The Bourbon Kings #1 (39 page)

A
s Edward listened to Lane’s report on the family’s finances, and then the further news that their mother had been declared incompetent, and finally the details around the hemlock suicide, he found himself … curiously detached from the whole story.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care.

He had always worried about his siblings, and that kind of regard didn’t go away, even after all he had been through.

But the string of bad news seemed like explosions happening far off on the horizon, the flashing and the distant roar something that captured his attention, but didn’t affect him enough to get him up out of his chair—literally or figuratively.

“So I need your help,” Lane concluded.

Edward brought the gin bottle to his mouth again. This time, however, he didn’t drink. He lowered it back down. “With what, precisely?”

“I need access to the BBC’s financial files—the real ones that haven’t been scrubbed for the Board or the press.”

“I don’t work for the company anymore, Lane.”

“Don’t tell me you couldn’t get into the servers if you really wanted to.”

Lane had a point. Edward had been the one to set up the computer systems.

There was a long silence, and then Edward followed through with another hit of the liquor. “There’s still plenty of money around. You have your trust, Maxwell has his, and Gin only has a year or two to go—”

“That fifty-three million dollar loan with Prospect Trust is coming due. Two weeks, Edward.”

Edward shrugged. “It has to be unsecured, otherwise Monteverdi wouldn’t be so worried. So it’s not like they’re going to come for the house.”

“Monteverdi will go to the press.”

“No, he won’t. If he did make an unsecured loan of that magnitude using Prospect Trust funds, he’d had to have done it behind his Board’s back and in violation of federal trust company laws. If it’s not repaid on schedule, the only thing that will happen publicly is an announcement that Monteverdi is taking early retirement to ‘spend time with his family.’” Edward shook his head. “I understand your wanting to know more, but I’m not sure where you think that’s going to get you. The debt is not yours to worry about. You live in Manhattan now. Why the sudden interest in those people who live at Easterly?”

“They’re our family, Edward.”

“So?”

Lane frowned. “I get that you don’t feel like William Baldwine’s son. After the way he treated you all these years, how could you? But … what about the house? The land—the business? Mother?”

“The Bradford Bourbon Company has a billion dollars in yearly revenue. Even if you go net, not gross, on that figure, whether the personal debt is fifty or even a hundred million, that is not a catastrophic event considering how much stock the family owns. Banks will loan between sixty to seventy percent of value against an investment portfolio—you could finance the payback of that amount on your own right now.”

“But what if that isn’t all that’s been borrowed? And shouldn’t Father be held accountable? And again, I ask, what about Mother?”

“If I went down the rabbit hole of wanting some kind of justice against that sire of ours, I’d be flat-out insane. And the last time I heard, Mother hasn’t been out of her bed except to take a bath in three years. Whether she’s at Easterly or in a nursing home, she won’t notice the difference.” As Lane let out a curse, Edward shook his head again. “My advice to you is to follow my lead and distance yourself. I should go even farther away, actually—at least you have New York.”

“But—”

“Make no mistake, Lane—they will eat you alive, especially if you follow this avenging road you’re on.” As he fell silent, he felt a brief moment of surging fear. “You’re not going to win, Lane. There are … things … that have been done in the past against people who tried to come forward about certain issues. And some of them were done against family members.”

He should know.

Lane went over to the bay window, staring out as if its drapes were not closed. “So you’re saying you won’t help me.”

“I’m advising you that the path of least resistance is best for your mental health.” Physical, too. “Let it go, Lane. Move past, move on. That which you cannot change must be accepted.”

There was another stretch of quiet, and then Lane looked across the stale air between them. “I can’t do that, Edward.”

“Then it’s your funeral—”

“My wife is pregnant.”

“Again? Congratulations.”

“I’m divorcing her.”

Edward cocked an eyebrow. “Not the typical response of an expectant father. Especially given how much child support you’re going to owe.”

“It’s not mine.”

“Ah, that explains it—”

“She tells me it’s Father’s.”

As their eyes met, Edward went very still. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You heard me. She says she’s going to tell Mother. And that she’s not leaving Easterly.” There was a pause. “Of course, if it turns out there
are money problems, then I won’t have to worry about our father’s bastard living in our family’s house. Chantal will go elsewhere and find another wealthy idiot to glom on to.”

As an odd pain shot up Edward’s forearm, he glanced at his hand. Interesting. It had somehow locked onto the Beefeater bottle with such a strong grip that his knuckles were nearly breaking through his pale skin.

“Is she lying?” he heard himself ask.

“If she’d named anyone other than Father, I would say maybe. But no, I don’t think she is.”

A
s Samuel T. emerged from the wine cellar and strode off, he found that ignoring the woman he’d just screwed was an issue of survival. Her voice was enough of an energy suck; if he actually focused on her words, he would probably slip into a coma.

“—and then we’ll go to the club! Everyone’s going to be there, and we can …”

Then again, the exhaustion he was battling probably wasn’t her. It was more likely the result of putting down his weapons after a decades-long battle.

What he was clear on was that he’d had to fuck someone in there, on that table. It was his way of wiping the slate clean, metaphorically burning the last memory he had of being inside Gin here at this house. And the other sites he’d been with her at, whether they were at his farm, or in hotels internationally, or out in Vail, or up in Michigan? He was going to knock them off, too, until he’d covered up every single recollection with another woman.

“—Memorial Day? Because we could go out to my parents’ estate in the Loire Valley, you know, get away …”

As the prattling continued, Samuel T. was reminded of why he preferred to sleep with married women. When you had sex with someone who had to worry about a husband? There wasn’t this expectation of a relationship.

The stairs back up to ground level couldn’t arrive in enough of a
hurry. And even though he was ready to take them two at a time just so he could lose the chatterbox behind him, he was enough of a gentleman to stand aside at the bottom and indicate for her to go first.

“Oh, thank you,” she said as she hustled up ahead of him.

He was about to follow when he caught a flash of something colorful on the floor.

A pair of stilettoes. Pale, made of satin. Louboutins.

He ripped his head around and searched where he and the woman had come from.

“Samuel T.?” she said from the top. “Are you coming?”

They were Gin’s shoes. She was down here. She had come down here … to watch?

Well, she certainly hadn’t stopped them.

His first impulse was to smile and go on the hunt—but that was a reflex born out of the way they had related for how long?

To remind himself of how things had changed, all he had to do was think of that ring on her finger. That man standing beside her. The news that was soon going to go nationwide.

Funny, he had never cared about all the other men Gin had been with. Whether that came under the eye-for-an-eye exception because he was sleeping with an equal number of other women … or whether he had some kind of kink in him that made him want her more knowing she’d fucked and sucked other men … or maybe it was something else entirely … he didn’t know.

One thing that was certain?

Richard Pford was now a source of tremendous jealousy. In fact, it had taken every ounce of Samuel T.’s self-possession not to give that waste of space a glare that left a hole in the back of his skull.

“Samuel T.? Is there something wrong?”

He looked up the stairs. The light coming from behind the woman turned her into nothing but shadow, reducing her to a faceless set of curves with no greater weight than an apparition.

For some reason, he wanted to take Gin’s shoes, but he left them behind as he let his ascent answer the lady’s question.

Emerging on her level, he cleared his throat. “I’ll meet you there.”

Her smile drooped. “I thought we would go to the track together.”

The track?

Oh, right. It was Derby day.

“I have some business to take care of. I’ll see you there.”

“Where are you going now?”

The question made him realize that he’d started off toward the kitchen, not the party. “Like I said, business.”

“Which box are you in?”

“I’ll find you,” he called out.

“Promise?”

Walking away, he could feel her staring at him—and he was willing to bet that she was praying to Mary Sue, the Patron Saint of Debutantes, that he turn around, come back over and become the escort that she’d hoped would emerge thanks to that subterranean fucking.

But Samuel T. did not look back nor did he reconsider his exit. And he didn’t pay any attention to the host of chefs in Miss Aurora’s kitchen.

He wasn’t actually aware of anything until he stepped outside.

Closing the mud room’s door behind him, he took a breather and leaned back against the hot white-painted panels. Another scorcher of a day, which was not a surprise. Then again, nothing was a shocker in Charlemont when it came to the weather.

If you didn’t like the conditions, all you had to do was wait fifteen minutes.

So sleet for Derby would also have been possible.

God, he was tired.

No … he felt old—

A throaty growl sounded from over on the left, but it wasn’t a sports car. It was an old beater of a truck coming up the service road.

Poor bastard, whoever it was. Staff wasn’t allowed to park anywhere near the house on a day like today. Whoever was behind the wheel was volunteering for a proverbial throat punch.

But he had troubles of his own to worry about. Putting his hand in
his pocket, he took out his car key; then he stepped off the flat stone and began to head over to where he had tucked his Jag in tight to the house.

He didn’t make it far.

Through the windshield of that old truck, he saw a very familiar face. “Lane?”

As the truck stopped by the rear entrance of the business center, he went across. “Lane?” he called out. “You downscaling before Chantal hits us with a response?”

The driver’s window went down and the guy made a quick slashing finger across his throat.

Samuel T. glanced around. There was nobody anywhere. Staff were inside or out working the tent and gardens. Guests wouldn’t have deigned to come back here where the scrubs might be. And it wasn’t like the birds in the trees were going to have an opinion about two humans chatting.

As he came up to the truck, he leaned in. “You really don’t need to do this for your divorce—”

He fell silent as he focused on the man sitting beside his newest client.

“Edward?” he croaked.

“How lovely to see you again, Samuel.” Except the man didn’t look over. His eyes remained fixed on the dashboard ahead of him. “You’re looking well, as usual.”

As the words were spoken, it was impossible not to take a survey of that face … that body.

Dear … Lord, the pants were bagging around thighs that were like toothpicks, and the loose jacket hung from shoulders that had all the breadth of a coat hanger.

Edward cleared his throat and reached down to pick a BBC cap off the floorboards. As he put it on his head and drew the bill down low to cover his face, Samuel T. was ashamed of his gawking.

“It’s good to see you, Edward,” he blurted.

“You didn’t,” Lane said quietly.

“I’m sorry?”

“You didn’t see him.” Lane’s eyes burned. “Or me. Do you understand, counselor?”

Samuel T. frowned. “What the hell’s going on?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Samuel T. glanced back and forth between the brothers. As a lawyer, he had been involved in a lot of gray areas, both in terms of avoiding them and getting into them with deliberation. He had also learned over time that some information was not worth knowing.

“Understood,” he said with an incline of the head.

“Thank you.”

Before he stepped away, he forced a smile on his face. “Congratulations on the new addition to your family, by the way.”

Lane recoiled. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’m quite sure you wouldn’t have chosen Richard Pford as a brother-in-law, but one must adjust when love is in the air.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Samuel T. rolled his eyes, thinking that was just like Gin. “You mean you don’t know? Your sister is engaged to Richard Pford. Have a good Derby, gentlemen. Perhaps I’ll see you both—”

But of course, not both of them.

“Ah … if either of you need me,” he amended, “you know exactly where to find me.”

Which would be anywhere their sister was not,
he thought as he walked off toward his Jag.