Neck & Neck (22 page)

She made her way up the stairs, and a half hour later, she was showered and had changed into her pajamas and was lying in bed trying to steal a few hours of sleep before launching into another day. But her mind was racing too quickly with everything that had happened this evening, and every time her thoughts landed on Finn, she forced them to ricochet onto something else.

This close,
she thought. She’d been
this close
to snagging Russell Mulholland for Clementine’s party. She’d been sitting at his dinner table, at his
invitation
, for crying out loud, and she’d still managed to mess everything up. It had been her best chance—hell, probably her
only
chance—and she still hadn’t been able to make things work the way she was supposed to have made them work. Plan B had failed before she’d even realized what it was.

With a growl of discontent, Natalie shoved the covers off herself and jackknifed up in her bed. There was no way she’d be able to sleep with her mind racing the way it was, with recriminations in first place, guilt in second, and self-loathing bringing up the rear. Automatically, she headed downstairs for her office, thinking maybe a rousing round or two—or fifty—of spider solitaire would bore her enough to make her sleepy. But first, likewise automatically, she checked her e-mail, to see if maybe, by some wild miracle, George Clooney or Denzel Washington or Nicole Kidman had dropped her a line saying, why, yes, they’d be in town for Derby, and they’d love to come to Clementine Hotchkiss’s party.

Hey, it could happen.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t happened in the fifteen hours since Natalie had last checked her e-mail. Even more unfortunately, she
had
received a reply from Morty Ham merdinkle saying he’d be honored to attend, because she couldn’t for the life of her remember who Morty Ham merdinkle was. But what was most unfortunate of all was that a quick Google check revealed that Morty Hammerdin kle was a ventriloquist who’d performed for children in Louisville decades before Natalie was even born, and all his puppets were racially insensitive stereotypes, which was why he hadn’t performed in Louisville since decades before Natalie was born.

How the hell had he gotten on her list? she wondered. Man, she had to be more careful when she got desperate. Then she remembered. Dean had been the one to suggest him, telling Natalie how much his father had loved the guy when he was a kid. At that point, Natalie had been so hard up for talent, she hadn’t bothered to do much research into anyone’s background. If he’d been a local celebrity with kids back in the forties and fifties, she’d figured, then he would obviously have appealed to Clementine’s social circle.

Yet another reason to never, ever, under any circumstances, pay heed to Dean or anyone else in the Waterman family. Because now, on top of everything else, Natalie was going to have to figure out how to uninvite a guy to a party no one was going to be coming to anyway.

Just to verify that, she scrolled quickly through her new e-mails, only to find that there were none,
none
from any celebrities—or any celebrealities, for that matter. Not even from the X, Y, or Z lists.

In a fit of despair, she dropped her head to the desktop and began to bang it gently on the surface. In time with the bonking, she told herself, “You are . . . such a . . . loser.”

No one was going to come to this party. She might as well just accept it. She should call Clementine today and tell her the party was going to be a flop, so that at least Clementine would have a chance to make other plans for Derby. She should just confess to her client that she was an abject, unmitigated loser, refund the client’s money, cancel the caterer, the band, and everything else, take a huge financial hit eating the nonrefundable deposits herself, and then slink under a rock to hide until it was time for her to make good on her agreement with her parents and date Dean Waterman for six months.

But then, if she was under a rock, Dean would already be right there with her, wouldn’t he?

Strangely, it was more the thought of disappointing Clementine than going out with Dean that bothered Natalie. Then she remembered it wasn’t just Clementine she’d be disappointing. There was that small matter of a six-figure check that wouldn’t be going to Kids, Inc., because of Natalie’s failure. So she’d cover that herself, too.

But even all that wasn’t what disappointed her the most. What was most disheartening was the realization that she had failed abysmally again. Maybe she wasn’t suited to a career, she told herself. Maybe her parents were right. Maybe even Dean was right. Maybe she should just forget about trying to be successful at anything, since the only thing she seemed to succeed at was failure.

As if cued by the thought, her e-mail alert chimed softly, and a disembodied voice that was supposed to sound like Clive Owen, but never quite did, announced that she had mail. And also that she looked sexy as hell in those pajamas, which would have been flattering had it not been for the fact that Natalie’s tech guy had programmed the voice to say that at her own specifications. After seven a.m., which was when Natalie got dressed for work, Clive told her she had mail and that she looked ten pounds thinner in that outfit. And in the evenings, Clive told her she had mail and then insisted on letting him be the one to cook dinner and then give her a foot massage.

Hey, sometimes a computer-generated Clive Owen telling her that stuff was the only thing that got her through her day.

“Thanks, Clive,” she said as she moused over to the mail icon and clicked on it. Maybe George Clooney had come through after all.

But it wasn’t George Clooney this time, alas. It was Dean. Alas. Natalie told herself it was a sign of just how exhausted she was that she actually clicked on the mail to see what it said. Then again, she did wonder what Dean was doing up so early. Plus, the subject heading was a bit intriguing, since it was punctuated with about eighty billion exclamation points, and anyone who was the crème de la crème of society knew exclamation points were far too plebeian to ever use even one. Preceding those exclamation points was also the leading sentiment, “
You’ll Never Guess.
”

Well, of course Natalie
could
guess, but she doubted Dean would be interested in her conjectures, since they would consist largely of things like guessing his sense of decency, his level of moral obligation, and his stage of mental development, none of which she would place anywhere in the upper reaches.

What she
wouldn’t
have guessed was that he had invited Russell Mulholland to a dinner party Wednesday night and that Russell Mulholland had accepted.

That
bastard
, she thought. Though she honestly wasn’t sure if the epithet was meant for Dean or for the billionaire. Ultimately, she decided it was for both. For Dean, because he’d usurped her invitation—evidently pretty effortlessly, too—and for Mulholland, because he couldn’t be bothered to come to a fund-raiser for underprivileged kids, but he jumped at the chance to hobnob with shallow, pointless people who were obviously much like himself.

But what really toasted Natalie’s melbas was that, as she read Dean’s e-mail, she realized he wanted—no,
expected
—her to act as his hostess at this impromptu party, as if she didn’t have anything better to do with her Wednesday night.

Of course, she
didn’t
have anything better to do with her Wednesday night, but that was beside the point. The point was that
she
was supposed to have been the one to win Russell Mulholland’s appearance at a party, not Dean. And her party was way more important than Dean’s was. Not only did her career and Clementine’s standing in the community depend on it, but so did a very worthy cause for kids. What kind of man was Russell Mulholland that he wouldn’t even give Natalie a chance to tell him about all the wonderful things the revenue from Clementine’s party would provide those children, but he would happily show up at Dean’s at the drop of a hat?

Well, she’d show both of them, she thought. She’d tell Dean she’d be happy to act as his hostess—never mind that she’d have to put up with his smug “
I knew you couldn’t resist me
” nonsense all night. And as soon as Russell Mulholland showed up, she’d corner the man and
make
him listen to how important his appearance—his incredibly brief appearance—at the Hotchkiss party would be. How much good he could do simply by stopping by long enough to glad-hand a few civic leaders and sign a few autographs.

She would get Russell Mulholland to attend Clementine’s party, Natalie told herself as she lifted her hands to the keyboard to type her reply to Dean. She would. She wasn’t a loser. She wasn’t. Whatever it took to get Mulholland to the Hotchkiss estate on Derby Eve, Natalie would do it. Even if it meant spending an evening with Dean.

The man with whom she would have to spend six months of her life that she would never get back if she didn’t.

IT WAS NO EASY FEAT FOR RUSSELL TO SNEAK OUT alone without anyone realizing it for one night, let alone two, but he managed as well Wednesday as he had before. Though not without making everyone incredibly suspicious at first by telling them he intended to spend the entirety of the evening in his hotel suite. Fortunately, by a stroke of amazing luck, he’d noted an item earlier in the day while reading the newspaper that said ESPN2 was featuring the first round of women’s championship roller derby tonight, something that had gone a long way toward convincing everyone a stay in his suite wasn’t so far-fetched. It was also something that made him set up his TiVo. Add to it the fact that he’d had such an exhausting week so far, what with hanging out at strip clubs until nearly daybreak and spending his days at the track and his evenings at some function or another, and he finally stopped getting the evil eye from Finn.

Still, he knew Finn hadn’t been completely convinced, even knowing Russell’s proclivities when it came to Spandex-wrapped, girl-on-girl action disguised as professional sports. But he wouldn’t worry about that right now. Because he had used his limited—read, nonexistent—knowledge of feng shui to choose the most intimate table in a corner of Vincenzo’s, one that would be growing more intimate as soon as Amber arrived. He sighed silently with contentment, admired the handsome ivory elegance of the place, and checked his watch for the tenth time.

In spite of Finn not having pushed, Russell still halfway expected his friend to come storming through the entrance to the restaurant, hand on hip, one finger wagging, then grab him by the ear like Aunt Bee and drag him out to the woodshed for a whuppin’ because he’d told a lie. He reminded himself that there was no way anyone had followed the stretch limo he’d hired for the night, because he’d paid the driver outrageously to keep an eye out for any suspicious cars that might be tailing them. He’d paid the driver even more outrageously to go by the name Raoul for the night, but that was neither here nor there, even if the guy had driven a very hard bargain on account of his real name was Butch.

Russell checked his watch for the eleventh time. Five twenty-eight. Technically, Amber wasn’t late. Technically, he had just been early. Never mind that he was never early for anything and in fact went out of his way to be more than fashionably late, just to piss people off and because he knew he could get away with it. Amber wasn’t going to stand him up. He was sure of it.

Well, okay,
almost
sure of it. But then, that was part of her allure, the fact that he had no idea what to make of her. Other than that she’d obviously been around the block a time or two—or ten—and that she would be a pushover by evening’s end, because he intended to woo her as no woman named Amber who worked in a strip club had ever been wooed before. And that wooing would end in something that would make both of them go
Woo!
Hopefully more than once.

A movement near the restaurant’s entrance caught his eye, and Russell snapped his gaze in that direction, only to be immediately disappointed. Although a woman did indeed stand framed in the doorway, it wasn’t Amber. Even with the late afternoon sun glaring through the windows behind her, he could see that she was a pale, plain creature, as lacking in color and attitude as Amber was abundant with it. With an audible sigh this time, he dropped his gaze to his watch again, noting that it was now five thirty on the nose, so his bird of paradise should be striding through the door right about—

A movement on the other side of the table made him look up, and he saw that the pale, plain creature had taken it upon herself to join him. He hated it when people did that—assumed that because of his celebrity, they could approach him without a single concern for his personal privacy. It was why he employed bodyguards, why he kept to himself, why he was such a freaking recluse, for God’s sake. Not to mention the fact that this woman, if she didn’t beat it now, might give Amber the wrong idea if she strolled through that door and saw Russell sitting here with her.

Though, he had to admit, now that he got a better look at his uninvited companion, she wasn’t quite as plain or as colorless as he’d first thought. Her eyes were a rather remarkable shade of blue, and her mouth was too full to be considered anything but erotic. The rest of her
was
lacking in color, however, from her pale brown, shoulder-length hair to her utter lack of cosmetics to her simple black dress—made of cotton, if he wasn’t mistaken, a fabric that certainly had its place, but not in a restaurant like this. The cut was a little off-the-shoulder, though, revealing skin that was smooth and unblemished, so it wasn’t completely unappealing. Her lack of makeup, too, didn’t really detract from her features, he decided, because her skin was a creamy, flawless ivory, her cheeks were tinted with the bare hint of a blush, and her lashes were thick and dark.

Still, she was nothing like Amber, and the sooner he got rid of her, the better. So he pulled a pen out of his inside jacket pocket, grabbed the cocktail napkin the waiter had dropped in front of him when he first sat down, and scrawled his name illegibly over it. Then he extended it to the woman.