Ready & Willing (39 page)

Not yet, anyway.

Because Natalie was determined that she would not fail in this venture. She
was
good at this. She
could
make a go of it. She
would
ensure that Party Favors was a rousing success.

Just as soon as she figured out how to bring people to Clementine Hotchkiss’s party.

“Don’t worry, Clementine,” she said again. “I
promise
your Derby Eve bash will be the one people are talking about come Derby Day.”

It had to be
, Natalie told herself. Because if it wasn’t, the next event she’d be planning would be a wedding. Her own. To a man she’d rather bury than marry.

 

BY THE TIME NATALIE ARRIVED BACK AT HER OLD
Louisville office, she’d managed to shove thoughts of Dean Waterman back to the farthest, darkest recesses of her brain, which was where they belonged. No, actually, the farthest, darkest recesses of her brain were still too nice a place for Dean. She didn’t care how much her parents liked him or how convinced they were that he was the man she should be tied to for the rest of her life. And she didn’t care that Dean had been saying since childhood that someday he would make Natalie his Mrs., and that, to this day, he continued to make no secret of the fact that he was convinced she would be the perfect wife for him.

Dean Waterman was the very definition of smarmy. And cloying. And supercilious. And icky. And he’d been that way since she met him at the age of ten, in cotillion class. Between the sweaty palms and the prepubescent complexion and the hair goo his mother had made him use all the time, Natalie had always been on the edge of her seat, waiting to see if Dean would slide out of his.

These days, he bore no resemblance to the rat-faced little kid he’d been. Braces had fixed his overbite, Lasik had corrected his myopia, and puberty had filled him out. Natalie might have even considered him handsome, if it hadn’t been for the cloying smarminess. He was still plenty oily, metaphorically speaking. And he was still definitely icky. But in a moment of weakness, on an evening when her parents had been hammering her even harder than usual about making a go of Party Favors, she’d made a bargain with them. If Clementine Hotchkiss’s Derby Eve party didn’t come off as a
huge
success, then Natalie would close up shop and refrain from plunging into another business venture . . . and date Dean Waterman—exclusively—for six months.

Not that the
exclusively
part was any big deal since Natalie hadn’t dated anyone more than once or twice for more than a year. It was the
date Dean Waterman
part that made her stomach clench. God, what had she been thinking to agree to such a thing? She’d just been so tired of her parents harping on her, and so certain she would make Party Favors a success. She honestly hadn’t thought it would come down to actually having to go out with Dean. For six months. Exclusively.

Not to mention the fact that Clementine’s party, like all the big Derby Eve parties, was a fund-raiser, and her choice of recipients was a local group dedicated to keeping at-risk kids off the streets. The large check Clementine had hoped to turn over to Kids, Inc., after charging a hundred and fifty dollars to each of her wealthy guests was looking to be more like a buck and a half. And a buck and a half wasn’t going to go far in building a facility that would teach those kids about running a business or scholarships to help them someday do just that.

The word
loser
began to circle through Natalie’s brain again, so she shoved it back into the shadows alongside thoughts of Dean. Yeah. They went nicely together. Then she turned to her computer and pulled up the web page for the
Courier-Journal
to see who the latest celebrities were coming to town for Derby. The local paper began their Derby celeb watch in January, and Natalie had been keeping close tabs on who was coming and when they were arriving. Scoring major players in the sports, entertainment, and business communities was a big part of ensuring the success of a Derby party, but most of the famous people coming to town had committed to parties before she even opened Party Favors. Every time she saw a new celebrity listed, Natalie contacted that person’s representative to extend a personal invite to Clementine’s party.

At best, she received a polite thanks, but no thanks. At worst, her invitation went completely ignored. At second to worst, it was accepted, by some celebreality type who was so far down the list, they actually referred to themselves as “celebrealities.” In addition to the cast-off from
Pimp My Toddler
for Clementine’s yes list, Natalie had scored an auditioner for
American Idol
who hadn’t made it to Hollywood, but who had risen to fame—fifteen minutes of it, anyway—because Simon had dubbed him with one of those sound bites that got airtime again and again. This one involved a cattle prod to a part of the young man’s anatomy that one normally didn’t want a cattle prod anywhere near. She’d also added an actor who had once played a politically incorrect Native American on
F-Troop
. And a college basketball player it was rumored might possibly, perhaps, maybe, if the stars were aligned, go in the twenty-sixth round of the NBA draft.

Today’s celebrity pickings, she saw were pretty slim, even though the race—and parties—were just two weeks away. A cable channel talk show host, a decorator from an HGTV series, and a marginally successful podcaster.

Ah, what the hell, Natalie thought. It wasn’t like she had a lot of choice.

She was about to head off to Google to see who repped whom when her gaze lit on the sidebar of today’s headlines, and a name popped out at her. A name which, although written in the same tiny font as the rest of the news and with the same dispassionate reporting, might as well have been etched in gold on her computer monitor in letters eight feet high. And they might as well have been accompanied by a crack of thunder and a bolt of lightning, and the skies splitting open, and a chorus of angels belting out “Hallelujah.”

Russell Mullholland, the headlines said, had come to town.

Clicking on the headline, Natalie discovered that the man who defined the term “reclusive billionaire” had just shown up in Louisville at some point earlier in the week, without announcement or fanfare, because he owned a horse that would be running in the Kentucky Derby. Meaning, she concluded, that he would be here for the two weeks leading up to the race, including Derby Eve. And since no one had known he was coming, there was a chance, however small, that he hadn’t committed to any parties yet. In fact, due to the whole reclusive billionaire thing, even if he had been invited to other parties, there was a good chance he hadn’t accepted any of them.

Yet.

Hungrily, Natalie read the rest of the article. Evidently Mr. Mullholland and his adolescent son had been spotted crossing the lobby of the Brown Hotel yesterday, surrounded by a cadre of bodyguards, which was the first anyone knew that he had planned to be in Louisville. There was a photograph accompanying the article, but it was virtually impossible to see what Mullholland looked like, because, even if his head hadn’t been bent the way it was, he was wearing a hat and sunglasses, and what was left of his face was obscured by a very large man with a very determined look on his face.

Strangely, it was that man, and not the buried billionaire, who really captured Natalie’s attention. He stood a full head above everyone around him and somehow seemed to be looking everywhere at once. His hair was dark, quite possibly black, and he didn’t appear to have shaved for some time. His clothing was fairly nondescript, what looked like khaki trousers and a dark-colored polo, and shouldn’t have called attention to him. But his rugged good looks coupled with that wary expression simply commanded her gaze.

Security detail, she thought. The guy had to be one of Mullholland’s bodyguards. No self-respecting reclusive billionaire would be without security. Her gaze went back to the indistinct billionaire, since that was where her attention needed to be, even though what she really wanted to do was inspect the bodyguard further. Russell Mullholland had catapulted onto the celebrity scene about a year and a half ago after designing what would become
the
game system of gamers everywhere. The Mullholland GameViper had been talked about for months before it was made available, the gossip and hype turning it into the Holy Grail of game systems. When it finally was launched—strategically, six weeks before Christmas—there had been a frenzy to see who could get their hands on one.

Natalie wasn’t much into gaming herself, but she knew plenty of guys and a couple of girls who had camped outside Best Buys and GameStops for days in the hopes of scoring a GameViper for themselves. Even at that, few had succeeded. In the year-and-a-half since its introduction, there had been a half-dozen additional pushes for a limited number of systems, and between the sale of those and the games designed specifically for the GameViper, which went for close to sixty bucks a pop—not to mention the way the company’s stock had gone straight through the roof—Russell Mullholland had become a billionaire virtually overnight.

He’d become a recluse nearly as quickly.

Natalie had seen photos of Mullholland where he
wasn’t
ducking the paparazzi and knew there was a reason why he’d been voted one of
People
magazine’s Most Beautiful Men. Blond and blue-eyed, with one of those smiles that made a woman want to melt into a puddle of ruined womanhood at his feet. Even without the billions, he was too yummy for words. Add to that the fact that he was a single dad who’d been struggling to raise a son after losing his wife to cancer when the boy was a toddler, and it made him irresistible to even the most cold-hearted woman.

Evidently one of the things he’d invested his millions in was Thoroughbreds, all named after his games, one of whom was close to being a favorite in the race. Mullholland had come to town with his son, Dylan, the article said, but it also cautioned not to expect to catch too many glimpses of him, since he had routinely declined all invitations to make appearances at a variety of Derby-related events.

Oh, he had, had he? Natalie thought. Well, she’d just see about that. He hadn’t received his invitation to Clementine’s Derby Eve bash yet.

Her gaze strayed to the big bodyguard shielding the billionaire with his body. She wasn’t about to let a little thing like a security detail get between her and
the
Russell Mullholland. The billionaire would be the perfect party favor for Clementine’s gala.
Everyone
wanted to get a glimpse of Russell Mullholland. If Natalie could convince him to attend the party,
everyone
else would come, too. Clementine’s fete would be
the
place to be on Derby Eve, and it would be all people talked about the next day. Natalie would be lauded as the party maven of all party mavens, and Party Favors would be a huge success. Clementine could hand an even bigger check over to Kids, Inc., and Natalie would have work out the wazoo.

And Dean Waterman, the slimy little jerk, would be nothing but an oil slick in the narrows of her mind.