Free The Bourbon Kings #1 by J.R. Ward Page A

enemy.
    Lizzie shook her head and went in through the rear kitchen door. Whatever was happening over there was not her problem. She was far, far, far down the totem pole, just looking to get a tent erected for her flower arrangements—
    Wow.
    Talk about a lotta chefs, she thought as she scooted in and out and around all the white-coated, toque-hatted men and women who were giving themselves scoliosis making filo-dough and stuffed-mushroom’y thingies.
    On the far side of all of the Gordon Ramsay, there was a heavy, swinging door that opened into a plain corridor full of cleaning closets, laundries, and the maids’ break room—as well as the butler’s living quarters, the controller’s office and the back staff stairwell.
    Lizzie went to the door on the right that was marked P RIVATE and knocked once. Twice. Three times.
    Given that Rosalinda was as efficient and punctual as an alarm clock, the controller clearly wasn’t in. Maybe she’d gone to the bank—
    “—shall check again in an hour,” Mr. Harris said as he entered the hall at the far end with the head housekeeper. “Thank you, Mrs. Mollie.”
    “My pleasure, Mr. Harris,” the older woman muttered.
    Lizzie locked eyes with the butler as Mrs. Mollie pared off. “We have a problem.”
    He stopped in front of her. “Yes?”
    “I need just over twelve grand for the tent company and Mrs. Freeland is not here. Can you cut checks?”
    “They require twelve thousand dollars?” he said in his clipped accent. “Whyever for?”
    “The tent rental. It’s a new company policy I’m guessing. They’ve never done this before.”
    “This is Easterly. We have had an account with them since the turn of the century and they will defer. Allow me.”
    Pivoting on his spit-polish shoeshine, he headed for his quarters—no doubt to call the rental company’s owner personally.
    If he could pull this off and Lizzie could keep her tents and tables? His PITA attitude might well be worth the trouble.
    Besides, if worst came to worst, Greta could write the check.
    One thing was certain, Lizzie was
not
going to ask Lane for it and they needed that tent: In less than forty-eight hours, the world was descending on the property, and nothing pissed off the Bradfords more than something, anything out of place.
    As she waited for the butler to reemerge, all triumphant in his penguin suit, she leaned back against the smooth, cool plaster wall and found herself thinking about the dumbest decision she had ever made …
    S he should have let the whole thing rest.
    After the dreaded Lane Baldwine had sought her out in the dark in the garden, she should have let the argument between them go. Why on earth did she care how wrong he was about her? How insane, egocentric, and ridiculous that silver-spooned fool was? She didn’t owe him any kind of world-view realignment—besides, that wasn’t going to happen without a sledgehammer.
    Not that she wouldn’t enjoy an attempt on those terms.
    The problem was, however, that among her own deficiencies was the paralytic need not to be misinterpreted by Channing Tatum’s doppelgänger.
    So she had to set him straight. And in fact, she talked to him all the wayhome that night. As well as all the way back to Easterly the following morning. And then throughout the next week.
    Eventually, she became convinced he was avoiding her: For the first time since he’d come home on his break from graduate school, she didn’t see him for seven days straight. The good news, if you could look at it that way, was that at least there weren’t any females coming around the house and leaving at odd hours in porn combinations. The bad news was that she was now overprepared with all her speeches, and in danger of revealing exactly how much time she’d wasted yelling at him in her head.
    And Lane was definitely still at Easterly. His Porsche—like he would drive anything else—was still around by the garages, and whenever she was forced to take a bouquet up to