Don't Mess With Texans

CHAPTER FIVE

A PHONE CALL to Carol Anne, Tag told himself, as he strode up the walk to his cottage. Remind her to feed the stray tomcat while he was away. Presumably Higgins could get her past that padlock. Then throw together a couple of days’ change of clothes. It might take that long in Boston to find the right lawyer.

Once he’d hired his big-city shark, he’d worry about shark feed. Somewhere in Boston he’d find a jeweler to buy Susannah’s ring. Because if Colton had given her that rock, it wasn’t zirconium. With any luck—if there was any luck left anywhere in the world—he’d get enough to pay his lawyer. And no, Susannah, I won’t be sending you back your change, care of Fleetfoot Farm. Her bill was higher than she’d dreamed and mounting by the minute.

And if he couldn’t salvage his career, then her ring would be just the first installment on all she owed him.

A letter was taped to his front door. Tag took it inside with him, ripped it open, then wadded it as he cursed aloud. A notice from the FYA Corporation, terminating his tenancy in their cottage, effective a month from today. Teeth clenched till they ached, he stalked to his TV. He’d set the VCR to record the noon news before he left the house that morning.

The twelve o’clock lead came as no surprise. The cameras showed Susannah Colton, sometime earlier that morning, coming down the Boston courthouse steps with a grimlooking suit—her lawyer, according to the voice-over. Besieged on all sides by reporters, she looked tiny and dog tired. More teenager than woman in her jeans and a man’s leather bomber jacket that hung down to her slim thighs.

Tag growled as he recognized it, but still, something twisted inside. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday when he met her. She’d spent the night in jail, after all?

The newscaster confirmed it as reporters blocked the couple’s way. With one arm draped protectively around her shoulders, seeming almost to hold her up, Susannah’s lawyer was doing the talking. As for his client, a night in a cell seemed to have knocked the stuffing, all that Texas grit and sass, out of her. She looked fragile, stunned. Less like a desperado horse thief or a vindictive wife than a scared little owl, staring out from shelter with those wide, haunted eyes and her feathers all ruffled.

A woman having second thoughts was what she looked like, and unpleasant ones. A little revenge seemed like a good idea at the time, huh, Tex? But now she was realizing. Bit off more than you could chew, did you, darlin’?

Or maybe she only needed a good night’s sleep to regain her spunk—and her spite. Looking at Susannah, Tax had missed most of the lawyer’s statement. He rewound the tape and this time focused on her designated knight.

“Mrs. Colton has no statement at this time,” that gentleman said grandly if predictably.

The surrounding pack resumed their yelping. Susannah put her head down and allowed her companion to steer her to a waiting car. The anchorman switched back to the studio.

He interviewed an expert on equine insurance, who hemmed and hawed and finally hazarded a guess that Lloyd’s of London would decline to pay out on Payback’s policy because, one, the horse had not been killed but only altered, and two, that horrendous act had been instigated not by some crazed outsider but by Stephen Colton’s own lawful wedded wife.

Tag attempted a whistle, but his lips were too dry. Sixty million dollars irretrievably washed down the drain? Even a millionaire might miss a sum like that! If Colton wasn’t the forgiving sort, and it looked less and less as if he was...

The question was, once he’d had time to cool down, who would Colton blame?

BY THE TIME Tag checked into a Boston hotel the tabloids had the story.

Revenge of the Century! shrieked the one in his hotel lobby, in two-inch type above a picture of Payback and one of the Coltons, kissing at the altar.

Payback, Texas Style! blared one of the rags he saw in a drugstore, walking back from supper at a cheap fishhouse down near the docks.

Don’t Mess with Texans! warned another.

By morning the Boston Globe had dug deeper. $30,000 Payoff to Geld Payback! yelled its banner headline. Ice in his guts, Tag told himself that at least now he knew what to ask for Susannah’s diamond. Assuming the jerks hadn’t made up that sum along with the rest of their facts.

By the time he’d hired his lawyer, the evening papers were out and somehow they’d dug up his juvenile records—which his lawyer had spent the past two hours assuring him were sealed. Buried forever. Not to worry.

Ex-Car Thief Took $30,000 Bribe to Ruin Payback! was how one headline put it.

Why bother with lawyers and the courts? He’d been tried and convicted already, and he could guess the sentence.

SHE SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT an umbrella. The collapsible one she’d bought in Paris was up at the big house along with the rest of her stuff. Her lawyer was still working on retrieving all that.

She should have bought, at least, a raincoat, one of those cheap plastic things. But she’d be counting her pennies from here on out. So the bomber would have to do. Leaning back against Brady’s pickup, Susannah Mack Colton tipped her Stetson to let the rain run off, folded her arms and snuggled her nose below the collar of Doc Taggart’s old jacket. She sucked in a breath of cold, damp Kentucky air, savoring with it the scent of man and leather, oddly comforting on this comfortless day.

Beyond the white board fence, a hundred yards up a low hill, the crowd was still gathering. A good-sized group, Brady would have been pleased. Black umbrellas, dark clothes, like a bunch of mushrooms sprouted in the rain.

She wondered suddenly what they were burying Brady in. Should have been his old jockey silks, the ones he wore winning the Derby on Payback. But they’d never fit. He’d put on the pounds since he’d quit the track and stepped down to stallion groom.

“Never mind. They’ll give you fresh ones upstairs,” she drawled softly, and dug in her pocket for his flask.

One swallow left since the night he’d given it to her. “That’s for warmth, not for whoopee,” he’d warned as they parted. “You save me a drop.”

He’d never come for it. She hadn’t had a sip since she’d found out why, that awful night in a Boston jail.

The crowd was bigger now. A wall of darkness ringed the grave. She tipped her brim to hide all that and looked down at his name on the flask. Brady, engraved in curly letters on old silver. A fine, fancy gift from a grateful British bettor, that time Brady won the Epsom on a five-to-one shot.

She had to struggle with the cap. Last closed by Dr. Taggart’s big, capable hands, she remembered with a rueful grimace. She held up the flask to the dripping sky. “Here’s to you, Brady.” Something warmer than a raindrop ran down her cheek and she brushed it away. “If they have horse races in heaven, then you and Daddy must be runnin’ neck and neck ’bout now. God bless...and Godspeed.” She held the last taste on her tongue, fire and sweetness, then welcome warmth around the heart. G’bye, ol’ friend. She buried her nose in the jacket again and breathed deep.

When she heard the sound of a car stopping behind the truck, Susannah didn’t look up. God give me strength! If it was more reporters... One more stupid question, just one more, and it’s Katy, bar the door!

“Miss? I’m afraid you can’t stop here, Miss.”

Oh, one of them. Eyes narrowed, shoulders squaring for a fight, she turned her head slowly. This was a public road even if Stephen would never admit it and had convinced the county he had the right to patrol outside his own fences, bully anybody who dared look at his farm.

Her muscles eased as she recognized the approaching guard. “Hey, Randy.” Randall was one of the few decent ones who didn’t give her the creeps. Most of the security guards her husband hired seemed to be angry, disappointed men. As if life didn’t give them enough opportunities to use those guns that dragged down their belts.

“Miz—!” The guard yanked off his hat from long habit, then stood there twisting it. “Mrs. Colton, ma’am! I didn’t recognize—”

“Hardly surprisin’.” Stephen had always insisted she dress her part around the farm. If she must wear pants, then it had to be jodhpurs with a silk shirt or a tweed jacket. Hair up in a snooty French twist. Only when she rode out with the exercise boys at dawn was she allowed to wear jeans and let her hair fly free. Funny that Stephen fell for her, looking like that, then had to change that first thing once he got her.

The guard glanced from her to the distant ceremony. “Oh. I guess he wouldn’t let you...?”

“Nope.” She’d had her lawyer ask, since Stephen wasn’t taking her calls. Word had come back promptly from on high. Translated from Houlihan’s tactful legalese, the word was, “Not in this lifetime, sugarbabe!”

Funny how little you could know a man in two years. She’d known Stephen was tough. Kentucky hardboot, they called a shrewd horseman hereabouts. But just how hard his boots were, she’d only begun to learn these past few days. She had a feeling the lesson wasn’t done yet, either.

“Sure was a shame,” Randall observed, putting his hat on and coming to stand beside her, facing uphill. “Surprised the heck out of me when I heard. That old man was so tough I’d have said Brady’d bury us all.”

“Yeah.” She’d thought so, too. But then, her own father had gone in seconds—one horse stumbling in front of his own, then the pileup from behind. Winged hero to smashed cripple in less time than it took her to scream and rush to press her hands to the TV screen, as if she could lift those tiny, flailing bodies off him. For horse folks, life usually happened fast, and it happened hard.

“But that plate in his skull, a fall on that...” Randall heaved a hound-dog sigh. “And they say he must have knocked it more than once, tumblin’ down a whole flight.”

“Yeah.” And Brady wouldn’t have been hurrying so, ’cept for me. She swallowed hard and blinked at the distant funeral.

Movement up there, looked like they were almost done. Dropping red Kentucky clay on his coffin, one by one, then trudging off over the crest of the hill.

A tall man dressed in black stepped apart from the dwindling crowd and stood staring down at them, something ominous in his stillness.

“Oh, Jeez, is that the boss?” Randall took two long steps away from her, spun toward his truck, then back again. “If he saw I was talking to you...!”

“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.”

“Of course, but I’m afraid he’s in a meeting. If you’d care to sit over there? And could I bring you a cup of coffee?”