“That is not what I meant—”
“Oh, I think it is—”
“I swear,” he muttered, “that chip on your shoulder—”
“Is what, Lane? Showing again? Sorry, you’re not allowed to twist things around like I’m the one with the problem. That’s on you. That has always been on you.”
Lane threw his hands up. “I can’t get through to you. All I want to do is explain—”
“You want to do something for me? Fine, great, here.” She shoved a half-full pitcher of what looked like lemonade at him. “Take this to the kitchen and get someone to refill it. Then you can tell them to take it back out to the pool house, or maybe you can deliver it yourself—to your wife.”
With that, she spun around and punched out the nearest door. And as she strode off across the lawn toward the conservatory, he couldn’t decide what held more appeal: putting his head into the wall, throwing the pitcher, or doing a combination of both.
He picked option four: “Goddamn, motherfucking, shit …”
“Sir? May I be of service?”
At the British accent, Lane glanced over at a fifty-year-old man who was dressed like he was the front house of a funeral parlor. “Who the hell are you?”
“Mr. Harris, sir. I am Newark Harris, the butler.” The guy bowed at the waist. “The pilots were kind enough to call ahead that you were en route. May I attend to your luggage?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Very good, sir. Your room is in order, and if you require ought further than your wardrobe upstairs, it will be my pleasure to procure any necessaries for you.”
Oh, no, Lane thought. Nope, he was not staying—he knew damn well what weekend was coming up, and the purpose for his visit had nothing to do with the Derby social circus.
He shoved the pitcher at Mr. Dandy-man. “I don’t know what’s in here and I don’t care. Just fill it up and take it where it belongs.”
“My pleasure, sir. Will you be requiring—”
“No, that’s it.”
The man seemed surprised as Lane pushed past him and headed in the direction of the staff part of the house. But, of course, the Englishman didn’t question him. Which, considering the mood he was in? Not only was that proper butler etiquette, but it would fall under a self-preservation rubric as well.
Two minutes in the house. Two damn minutes.
And he was already nuclear.
FOUR
Lane marched his way into the massive professional kitchen and was immediately taken aback by both the olfactory “noise” and the auditory silence. Even though there were a good dozen chefs bent over the stainless-steel counters and the Viking stoves, none of the white coats were speaking as they labored. A few of them did look up, however, recognized him and stopped whatever they were doing, he ignored their OMG! reaction. He was used to that double take by now, his reputation having preceded him across the nation for years.
Thank you, Vanity Fair, for that exposé on his family a decade ago. And the three follow-ups since. And the speculations in the tabloids. And don’t get him started on the Internet.
Once that lowest-common-denominator¸ media-packaged celebrity status sucker-fished you?
No getting it off.
As he went over to a door marked PRIVATE, he found himself retucking his shirt, pulling up his slacks, smoothing his hair. Now he wished he’d taken time to shower, shave, change.
And he really wished that meeting with Lizzie had gone better. Like he needed another thing on his mind?
His knock was quiet, respectful. The response he got was not:
“What are you knocking for,” barked the Southern female voice.
Lane frowned as he pushed open the door. And then he stopped dead.
Miss Aurora was at her stove, the hot-oil smell and snare-drum crackle of chicken frying in a pan rising into the air in front of her, her weave done in a short bob of super-tight black curls, her housecoat the same one he’d seen her in when he’d left to go up north.
All he could do was blink, and wonder whether someone had played a sick joke on him.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” she snapped at him. “Wash y’all hands and get out the trays. I’m five minutes out.”
Right, he’d expected to find her laying in bed with a sheet up to her chest and a fading light in her eyes as her beloved Jesus came for her.
“Lane, snap out of it. I’m not dead yet.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose as a wave of exhaustion sandbagged him. “Yes, ma’am.”
As he closed them in together, he searched for signs of physical weakness in those strong shoulders and those set legs of hers. There was none. There was absolutely nothing about the sixty-five-year-old woman to suggest that she had ended up in the emergency room that morning.
Okay, so it was a toss-up, he decided as he eyeballed the rest of the food she’d prepared for him. A toss-up between him being relieved … and him feeling furious that he’d wasted the time coming down here.
One thing he was clear on? There was no leaving before he ate—partially because she would hog tie him to a chair and force feed him if she had to, but mostly because the instant he caught that scent, his stomach had gone hollow-pit hungry on him.
“Are you okay?” he had to ask.
The glare she sent him suggested if he wanted to continue that line of questioning, she’d be more than happy to spank him until he shut his piehole.