Love Story(66)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“Erin!” he exclaimed. “Guess what I heard.”

Whitfield and I had not parted on good terms. The last time I’d seen him was the Derby party, when Hunter had told him to get his hands off my ass—the inspiration for my unfortunate stable-boy story. But if Whitfield had been sober, we would have pretended to forget all about that. For the sake of our families getting along and doing business, we would have embraced, backed off, and conversed politely, as we’d both been trained.

Whitfield was not sober. “I heard that you told your grandmother you didn’t want her f**king farm,” he slurred. “You ran off to New York City”—ran was a jerk of the potato salad bowl hard enough to send the plastic wrap flying off the top and sailing down to the granite top of the island—“and she gave her farm to Hunter Allen.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“And

” He held up his finger for silence, nearly dropping the bowl.

I rushed around the island and caught the bowl before it dropped, then set it on the counter.

This was a mistake, because now I was only a foot from Whitfield. He took off my cap and tossed it to the high ceiling. It rang a huge pot hanging from the rack over the island. “I heard you were playing stable hand today. I don’t understand you at all.”

“You don’t have to. I’ll see you around, okay?” I had thought I’d rather die than set foot in my grandmother’s party, but now the dance music and the crowded foyer leading to the front door were the lesser of the evils. I took a step in that direction.

He stopped me with a hand on my bruised hip. “Why are you making it so hard on yourself? Look at me.”

I should have pulled away from him. He would have been right on my heels as I entered the foyer, but then I could have escaped him in the jovial drunken crowd.

His tone and his words stopped me. “Look at me.” He spoke tenderly, the way I’d longed to be spoken to by a hero with an important message just for me.

I looked up into his eyes, which were green like the winter grass. I had talked closely with him a hundred times before. I’d never noticed what color his eyes were. And as my life veered closer and closer to the story I’d just turned in for Gabe’s class, I made a mental note of this detail to add to my story when I revised it for my end-of-semester portfolio.

“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.”