Outranked by Her Billionaire Husband (Groveling Billionaires #2)

1. Chapter 1

Imogen

Tru's championship ribbon lies beside my place setting, deep blue against the white linen, and I keep finding reasons to look at it.

The dining room is doing what it always does.

Candlelight, because Vivian considers electric light unkind to silver.

Place cards in her copperplate, one at every seat.

Two hundred years of polish glowing down the mahogany.

I have sat through ten years of dinners at this table, and this is the first one celebrating work that belongs to me.

This afternoon, in front of a grandstand full of people who remember exactly what he did, Held in Trust went down the centerline at Devon and won his Prix St. Georges class.

Less than a year ago he put one of Whitney's assistant trainers in the hospital, and this county wrote him off as dangerous.

Eight months of my life stand between those two sentences.

The win wasn't luck. It came out of eight months of careful work. Sorrel Gate's rider rode the test, and rode it beautifully. But the horse who walked calmly into that arena, the horse who could hear a grandstand rustle and settle anyway, exists because I rebuilt him one quiet session at a time.

He's rehabilitated, not cured. His triggers aren't gone; they're managed, off signals most people never learn to read.

Tonight, though, the ribbon is on the table. I'm tired all the way down to my boots, the particular exhaustion of a day that went exactly right, and for the first time in eight months I believe there is not one person in this room who can take this from me.

Vivian rises with her glass. She doesn't tap it. Rooms go quiet for her on their own, and this one does.

"Tonight Sorrel Gate celebrates a triumph," she says, in the soft, even voice she has never needed to raise. "And we celebrate the woman responsible for it. To Whitney, our brilliant head trainer, for producing another winning horse worthy of the Calloway name."

My glass is already up. That's the trouble with good manners; they run ahead of comprehension. Mine have me toasting before the sentence finishes landing on me.

Whitney accepts it the way she accepts everything, with the smile that arrives fully formed. "He's a special horse," she says, her voice trained to carry to every chair without effort. "It was a long road back for him. And I'm so grateful to Imogen for her assistance during his difficult period."

Assistance. During his difficult period. It's beautifully done. If I hadn't been there, I'd believe her too.

I look at Reed. He knows exactly what happened.

He's the one who overrode his mother and his head trainer both and handed me the horse, when the two of them wanted him kept in conventional training.

He has watched every month of the work since.

One sentence from him would put my name back where it belongs.

All he has to do is let the table become uncomfortable for thirty seconds.

Reed's hand covers mine beneath the tablecloth.

Warm, sure, familiar. Ten years of marriage in that hand. I know this squeeze the way I know his voice. It means he heard the toast for what it was. It means, please, not tonight. Don't let my mother spoil your evening.

It's love. I have never once doubted that it's love. But he is holding my hand where no one else has to see him choose me. It hurts more than the silence would have.

Vivian is still on her feet. "Which brings me to happier business. The autumn gala, six weeks from tonight, will celebrate our champion's triumph. Held in Trust will be presented as the centerpiece of the evening, under Whitney's direction."

She says it as if the decision requires no discussion, and sits to warm applause.

"A gala is nothing like Devon," I say. My voice comes out the way it comes out in a barn, low and level.

"Devon worked because we controlled everything he met.

Familiar handlers, a quiet warm-up, an exit any time he needed one.

A marquee, torchlight, and a few hundred strangers are none of those things.

If he's presented, his limits set the terms. His routine decides how it's done, not the program. "

"Of course we'll be sensible about it." Whitney doesn't even put down her fork. "But he can't be protected from every stimulus for the rest of his life. Past a certain point, accommodation only preserves the fear."

"The two of you will sort the details," Reed says, easy, reasonable, reaching for his wine. "I can't imagine that horse in better hands."

And that's the whole discussion. Six weeks from now, Whitney will stand at the head of the horse I rebuilt, in front of every family in the county, while Sorrel Gate tells the story of his recovery. I already know whose name the county will hear attached to it. They heard it tonight.

The plates change. Somewhere in the next course Vivian turns nostalgic, which is what she does instead of attacking.

It's a long, fond story tonight: Whitney and Reed as children, raised two farms apart, ponies and junior hunts, the same circles from the cradle.

How certain everyone was, she says, smiling at them both, that the two of them would marry.

I eat my dinner and keep my face pleasant. This is county scripture; I have heard it read before. I curl my fingers lightly around the stem of my wineglass and wait for her to finish.

Then Vivian's attention comes to rest on my left hand.

"Grandmother Calloway's ring," she says, the way people speak of the beloved dead. "Do you know, I always imagined Whitney would be the woman wearing it."

She means it. That makes it worse. There is nothing in the sentence anyone could object to out loud.

The ring sits where it has sat for ten years, an old-mine-cut diamond in a gold setting worn thin, small by modern standards, beyond price by county ones. It catches the candlelight the way it always does. On my hand, tonight, it looks borrowed.

I look at Reed. Again.

Reed's hand covers mine beneath the tablecloth. Again. The same good hand, warm and sure, saying the same quiet thing it has said for ten years, in the same place where nobody can see it said.

My pulse slows. My anger doesn't.

Whitney has public credit for my work; that was the toast. Vivian has publicly named the woman she believes belongs beside my husband. And Reed, who loves me, who I have never once doubted loves me, is holding my hand under the table so that no one has to watch him do it.

I slide my hand out from under his. I take hold of the ring and draw it over my knuckle, where it drags the way it always has, and then comes free. My hands don't hurry. They never do; it's the first thing you learn around frightened animals.

I set the ring on the tablecloth in front of Reed. The stone looks very small on all that white.

"You should have it back," I say, and it comes out level and courteous. "You're free to give it to whoever your mother considers worthy of wearing it."

"Imogen," Reed says, very quietly.

I stand and push my chair in, because apparently my manners are coming with me. "Please excuse me. It was a lovely dinner."

I walk the length of the dining room, down the portrait hall past eight generations of Calloway men in oils, through the great hall, and out the black front door.

The cold outside is sudden and clean after all that candlelight.

My truck sits at the far end of the line of good cars, and the gravel is loud under my good shoes the whole way there.

I get in and sit with my hands on the wheel. They're steady. They've had years of practice.

Under the dome light, a pale indentation circles my finger where the gold sat for ten years.

The ring is heavier sitting inside that house than it ever was on my hand.