wrestle her for the last remaining crumb?

Her head snapped up when she heard the clatter of Clementine’s shoes on the hardwood floor, telling herself they did
not
sound like the kind of footwear any self-respecting
gendarme
would wear. Then she had to squeeze her eyes shut tight and open them again to make sure she was just imagining her employer dressed as a
gendarme,
wielding a blackjacques with which she intended to coldcoq Natalie before dragging
la prisonnière
to
le donjon
.

Fortunately, that last was indeed her imagination, as Clementine actually looked as if she’d just come in from a Derby luncheon of some kind, dressed as she was in a pale blue suit with matching pumps and a hat that was so exuberant—read: ridiculous—that it would have looked outrageous anywhere but Louisville during the week preceding Derby. As it was, the hat was actually a little on the conservative side, since it didn’t boast any kind of animal or a tube for sucking in a strategically placed beer. And Clementine didn’t look at all like she wanted to coldcoq Natalie with a blackjacques. In fact, she looked like she wanted to give Natalie a big ol’ hug.

And then Clementine was giving her a big ol’ hug, and Natalie was so surprised, she barely had time to duck her head out of the way of the big feathers adorning her client’s hat, otherwise she might have lost an eye. Man, women took their Derby chapeaux seriously in this town.

“Oh, Natalie, I just came from having
the
best time,” Clementine said as she withdrew from the hug. She didn’t go far, though, leaving both hands curved affectionately over Natalie’s shoulders, gazing up at her through eyes that were shining with something Natalie could only describe as mischief.

Before she had a chance to ask Clementine where she’d had this best time, her employer was hurrying on, “Glenda Hightower had her Rose Garland Tea this afternoon, which, of course, everyone who’s anyone attends, and which everyone who’s anyone enjoys.”

Everyone who was anyone in Clementine’s generation, at least, Natalie thought. Glenda was Tootie Hightower’s mother, and she’d been hosting the Rose Garland Tea annually since before Natalie and Tootie were born, always on the Sunday afternoon before Derby, to put all her friends in the proper festive mood for the week. Natalie’s mother had never missed a year. Someday, Tootie would doubtless take up the reins and step in as hostess, inviting everyone who was anyone in
her
generation to attend, including Natalie. Not so much because Natalie was one of those everyones who were anyone, but more because Tootie could never have fun at these things unless she had a whipping girl to humiliate, and that, of course, was where Natalie would come in handy.

Not that Natalie cared. The Hightowers never scrimped on their parties, and several of the women attending would be her friends. Plus, she’d gotten very, very good over the years avoiding Tootie at such gatherings. And even better at leaving little surprises behind in Tootie’s pocketbook if she ever gave Natalie a hard time. For example, at this very moment, there were a couple of especially pungent—and sticky—bits of blue cheese and salmon fermenting in the zippered pocket of Tootie’s Michael Kors evening bag that she probably wouldn’t open for at least another week, whereby it ought to be good and ripe. As should a number of other items in the closet with it. Well, could Natalie help it if she accidentally dropped an hors d’oeuvre into Tootie’s bag when she was standing too close? And it would have been impolite to draw attention to the other woman’s plight in a room full of other people.

Anyway, Tootie’s taking over for her mother as tea party hostess was still a ways off, so Natalie cared even less about any of that right now. That evidently wasn’t the case with Clementine, however, because she gushed for several more minutes about the party, and who was wearing what, and how the Benedictine sandwiches this year had been especially delicious and cut into little heart shapes, which had made them all the more enchanting, and how the most scandalous bit of gossip burning up the Glenview grapevine was that Darla Poindexter—wife of fashion-obsessed Frederick Poindexter, the city’s equivalent of Beau Brummell—was engaged in the basest form of passive-aggressive behavior these days, buying all her clothes at a consignment shop on Frankfort Avenue, even if the dress she’d had on today, a gorgeous retro Givenchy reminiscent of Jackie Kennedy, was by far the most envied at the tea.

As Clementine had spoken, she’d seated herself on the overstuffed, rosy silk moiré sofa and invited Natalie to join her, had prepared each of them a cup of tea and tonged petit fours onto a plate for each of them to enjoy.

“But the absolute best part of the day, Natalie,” Clementine said after pausing for breath, leaning comfortably against the sofa’s back, teacup in hand, “was when Glenda asked me how my party plans were coming for this weekend.”

It was the perfect opening for Natalie to tell Clementine what she had come over to tell her. That, actually, the party plans were going great, but the guest list . . . Well, not so much. That, actually, so many people had declined to attend that it would probably be best to cancel the party, because Natalie had kinda sorta lied about having a secret weapon, and hadn’t been able to come up with a single idea that would lure guests away from the plethora of other parties going on that night. And she didn’t want Clementine to be at home alone save her beloved Edgar, both of them all dressed up with a million other places they could have gone as guests, only to be feeling humiliated because no one had come to their own party. The party that, if Natalie let it go any farther, would cost Clementine thousands of dollars more than she’d already sunk into it, thanks to all those nonrefundable deposits.

Natalie opened her mouth to tell her client all those things, still not sure what the best wording for such a disastrous announcement would be, but Clementine hurried on before she had a chance to even start.

“But before I tell you how I replied to Glenda, Natalie, dear, I have to set up a little history that she and I share. We were both at Princeton years ago, you see.”

Natalie’s eyebrows shot up at that. She hadn’t known Clementine attended Princeton. She hadn’t thought many women of that generation really went to college, especially wealthy ones who, it was assumed, would marry and start families and become unpaid hostesses and caterers for all the parties their upwardly bound professional husbands would expect and require them to organize. Even Natalie’s mother hadn’t attended college. She’d toured Europe with a bunch of her friends for six months after high school, then had come home and . . . Well, mostly started going to parties and volunteering for a variety of causes, which was actually mostly an opportunity to socialize with friends and plan fund-raising events that were pretty much just more parties for them to attend and, hopefully, meet potential husbands. Natalie’s parents had, in fact, met at such a society function.

“Oh, yes, I went to college,” Clementine said when she must have noticed Natalie’s expression. “I even graduated from college. So did Glenda. But my reasons for being at Princeton were quite a bit different from hers. Glenda’s parents sent her because they wanted her to meet suitable young men in the hopes that she might marry one, which she ultimately did.” Clementine lowered her voice a bit as she added parenthetically, “You see, Glenda had something of a, ah, reputation in Louisville by then that made her . . . Well, let’s just say she was less than marriageable in the eyes of the boys in her own social circle. Her parents knew they’d have to send her where no one knew her for her to land herself a nice boy with lots and lots of money.”