Showdown

by Tilly Bagshawe

  For the first time, Bobby had a vision of how hard it must have been for his mother, bringing him up alone in those godawful hippie communes. She’d made her mistakes, sure, but she was only a kid herself. Hank should have done better by her. He should have done better by all of them.

  All this time, he’d been beating himself up about Highwood, scared of letting his father down, of not living up to the legend. But now it was brought home to him, in the cruelest, most horrible way, that that was all Hank’s so-called heroism was: a legend. A story that people needed to believe about a distant, noble cowboy, fighting the good fight to keep the old ways alive.

  But the truth was very different. Hank wasn’t a giant among men. He was weak and selfish and thoughtless. If anyone was the heroic cowboy, it was Wyatt. But, of course, he didn’t have the great Cameron name.

  “Summer has no idea?” he whispered, breaking the long silence between them. “She never guessed?”

  Diana shook her head. “Why should she?”

  Pushing off the wall, he paced a few feet into the darkness, thinking.

  “You do promise not to say anything, Bobby?” said Diana anxiously.

  “I have to say something,” he said. “I mean, not about Dad. But she’s gonna wonder why I’m not interested anymore. After . . . you know.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Diana. “You said yourself it was only a kiss. Just tell her you see her as a sister and it wouldn’t work.”

  “I tried that before.”

  “Well, try it again.” Diana was firm. “Besides, it’s true, isn’t it? It’s not Summer you’re in love with.”

  “What do you mean?” said Bobby. “I’m single, Mom. I’m not in love with anyone.”

  “Whatever you say, sweetheart,” said Diana, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Whatever you say.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Rachel sat with her feet curled up beneath her on the beige suede sofa, flicking contentedly through a fat pile of press clippings about herself. It was April, her fourth month in America and her second riding for Randy Kravitz—probably the most successful racehorse owner in the U.S. after Jimmy Price, although, unlike his great rival, Randy was purely a Thoroughbred man. So far the gamble to move to the States seemed to be paying off in spades.

  Relaxing in her palatial rented apartment in Palm Beach, only a few minutes’ drive from Kravitz’s training facility, she was currently sitting with Des, her agent, trying to figure out which of the many magazine spreads she’d been offered to go for next.

  “What about W?” she asked wistfully. “I’ve always loved their style. And they have the best photographers, much more edgy than those boring Testino, Vanity Fair shots with everyone in ball gowns.”

  “Oi’ve told you,” said Des with a sigh. “It’s no good pickin’ a publication out o’ the blue, just ’cos you like ’em. We’ve got to target your audience, ’aven’t we?”

  “Which is?” Rachel asked frostily.

  “Sports mags, gossip rags, and the papers. Back home, we’d go for the Sundays.” He pronounced the word “Sun-dees,” which set Rachel’s teeth on edge. “Here, it’s a bit tougher to pitch. But basically racing fans, horny blokes, and girls who are interested in the ’ole soap opera, you-versus-Milly fing.”

  Rachel yawned. Des was annoying at the best of times but never more so than when he was right. Much as she might like to play the fashion maven, it was the story of her feud with Milly that had really captured the popular imagination and kick-started her debut season in American racing.

  With Milly’s T-Mobile ads now everywhere—billboards, TV, even in movie theaters (Rachel had had to sit through one of the ghastly things while waiting to watch Bridget Jones 2 the other day), Milly was clearly the bigger star and much more widely known in America than she was. But Rachel had no intention of playing Ashlee Simpson to her Jessica. At least not for long.

  Her first coup was to land Kravitz as a backer. Soon after that, as both her looks and talent began to get her noticed by the racing press, she accidentally let slip a few rumors to diarists and gossip columnists about her and Milly’s lifelong feud, spicing it up with juicy tidbits about how quarter horse racing’s darling was no longer speaking to her family after her Playboy pictures and how she, Rachel, was in a long-term relationship with Milly’s brother. Who also happened to be handily photogenic.

  As a story it had everything—two beautiful, foreign girls, brunette versus blond, skinny versus curvy, both talented, both ambitious, both trying to make it in America, riding for famous rival owners. The family drama angle only added to the Dynasty-esque fabulousness of it all. It was like Paris versus Nicole, but with sporting talent thrown in. What wasn’t to love?

  At first, much to Rachel’s disappointment, Milly had risen above the fray, boringly refusing to comment on her personal life. But after Rachel implied in Elle that her Playboy spread had been a betrayal of Cecil’s memory, the gloves were well and truly off. Milly responded with a long interview in Vanity Fair, spelling out how Rachel had “stolen” her family home and strongly hinting that she was guilty of abusing her horses. She was none too complimentary about Jasper either, or her mother.

  Suffice it to say, it was a long time since stuffy old horse racing had been quite this interesting.

  “Did you call your trustees back?” asked Des, putting aside the clippings for a moment.

  “God, you sound like my bloody father,” moaned Rachel. “Yes, I did, okay? I left another message.”

  After six straight months of losses, she’d finally bitten the bullet and put Newells back on the market. The three-million-pound price tag was a bit optimistic. But even if she cut her losses and took two point five, it’d be worth it just to have the millstone off her neck.

  She hadn’t mentioned anything to Jasper yet. Though still nominally together—it suited her purposes to keep him around as an extra in the feud story—he was stuck in England racing for Ali and she hadn’t actually seen him for over a month. When they spoke on the phone, he was increasingly out of it. His coke habit was now completely out of control. Chances were he wouldn’t give two shits about Newells and what she did with it, but the drugs made him horribly unpredictable, and she preferred not to raise the issue with him till it was a fait accompli.

  “Well, let me speak to ’em when they call back, will you?” said Des. “It’s about time they pulled their bloody finger out and found you a buyer. Then you can focus on really important stuff, like the Belmont.”

  Rachel sat up excitedly. “Has Randy said anything to you? Has he confirmed it?” she asked eagerly. The prospect of riding in the most important race in America in her very first season was tantalizingly close. Kravitz had hinted a couple of times that he was considering her for the June fixture but had yet to make a firm offer. If he did, it would be a feather in her cap to outshine anything that Milly had done to date. There was no quarter horse race even remotely as prestigious as the Belmont.

  “Not yet,” said Des, leisurely cracking his knuckles and dazzling her with a fistful of chunky gold and diamond rings as he did so. He’d always had a worrying penchant for jewelry, but since coming to America he seemed to have pimped up his style still further. “But don’t worry. He will. I’m on the case.”

  Rachel didn’t worry. He might be an annoying, slimy little weasel of a man, but Des had more than proved his worth as an agent.

  If he said he’d get her in the Belmont, he would.

  He hadn’t let her down yet.

  Back in Bel Air, Todd leaned out of the side of the bed and reached down for the little bag of coke he had hidden there, along with a fat rubber dildo and a tube of strawberry flavored K-Y.

  “Stay right there,” he said.

  The girl, naked and on all fours on top of his rumpled sheets, did as she was told. Moments later he reemerged from under the bed with the drugs in one hand and the K-Y in the other.

  “Now arch your back a little more. Perfect.”

  While she r
epositioned herself, he sprinkled a line of white powder across the raised arc of her ass, then reached around to grab her tits as he snorted it off her sweat-dampened skin. Man, did that feel good.

  Wiping his nose with the back of his hand, he licked up the remnants greedily before slipping his cock back inside her, picking up where he’d left off a few moments earlier.

  The girl’s name was Natasha Oakley. Known to the tabloids as an up-and-coming Hollywood starlet and teen horror heroine, she was also known to all the wealthy male players in LA as a total coke whore. Later, Todd would have to share some of his drugs with her—that was the deal—but it was a small price to pay for two hours with her incredible, tight, twenty-one-year-old body. Last time, he’d made her snort her share of the precious white powder off his balls. For a dominance freak like Todd, it didn’t come much hornier than that.

  Life, he reflected as he pounded away at Natasha, was pretty fucking good right now. Business was the best it had ever been. After almost a year of careful wooing, he’d finally gotten Jimmy Price to invest in a huge commercial property deal in Florida which, if all went according to plan, could catapult him into a whole new league of personal wealth. On top of that, he’d sold his development in Buellton a month ago for a vast profit. And then, of course, there was Highwood.

  After months of legal wrangling, the Santa Barbara District Court judge had granted Comarco an interim order last week, allowing them twenty-one days of exploratory searches on the property. It was a huge blow for Bobby’s case, which must in any case be costing him a small fortune. With any luck, the legal costs alone would soon force the boy out of the game. Then, at last, the advantageous, personal deal Todd had struck with the oil company would start bearing fruit.

  The most miraculous thing was that Milly had not yet gotten wind of his little coup vis-à-vis the cowboy, although he was going to have to tell her soon, perhaps even tonight. Though Milly hadn’t spoken to him in a year now, Todd suspected that deep down she still had a soft spot for him. She’d probably be tiresomely outraged on his behalf when he filled her in on events. It was an argument he wasn’t looking forward to, particularly as he was already starting to feel a bit bored by the relationship.

  He’d stayed with Milly so far because the sex was still good, her lifestyle gave him plenty of opportunity to play around on the side, and her growing fame had opened doors for him, as her boyfriend, that no amount of money could open. Though he would never admit it, secretly Todd loved being invited to celebrity parties and award ceremonies. He particularly enjoyed being “papped” when leaving restaurants, even if it was Milly who made the pictures valuable rather than him.

  On the other hand, ever since Demon died she’d become a terrible wet blanket. More emotional and needy than ever, she seemed to cry over nothing, and there was no doubt that her racing form had been steadily declining since Christmas. Even worse, ever since Rachel Delaney had turned up and started making waves in the press, the stress had caused her to lose a frightening amount of weight. He was all for skinny girls, but these days Milly’s breasts were practically concave. No one wanted to fuck a bag of jutting bones.

  Feeling his orgasm start to build, he quickly glanced at the Franck Muller watch lying faceup on the bedside table. Fuck. Six thirty. He’d better wrap this up and get Natasha out of here. He was meeting Milly for a romantic dinner at the Ivy at eight and would need a good long shower before then, not to mention changing the sheets.

  Grabbing hold of Natasha’s hair, he rammed himself even deeper into her, watching her drug-glazed eyes in the bedroom mirror as he came.

  “Here,” he said, throwing a fresh bag of coke down on the bed as he withdrew and walked straight into the bathroom, without even a backward glance. “Take it and get out. I’m in a rush.”

  “Come on!” yelled Milly, leaning hard on the horn of her vintage T-Bird convertible. She’d passed her test only a month ago, but she was already a classic, bad-tempered LA commuter. “Move!”

  She was late, she’d had an awful, awful day, and now to top it all off, an accident on the 5 had turned the freeway into a parking lot.

  This morning she’d had her third disappointing result of the month at a stakes race, coming fifth in a field she really ought to have dominated. The week before had been the first round of qualifiers for the All American. She’d gotten through, but with a margin so embarrassingly narrow she’d been given a bollocking by both Jimmy and her T-Mobile sponsors and told to pull her socks up or else. Somehow she doubted they’d consider today’s performance “pulling her socks up.”

  At first she’d put her plummeting results down to Cally, officially California Boy, the new horse Jimmy had had her riding since Demon died. They just didn’t seem to have clicked as a team. But as an excuse, she was aware, it was already wearing thin. Other jockeys had gotten excellent times out of him this season at out-of-state courses like Remington Park and Prairie Meadows. It was more likely that other things—all the stress with Rachel, and her ever-growing insecurity about Todd, for example—were affecting her form.

  She wished she weren’t still so obsessed with Todd. But, somehow, the more she saw him flirting and the more she feared losing him, the more desperate she felt to hold on to him. Since she’d grown apart from Amy, he was also now the only person she had to talk to, although she could tell that her moaning about Rachel bored him, and she tried not to do it too much.

  Then, as if today’s disaster weren’t bad enough, she’d read in her new copy of the English Racing Post that Rachel had put Newells up for sale. Having to read about it in the paper was awful but not half as awful as the price tag. Three million pounds! Was it really worth that much? She’d had no idea. Suddenly her dream of earning enough to buy the place back looked more ridiculously distant than ever.

  Yes, she was earning good money—although for how much longer remained an issue, especially if her times did not improve. But she realized now she hadn’t saved nearly enough. Todd was always encouraging her to spend. The car had been his idea, as had three quarters of her wardrobe, but she was the one who paid for them. His idea of “taking her shopping” was to hit the most expensive boutiques on Robertson, pick out far more dresses than she either wanted or needed, then sting her for the bill. But she was so desperate to please him and to hold his interest in the face of so much female competition, she found herself going along with it.

  Finally, almost forty minutes late, she pulled up outside the restaurant. She was so sweaty she had had to unstick her white trousers from the backs of her legs before handing the key to the valet and scrabbling in her purse for some Tylenol to relieve her throbbing headache.

  “At last,” said Todd, as she fought her way to the table through crowds of waiting diners, two of whom stopped her for autographs. “What the hell happened?”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said, grabbing his hand and covering it in conciliatory kisses as she sat down. She saw that he’d already finished his appetizer and had a good crack at the bread basket, crumbs from which now littered the pretty red-and-white gingham tablecloth. “A truck turned over on the freeway and it took forever. I’d have called but there wasn’t any cell reception.”

  “Hmmm,” said Todd, pouring the rest of his beer from the bottle into his glass. He was pissed—thanks to her lateness he’d had to miss out on an extra hour’s sex with Natasha—but on the other hand it suited him to have her on the back foot this evening. Hopefully it would help to tone down her reaction to the Highwood news.

  Dipping the last morsel of bread into a saucer of olive oil, he changed the subject.

  “How was the race?”

  “Bad,” said Milly, pouring herself a glass of water and gulping it down along with a third Tylenol. She looked thinner and more drawn than ever. “We came fifth. Jimmy doesn’t know yet, but he’ll hit the roof when he finds out. And guess what else I found out today?”

  “I don’t like guessing games,” said Todd, making no attempt not to stare as a s
ix-foot, miniskirted redhead shimmied past their table and quite blatantly winked at him. “Tell me or don’t tell me.”

  “Newells is on the market,” said Milly despondently. She knew he wasn’t interested, but she had to tell someone. “For three mill, if you can believe that. After all that guff Rachel fed Mummy about being the best person to take over Dad’s legacy, she’s run the stud into the ground and now she’s bloody selling the place.”

  “I can’t keep up,” said Todd, waving to a waiter to come and take their order. “I thought you wanted her out of Newells.”

  “I do,” said Milly. “But not like this. I mean, what’s going to happen to the rest of the horses? Maybe the new owner will close the stud altogether? Turn the stables into holiday cottages or something awful. . . .” Her face clouded over as the limitless possibilities, all of them bad, loomed into mental view.

  “Well,” said Todd, deciding to take advantage of her evident distraction to break the bad news. “I’ve had a good day, as it happens, businesswise. I’ve been talking to a Texas company—Comarco, you’ve probably heard of them—about a profit share in Highwood’s oil rights. We’ve been having a few legal problems, but we’ve just heard we will be allowed to begin exploration this month. So that’s good news.”

  It took a moment for the import of what he was saying to sink in.

  “You mean . . .” she asked slowly, “you’re going to dig the ranch up for oil?”

  “That’s right,” said Todd, sipping his beer unconcerned. “It’s about time someone did.”

  “But you can’t,” said Milly, aghast.

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . .” She shook her head, as if trying to loosen the right words from her vocabulary. “Because you can’t. What about Bobby? That land has been in his family for six generations. He’d rather die than—”

  “Please.” Todd held up his hand to interrupt her. “Spare me the Cameron family speech. I’m sick of it. I took Highwood for the same reasons you British once took India. Because I was tired of seeing her potential wasted. And because I could. I don’t owe Bobby Cameron anything. Anyway, whose side are you on? His or mine?”