The Bourbon Kings #1 (11 page)

Most racing people operated in a stratified system where the breeders were separate from the yearling breakers, who were different from the track trainers. But he had enough money and time on his hands so that he not only bred, but ushered his horses through elementary school here on his farm, to middle school at a center he’d bought last year, to the booking blocks of stalls at Steeplehill Downs in Charlemont and Garland Downs in neighboring Arlington, Kentucky.

The money required for his breeding and racing operation was astronomical, and any return on investment was a hypothetical—which was why syndicates of investors were typically formed to spread the financial exposure and risk. He, on the other hand, didn’t do syndicates. Co-investors. Partners.

He hadn’t lost anything yet. In fact, he was almost making money. His operation, in the last year and a half, had produced remarkable results—all thanks to Nebekanzer, his stallion, who happened to be the biggest, meanest sonofabitch anyone had ever come across. That nasty bastard bred fast sons and daughters, though—something he had discovered when he’d moved here to the Red & Black’s caretaker’s cottage and bought the four-hooved spawn of the devil and three of Neb’s two-year progeny at auction. The following year? All three descendants had won more than two hundred grand apiece by April, and one of them had been second in the Derby, third in the Preakness, and first in the Belmont.

And that had been his farm off to the races, as they say. This year, he was slated to do even better. He had two horses in the Derby.

Both from Neb’s loins.

He couldn’t say that his heart was in the business, but it certainly was better than sitting around and ruminating on everything he had lost.

Just like all those racehorses, he had been bred, born, and trained for a given future: to take over the Bradford Bourbon Company. But like a thoroughbred who had broken his leg, that was no longer his future.

“Buenas noches, jefe.”

Edward nodded at one of his eleven stable hands. “
Hasta mañana
.”

He resumed his sweeping, ducking his head—

“Jefe, hay algo aquí.”

“Who?”

“No sé.”

Edward frowned and used the broom as a cane, limping down to the open bay. Outside, on the circular drive, a two-acre-long black limousine was rolling to a halt over in front of Barn A.

Moe Brown, the stable manager, walked out to the monstrosity, the man’s long strides eating up the distance. Moe was sixty, lanky as a fence rail, and smart as a mathematician. He also had “the eye”: That guy could pretty much tell a horse’s future from the moment the animal stood up on its hooves for the first time. It was spooky—and invaluable in the business.

And he was slowly but surely teaching his secrets to Edward.

Edward’s innate knack, on the other hand, was the breeding. He just seemed to know which bloodlines to cross.

As Moe stopped at the limo, a uniformed chauffeur got out and went around to the rear doors—and Edward shook his head when he saw what emerged.

The Pendergasts were sending in the heavy guns.

The forty-ish woman emerging from the vehicle’s backseat was thinner by three times than even Moe, dressed in pink Chanel, and had more hair than what was in Neb’s entire tail. Beauty-queen pretty, pampered as a Pomeranian, and with a will to give those Steel Magnolias a run for their money, Buggy Pendergast was used to getting her way.

For example, about five years ago she’d played her hand and gotten one of the scions of an old oil family to throw out his perfectly good first wife in favor of her. And ever since then she’d been dumping his money into thoroughbreds.

Edward had already told her no three times over the phone.

No syndicates. No co-investors. No partners.

He bred for himself and no one else.

The man who got out after Buggy was not her husband, and given the briefcase he was holding, one had to assume he was an accountant of
some kind. Certainly wasn’t a security guard. Too short, and those glasses were a testosterone drain if Edward had ever seen one.

Moe started jawing with them, and Edward could tell it was not going well. Then things went from bad to worse when that briefcase got summarily laid on the hood of the limousine and Buggy opened it with a flourish—like she was lifting up her skirt and expecting everyone to moan with approval.

Edward came out into the late sunshine with his broom-cane and his bad mood. As he approached, Buggy didn’t look over. And when he stopped behind Moe, she gave him nothing but a glare—as if she didn’t appreciate a stable hand playing witness to all this.

“—quarter of a million dollars,” she said, “and I’m leaving with my colt.”

Moe moved the piece of straw he was chewing on to the other side of his mouth. “Don’t think so.”

“I have the money.”

“Y’all need to leave the property—”

“Where is Edward Baldwine! I demand to speak with—”

“I’m right here,” Edward said in a low voice. “Moe, I’ll handle this.”

“And the Lord grants us small miracles,” the man muttered as he walked off.

As Buggy’s colored contacts went up and down Edward’s body, even her Botoxed face strained with the shock she clearly felt. “Edward … you look …”

“Smashing, I know.” He nodded at the money. “Close that ridiculous show up, get back in your vehicle and go on about your business. I told you over the phone, I do not sell my stock.”

Buggy cleared her throat. “I, ah, I heard what happened to you. I didn’t realize, however—”

“The plastic surgeons did a fine job with my face, don’t you think.”

“Ah … yes. Yes, they did.”

“But enough of catching up. You are leaving.”

Buggy pinned a smile on her face. “Now, Edward, how long have our families gone back?”

“Your husband’s family and mine have known each other for over two hundred years. I don’t know your kin and have no intention of making their acquaintance. What I am very sure of, however, is that you are not leaving here with rights to any foal. Now, g’on. Get going.”

As he turned away, she said, “There is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in that briefcase.”

“Is that supposed to impress me? My dear woman, I can find a quarter of a million in the cushions of my couch so I assure you, I am wholly unswayed by your show of liquidity. More to the point, I can’t be bought. Not for one dollar. Not for a billion.” He glanced over at the chauffeur. “Am I getting my shotgun. Or are you squeezing yourself back into that limo and having your driver hit the gas?”

“I am going to tell your father about this! This is disgraceful—”

“My father is dead to me. You’re more than welcome to discuss my business with him, but it will get you no further than this wasted trip out into the country. Enjoy your Derby weekend—elsewhere.”

Pushing into the broom handle, he started to shamble his way back to the barn. In his wake, the chorus of multiple car doors opening and closing and the limo’s tires squealing out on the asphalt suggested that the woman was on her cell phone, bitching to her twenty-years-older husband about the shameful way she’d just been treated.

Although considering gossip had her having been an exotic dancer in her twenties, he could guess she’d been exposed to rather a lot worse in her previous life.

Before he went back inside and resumed his sweeping, he looked over the vista of his farm: The hundreds of acres of rolling grassland that was cut into paddocks with dark brown five-rail fences. The three stables with their red and gray slate roofs and their black siding with red trim. The outbuildings for the equipment, and the state-of-the-art trailers, and the white farmhouse where he stayed, and the clinic and the exercise ring.

His mother owned all of it. Her great-grandfather had bought the land and started the equine enterprise, and then her grandfather and father had continued to invest in the business. Things had coasted after
her father died some twenty years ago—and Edward had certainly never considered getting involved.

As the eldest son, he’d been destined to step into the leadership role at the Bradford Bourbon Company—and actually, more than what legacy or primogeniture dictated, that had been where his heart was. He had been a distiller in his blood, as scrupulous with his products as a priest.

But then everything had changed.

Red & Black Stables had been the best, post-everything solution, a diversion that occupied his days until he could drink himself to sleep. And even better, it was something his father wasn’t involved in.

What little future he had was here with the bluegrass and the horses.

It was all he had.

“You enjoyed that, didn’t you,” Moe said from behind him.

“Not really.” He shifted his weight and began to sweep the aisle again. “But no one is getting a part of this farm, not even God Himself.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that.”

Edward glanced over his shoulder to remind the man what his face looked like. “You really think there’s anything I’m afraid of now?”

As Moe made the sign of the cross, Edward rolled his eyes … and went back to his work.

“—l
aying in bed and playing with my breasts.” Virginia Elizabeth Baldwine, “Gin” to her family, leaned back in her padded chair. “And then I’m putting my hand between my legs. What do you want me to do with it now that it’s there? Yes, I’m naked … what else would I be? Now, tell me what to do.”

She tapped her cigarette over the Baccarat crystal wineglass she’d emptied about ten minutes ago and crossed her legs under her silk robe. The tugging on her hair was beyond annoying, and she glared at her hairstylist in the mirror of her bathroom.

“Oh, yes,” she moaned into her cell phone. “I’m wet … so wet, only for you …”

She had to roll her eyes at the good girl reference, but that was what Conrad Stetson liked because he was an old-fashioned kind of man—he needed the illusion that the woman he was being unfaithful to his wife with was monogamous to him.

So silly.

But Gin did rather miss the early days of their relationship. It had been heady stuff to draw him slowly, inexorably away from his marriage.
She had reveled in how hard he’d fought the attraction to her, the shame he’d felt when they’d first kissed, the way he’d tried so valiantly not to call her, see her, seek her out. And for a week or two, she’d actually been interested in him, his attention a drug well worth bingeing on.

Once she’d fucked him a few times, though? Well, it was too much missionary, for one thing.

“Oh, yes, yes, yes … I’m coming, I’m coming …”

As she “orgasmed,” her stylist flushed from embarrassment but kept pinning her dark hair in place while a maid came in from the walk-in closet with a velvet tray in her hands. On it were two parures, one made of Burmese rubies by Cartier in the forties and the other a sapphire creation done in the late fifties by Van Cleef & Arpels. Both were her grandmother’s, one having been given to Big Virginia Elizabeth by her husband on the birth of Gin’s mother, and the other presented on her grandparents’ twentieth wedding anniversary.

She made a moaning noise; then hit mute and shook her head at the maid. “I want the Winston diamonds.”

“I believe Mrs. Baldwine is wearing them.”

As Gin pictured her sister-in-law, Chantal, with the hundred-plus carats of D flawless on, she smiled and spoke slowly, as if addressing a dolt. “Then take the diamonds my father bought my mother off that bitch’s neck and ears and bring them here to me.”

The maid blanched. “My … pleasure.”

Just before the woman stepped out of the bedroom, Gin called over, “Make sure you clean them first. I can’t stand that drugstore perfume she insists on wearing.”

“My pleasure.”

It was a bit of a stretch to refer to Flowerbomb by Viktor & Rolf as “drugstore,” but it certainly wasn’t Chanel. Honestly, though, what could you expect from a woman who hadn’t even made it through Sweet Briar?

Gin unmuted the phone. “Baby, I’ve got to go. I need to get ready. I’m so sorry you can’t be here, but you understand.”

Cue that Peanuts’ routine, where the adult’s voice turned muffled.

God, had he always had that thick of a Southern accent? Bradfords didn’t have any kind of dreadful garbled twang—only enough of a drawl to prove what side of the Mason-Dixon Line they were born and lived on and that they knew the difference between bourbon and whiskey.

The latter being beneath contempt.

“Bye, now,” she said, and hung up.

As she ended the call, she decided to end the relationship. Conrad had started talking about leaving his wife, and she didn’t want that. He had two children, for godsakes—what was he thinking. It was one thing to have some fun on the side, but children needed the illusion of two parents.

Plus, she’d already proven she had no business being a mother to anything. Not even a goldfish.

A half hour later, she was dressed in a Christian Dior gown made of U of C red and had that Harry Winston necklace laying heavy and cool on her collarbones. Her perfume was Coco by Chanel, a classic that she had decided she could carry off when she hit thirty. Her shoes were Loubou’s.