Don't Mess With Texans

“You’re just tellin’ me t’beat it, that’s all. He can’t blame you for that.”

“Oh, can’t he?” Good jobs were hard to find out in the country. A job at Fleetfoot Farm was golden. “But you’re not going.”

“Not till it’s over, I’m not.”

“Look, Mrs. Colton, I’m real sorry, but—” the guard grabbed her arm and hustled her toward the pickup’s door “—get out of here, will you? Please, ma’am? It’s my job if you don’t.”

“Ouch, dammit, lemme go!” Even a week before, if Randall had dared lay a finger on her, he’d never have worked again in the bluegrass. Now she was fair game for anyone. The door scraped her shins as he yanked it open. He grabbed her waist and tossed her up on the seat. “You son of a bitch!” She slapped his hands aside.

He shut the door carefully on her, then held it shut, onehanded, while he stooped for her fallen hat. She gave up pushing and rolled down the window. “Bastard!” The tears that had been threatening all day brimmed and overflowed. Her face burned with the shame of it. She didn’t cry easily or often. Never before strangers.

“Ma‘am, I’m real sorry, but y’know, you started it all.”

“Ha!” She rubbed her nose and glared past his shoulder. Stephen hadn’t missed the show. Thank God she was too far away to see him grinning! He who laughs last... It was a phrase he’d always been fond of, trailing it off with a little smirk and a shrug.

“I don’t blame you for wanting your own back,” Randall was saying, brushing off her hat. “Lot of us had a good laugh when we heard what you’d done.”

Maybe the guards and the house staff had. But not her people, the grooms and the trainers and the exercise boys down in the stables. They weren’t amused. She’d met a groom on the streets of Lexington yesterday and he’d spat at her feet.

“Serves him right, I say. But he’s a hard one and they say he never forgets if you cross him. I was you, I wouldn’t hang around here. I’d want some miles between.” He offered her the hat with a pleading smile.

It was good advice. Advice she’d already given herself. She’d only stopped to say goodbye, and now there was no one left by the grave but her husband.

A word that wouldn’t apply much longer.

She took the Stetson, saw the muddy bootmark on its brim—well, damn—and sat blinking frantically. Don’t be such a stupid crybaby! She dropped it on the seat and started the truck.

“Where’re you headed for, ma‘am, if y’don’t mind my asking?”

“Texas, where else?” This kid’s had enough of the high life. Her sister would be waiting for her in Houston, with that big old terry-cloth robe she always loaned Susannah when she came calling, and endless cups of hot chocolate. They’d stay up talking all night, and Saskia wouldn’t judge.

She couldn’t get back to Texas soon enough. Careful not to look toward the distant watcher, Susannah set her eyes on the open road and drove.

CHAPTER SIX

JUNE IN KENTUCKY. Beyond those towering, wrought-iron gates, Fleetfoot Farm looked like a slice of paradise. More than a square mile of prime bluegrass, according to Tag’s guidebook. Hill upon hill of lush emerald green—bluegrass wasn’t really blue, so go figure—stitched with white board fences. Flashes of chestnut and bay as thoroughbred yearlings chased each other around a distant pasture. A shady avenue lined in century-old sycamores, rising toward a glimpse of far-off roofs, which would be Colton’s antebellum manor.

So it was her upcoming expulsion from this Eden that Susannah had been avenging when she brought him Payback to ruin. To have risen this high, then to lose it. Tag could almost feel pity for the lying little bitch.

Almost. Has he ever been raced? Gullible fool, had he really asked that?

Few times, she’d drawled, and looked him straight in the eye. God, she must have been laughing fit to burst!

A heavyset guard paused in the open door of the gatehouse. Piggy eyes moved over Tag’s rusting and battered vehicle, an ex state police car he’d recently bought at auction. Its big V-8 engine burned oil and sucked gas at an awesome rate, but as long as you fed the monster, at least it still had some speed. The guard swaggered over to its window, his smile dismissing both man and car. “You here for the tour?” A driver of a heap like this might be allowed to press his nose to the glass, catch a peek of heaven, was the unspoken assumption, but he’d have no real business with the high and mighty.

“Yep.” Tag dragged his own eyes away from the gun on the man’s hip—more firepower than he’d have expected out here in the country—as he mustered a smile. Smiling was his best disguise these days. Since January, not a single gossip rag or network newscast had caught the infamous Dr. Taggart with a smile on his face. “The tour.”

Like many of the big racing stables and stud farms of the bluegrass, Fleetfoot Farm opened its barns and grounds to its admiring public in the summer months. And the only way he could hope to gain admittance to Susannah’s ex’s estate was if he was disguised as a lowly tourist.

Because in six months of trying, Tag hadn’t managed a meeting with Stephen Colton face-to-face. Nor had he even talked to the elusive bastard over the phone. But for the few glimpses he’d had of the man on TV, his signature on the blizzard of lawsuits that drifted down on Tag’s head, his endless army of legal minions, Colton might have been a figment of Tag’s worst nightmare. An invisible hand dealing cards of misfortune.

And it was you dragged me into the game, Susannah. But for you, I’d still be—He blinked as the guard thumped his fender.

“...the bus, mister,” he growled, apparently repeating his words. “See it?” He jerked a thumb at the gates. Beyond them, halfway along the tunnel of trees, a tour bus chugged uphill. Trailed by three cars and a van, it rounded a bend and disappeared. “Follow that bus. Stay right at the first and second forks in the drive, then you’ll see the parking lot Just stay with the tour, y’hear?”

Was it branded on his forehead that he was different? Dangerous? Did he look what he felt, lean and angry, like a coyote who’d missed his rabbit three days running? Tag showed his teeth in what he hoped passed for a smile, nodded and steered his beater through the massive green gates, swinging open in electrified silence.

Halfway through, the car died. Twisting the key, he swore and pumped hard on the gas—blue smoke blatted out the back. Time for another quart of oil. He bucketed on through the gap without looking toward the guard, who’d be grinning. Blast this wreck! Blast the woman who’d brought him to this!

He’d lost his beloved pickup, the first and only new wheels he’d ever owned in his life, in the second month of the disaster. He’d sold it to pay his mounting legal fees, since his lawyer had known better than to work for him on credit. But not to worry, Atkins had assured him each time he handed Tag another bill. Come his day in court, it would be obvious to even the densest jury that Tag was innocent of any wrongdoing. He’d operated in good faith, believing Susannah’s assertion that she was the owner. Colton could sue, but he’d never win.

Yeah, and the meek shall inherit the earth.

Whatever advice Tag had been buying, Colton obviously had bought better. Or maybe he’d simply known how the game was played. Because each time Tag’s lawyer prepared a painstaking defense encompassing hours of depositions, reams of paperwork, phone calls, assistants, charges, countercharges and consultations, the suit would be dropped at the last possible instant. Leaving Tag with more bills to pay.

He’d scramble to meet those debts—then a new lawsuit would loom over the horizon, winnable in the end, ruinous in the desperate meantime. And even knowing the score, Tag had to respond to charges, no matter how ridiculous. You couldn’t ignore a lawsuit. Death by law. A slow, nibbling death.

So I don’t play that game anymore. No more depending on lawyers. On anyone but himself. It was the way he’d grown up, after all, on the streets of South Boston. In the years since, he’d tried his best to play by society’s rules—and he’d gotten both hands smashed in a drawer for his efforts. From now on it was back to his own rules.

Round the bend he came to a fork in the road. The righthand choice followed the shoulder of the hill, curving gently around the unseen manor. The track and stables would be at its back, he supposed.

Tag chose the left fork, which burrowed into a glossy dark wall of rhododendrons, then burst out the other side into sunlight. Across a lawn smooth and wide as a golf course, beyond a spouting fountain encircled by red roses, the white columns and tall chimneys of Fleetfoot Farm reached for the sky. Tara north. My old Kentucky home, be it ever so humble.

He parked on the raked gravel sweep before the portico, feeling as if a hundred eyes watched him from the French windows to either side of the door. After all his months of trying to make contact, surely it couldn’t be this easy? Where was Colton’s wall of lawyers, his bodyguards, his secretaries?

The door knocker was a polished bronze horseshoe, mounted curve-down to hold the luck. What must it be like to be born lucky, a fourth-generation millionaire? To never once in your life have gone to bed hungry, wondering how you’d pay the rent? Did Colton have a clue how the other half lived? Two savage knocks and the door swung silently open.

“Yes, sir?” Except for the drawl, the speaker might have been snatched from Central Casting. The perfect English butler. Silvery hair, crisp white sleeves, a black waistcoat and trousers. No doubt he’d been polishing the sterling when interrupted. Eyes fixed respectfully on Tag’s face, though Tag was sure his best suit had been noted and found wanting.

Go ahead, tell me to apply at the back door, pal. But this one was too old to punch. “I’d like to see Mr. Colton, please.” Please let him be home.

There was no guarantee. In the first weeks of the scandal Tag, along with everyone else in America—had learned more than he’d ever wanted to know about the reclusive millionaire, thanks to the tabloids. Colton had his own jet, another house on a private island off Miami, inherited rights to the finest salmon fishing in Scotland. If his horses were racing in Europe this week he’d be there to collect the trophies. If not, he might be off shopping for broodmares in Japan or gambling in the Bahamas.

“Whom may I say is calling?”

By God, was it possible? “The name’s Taggart. R. D. Taggart.”

“Ah.” The butler didn’t pull an Uzi out of the porcelain urn to the left of the door, but his eyelids quivered. Trained in the very best butlering schools. “Yes, sir.”

Tag kept his face relaxed, his hands in view. Don’t call the cops, old man. I just want to talk.

The butler pulled a chain and a gold pocket watch slid into his palm. He consulted it with pursed lips. “Mr. Colton will have finished his barn rounds, I b’lieve. You might try down at the office.”

An elegant dodge while he called for reinforcements? Or the truth? Tag was tempted to shove past him and find out. But once he’d crossed the line into open belligetience, there’d be no going back. So he thanked the man, then followed his directions to the office, which turned out to be an entire building, painted white, trimmed in forest green to match the gigantic barns that dotted the hills beyond the manor.

A receptionist, blond and beautiful, was just cradling her phone when he found her on the second floor. “Yes, Dr. Taggart?”

So much for surprises. “To see Mr. Colton, please.”