by Nora Roberts
“Well, uh, Thursday, late morning. He said he wasn’t sure. Moses?” She scrambled to her feet because he’d already gotten up and was heading toward the barn.
“The man’s trouble,” he spat out. “Bad medicine.”
“Bad medicine?” She wanted to smile, but she couldn’t make her lips obey. “Come on, Moses.”
“Some people carry trouble with them, and like to pass it out. Rich Slater’s like that.” He moved quickly to Pride’s box, satisfying himself, then forcing himself to relax. Horses picked up on emotions. He wanted Pride edgy, revved, but not spooked. “If he’s around, I don’t want him near here.”
“The guards won’t let anyone in who isn’t authorized. Boggs wasn’t even certain. Besides, what trouble could he cause?”
“None.” Moses stroked the colt’s nose, murmured to him softly. “Guess I’m wired, too. Slater’s old news. Bad news, but old.”
“Boggs told me about the race in Lexington, when Sun Spot broke down.”
“Hard. That was hard on her. Slater tried to stir up a hornet’s nest there, but they stung the wrong person. Benny Morales was a good jockey. He was making a comeback that year. He’d been out for a while with a broken back. Cunningham put him up on his colt. I was never sure if Benny doctored that colt because he needed the money that bad, or if he just needed to beat the Chadwick colt.”
It hardly mattered why, Moses thought now. The worst had happened.
“He’d been riding for Three Willows when he took a bad spill at a morning workout. It was a year and a half before he was back on his feet. Mr. Chadwick offered him a job, assistant trainer. But Benny wanted to ride, wanted to prove himself. So Cunningham put him up.”
“Was he capable?”
“I can’t say. He ate a lot of painkillers. Worked himself to death to get back down to weight. There weren’t a lot of takers, so Cunningham bought him cheap. It ended up costing a lot more than a cut of the purse. Well”—he stroked Pride again—“that’s old news. We’ve got a new race here. The race. It’s almost time to take our boy to the paddock.”
A horse would take this walk from barn to paddock on the first Saturday in May only once. Less than three years before, he would have frolicked cheerfully alongside his mother in green pastures. One of the first steps in a dream. As a yearling he might have danced in meadows, raced his companions, or his own shadow. Training, growing as muscle and bone developed, learning the poetry and power of movement that was exclusive to the breed. He would come to the bridle eager, or fitful, feel the first weight of man on his back in a dawn-washed stall.
One day he would be walked to an iron gate and urged to accept the confinement. He would have trained on the longe, on the practice oval. He would learn the scent of his groom, feel heat in his legs and the crop on his back.
He would do what he had been born to do. He would run.
But he would take this walk, to this race, only once. There was no second chance.
At 5:06 they were in the paddock, Pride moving into his stall to be saddled. Tattoos were checked, as were the colors and markings of each of the seventeen entrants. No different from any other race, and different from any other.
There had been only one scratch. No one mentioned the colt from California who had broken down at the morning workout with an injured foot.
Bad luck.
Inside the jockeys’ quarters, riders stepped on scales. One hundred and twenty-six pounds, no more, no less, including tack. Reno stepped up, watched the scale, and smiled. The hours in the steam room had been worth it. Moments later, the silks bright, riders made their way from the second floor of their quarters to the paddock.
The waiting was nearly over.
In the stands people grew restless, excited, jubilant. Celebrations continued in the infield, some of them heated from liquor smuggled inside hollowed loaves of bread or diaper bags.
The odds board flickered, and the betting windows were packed.
It was 5:15. The horses were saddled, their lead ponies outfitted brightly with braided tails and flowers. Despite the powder-puff clouds riding high overhead, the air was thick. Tension had weight.
“Don’t worry about taking the lead,” Moses told Reno. “Let the Kentucky colt set the pace through the first turn. Pride runs well in the pack.”
“He’ll thread like a needle,” Reno agreed. Though his voice was cool, casual, he was sweating under his silks.
“And talk to him. Talk to him. He’ll run his heart out if you ask him to.”
Reno nodded, struggling to keep his cocky smile in place. There was so much riding on that quick two minutes.
“Riders up!”
At the paddock judge’s announcement, Moses slapped a hand on Reno’s shoulder, then vaulted him into the saddle. They would head back through the tunnel now, on the way to the track.
“Ready?” Naomi clasped a hand over Kelsey’s.
“Yeah.” She took a deep breath, then another. “Yeah.”
“Me too.” After two steps, Naomi shook her head. “Wait one minute.” In her trim red suit and elegant pearls, she made a dash across the paddock. She was laughing when she caught up with Moses, threw her arms around him, and kissed him.
“Naomi.” Blushing with a combination of pride and embarrassment, like a schoolboy caught pinching the head cheerleader, he wiggled away. “What’s wrong with you? There’s—”
“People watching,” she finished, and kissed him again. “The hell with your reputation, Moses.”
She was still laughing as she dashed back to Kelsey. “Well, that settles that.”
Amused, and oddly touched, Kelsey fell into step with her. “Does it?”
“A running argument we’ve had for more years than I care to count. He hasn’t wanted our relationship made public because it’s unseemly for a woman in my position.” She tossed back her hair. God, she felt young and free and incredibly happy. “Nothing but male pride, of course, which they all wear in their jockstraps.”
Kelsey snorted out a laugh. “Why don’t you just marry him?”
“He’s never asked me. And I suppose I have too much female pride to ask him. Speaking of males.” She saw Gabe walking toward them. “I’d like to say, before he can hear me, that there is one of the most gorgeous examples of the species that I’ve ever seen.”
“There’s something about the eyes,” Kelsey murmured. “And the mouth. And the cheekbones.” Her smile curved slyly. “And of course, there’s that incredible butt.”
“I’ve noticed.” Naomi giggled. “Just because I’m nearly old enough to be his mother doesn’t mean I’ve lost my eyesight.”
“Ladies.” Gabe cocked his head. When two women had gleams like that in their eyes, something was up. “Want to share the joke?”
They looked at each other, and shook their heads in unison. “Nope.”
Each hooked an arm through one of his and strolled to their box to the strains of “My Old Kentucky Home.”
Deep in the stands, surrounded by picture hats and silk jackets, Rich Slater swirled his third mint julep. The seats Bill Cunningham had arranged for him weren’t choice, but he’d sprung for a new pocket-size set of binoculars. With them, he watched Gabe escort the women up to their glitzy box.
Quite a picture they made, he thought. Naomi in her flashy red suit, the daughter in her flashy blue, both blond heads gleaming. Like a couple of sexy bookends for the tall dark man between them.
He wondered if the boy had taken them both to bed yet. A blond sandwich with four milky legs and arms. He’d bet they could fuck like rabbits.
“Look, honey, aren’t they the cutest things with the flowers in their hair?”
Cherri, who’d lasted out the week with him due to tireless sex and a high tolerance for sloe gin fizzes, tugged on his arm. Dutifully, Rich shifted his attention back to the game at hand.
“They sure are, baby. Cute as can be.”
The entrants were ponied around the track, their flower-bedecked escor
ts carrying liveried riders. The Arkansas colt danced and tried to nip at the colt in front of him. The pony rider helped the jockey calm him.
The entrants cantered around the track to the cheers of the crowd.
“It’s incredible,” Kelsey said. “All of it. Just incredible.” She shook her head at Gabe’s offer of a drink. “I can’t swallow. I can hardly breathe. Oh, God, they’re loading them in the gate.”
Everyone was in place, horses, jockeys, assistants, officials. In the stewards’ stand, two judges stood outside, peering through binoculars, waiting for the start. A third remained in the stewards’ room, with two television monitors. Others were stationed at poles and the finish line.
From the announcer’s booth: “It is now post time.”
Once they started the Derby with a whip. Now it was the press of a button, and the words everyone had waited for.
“And they’re off!”
A plunge through the gate, the roar of the crowd, and the first feet of the race were eaten up by flashing hooves. Kelsey’s heart leaped to her throat and stayed there.
So much color, so much sound, could be lost in the blur of dazzled eyes and speeding pulse. The pack swept past the grandstands for the first time, around the clubhouse turn. The first quarter whizzed by in a fraction more than twenty-two seconds with the Kentucky-bred favorite in the lead.
With her binoculars all but glued to her eyes, Kelsey searched the pack for Pride. His colors blazed as he began to surge forward, almost hoofbeat to hoofbeat with Gabe’s colt. Cunningham’s game Big Sheba thundered between them.
“He’s moving up! He’s moving up!” She was screaming but didn’t know it. Her voice was lost in the wall of sound. Naomi’s fingers were on her arm, digging in.
Pride nosed out Midnight Hour at the half-mile, in forty-five seconds flat, Reno curved over his back.
She could see the turf fly, the swing of silk as bats were whipped, the incredible power of long, slender legs bunching, reaching, lifting.
Midnight Hour dropped back to fourth, horse and rider battling for the rail.
At three-quarters, Pride inched ahead, a neck, a half-length, but the Longshot colt dug in and stole back the distance. A two-horse race, some would say, with the valiant filly behind by two lengths at the mile.
The Arkansas colt surged from the pack, making a bid for a come-from-behind that had the crowd frenzied.
Then that last sprint for the wire, all or nothing.
It happened fast, just before the sixteenth pole. Pride stumbled, those plunging forelegs folding like toothpicks. Reno, balanced in the irons, sailed over his head and rolled like a stone into the infield. As horses and riders fought and veered in the dust cloud to prevent a collision, the colt made one fitful attempt to rise, then crumpled on his ruined legs and stayed down.
Double or Nothing sailed under the wire in two minutes, three and three-quarter seconds as grooms scurried from everywhere onto the track to aid the injured champion.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
THERE WAS NO THRILL OF VICTORY FOR GABE IN THE WINNER’S CIRCLE. A gold trophy, a blanket of roses the color of blood. Cameras whirled, capturing the Derby winner, the champion Virginia colt with his red-and-white silks stained with dirt and sweat. The jockey leaned forward over Double’s glistening neck to accept his own dozen blooms, his face grim rather than triumphant as he stroked the colt.
“Mr. Slater,” was all he could say when Gabe gripped his hand. “Ah, Christ, Mr. Slater.”
Gabe only nodded. “You ran a good race, Joey. A Derby record.”
Joey’s eyes, circled by the grime where his goggles had shielded them, registered no pleasure at the news. “Reno? Pride?”
“I don’t know yet. Take your moment, Joey. You and the colt earned it.” Gabe’s arms went around the colt’s neck, ignoring the sweaty dirt. “We’ll deal with the rest later.” He turned to Jamison, trying to block the cameras aimed at him, the questions hurled. “You were closer, Jamie. Could you tell what happened?”
His face nearly translucent with shock, his eyes glazed with it, Jamison stared down at the roses in his arms. “He broke down, Gabe. That sweet colt just broke.” He looked up then, a flare of desperation burning through the shock. “Double would’ve taken him. He’d have nipped him at the wire.” His voice was a plea. “I know it. I feel it.”
“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” But Gabe laid a hand on his shoulder in support. The taste of victory might have been bitter, but he couldn’t refuse it.
The guards kept the press and the fans at bay. Kelsey could hear the tide of their voices from behind the privacy screen, see the shadows moving on it. There were cheers, there were questions, there were demands. But all that was another world behind the thin white wall between life and death. Here, there was only her mother’s quiet weeping.
“Moses.” He rocked Naomi, stroking her hair, holding on to her and her grief. “Oh, Moses, why?”
“I shouldn’ta bet.” Boggs stood, tears streaming down his face, Pride’s saddle clutched to his heaving chest. “I shouldn’ta.”
Gently, Kelsey ran her hand over Pride’s neck. So soft, she thought. So still. Dirt streaked his coat, a testament to the effort. He should be washed, she thought dimly. He should be washed and brushed and pampered with the apples he loved so much.
She lingered over one last caress, then forced herself to rise. Kelsey picked up the dirt-streaked blinders and laid them gently over the saddle. “Take his things back to the barn, Boggs.”
“It ain’t right, Miss Kelsey.”
“No, it isn’t.” And her heart was aching with the horrible wrongness of it. “But you take care of his things, like always. We need to get my mother away from here.”
“Somebody’s got to stay—somebody’s got to see to him.”
“I’m going to stay.”
Eyes blurred with tears, he stared at her, then nodded. “That’s fittin’.” Like a page bearing away his warrior’s sword and shield, he turned and left them.
Holding on to her own control, Kelsey crouched. “Moses, she needs you. Will you take her back to the hotel?”
“There’s a lot to handle here, Kelsey.”
“I’ll handle what I can. The rest will have to wait.” She put a hand on Naomi’s back and gently moved it up and down as if to smooth out the trembles. “Mom.” Only Moses was aware it was the first time Kelsey had used the term. “Go with Moses now.”
Ravaged by guilt and grief, Naomi rose limply when Moses lifted her to her feet. She looked back down at the colt. Virginia’s Pride, she thought. Her pride. “He was only three,” she murmured. “Maybe I can’t hang on to anything longer than that.”
“Don’t.” Though she had her own demons to fight, Kelsey gripped Naomi’s hand. “There are a lot of people out there. You have to get through them.”
“Yes.” Her eyes went blind. “I have to get through them.”
Kelsey walked her past the screen and winced at the sudden press of bodies and sound. She knew she would remember this all of her life—the thrill of the race, the shock of the fall. The cheers and screams of the crowd that had fallen into sudden, terrible silence. The way the grooms had raced toward the fatal spot, and all the confusion and movement of getting both horse and rider from the field.
How many times would she close her eyes and see the way Pride’s legs had buckled at that crazy angle?
Or hear her mother’s soft, breathy weeping.
“Kelsey.” Gabe had rushed from the winner’s circle to the stables, holding on to one thin thread of hope. It snapped the moment he saw her face. “Goddammit.” He pulled her against him, held on. “They had to put him down?”
She allowed herself one moment, just one with her face pressed against his chest. “No. He was already gone. Boggs reached him first, but it was already over.”
“I’m sorry. Christ, I’m sorry. Reno?”
She drew in a steadying breath. “They’ve taken him to the hospita
l. The paramedics don’t think it’s serious, but we’re waiting for word.” She straightened, then brushed the tears from her cheeks. “I have to deal with the rest of this now.”
“Not alone.”
She shook her head. If she let herself lean, she’d crumble. “I