“Where is Edward Baldwine! I demand to speak with—”
“I’m right here,” Edward said in a low voice. “Moe, I’ll handle this.”
“And the Lord grants us small miracles,” the man muttered as he walked off.
As Buggy’s colored contacts went up and down Edward’s body, even her Botoxed face strained with the shock she clearly felt. “Edward … you look …”
“Smashing, I know.” He nodded at the money. “Close that ridiculous show up, get back in your vehicle and go on about your business. I told you over the phone, I do not sell my stock.”
Buggy cleared her throat. “I, ah, I heard what happened to you. I didn’t realize, however—”
“The plastic surgeons did a fine job with my face, don’t you think.”
“Ah … yes. Yes, they did.”
“But enough of catching up. You are leaving.”
Buggy pinned a smile on her face. “Now, Edward, how long have our families gone back?”
“Your husband’s family and mine have known each other for over two hundred years. I don’t know your kin and have no intention of making their acquaintance. What I am very sure of, however, is that you are not leaving here with rights to any foal. Now, g’on. Get going.”
As he turned away, she said, “There is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in that briefcase.”
“Is that supposed to impress me? My dear woman, I can find a quarter of a million in the cushions of my couch so I assure you, I am wholly unswayed by your show of liquidity. More to the point, I can’t be bought. Not for one dollar. Not for a billion.” He glanced over at the chauffeur. “Am I getting my shotgun. Or are you squeezing yourself back into that limo and having your driver hit the gas?”
“I am going to tell your father about this! This is disgraceful—”
“My father is dead to me. You’re more than welcome to discuss my business with him, but it will get you no further than this wasted trip out into the country. Enjoy your Derby weekend—elsewhere.”
Pushing into the broom handle, he started to shamble his way back to the barn. In his wake, the chorus of multiple car doors opening and closing and the limo’s tires squealing out on the asphalt suggested that the woman was on her cell phone, bitching to her twenty-years-older husband about the shameful way she’d just been treated.
Although considering gossip had her having been an exotic dancer in her twenties, he could guess she’d been exposed to rather a lot worse in her previous life.
Before he went back inside and resumed his sweeping, he looked over the vista of his farm: The hundreds of acres of rolling grassland that was cut into paddocks with dark brown five-rail fences. The three stables with their red and gray slate roofs and their black siding with red trim. The outbuildings for the equipment, and the state-of-the-art trailers, and the white farmhouse where he stayed, and the clinic and the exercise ring.
His mother owned all of it. Her great-grandfather had bought the land and started the equine enterprise, and then her grandfather and father had continued to invest in the business. Things had coasted after her father died some twenty years ago—and Edward had certainly never considered getting involved.
As the eldest son, he’d been destined to step into the leadership role at the Bradford Bourbon Company—and actually, more than what legacy or primogeniture dictated, that had been where his heart was. He had been a distiller in his blood, as scrupulous with his products as a priest.
But then everything had changed.
Red & Black Stables had been the best, post-everything solution, a diversion that occupied his days until he could drink himself to sleep. And even better, it was something his father wasn’t involved in.
What little future he had was here with the bluegrass and the horses.
It was all he had.
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you,” Moe said from behind him.
“Not really.” He shifted his weight and began to sweep the aisle again. “But no one is getting a part of this farm, not even God Himself.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that.”
Edward glanced over his shoulder to remind the man what his face looked like. “You really think there’s anything I’m afraid of now?”
As Moe made the sign of the cross, Edward rolled his eyes … and went back to his work.
NINE
“—laying in bed and playing with my breasts.” Virginia Elizabeth Baldwine, “Gin” to her family, leaned back in her padded chair. “And then I’m putting my hand between my legs. What do you want me to do with it now that it’s there? Yes, I’m naked … what else would I be? Now, tell me what to do.”
She tapped her cigarette over the Baccarat crystal wineglass she’d emptied about ten minutes ago and crossed her legs under her silk robe. The tugging on her hair was beyond annoying, and she glared at her hairstylist in the mirror of her bathroom.