Fast & Loose

by Elizabeth Bevarly

  He looked like a poem, Lulu thought wistfully. A tragic sonnet of unrequited love written from the deepest recesses of the heart. He was just a gorgeous, gorgeous man, and totally not her type. Which was just as well since, in case she hadn’t mentioned it, the guy was totally sprung on Bree.

  “Rufus!” Lulu called out, jumping up and down and waving her hand to get his attention.

  Immediately, Bree spun on her and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Are you crazy?” she hissed. “The last thing I want when I’m looking for Cole Early is a guy like Rufus anywhere in my personal space.”

  Lulu yanked Bree’s hand from her mouth. “Oh, who cares what you want?” she said. “I like Rufus. He’s a good guy. Rufus!” she called out again, doing the jumping and waving thing even more adamantly.

  Amazingly, he heard her over the din of the bar, turning his head in her direction, smiling and lifting a hand in greeting when he saw her. Then, when he looked to her right and saw Bree with her, his eyes went brighter, his smile turned incandescent, and everything about the guy seemed to absolutely glow.

  What the hell was the matter with Bree, that she couldn’t see Mr. Right-Under-Her-Nose?

  As if wanting to make that painfully evident, Bree quickly turned her back on both Lulu and Rufus and started scanning the other side of the bar for whatever she thought it was she wanted. Rufus did a good job of pretending not to notice, but Lulu saw how his features dimmed a little at her friend’s behavior.

  Nevertheless, he had perked up by the time he approached, beer bottle still in hand. “Hey, Lulu,” he greeted her warmly. As he always did, he leaned forward and brushed her cheek lightly with his lips, taking her hand and giving her fingers a gentle squeeze as he did. When he drew back, he looked at Bree—who still had her back to him—and said a little more coolly, “Bree. Good to see you, too.”

  “Hey, Rufus,” she replied without turning around.

  Lulu had known Rufus roughly eight hours less than Bree, who had worked her first shift with him two years ago at the Ambassador Bar before Lulu came in to meet her friend for drinks afterward. As she’d waited for Bree to finish up, Lulu had chatted with Rufus, and it had taken approximately three minutes for her to realize the guy was already hung up on Bree. It had taken her three-and-a-half minutes to realize Bree would never give him the time of day, because it took Rufus only thirty seconds to give Lulu an answer to her question about what he wanted to be when he grew up. That answer being a momentary blank stare followed by, “A bartender. I love this job.”

  To Lulu, the answer told her everything she needed to know about Rufus—and made her like him even more than she already did. Job-loving was a major, major factor in essential human happiness. Anyone who loved his or her job, regardless of what it was, was someone to be admired, because it meant they went their own way, did their own thing, and didn’t care what society thought about them. Bree, however, equated Rufus’s professional contentment with a profound lack of ambition. Because there was no way his work would lead to reeking piles of filthy lucre, and how could you not want reeking piles of filthy lucre? So that was the end of any chance Rufus might have with Bree on the romantic front.

  “What are you guys doing here?” he asked Lulu. But he was looking at Bree when he asked it—or, at least, at Bree’s back. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out and about down here. Bad band at Deke’s tonight?”

  “Great band at Deke’s tonight,” Lulu told him. “But—”

  “But I’m here looking for someone,” Bree said, finally spinning around. “Someone, ah, special.”

  Oh, sure, now she looked right at Rufus, Lulu thought. To hammer home that he wasn’t anything special. Funny, though, how she seemed to stumble a little over the words when she looked at Rufus. And her voice, too, seemed a little more shallow and a little less certain. Funny, too, how she didn’t seem able to hold his gaze for more than a second or two before it went skittering over his shoulder.

  “Oh, yeah?” Rufus asked with seeming unconcern. “Who?”

  “Just some guy,” Lulu said.

  “Cole Early,” Bree said at the same time.

  Rufus had started to lift his bottle for another sip, but halted it shy of his mouth and smiled. “Cole Early,” he repeated dispassionately.

  Bree nodded, still looking over Rufus’s shoulder, but seemed about one-tenth as certain about that now as she had a few minutes ago.

  “The trainer,” he said in that same flat tone.

  Bree nodded again, a little more slowly this time, looking about one-one-hundredth as certain now. And it wasn’t just her gaze that ricocheted this time. She turned her whole head to avoid looking at him.

  “The one with a horse in the Derby,” Rufus said.

  Another nod, even slower. Another substantial drop on the ol’ confidence meter.

  “The one whose picture is on the cover of the new Louisville magazine? The one who they featured in the Scene this weekend? The one who’s been on the news every night for the past few nights surrounded by incredible-looking women? That Cole Early?”

  Bree didn’t even manage a nod this time. Though Lulu was pretty sure Rufus’s question was rhetorical.

  “You think he’s potential Sugar Daddy material?” he asked.

  Like, oh…everyone else on the planet, Rufus knew Bree’s big ambition in life was to bag herself a rich caretaker. Which was doubtless why he’d never made known his feelings for her. Well, not to anyone except any person with an IQ higher than zero who looked at him whenever he was somewhere in her zip code.

  Bree did nod in response to that one—sort of—and, very softly, said, “Yes.”

  Rufus grinned again, biting his lip in a way that was truly adorable and would have melted the heart of any self-respecting woman. Lulu was practically swooning, and she loved Rufus like a brother. If Bree wasn’t purring at least a little bit inside, then she needed to go see the Great and Powerful Oz for a new heart.

  “Bree,” he said, “Cole Early was in here a little while ago, and—”

  “He’s here?” Bree interrupted, looking panicky now.

  “He left,” Rufus told her, the warmth in his voice cooling. “But while he was here, no fewer than ten women came up to him—all of them dressed way better than you, I might add,” he dropped in as if he couldn’t help himself, “and the guy wasn’t interested in any of them. Last time I saw him, he was heading for the door. Alone.”

  Bree looked a little hurt after the better dressed comment—not that she hadn’t asked for it—but recovered admirably. “Of course he left alone,” she said. “He didn’t meet me.”

  Rufus started to say something else, seemed to think better of it, and turned to Lulu instead. “Wanna dance?” he asked.

  Lulu’s eyes went wide at the invitation. Not because it surprised her, but because the last thing she wanted to do was go out onto a dance floor and move her body in a way that might draw attention to herself. It wasn’t that she was a bad dancer. On the contrary, she loved to dance. At home. Alone. Just her and her iPod. If she went out there with all those people jostling her and looking at her, she’d immediately invent a new dance: the Pufferfish Girl Fandango.

  “Uh, that’s okay, Rufus,” she said. “Thanks anyway.” She was about to say more, but something over his shoulder caught her eye, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t the same thing that had caught Bree’s a moment ago. Because a man was emerging from a poorly lit alcove. A dark-haired man in an amber-colored suit. A man she remembered all too well.

  Cole Early was still here.

  Something hot detonated in her belly at seeing him again—probably the burger she’d downed at Deke’s, since the place was known for its music, not its food. ’Cause it couldn’t be excitement at seeing Cole Early again. The guy was a boor, he was arrogant, and he was self-centered. Not to mention he was the kind of tourist she found most annoying, one of the ones who threw their weight around with a lot of flash, dash, and cash. Of course, he did have that sm
ile that made a woman want to…

  Um, never mind.

  Then she realized that if Bree saw him, too, she’d go right over to the guy and introduce herself, and then introduce Lulu, too, and then Lulu would have to talk to him again, and she totally didn’t want to do that. Nor did she want to be with Bree when her friend was doing the feminine wiles thing she did so well. When Bree flirted, no matter the circumstances, she was dazzling. Standing beside her in such situations, Lulu invariably ended up feeling like the bedraggled street urchin selling flowers to the theater-going hoi polloi. Dead flowers, at that. From a dirty alleyway. In the rain. On a Monday night, when no one was even going to the theater to begin with.

  She quickly grabbed Bree and spun her around so that she was facing Lulu and Rufus, and not Cole Early. And she said something she was certain would make Bree call it a night. “If you want to dance, Rufus, maybe you and Bree could—”

  “No, we have to go, Lulu,” Bree cut her off.

  Perfect, Lulu thought.

  “There’s no reason to hang around here,” she added.

  Not so perfect. Poor Rufus. Damn Bree.

  Bree circled Lulu’s wrist with sure fingers and gave her hand a tug. Unfortunately, the direction she tried to tug her into was the same one that led to Cole Early, which was in the opposite direction of the exit.

  Time to get serious about leaving.

  “But we just got here,” Lulu whined. “Let’s have a beer with Rufus.”

  “Suits me,” Rufus said amiably. “I’ll even buy.”

  “Can’t,” Bree said succinctly, this time really turning for the exit. “We have to go. Like I said, no reason to stay.” She lifted her head as if she intended to shake it defiantly at Rufus, but the minute she caught his eye, her dark brows arrowed downward, two bright spots of pink appeared on her cheeks, and she immediately dropped her gaze again, looking embarrassed for saying what she had.

  In spite of that, Lulu thought she saw Rufus dip his head forward almost imperceptibly, as if to silently concede the round to Bree. Something about the gesture, though, told her he wasn’t giving up on the battle just yet.

  After checking to make sure Cole Early was well and truly out of sight—thankfully, he was—Lulu gave Rufus an Oh, well kind of smile, lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “See you later, Rufus,” she said.

  “Next time, I’ll collect that dance,” he replied with a smile as she let her friend pull her toward the exit.

  But Lulu wasn’t sure if he was talking to her, or to Bree.

  Six

  COLE ARRIVED BACK AT HIS RENTED HOUSE A LITTLE after two, fumbling for a good five minutes with his key ring because he’d forgotten to leave on any exterior lights, and because he’d slipped the house key onto his own key ring and couldn’t find it amid the jumble of keys he always carried on his person. Let’s see, that first was the key to his Maserati, the second was the key to the Merc, the third was the key to the SUV…no, that was the fourth key. The third was to the truck he drove at the stables. Then came the key to the big house on the farm, then to the main stable, then to the tack room, then the shed…He counted out a few more and ticked them off mentally as he went. The penthouse in LA, the condo in Miami, the cabin on Lake Arrowhead, the sailboat, the runabout, the Jet Ski, the snowmobile… Ah. There it was. The key to his rented house in Louisville.

  He sighed with much fatigue as he pushed it into the front door and turned it, fighting with it a little to make it work and telling himself the house was not trying to keep him locked out. Again. Man, not only did he have a way-too-overactive imagination—Take that, house, he thought as he finally got the key to turn—he had way too many keys. He pushed the door open gently, but only because he didn’t want to break anything, not because he feared pissing off the house. Again.

  How had he ended up with so many keys? he wondered as he shoved them back into his pocket. And why did he feel like he needed to keep them with him all the time? He remembered when he was hired for his first job, as a junior in high school in Charlottesville, Virginia, at Buck Trenton’s stables. He’d only had one key, then—the one Buck had given him for the stables he mucked out every day. Eventually, he started filling feed bins, too, and by the time he graduated from high school, Cole was grooming and exercising some of the younger horses.

  During his four years at UVA with a double major in animal husbandry and business, Buck had taken Cole under his wing and showed him the finer points of training. Buck had said Cole had a way with horses—and he’d been right. Cole may not have known his father very well—he and Cole’s mother had divorced before Cole even started school and had taken a job in Ocala—but the elder Early had been a fine trainer, too, right up until his death two years ago from cancer. The Earlys had worked with horses in one way or another for generations. It was in their blood. Cole was just the latest branch of the tree to bloom. None of the previous Earlys had seen success like his, though. None had even come close. They sure as hell hadn’t carried around as many keys as he did.

  Cole pushed the door closed behind him and leaned back against it, taking a moment to acclimate himself to the little house that was so unlike his own. He’d left a light on in the living room, a stained glass number with an overly decorative base that was, like much of the rest of the house, a little too feminine for his tastes. Funny, though, how welcome it made him feel. The bright color palette, too, which should have seemed too manic and chaotic, soothed him more than the dependable browns and benign beiges of his own décor. His house in Temecula was a sprawling ranch of nearly four thousand square feet with broad windows that looked out on green pastures and running horses no matter what room he occupied. It had state-of-the-art everything, a media room he rarely used, a Hollywood perfect pool he used even less, a gourmet kitchen his cook assured him was perfect in every way, and a master bedroom he didn’t sleep in nearly enough—and never with guests. Those occupied the numerous spare rooms, some of which, he realized now, he couldn’t remember what they looked like.

  He closed his eyes as he tried to remember. But the only room that appeared in his head was the tiny bedroom upstairs he kept bumping his head on. And that room, he could see better than he did his own back in Temecula. He opened his eyes again, smiling reluctantly at the living room that was probably a quarter of the size of his back home. Funny, though, how after just a few days, it felt more like home to him than his own house did.

  Pushing himself away from the door, he strode to where he’d left his laptop charging earlier, shrugging off his suit jacket as he went. Tired as he was, he was still too wired to sleep, and, having spent much of the day in Shelbyville and the rest of it in meetings at Churchill Downs, he hadn’t checked his e-mail for more than twenty-four hours. He unplugged the laptop to take it upstairs, stopping long enough in the kitchen to pour a couple fingers of cognac into the only thing he was able to find that resembled a snifter—something the house’s owner probably poured her morning OJ into, because it was short and etched with flowers and was in no way suitable for a Napoleon that would probably suffer a major inferiority complex as a result.

  He sipped the cognac slowly as he ascended the stairs to the bedroom, bumped his head—again—before remembering to stoop, then set his laptop on the bed and pushed the On button to power it up while he shed his work clothes and donned a pair of navy silk pajama bottoms. But when he seated himself on the bed and opened his computer, all that greeted him was a blank—and dark—screen.

  He pushed the On button on the side of the apparatus again. Nothing happened. He pushed it a third time. Nothing. He checked to make sure the battery was snug in place. It was. Another push of the button. The laptop lay there lifeless.

  Dammit.

  What the hell was the matter with this piece of crap computer? he wondered. Bad enough this house wasn’t equipped with wireless and it had taken Cole fifteen minutes to locate someone in the neighborhood whose service he could pirate. Fat lot of good it did now that the damned machin
e wasn’t even working. He went back downstairs to retrieve the power cord and bumped his head on the ceiling when he returned. He plugged one end of the cord into the laptop and the other into a wall socket, then pushed the On button again.

  Nothing.

  He looked at the big computer on the desk. The one that belonged to the house’s owner. The one with one of the ubiquitous pink Post-it notes affixed to it. He’d read this one his first evening here, but now he strode across the room to read it again.

  “Please don’t feed the Mac,” it said. “She must stay on a strict vegetarian diet to maintain her multitasking capabilities. And please don’t ask her for help. She’s very shy. If you need a computer, there are several at the library, and being social creatures, they adore visitors!”

  In other words, Cole translated, Mitts off.

  He knew it would be a violation of all that was decent and holy to violate the instructions on that note. It would be the equivalent of opening that drawer in the dresser he was sure housed his hostess’s underwear to fondle it, or rifling through her filing cabinets in search of financial information that was none of his business.

  Oh, hell, it would just be for a couple of minutes, he told himself, and she would never know, and there might be some really important e-mail that needed his immediate attention, and blah, blah, blah, fill in the blank with whatever lame excuse worked, because he was going to fire up her computer. He admitted it—he was an e-mail junkie with an e-monkey on his back the size of e-Kong. He needed his e-mail, dammit. He needed that even more than he wanted to fondle women’s underwear. That probably said something about his manliness he’d find a little troubling if he took the time to consider it, but, thankfully, he was too busy—manfully busy—to make time for that. So he strode manfully back to his laptop and manfully slammed it shut, manfully clutched his cognac in its glass with the little etched flowers, and made his way manfully back to the desk—first bumping his head manfully on the ceiling again—then reached for the computer with a manful hand…