“Of course,” he said. “Call if you need me.”
Grogan picked up the cup and sampled the contents with a grunt of approval. “Why don’t you go and seek out our noble sponsors?” he said. “Perhaps you could remind Mr Warwick of his . . . obligations.”
“Of course,” Dmitry said again, only this time there was a touch more enthusiasm in his tone.
120
“Am I glad to see you!”
Kelly gaped at the girl who stood in the open doorway, her mind a complete blank.
The girl didn’t seem to notice this reaction right away. She was slightly on the plump side with skin the colour of strong café latte and an air of bustle about her as she hurried into the cloakroom. “Oh, please tell me you’re the new girl?” she blurted out as Kelly remained frozen with surprise. “We are so short-staffed it isn’t true. Today of all days, and then we were told you couldn’t make it. I mean, disaster or what?”
Kelly saw the girl’s eyes flick over her features and instinctively put a hand up to her discoloured face. “I nearly didn’t,” she said, rueful. “But I need the work, you know?”
The girl rolled her eyes. “Don’t I know it,” she said. “I’m Shula by the way. You?”
“Ellie,” Kelly invented quickly.
“Did they explain anything to you?”
“Erm, no,” Kelly said. “They just dumped me here and assumed somebody else would tell me.”
Shula rolled her eyes. “Typical. Well, we’ll soon get you sorted out.” She pointed to a rack of clothing. “Pick out something that fits—white shirt, waistcoat and either black trousers or skirt, whichever you prefer.”
Kelly thought of the climb she’d just made and her leap from the walkway last time she was here. “Trousers, I think.”
“Don’t blame you. I don’t have much of a choice—don’t have ankles, see, just calves that go all the way down. About a size eight are you? Lucky girl.”
Spending time in prison had rid Kelly of whatever inhibitions she might once have had about undressing in front of a stranger. She stripped down to her underwear without a qualm and was soon pulling on the uniform Shula helped her select.
“We’re supposed to have the wife of one of the sponsors helping organise the hospitality but she hasn’t deigned to put in an appearance yet,” Shula said rolling her eyes. “Losing Mrs Lytton was a disaster—she was originally taking care of things and there wasn’t nothing she didn’t know.”
“What happened to her?” Kelly asked innocently.
Shula pulled a face. “She died suddenly. Not here,” she added quickly as if worried about scaring Kelly off. “And the other bloke’s wife was supposed to take over but she’s been a non-starter I can tell you. Scurried around the place like she was counting the silver and never showed up again after that.”
Kelly nearly asked more about Yana Warwick then realised she shouldn’t even know the name and shut up.
“What happened to your face—boyfriend?” Shula’s eyes lingered with a certain amount of sympathy. When Kelly just gave a shrug she added, “Don’t worry—we’ve all been there. Tell you what, the girls are always leaving their make-up bags lying around. Let’s see if we can’t steal you a bit of foundation, take the edge of those bruises. He caught you a belter didn’t he?”
And five minutes later, when Kelly stepped out of the cloakroom with her newfound friend, she realised she was wearing a far better disguise for helping her blend in on the racecourse than anything she could have borrowed from Matthew Lytton’s dead wife.
121
Steve Warwick was sweating inside his suit as he walked from the VIP car park towards the main racecourse building. It had nothing to do with the exercise and everything to do with the woman on his arm.
Her face a mask of cosmetic perfection and dressed in a voluptuous but politically incorrect fur coat, Myshka was looking her mysterious very best.
“Matt’s going to flip out,” he complained, flicking her nervous little glances. “He’s expecting to see me with Yana not—”
“It will be nice surprise for him then, yes?” Myshka said, her voice as sultry as her walk.
Warwick swallowed. “Darling I thought we agreed it would be best—”
“No!” Myshka interrupted. “We did not agree. You made decision. I did not agree.”
And Warwick finally realised with a feeling of panic in the pit of his stomach that by allowing Myshka to dominate him in the bedroom he’d also allowed her to take too much control of things outside of it.
“Look darling, let me at least go and have a talk to him before he sees us together—explain things, hmm?”
He held the door open for her, ushered her through. Myshka waited until they were in the lift gliding upwards before she turned him to face her. The way she let her eyes focus on his mouth had his breath hitching in his throat. Damn, she could always do that to him with just a look.
She trailed one of those deadly red-tipped acrylic nails along his cheek, gripped his chin just a little too hard. Lust began to curl through his belly.
“He will understand soon, and we still have a little time,” she murmured. She leaned close to his ear, her breath stirring the delicate hairs on his lobe as she whispered, “And I do not have on any underwear . . .”
122
McCarron’s mugging story did not gain him free entry to the racecourse but it did see him escorted through the disabled entrance by an elderly steward with too kind a heart for the job.
It did not take much after that to feign a weakness that required a brief rest at the First-Aid post, located in the main building. The steward walked him in and delivered him into the care of the uniformed paramedic in charge who’d been drinking a cup of tea and reading a racing paper.
“Ah, first customer of the day,” the paramedic said jumping up. He let out a low whistle as he cast a professional eye over McCarron’s healing wounds and intricately cast arm. “Coming out today in this state, you must really like to put a bet on, old man.”
“Well Matthew offered to send a car, bless the lad, but I told him I’d rather make my own way,” McCarron improvised, shrugging off the jacket he’d only managed to get half on in the first place.
“Matthew?” the medic asked. He slipped an inflatable cuff around McCarron’s good arm and began to pump it up.
“Hmm? Oh, Lytton, of course.”