Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

“What?” he asked. “Lulu, what’s happening between us is huge. How can we not pursue it?”

“Cole, it would never work. We’re too different from each other.”

“Too different?” he echoed. “Lulu, you and I are more alike than you realize. Or at least more than you’ll allow yourself to admit.”

“That’s nuts,” she said, suddenly feeling defensive for no reason. “We are nothing alike. You’re so…out there. You’re so bold and brash and larger than life. I’m timid and deliberate and smaller than life. You go out and meet the world head-on. I hide from it. You’ll challenge anything or anybody. I don’t want to make waves.”

“You are so wrong.” He shook his head. “Not just about yourself, but about me, too. Look at this studio,” he said. “Talk about bold and brash and larger than life. This place is incredible.”

“That’s my art, Cole, not me.”

“You said your art is an extension of you.”

“That’s not what I meant when I said that.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“No.” He started to object again, so she hurried on. “Cole, I’ve seen you in action the past two weeks. You’re a showman. You’re always on. You never take a break for a minute. You’re type A all the way.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I’ve had to be for the past two weeks. It’s what people expect of me at times like this. But my life isn’t just two weeks a year. It’s not just the Kentucky Derby.”

“No, it’s the Santa Anita Derby, too,” she said. “And the Preakness. And the Belmont Stakes. And a host of other races.” He opened his mouth to say something more, but she continued, “You love the world you live in. You thrive in it. The brighter the spotlight and the more intense the scrutiny, the more you shine. Admit it. You love being King Cole. And you’ve been King Cole so long, you can’t be anyone else.”

She could see he wanted to deny it. But that he knew there was truth to what she said. “I love racing Thoroughbreds,” he said. “I love the people who populate that world. I love the character, the color, the excitement, the risk, the energy, the potential, the life.” He lifted a hand to her hair and brushed a damp curl away from her forehead. “But, Lulu,” he added, “those are the things I…like…about you, too.”

This time Cole was the one to hurry on before she had a chance to respond. “I’m not the only one who does his work under a spotlight,” he said. He pointed at the halogens overhead that were dark now. “Your light is even brighter than mine when it’s on. And there’s more to Thoroughbred racing than what you’ve witnessed this week,” he added. “There’s another side to my world. Another side to me. And it’s a side I love just as much as the other one, a side I thrive in even more. Remember how I said at the gallery last night that you can’t really know a person until you’ve seen them working in the world they love most and where they feel most comfortable?”

Lulu nodded cautiously. “Yeah.”

He smiled down at her, but there was something kind of sad mixed with the contentment she saw there. “I really didn’t come here with the intention of making love to you this afternoon,” he said. “But watching you here in your world, surrounded by your art, creating your art…I couldn’t resist you. Because you’re yourself here, Lulu. Your most genuine, honest self. You’re not the cautious woman who wears the blue jeans and the bland T-shirts. You’re the woman who has a million colors and textures in her closet. You’re the one who writes with such passion in her journal.” He looked at the glass surrounding them, tempered by the darkness, but still vivid and glittery in the waning light. “You’re the woman who creates this incredible beauty. Because you have so much color and texture and passion and beauty inside.”

Lulu didn’t know what to say to that. She told herself he was wrong. That as much as she knew her art was a part of her, it was different from who she really was. But if that was true, then couldn’t what Cole did for a living be different from who he was, too?

He covered her shoulders with his hands and dipped his head until his forehead pressed lightly against hers. “Do me a favor,” he said.

“What?” she asked softly.

“Come out to the farm in Shelbyville. I want you to meet someone.”

The request puzzled her. “Why? Silk Purse is at the Downs by now, isn’t she? The race is only a few days away.”

“Yeah, she is,” he said. “But she’s not who I want you to meet. I mean, I do want you to meet her. Eventually. But this is someone way more important.”

“Cole, I don’t think—”

“Please, Lulu.”

“But—”

“Just have dinner with me the night before the Derby. For luck.”

She expelled a sound of derision. But, as in everything else, she simply couldn’t resist him. “Okay,” she said. “For luck. But not for any reason other than that.”

Twenty

LULU FOUND THE FARM JUST OUTSIDE SHELBYVILLE with no trouble at all. Nothing in Shelby County was very far from anything else, and virtually everything was off Highway 60, which ran right through the middle. Mayhew Farms was only a few miles past Claudia Sanders Dinner House, a local landmark for decades and host to one of the most exuberant wedding receptions Lulu had ever attended. The narrow asphalt lane down which she turned wound first one way, then another, then seemed to double back on itself before straightening out again. The landscape around her was rolling green hills broken up by ponds and copses of poplar and redbud, the bright blue bowl of the sky arcing cloudless and perfect over all of it.

She slowed when she saw a groundhog up ahead poking his nose from some brush at