Neck & Neck (6 page)

By now, Finn’s head was beginning to spin at the outpourings of Natalie Beckett’s brain. Though he somehow did manage to grasp the fact that she was currently condemning the very behavior she’d just indulged in herself, dressing as she had and flirting with Finn just to get him to convince his employer to attend a party she was throwing.

Right? Wasn’t that what she was doing? At this point, he was so befuddled, he wasn’t confident he could say for sure that the sky was blue and the grass was red.

Green, he quickly corrected himself. The grass was green. Right? Wasn’t it?

Oh, for . . .

“Look, Ms. Beckett,” he said more adamantly. At least, he tried to be adamant. But she lifted her beer to her mouth for another one of those luscious sips, and when she lowered it, there was a thin veil of foam on her upper lip that she immediately swiped away with the tip of her tongue, and Finn couldn’t remember what he’d been going to say. Then her tongue darted out a second time, limning the entire outline of that succulent mouth, and all he could think about at that point was the succulence of that succulent mouth.

And holy crap, what did he think he was doing, looking at Natalie Beckett’s succulent mouth when he should be telling her to take a hike? He reminded himself of all the reasons Russell had hired him in the first place—including the really big reason—reminded himself it was his job to ensure there was always a safe distance between the Mulhollands and people like Natalie Beckett. Or people like anyone else. It didn’t matter that the rule didn’t hold up for Finn himself, and that there was no one who said he had to keep a distance between himself and Natalie. In fact, there was no one who said he couldn’t get as close to her as he wanted. Even closer than they already were, with her elbow nearly touching his on the bar. He didn’t even mind if she smelled like Havarti and peppers and garlic later. In fact, if he wanted . . .

He bit back a mental sigh. Well, that was the problem. Finn couldn’t allow himself to want. Because he wanted things he would never—could never—have. And for that reason, if no other, he really needed to get as far away from Natalie Beckett as possible.

“Ms. Beckett,” he tried again.

“Please, call me Natalie,” she said.

Telling himself that was the last thing he should do, he said, “Natalie.” He hesitated only a moment before telling her, “I’m sure Mr. Mulholland would tell you thanks for the invitation, but no thanks. He’s a very busy man, and his focus for the next two weeks will be on making sure his horse is ready for the race.”

“But—”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” This time he turned to the bartender. “Could I get that Hot Brown to go?”

 

 

NATALIE WATCHED FINN GUTHRIE’S RETREATING BACKSIDE for the second time in one day, with even more appreciation than she’d had the first time. Boy, that walk of his could start fights and stop traffic. Then she noted the edge of the carelessly folded invitation rising out of his back pocket and remembered that he’d once again refused to even pass it along to his employer. The door closed behind him, removing both the invitation and his backside from view, leaving her feeling doubly let down.

What was the guy’s problem, anyway? Yeah, okay, as head of Russell Mulholland’s security detail, he was obligated to keep people away from his employer, but still. Mulholland really was going to miss out on a lot of fun if he spent his entire stay in Louisville surrounded by bodyguards and never enjoyed any of the scores of events to be had this time of year. And it wasn’t like Natalie was asking the guy to attend some minor affair where a bunch of yahoos would do nothing but make demands on his time and attention. Only the finest people would be at Clementine’s party making demands on his time and attention. Provided, you know, he accepted the invitation. Otherwise there would be no one at Clementine’s party doing anything.

The bartender placed her burger on the bar in front of her, and she turned to look at it dispassionately. Just as Finn Guthrie had done a moment ago, she asked the bartender if she could get it to go instead. She enjoyed a few more swallows of her beer as she waited for him to box it up, but left the glass half-full after paying for her purchase.

Half-full,
she repeated to herself at the realization, brightening some. That was the way she always looked at things. It was the reason she kept rebuilding after every disaster she’d created, both in life and in business. Natalie Beckett was not a quitter. Nor was she one to back down from a challenge. If things didn’t go right the first time, then you tried again. And if they didn’t go right the second time, then you tried
again
. And if they didn’t go right the third time, you—

Well, anyway,
she
would just try again. Natalie Beckett had never been one to take no for an answer. Not unless no was the answer she wanted to hear. And certainly not when her livelihood—her entire future—depended on a yes.

Once again, she followed the same path Finn Guthrie had taken, exiting through the same door as he. But this time, she didn’t follow him. She turned in the opposite direction of the Brown Hotel and strode toward the lot where she’d parked her car. Instead of returning to her Crescent Hill office, however, she opted for her Crescent Hill home, a creekstone Arts and Crafts-style house she’d purchased after graduating from college—okay, okay, with money from her trust fund—and which she loved even more now than she had the first day she moved in. It wasn’t huge—three bedrooms, two baths—but it was the perfect size for her, and the open spaces, geometric lines, dark trim, and jewel-toned colors she’d chosen to fill it suited her. It was a far cry from the muted and overstuffed—in more ways than one—house in which she’d grown up, and in which she’d never felt comfortable. Where her mother’s style could be best described as Colonial condescension, Natalie’s was more cottage cozy. And that didn’t relate just to their decorating styles, either.

After stowing her carryout in the fridge—not surprisingly, she hadn’t actually been hungry when she ordered—she went straight upstairs to her bedroom to change clothes, opting for a baggy white T-shirt and even baggier pajama pants decorated with cartoon cats. Then she washed her face of the makeup she’d donned for Finn Guthrie’s benefit—for all the good it had done—and made her way to her home office. Zip, her silver tabby, jumped into her lap the moment she sat down in front of her computer, and Natalie absently scratched her ear as she skittered the mouse across the pad to bring up a screen. She clicked on her Internet icon, which automatically opened on Google, but she hesitated a moment before typing anything into the search box.

Finally, on a whim, she typed in the name Steve Jobs in quotations. More than sixteen million hits came up. When she’d done the same thing for Russell Mulholland earlier in the day, fewer than one million had come up. Why would that be? Certainly Steve Jobs had been around longer than Russell Mulholland, but the two men’s success was comparable, and the huge discrepancy hardly seemed justified.

That was made more evident when she Googled Finn Guthrie’s name for a second time and realized again that his name appeared nearly as often as Mulholland’s did. Why would a man who was worth as much as Russell have only as many hits as a man whom he employed, even if that man was constantly at his side?

One thing Natalie had learned early on about the Internet was that it was rife with complaint and misanthropy, particularly where celebrities of any kind were concerned. There should at least be a handful of websites—if not more—devoted to bashing Russell and his game system, thanks to malcontents who hadn’t been able to get their hands on one or who didn’t know how to use it properly. And those sites wouldn’t include mention of Finn’s name, because people wouldn’t know or care about him in that context. There should also be plenty of business and financial articles about the billionaire that wouldn’t include Finn, because even if they mentioned his cadre of bodyguards, few would bother to specify any of them by name.

So why were Finn and Russell virtually always linked, and why were there so many fewer mentions of the billionaire than there should be? There could be only one explanation, Natalie finally concluded.

Russell Mulholland was hiding something. The billionaire had a secret he didn’t want getting around. And she’d bet every cent she had that Finn Guthrie’s job was to protect that as much as he did the billionaire.

She’d read an article not long ago about a type of business that was beginning to thrive because the companies were able to, through finagling or bribery or outright threats, have removed from the Internet any number of pages or sites that referred to their clients in less-than-stellar ways. It made sense that someone who valued his privacy as much as Russell Mulholland did would pay for such a service. If Natalie could afford it, she’d pay for such a service herself. To this day, she continued to be mocked about the dress she’d worn to Sybil Garrison’s twenty-first birthday party, because there were still photos floating around out there in cyberspace. Well, how was she supposed to know how enormous her butt had looked with that big-ass bow on the back?

Suffice it to say she could just sympathize with Russell Mulholland, that was all.

But what could a man like that have to hide? Then again, what she
had
read painted him as a man who was using his newfound wealth to live like an overgrown adolescent. In addition to racing horses, he liked to race Formula One cars—except that he employed jockeys to ride the horses, and he himself drove the cars. He’d also been linked romantically to a number of women—though none for any length of time—but that wasn’t surprising, given both the nature of handsome, wealthy men and the often biased sensationalism of the media. Womanizing was in no way a secret when it came to business moguls, never mind acting like an overgrown adolescent. So that couldn’t be what Russell Mulholland was worried about having revealed to the world.

She recalled again how she hadn’t been able to uncover anything about him or his chief of security prior to the formation of Mulholland Games. No mention of him being an academic standout in high school or college, which one would think he had been, considering his current success. She hadn’t found so much as his name listed on the roster of the science or chess clubs of any schools. No marriage announcement. No birth announcement for his son. Not even an obituary for his wife.

Just to be sure, Natalie searched a variety of word combinations in an effort to rouse something like that. But there was nothing. She did the same thing with Finn Guthrie, telling herself it was only because she needed a comparison, and not because she was genuinely curious about whether or not he was married with children, or how old he was, or where he was born, or where he’d gone to school, or whether or not he’d been in the science or chess club at that school.

But there was nothing about Finn prior to his employer’s business successes, either. There were only a few hundred thousand mentions of him at Mulholland’s side, keeping away (choose any that apply) paparazzi, autograph hounds, gold diggers, corporate spies, all of the above.

Just who was Finn Guthrie? she wondered. Who was Russell Mulholland, for that matter? And more to the point, what was he—or what were
they
—trying to hide? Maybe if Natalie could figure that out, she’d have some leverage when it came to convincing the billionaire it would be in his best interests to come to Clementine’s party.

She was brought up short when she realized what she’d just thought. Digging into someone’s background to uncover things they’d probably just as soon leave covered, and then using those things to sway that person’s actions wasn’t leverage. It was extortion. What Natalie was thinking about was blackmail, plain and simple.

Could she really do that? Could she blackmail Mulholland into coming to Clementine’s party if it meant ensuring her own success? That was pretty conniving. Pretty coldhearted. Pretty heinous. Even assuming she
could
uncover whatever it was the billionaire was hiding.

Good heavens, what was she thinking? Natalie asked herself. Of course she wouldn’t—couldn’t—blackmail anyone. Not unless, you know, she got really,
really
desperate.

And she wasn’t desperate. She still had two weeks before Clementine’s party. Well, okay, one week to convince Russell Mulholland to attend and make the announcement, and then another week to have hundreds of people switch allegiance to attend the Hotchkiss gala instead of the parties to which they’d already committed. But hey, that was seven whole days she had to change Russell Mulholland’s mind. Anything could happen in seven days. An entire universe could be created in seven days. And even if that was an allegory, Natalie was up for a decidedly
un
allegorical challenge.

All she had to do was find some way to convince Russell Mulholland to come to Clementine Hotchkiss’s party that
didn’t
involve extortion. If she could somehow appeal to the billionaire himself, in person, she was confident she could do just that. But appealing to the billionaire himself, in person, meant getting past his bevy of bodyguards first. And
that
meant getting past Finn Guthrie. Finn Guthrie, whose arms were roped with sinew, and whose chest was as broad as the Grand Canyon, and whose shoulders were roughly the size of Antarctica.

Oh, yeah, she thought sarcastically. No problem. Considering the way he’d succumbed to her today, she’d have him eating out of her hand in no time.

There. The perfect solution to her problem. There was always a plan B to implement. Always. All she had to do now was, you know, remember what plan B was.

FINN WAS IN THE HOTEL SUITE BATHROOM TRYING TO get melted cheese off his Talk Derby to Me T-shirt—a Hot Brown, he’d realized in hindsight, wasn’t the best thing to eat from a carryout box—when he heard the knock at his door. For one fleeting moment, he thought—even hoped—it was Natalie Beckett coming to bother him again. Then he reminded himself that there was no way she could learn what room he—or anyone else in Russell’s party—could be in. Not if he was doing his job right.