Step one, get the Proprietor’s attention. The more impossible the challenge laid before him, the more it brought the world into magnificent focus.
“I’d go for the hat on the left,” Nash drawled behind him. “Nice sheen.”
Jameson glanced back at his brother. “You wouldn’t go for any of them.” Formal wasn’t exactly the oldest Hawthorne brother’s style.
“I’m not you,” Nash replied. The words were plain enough, but Jameson heard layers of meaning buried there—and ignored them. Unfortunately, Nash wasn’t one to be ignored. “I met Jake Nash and walked away just fine,” he said quietly. “But you’re not me, Jamie.”
Jameson’s eyes narrowed. “I take it Avery told you about Ian.”
“It’s real cute,” Nash replied, “that you think I need anyone’s help keepin’ tabs on you.” Hazel eyes ringed in amber met Jameson’s green ones, head on.
Jameson looked away. “Blood doesn’t make family. I have Avery. I have all of you. I don’t need anything else.” Setting his jaw, Jameson turned his attention back to the top hats and chose the one on the left. “You’re right,” he told Nash. “Nice sheen.”
This conversation is over. Jameson sauntered past, daring Nash to say one more thing, and made his way to the dressing room. The twin doors were already opened a crack. Jameson knocked, pushing one door inward. He saw the stylists first, then Avery, and once he saw Avery, it was like he couldn’t see anything else.
They’d styled her in white lace. The dress looked modest at first glance: It fell below her knee, came up nearly to her collarbone, and had sleeves that covered her from shoulder to elbow. But the fit. Jameson knew her body—every inch of it—but if he hadn’t, that dress would have had him wanting to, dying to. The tailored fabric showed the swell of her chest, the exact location of the smallest part of her waist. A thick black belt split the top half of the dress from the bottom—and that part wasn’t exactly loose, either.
There was just enough left to the imagination to make Jameson want to imagine it. The way her hair had been swept back from her face made her neck look long and graceful. Inviting.
Who am I, Jameson thought, to turn down an invitation?
“And finally…，” one of the stylists said, holding out an imperious hand. The other stylist placed a hat in it: white, with a wide, asymmetrical brim and a black rose, its petals kissed with tiny jewels, attached to the underside. Pinned in place, the hat sat on Avery’s head at angle, the sparkling black rose drawing the gaze to her eyes.
“Figured out where we’re going yet?” Avery said.
Jameson held out a hand and waited for her to take it. He anticipated her touch, then felt it through every inch of his body when the pads of her fingers brushed his palm, electric.
This was the beginning.
“Are we, by any chance,” he said, answering her challenge, “off to the races?”
CHAPTER 14
JAMESON
Like the Kentucky Derby,” Jameson murmured in Avery’s ear as they stepped onto a fabulously green lawn, “but make it royal.”
There was no press on racecourse grounds and no personal security allowed. Oren had grudgingly signed off on Avery’s attendance, primarily because, for once, she wasn’t the biggest target in the vicinity. The rich. The famous. The connected. The royal.
“Ready to make some noise?” Avery murmured back.
Jameson swept his gaze over a sea of men in top hats and long-tailed jackets and impeccably dressed women vying for a spot in Vogue. “Always.”
An hour in, the champagne and Pimm’s were flowing freely, and word of the Hawthorne heiress’s appearance had spread. In other circumstances, with literal royals in attendance, that might have mattered less. But Avery was in the beginning stages of giving away twenty-eight billion dollars. And then there was the fact that she literally had a horse in this race.
Actually, she had two.
“Thamenold had a good showing yesterday.” The lordly gentleman currently holding court around them was one of many who’d made a similar comment. “Is there any truth to the rumors that you’re looking to part with him, Ms. Grambs?”
Thamenold. Jameson’s mind automatically rearranged the letters in the horse’s name. The old man. As with everything his grandfather had ever done, there were layers of meaning.
“You must know better than to listen to rumors,” Avery replied coyly.
That was his cue. “Although,” Jameson said, lowering his voice, but pitching it so that everyone in the vicinity could still hear, “I have to say that you certainly have some interesting rumors on this side of the pond. Legendary, even.”