Racing Hearts

by Melissa West

  Trip’s tongue swept over his bottom lip and her eyes immediately drew down, wondering if they felt as full as she remembered. Wondering how they would feel now. She shuddered and turned back to the horse, who walked around like he wasn’t sure about anything at all. Emery could relate.

  She took another few steps toward him, watching for his reaction, waiting until he calmed, then took another few steps, and then she stood right beside him, listening to his breathing.

  Emery closed her eyes and gingerly reached out her hand . . .

  Trip’s insides coiled up like a rattler, every fiber in him screaming for him to step between the colt and Emery. He didn’t know this horse, couldn’t predict his responses. He’d almost kicked in Clark’s face, for Christ’s sake, and now, here was Emery, five foot nothing, tiny and meek, her body’s weight resting on that black cane of hers. He still couldn’t make sense of her using it when she very clearly didn’t need it. But need was a very subjective thing.

  Time slowed down as he watched her extend her hand to the horse, her palm out flat, reassuring. He held his breath, telling himself to stay put, despite everything in him screaming that he should intercept. But then her hand was flush against the colt, holding there, not moving, just rising and falling with the horse’s breaths. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and for the first time in his life, he questioned his own ability. No one had touched that horse without him flinching. Until now. It was like Craving Wind remembered Emery, cared for her. This was different than the standard rider-horse relationship. Trip just couldn’t decide if different was a good thing or a very dangerous one.

  He gave Emery another five minutes alone with the horse, watching as her mouth moved in hushed whispers, appreciating how quickly they’d reconnected—their bond undeniable. Damn, how did he allow himself to get in this situation? Emery was injured. Even if he hired her, he couldn’t put her with this colt, who by all accounts was expected to become a champion. He needed an experienced rider to get him there, and Emery hadn’t been in a race in years. Clearly, Trip was losing his mind. He shook his head and released a breath, forcing the trainer in him to return.

  “I have other horses to show you,” Trip said as he approached her.

  “I don’t want another horse.”

  “Well, I refuse to let you ride this one.”

  She dropped her hand from Craving Wind, and the look on her face nearly broke his will. Like she was losing her best friend, like she was losing herself. “I told you, you don’t have to pay me. Just let me ride.” She lowered her eyes, and he knew she was trying to rein in her emotions. “I can do this.” Her watery gaze returned to his.

  He swallowed hard, wishing he’d never invited her here in the first place, but at the same time, he didn’t want her to leave. The feelings that had settled over him since she arrived couldn’t be ignored. He enjoyed being around her, enjoyed listening to her voice and watching her with Craving Wind. Still . . . “I can get you back on a mount. Just not this mount.”

  Emery spun to face him. “Why?”

  There were a thousand answers to that question, all of them more important than the last, but maybe the truest answer of all was that he didn’t trust her. A part of him wanted to, but that part was also the one urging him to forget that eight years had passed and pull her into his arms. He couldn’t depend on that side of himself right now, which only left the sensible side, and anyone with good sense would laugh at the idea of putting Emery on Craving Wind. He would prove to be a champion. Trip could feel that in his bones. And champions needed dependable, experienced riders. Not riders with canes and two years’ worth of pent-up fear, who refused to ride for him today.

  “Are you going to continue analyzing every aspect of this situation or are you going to answer me? It’s a simple question.”

  He almost laughed at how well she could read him. Maybe he hadn’t changed that much after all. Though she was wrong about one thing—this was anything but simple.

  “I have other horses,” Trip repeated.

  “This is my horse.”

  Trip shook his head. “See, this is part of the problem. He isn’t your horse. He’s Sarah Anderson’s horse, and she expects him to win a title this year. That isn’t going to happen with an inexperienced rider. So, like I said, I have other horses.”

  Both Clark and Kate adjusted their stance, sensing the tension rising.

  Emery walked away from the colt, toward the edge of the fencing, gripping the side and staring over the pastures. “You don’t get to call me inexperienced. Not you. You’ve never seen me ride.”

  “I’ve seen you—”

  She whirled around. “You’ve watched a race. That isn’t the same thing and you know it. You have never been part of my winner’s circle. You don’t know how I ride or what I’m capable of. Besides, my résumé speaks for itself.”

  “Two years ago it might have.”

  “Might?”

  Clark cleared his throat and mouthed the words your terms and Trip nodded. “On second thought, you’re right. The answer is simple. My farm, my rules.”

  She started to say more, and Trip readied himself for the argument that was sure to follow, but then her gaze went back to Craving Wind and her shoulders drooped. “Okay. Okay, I get it. And I know this is crazy to you. Trust me, I’ve heard it all before. But I can’t ride just any horse. I . . . I can’t.” She drew a rattled breath, and with one more stroke of Craving Wind’s mane, she walked out of the gate. “Thanks for your time. I’ll just . . . go.”

  Trip ground his teeth together and placed his hands on his hips, anger pulsating through him in waves. Anger at the horse. Anger at Emery. But mostly, anger at himself. He thought of the expression on Emery’s face when she said okay, like it was the most difficult word she’d ever uttered, and he knew he couldn’t allow her to just leave.

  He pushed through the gate and took off in a light run, rounding the corner of the stables just as the women reached their car.

  He bit his lip, searching for some way out of this—some way to keep her there on his terms, but Emery had never operated on anyone’s terms but her own. Frustrated, he opened his mouth and blurted the first thing that came to mind, “I’ll let you ride him on one condition.”

  Emery turned, her face lit up. “Anything.”

  “You show me that you can.”

  “I—”

  “I know you say you’re ready to ride, and I believe you. Or I want to believe you. But this is a multimillion-dollar horse, owned by a close friend of my family. I need to trust that the jockey I put on his back is the best jockey there is for the job. And I don’t know that of you. Not yet. Prove to me you’re that rider and the mount’s yours.”

  They stared at each other, Emery’s face unreadable, and then she smiled triumphantly and said, “Thank you for the offer. I’ll let you know.” And then they were in their car, the taillights disappearing down the drive.

  Trip shook his head. What the hell just happened? Then he realized—she’d manipulated him. Completely and totally manipulated him.

  Clark walked up beside him, a smile playing on his lips.

  “Shut up.”

  His friend laughed. “Not saying a word.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Odds-on favorite

  Emery rode in silence the entire drive back to Crestler’s Key, unable to wrap her mind around what Trip had asked of her—demanded of her. She still couldn’t decide what she thought of the Trip Hamilton of today. He had a way about him, a sincerity that was hard to ignore. But then, there was that arrogance . . .

  “Em, we’ve sat in the car for twenty minutes now. Are we going to talk about this out loud or are you going to continue chewing away your nails?”

  Emery’s gaze dropped to her thumb, and sure enough, the nail had been whittled away to the wick. Her mama would have a few choice words about that, a habit she’d had since she was a kid that tended to reappear when she was under stress. Stress like going aga
inst her daddy for her dream, or worse, for a man that made her heart beat out of control. She’d genuinely thought her feelings were gone, healed, or at the very least under her control. Now she knew that was laughable.

  “I just . . . I have to tell him no, right? That I changed my mind. I mean, I ride for Carlisle Farms. I can’t just turn my back on that.”

  “But the thing is . . . you aren’t riding for Carlisle Farms. Your daddy refuses to let you ride.”

  Of course her friend was right, so what should she do? Emery went to work on her other thumb, the decision too great.

  It was no secret that her riding for her daddy was frowned upon. Jockeys were hired by trainers to ride on their horses. They never owned the horse themselves. Jockeys were contract employees, paid hands. But the rules stated the jockey couldn’t own the horse. It said nothing about family. So, Daddy trained the horse and Emery worked for him. Their setup received too many sharp looks to count, especially given how much he paid her. It was a little too close to the rule, but Daddy never gave a damn what anyone else thought of him. He’d been bending rules his entire life. He knew Emery wanted to be a jockey, and being his only daughter, he wasn’t about to let her ride for someone else.

  So Emery chose her mounts, and then Beckett paid her to ride them. Only, riding for her daddy had its drawbacks—she played too safe. Sure, riding was a risk. Racing was a risk. But she never pushed herself, never took a chance on a mount, because anytime she suggested taking a chance, Daddy would turn her down. Emery loved her parents, loved Carlisle Farms, and loved every single person who worked there. They were a family, blood or water, but she didn’t really live her life, didn’t state her opinions. She did what she was told to do, ignoring her gut at times, because she was twenty-five and Daddy was the expert. For years she’d told herself it didn’t matter, but now things were different. She couldn’t get on a horse, could barely stand beside one back home, and he refused to put her back on a mount. Deep down, Emery knew she needed the change. She needed to accept Trip’s offer and prove to him she was the best rider for Craving Wind.

  But by accepting his offer, she would break her family’s hearts.

  Emery realized Kate was watching her work all this out and glanced over. “What?”

  “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

  She bit into her pinky nail, giving her thumbs a break. “I don’t have to decide today.”

  “No, I guess not,” Kate said. “But you do have to decide, Em. And the decision shouldn’t involve anybody but you.” Emery’s eyes lifted back to Kate’s, and she opened her mouth to respond as Kate cut her off. “I know what you’re going to say, and you’re right. They’re your family. That matters. It’s thick and real and it matters. But this is your life, Emery. Your career. Your future. And Trip’s handing you the opportunity of a lifetime. The best jockeys in the world would kill for this opportunity.”

  “You think I should take it?” Emery stared at her friend, a part of her wishing she could make the decision for her. Why couldn’t life be that easy?

  “I think you will never get on another horse if you stay at home. But I think . . . if you go with Trip, if you take that leap, you could be something amazing, Emery Jane Carlisle. This is your chance.”

  Tears welled in Emery’s eyes, and she brushed the heel of her hand over her cheeks. “Well, I don’t have to decide today.”

  Silence fell between them again, and then Kate said, “So, has enough time passed for me to ask the real question on my mind?”

  Emery rested her head back against the seat, hesitating. She knew her friend would eventually question her about Trip. She just didn’t know how she would answer. Seeing him again had brought all those old emotions to the surface.

  “Go ahead. I was waiting for it.”

  “Oh, come on now,” Kate said. “Don’t be like that. You would be the same exact way if it were me.”

  Emery smiled at the thought. “Yeah, probably.”

  “Does that mean I can continue without getting crucified?”

  “Go already.”

  Kate squealed loudly. “Good! Tell me everything you know about him.”

  “Him? Trip? He’s—”

  “Not Trip. The brother.”

  “What?” Emery’s eyes went wide and she turned toward her friend. “No. No, no, no. You can’t get involved with Alex Hamilton.”

  “Why not? I’m not a jockey. My daddy isn’t their competitor. The way I see it, I’m just an innocent bystander to this whole disaster.”

  “Hey! It’s not a disaster.”

  Kate laughed. “Oh, it’s capital D disaster.”

  “But you said—”

  “Oh, I still think you should do it. Sometimes we know the crash is coming, but we’ve still gotta go through with the ride. Learning, and all that crap. That’s why I went out with Chris Dickens.”

  Emery hit the radio dial, leaving the car in sudden silence. “Wait, what? When did you go out with Chris Dickens?”

  “Last night.”

  “Last night? And you’re just now telling me this.”

  Shrugging, Kate reached for her bottle of water and took a long pull before dropping it back in the cup holder. “You had a lot going on, and besides, it wasn’t a big deal.”

  Somehow it bothered Emery more than it should that her friend hadn’t told her. She didn’t want to be this complex, chaotic mess who became detached from the rest of the world. She crossed her arms and peered over, studying Kate’s face. “Well, how did it go?”

  She shrugged again. “Fine, I guess. We kissed. It was . . . interesting.” Her shoulders shook a bit, and then she was laughing. “God, who am I kidding? It was horrible.”

  “Horrible?”

  “He did the whole lizard thing. You know, the—” She stuck her tongue out rapidly, and Emery burst out laughing.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  They turned onto the main stretch toward Carlisle Farms, and Kate smiled over at her, but it didn’t reach her eyes the way it should. “I don’t know. It’s something, right?”

  Emery slowly shook her head. “No. It isn’t enough to be just okay. It needs to rock your world. The whole sparks-flying thing, or it isn’t worth it.”

  Kate parked outside the guesthouse and peered over at Emery. “I don’t know if that’s real. I’ve never felt sparks. Have you?”

  A flash hit her of the moon high above, a slight chill in the air, of Trip laying her back onto a blanket, his lips pressed to hers. Emery wasn’t sure if it was possible to feel love at seventeen, but she’d felt something amazing that night, something so intense that it scared her. Still scared her.

  “Yeah . . . I think I have.”

  She waved good-bye to Kate, but instead of going inside, drowning in her thoughts, she jumped in her Jeep, desperate to be around someone else who’d disappointed the Carlisle family. Funny how as humans, whenever we were bad, we wanted to be around someone who was just a little bit worse. Make the whole thing a little easier to digest. And no one did bad like Annie-Jean Carlisle.

  Emery drove as close to the one mile an hour mark as she could down the old gravel road, which was less gravel and more dirt and holes and other things capable of ruining a perfectly good car. Finally, she pulled up to the detached garage and stepped out of her Jeep, eyeing the peeling paint and cracked window in the second story. Well, at least she was consistent.

  Up the front steps, Emery didn’t bother knocking on the door— Annie-Jean wouldn’t hear her anyway—and went on through the screen door, following the chorus of a woman belting out to Diana Ross and the Supremes. Emery rounded the corner into the kitchen and stopped, her eyes going wider with each new observation. It looked like someone had bombed the place. Flour decorated every inch of countertop. Other places were covered in dough (Clearly, the flour had morphed into something at some point.) And then, in other places, there were dozens of cookies, cooli
ng on racks.

  “You overbooked again, didn’t you?” Emery asked her aunt with a sigh. “How many and when?”

  Annie-Jean pushed her glasses up high on the bridge of her slightly crooked nose and ran a hand through her black hair, sprinkling it with flour. “One hundred. Nine a.m.”

  “Tomorrow?” Emery squeaked. “One hundred cookies due by tomorrow morning?”

  Annie-Jean laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. One hundred dozen. Now, are you going to keep staring at me with exasperation—I swear, you were carved from the same tree as your daddy—or are you going to help? I assume you came here to pour your soul. Might as well bake while you do it.”

  With another sigh, Emery grabbed a spare apron from one of the hooks by the doorway and draped it over her neck, unsure if it would do her any good, but Annie-Jean had her rules, and aprons and hair ties were two of them. Emery pulled her hair back into a ponytail and motioned to her head and the apron. “Okay to enter, Chef?”

  Annie-Jean flashed the smile that had broken hearts all over town in her day—still to this day, really. “Enter, and hurry. I’m only at three dozen.”

  They spent ten minutes scraping the first three dozen from their pans, the work providing the silence Emery needed to think. Until finally, Annie shut the oven door and twisted around. “All right, spill it, before that sour look of yours seeps into my cookies. What happened? Did Beckett say no again?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “He said yes?”

  “Well, no. Not exactly.”

  Annie set down the wooden spoon in her hand. “Look, honey, I’ve never been a fan of carousels. So can we quit this cycle and you just get on with it?”

  Emery closed a package and pushed it across the counter to meet the other two. “Trip Hamilton’s agreed to hire me on at Hamilton Stables.”

  “Agreed?”

  “Well, see . . . I sort of... blackmailed him into it.” She closed her eyes tightly and dropped her head onto the counter, refusing to face her aunt’s judgment. But Annie-Jean was never one to dish it out by look alone.