Free The Ring on Her Finger by Elizabeth Bevarly Page B

help,” he said without looking at her. “I’ll just take it back to my apartment.”
    Without waiting for an answer, Max Hogan, a man who had once gleefully faced death and dismemberment at speeds nearing—sometimes exceeding—200 miles an hour, ran away. Ran away from a beautiful woman who had the softest skin and the most expressive eyes and the nicest smile he had ever seen.
    Only after he’d retreated to the safety of his apartment—safety, yeah, right—did he allow himself to replay the scene in his mind. In slow motion, because he didn’t want to skip over a single frame. As he recalled the way the two of them had laughed for that brief spell, so freely and without inhibition, he realized it was the first good, genuine laugh he’d enjoyed in more than five years. And when he remembered the way Lucy had felt when he’d held her—and he hadn’t even held the best parts—he realized how badly he’d been kidding himself thinking he didn’t miss the presence of women in his life.
    In less than twelve hours, Lucy French had crawled inside him and located places—dark, dreary places—that Max had sworn he’d closed off to the world forever. Worse than that, she had thrown open windows in those places and invited in the light. All he could do now was wonder, if she’d done all that in a half day’s time, what kind of damage would she do after being here for four months?

Chapter 5
     
     
    Nathaniel Finn leaned against the mantelpiece in Justin Cove’s living room, surrounded by fine antiques and artwork, sipping eighty-year-old Irish whiskey, gazing at a host of beautiful women—many of whom he’d known intimately—and realized he was profoundly bored. Not that that was unusual. Lately, he’d spent the better part of every day being bored, often profoundly. If he wasn’t bored, he was irritable. If he wasn’t irritable, he was gloomy. If he wasn’t gloomy, he was surly. Which made no sense, seeing as he was living a life that was the envy of every man. Hell, he was the Bad Boy of the Thoroughbred Racing Set—everyone said so. He used to love that. Lately, though, the nickname felt weirdly inappropriate.
    Still, his was a most excellent life, he reminded himself—mostly because he kept forgetting it—and it was only going to get better in a couple of months, after Keeneland held its November sale of fillies. Nathaniel had one particularly fine mare to sell this year, a dam to a Triple Crown champion who was in foal by a Derby winner, and he was certain she’d fetch him a cool two million, at least. Yet even that prospect didn’t excite him as much as it should.
    He sipped his drink again, savoring the mellow spirit as it warmed his mouth and belly. And he tried not to think about how the liquor’s kindling of his insides was the most stimulation he’d enjoyed in months. Then, sighing with something that felt vaguely like resentment, he made his way across the room to where a trio of his friends—other horsemen—had gathered amid discussion and cigar smoke. He raked his fingers through his straight, black hair and loosened the Valentino necktie he had knotted expertly at his throat. He had conceded to Alexis’s edict that he wear a suit to this party to impress her guests, but he’d be damned if he’d feel comfortable in it. Give him the solace of denim and boots any day. He was way more comfortable around horses than he was in polite society.
    “Justin,” he greeted his host and closest friend.
    Justin was dressed in a dark power suit and ultraconservative burgundy silk tie. His wavy auburn hair was thinner and grayer now than it was when the two of them roomed together at Vanderbilt two decades ago, and his brown eyes were weary from too much work and too little play. Yet he looked as sharp as ever, despite the two fingers of Bourbon in his cut-crystal glass.
    “Nathaniel,” Justin greeted him amiably. “Sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk earlier when you arrived. Alexis always