by J. R. Ward
What she didn't know was that she'd already ruined his life. She'd cost him Lizzie . . . and so much more. But the losses were going to stop there, goddamn it.
"Be careful, Chantal." He didn't break the eye contact. "I will do anything, in - and outside of the law, to protect what's mine."
"Is that a threat?"
"Just a reminder that I'm a Bradford, my darling. We take care of things."
Striding away from the woman, Lane knocked on his mother's door. Even though there was no answer, he stepped into the fragrant inner reaches of the suite and shut things behind him.
Closing his eyes, he needed a second to dose the fury before he faced off this dubious reunion. Just a second to pull it together. Just . . .
When he reopened his lids, he found yet another stage set that was utterly unchanged.
His mother's white and cream room was just as it had always been, huge windows overlooking the gardens adorned with ballgown drapes of blush-colored silk, Maxfield Parrish paintings glowing like jewels worn by the walls, fine French antiques too precious to sit on or use properly in the corners. But none of that was the focal point, as impressive as it all was.
The canopied bed across the way was the true showpiece. As resplendent and awesome as Bernini's Baldacchino di San Pietro, the massive steamboat-sized platform had carved columns that rose heavenward and a top that was festooned with waterfalls of that pale pink silk. And there she was, Virginia Elizabeth Bradford Baldwine, laying as still and well preserved as a saint, her long, thin body buried under the profusion of satin comforters and down pillows, her pale blond hair perfectly coiffed, her face made up even though she wasn't going anywhere and wasn't even conscious.
Beside her, on a marble-topped bombe chest, a dozen orange medicine vials with white tops and white labels were arranged in neat rows, like a platoon of soldiers. He had no clue what was in them and, likely, neither did she.
She was the Southern Sunny von Bulow--except his father had never tried to kill her. At least not physically.
The bastard had done other kinds of damage, though.
"Mother, dear," he said, striding over to her. When he got in range, he took her cool, dry hand with its paper-thin skin and blue veins into his palm. "Mother?"
"She's resting," came a voice.
A woman of about fifty, with red hair and a white and gray nurse's uniform, came in from the walk-in closet. She was a perfect fit for the decor, and he wouldn't have put it past his mother to have hired her on that basis alone.
"I'm Patty Sweringin," she said, offering her hand. "You must be young Mr. Baldwine."
"Lane." He shook what she put out. "How is Mother doing?"
"She's resting." The smile was as pressed and professional as her uniform. "She's had a busy morning. The hair colorist and stylist were here."
Ah, yes, HIPAA, he thought. Which meant she wasn't allowed to tell him about his own mother's condition. But that wasn't the nurse's fault. And if his mother was exhausted by getting a couple of foils crimped on her head and a blow-dry? How the hell did he think she was doing.
"When she wakes up, tell her I . . ." He glanced back over at his mother.
"Tell her what, Mr. Baldwine?"
He thought of Chantal.
"I'm going to be here for a few days," he said grimly. "I'll tell her myself."
"Very good, sir."
Back out in the hall, he closed the door and leaned against it. Staring across at an oil painting of some Bradford or another, he found that the past came back again like a bee sting.
Fast and painful.
*
"What are you doing here?"
Lizzie had spoken the words to him out in the garden, out in the darkness, out in a hot, humid summer night. Overhead, thunderclouds had shut out the moonlight,leaving the blooming flowers and specimen trees in the shadows.
He could remember everything about the way she had stood in front of him on the brick walkway, her hands on her hips, her stare meeting his with a directness he wasn't used to, her Easterly uniform as sexually alluring as any set of lingerie he had ever seen.
Lizzie King had caught his eye the first time he'd seen her on his family's estate. And with each return during semester breaks from his masters programs, he'd found himself looking for her on the grounds, seeking her out, trying to get in her path.
God, he loved the chase.
And the capture wasn't half bad, either.
Of course, he didn't have much experience past that--nor did he want it.
"Well?" she demanded. Like if he didn't get on topic quick, she was going to start tapping her foot--and her next move was going to be knocking his block off for wasting her time.
"I've come for you."
Wait, that came out wrong. He'd meant to say that he'd come to see her. Talk to her. Look at her up close.
But those four words were also the truth. He wanted to know what she tasted like, what she felt like underneath him, what--
She crossed her arms over her chest. "Look, I'm going to be honest with you."
Lane smiled a little. "I like honesty."
"I don't think you're going to feel that way when I'm done with you."
Okaaaaay, now he was getting hard--and funny, that wouldn't have bothered him with the kinds of women he usually toyed with. Standing in front of this particular female with an urge to rearrange himself in his pants, however, seemed kind of . . . tacky.
"I'm going to spare you a lot of wasted time here." She kept her voice low, like she didn't want to be overheard, but that didn't detract from the power of her message. "I am not, and never will be, interested in someone like you. You are nothing but an entitled bad boy who gets off causing chaos with the opposite sex. That stuff was boring when I was a fifteen-year-old, and considering that I'm closing in on thirty this year, I'm even less attracted to it. So do us both a favor--go to the country club, find one of those interchangeable blond women by the pool, and turn them into your twenty-minute StairMaster. You are not going to get that from me."
He blinked like an idiot.
And he supposed the fact that he was so shocked that anyone would call him on his behavior proved her point.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going home. I've been here working since seven a.m.--"
Snapping out his hand, he took hold of her arm as she turned away. "Wait."
"Excuse me?" She glanced down at the contact and back up into his eyes. "Unless you have something related to the flowers in this garden, you have nothing to say to me."
"You're not going to give me a chance to defend myself? You're just going to play judge and jury--"
"You are not serious--"
"Have you always been so prejudicial?"
She stepped out of his grip. "Better that than naive. Especially with a man like you."
"Don't believe everything you've seen in the papers--"
"Oh, please. I don't need to read about it--I've seen it firsthand. Two of them left yesterday morning out the back of the house. The night you came here, you brought a redhead home from a bar. And then they say when you went for your annual physical on Wednesday, you came back with a hickey on your neck--presumably from when the woman asked you to turn your head and cough?" She cut him off again, putting her palm out to his face. "And before you think I'm keeping this happy catalog of conquests because of some latent attraction to you, it's because the women on staff keep track of these things and won't stop talking about them."
"You want to give me a word in edgewise?" he countered. "Or are you good just keeping this conversation going on your own. Jesus, and you think I'm stuck-up."
"What?"
"You think I'm entitled? Well, you're putting me in the shade on that one, sweetheart."
"Excuse me?"
"You've decided you know everything about me just because a bunch of other people, who also don't know me, are talking about things they know nothing about. That's pretty damn arrogant."
"Which is not the sa
me as entitled."
"You really want to argue Websters's dictionary with me?"
Right, the fact that they were bickering should not have been a total flippin' turn-on, but holy hell it was. For every lob she tossed at him, he found himself looking at her body less and focusing on her eyes more--and that made her even sexier.
"Listen, can we just be done here?" she said. "I have to be back at the crack of dawn, and this conversation is not as important as the sleep I need to get."
This time when she turned away, he stopped her with his voice. "I saw you out by the pool yesterday."
She glared at him over her shoulder. "Yes, and I was pulling weeds. You got a problem with that?"
"You were staring at me. I saw you."
Touche, he thought as she blinked.
"I was in the pool,"he whispered as he took a step closer to her. "And you liked what you saw, didn't you. Even though you hate who you think I am, you like what you saw."
"You're delusional--"
"Honesty. You were the one to bring it up first." He leaned in, turning his head to the side as if he were going to kiss her. "So do you have the guts to be honest?"
Her hands fiddled with the collar of her Easterly polo. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Liar." He smiled a little. "Why do you think I stayed out there so long? It was because of you. I liked that you were watching my body."
"You're crazy."
God, her false denial was better than the last full blown orgasm he'd had.
"Am I?" He focused on her lips, and in his mind, he started kissing them, licking his way into her, pulling her up against him. "I don't think so. And I'd rather be a philandering snob than a coward."
That was how he left her.
He'd turned away on that brick path, and walked toward the house, leaving her behind.
But he'd known, with every step he took away from her, that she wasn't going to be able to let things rest like that.
Next time, she would come to him . . .
And sure enough, she did.
SEVEN
"I'm sorry, what was that?"
As Lizzie spoke, she stared at the flowers in the vase she was holding, and couldn't remember what she'd meant to do with them--oh, right, put them in a bucket until she got off work; after which she would wrap them in a damp paper towel and a Kroger's plastic bag, and take them home.
"I'm sorry, come again?" she said, glancing across the conservatory at Greta.
"I was speaking in English that time, too, you know."
"I'm just all up in my head."
"The tent people are demanding to be paid up front? Or they're going to take down everything they're putting up."
"What?" Lizzie put the bouquet down next to the empty silver bowls. "Is this a new policy for them?"
"Guess so."
"I'll go talk to Rosalinda--do you have the total?"
"Tvelve sousand, four hundred, fifty-nine, zeventy-two."
"Hold on, let me write that down." Lizzie grabbed a pen. "One more time?"
After she got the total scribbled into her palm, she glanced out to the garden. The tent people had just stretched the fabric panels out flat and were beginning to lay the poles down as some of them got to stitching the huge sections together with ropes.
Two hours more work for them. Maybe three.
"They're still going strong out there," she murmured.
"Not for long." Greta resumed cleaning the pink garden roses. "The rental office called me, and they're prepared to order them back into the truck."
"There's no reason to get hysterical about this," Lizzie muttered as she headed outside.
Rosalinda Freeland's office was in the kitchen wing, and she took the longer, outdoor route because she was pretty damned sick and tired of running into Lane.
She was about halfway across the terrace, passing by the French doors that led out of the dining room, when she looked over toward the business center.
The facility was located where the original stables used to be, and like the conservatory, it opened out to the gardens and the river. The architecture that had been added had been precisely matched to that of Easterly, and the total square footage was nearly the same as the mansion's. With over a dozen offices, a conference room the size of a college lecture hall, and its own catering kitchen and dining room, William Baldwine ran his wife's family's multi-national bourbon company out of the state-of-the-art compound.
You almost never saw anyone loitering around over there, but apparently something was going on because a group of people in suits was standing on the terrace outside of the main conference room, smoking and talking in a tight enclave.
Strange, she thought. Mr. Baldwine was a smoker, so it was unlikely those folks had been banished to the terrace just to get their nicotine fix.
And what do you know, she actually recognized the single non-smoking woman in the mix. It was Sutton Smythe, heir to the Sutton Distillery Corporation fortune. Lizzie had never met her personally, but there had been a lot of press about the fact that a female might, just might, in the next decade, head one of the largest liquor companies in the world.
Frankly, it looked like she was already the boss, with her dark hair coiffed and her no-nonsense, super-expensive, black pant suit. She was actually quite a striking woman, with bold features and a curvy body that could have taken her into bimbo territory if she'd been so inclined to play that card--which she obviously wasn't.
What was she doing here, though?
Talk about sleeping with the enemy.
Lizzie shook her head and went in through the rear kitchen door. Whatever was happening over there was not her problem. She was far, far, far down the totem pole, just looking to get a tent erected for her flower arrangements--
Wow.
Talk about a lotta chefs, she thought as she scooted in and out and around all the white-coated, toque-hatted men and women who were giving themselves scoliosis making filo-dough and stuffed-mushroom'y thingies.
On the far side of all of the Gordon Ramsay, there was a heavy, swinging door that opened into a plain corridor full of cleaning closets, laundries, and the maids' break room--as well as the butler's living quarters, the controller's office and the back staff stairwell.
Lizzie went to the door on the right that was marked PRIVATE and knocked once. Twice. Three times.
Given that Rosalinda was as efficient and punctual as an alarm clock, the controller clearly wasn't in. Maybe she'd gone to the bank--
"--shall check again in an hour," Mr. Harris said as he entered the hall at the far end with the head housekeeper. "Thank you, Mrs. Mollie."
"My pleasure, Mr. Harris," the older woman muttered.
Lizzie locked eyes with the butler as Mrs. Mollie pared off. "We have a problem."
He stopped in front of her. "Yes?"
"I need just over twelve grand for the tent company and Mrs. Freeland is not here. Can you cut checks?"
"They require twelve thousand dollars?" he said in his clipped accent. "Whyever for?"
"The tent rental. It's a new company policy I'm guessing. They've never done this before."
"This is Easterly. We have had an account with them since the turn of the century and they will defer. Allow me."
Pivoting on his spit-polish shoeshine, he headed for his quarters--no doubt to call the rental company's owner personally.
If he could pull this off and Lizzie could keep her tents and tables? His PITA attitude might well be worth the trouble.
Besides, if worst came to worst, Greta could write the check.
One thing was certain, Lizzie was not going to ask Lane for it and they needed that tent: In less than forty-eight hours, the world was descending on the property, and nothing pissed off the Bradfords more than something, anything out of place.
As she waited for the butler to reemerge, all triumphant in his penguin suit, she leaned back against the smooth, cool plaster wall and found herself thinking about the dumbe
st decision she had ever made . . .
*
She should have let the whole thing rest.
After the dreaded Lane Baldwine had sought her out in the dark in the garden, she should have let the argument between them go. Why on earth did she care how wrong he was about her? How insane, egocentric, and ridiculous that silver-spooned fool was? She didn't owe him any kind of world-view realignment--besides, that wasn't going to happen without a sledgehammer.
Not that she wouldn't enjoy an attempt on those terms.
The problem was, however, that among her own deficiencies was the paralytic need not to be misinterpreted by Channing Tatum's doppelganger.
So she had to set him straight. And in fact, she talked to him all the way home that night. As well as all the way back to Easterly the following morning. And then throughout the next week.
Eventually, she became convinced he was avoiding her: For the first time since he'd come home on his break from graduate school, she didn't see him for seven days straight. The good news, if you could look at it that way, was that at least there weren't any females coming around the house and leaving at odd hours in porn combinations. The bad news was that she was now overprepared with all her speeches, and in danger of revealing exactly how much time she'd wasted yelling at him in her head.
And Lane was definitely still at Easterly. His Porsche--like he would drive anything else--was still around by the garages, and whenever she was forced to take a bouquet up to his room, she could smell his cologne in the air and see his wallet on the bureau with his gold cuff links.
He was playing her--and as much as she hated to admit it, the act was working. She was getting more frustrated and more determined to find him, instead of less so.
He was a master at women, all right.
The bastard.
With yet another fresh bouquet in hand, she headed up the back stairs for his room. She didn't expect him to be in there, but somehow, the idea of walking into his space and throwing out a couple of choice sound bites was going to offer her a release. When she knocked on his door, it was a hard demand, and after a moment, she pushed her way in--
Lane was there.
Sitting on the edge of his bed. Head in his hands, body bowed.
He did not look to the door.
Didn't seem to know anyone had come in at all.
Lizzie cleared her throat once. Twice. "Excuse me, I'm here to switch out your flowers."
He jumped and twisted around toward her. Red-rimmed eyes seemed to struggle to focus, and when he spoke up, his voice was rough. "Sorry? What?"