Neck & Neck (16 page)

“With me, you assumed wrong.”

There was something in the way he uttered the comment that made Ginny think he was talking about a lot more than just his offer of the other night. Which was all the more reason, she told herself, not to even consider it.

“Yeah, well, thanks, but no thanks,” she said.

His mouth dropped open in obvious astonishment. “Are you serious?” he said. “You won’t even have dinner with me?”

She shook her head. “Number one, why should I trust you? And number two, I’m busy.”

“Number one,” he said, “I may be a recluse, but I’m enough in the public eye for you to know who I am and that I’m not a serial rapist. And number two, you’re not working Wednesday night. I checked.” Before she could ask how he knew that, he told her, “The bartenders here are imminently bribeable.”

“Number one,” she echoed his own statement, “maybe it’s not your criminal background I’m concerned about, and number two, I didn’t say I’m working. I said I’m busy.” And she was, too. Wednesday night was card night at the Collins house. Not to mention Maisy had promised to teach Ginny and Hazel how to play something called Trash, and she was
so
looking forward to learning a game with a name like that.

“They must be pretty major plans for you to turn down dinner with a nice man who has money to burn and no criminal background.”

She smiled at that. “They are major plans. But they’re not engraved in stone.” Which was true. Half the time, Maisy was the one who changed them, often at the last minute, to hang with a girlfriend or watch something on TV instead. “I could potentially change my plans for dinner with a nice man, should a nice man ask me out.”

“You don’t think I’m a nice man?”

To answer that question, Ginny did slip back into Amber mode. “Sugar, look aroun’ you. Do you think
any
of the men who come to places like Minxxx could be called
nice
?”

He dipped his head forward, silently conceding the point to her. “All right. Then change your plans to go out with a man who could drop four figures on you in a matter of hours.”

She stiffened at that, dropping all pretense. “I already told you I won’t—”

“Think about it, Amber,” he interrupted her again. “I’m the definition of ‘money is no object.’ I can give you an evening like you’ve never had before. Like you’ll never have again. I’ll show up at your front door dressed in a five thousand dollar suit, cradling two dozen long-stemmed roses in my arms. I’ll escort you to a stretch limousine with Dom Perignon chilling in the backseat and a driver named Raoul in the front. I’ll take you to a restaurant that has a name neither of us can pronounce, and we’ll order one of everything on the menu, and a bottle of Cristal to go with. And I will expect nothing in return except the pleasure of your company.”

As if, she thought. “Well, I don’t know, Mr. Mulholland,” she replied in her most vapid Amber voice. “You jes’ kinda took the whole surprise out of it by tellin’ me all that. Where would be the fun of goin’ out and doin’ it now?”

He smiled at her the way a man smiles when he knows he’s close to getting exactly what he wants.

But he wasn’t there yet.

Ginny told herself to turn him down, that no matter how much he assured her he wouldn’t expect anything sexual in nature in return, no man—not one—ever spent that much on a woman he just met without there being the expectation of some spectacular sex at the end of the night. At least, no man ever took out a woman like
Amber
without expecting some spectacular sex.

Now Ginny smiled, too. It had been a long, long time since she’d gone out on a date with
any
man, let alone one who could afford anything more than Steak n Shake and a second-run movie at Village 8. And it wasn’t like he was a total stranger. Everyone in the world knew who Russell Mulholland was. And he was definitely right about the fact that she’d
never
have another opportunity in her life to enjoy the sort of night he described. It really was an offer that was too good to refuse. Just because he was making the offer to Amber instead of Ginny . . .

Actually, that was the best part. Because assumptions went both ways, and if she showed up for the date as herself, instead of the woman
he
assumed
her
to be, not only would he not
expect
sex at the end of the night, he wouldn’t
want
it.

“You don’t have to pick me up in a limo,” she told him.

His smile at that went supernova. “I insist.”

She shook her head. “I’ll meet you.”

“But—”

“At a restaurant whose name I can pronounce just fine, thanks, called Vincenzo’s. Make a reservation for five thirty. I want to get started early if we’re going to eat our way through the entire menu.” Because then, she thought, there would be plenty of leftovers to bring home in a doggie bag, and Maisy and Hazel both loved Italian.

Russell nodded his head with much satisfaction. “The Dom Perignon will be chilling when you arrive.”

WHEN NATALIE AWOKE, IT WAS TO DISCOVER THAT A lineup of rowdy hockey players was caroming through her belly at full speed and rocketing pucks into her brain, leaving the mouth between little more than filthy, overskated slush. Then the crowd, also apparently in her brain, went wild. And then someone bodychecked her. Hard. Which was really weird, because Louisville didn’t have a hockey team and hadn’t for some time.

She opened her eyes to almost complete darkness, but not before the steroid-crazed forward in her stomach did some slap shot thing and beaned her squarely behind her forehead with another puck.

“Ow,” she murmured, lifting a hand to rub at the sharp pain.

Vaguely, she heard what sounded like a hockey tournament raging in the next room, something that might have explained how she had become a casualty of such, except that she also registered the fact that she was still dressed in the cocktail dress she’d donned the night before, and if there was one thing Natalie Beckett had learned in life, it was that one
never
wore cocktail attire to a sporting event. Unless, it went without saying, it was a fund-raiser.

What the . . . ?

Had she left the TV on before going to bed? And why hadn’t she put on her pajamas? And what was with all the physical unfitness in her belly and brain? She started to lever herself up to sitting, but that just made the hockey players in her stomach turn into a pack of wild animals, all of whom wanted to be the enforcer, and it doubled the number of pucks—and their velocity—in her brain. So she lay back down again, cupping one hand over her forehead and the other over her stomach.

Okay, clearly something had happened last night that made her go to bed in her clothes, and—
okay
—she was obviously suffering from the effects of having had too much to drink. Natalie knew a nasty hangover when she felt one. Not that she’d felt one since her sophomore year in college during rush week, but that was beside the point. The point was that she’d obviously partied like a sorority girl last night, and the details at the moment were a bit, ah, sketchy.

Sketchy, ha,
she echoed herself.
More like nonexistent
.

She remembered sitting in the English Grill stalking Russell—ah, she meant scoping . . . oh, what the hell . . . stalking Russell Mulholland—and then having Dean Waterman ooze into the chair opposite hers like the overripe contents of a septic tank. Then she remembered him saying something really stupid—no surprise there—and then she decided to—

Ooooooh
. Now she remembered. She’d turned it into a drinking game. Whenever Dean said something stupid, she’d taken a drink. Well, hell, no wonder she’d passed out.

What a dumb idea,
she thought. She should have realized she’d be under the table in no time. Dean rarely said something that
wasn’t
stupid. No wonder she couldn’t remember what happened after th—

She jackknifed up in bed, panic surging through her—and pain knifing through her belly and brain again—when she did indeed remember what had happened after that. Finn Guthrie had come into the restaurant with Russell Mulholland. And Mulholland had invited Natalie and Dean to join them for dinner. After that . . .

She closed her eyes in abject humiliation. After that, she must have gotten so snockered she didn’t even remember what happened. She kind of recalled sitting next to Mulholland and thinking he was even better looking in real life than he was in his photographs. She also remembered thinking he still wasn’t as attractive as Finn. To her credit, she was pretty sure she’d tried to tell him about Clementine’s party. Unfortunately, she was also pretty sure—dammit—she’d never gotten the words out. And after
that
. . .

She opened her eyes again, thankful for the complete and profound darkness. Because she could remember nothing after that, and she really hated to think that she’d made a complete fool of herself in front of Finn Guthrie.

No, in front of Russell Mulholland, she quickly corrected herself. She couldn’t care less what Finn thought about her. It was his employer she’d been trying to impress. Impress by getting so drunk, she couldn’t even remember what she’d said or done.

So how had she gotten home? Surely she hadn’t driven. Surely Dean would have been at least smart enough and decent enough not to let her get behind the wheel of a car. Surely Dean had driven her home and put her to—

Automatically, her nose wrinkled in disgust. If he’d copped a feel while she was unconscious, she’d smack him upside the head but good. With a brick. One of those big cement bricks they used to build school gymnasiums.

What time was it, anyway? She turned to where her clock with the big purple numbers should be, but it wasn’t on the nightstand. Unless maybe she was turned around and had gone to bed—or been dumped there—backward, with her head at the foot. So she looked where the clock should be if that were the case. But there was no sign of it anywhere. Damn. She must have been ambulatory enough to make it into the bedroom but incoherent enough to run into things and knock stuff to the floor.

She reached over her head to feel around for the brass headboard, but her wiggling fingers met only thin air, telling her she was indeed at the foot of the bed. She did her best to scramble back up to the other end, looking first over one side of the mattress, then the other, to locate her clock. Ah. There it was on the floor, right on the side it was supposed to be on, having been toppled there by her plunge into bed—whoever had been responsible for it. But the fall had evidently slapped it out of whack, because not only were the numbers red instead of purple, they were half the size they normally were. Even worse, they were arranged in a way that indicated it was just after three a.m., and there was no way Natalie could have been passed out . . . ah, she meant asleep . . . for that long.

Just what time had dinner ended, anyway?

When she reached down to retrieve the clock, some of the hockey pucks in her brain toppled to the left, causing her center of gravity to shift—that was her story and she was sticking to it—something that made her, too, go toppling off the bed and onto the floor. The lushly carpeted floor with the thick, comfy carpet pad beneath it.

Natalie didn’t have carpet in her bedroom. She had a wool dhurrie rug rolled open over her hardwood—and very
un
padded—floor. Pushing herself up onto all fours, she crawled along the edge of the bed until she felt the bottom edge of a nightstand of some kind. Then she felt her way up to the base of a lamp, then farther up to a lamp cord, which, after only a small hesitation, she tugged.

“Oh, ow,” she said again in response to the soft white light that spilled over her. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and lifted a hand to her forehead again in an effort to halt the pain that hammered her right between the eyes. Then her stomach lurched again, and she opened her eyes once more. She allowed herself a fraction of a second to look around, long enough to note the elegant furnishings and appointments of one of the Brown Hotel’s most luxurious suites. Then—yes, there was a god—she saw the door of a bathroom ajar on the other side of the room. She had just enough time to reach the toilet before losing the entire contents of her stomach into it.

And just like that, hockey season came to an end. But, suffice it to say, Natalie did
not
win the Stanley Cup.

She flushed and continued to cling to the side of the bowl for another minute, just in case there might be a second-stringer or two still trying to leave the rink. Finally, when her stomach settled some and her head began to clear, she figured it was safe to stand.

Until she got a look at herself in the mirror.

Holy cow, she looked like the demon offspring of Mari lyn Manson and RuPaul. Her mascara had smudged to raccoon eyes, and her lipstick had journeyed from her mouth up to her ear, leaving a few bread crumbs behind. Ew. Her hair was matted on one side to the point where it was significantly higher than the other side, making her look vaguely like the Matterhorn. Surely all that had happened
after
her dinner with Russell Mulholland. Surely.

As she ran some cold water into the sink, she noticed a man’s shaving kit open on the vanity, and for the first time, she gave more than a moment’s thought to wondering where the hell she was. Still at the Brown, obviously, but whose room? Had Dean taken one when he realized the severity of Natalie’s condition? And if so, why had he had the foresight to bring along a shaving kit?

Then she reminded herself that it was Derby time, which meant Dean probably wouldn’t have been able to even get a room. Besides, his condo was barely five minutes away. He could have driven them to his place in the time it would have taken him to get a room and wrangle Natalie up to it.