She’d had his heart in the palm of her hand since the first day he’d laid eyes on her.
Getting out of his car, he brushed his hair back and buttoned the front of his pink, pale blue, and yellow plaid sport coat. Then he bent down, took his straw derby hat from the jump seat and arranged the thing in perfect position on his head.
Using the nearest gate into the garden, he walked into the party.
“Here’s the man!”
“Samuel T.!”
“Mint julep for you!”
Buddies of his, gentlemen he’d known since kindergarten, came up to him, clapping hands, talking about handicapping the race, asking about the parties to come later in the day, the night, Sunday morning. He responded with throwaways, his eyes searching the crowd.
“Will you excuse me?” he said.
He didn’t wait for any permissions, but strode across the tented space, bypassing waiters with trays and more people who reached out to him and several women anxious to connect with him.
Finally, he found her, standing alone, staring out over the river.
As he approached, he traced the elegant lines of Gin’s body, lingering on the way her shoulders were left exposed by the silk dress she had on. For some reason, she had a long scarf tied around her throat, the ends waving in the wind created by the tent fans, the ends trailing down to her unbelievable legs.
He hated the way his heart beat so hard in his chest. Despised the fact that he had to subtly wipe his palms next to his jacket’s double vents. Prayed that his read on her was correct … that she had, for once, been speaking from the heart—and that they were ready, finally, to get real about each other.
“Gin?”
When she didn’t turn around, but just stayed fixated on the river, he put his hand on her arm—
She wheeled around so fast that her mint julep splashed all over his jacket, leaving a damp line across his midsection.
Not that he cared.
“Jumpy much?” he drawled, trying to recover some of his mojo.
“I’m so sorry.” She reached forward with a little monogrammed cocktail napkin. “Oh, I’ve ruined—”
“Please. I have a backup in the trunk.”
Mostly because he always sweated at the boxes at the track and he’d be damned if he’d spend the rest of the night in that kind of mess.
“So, ready for the big day?” she said as he took off his jacket.
He was folding the thing over his arm when it dawned on him that she wasn’t meeting his eyes.
“Well?” she prompted. “My brother has a horse in the running. Maybe two? Sired by that nasty bastard Nebekanzer.”
Still no eye contact.
Under his breath, he muttered, “I hate jumping out of airplanes.”
That got her to look at him. But only for a moment. “What?”
As those blue eyes of hers went back out to the river, he cursed. “Listen … Gin.”
“Yes?”
She was so still, he thought. And so much smaller than he was. Funny, he never noticed the height difference when they were going at it—nearly a hundred pounds less and six inches shorter didn’t mean a thing when that mouth of hers was going to hell and back.
He took a deep breath. “So I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday. And honestly … you’re right. You’re absolutely right. About everything.”
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to get in response—but the slump of her shoulders was not it. She seemed … utterly defeated.
“I’m not any better at this than you are,” he said. “But I want to … well … goddamn it, Gin, I love—”
“Stop,” she blurted. “Don’t say it. Please … not now. Don’t—”
“Good morning, Samuel T. How are you?”
The appearance of a third party registered about as much as a house fly passing through would have.
Except then Richard Pford put his arm around Gin’s waist and kept going with, “Have you told him the good news, darling?”
For the first time in his life, Samuel T. felt the cold wash of horror. Which, considering some of the things he’d done in the last two decades, was saying something.
“And what might that be?” he forced himself to drawl. “You two opening a lucrative organ-selling business over the Internet?”
Pford’s beady little eyes grew nasty. “You have such an active imagination. It helps your clients, I’m sure.”
“With your sense of ethics in business, I wouldn’t be casting stones in that glass house, Pford.” Samuel T. focused on Gin, his chest turning to stone. “So, you have something to tell me, do you?”
By way of reply, Pford took her left hand and thrust it forward. “We’re going to be married. On Monday, actually.”
Samuel T. blinked once. But then smiled. “Marvelous news. Truly—and, Richard, let me be the first to congratulate you. She fucks like a wild animal, especially when you do her from behind—but I’m sure you already know that. Half the country does.”