“Wait,” Cullen said. “Nobody told you that Maggie was back in the old saddle?”
“No one did,” Gorton said. “You say it just happened yesterday?”
Cullen nodded.
“How did you find out so quickly?”
“I make it my business to know,” Cullen grinned and said, “but maybe the owner of the horse is the last to know.”
God, Gorton thought, he is a cocky little bastard. But maybe that’s what made him such a good rider. He’d invested in a few movies and been around enough stars to know how much shit directors and studios were willing to put up with from them.
“This might actually help you get all three of those women out of your life,” Cullen said.
“Why is that?”
“Because Maggie has no shot at winning on that horse, that’s why,” Cullen said.
Gorton sipped his Bloody Mary. Cullen had coffee in front of him. He was in his riding clothes, having told Gorton he was only schooling today—whatever the hell that meant—and due back to his ring in a few minutes.
“You’re full of shit,” Gorton said. “You don’t know she can’t win.”
“Yeah, boss,” Cullen said, “as a matter of fact I do. Maybe she’s back in form by the fall, if she’s lucky and doesn’t break her ass again. But not before. Nobody comes back this fast. Don’t ask me. Ask anybody. Trust me: The rider you thought you wanted in the first place isn’t the rider you want now.”
“Is that so?” Gorton said.
Cullen nodded. “You want to hear something funny?”
“Yeah, Cullen,” Gorton said. “You can probably see how much I want you to amuse the living shit out of me.”
“Not funny, actually,” Cullen said. “More ironic. Because as much as it pains me to admit it, the kid is the better rider.”
“Son of a bitch!” Gorton said, loud enough to turn heads at nearby tables. “I’d rather lose without that kid than win with her.”
He finished his Bloody Mary.
“I could be boxed in here,” he said. “And I effing hate being boxed in.”
“Yeah,” Cullen said. The smug grin again. “It’s not like you’re Steve Gorton or anything.”
“Let me ask you something,” Gorton said. “Say I can figure this out and get rid of them both once and for all and get you on the horse without looking like I threw brave little Maggie under the bus, what about the horse you’re on now, and your owner, what’s-his-name?”
“You give me a shot at Coronado,” Cullen said, “and let me worry about the rest of it.”
“You’d sell him out?”
“I’d sell my mother out,” Cullen said.
Gorton said, “If everything else does turn to shit, and I’m with one or the other, we still need a Plan B.”
“Still working on it,” Cullen said.
“Work harder,” Gorton said.
“I hear you.”
“You better,” Gorton said. “You’ve got a lot riding on this, too. So to speak.”
“Hear that,” Cullen said. “Some money might have to change hands.”
Gorton smiled. “Now we’re talking about my sport,” he said.
Cullen stood up.
“Even you sometimes forget that you’re the one who tells people how this shit is going to go,” Tyler Cullen said. “Not the other way around.”
When he was gone, Gorton picked up his phone, punched in a number, waited, drumming the fingers of his free hand on the table.
“I need to see you,” he snapped. “Now.”
“What about?”
“I thought I explained to you before that I don’t like surprises,” he said.
“Where are you?”
“At my table.”
He put the phone back down.
He was working on his second Bloody, reading through some text messages, when he heard Caroline Atwood say, “What was so important that it couldn’t wait?”
Then he told her how it was going to go.
“You wouldn’t,” she said when he finished.
“Watch me,” Gorton said.
SIXTY-ONE
I WAS IN THE RING with Daniel in the late afternoon, just having schooled one of Grandmother’s new horses, when we saw Gus Bennett’s trailer pull up the driveway.
Mom walked toward us, announcing, “I’m moving Coronado over to Gus’s.”
Just like that.
“Wait,” I said. “Can we at least talk about this?”