by Nora Roberts
Payment’s your choice.”
It had been a long time since she’d felt this quickening in the blood. Since it couldn’t be ignored, it would have to be fought. “Don’t you think it’s in questionable taste for you to make a move on me in the kitchen?”
Christ, he loved the way she could come up with those prim little phrases and deliver them in that husky voice. “Darling, this isn’t even close to a move.” Keeping her hand firmly in his, he turned it palm up. “Lady hands,” he murmured. “Teacup hands. I’ve always had a real weakness for long narrow hands with soft skin.”
He pressed his lips to the center, lingering while her pulse bumped like a hammer under his thumb. “That,” he said, curling her fingers closed as if to ensure she kept the imprint of his lips there, “was a move. As far as taste goes, yours suits me. You’ll probably want to keep that in mind.”
He released her hand, scooped up his cards, and rose. “I’ll see you in the morning. Unless you’re having second thoughts.”
Dignity, she reminded herself, was as important as pride. “I’m not having any thoughts at all, Slater, that involve you.”
“Sure you are.” He leaned down until they were face-to-face. “I warned you not to bluff, Kelsey. You lose.”
He left her steaming over cold coffee. It was a damn shame, he thought, that he couldn’t indulge himself in a few afternoon fantasies. But he had work to do.
As soon as he returned to Longshot, Gabe sought out Jamison. The trainer had been Cunningham’s man, but when Gabe took over the farm, it hadn’t taken much to induce Jamison to stay.
His loyalties had always been more with the horses than with the owner.
He was a big-bellied man who liked his food and his beer. Though he’d trained generations of horses that had finished in the money, no one but his staunchest friends would have considered him in Moses Whitetree’s league.
He’d come from the county of Kerry as a babe in his mother’s arms. His earliest memories were of the shedrow, the smell of the horses his father had groomed.
Jamison had lived his entire life in the shadow of the Thoroughbred. Now, at sixty-two, he sometimes dreamed of owning his own small farm and one champion, just one to carry him comfortably into retirement.
“Well, Gabe.” He set aside his condition book and rose as Gabe walked in. “I shipped Honest Abe to Santa Anita, and Reliance to Pimlico. Missed the first post.” He smiled wanly. “But I heard you’d had a spot of trouble and thought you’d want to see me before I headed to the track.”
“How many times have you caught Lipsky drinking on the job?”
No prevaricating or how was your day with the likes of Gabriel Slater, Jamison thought. He’d known the boy for some twenty years, and had yet to fully understand him. “Twice before. I gave him a warning and told him he’d be cut loose if it happened again. He’s a good hand. A weakness for gin, it’s true, but he’s worked on this farm for a decade.” He glanced at the bandage on Gabe’s arm and sighed. “I swear on my mother’s heart I’d no notion the man would try to stick you.”
“Drunks are unreliable, Jamie. You know my feelings about that.”
“I do indeed.” Jamison folded his hands over his belly. He should be at the track, not here, smoothing feathers. “And maybe I understand why you’ve no tolerance for that particular weakness. Still, the lads are my province, aren’t they? And I followed my own judgment.”
“Your judgment was faulty.”
“It was.”
“A hand drinks on the job, from you down to the lowest stableboy, he’s gone. No more warnings, Jamie. No exceptions.”
Irritation might have flickered in his eyes, but Jamison nodded. “You’re holding the bat, Gabe.”
Satisfied, Gabe picked up the condition book himself, skimming pages. “I’ll be spending more time around the barn and the backstretch,” he said. “I don’t want you to feel I’m breathing down your neck.”
“It’s your barn,” Jamie returned, his voice stiffening. “Your backstretch.”
“Yes, it is. And it was very clear to me today that the men don’t consider me an integral part of this operation. That’s my fault.” He set the book down again. “The first couple of years after the farm changed hands I was involved with building the house and shoehorning my way into the tight little club of owners. Since then I’ve let most of the day-to-day business stay in your hands and played owner. Now I’m going to get down to work. You’re my trainer, Jamie, and as far as the horses go, I’ll accept what advice you give me. But I’m back in the game now. I don’t intend to lose.”
It would pass, Jamison decided. Owners rarely concerned themselves with the real work for long. All they wanted was their spot in the paddock and the purse. “You know your way around a shedrow as well as anyone.”
“It’s been a long time since I picked up a pitchfork.” Gabe smiled as the image of Kelsey brandishing one like a spear flashed into his mind. He looked at the big-faced clock Jamison had nailed to the wall of his office. “We can make it to Pimlico by three. Who’d you send with the filly?”
“Carstairs. Torky’s up on her, Lynette’s groom.”
“Let’s go see what kind of team they make.”
Since she was left to her own devices, Kelsey changed her shoes for boots and headed out. She didn’t go toward the stables, aware that she would just be in the way, or stared at as if she were an oddity. Instead she walked toward the soft roll of hills where the horses were at grass.
The quiet, the undeniable peace were a welcome change from the frantic morning. Even so, she had to fight a restlessness that urged her to keep walking, keep moving, until she found what was over the next rise.
How could she have walked here as a child and remember nothing? It frustrated her to think that the first three years of her life were a virtual blank. It wouldn’t matter in most cases, but her destiny had been skewed in those early years. She wanted them back, wanted to decide for herself what was right, what was wrong.
She stopped by a tidy white fence, leaning on it while a trio of mares began an impromptu race, their babies skipping after them. Another mother stood patiently, cropping grass while her foal suckled.
It was almost too perfect, Kelsey thought. A postcard that was just slightly too clear, too bright for reality. Yet she found herself smiling at the foal, admiring the impossibly delicate legs, the tilt of the somehow elegant head. What would he do, she wondered, if she climbed the fence and tried to pet him?
“Spectacular, aren’t they?” Naomi joined her at the fence. The breeze ruffled the hair she’d cut to chin length for convenience more than fashion. “I never get tired of watching them. Spring after spring, year after year. It’s soothing, the routine of it. And exciting, the possibility of it.”
“They’re beautiful. Sedate somehow. It’s hard to imagine them streaking down a racetrack.”
“They’re athletes, bred for speed. You’ll see that for yourself tomorrow.” Naomi tossed back her hair, then impatient with it, pulled a soft cap out of her jacket pocket and put it on. “The one there, nursing? He’s five days old.”
“Five?” Surprised, Kelsey turned back, studying the mother and her baby more closely. The foal was sleek and healthy and appeared wise to the ways of the paddock. “That doesn’t seem possible.”
“They grow quickly. In three years he’ll be prime. It starts here, or more accurately in the breeding shed, then goes to that final blur of color at the wire. He’ll be fifteen, sixteen hands, perhaps twelve hundred pounds, and he’ll race the oval with a man on his back. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.”
“But not easy,” Kelsey commented. “It can’t be easy to take something so delicate and turn it into a competitor.”
“No.” Naomi smiled then. Her daughter already understood. That, she supposed, was in the blood. “It’s work and dedication and quite often disappointment. But it’s worth it. Every time.” She angled her hat so the brim shaded her eyes. “I’m sorry I left you
so long. The farrier likes to talk. He was a friend of my father’s. He does the work for me here rather than at the track because of old ties.”
“It’s all right. I don’t expect you to entertain me.”
“What do you expect?”
“Nothing. Yet.”
Naomi looked back at the nursing mare, wishing it could be that easy to bond with her own child. “Are you still angry about this morning?”
“Angry’s the wrong word.” Kelsey turned away from the fence so she could study her mother’s profile. “Baffled is better. Everyone just stood there.”
“You didn’t.” With a grin, Naomi shook her head. “I thought you were going to run that drunken fool through. I envy you that, Kelsey, that knee-jerk reaction that comes from a lack of fear, or a surplus of honor. I froze. I have too much fear and not nearly enough honor left. A lifetime ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated either.”
She braced herself and shifted to face her daughter. “You’re wondering why the police weren’t called. Gabe did that for me. He may or may not have handled it differently on his own place. But here . . . well, he would have known I’d be reluctant to talk to the police again. Ever again.”
“It’s none of my business.”
Naomi closed her eyes. The simple fact they both had to face was that it was all Kelsey’s business now. “I wasn’t afraid when they came to arrest me. I was so arrogantly sure that they would end up looking like fools, and I a heroine. I wasn’t afraid when I sat in the interrogation room with its long mirror, gray walls, the hard chair designed to make you squirm.” She opened her eyes again. “I didn’t squirm. Not at first. I was a Chadwick. But the fear creeps up on you, inch by crafty inch. You can beat it back. Not away, but back. Before I left that horrible room with the mirror and the gray walls, I was afraid.”
She took a steadying breath, reminded herself she was free of that. Free of it, but for the memories. “Through the trial, the headlines, the stares, I was afraid. But I didn’t want to show it. I hated the idea of everyone knowing I was terrified. Then they tell you to stand up, so the jury of your peers can deliver the verdict. Your verdict. You can’t beat it back then. It has a choke hold on you and you can’t breathe. You might stand there, pretending to be calm, pretending to be confident because you know they’re watching you. Every eye is on you. But inside, you’re jelly. When they say ‘guilty,’ it’s almost anticlimactic.”
She drew another deep breath. “So you see, I’m very reluctant to talk to the police again.” She said nothing for a moment, expected no response. “Do you know, we used to come here when you were little? I’d sit you up on the fence. You always loved visiting the foals.”
“I’m sorry.” And she was, suddenly, deeply sorry. “I don’t remember.”
“It doesn’t matter. See the one there sunning himself? The black? He’s a champion. I knew it when he was born. He might prove himself to be one of the best to come out of Three Willows.”
Kelsey studied the foal more closely. He was charming, certainly, but she didn’t see anything to separate him from the other young in the pasture. “How can you tell?”
“It’s in the eyes. Mine and his. We just know.”
She leaned on the fence, looking out over the fields with her daughter. And was, for a moment, nearly content.
Late that night when the house was quiet and the wind tapped seductively at the windows, Naomi curled her body to Moses. She liked it best when he came to her bed. It had more of a sense of permanence than when she crept up to his rooms above the trainer’s shed.
Not that she didn’t enjoy the thrill of doing just that. The first time, their first time, she’d walked into his room, surprising him as he sat in his underwear nursing a beer and poring over paperwork.
He’d been a tough seduction, she recalled, stroking a hand along the firm skin of his chest. But his eyes had given him away. He’d wanted her, just as he’d always wanted her. It had just taken her sixteen years to realize she wanted him, too.
“I love you, Moses.”
It always jolted him to hear her say it. He supposed it always would. He laid his hand over hers, over his heart. “I love you, Naomi. How else could you have talked me into coming up here with your daughter down the hall?”
She laughed, shifting her head so that she could nibble on his neck. “Kelsey’s an adult. I doubt she’d be traumatized even if she knew I had you in bed.” She rolled over, straddling him. “And I do have you, Moses.”
“It’s hard to argue with that since all the blood just drained from my head and into my lap.” In an old habit he skimmed his hands up her slim torso to cup her breasts. “You get more beautiful every day, Naomi. Every year.”
“That’s because your eyes get older.”
“Not when they look at you.”
Her heart simply melted. “Christ, you destroy me when you get sentimental. I look at Kelsey and see how much I’ve changed. It’s wonderful to see her, to have her close even for a little while.” She laughed, shaking her hair back. “And I’m still vain enough to look away from her and into the mirror and see every goddamned line.”
“I’m crazy about every goddamned line.”
“Being beautiful used to be so important to me. It was like a mission—no, like a duty. Then for so many years it didn’t mean anything. Until you.” She smiled, bending down to brush his lips with hers. “And now you tell me you like wrinkles.”
Moses cupped a hand behind her head, drawing her more firmly to him. As she flowed into the kiss, he shifted her, raising her hips, lowering them so that he slid deep into her. He watched her arch back, thrilling to her quick, throaty moan. He set the rhythm slow, holding her to his pace, drawing the pleasure out for both of them.
From the hallway outside her room, Kelsey heard the muffled sounds of lovemaking, the creak of the old mattress, the breathy moans and murmurs. She stood, the cup of tea she’d gone down to brew in one hand, a book in the other, flustered into immobility.
Not once had she ever heard her father and Candace in the night. She assumed they were both too restrained and polite to make noisy love. There was certainly nothing restrained or polite about the sounds only partially smothered by the closed door down the hall.
Nor, she reminded herself, was it polite to stand out here listening. She fumbled with the knob, spilling tea in her rush to get inside.
Her mother, she thought, barraged by dozens of conflicting emotions. And Gabe Slater, she assumed. The emotions his presence behind that door conjured up were best not explored.
The moment she had her own door safely closed, she leaned back against it. Part of her wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. A grown woman shocked because another grown woman, who happened to be her mother, had an active sex life.
But she wasn’t very amused at the moment, at the situation or her own reaction to it. No longer wanting either, she set the tea and book aside. The dark, still sleeping garden beneath her window was silvered with moonlight. Romantic, she thought, laying her brow against the glass. Mysterious. As so much of Three Willows was.
She didn’t want romance. She didn’t want mystery. At least, she didn’t want to want them. She was here because it was important to learn about the half of her parentage that had been taken away from her.
Turning from the window she went back to bed. But she didn’t sleep until long after she heard the door down the hall open and close, and the sound of quiet footsteps moving past her room toward the stairs.
CHAPTER
SIX
THE TRACK, AT DAWN. IT WAS A DIFFERENT WORLD FROM THE ONE Kelsey had expected. Racing to her meant more than speed. It meant gambling and gamblers, fat cigars and bad suits, the smell of stale beer and losers’ sweat.
The drunken groom Gabe had fired the day before fit her image of the world she’d imagined much more cozily than the tranquil, somehow mystical reality of the dawn horse.
The track was cloaked in mist when she arrived with Naomi. The horses had l
eft even earlier, to be off-loaded, saddled, and prepped for their workouts. It was quiet, almost serene. Voices were muffled by the fog, and people moved in and out of the trailing mist like ghosts. Men leaned against the sagging rail around the oval, sipping from steaming paper cups.
“They’re clockers,” Naomi told her. “Speedboys. Some work for the track or Daily Racing Form. They’ll be here for hours, timing the horses, handicapping them.” She smiled. “Chasing speed. I guess that’s what we all do. I thought you’d like to see it from this angle first.”
“It’s . . . well, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? The fog, the trees slipping through it, the all but empty grandstands. It’s not what I pictured.” She turned to the woman beside her, the slim, lovely blonde in denim jacket and jeans. “Nothing seems to be.”
“Most people see only one aspect of racing. Two minutes around the oval, over and done in a flash. Thrilling, certainly. Sometimes terrifying. Triumphant or tragic. Often a man or woman is judged the same way. By one aspect, or one act.” There was no bitterness in her voice now, but simple acceptance. “I’ll take you around to the shedrow. That’s where the real action is.”
And the real characters, Kelsey discovered. Aging jockeys who’d failed at the post or put on weight hustled for the forty dollars they’d earn per ride as exercise boys. Others, hardly more than children, with an eager look in the eye, loitered, hoping for their
