The Bourbon Kings #1 (15 page)

For someone like him, whose only mistress was night terrors and whose primary job was attempting to keep his brain from cannibalizing itself, the tight quarters were much easier to handle—especially around this time of the year. Such a shame he’d been down in South America right before the Derby when he’d been kidnapped. The anniversary of him getting held for corporate ransom ruined what had always been a most enjoyable weekend.

He checked his watch and cursed. Now that the sun was down, the evening hours presented themselves in a hazy twist, minutes lasting a century and a second at the same time. His night job? To somehow make it to sunrise without screaming.

At his elbow, the bottle of vodka was nearly finished. He’d started off with five cubes of ice in his tall glass, but they were long gone and he was drinking things neat at this point. Last night it had been gin. Two evenings ago he’d had three bottles of wine: a pair of reds and a white of some variety.

During the initial, acute stage of his “recovery,” he’d had to learn the ins and outs of pain management, how you timed your pills and your food so that riding the nerve impulses of a ruined body was not worse than the torture he’d endured to earn his wounds. And that Master’s in Medication Management had translated nicely over to this second, chronic part of his “recovery.” Thanks to the early trial and error he’d had with the bottles of pills, he was able to arrange things for optimal sedative effect: Every afternoon, he would have a meal of some sort around four p.m., and by six o’clock, when the stables flushed out of employees, he could start drinking on an essentially empty stomach.

Nothing set his quick temper off faster than someone getting in the way of his buzz—

When the knock sounded out, he reached for the handgun beside the Grey Goose and tried to remember what day it was. The Derby was the day after tomorrow … so Thursday. It was Thursday night at some hour past sunset.

So this was not one of the prostitutes he paid to come service him.
They were Friday. Unless he’d scheduled a twofer this week—and he hadn’t done that.

Right …? Or had he.

Reaching for his cane, he pushed himself off the chair and shuffled over to the front window. As he parted the drapes, the gun in his hand was steady, but his heart was pounding. Even though logically he knew there were no mercenaries here in Ogden County looking for him, even though he was aware that he was safe behind all of the locks and the security system he’d installed, and in spite of the forty millimeter against his palm … his brain had been permanently rewired.

When he saw who it was, he frowned and lowered the weapon. Going over to the door, he undid the chain, three dead bolts, and the latch and opened up, the hinges squeaking like mice—another warning mechanism for him.

“Wrong client,” he muttered dryly at the small blond woman wearing old jeans and a clean muscle shirt. “I order brunettes. In ball gowns.”

For a reason he preferred to keep to himself.

She frowned. “’Scuse me?”

“I only take brunettes. And they are supposed to be dressed properly.”

He wanted long dark hair that curled at the end, a gown that reached the floorboards, and they had to wear Must de Cartier. Oh, and keep their mouths shut. They weren’t allowed to speak to him as he fucked them: Although the whores could get the outside almost right, the fragile illusion would be broken the instant their voices didn’t sound like the woman he wanted but could not have.

He had enough trouble keeping an erection going as it was—in fact, the only way he could get it up at all was if he believed the lie for the duration it took him to pump his way to an orgasm.

The woman standing on his doorstep put her hands on her hips. “I don’t believe I know what you’re talkin’ ’bout. But I know I’m in the right place ’chere. You’re Edward Baldwine, and this is the Red and Black.”

“Who are you?”

“Jeb Landis’s daughter. Shelby. Shelby Landis.”

Edward closed his eyes. “Goddamn it.”

“I’ll appreciate you not takin’ the Lord’s name in vain in my presence. Thank you.”

He cracked his lids. “What do you want?”

“My father’s dead.”

Edward focused over her head, at the moon that was rising above Barn C. “You want to come in?”

“If you put that weapon away, yes.”

He tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans and stepped back. “You want a drink?”

As she came in, he realized how truly short she was. And she probably weighed ninety pounds tops—soaking wet while holding a bale of hay.

“No, thank you. I do not abide by alcohol. But I would care to avail m’self of your facilities. I’ve had a long trip.”

“They’re over there.”

“Thank you kindly.”

He leaned out his door. The pickup truck she’d evidently driven here from God only knew where was parked on the left, the engine still ticking after she’d turned it off.

As he shut the heavy weight and went through the procedure of relocking things, a toilet flushed in the back of the house and the water ran. A moment later, the girl emerged and went over to look at the trophies.

Edward returned to his chair, grimacing as he arranged himself. “When?” he asked as he poured the rest of the vodka into his glass.

“A week ago,” she replied without looking over at him.

“How.”

“Trampled. Well, the doctors say his heart gave out, but it was caused by a trample. That how you got maimed?”

“No.” He took a long drink. “So what are you doing here.”

Now she turned around. “My father always said I was to come and find you if anything ever happened to him. He said you owed him. I never asked for what.”

Edward regarded her for a long time. “How old are you? Twelve?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Jesus, you’re young—”

“Watch your mouth around me.”

He had to smile. “You’re just like your old man, you know that?”

“So people say.” She put her hands back on her hips. “I’m not lookin’ for no handouts. I need a place to stay and work to do. I’m good with horses, just like my father, and bad with people—so you’re warned up front on that one. I got no money, but my back is strong and I’m not afraid of nothing. When can I start.”

“Who says I’m looking for any help?”

She frowned. “My dad said you’d need it. He said you’d have to have more help.”

The Red & Black was a big operation, and there were always vacancies. But Jeb Landis was a complicated blast from the past—and his kin was contaminated by association.

And yet … “What can you do?”

“It’s not rocket science to muck stalls, keep the horses in shape, watch the pregnancies—”

He waved away her words. “Fine, fine, you’re hired. And I’m just being a prick because, like you, I can’t get along with people anymore. There’s a vacant apartment next to Moe’s over in Barn B. You can move in there.”

“Point the way.”

Edward grunted as he got back to his feet and he purposely brought his glass with him as he led the way to the door. “Don’t you want to know how much I’ll pay you.”

“You’ll be fair. My father said that dishonesty was not in your character.”

“He was being generous on that one.”

“Hardly. And he knew men and horses.”

As Edward went through the unlocking procedure again, he could feel her looking at him and hated it. His injuries were the result of a hell he would have prefered to keep private from the world.

Before he let her out of the cottage, he stared down at her. “There’s only one rule.”

“What’s that?”

For some reason, he took stock of her features. She was nothing like her father physically—well, other than that small frame. Shelby—or whatever her name was—had eyes that were pale, not dark. And her skin wasn’t the consistency of leather. Yet. She also didn’t smell like horse sweat—although that would change.

Her voice, however, was all Jeb: That twang of hers was backed up by a solid core of strength.

“You don’t go near my stallion,” Edward said. “He’s mean to the core.”

“Nebekanzer.”

“You know him.”

“My father used to say that that horse had gasoline in his veins and acid in his eyes.”

“Yeah, you know my horse. Don’t go near him. You don’t muck his stall, you don’t approach him if he’s out to pasture, and you never, ever put anything over that stall door if you want to keep it. That includes your head.”

“Who takes care of him?”

“I do.” Edward limped out into the night, the heavy, humid air making him feel like he couldn’t breathe. “And no one else.”

As he tried and failed to take a deep inhale, he wondered if all those doctors had missed an internal injury. Then again, maybe the sense of suffocation was the image of this small woman anywhere near that hateful black stallion. He could just imagine what Neb could do to her.

She went ahead of him and grabbed a backpack out of the passenger side of the truck. “So you’re in charge here.”

“No, Moe Brown is. You’ll meet him tomorrow. He’ll be your boss.” Edward started off toward the barns. “Like I said, the apartment next to his is furnished, but I don’t know when the last person lived in it.”

“I’ve slept in stalls and on park benches. Having a roof over me is enough.”

He glanced down at her. “Your father … was a good man.”

“He was no better or worse than anyone else.”

It was impossible not to wonder who the woman’s mother was—or how anyone could have put up with Jeb long enough to have a child with him: Jeb Landis was a legend in the industry, the trainer of more stakes winners than any other man, alive or dead. He’d also been an alcoholic sonofabitch with a gambling problem as big as his misogynistic streak.

One thing Edward was not worried about was whether this Shelby could handle herself. If she could survive living with Jeb? Working an eighteen-hour shift on a breeding farm would be a piece of cake.

As they came up to Barn B, the motion-activated exterior lights came on and horses stirred inside, clomping their hooves and whinnying. Entering through the side door, he bypassed Moe’s office and the supply rooms, and took her to the staircase that rose up to what had once been a hayloft stretching the full length of the massive roof beams. Sometime in the seventies, the space had been converted to a pair of apartments, and Moe had the front one that looked out over the drive.

“You go first and wait for me at the top,” he gritted. “It takes me a while.”

Shelby Landis hit the stairs at the kind of clip he had once enjoyed but had failed to appreciate, and it felt like it took a hundred thousand years to join her on the upper floor.

And by then, he was out of breath to such a degree he was wheezing like a stuck tire.

Turning away from her, he found that there was no light shining under Moe’s door, but he wouldn’t have bothered the man with any kind of introduction anyway. With the Derby running in less than forty-eight hours, the man, assuming he was home, would be passed out.

Especially considering one of their two horses might have to be scratched from the race.

As Edward went across and tried the doorknob to the other flat, he didn’t know what he was going to do if it was locked. He had no clue where keys might be—

The door opened wide, reminding him that he was in the minority of paranoids out here on the farm. The light switch was to the left on
the wall, and as he clicked it on, he was relieved that the place didn’t smell too musty and that there was, in fact, a couch, a chair, a table, and a tiny kitchen that made the galley one he had look industrial by comparison.

“Did your father ever tell you why I owe him?” he said as he limped over to a darkened doorway.

“No, but Jeb wasn’t a talker.”

Flipping a second switch, he found that, yup, there was a bedroom and bath, too.

“This is what you’ve got,” he said, pivoting around and becoming exhausted as he measured the distance back to the door.

Fifteen feet.

It might as well have been miles.

She walked over to him. “Thank you for the opportunity.”

She put out her hand and met his eye—and for a moment, he felt an emotion other than the worm of anger that had been churning and burning in his gut for the last two years. He wasn’t sure how to define it—the sad thing was, though, he wasn’t sure he welcomed the shift.

There was a certain clarity to having such a unilaterally hostile operating principle.

He left that palm hanging in the breeze as he dragged his body over to the exit. “We’ll see if you thank me later.”

Abruptly, he thought of the whole don’t-cuss, no-alcohol thing. “Oh, one more rule. If my drapes are drawn, don’t bother me.”

The last thing he needed was for her to find out he cavorted with loose women. And paid them for the privilege. He could just imagine that conversation.

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded and shut the door. Then slowly, carefully, executed his descent.

The truth was, Jeb Landis had been the one to turn him around, such as he was. Without that man’s swift kick in the ass, heaven only knew whether Edward would still be on the planet. God, he could remember with such clarity the trainer coming to see him in that rehab
hospital. In spite of Edward’s no-visitors, no-exceptions rule, Jeb had gotten past the nursing station and marched into his room.

They had known each other for well over a decade before that intrusion, Edward’s interest in, and ownership of, racing horses, coupled with his previous commitment to being the best at everything, meaning that there was only one man he wanted training his stock.

He would never have predicted the guy to be some kind of savior for him, however.

Jeb’s come to Jesus had been short and to the point, but it had gotten through, to the extent it had, better than all the cajoling and handholding had. And then a year after Edward had moved in here, thrown out his business suits, and decided this would be his life, Jeb had told him he was leaving the Red & Black and going to California.

Probably because the bookies up in Chicago wanted a piece of the guy.

In all those years, before and after the kidnapping, the subject of Jeb having any offspring had never come up. But, yes, of course, he would take the man’s daughter in.