Neck & Neck by Elizabeth Bevarly Read Free Book Online

whose contributions went to the sponsorship of self-important artists whose “art” was anything but, or to funding research for more environmentally friendly lipstick. He’d met enough society do-gooders moving in Russell’s social circles to know that most of them picked niche groups whose work eventually found its way back to the original benefactor. “My employer has better things to do than be the centerpiece for a party full of strangers that will benefit him in no way.”
    “But Mr. Mulholland will benefit greatly,” she quickly countered. “He has a horse running in the Derby, doesn’t he?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “But the race itself is only a small part of the Kentucky Derby experience,” she interrupted. Again. “The parties come close to stealing the limelight every year. If Mr. Mulholland comes all the way to Louisville for the Derby but doesn’t attend anything but the race, he’s going to miss out on so many wonderful opportunities.”
    “Really,” Finn said wryly. “And here, all these years, I’ve been thinking the Kentucky Derby was the reason for the Kentucky Derby.”
    Actually, he’d never given the Kentucky Derby any thought at all. Not until Russell started investing in Thoroughbreds and was bitten by the racing bug. And even now, Russell had been infinitely more excited about coming to town for the next two weeks than Finn had. Which, in the long run, had just frustrated the guy, because he knew he couldn’t get out and enjoy things the very way Natalie Beckett was suggesting he enjoy them. To do so would mean to be overrun by, at best, admirers and, at worst, psychos. Even in good times, celebrity wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
    Of course, there were those who said, “Hey, if you want to be rich and famous, you have to take the good with the bad.” Celebrities knew the job was dangerous when they took it, and many of them spent years courting fame, so they had no right to shun the limelight once they had it. True enough for many of them, Finn conceded. But there were others, like Russell—and, even more to the point, his son Max—for whom fame and fortune had come as an enormous surprise and was simply the result of doing something they loved that grew beyond their wildest dreams. And those were the people who did have a right to shun the limelight. Unfortunately—and ironically—by making themselves unavailable, they became even more adamantly pursued.
    If Russell had it all to do over again, Finn knew, he would have handled everything differently. But there was no such thing as a do-over in life. You had to make choices one day and deal with them the next.
    “Pshaw,” Natalie said, and for a moment, he thought she was disagreeing with his life’s philosophy, and that she believed life was nothing but do-overs. Then he remembered they’d been talking about a horse race. “There’s the Derby,” she continued, “and then there’s the Derby experience . As any Louisvillian will tell you, they are two hugely different things.”
    “Really,” Finn repeated even more wryly.
    She nodded knowingly and was about to say more when the bartender returned with her Nut Brown Ale. To Finn’s surprise, it wasn’t a light lager, which he would have thought a woman would order, but a dark stout that she readily lifted to her mouth. And she didn’t sip it daintily, the way he would have thought a woman would. Instead, she drank apprecia tively and savored it before turning to look at him again.
    “The Derby,” she began again without missing a beat, “is a bunch of gorgeous horses with brightly clad riders running around a big oval.”
    “Oh, I’d say it’s a little more than that,” Finn objected.
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s a million dollar purse,” she conceded dispassionately. “Whatever. The Derby experience , on the other hand, is something you absolutely cannot put a price tag on. For the next two weeks, every single day, there will be something going