Love Story(50)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“You don’t have to make it so hard on yourself,” Whitfield crooned. “It’s not a crime to inherit millions of dollars.”

“I don’t think it’s a crime,” I protested. “I just—”

He nodded. “Want to live your life without being told what to do.” His face inched closer to mine, and my urge to back away dissolved as I watched his lips. He understood exactly where I was coming from. Hunter did not.

“Just do what they tell you, Erin,” Whitfield whispered. “You’ll have the last laugh in the end because you will be the millionaire, and they will be dead.”

“Whitfield,” Hunter called sharply from the doorway to the back hall. “Get your hands off her.”

I tried to step away from Whitfield, but his fingers dug into my bruise.

Whitfield shook his head at Hunter. “Just because you say it doesn’t mean people are going to do it, Allen. You may have a hold on the old bitch, but nobody will ever forget where you came from.”

“You know what?” I interjected, trying again to pull away as Whitfield held me firmly where it hurt. “I’m just going to—”

“We talked about this last May,” Hunter boomed. “Get your hands off her or I will knock your teeth in.”

Whitfield gaped at Hunter.

I held my breath.

Hunter took a step forward.

“Okay!” Whitfield exclaimed, holding up his hands. “I don’t want you to cause a scene at your house, Hunter.” He turned to me. “Remember what I said.”

Hunter took another step toward him.

Eyeing Hunter, Whitfield grabbed the bowl of potato salad and escaped through the doorway to the foyer.

“Well!” I exclaimed. “That was tense.”

Hunter watched me, brows down, blue eyes dark. “I’m not cut out for this.” He rounded the island, sidestepped me, and followed Whitfield into the foyer. At first I thought he would try to catch Whitfield, but then above the crowd I saw the massive front door open and close, and I knew Hunter had left.

I pushed through the party after him. Old people stopped me and hugged me and told the roaming waiters to bring me drinks and asked me if it was true my grandmother was grooming Tommy Allen’s son to take over the farm instead of me. These were exactly the conversations that I’d dreaded, that I’d braved in coming back here to see my father.

My heart raced at the idea that Hunter was walking away from me. If my grandmother caught me here, she would insist on having a long discussion with me. By the time I got away, Hunter would be gone. I couldn’t let him go—not when he’d played hero to my damsel in distress for a second time. Not again.

Finally I extricated myself from the party and dragged open the front door. Outside in the cold moonlight, the green grass shone in long waves, but no tall blond boy waded through it or trudged along the lane. He really was gone.

Then I heard shouts and man laughter way over at the stables. My grandmother had sent the stable hands bourbon. They would be playing basketball.

Sure enough, I rounded the stone corner of the stable, out of breath and sick with worry, just in time to see Hunter, stripped to the waist, wearing only the khakis and lace-up shoes from his horse-farm-heir uniform, sail through the air in a perfect layup. His white skin gleamed spookily in the strange light. He was breaking a sweat already in the cold air, and the scar on his side stood out like a marker from some ancient magic. He dunked the ball through the netless hoop and landed flat on his feet on the asphalt parking lot.

Half the men moaned a triumphant “Oooooh!” and the other half a defeated “Aaaaaw.” Then another shirtless man pointed in my direction. “Erin!” The game stopped as I slid onto a white wooden bench against the stone wall. Several more stable hands called out to me.

“Good work today, Erin!” Tommy shouted above them. Drunk now, he was a lot happier with the job I’d done than he had been sober. “As good work as Hunter ever did, and she doesn’t complain like Hunter.”

Several of the men shoved Hunter in different directions. He didn’t seem to mind. He grinned at me, looking—proud, dared I say?

“You want to play with us, Erin?” another man asked. I don’t think he meant anything by it, but the others read innuendo into it and groaned.

“I haven’t had nearly enough bourbon for that,” I called back. “I’ll just sit here and watch, and I’ll call 911 when someone tears an ACL.”

Most of them turned away, resuming their positions for the game. Only Hunter continued to stare at me with his blond head cocked to one side, bare muscular chest shining, basketball on his hip. He sounded genuinely puzzled as he said, “You don’t have a phone.”

I opened my hands and shrugged. I recognized this uncharacteristically slow-on-the-uptake Hunter from our conversation in the coffee shop two months before. He was drunk.

“Ball!” the other men called. Hunter turned and tossed the ball into the crowd.

The game began again. I watched the men dodge each other, throw over each other, lose their balance and stumble drunkenly out of the area of play, then jog back again. I watched Hunter’s muscles work underneath his skin, his body retaining surprising grace even though bourbon had slowed his brain. Sweat darkened the blond hair at his temples. He grew hotter as I got colder, shrinking in my Blackwell Farms jacket on the hard wooden bench.

When two men leaped for the ball at once and tumbled in a tangle on the asphalt, Tommy shouted, “We gotta call this. Come inside. Next round’s on me.” The bare-chested men slapped each other high-fives and moved through a doorway golden with light, into the stable office.

Only Hunter stayed behind. He tugged his shirt out of a nearby tree. As he buttoned it he said, “Hullo, Miss O’Carey.”

“Hullo, David.” I tried to keep my voice from shaking with cold and anticipation.

He pulled his cashmere sweater over his head. “Did you remember to bring me the anatomy note cards I hadn’t forgotten?”

So he’d left the note cards in his bedroom on purpose after all, to give me an excuse to find him at the party. With tingling fingers I reached into my jacket and handed him the cards. He pocketed them, a sly grin pulling at one corner of his mouth.

“What’s with the British accent?” I asked. “They wouldn’t have talked like that in America by 1875. They might have had a lingering Scotch-Irish inflection because so many of them were recent immigrants and they didn’t have television to flatten the brogue.”

He stared at me. In my usual wonky way, I’d blathered too much information. He had started the conversation from “Almost a Lady.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by this, but I was excited about finding out. So I began the conversation again. “Hullo, David. Would you like to walk behind the stables?”

“I would soil my slippers,” he said, “and the maid would notice in the morning.”

He was reciting my story, but he was also rejecting me. I stood and pasted a smile on my face to show him it was all in fun. “Okeydoke. Tommy said he can’t take us to the airport tomorrow because he’s leaving for Churchill Downs too early, but one of the other guys will take us. I’ll see you in the—”