“Hey!” she exclaimed before she could stop herself, pointing up at the television set.
“What?” Bree replied, surprise mingling with alarm on her face at Lulu’s tone. “What’s wrong?” She turned to look at the TV, too, but by then the image had switched over to one of the news anchors, so she turned to look at Lulu again, her expression now puzzled.
“That guy,” Lulu said, pointing more adamantly at the TV screen.
“Who? Scott Reynolds? What about him? Besides the fact that his hair, as always, looks fabulous?”
“No, not him. The other guy that was up there a second ago.”
“Sorry, Lu. Missed him. Who was it?”
Lulu shook her head slowly, as if that might negate what she’d just seen. Impossible, she thought. There was no way she could have seen the guy from the realty office Friday afternoon on the local news. He’d just made such a big impression on her subconscious that she was seeing him in places he couldn’t possibly be. After all, hadn’t he crept into her thoughts more than once over the weekend? And not just because she’d been reflecting on what a big jerk he was, either. In fact, that hadn’t been one of her reflections about him at all, since most of her reflections about him had had him dressed in a Speedo and passing a piña colada to her from the neighboring beach towel. And the rest of her reflections about him had sort of been lacking the Speedo altogether.
But she wasn’t concerned about the errancy…errantness…errantularity…waywardness of her thoughts tonight. She wasn’t. Really. Honest. She wasn’t. Thinking about the guy from the realty office in a Speedo just meant she’d gone way too long without a beach vacation, that was all. And “beach vacation” wasn’t any kind of metaphor for anything sexual in nature. It wasn’t. Really. Honest. It wasn’t.
Um, where was she?
Oh, right. The man at the realty place in a Speedo. No! The man at the realty place on TV. Which he wasn’t. Was he?
But no sooner did that question erupt in her head again than his face did indeed flash on the screen. She knew it was him, because there wasn’t a man alive who had a smile that oozed sex and charm and made women’s thoughts go all errantular the way his did.
“That guy,” Lulu said again, wagging her finger at the TV once more. Before Bree had a chance to respond, Lulu grabbed Doug the bartender by the sleeve and said, “Turn up the TV, quick.”
Doug arched an elegant dark brow at her, doing his best to ooze the kind of sex appeal that Realty Office Guy came by naturally…and coming in way under par. In fact, Doug’s rating on the sexy odometer hovered somewhere between Dwight Schrute and Larry the Cable Guy. Except he didn’t dress as well as either of them.
“Say please,” he purred to Lulu like a rusty jackhammer.
Instead, Lulu rolled her eyes and reached across the bar for the remote control herself, pointing it at the TV, and pushing the volume button. Hard. Fortunately, the band was taking a break, but there were still a few disgruntled grumbles from other bar patrons when the man on the screen’s voice usurped the canned music. Without hesitation, Lulu shushed all of them with a wave of her free hand and a hasty, “C’mon—it’s only for a second.”
The minute she heard the man’s voice, though, she knew without question it was him—not that she comprehended a word of what he said, because her thoughts were zinging in a million different directions by then. And not that she’d even needed to hear his voice to cement his identity to begin with. Or even the reminder of the curious green hue of his eyes. All she’d needed to confirm her suspicions was the zinginess of her thoughts and the warmth spreading throughout her midsection. That warmth turned to an explosion of embarrassment, however, when she saw letters scroll beneath his name, letters that her muzzy brain was just coherent enough to understand spelled out: COLE EARLY, TRAINER OF DERBY ENTRY SILK PURSE.
Then the remote control slipped from her numb fingers, and she muttered, “Oh. Hell.”
“What?” Bree said again, her gaze ricocheting from Lulu’s face to the TV screen.
Lulu held up a finger in the internationally recognized body language for “Hang on a sec.” Although Bree clearly wanted to ask more, she closed her mouth and, along with Lulu, watched and listened to the man on TV.
“Of course I’m confident,” he was saying in response to whatever question he’d been asked, sounding vaguely insulted by whatever it had been. “Silk Purse is not only going to win the Kentucky Derby, she’s going to win the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, too. That filly’s taking home the Triple Crown, or my name isn’t Cole Early.”
Well, so much for that last futile hope that WAVE had scrolled the wrong letters under the man’s name. Or the more likely hope that Lulu was too addlebrained to have read them correctly. Well, okay, so the addlebrained part wasn’t in question, since she was clearly that, and had been since running into Cole Early, Trainer of Derby Entry Silk Purse.
The camera cut back to the interviewer, a young perky blonde Lulu recognized as a newly minted correspondent for the station, since the newscast was the one she watched nightly. For some reason, though, tonight the woman looked even younger, perkier, and blonder than usual. And although Lulu was by no means an expert on the subject, the correspondent also looked vaguely orgasmic at the moment. Then again, Lulu remembered well that shimmying-out-of-your-underwear effect that Realty Office Guy—no, Cole Early, she corrected herself—had on a woman.
“There you have it, Scott and Dawne,” she cooed into the camera, licking her lips as if trying to savor some leftover bit of cotton candy. Or, more likely, Lulu thought, she was picturing Cole Early in a Speedo, too. “The first trainer to officially arrive in Louisville for the Derby, even though his horse was the last entry for the race.” Something must have caught her eye over the camera operator’s shoulder, because she smiled and said, “Ronnie, can you get a shot of that?” after which the camera swung wildly in a one-eighty to reveal Cole Early standing at what looked like a very crowded bar, surrounded by young women thrusting pieces of paper at him.
Then the correspondent’s voiceover said, “And just like he is when he’s at home in southern California, he’s already surrounded by fans. All of whom, not too surprisingly, are female.” The camera swung back to her again, but instead of looking into it, the way any self-respecting, self-absorbed TV personality should, she was still gazing over the camera operator’s shoulder at Cole Early. She identified herself for the viewers, said she was reporting from Fourth Street Live, and, almost as an afterthought, concluded, “Back to you, Scott and Dawne.” She was already tossing someone her microphone and walking away before the camera shot cut back to the studio.
Then the news anchor was back on the screen, smiling his news anchor smile, which was pleasant, sunny, and safe, and nothing at all like Cole Early’s.
And Lulu repeated, “Oh. Hell.”
She turned to Bree, who was looking at her with no small amount of concern.
“Lu?” her friend said in a voice Lulu remembered well from their childhood. It was the one Bree had always used in Brownies or art class when they were doing a craft and Lulu glued something to her forehead without realizing it. She hadn’t heard her friend use it since the pufferfish girl incident. “What’s wrong?” Bree asked. “Why do I get the feeling you’re about to tell me something that’s going to make me say, ‘Oh, Lulu, what have you done?’ Again.”
Pointing at the television again, Lulu told her friend, “I met him the other day.”
“Scott Reynolds?” Bree asked, brightening. “Did his hair look as fabulous in person as it does on TV?”
Lulu shook her head. “No, not him. Cole Early. The guy they just interviewed.”
Bree’s dark eyebrows arched so high, they disappeared under her bangs. “You met Cole Early? Are you serious? Why didn’t you tell me? You know the entire goal of my life is to be the kept woman of a guy like that. If you’ve met him, it puts me within one degree of separation.”
It wasn’t hyperbole on Bree’s pa
rt. Her life’s goal really was to be the kept woman of some rich guy. Ever since kindergarten, where she and Lulu first met, she’d said she was going to grow up to marry one of the richest men in the world. By sixth grade, she had begun doing research and making graphs. By high school, she’d narrowed it down to where her ambition in the senior yearbook said: “To become Mrs. Bill Gates. Or Sra. Carlos Salinas. Or Sig.ra Silvio Berlusconi. Or Fr. Ingvar Kamprad. Or Princess Sabrina bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud.” Bree had always been an equal opportunity gold digger.
With the harsh reality that set in with college, however—the realization that there were very few billionaires walking down the streets of Louisville on any given day—Bree had become less adamant about the Forbes and People magazine lists, not to mention necessarily wanting to marry the guys. These days, all Bree wanted—and Lulu did mean all she wanted—was to find a guy who raked in at least a high seven figures a year and drove (choose as many as applied) a Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche, Lamborghini, Mercedes, Jaguar, or at least a really nice Lexus. During Derby time in Louisville when most people were trying to decide which horses had the most potential to win the race, Bree was trying to decide which out-of-towners had the most potential to array her in Prada.
It wasn’t because she was shallow that she’d developed such an ambition at such an early age, however. It was because she never knew her father and grew up watching her mother struggle for meager amounts of money, security, and self-confidence. Although Lulu didn’t necessarily agree with her friend’s certainty that money could not only buy happiness, but also security and some righteous self-esteem, she didn’t begrudge Bree her quest. Lulu’s own home life growing up hadn’t been the most stable in the world, and Bree had expenses these days that Lulu sure wouldn’t want to shoulder.
But neither did she have any desire to put her happiness and her future in someone else’s hands. Bree, however, couldn’t wait to unburden her burden onto someone else. Preferably someone with open table reservations at Spago and an account at Tiffany’s.
Lulu met her friend’s accusatory gaze sheepishly. “I didn’t tell you I met Cole Early because I didn’t know the guy I met was Cole Early. I thought he was just some jerk guy.”
Now Bree looked at Lulu as if she wanted to smack her forehead. Hard. And not Bree’s forehead, either. No, Bree looked like she wanted to smack Lulu’s forehead. Hard. “Okay, number one,” she began, “how could you not know Cole Early when he’s been in the paper like every day for the past two weeks?”
“Oh, the sports section,” Lulu said. “Who reads the sports section?”
Bree gaped at her. “In April? In Louisville? Oh, I don’t know, Lulu. Maybe everybody? ’Cause how else are you going to know which horse to pick for the Derby?”
Lulu shrugged. “I usually just pick the jockey silks I like best.”
Bree closed her eyes, and judging by the almost imperceptible movement of her lips, Lulu was pretty sure she was counting slowly to ten.
“Or sometimes,” she added, “if the horse has a name I like, I go for that.”
Make that twenty Bree was counting to.
Finally, she opened her eyes. But she continued as if the break in conversation had never happened, “And number two, even if you didn’t know Cole Early, how could you possibly mistake that…that paragon of perfection, that ideal of impressiveness, that gem of juiciness, that nonpareil of numminess, that—”
“Bree?”
“What?”
“You’re starting to drool.”
Without missing a beat, Bree swiped the back of her hand across her lips, lifted her beer to enjoy a healthy swig, then concluded, “How could you mistake that…that hard copy of hunka hunka burnin’ love…”
“Oh, now, you’re reaching for that one.”
“…that masterpiece of manhood and monument for moolah…How could you mistake that for some jerk guy?”
Lulu fidgeted on her seat a little. Bree did sort of have a point. “Well, he acted like kind of a jerk guy when I talked to him.”
“You talked to him?” Bree squealed.
“And he did knock me down,” Lulu told her. “And he barely apologized when he helped me back up.”
“You touched him?”
“He knocked me down!”
“You touched him?”
“Bree!”
Bree expelled a sound that was a mix of impatience and intrigue. And then she said, “Oh, Lulu. What have you done?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Lulu protested. “Except maybe, you know, talk to him like I thought he was, um, an idiot.”
The sound Bree expelled then wasn’t a mix of anything. It was totally, crystal clear in its meaning. That meaning being, Oh, dammit. But all she said was, “Tell me what happened.”
Lulu replayed the incident at Eddie’s office for her friend as quickly as possible, leaving out the panties-shimmying part and focusing instead on Cole Early’s obnoxious arrogance. But somehow, through the telling, Cole Early’s obnoxious arrogance came out sounding really suave and charming. She had no idea how that happened. Lost in translation and all that. Anyway, Lulu concluded the story with, “Probably, he won’t have to watch the race from the infield after all. Probably, he’ll be standing in Millionaire’s Row.” She shrugged a little and did her best to smile. “My bad.”
Bree shook her head slowly. “This close,” she said, holding up her thumb and index finger about two nano-millimeters apart. “I was this close to finally meeting my meal ticket. I could have been on Millionaire’s Row right beside Cole Early, watching the race with him.”
Not that Bree would have been watching the race, Lulu knew. Or even Cole Early, for that matter. No, Bree would have been too busy waving down the vendor selling those thousand-dollar mint juleps with the ice imported from Antarctica and the sugar flown in from Aruba. And flaunting her Derby hat by Gabriel Amar for Frank Olive, since she did have a soft spot for the designer who donated the proceeds of his hat sales to local charities.
Lulu patted her friend’s shoulder with almost genuine sympathy. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be Pandarus to your Cressida and Cole Early’s Troilus. But, hey, look how that turned out. I mean, Troilus and Cressida lived, but they didn’t get catharsis. What’s up with that?”
Bree brightened, but Lulu doubted it was because she was up for a rousing discussion of the Bard. “Wait a minute,” she said. “If you ran into Cole Early at Eddie’s office, then he must be renting a house from Eddie, right? Eddie can tell me where he’s staying.”
“Well, except for that pesky confidentiality of clients thing that Eddie embraces,” Lulu reminded her. “He won’t even tell me for sure who’s renting my house.”
Bree waved a breezy hand. “A small matter. Eddie will divulge anything for the right price.”
“Which you can’t afford.”
“I’ll figure something out. Maybe I can blackmail him.”
“Gee, Bree, I’m thinkin’ that a man who dances in public dressed as Liza Minnelli probably doesn’t have a lot of dirty little secrets he fears someone might expose.”
Bree looked unconcerned. In fact, Bree looked like she was making plans. Plans that might even include Cole Early in a Speedo. She grinned slyly as she said, “That reporter on TV just now said she was reporting from Fourth Street Live, right?”
Lulu nodded, not sure she liked the look on Bree’s face.
“Could you tell which bar they were in?”
Lulu shook her head. She’d been to Fourth Street Live exactly two times. And both times, she’d been visiting the bookstore, not one of the numerous bars the entertainment complex boasted.
Bree deflated some. “Me, neither.” Then she brightened again. “But how many bars could there be at Fourth Street Live?”
Lulu shrugged. “Just a shot in the dark, but I’d say about twelve hundred.”
Bree waved a negligent hand. “No way. There couldn’t be more than ten or fifteen.”
Which was about ten or
fifteen more than Lulu wanted to visit, if she was reading Bree’s expression right—and she was reasonably sure she was.
Bree eyed the last few swallows of her beer, as if trying to decide whether or not it was worth spending the extra couple of minutes necessary to finish it. Then she pushed the glass away and stood.
“C’mon, Lulu,” she said as she grabbed her purse from the barstool beside her. “We’re going downtown. And when we find your good buddy Cole Early, you’re going to introduce us.”
Interfering with her friend’s life quest wouldn’t cost Lulu her friendship with Bree, she knew. But it might cost her a limb. So Lulu swept up her own purse and followed Bree to the exit. She told herself to tell Bree she was going back up to the apartment, that her friend was on her own when it came to hunting down Cole Early, because tycoon trapping expeditions weren’t Lulu’s thing at all. But Bree had a bad habit of biting off more than she could chew when it came to achieving her life’s ambition—never mind the fact that Cole Early was an infinitely tastier morsel than some of the other “bites” Bree had hooked up with for brief spells in the past. Someone had to keep an eye on her and keep her out of trouble.
Which was the only reason Lulu was going along with her now. It had nothing to do with the memory of Cole Early’s smile or the way he called her “sweetheart.” Or the thrill of heat that had shot up her arm when he’d taken her hand at Eddie’s office. Or the stupid, unfounded fear that Bree might just wind up on Cole’s arm at the Derby, leaving Lulu to watch the race on TV alone.
It was because she wanted to make sure Bree stayed out of trouble.
Nevertheless, she had to battle a ripple of apprehension as the door to Deke’s swung closed behind them, and Bree said, “You know, Lulu, this just may be our best Derby yet.”
Five
COLE WAS HAVING TROUBLE REMEMBERING THE name of the nightclub—or was it a restaurant?—into which he had wandered. Even after three full days in Louisville, he hadn’t yet acclimated himself to the Eastern time zone and kept getting ravenous around ten o’clock, which was dinnertime in his part of the world. Tonight was no different, and, finding nothing to eat in his rented house—mostly because he hadn’t bothered to stock it with anything other than essentials like brandy and Scotch—he’d called a cab and asked the driver to take him someplace where he could get a decent meal, a decent drink, and some decent music.
Fast & Loose Page 5