Unfortunately, that look in her eye remained unchanged as well.
The one that told him she, too, had thought of him since he had left.
Just not in a good way.
As his mouth moved, Lane realized he was speaking some combination of words, but he wasn’t tracking. There were too many images filtering through his brain, all memories from the past: her naked body in messy sheets, her hair threaded through his fingers, his hands on her inner thighs. In his mind, he heard her saying his name as he pumped into her hard, rocking the bed until the headboard slammed against the wall—
“Yes, I knew you’d come,” she said levelly.
Talk about different wavelengths. He was off-kilter down to his Guccis, in the midst of reliving their relationship, and she was utterly unaffected by his presence.
“Have you seen her yet?” she asked. Then frowned. “Hello?”
What the hell was she saying to him? Oh, right. “I hear she’s already home from the hospital.”
“About an hour ago.”
“Is she okay?”
“She left here in an ambulance on oxygen. What do you think.” Lizzie glanced in the direction she’d been headed in. “Look, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to—”
“Lizzie,” he said in a low voice. “Lizzie, I’m …”
As he trailed off, her expression became bored. “Do us both a favor and don’t bother finishing that, okay? Just go see her and … do whatever else you came here to do, all right? Leave me out of it.”
“Christ, Lizzie, why won’t you hear me out—”
“Why should I, is more the question.”
“Because civilized people give others that common courtesy—”
And BOOM! they were off.
“Excuse me?” she demanded. “Like just because I live over the river and I work for your family, that makes me some kind of an ape? Really—you’re going to go there?”
“That is not what I meant—”
“Oh, I think it is—”
“I swear,” he muttered, “that chip on your shoulder—”
“Is what, Lane? Showing again? Sorry, you’re not allowed to twist things around like I’m the one with the problem. That’s on you. That has always been on you.”
Lane threw his hands up. “I can’t get through to you. All I want to do is explain—”
“You want to do something for me? Fine, great, here.” She shoved a half-full pitcher of what looked like lemonade at him. “Take this to the kitchen and get someone to refill it. Then you can tell them to take it back out to the pool house, or maybe you can deliver it yourself—to your wife.”
With that, she spun around and punched out the nearest door. And as she strode off across the lawn toward the conservatory, he couldn’t decide what held more appeal: putting his head into the wall, throwing the pitcher, or doing a combination of both.
He picked option four: “Goddamn, motherfucking, shit …”
“Sir? May I be of service?”
At the British accent, Lane glanced over at a fifty-year-old man who was dressed like he was the front house of a funeral parlor. “Who the hell are you?”
“Mr. Harris, sir. I am Newark Harris, the butler.” The guy bowed at the waist. “The pilots were kind enough to call ahead that you were en route. May I attend to your luggage?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Very good, sir. Your room is in order, and if you require ought further than your wardrobe upstairs, it will be my pleasure to procure any necessaries for you.”
Oh, no, Lane thought. Nope, he was not staying—he knew damn well what weekend was coming up, and the purpose for his visit had nothing to do with the Derby social circus.
He shoved the pitcher at Mr. Dandy-man. “I don’t know what’s in here and I don’t care. Just fill it up and take it where it belongs.”
“My pleasure, sir. Will you be requiring—”
“No, that’s it.”
The man seemed surprised as Lane pushed past him and headed in the direction of the staff part of the house. But, of course, the Englishman didn’t question him. Which, considering the mood he was in? Not only was that proper butler etiquette, but it would fall under a self-preservation rubric as well.
Two minutes in the house. Two damn minutes.
And he was already nuclear.
FOUR
Lane marched his way into the massive professional kitchen and was immediately taken aback by both the olfactory “noise” and the auditory silence. Even though there were a good dozen chefs bent over the stainless-steel counters and the Viking stoves, none of the white coats were speaking as they labored. A few of them did look up, however, recognized him and stopped whatever they were doing, he ignored their OMG! reaction. He was used to that double take by now, his reputation having preceded him across the nation for years.
Thank you, Vanity Fair, for that exposé on his family a decade ago. And the three follow-ups since. And the speculations in the tabloids. And don’t get him started on the Internet.
Once that lowest-common-denominator? media-packaged celebrity status sucker-fished you?