The Ring on Her Finger (8 page)

Well. It would probably be best if he just went back to fantasizing. Unfortunately, he suspected that fantasizing was never going to be enough again.

“I don’t think anything got broken,” Lucy said as she hastened back to where Max still sat on the floor, his arms hooked loosely over his denim-clad knees.

“Just my heart,” he said under his breath.

“What?” she asked as she stooped to clean up—keeping her legs clamped together and turned to the side, he couldn’t help noticing.

“Nothing,” he said, more loudly this time. “It was nothing.” He knelt and began to scoop up what he could of the mess, trying to nudge Lucy aside. “I’ll do that. It’s my mess.”

“That’s all right,” she said, nudging him back. “I’m the housekeeper, remember? This is my job.”

“But you’ve got something else to—”

“It’s okay,” she interrupted him. “I’ll take care of this. Go ahead and heat up what’s left of dinner. I’m sure you’re hungry.”

Understatement of the century, Max thought. But he did as she asked, mostly because he didn’t want to get into a nudging match with her. Two nudges and a collision with a woman were about all his deprived libido could stand these days. As it was, he probably wouldn’t sleep a wink tonight, because he’d be too busy replaying those nudges and that collision over and over in his brain. He was getting hot already just thinking about it.

Oh, yeah. He had a full night ahead.

He watched Lucy surreptitiously as he prepared a plate and popped it into the microwave. Always, he made sure he glanced away before she looked up and caught him. And she did look up while she was cleaning, though whether it was because she liked looking at him, or because she was afraid he might be looking at her, he couldn’t say. He did like looking at her, though. He liked it too much. All he could do was hope like hell she didn’t like looking at him, too. Because if they both liked looking, there was too much potential for doing. And doing was strictly forbidden, since Max wasn’t allowed such pleasures anymore, and Lucy had a rock on her finger the size of Alcatraz that signified she was meant for someone else.

Since he needed reminding of that, Max forced his attention to that very ring. It was still on her left hand, still ugly, and still representative of her intention to marry another man. It didn’t matter if Lucy looked at him. It didn’t matter that she made him want things he’d sworn he would never have again. She wasn’t his to nudge. She wasn’t his to collide with. She wasn’t his to laugh with. She belonged to someone else who obviously intended to keep her forever.

Then again, that someone else wasn’t here now, Max couldn’t help thinking as he watched her finish cleaning up. And if that someone wasn’t here now, then who was going to inform Lucy that, during her cleanup, she had somehow gotten a little smudge of salad dressing on her face?

The timer on the microwave beeped, jolting Max out of his thoughts. But he couldn’t bring himself to retrieve his dinner and head back to his apartment, the way he knew he should. He just couldn’t bring himself to look away from that little dab of dressing on Lucy’s upper lip.

“Hey,” he said, as she strode by him, presumably to return to her paperwork at the desk.

Without thinking, he circled her wrist loosely in his fingers to halt her forward motion. Immediately, he both regretted and rejoiced in the action. She really was soft. Warm. Womanly. The silky caress of her skin against his bare palm was a sweet torture, one he couldn’t resist. Just the feel of his fingers wrapped around her wrist made Max remember what it was like to lie with a woman, to be buried inside her as she clung to him, bucking beneath him, groaning her need, her passion, her absolute ecstasy.

Ah, hell.

No matter his discomfort, however, Max couldn’t make himself let go of her. The contact was just too damned nice for him to end it yet.

At first, she seemed not to be as affected by the touch as he was. But when she glanced at his face, her pupils dilated, and her cheeks darkened with color. She didn’t pull away, didn’t comment on his touch. Max wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. So he decided not to think about it. And he decided not to end it.

“You, ah...” He halted when he realized how rough his voice sounded, how ragged it felt. “You, um...” Still unwilling—unable?—to release her wrist, he pointed at her face with his other hand. “You have salad dressing on your lip,” he finally finished, forcing a smile.

Her eyes went wide, and she swiped at her upper lip with the back of her hand. But she just missed hitting her target.

“No, here,” he said.

Again, without thinking—or maybe he was thinking more than he wanted to admit—Max brushed the dressing away with the pad of his thumb. But he pretended it was bigger than it really was, pretended he needed to touch her a second time, just to be sure he got it all. Then he realized he wasn’t pretending about needing to touch her a second time. He really did need to touch her again. Then he was doing more than touching—he was cupping her jaw in his palm and gazing into her eyes, wondering what she would do—wondering what he would do—if he leaned forward and covered her mouth with his. He took a single step forward to do just that. Then, thankfully, sanity returned. Reluctantly, he released her and shoved himself away, back to the counter, where he scooped up his plate.

“Thanks for your help,” he said without looking at her. “I’ll just take it back to my apartment.”

Without waiting for an answer, Max Hogan, a man who had once gleefully faced death and dismemberment at speeds nearing—sometimes exceeding—200 miles an hour, ran away. Ran away from a beautiful woman who had the softest skin and the most expressive eyes and the nicest smile he had ever seen.

Only after he’d retreated to the safety of his apartment—safety, yeah, right—did he allow himself to replay the scene in his mind. In slow motion, because he didn’t want to skip over a single frame. As he recalled the way the two of them had laughed for that brief spell, so freely and without inhibition, he realized it was the first good, genuine laugh he’d enjoyed in more than five years. And when he remembered the way Lucy had felt when he’d held her—and he hadn’t even held the best parts—he realized how badly he’d been kidding himself thinking he didn’t miss the presence of women in his life.

In less than twelve hours, Lucy French had crawled inside him and located places—dark, dreary places—that Max had sworn he’d closed off to the world forever. Worse than that, she had thrown open windows in those places and invited in the light. All he could do now was wonder, if she’d done all that in a half day’s time, what kind of damage would she do after being here for four months?

Nathaniel Finn leaned against the mantelpiece in Justin Cove’s living room, surrounded by fine antiques and artwork, sipping eighty-year-old Irish whiskey, gazing at a host of beautiful women—many of whom he’d known intimately—and realized he was profoundly bored. Not that that was unusual. Lately, he’d spent the better part of every day being bored, often profoundly. If he wasn’t bored, he was irritable. If he wasn’t irritable, he was gloomy. If he wasn’t gloomy, he was surly. Which made no sense, seeing as he was living a life that was the envy of every man. Hell, he was the Bad Boy of the Thoroughbred Racing Set—everyone said so. He used to love that. Lately, though, the nickname felt weirdly inappropriate.

Still, his was a most excellent life, he reminded himself—mostly because he kept forgetting it—and it was only going to get better in a couple of months, after Keeneland held its November sale of fillies. Nathaniel had one particularly fine mare to sell this year, a dam to a Triple Crown champion who was in foal by a Derby winner, and he was certain she’d fetch him a cool two million, at least. Yet even that prospect didn’t excite him as much as it should.

He sipped his drink again, savoring the mellow spirit as it warmed his mouth and belly. And he tried not to think about how the liquor’s kindling of his insides was the most stimulation he’d enjoyed in months. Then, sighing with something that felt vaguely like resentment, he made his way across the room to where a trio of his friends—other horsemen—had gathered amid discussion and cigar smoke. He raked his fingers through his straight, black hair and loosened the Valentino necktie he had knotted expertly at his throat. He had conceded to Alexis’s edict that he wear a suit to this party to impress her guests, but he’d be damned if he’d feel comfortable in it. Give him the solace of denim and boots any day. He was way more comfortable around horses than he was in polite society.

“Justin,” he greeted his host and closest friend.

Justin was dressed in a dark power suit and ultraconservative burgundy silk tie. His wavy auburn hair was thinner and grayer now than it was when the two of them roomed together at Vanderbilt two decades ago, and his brown eyes were weary from too much work and too little play. Yet he looked as sharp as ever, despite the two fingers of Bourbon in his cut-crystal glass.

“Nathaniel,” Justin greeted him amiably. “Sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk earlier when you arrived. Alexis always makes me greet everyone at the door, whether I like them or not. And since they’re mostly her friends...” He left the statement unfinished. Not that it needed finishing, especially when Justin punctuated it with a theatrical roll of his eyes. “How are things with the Bad Boy of the Thoroughbred Racing Set? How was Belize?”

“Excellent, as always,” Nathaniel replied. It was a lie, of course. Belize had been profoundly boring, just like everything else. A man could only tolerate so much unspoiled natural beauty and so many nameless, sexually agreeable women, and so long on a luxury yacht.

“Did you take Tracy with you?”

Nathaniel shook his head. “Candy.”

“Oh, ho, back with the Red Zinger are we?”

Nathaniel smiled at Justin’s nickname for the leggy redhead who had been his on-again-off-again companion for years. If there was one thing Candy did do to a man, it was zing him. Not that Nathaniel minded that part. It was everything besides the zinging that annoyed him.

“I was only with her temporarily,” Nathaniel assured his friend. “In fact, she stayed behind in Belize. Photo shoot or something. Photographer, maybe. I can’t remember what she said.”

Justin chuckled knowingly. “Must be hell being the Bad Boy of the Thoroughbred Racing Set.”

Wasn’t it just?

Justin ran his gaze quickly around the room. “Well, I’d introduce you to someone new, but I think you know—biblically, in fact—just about every woman here. Except Alexis, of course.”

Of course. Not that Alexis hadn’t tried getting to know Nathaniel biblically. On more than one occasion.

His host shook his head. “Nope. Sorry. I honestly think you’ve had just about every woman in this room, save two or three, and if you wanted them, you’d have had them by now. You always get your woman. And other guys’ women, too, come to think of it.”

That last was said without malice, because Justin was confident his own wife would never stray. The sap. Still, he’d been right in saying that the handful of women in the room Nathaniel hadn’t had were those whom he had no intention of having. One was way too young, one was way too skinny, and the third was way too married. Not that any of those qualities would normally be an impediment to his bedding a woman, provided she didn’t indulge in any off-putting behavior like attending boy band concerts or practicing eating disorders or relying solely on the missionary position. But Suzanne Dormer had just started her sophomore year at U of L and deserved a few awkward fumblings with boys her own age before hitting the big time. Patrice Gordon could give the Grim Reaper a run for his money in the skin-and-bones department. And Sissy Donovan’s husband often golfed in the same foursome Nathaniel did, something that would blow his concentration on the greens, thereby affecting his game, and God knew he couldn’t have that. So those women would just have to suffer without his sexual expertise.

Oh, well.

“So how’s that mare coming along?” Justin asked, as he inevitably did every time he saw Nathaniel.

It was no secret that Justin had his eye on the mare Nathaniel intended to sell for that cool two million or so in a couple of months. Justin had, in fact, already made an offer for the horse. Unfortunately his offer had been half what Nathaniel expected to make on the sale, the cheapskate.

“Sassy as ever,” Nathaniel said. “Taking nicely to her pregnancy. She ought to go in January.”

“Excellent.” Then, not surprisingly, because it always came to this, Justin added, “I’ll give you a million for her.”

Nathaniel laughed. “Dollars American? I don’t think so.”

“There’s no guarantee she’ll go in January, or even until November,” Justin pointed out. “Anything could happen between now and then. You might end up with a lot less than a million. You might end up with nothing at all.”

Nathaniel met the other man’s gaze levelly. “Is that a threat, Justin?” Not that such a thing would be unlike his friend. Justin had even fewer scruples than Nathaniel did. And that was saying something, because Nathaniel had, at last count, zero scruples.

His friend smiled indulgently. “Of course it’s not a threat. You know I would never allow a fine animal like that to be intentionally hurt.”

This was true. Justin appreciated anything that was worth a lot of money. Monetary value was, in fact, just about the only thing Justin did appreciate.

“I’m just saying,” the other man continued, “that a million now is guaranteed. More in November isn’t.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Yeah, you always do,” Justin agreed with a chuckle.

What went unsaid was that in taking his chances, Nathaniel would naturally win. He always did. In addition to being a horseman, a womanizer, and a cad, Nathaniel Finn was a gambler. A good one, too, seeing as he hadn’t come by his initial wealth the way Justin had—by inheriting it. Though his beginnings were by no means meager, Nathaniel had damned well earned every penny he owned—one way or another.

He was about to change the subject when he noticed his host eyeing him in a strangely speculative way. “What?” he asked.