The Bourbon Kings
Page 34

“Trampled. Well, the doctors say his heart gave out, but it was caused by a trample. That how you got maimed?”
“No.” He took a long drink. “So what are you doing here.”
Now she turned around. “My father always said I was to come and find you if anything ever happened to him. He said you owed him. I never asked for what.”
Edward regarded her for a long time. “How old are you? Twelve?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Jesus, you’re young—”
“Watch your mouth around me.”
He had to smile. “You’re just like your old man, you know that?”
“So people say.” She put her hands back on her hips. “I’m not lookin’ for no handouts. I need a place to stay and work to do. I’m good with horses, just like my father, and bad with people—so you’re warned up front on that one. I got no money, but my back is strong and I’m not afraid of nothing. When can I start.”
“Who says I’m looking for any help?”
She frowned. “My dad said you’d need it. He said you’d have to have more help.”
The Red & Black was a big operation, and there were always vacancies. But Jeb Landis was a complicated blast from the past—and his kin was contaminated by association.
And yet … “What can you do?”
“It’s not rocket science to muck stalls, keep the horses in shape, watch the pregnancies—”
He waved away her words. “Fine, fine, you’re hired. And I’m just being a prick because, like you, I can’t get along with people anymore. There’s a vacant apartment next to Moe’s over in Barn B. You can move in there.”
“Point the way.”
Edward grunted as he got back to his feet and he purposely brought his glass with him as he led the way to the door. “Don’t you want to know how much I’ll pay you.”
“You’ll be fair. My father said that dishonesty was not in your character.”
“He was being generous on that one.”
“Hardly. And he knew men and horses.”
As Edward went through the unlocking procedure again, he could feel her looking at him and hated it. His injuries were the result of a hell he would have prefered to keep private from the world.
Before he let her out of the cottage, he stared down at her. “There’s only one rule.”
“What’s that?”
For some reason, he took stock of her features. She was nothing like her father physically—well, other than that small frame. Shelby—or whatever her name was—had eyes that were pale, not dark. And her skin wasn’t the consistency of leather. Yet. She also didn’t smell like horse sweat—although that would change.
Her voice, however, was all Jeb: That twang of hers was backed up by a solid core of strength.
“You don’t go near my stallion,” Edward said. “He’s mean to the core.”
“Nebekanzer.”
“You know him.”
“My father used to say that that horse had gasoline in his veins and acid in his eyes.”
“Yeah, you know my horse. Don’t go near him. You don’t muck his stall, you don’t approach him if he’s out to pasture, and you never, ever put anything over that stall door if you want to keep it. That includes your head.”
“Who takes care of him?”
“I do.” Edward limped out into the night, the heavy, humid air making him feel like he couldn’t breathe. “And no one else.”
As he tried and failed to take a deep inhale, he wondered if all those doctors had missed an internal injury. Then again, maybe the sense of suffocation was the image of this small woman anywhere near that hateful black stallion. He could just imagine what Neb could do to her.
She went ahead of him and grabbed a backpack out of the passenger side of the truck. “So you’re in charge here.”
“No, Moe Brown is. You’ll meet him tomorrow. He’ll be your boss.” Edward started off toward the barns. “Like I said, the apartment next to his is furnished, but I don’t know when the last person lived in it.”
“I’ve slept in stalls and on park benches. Having a roof over me is enough.”
He glanced down at her. “Your father … was a good man.”
“He was no better or worse than anyone else.”
It was impossible not to wonder who the woman’s mother was—or how anyone could have put up with Jeb long enough to have a child with him: Jeb Landis was a legend in the industry, the trainer of more stakes winners than any other man, alive or dead. He’d also been an alcoholic sonofabitch with a gambling problem as big as his misogynistic streak.
One thing Edward was not worried about was whether this Shelby could handle herself. If she could survive living with Jeb? Working an eighteen-hour shift on a breeding farm would be a piece of cake.
As they came up to Barn B, the motion-activated exterior lights came on and horses stirred inside, clomping their hooves and whinnying. Entering through the side door, he bypassed Moe’s office and the supply rooms, and took her to the staircase that rose up to what had once been a hayloft stretching the full length of the massive roof beams. Sometime in the seventies, the space had been converted to a pair of apartments, and Moe had the front one that looked out over the drive.
“You go first and wait for me at the top,” he gritted. “It takes me a while.”