deciding to go there after all. In the end, the sun rose on a daily basis, an old dog couldn’t learn to play fetch and Demetri was born to pull the wheel against the skid. “I think I scared her. Drives a tank of a Volvo.”
“That’d be Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth who?” he asked, rolling the name over in his mind. Elizabeth.
Hugh frowned. “That’d be ‘just Elizabeth’ to you, Demetri. She’s like family to me.”
The slight hurt, but Hugh would never realize that. Demetri’s smile was too polished, too practiced. “I would guess she doesn’t need your protection, Hugh. She seems capable of making up her own mind.”
Hugh’s harsh bark of laughter was answer enough. “Now what was that I was reading in the tabloids about you?A married princess? Whatever got you thinking that was a good idea?”
Demetri shrugged, the picture of casual indifference. “She was lonely. I thought I could help. I didn’t know her great-aunt owned forty-seven percent of Valencia Products and would pull her sponsorship of the team.”
“Elizabeth isn’t lonely. She doesn’t need your help.”
“All right. Lesson learned. Message received. Hands off. But she should have checked her mirrors,” he felt the need to add, because she should have looked behind her. However, Demetri wasn’t here to play, and he’d made polite small talk long enough. “Tell me what’s going on, Hugh. The stalls are empty. I heard there won’t be any Quest horses at the Keeneland sales. Thomas said that he’s losing McMurray’s horses and the Thornhills’, too. How much longer until this racing ban goes away?”
“Not long,” answered Hugh, which wasn’t much of an answer.
Thoughtfully Demetri swirled the ice in his glass before looking up. “Let me give you the cash to cover the expenses until then.”
“No,” said the old man, not even waiting to reply.
“Talk to Thomas. He’ll agree.”
Hugh scoffed at that. “You don’t know my son very well."
It was true, Demetri had never bonded with Thomas the way he had with Hugh. Thomas had a hard, uncompromising edge that reminded Demetri of his own father, whereas Hugh had been impulsive, reckless, a risk taker, but a man who had grown wiser as he had gotten older. “He can’t be prouder than you,” Demetri pointed out.
“Prouder, and in some ways, more stubborn.”
Demetri sighed, taking another long sip of his drink. This was going to be harder than he’d thought, and he had known coming in that it wouldn’t be easy. That was all right, though. For Hugh, he’d work a little harder. Demetri polished off the last of the bourbon and then put the glass on the table next to him. “Ten years ago, somebody spotted me a loan to move my father’s start-up to the big leagues. I repaid the money, but that man wouldn’t take a decent interest rate on the loan.”
Hugh smiled and waved the reminder off with a careless hand. “I liked you, Demetri.”
“It was a boneheaded move,” Demetri reminded him.
“You were a friend.”
“So are you. Take the money. It’ll be an infusion of cash to tide Quest over until the ban has lifted.”
Hugh shook his head, not even hesitating. “Put your wallet away. First Elizabeth, now you.”
There was that name again, rolling in his head. He could feel the itch in his fingers, the ache in his body, the challenge. Always the challenge. “Elizabeth?”
“The money’s not needed here,” answered Hugh, slamming down his glass. “Thomas won’t take any loan, and I don’t want to discuss it any longer. For over sixty years I’ve been picking out the best legs, the biggest hearts and the horses that kept going when they had nothing left to give. After I retired, Thomas ran these stables with honor and integrity. They’re not going to take that away from us now.”
“Talk to Thomas. Please.”
Hugh sighed, downed the remainder of his bourbon and shook his head. “No.”
Okay, so the honest, aboveboard ways weren’t going to work. Not a surprise. “My teammate wants to stable some horses here. Would you mind if I show him around?”
“Stabling horses here? While people suspect us of cheating to win, and we can no longer race our own horses? Is this another cockamamy way of throwing money in my direction?”
Demetri had been stabling horses at Quest for nearly ten years. Last spring the Prestons’ own champion Leopold’s Legacy was on his way to winning the Triple Crown when a DNA test was required because of a discrepancy in the Jockey Association’s computer records. The results revealed that the stallion’s sire was not Apollo’s Ice, as listed, and a racing ban was imposed on all majority-owned Quest horses. The integrity of the stables had come into question and owners began to remove their horses. But Demetri could help add more horses to Quest Stables. Boarding fees didn’t bring in nearly as much as stud fees or racing purses, but whatever worked.
“No,” he lied. “Definitely not. He’s new to horses.” Actually, Oliver didn’t know that he was stabling horses at Quest. But he would soon. Demetri would buy them, Oliver would “own” them and Quest would stable them. Everybody was a winner.
Oliver was in his debut season as the number two driver for Team Sterling, with the promise of a great career ahead of him, assuming he didn’t muck it up. Young at twenty-two, he was powerful and aggressive, and what he didn’t have in brains, he made up for in grande cojones and gamesmanship.
Some of the other drivers didn’t care for Oliver. They said he was too aggressive, too manipulative, always chasing the top step of the podium, rather than driving for the team, but that was the exact reason that he and Demetri worked well together. It wasn’t about the team, it was only about the win. And James Sterling, former CEO of Sterling Motor Cars, and the principle executive for Team Sterling, was building up his reputation by picking drivers who drove to the edge.
Drivers like Demetri.
For a moment Hugh studied him, looking right through him, but Demetri didn’t flinch. Finally Hugh nodded. “Bring him to the barbecue with you tomorrow. Maybe he can keep you out of trouble.”
“Sounds like a plan,” answered Demetri, rising from the chair and heading for the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Are you forgetting something?” asked Hugh.
Demetri looked around blankly. “No.”
“Are you planning on walking all the way back to town?” The faded blue eyes danced with mischief.
“Call me a cab?”
“You’re a cab, and if you give me your promise to keep your hands off my great-niece, then I’ll let you borrow one of the trucks.”
“You don’t need my promise,” answered Demetri, because he knew it was a promise he couldn’t keep.
Elizabeth.
Hugh
