The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings Book 2) (5 page)

It would have been a pity to destroy such beauty—and God knew there would be nothing but shards and shreds left after she was done throwing it.

What stopped her was her fiancé’s hand grabbing at her hair, catching hold, and whiplashing her right off her stilettoes. After a brief moment of weightlessness, which was kind of fun, there was a smack down that stung her shoulder blades, clapped her teeth together and reminded her that the coccyx was in fact a very unnecessary body part.

The resulting pain down there also took her back to her father spanking her as a child with one of his alligator skin belts.

Of
course, she had resolutely refused to learn anything from those slap-happy sessions or alter her behavior in any way. Just to prove he didn’t run her life.

And yes, things had worked out so damned well since then.

Richard Pford’s thin, angular face came over the top of her head. “Hate me all you like, but you will
not
disrespect me like this again. Are we clear.”

He was still pulling on her hair, forcing her neck and spine to counter his strength or risk her being decapitated.

“What I do or do not do”—she grunted—“will not change anyone’s opinion of you. Nothing ever has.”

As she glared at him, she also smiled. Behind those rat eyes of his, right now, he had gone on a little trip down memory lane, his low self-esteem running through the script of insults that had been ladled out at him while they had been classmates at Charlemont Country Day. Gin had been among the name-callers, very much a mean girl who had run in a pack. Richard, on the other hand, had been a scrawny, pimply kid with a grating sense of entitlement and a voice like Donald Duck. Not even his family’s extraordinary wealth had saved him socially—or gotten him laid.

And indeed, nineties slang had yielded such stellar nomenclature, hadn’t it: loser, scrub, tool, dork, fucker.

Richard shook himself back into focus. “I expect my wife to be waiting at home for me when I have a business engagement she is not welcome at.” He yanked on her hair. “I do
not
expect her to be on a jet to Chicago—”

“You’re living in
my
home—”

Richard snapped his hold on her again, like he was schooling a dog with a choke chain. “
Especially
when I told her she was not permitted to use any of my planes.”

“But if I’d taken a Bradford one, how could I have been sure you’d find out about it?”

The look of confusion on his face was worth everything that was happening—and what was going to come next.

Gin tore herself free and got back on her feet. Her Gucci dress was twisted about, and she debated whether to leave it that way or straighten it.

Disheveled,
she decided.

“The party was divine,” she said. “So were both the pilots. You certainly know what kind of men to hire.”

As Richard exploded up from the floor and raised his hand over his shoulder, she laughed. “Be careful with the face. My make-up artist is good, but there are limits to concealers.”

In her mind, throughout her body, crazy mania sang like a choir at the altar of madness. And for a split second she thought of her mother, lying in her bed just down the hall, as incapacitated as any homeless addict on the streets.

When a Bradford became hooked on opiates, however, they got them from their private physician and it was Porthault rather than cardboard, private nurse rather than shelter. “Medication” instead of “drugs.”

Whatever the vocabulary, one could appreciate how it might be better and easier than dealing with reality.

“You need me,” Richard hissed. “And when I buy something, I expect it to function properly. Or I throw it out.”

“And anyone who wants to be the governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky someday should know that beating his wife presents a terrible PR problem.”

“You’d be surprised. I’m a Republican, remember.”

Over Richard’s shoulder, the oval mirror above one of her pair of eighteenth-century Italian Louis XV commodes presented her with a perfectly framed image of the two of them: her with her lipstick smudged like blood on her jaw, her blue dress hiked up to the lace tops of her thigh highs, her brunette hair in messy waves like the halo of the whore she was; him in his old-fashioned nightshirt, his hair eighties Wall Street–side part, his Ichabod Crane body strung like a wire about to get tripped. All around them? Silk drapes like ball gowns next to windows tall as waterfalls, antiques worthy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, a bed as big as a reception hall with a monogrammed duvet.

She and Richard in their dishabille and their disregard for polite discourse were the wrong note in a sonata, the tear through the center of a Vermeer, the flat tire on a Phantom Drophead.

And
oh, Gin loved the ruination. Seeing her and Richard together, both trembling on the edge of insanity, scratched the itch that she had been seeking to redress.

They were each right, however. With her family’s abrupt reversal of financial fortune and his gubernatorial ambitions, they were the union of a parasite and its host, locked in a precarious relationship based on his decades-old crush on the most popular debutante in Charlemont and her unexpectedly finding herself on the red side of the ledger.

Still, marriages had been built on far lesser bases … like the illusion of love, for example, the lie of fidelity, the poisonous Kool-Aid of “fate.”

At once, she became tired.

“I am going to bed,” she announced as she turned away to her bathroom. “This conversation bores me.”

When he grabbed her this time, it was not by the hair. “But I am not done with you.”

As he spun her around and pulled her against him, she yawned in his face. “Do be quick, will you. Oh, that’s right. You’re nothing but fast—it’s the only thing I enjoy about having sex with you.”

Lizzie’s Farmhouse
Madisonville, Indiana

“Y
ou didn’t actually think I was there to jump, did you.”

As
the man Lizzie loved spoke up from the other end of her sofa, she tried to pull herself together … and when she got nowhere with that, she settled for stroking the handmade quilt she’d tugged across her legs. Her little living room was in the front of the farmhouse, and had a big six-paned window that looked out onto her porch and across her front lawn and dirt driveway. The decor was rustic and cozy, her collection of antique farm tools mounted on the walls, her old-fashioned upright piano across the way, the braided throw rugs done in primary colors to bring out the color of the wooden floors.

Typically, her sanctuary never failed to calm her. That was a stretch this dawn, however.

What a night. It had taken about two hours to tell the police what had happened, apologize, get the cars sorted, and head back.

If it hadn’t been for Lane’s friend, Deputy Sheriff Mitchell Ramsey, they’d
still be out at the river’s edge by the Victorian ice cream place—or maybe down at the police station. In handcuffs. Getting strip searched.

Mitch Ramsey had a way of taking care of difficult situations.

So, yes, now they were here on her couch, Lane showered and in his favorite U.Va. sweatshirt, her changed into one of his button-down shirts and some leggings. But jeez, even though it was May in the South, she felt cold in her bones. Which was the answer to Lane’s question, wasn’t it.

“Lizzie? Did you think I was going to jump?”

“Of course not.”

God, she was never going to forget the image of him on the far side of the rail, turning to look at her … losing his grip … plummeting out of sight—

“Lizzie—”

Throwing up her hands, she tried to keep her voice level. Failed. “If you weren’t going to jump, what the hell were you doing out there? You were leaning over the drop, Lane. You were going to—”

“I was trying to find out what it was like.”

“Because you wanted to kill yourself,” she concluded through a tight throat.

“No, because I wanted to understand him.”

Lizzie frowned. “Who? Your father … ?” But come on, like he was trying to figure out someone else? “Lane, seriously, there are other ways to come to terms with this.”

For example, he could go to a shrink and sit on a different couch from this one. Which would decrease his chances of falling to his death down to zero as he tried to get a handle on what was going on in his life.

And as a bonus, she wouldn’t have to worry about becoming a nautical felon.

Wonder if that five-dollar bill was still tucked into that gas cap, she thought.

Lane stretched out one of his arms like it was stiff and cursed as his elbow, or maybe shoulder, made a popping sound. “Look, now that Father is dead, I’m never going to have any answers. I’m stuck here, cleaning up his fucking mess, and I’m resentful as hell and I just don’t get it. Anyone can say
he was a shitty human being, and that is the truth … but that isn’t an explanation of the details. And I was staring at your ceiling, not sleeping, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I went to the bridge, I went over the rail to stand where he had stood … because I wanted to see what he saw when he was there. I wanted to get an idea of what he’d felt. I wanted answers. There’s nowhere else to go for them—and no, I was
not
there to kill myself. I swear on Miss Aurora’s soul.”

After a moment, Lizzie sat forward and took his hand. “I’m sorry. I just thought—well, I saw what I did, and you haven’t been talking to me about any of this.”

“What is there to say? All I’m doing is going around in circles in my head until I want to scream.”

“But at least I’d know where you’re at. The silence is scary on my end. Your mind is spinning? Well, so is mine.”

“I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “But I am going to fight. For my family. For us. And trust me, if I were going to commit suicide, the last way I’d end my life is in the same fashion he did. I don’t want anything in common with that man. I’m stuck with the DNA, nothing I can do there. But I’m not going to encourage any further parallels.”

Lizzie took a deep breath. “Can I help in some way?”

“If there was something you could do, I’d let you know. I promise. But it’s all on me right now. I’ve got to find the missing money, pay back Prospect Trust, and pray to God I can keep the business going. Bradford Bourbon’s been around for over two hundred years—it can’t end now. It just can’t.”

As Lane turned to look out of that big window, she studied his face. He was, as her grandmother would have called it, a real looker. Classically handsome, with blue eyes the color of a clear fall sky, and dark hair that was thick between her fingers, and a body that was guaranteed to catch every eye in any room.

But it had not been love at first sight for her. Far from it. The Bradford family’s ne’er-do-well youngest son had had pole marks all over him as far as she was concerned—although the truth was that under her
disdain had been a vicious attraction she’d moved heaven and earth to ignore. And then they had gotten together … and she had fallen in love with him in typical
Sabrina
fashion.

Well, except in her case, the “staff” was a horticulturalist with a master’s in landscape architecture from Cornell.

But then Chantal had gone to the press four weeks later and announced she was engaged to Lane, claiming the child she carried was his. That had ended things for Lizzie, and Lane had married the woman.

Only to disappear up North shortly thereafter.

Horrible. What a horrible time it had been. Following the break-up, Lizzie had done her best to keep working at Easterly and stay focused. But everyone noticed when Chantal suddenly wasn’t pregnant anymore.

Come to find out later that the woman hadn’t “lost” the baby. She had “taken care” of it at a private clinic up in Cinci.

Unbelievable. And thank God Lane was divorcing her.

Thank God also that Lizzie had seen the light when she had and allowed herself to trust the man, not the reputation. Talk about near misses.

“Sun’s coming up,” Lane murmured. “It’s a new day.”

His hand stroked its way up her bare foot and onto her ankle, lingering on her skin in a manner she wasn’t sure he was aware of. He did that a lot, touching her absently, as if when his focus shifted away from her, his body was compelled to close the mental distance with physical contact.

“God, I love it out here.” He smiled at the golden light that drew long shadows out on her lawn and across the fields that had just been seeded. “It’s so quiet.”

That was true. Her farmhouse with its tract of land and its distant neighbors was a world away from his family’s estate. Out here, the only disturbances were plows off in the distance and the occasional rogue cow.

Easterly was never quiet, even when its rooms were silent. Especially now.

The debt. The deaths. The disorder.

“I just wanted to know what he experienced when he died,” Lane said softly. “I want it to have hurt. I want him … to have hurt.”

Lizzie
pointed her toes to stroke his forearm. “Don’t feel badly about that. The anger is only natural.”

“Miss Aurora would tell me I should pray for him, instead. Pray for his soul.”