Breaking Free (Thoroughbred Legacy #10)

by Loreth Anne White

  She set down her broken Snoopy pencil, grabbed a pen from a container on her dad’s desk, and quickly copied her mum’s address onto a notebook, e-mail addy and all. She tore the page from the notebook, folded it over several times, and slipped it into her pocket, heart racing.

  As she left the office, the seed of an idea was forming in her mind.

  Dylan rang the doorbell.

  A tall, fit and tanned man in white tennis gear opened the door, momentarily taking Dylan aback.

  “G’day, mate—Detective Sergeant Dylan Hastings,” he said, noting the quick flicker of recognition in the man’s face at the mention of his name. “I’d like to speak to the Fairchild Acres manager. Is he in?”

  “You can speak to me,” the man said, eyes narrowing. “I’m Patrick Stafford, Louisa Fairchild’s nephew. I’m handling the administrative side of things in her absence.”

  Megan’s brother.

  Dylan could see the resemblance. Even though their coloring was different, both Patrick and Megan exuded a calm athletic energy. And the easy air of wealth.

  “I need to interview some of the Fairchild staff,” he told Patrick. “I’d like to start with the manager.”

  “You have a warrant?”

  “Do I need one?”

  “I’m afraid Miss Fairchild’s lawyer insists on it. None of our employees can talk to police without a court order.” He began to close the door, but Dylan halted the action with his boot. Patrick’s eyes darkened.

  “D’Angelo gives the orders around here now, does he?”

  “No. I do.”

  Dylan crooked a brow. “I must have missed something. Did you inherit the place while your aunt was in surgery?”

  Anger corded the muscles in Patrick’s neck. “I must ask you to leave.”

  “Is D’Angelo here, perhaps?”

  “He’s in Sydney, negotiating a deal. The estate still has business to run, Sergeant. Now if you’ll excuse me—” He began to push the door closed.

  But Dylan raised his hand casually against the side of the jamb. “Then I’d like to see Megan.”

  A ripple of surprise crossed Patrick’s features, then a spark of irritation flickered in his hazel eyes. “I don’t think you understand me, Sergeant. No one affiliated with Fairchild can speak to you. Not without a warrant.”

  “I don’t need a warrant to speak to Megan. The business I have with her is personal.”

  A phone rang in the hall. Patrick’s eyes darted agitatedly to the left. It rang again. “How about I tell my sister you stopped by?” he said tightly, closing the door and forcing Dylan to step back.

  Dylan left the front porch and ambled round the side of the massive stone-and-stucco mansion, counting on the phone call to keep Patrick busy. Megan appeared to have taken temporary ownership of Louisa’s Aston Martin, and he’d seen it parked round the back.

  His boots crunched softly over gravel, then packed dirt swallowed the sound of his footfall as he followed a track that led toward the stables nearest the house where Louisa kept her personal riding horses.

  The late-afternoon sun angled through the haze on the horizon, and he could see Blue and Scout lying under a stand of tall wattle trees near a dressage ring tucked behind the outbuildings. Dylan’s gut told him Megan would be with them. She seemed to have taken on Louisa’s dogs as well as the convertible.

  Her brother, however, appeared to have taken the farm.

  Megan didn’t have a clue what a service she’d done him by inviting Heidi to ride here. While he detested the idea of his daughter’s involvement, it did give him a personal reason to be on the estate.

  Dylan strode quietly, purposefully toward the outbuildings, wind starting to rustle through the wattles. A truck drove across the estate in the distance, dust boiling behind it as it headed towards a group of bungalows near an exercise area for the Fairchild Thoroughbreds.

  Blue saw him approach first and the dog came running, body held low, ears half cocked in warning, half anticipating a pat. Dylan crouched down and ruffled the cattle dog’s soft, mottled fur. Scout, however, remained under the trees, flat on his belly, transfixed by something in the paddock beyond Dylan’s line of sight.

  Suddenly Megan came into view around the side of the barn mounted on a massive black stallion that was all rippling muscles, shining coat, stomping hooves and snorting breath.

  Dylan’s heart stalled.

  He stood up, very slowly, mesmerized by the sight of her astride the powerful gleaming animal.

  Dressed in a tight white T-shirt that left little to his imagination, frayed jeans, dusty riding boots, black helmet, and with her hair hanging in a gleaming untidy gold braid down her ramrod back, she didn’t much resemble the slick urbanite he’d seen getting out of the convertible, or the fashionista in designer-casual who’d squared off with him on opposite ends of an interrogation table.

  She was breathing hard, chest rising and falling fast, yet the rest of her body was taut, and her concentration fierce. Sweat dampened her back, and the horse had worked up a lather.

  Bewitched, Dylan watched as Megan steadied the black stallion in the center of the ring, gathering the reins, her thighs pressing firmly against powerful flanks as the animal danced with barely bottled energy beneath her.

  Forgetting the Fairchild employee list in his hand, Dylan moved on instinct into the lengthening evening shadows along the barn wall, not wanting to startle the horse, not wanting to distract Megan’s focus. Wanting to watch, undetected, just a few moments longer.

  She nudged the horse forward, gradually urging him into a springy canter as she held her spine perpendicular to the ground, her pelvis rocking easily in the saddle as the animal moved under her, the soft thudding of hooves in the ring raising puffs of fine dry dust that blew in the warm wind.

  Perspiration began to gleam on her face and arms from the controlled effort as she slowed the stallion to almost a standstill, executing a turn on the forehand, then urging him forward and sideways at the same time. Sunlight caught a pool of sweat at the hollow of her neck as she turned, and Dylan saw that the horse’s wild black eyes sparked with energy and his flanks shimmered in the glow of the setting sun.

  Megan’s mind, body, energy—everything was wholly attuned to the animal beneath her as their movements became one, and their efforts an equine ballet.

  It clean stole his breath.

  Dylan knew what sheer physical exertion and mental fitness it took to make dressage exercises appear so smooth, so effortless.

  He knew because it was Heidi’s passion.

  Heidi had pointed out excellent technique when they’d watched the Olympic sport on television, and he was now entranced by the way Megan was working not against this stallion, but with him.

  The animal was clearly flighty, his energy barely leashed. Yet Megan wasn’t fighting to subjugate him in any way. Instead she was coaxing the horse to work with her, asking him to accept her intent as his own, giving him the idea that he had the freedom to run, but that it was his choice to behave under her. To become one.

  It was a relationship of complete trust as much as it was one of power. A delicate balance of wills.

  And it was flat-out seductive.

  The subtle, sensual communication, body to body, mind to mind, the way she sat into him, spine erect, breasts thrust forward, shoulders back, hips rocking, responding to the horse as he responded to her—it turned him on in ways it shouldn’t.

  It made him hot. Hard.

  Her hands tightened on the reins.

  Dylan swallowed, pulse quickening, heat swirling low and dark in his gut.

  Sweat became a gleaming lather on the horse’s back as their movements grew more fluid, faster, her energy flowing like a river right though the animal as she galloped around the ring on the twenty-meter circle. And Dylan felt a reciprocal tug in his body, a pulsing in his groin, his heart pounding in beat with the hooves, his mouth growing dry, his pulse thrumming, tension mounting.

  Then sh
e brought the horse to a standstill.

  Dylan released a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

  Muscles almost quivering in forced relaxation, Megan gently coaxed the stallion to raise his head and tuck his chin in, rounding his spine, gradually gathering him into the compacted form of a highly collected dressage horse until she had him steady on the spot, his hooves pounding a three-time beat into the dust directly below him.

  Dylan realized he was holding his breath again.

  He’d just learned more about this woman watching her on that horse than he’d learned about others in a lifetime.

  She had self-discipline, determination, control. Staying power. To her a relationship was about mutual respect, about allowing individual strengths to cooperate in a harmonious whole.

  It was about freedom to make choices. Not a battle for control.

  And in those moments observing her on the willful and spirited stallion, Dylan began to think he could just fall in love with Megan Stafford—or some idea of her.

  Then a rough blur of movement caught his eye as Scout bolted from the wattle shade after something in the grass. The massive black stallion spooked, rearing up, eyes white and wild, hooves clawing at air, and he tossed Megan clean off his back. She landed on the ground with a gut-sickening thud, and a small bounce.

  The horse whinnied, snorted, kicked backwards and bolted in a wild gallop around the paddock.

  But Megan lay dead-still in the dirt.

  Chapter Seven

  She couldn’t breathe.

  And she didn’t dare move. Pain was like fire in her chest, in her back. Her skull was ringing from the impact of her fall, the twilight sky spinning above, her vision blurred. She could taste dust, blood, in her mouth. From the corner of her eye she watched Breaking Free gallop round the edge of the ring. She prayed to God he wouldn’t stomp on her.

  He didn’t.

  He came to a standstill, snorting through his nose, sweat glistening over his body, bright eyes watching her intently.

  Megan slowly managed to draw in one razor-sharp breath, then another, tears of pain tracking through the dust on her face. Gradually air returned to her lungs, and with a mad exhilaration, she realized she was going to be okay. She was alive, breathing, just badly winded, that’s all.

  She stared up at the violet sky and began to laugh through her tears. A release of pure adrenaline at first, then a real deep throaty chuckle as the irony hit her—Louisa had given her Breaking Free as a test.

  That aunt of hers was something else.

  Those shrewd calculating eyes had seen. She’d known. That Megan needed this, to be challenged, to find something vital at her core again—the part of her that had been lost along with her mother, Granny Betty, the horses she’d once ridden in her past.

  And Megan had found it—her center, a moment of pure balance and peace when she and the animal had become one at the heart of the dressage ring, at that place marked X. A place where the rider was totally focused, yet fully aware.

  It took a dressage rider to understand this, Megan thought as she rolled carefully onto her stomach and tentatively pushed herself up onto hands and knees, testing one limb at a time as she stood shakily.

  Louisa spoke her language, a language she’d forgotten. Until this very moment.

  And Louisa had given her the most challenging horse of all, her spirited black stallion, knowing that if Megan overcame her fear, or any doubt in her own abilities, and still chose to mount him, if she could find a way to communicate with Breaking Free, she’d manage to relate to her aunt, to her legacy.

  To this place.

  Megan snorted as she tried to wipe off the dust caked to her face with the back of her wrist.

  Louisa Fairchild had probably wanted to see whether Megan’s compassion and sensitivity translated into strength on that willful horse. Or if Megan was someone who’d fold under the challenges and pressures of a massive stud farm.

  She slapped her hands on her jeans, trying to dust them off. It was futile really—dirt was sticking to sweat all over her body. She was now caked in the stuff.

  She limped slowly over to Breaking Free, talking softly as she neared him, her heart still hammering, blood rushing in her ears, her legs like wobbly jelly. The stallion studied her warily, twitchy as she approached, with a nasty glint in his black eyes that gave her a moment’s pause. But she had to get back into that saddle. Just for a few moments. Or the horse would win.

  Louisa would win.

  She reached for the reins, clicked her tongue gently as she took hold of them, telling Breaking Free what she was doing. She mounted him and walked him slowly round the ring, rubbing his neck, whispering sweet nothings to him, settling them both.

  That’s when a familiar shade of pale blue near the barn snared her eye, immediately causing her to falter again. Detective Sergeant Hastings, in uniform, leaned casually against the barn wall, watching her, and only her, his features devoid of expression.

  Megan’s heart began to race all over again. And with the fresh dose of adrenaline came a hot spurt of anger. How long had he been standing there spying on her? She felt suddenly violated. Exposed.

  She dismounted. “What do you want?” she snapped as she led Breaking Free to the stables.

  He pushed off the barn wall and swung his legs over the fence, following her into the barn. “To talk to you.”

  “I’ve been ordered not to speak to you,” she said as she led Breaking Free into his grooming stall.

  He propped his shoulder against the wall inside the barn, hooking the ankle of one boot over the other. “You ride well,” he said.

  Megan concentrated on removing the stallion’s bridle. She put on his halter and hooked him into cross ties, all the while feeling the burn of Dylan’s eyes on her. His stance was casually arrogant and designed to provoke her, she was sure. But she refused to let him throw her.

  “You want something, you go through D’Angelo,” she said, crouching down to pull off Breaking Free’s boots.

  The air was warm and close in the barn. The horse’s breath was hot, and the stallion was getting edgy with Dylan there, blocking the exit.

  Megan was always acutely aware of an escape route when cloistered with a big horse in a tight environment. And that meant Dylan was making her feel trapped, edgy, too. As was the intensity in his eyes, the way he was tracking her every movement. The fact he was even here.

  “I thought you wanted the truth, Megan,” he said, watching her hands work the boot. “You won’t get it playing D’Angelo’s game.”

  She moved around the horse carefully, removing his other boots before going over to the cabinet of grooming supplies.

  A young groom came rushing over, apologizing for not arriving sooner. “You want me to take him, Miss Stafford?”

  She hesitated. She’d wanted to rub Breaking Free down herself, finish off their session properly, bond with him some more.

  She glanced at Dylan, eyes laser-blue, waiting. Tension swelled in her. Whatever he wanted, Megan thought it better to get it over with.

  “Thank you,” she said to the groom as she rubbed Breaking Free’s muzzle one last time. The stallion snuffled at her hand, looking for the peppermints she’d tempted him with earlier.

  She dug deep into her back pocket, pulled out the last two and offered them to him. Breaking Free lifted the peppermints gently from her palm with his lips, letting a puff of warm hay-scented breath escape against her skin, then he just stood for a moment, resting his muzzle in her hand.

  And Megan was a goner. She’d found a friend in this horse, a worthy challenge. And she’d just found a little part of herself.

  It bolstered her confidence with Dylan.

  “We can talk outside,” she said, brushing past him, removing her helmet as she exited the stables. She pushed sweat-dampened tendrils back from her face, and kept on walking.

  He followed her, as she knew he would, into a pool of balmy gold-red evening light. And he
chuckled as he kept pace with her along the length of the paddock, dogs following at their feet.

  “Something funny?” she said, slanting a look at him.

  “You look good in dirt.”

  She suppressed the sudden tug of a smile. “I feel good in dirt,” she conceded.

  He regarded her oddly, as if seeing her for the first time. “You spooked me back there when he threw you, Megan.”

  “I was pretty startled myself, believe me.”