by Nora Roberts
“Kelsey?” Naomi paused at the foot of the stairs. The girl looked so solemn, she thought. “Missing Channing already?”
“No, I was thinking of . . .” She trailed off, blew her breeze-tousled hair out of her eyes. “Nothing really.” Realigning her thoughts, she studied Naomi. Slim, strong, self-contained. “It was nice of you to offer him a job this summer.”
“Not that nice. He has a strong back, willing hands, and I enjoy having him around. The house has been empty a long time.”
“I think he wants to be a vet.”
“So he told me.”
“He told you.” With a baffled laugh, Kelsey shook her head. “He’s never mentioned it to me. Not once. I’ve always thought he was revved to be a surgeon, like his father.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to tell those secret hopes to someone who isn’t so close. He loves you. Admires you. Could be he’s afraid you’d be disappointed in him.”
“I couldn’t be.” Her breath came out in an impatient gush. “Candace has been talking for years about him carrying on the Osborne tradition. I just assumed he wanted it too. Why do people try to shoehorn their children into slots?”
“Family honor. A terrifying obligation.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again. Family honor. Hadn’t that been why she’d married Wade? How many times had she been told how perfect he was for her, until she’d believed it. Good family, good prospects, excellent social standing. It had been her duty, after all, to marry well, and to marry properly.
God, had she loved him at all?
“And when you can’t hold up that obligation,” Kelsey said slowly, “it’s the worst kind of failure. I don’t want that for Channing.”
“He’ll do what’s right for himself. You did.”
“Eventually.”
“You can talk about eventually when you’re my age. Kelsey . . .” She wasn’t quite sure of her approach. Casual, she decided, was probably best. “I’m going down to Hialeah. I want to watch Virginia’s Pride run. And I want to stick close to him after what happened at Charles Town.”
“Oh.” So, she wasn’t to have the last week after all. “That makes sense. When are you leaving?”
“In the morning. I thought you might like to go with me.”
“To Florida?”
“Well, it’s not spring break, but it should be quite a spectacle.”
As cautious as Naomi, she nodded. “I’d like to see it.”
“Good. How would you feel about taking the rest of the day off?”
Kelsey’s brows lifted. She hadn’t seen Naomi take more than an hour off in over three weeks. “For?”
“What else?” Naomi’s laugh was quick, bright, and young. “Shopping. What’s the fun of taking a trip if you can’t splurge on some new clothes first?”
Kelsey’s grin flashed. “I’ll get my purse.”
In a dingy hotel room off Route 15, Lipsky gulped down warm Gilbey’s gin. The ice machine a few feet outside his door was on the fritz. Not that he cared. Warm or chilled, the liquor went down the same.
“I tell you, sooner or later they’re going to come looking for me.”
“You’re probably right. You got sloppy.” Rich straightened his bolo tie. “Neatness counts, friend.”
“I was just going to take care of the horse.” With his free hand, Lipsky reached for the cigarette smoldering in a chipped glass ashtray crammed with butts. “Just enough so he couldn’t race, that’s all.”
“But that wasn’t your job,” Rich reminded him with an affable grin. “Eyes and ears open, remember? Just eyes and ears until I told you different.”
“You didn’t bitch when I fixed his other colt.” Resentment gleamed in Lipsky’s red-rimmed eyes. “You gave me another hundred for it.”
“You were tidy, Fred. I did tell you, I believe, not to take chances. But”—he spread his arms wide—“that’s behind us now. And Gabe’s favorite colt won’t be wearing a saddle for another week or so.” It fit nicely into the master plan, the damaged horses, even the murder. Such things stirred gossip and excited the press. Feeling generous, Rich reached into his pocket. He carried his lucky money clip, the oversize silver dollar sign he’d picked up in Houston. There was nothing he liked better than to have it straining with bills.
Normally, he would load it with singles, putting a fifty or, if he was lucky, a C-note on the outside. He was really in the groove now, he thought. The money clip was fat with hundreds. He peeled one off and laid it on the table.
Lipsky stared at it with a mixture of hunger and guilt. “I wouldn’t have hurt the Peacock. Nobody coulda paid me to hurt Old Mick.”
“An unfortunate accident.” In sympathy, Rich patted a hand on his shoulder.
Lipsky gulped more gin. “I never killed nobody. Maybe I cut a few, when they deserved it. But I never killed nobody before.” He could still see Mick’s face, the shock, the pain, the way his eyes had rolled back right before the horse reared and felled him.
And he could see the blood pumping and pooling, Mick’s trademark blue cap going red with it . . .
He snatched the bottle and poured another shot. “He shouldn’t have poked his nose in.”
“An excellent rationalization.” Rich poured a glass for himself. He hated to see a man drinking alone, even a revolting specimen like Lipsky. But he kept his cigarettes and his monogrammed lighter tucked away. “Now it’s time to consider the next move.”
“The cops are going to come looking for me. Plenty of people saw me around the track that day, at the shedrow.”
“You were hustling rides,” Rich reminded him. “Perfectly permissible. You’re a familiar face at the track, Fred. Otherwise, the guards would have blocked you from entering the barn.”
“Yeah, and sooner or later somebody’s going to remember that I did. Then they’ll notice I ain’t been back.” He tamped out his cigarette, spilling ash and old butts over the rickety table. “Then they’ll remember I carry a blade.”
“Your deductive powers are admirable. My advice is to run, lose yourself in Florida, California, Kentucky. Maybe Mexico. They’ve got tracks south of the border.”
“I ain’t living in no foreign country. I’m an American.”
“Ah, patriotism.” Rich toasted with his glass of gin. “You’re a resourceful man, Fred. Otherwise I wouldn’t have put you on the payroll. But I’m afraid we’ll have to sever our relationship, under the circumstances.”
“It’s going to take more than a hundred.”
Rich’s smile never wavered, but his eyes turned gelid. “Now, Fred, you wouldn’t put the arm on me, would you?”
Desperation was leaking sweat down Lipsky’s back. He could smell himself. “I can’t take the rap for this alone. If I’m going to run, I need money. Fuck, Rich, I was working for you. You got a part in this.”
“Is that the way you see it?”
“The way I see it, I need ten thousand. To hide, and to keep my mouth shut about you if I don’t hide good enough. It ain’t too much to ask, Rich.”
Rich sighed. He’d been afraid it would come to this. “I understand your position, Fred. I truly do. Listen, let me make a phone call, see what I can come up with.” He bolstered his smile with another pat on Lipsky’s shoulder. “Give me a little privacy, huh?”
“Yeah, okay. I gotta piss anyhow.” He rose and staggered into the bathroom.
Rich didn’t pick up the phone. Instead, he took a small vial out of his inside coat pocket. It really was a shame, but he couldn’t afford to call Lipsky’s bluff. Even if he paid, odds were the man would sing like a bird the minute the cops nailed him. And they’d nail him, Rich thought, as he tapped the liquid into Lipsky’s gin.
“Come on back, Fred. We got it all taken care of.” He was beaming when Lipsky reeled back into the room. “I’ll have the money for you tomorrow.”
Relief and liquor had Lipsky tumbling into his chair. “No shit, Rich?”
“Hey, we go back a ways, don’t we? R
ollers like us, we take care of each other.” He lifted his glass. “Here’s to old friends.”
“Yeah.” Eyes tearing in gratitude, Lipsky brought his glass to his lips. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Yeah.” Rich’s smile hardened as he watched Lipsky literally drink himself to death. “You can count on me, Fred.”
Palm trees and striped awnings, brilliant sunshine and trailing bougainvillea. Men in white suits and women in sundresses. The ambience added to the glamour of the track. But Hialeah Park was still about racing.
At the Gulfstream receiving barn, horses arched their necks, pranced, sniffed the air, athletes psyching themselves up for competition. Many of the sights and sounds were the same as Charles Town; vendors still hawked Daily Racing Form, handicappers still hovered, working the odds. But the weather itself, the sheer glory of it, drew a different breed from the chilly spring in Virginia.
Kelsey amused herself watching a woman teetering on ice-pick heels leading a filly around the walking ring. Her shoulder-length rhinestone earrings flashed.
“Nobody could call a horse a dumb animal looking at that.”
Kelsey glanced up at Gabe. “Meaning?”
“What do you see when you look at her face?”
“The horse or the woman?”
“The horse.”
Obliging, Kelsey looked back at the filly, plodding, head down behind the giggling woman. “Embarrassment.”
“You got it. That’s Cunningham’s latest acquisition.”
“The horse or the woman?”
“Both.”
She let loose a laugh, and realized how glad she was she’d come. Maybe it was the quick peek at summer, or the simple pleasure of discovering herself a part of a close-knit group. But she was glad.
“I heard you’d be here, but I didn’t see you at morning workout.”
“I just got in an hour ago,” he told her. “What do you think of Miami?”
“Well, some of the grooms were grumbling this morning about losing sleep—gunshots outside their quarters—and I cruised the beach yesterday and it hit me that I must be an adult: I had no desire to strap on Rollerblades. Other than that”—she drew in a deep breath—“I love it. It’s a beautiful park.”
“The bottom line. Racetrackers don’t have much use for the outside world anyway.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“You’re not a racetracker.” He looked down at her. “At least not yet.”
She frowned, unsure if she’d been complimented or insulted. Rather than pursue it, she watched the losers returning from the first race. The winners, she knew, would be taken to the “spit box” so that samples of urine and saliva could be tested for drugs.
But it was the losers she thought about now, her heart aching a little to see them limping in, their flanks sweaty, faces dirty. If a filly could feel embarrassed by being led around in public by a tarted-up Barbie doll, she wondered how deeply these suffered the pangs of failure.
“Sad, isn’t it?” she murmured. “Like watching soldiers struggling back from the front. All that color and show, and in just a couple of minutes, it’s done.”
“It’s a hell of a couple of minutes. Too bad you missed the Florida Derby. Now, that’s a show. Acrobats, a camel race.”
“Camels? Really?”
“Never bet on one.”
They walked past the tack rooms around the backstretch. It was nearly time for the second race, and Pride was in the third. She wanted to see Reno before Moses gave him that leg up. It had become her personal superstition to add her last wish for good luck before he walked his horse from the paddock.
“Not going to head for the windows?” Gabe asked her.
“Nope. I’ve picked my horses. Pride in the third and Three Aces in the fifth.” She stopped to buy a lukewarm Pepsi from an ancient black man. “I’ve got my own system now.”
Gabe accepted the can, took a swallow, and handed it back to her. “And what is that?”
“Sentiment. I just bet my heart.”
“It’s a lot to lose.”
She shrugged. “Gambling’s no fun without the risk.”
“Damn right. Come here.” They were nearly at Pride’s saddling stall and there was plenty of traffic.
“Cut it out, Slater.” But he’d already caught the ponytail she’d looped through the back of her cap.
“I’m just going to kiss you. The risk’s on both sides.”
She thought she heard some of the grooms hooting with laughter before her mind went blank. She’d wondered if that first, that only, intellect-sapping kiss had been a fluke. A coincidence. A one-time trip.
Apparently not.
There was something about his mouth. She opened hers to it eagerly, swamped in the taste, the texture, the heat. It moved against hers, clever and tormentingly slow, as if there was all the time in the world to sample. On a moan of agreement, she plunged her hands into his hair, holding on until the sounds of the track were no more than misty white noise.
I want. It was all he could think. He’d spent so much of his life wanting—decent food, a clean bed, the simple peace of living without fear. As he’d grown, those wants had grown with him. He’d wanted women and power and the money that would ensure both.
But he’d never craved anything, certainly not anyone, as he craved now. One woman. One night. He’d have gambled everything he had for the chance of it.
“How much longer?” he murmured against her lips.
“I don’t know.” She struggled to catch her breath. “I don’t know you.”
“Sure you do.”
“I didn’t know you existed a couple of months ago.” She drew away, surprised her legs didn’t fold under her. “I’m not—” She straightened her cap with a shaky hand as applause rang out behind them. “We need to talk about this later. Without an audience.”
“Well.” He skimmed a fingertip over her jaw. “I accomplished something, anyway. The word’s already going out that you’re off limits.”
“That I’m—” She set her teeth. “Is that what that was for? Some sort of macho claim staking?”
“No. It was for me, darling. But it worked. See you around.”
She kicked the soda can she’d dropped when he’d kissed her. “Idiot,” she muttered. Fighting for dignity, she turned and nearly ran into Naomi.
“It’s odd,” Naomi began while Kelsey struggled for words. “Watching that. If you’ll pardon the analogy, I often have the same sensation when I see one of my horses led to the track. It’s like watching your child get on the school bus, or recite in a class play. You suddenly realize that they’re not just your child anymore, and that there’s so much you don’t know about them.”
“He just did it to annoy me.”
Though her heart was still swelling, Naomi smiled. “Oh, I don’t think so.” She took a chance and lifted a hand to Kelsey’s cheek. “Confused?”
“Yes.”
But not ready to talk about it. “Would you like me to speak with Gabe? He won’t appreciate it, but he’s fond enough of me to put up with the intrusion.”
“No. I’ll handle it.” She glanced around. There were still a number of grinning faces pointed her way. “Don’t we have a race coming up?” she snapped. “You’re not being paid to gawk.”
As Kelsey stalked over to the saddling stall, Naomi let out a grin of her own.
On the track, Pride ran like a dream, bursting through the gate with a fierce look in his eyes and Reno driving him on. At the first turn, he was fighting for position, but after that it was over. Down the backstretch there were three lengths of daylight between him and the closest contender.
“Looks like a rich man’s horse,” she heard someone comment
