Fast & Loose

by Elizabeth Bevarly

  Of course, he’d done that his other nights here, as well, only to have the driver drop him a few blocks from the house and charge him outrageously for the trip. So tonight, Cole had specifically said he wanted to go somewhere besides Bardstown Road, and the driver had dropped him here, in a monstrous entertainment complex filled with nightspots, only one of which—the Hard Rock Café—he recognized. He’d chosen the nearest door and walked through it, barely noticing the name of the establishment. The place was nice—if a little more into Bourbon than he was himself—but it wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind.

  In spite of being three hours ahead of everyone here, he was sure he felt three times as exhausted, and he just hadn’t had it in him to look around for something else. Besides, the music playing was decent, and, even more important, there had been plenty of seats at the bar when he entered. So he’d loosened his necktie spattered like a Jackson Pollock painting and unbuttoned both the amber suit jacket and top two buttons of the plum-colored dress shirt he’d had on since before dawn, and he’d claimed one of the empty seats for his own.

  They hadn’t stayed empty for long, however, because within minutes of sitting down, the seats on each side of Cole had been occupied, by women whose names, like the nightclub/restaurant/bar’s, he could also no longer remember. Nor could he recall the name of the woman standing behind him who had crossed the room immediately behind the other two to press her spectacular breasts into his back—those Cole did remember. And probably would for some time. They’d chatted him up while he ate his dinner—making the enjoyment of it pretty much impossible—and consumed three drinks for his every one. Although he’d made numerous—polite—attempts to make clear his desire to be left alone, they were either too inebriated or clueless to take the hints. The same way the women just like them at a restaurant the night before had been. And the same way the women just like them at yet another bar the night before that had been.

  What a jerk he’d become, he thought. He was a disgrace to his gender. Whining about an overabundance of beautiful women who wouldn’t leave him alone. At this rate, he was going to have to trade in his membership card to Studs Unlimited for one from Sissies Anonymous instead.

  Within hours of his arrival in Louisville, though, the vultures had begun circling. And not just the fans, like the trio of beauties smothering him now, but the press, too. Not a single night had passed since he’d come to town that he hadn’t been spotted by someone from the local news and pressed for an interview—TV, newspapers, periodicals, websites, it didn’t matter. All of them wanted to talk to Cole. And Cole, mindful that publicity was always—always—a good thing, had happily talked to all of them. Or, at least, he had pretended it was happily. He just hoped he could keep it up. If the next two weeks were like the last three or four days had been, however, he was going to be stretched too thin to be good to anyone. Including Susannah and Silk Purse.

  Not that he wasn’t used to being recognized and courted by the press. No matter where he found himself, Cole was always surrounded by admirers. But he’d hoped his reputation hadn’t preceded him to Louisville yet. He had wanted his time here to be fairly anonymous for a while, so that he might enjoy a gradual immersion into the adventure that would become the Kentucky Derby Experience. Simply put, he’d wanted to be himself for a little while before shouldering the mantle of King Cole.

  He should have known better. Rock ’n’ roll had groupies for its bands. Major League had Baseball Annies for its players. NASCAR had Track Bunnies for its drivers. Thoroughbred racing had something similar for its trainers that no one had yet formally christened. So for lack of a better phrase, Cole had always dubbed such women—because they were overwhelmingly female—Trainer Hangers. Of course, his profession wasn’t the only one in the industry that had its overly enthusiastic fans. He’d also found names for Owner Followers, Horse Nuts, and Jockey Junkies. But, all modesty aside, the trainers were the elite members of Thoroughbred society, often better known and more recognizable even than the owners. Certainly they were the most flamboyant members of the horse world. And just like rock stars and pro athletes, many of them commanded, whether actively or not, a lot of attention from—mostly female—admirers.

  Cole was one of those many. And, truth be told—at least early on in his career—he had actively courted the limelight. But now that the limelight dogged him wherever he went, he was starting to wish for a little more shadow time. During racing’s off-season, he had more success deflecting the unwanted attention—not that it was always unwanted, mind you, even now—but it never went away entirely. And during race time, in racing cities like Louisville or Mar or Saratoga or Baltimore, trainers were treated like royalty. Usually, that didn’t bother Cole at all. Usually, he welcomed the attention. Usually, he reveled in the way women pursued him. Usually, he let the women catch him.

  But there were times, infrequent though they may be, when he just wanted to be left alone, to enjoy himself without the added distraction of being King Cole. Especially when he was facing the biggest race of his career.

  He glanced down at his watch for perhaps the tenth time in as many minutes and sighed loudly enough that he hoped the blonde on his left—Randi? Rhonda? Renee?—would get the hint. Naturally, she didn’t. Instead, she wrapped her perfectly manicured fingers around the premium Bourbon Cole had just ordered and hadn’t yet had a chance to taste and lifted it to her own mouth for a sip.

  She grimaced after sampling it. “Even though I grew up in Kentucky,” she purred in a voice he was reasonably certain she had altered for effect, “I absolutely loathe Bourbon.”

  Cole was about to ask her why she’d felt compelled to drink his then, but refrained. “Let me order you something else,” he offered magnanimously. To himself, he added, And then go away.

  Before Randi/Rhonda/Renee had a chance to reply, the brunette on his right piped up, “I’ll have a screwdriver.”

  Cole shuddered. How could anyone do something as heinous as adding juice to a perfectly good spirit like vodka? In spite of his revulsion, he started to lift a finger to signal the—female—bartender. But she was there before his hand was even fully in the air, ignoring the people who had clearly summoned her before he had, slapping a cocktail napkin down on the bar in front of him.

  “What can I get you, Mr. Early?” she asked.

  He turned to look at the brunette, wishing like hell that he could remember her name. Susie? Cindy? Sally? “Sarah,” he finally said out loud when he recalled it, relief washing over him, “would like a screwdriver.”

  “Vicky,” she corrected him. “Vicky would like a screwdriver.”

  Damn. He hadn’t even been close.

  “But I can be Sarah if you want,” she offered, leaning in even closer to curl her own perfectly manicured fingers over his thigh and give it a gentle squeeze. “In fact, for you, Cole, I can be anybody—or anything—you want.”

  “So can I,” Randi/Rhonda/Renee said from his left.

  The redhead behind him—Barbie? Bobbie? Belinda?—pressed more intimately against him. “Me, too,” she joined in, her voice sultry in his ear, her breath hot on his neck.

  Randi/Rhonda/Renee slipped her arm over his shoulders, threw a very suggestive look at the other two women, leaned in very, very close to his other ear and added, “If you’d like, we can all be anyone and anything you want…together.”

  Hello. A part of Cole’s anatomy that didn’t normally misbehave in public suddenly jumped to attention with a rousing chorus of Hoo-ah! What Randi/Rhonda/Renee, Barbie/Bobbie/Belinda and Whatshername were offering was an opportunity the average man only dreamed about, then lied about in a letter to Penthouse. He didn’t kid himself that if he’d been any regular working stiff—if one could pardon the crassness of the pun—the three women wouldn’t have given him the time of day. It was only because he was Cole Early that such offers ever came his way. Not that he’d ever been offered a four-way before—just how did that work, anyway?—so this was a bit of a treat, eve
n for Cole.

  Which was why he was so surprised when he heard himself say, “I appreciate the offer, ladies, but I’m kind of waiting for someone.”

  Their disbelief was almost palpable. As was their disappointment. As was the seemingly fifty-degree drop in temperature as they removed their hands from his various body parts, collected their drinks, and walked away. Cole was about to breathe a sigh of relief and reach for his own drink, but he was immediately surrounded by a new batch of women, each of whom draped herself over him in much the same way as the ones who had just left.

  It was going to be a looooooong two weeks, he thought morosely. How was he supposed to guide Silk Purse to the finish line when his attention span was being hindered at the starting gate?

  The thought had just wrapped itself around his brain when, in an effort to deflect one of the new women’s sultry, hot, lascivious, yada-yada-yada looks, he shot his gaze across the crowded bar and saw a familiar face. It took a moment for him to recognize it as belonging to the woman he’d met Friday afternoon at the realty office, the one whose laughing eyes and smug grin had stayed with him long after she’d gone—mostly as an irritant in his belly. Something erupted in his belly again at seeing her now, but, surprisingly, it wasn’t irritation this time. In fact, it was kind of…sort of…

  Nah. It couldn’t be happiness. That would be nuts. But he was…relieved—yeah, that was it—to see Craggedy Ann standing on the other side of the room. Because now he had a legitimate someone to be waiting for/know/halfway-recognize that would fend off any future groups of luscious women who might want to press their bodies into Cole’s and offer to, um, do the, ah, remarkable thing that Rosina, Betina, and Samantha had just offered to do.

  Craggedy was wearing pretty much the same thing she’d worn on Friday, and her plain jeans and white T-shirt looked completely out of place amid the colorful cocktail and dance club attire of the other patrons. Out of place, too, was her obvious lack of makeup and the fact that she didn’t seem to have even run a brush through her unruly mop of russet curls since he’d last seen her. But what was most out of place was his reaction to her. Because as he observed Craggedy Ann looking so uncomfortable and alien in her festive surroundings, Cole found himself sympathizing with her. Maybe because he’d been feeling so uncomfortable and alien in his festive surroundings, too.

  Without even thinking about what he was doing, he stood and began to make his way across the room. But it was so crowded—and so many people wanted to greet him, or congratulate him, or ask him who he liked for the Derby, as if that wasn’t the dumbest question in the world—that his progress was constantly impeded. He started to feel like he was in one of those dreams where the thing he was struggling hardest to get to kept getting farther and farther away, and the faster he tried to run, the more unattainable it became. Then he realized Craggedy Ann was craning her neck and looking around the room, as if she were searching for something—someone—too. And then his anxiety rose, because what if she found that person before he had a chance to get to her? He might never see her again.

  Then he realized how foolish he was being. He didn’t even know the woman’s name, had exchanged maybe two dozen words with her, none of which had been especially warm. Hell, he didn’t even like her, weird sympathizing notwithstanding, which was probably only a result of indigestion, anyway. What did he care if he never saw her again?

  Nevertheless, for whatever reason—probably the aforementioned indigestion, or maybe jet lag, or, hell, it was probably from the damned concussion he got every night banging his damned head on the damned ceiling in the damned bedroom—seeing Craggedy again felt a little bit like good luck. And like everyone else in the Thoroughbred business, Cole was just superstitious enough to believe he needed all that he could get.

  He inched forward again, smiling and shaking hands and replying as quickly and politely as he could to everyone who wanted a piece of him. Just when he was within inches of being able to call out—or better yet, reach out—to her, Craggedy turned away and melted into the crowd. He lunged forward in the direction into which she’d disappeared, pushing aside a man who stepped in front of him without even caring how rude the action may have been interpreted. But he was immediately encircled by throngs of people again. He pushed himself up on tiptoe, and since he was already taller than the majority of people there, was able to see a good many of the heads surrounding him. But none sported a crop of ragged red curls that invited a man’s finger to loop itself inside one.

  As quickly as she had appeared, Craggedy Ann was gone. And so, Cole realized, was the last of anything that might have resembled a good mood.

  “HE’S NOT HERE, EITHER, BREE,” LULU SAID AS SHE curled a finger through a belt loop of her friend’s jeans so she wouldn’t get separated from her amid the crowd at the Maker’s Mark Lounge. Heavens, if this was what Fourth Street Live was like on a Monday night, Lulu would continue to confine her visits to Borders. The only thing that made her more anxious than being the center of attention was being in a huge crowd. What kind of person actually enjoyed this kind of lifestyle?

  “He has to be here,” Bree replied, surging forward through a trio of men who were nearly twice her size, and who each gave her a thorough once-over as she passed. She was completely oblivious to their once-overs, since they didn’t look like their net worth collectively was more than a buck-and-a-half. “He wasn’t in Felt or Sully’s or the Hard Rock. This is the only place we haven’t checked yet. He’s here, I tell you.” She swiveled her head first right, then left, then right again. “Somewhere.”

  “We missed him,” Lulu assured her friend. “He was probably getting into his car just as we were getting out of yours.” She looked at her watch, then thrust her arm forward, in front of Bree’s face. “It’s almost one o’clock. Who in their right mind stays out this late at night?”

  Bree glanced over her shoulder at Lulu and made a big production of looking at the scores of people thrashing around the place.

  “Okay, okay,” Lulu conceded as the music pumped louder and the pulsating of the crowd notched upward. She raised her voice accordingly, fairly shouting as she added, “Lots of people stay out this late. I bet Cole Early’s the early-to-bed, early-to-rise type. Don’t those horse people get up at the crack of dawn to exercise their pets?”

  “Thoroughbreds aren’t pets,” Bree yelled back. “They’re worth millions of dollars, a lot of them.”

  “They still get their owners up early to take them outside.”

  This time when Bree looked over her shoulder, she was gritting her teeth. “Not their owners. And not their trainers, either, necessarily. They get their exercisers up early.”

  “Maybe Cole Early likes to—”

  “Cole Early is not an early-to-bed type,” Bree interrupted her. “Trust me. He may not be on the short list of Rich Guys I Want to Bag, but I’ve read enough about him since he won Santa Anita a couple weeks ago to know he’s as sure a thing as I can get right now. So I’m not gonna hedge my bets.”

  Honestly, sometimes Lulu just wanted to smack her best friend. Bree talked about men as if they were…Well, in this case, racehorses. But she also talked about men as if they were commodities. Or investments. Or possessions. Or careers. Or prey. She almost never talked about men as if they were human beings.

  If she were anyone but Sabrina Calhoun, Lulu wouldn’t tolerate it. But she knew Bree well enough to understand her friend’s shortsightedness in this, even if she didn’t condone it. Bree had even better reasons as an adult to want to marry well than she’d had as a kid. And anyway, deep down, Bree was capable of deep and abiding loyalty and affection—just look at her friendship with Lulu. The whole man-woman thing, though…Bree just hadn’t ever had the opportunity to witness what a healthy adult relationship was like. Someday she’d meet a man who dropped her in her tracks, a man she’d fall for heart and soul, and then she wouldn’t care what he did for a living, or what kind of car he drove, or how fat his investment portfolio was, o
r if he even had an investment portfolio.

  “Man, I hate it when they slip the snare this way,” Bree grumbled. “It takes forever to set up a trap the right way.”

  Okay, probably she would meet a guy like that someday, Lulu reluctantly amended.

  “Oh, no,” Bree muttered then, barely loud enough for Lulu to hear.

  “What?”

  “Rufus is here.”

  Lulu smiled. Speak of the devilishly handsome. Or, at least, think of the devilishly handsome. Because even if she hadn’t been thinking about Rufus Detweiler by name, she’d certainly been thinking about him in spirit. As far as she was concerned, Rufus was exactly the man Bree should be looking at for potential happiness. And not just because the guy was already head over heels in love with her, either.

  Lulu followed Bree’s gaze to the bar on the other side of the room and, within seconds, she had identified him. It was strange to see him sitting on the patron side of the bar, when he was usually behind one working alongside Bree. But he seemed perfectly at home with all the people surrounding him, even if he stood a good two or three inches taller than even the tallest guy. He was leaning back against the bar, one elbow propped nonchalantly on its surface, the other tipping a longneck bottle of beer into what Lulu had remarked on many occasions was a thoroughly sexy mouth. The tiny halogen light fixed in the ceiling above him sent a wash of light cascading down over him like an inverted V, lighting dark amber highlights in his near-black hair and chiseling even finer what were already very well-honed cheekbones. His white pin-striped oxford shirt was untucked over faded jeans that hugged his lean legs, enhancing the innate grace of his spare frame.