by Nora Roberts
“The point is she spent ten years behind bars. Isn’t that the point?”
“The point,” he said, taking her arm and steering her into the house, “is that that part’s done. You can’t change it. How much are you willing to risk to turn back the clock and prove it was a mistake?”
Stunned, she stared at him. “Risk? What’s the matter with you? The risk doesn’t count—it doesn’t matter! What happened to her was wrong. It has to be put right.”
“Black and white?”
There was a twist in her gut, one quick churn. “And if it is?”
“Then it is,” he said simply. “But don’t overlook the gray areas, Kelsey. Not everything you find out if you go on with this is going to fit neatly into one column or the other.”
She stepped back from him, and the distance was much wider than the simple movement. “You want me to stop.”
“I want you to be prepared.”
“For?”
Deliberately he closed the distance, cupping her stiff shoulders in his hands. “Not everyone you care about is perfect. And not everyone who matters to you is going to thank you for sweeping away two decades’ worth of dust.”
She shrugged irritably in a fruitless attempt to dislodge his hands. “I’m aware that Naomi wasn’t—isn’t—a saint. I don’t expect perfection, Slater, or look for it. But I want the truth.”
“Fine. As long as you can handle it when you get it. No use trying to shake me off,” he said, and smiled when she shoved at his hands. “The first truth you’re going to have to swallow is that you’re stuck with the cards you’ve been dealt. You and I are going to play out this hand.”
“I’m not trying to shake you off. I just need to think about what to do next.”
“I can help you with that.” He urged her closer, those clever hands slipping down her back, cruising up again. “You’re going to relax, take a swim.”
“I don’t have a suit with me.”
“Darling, I’m counting on that.” He was kissing her now in a way that always turned her mind to fluff. “After, I’m going to talk you into trying out some of those culinary skills you once bragged about.”
Relaxing seemed like an excellent idea. With a little murmur of pleasure, she turned her head to ease his access to her neck. “You want me to cook for you?”
“I do. Then I want to take you upstairs and seduce you.”
“What are you doing now?”
“This is just a preview. Tomorrow, when you’re relaxed and your mind’s clear, we’ll start thinking again.”
“It sounds sensible.”
He nipped his way back up to her mouth. It wasn’t particularly fair, he knew, to keep certain ideas to himself. But he wanted to clear the tension out of her face. And to celebrate the fact that they’d found each other. For one night, he wanted them both to concentrate on only that.
“Let’s be sensible.” He stepped back, sliding his hands down her arms until they were linked with hers. “I love you.”
Her heart took one long, slow turn in her breast. “How can I argue with that?”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
IN THE ROSY LIGHT OF DAWN, MOSES WATCHED THE MARES LEAD THEIR babies to water. He knew the pecking order as well as they. Big Bess, with an arrogant swish of her tail, was first, always. Then Carmen, the hardheaded red, followed by Trueheart, and so on down the line until shy, self-effacing Sunny.
The foals scampered with them, frisky and secure. Unaware, Moses thought, that in a few short weeks they would be weaned and separated from Mama in the next step toward their destinies.
Some would be trained for the track, some would be sold at yearling auctions. One might show a different promise and be culled out as a jumper, or for the show ring. Moses wasn’t much on show horses himself. It seemed as shallow to his mind as beauty pageants. Some would be gelded, others bred.
And one, maybe one, would show the mark of a true champion. There was always another Derby, he told himself. Always another chance for that win.
Maybe that one, the little chestnut with the blaze. The one with the cocky tilt to his head. Naomi had named him Tomorrow’s Arrogance because of it. He had the lines, the breeding, and time would tell if he had the heart.
In his own breast, Moses’s heart was heavy. He’d put too much on the line at the Derby. He knew better. Both sides of his heritage warned against testing the gods. Yet he had tested them, putting all of his hopes, all of his heart, into one two-minute race.
And the cost had been staggering.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Kelsey murmured from behind him. “It’s hard to believe that in another year they’ll be ready for the saddle.”
Moses tucked his hands into his front pockets and kept his eyes on the foals. “So, you decided to show up.”
“I’m sorry. I’m a little late.”
“A little late today. Half a day yesterday, and the day before that.”
“There were some things I had to take care of.”
“Things.” He turned to her, knowing he was about to take out some of his frustration on her. Certain she deserved it. “Only one thing comes first for anybody who works here, and that’s the horses.”
He strode off toward the barn with Kelsey trotting guiltily after him. “I’m sorry, Moses, really. It was unavoidable—”
Her heels dug in when he stopped abruptly in front of her and swung about. “Listen, little girl, this isn’t one of your playgrounds. You don’t get to call time here and tie your shoe. What you do is you pull your weight, all day, every day. Because if you don’t, someone else has to pick up the slack. That’s not the way I run things. Just what were you doing yesterday when you should have been with your horse, when you should have been taking your orders from the yearling manager?”
“I was . . .” Kelsey all but sawed at her tongue. “It was personal business.”
“From now on you get your hair fluffed and your nails painted on your own time. I’m not wasting mine. You’ve got stalls to muck.”
“But I—I need to work with Honor.”
“She’s already on the longe. You can cool her off when she’s done. Now get a shovel.”
He strode away, disappearing inside his office. Grooms and stable hands who’d stopped to listen immediately got back to work. Everyone enjoyed a public flogging, but no one liked to get caught watching one.
“Well, you’ve been accepted.” Naomi stepped up to Kelsey and ran a comforting hand up and down her spine. “He wouldn’t have spoken to you that way unless he considered you part of the team.”
“He might have slapped me down privately,” Kelsey muttered. “And goddammit, I wasn’t getting my hair done. Look at these.” Incensed, she fanned out her fingers, the nails short, clipped, unpolished. “Does it look like I’ve had a manicure recently? I’m not here to play. Just because I needed a few hours off—” She stopped, swore again. “It was important to me.”
“Sometimes we can forget there’s anything else going on in the world that doesn’t happen right here. You’re under no obligation to throw yourself into this. The fact is, most owners aren’t nearly so involved with the day-to-day work. If you’d rather—”
“You don’t think I can handle it.” Color bloomed and rode high on Kelsey’s cheeks. “You don’t think I can see it through.”
“I’m not saying that, Kelsey.”
“Aren’t you? Why should this be any different? I’ve always moved from job to job, interest to interest. Why should anyone believe that I can stick, that this means any more than writing ad copy, or explaining Impressionist art to tour groups? If I can give up on everything else, why shouldn’t I give up on this?” She tossed back her hair. “Because it is different. Because everything’s different.”
Turning on her heel, she stalked to the barn.
Naomi only sighed. It was, she realized, a surefire way to forget your own troubles when two people you loved dumped their own at your feet. Gauging temp
eraments, she decided that Kelsey could use some time wielding a pitchfork to cool off. So she started with Moses.
He was at his desk, barking on the phone to Reno’s agent. “No, I’m not putting him up at Belmont. He’s not ready, and Corelli rode High Water to place in the Preakness. He knows the colt and he deserves the ride. Yeah, that’s final.”
He slammed the phone down, cutting off the voice yammering through the receiver.
“I’m not putting up a spooked jockey with a bum shoulder.”
“I agree with you.” Ready to placate, she sat on the corner of his desk. “And so does Reno. He knows he’s not ready.” In a gesture she hoped would serve as truce, she covered his hand with hers. “Weren’t you a little rough on Kelsey out there?”
His face closed, and Moses drew his hand away. “Are you here as the owner, or as her mother?”
“I’m here, Moses,” she said, and left it at that. “I know she’s taken some time off recently. Just as I know that something’s troubling her. Just,” she continued quietly, “as I know something’s troubling you.”
“Let’s stick with one issue, Naomi.” He pushed back from the desk. “She’s been slacking off. So maybe the bloom’s faded.”
Puzzled, she studied his face. Not just annoyed, she realized, but worried. “And maybe she just had some loose ends to tie up. We can’t forget the fact that she’s had to make a lot of adjustments in a very short time. I thought you were happy, even impressed with her work up until now.”
“Up until now,” he agreed. “I’ve been anything but happy and impressed the last few days. She needed a shot, and I gave her one. Maybe you’ve forgotten that’s one of the things I do around here. If you want her treated differently—”
“I didn’t say that.” Annoyance snapped into her voice. “But I know you, Moses. You don’t slap someone down like that in public for a couple of infractions So, who’s decided to treat her differently?”
He turned so that they faced each other with the desk between them. “As far as I see it, that’s a girl who’s gotten pretty much everything she wants her whole life. She’s spoiled, she’s reckless, and she’s used to coming and going as she pleases.”
“Just like I was.”
He acknowledged that with a nod. “Some. But you finished what you started, Naomi.”
“Maybe this is the first time she’s found something worth finishing.”
“And maybe she’s getting bored and is going to pack her bags. Do you think I don’t know what it’s going to do to you if she turns away now?”
The chill had Naomi hugging her arms. “You’re the one who told me she wasn’t going to do that.”
“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was just so damn happy to see you smile all the way again. Everything seemed to be moving in the right direction. And then . . .” Disgusted, he dropped back down into the chair, scrubbed his hands over his face. “Goddammit. She got in my way at the wrong time.”
“What is it, Moses?” She reached for him again. This time he gripped her hand.
“The gods laugh, Naomi. Especially when you forget that they can step in at any time and snatch away what you want most. I’ve had my heart broke before.” He looked up at her again, smiled a little. “You did it first. But it’s been a while. I’d forgotten how much it hurts.”
“Pride,” she murmured. “You let me do all the grieving over him.”
Miserable, he looked down at the joined hands. “I missed something, Naomi. I had myself so revved up about winning that I had to be careless, even for a minute. It cost too much.”
“You can grieve, Moses, but you can’t take the blame.”
“That was my horse, Naomi.” His eyes cut back to hers. “Your name might be on the papers, but he was mine. And I lost him. I wasn’t looking in the right place at the right time. I didn’t sense what I should have sensed. Even now, I go back over that day. I go back and back and back, and I can’t see it. It had to be under my nose.” He rapped a fist against the desk. “Under my fucking nose.”
There was, she knew, only one way to handle him in a mood like this. “Okay, Whitetree, it was all your fault. You were in charge. I pay you to train my horses, to know them, to understand them, and to guide them from birth to death. I also pay you to oversee the men, to hire and fire, and to decide which team works for which horse for which race. It looks as though I’ve also been paying you to foretell the future.” She cocked her head. “Since that’s the case, I don’t know whether to fire you or give you a raise.”
“I’m serious about this.”
“So am I.” She rose and skirted the desk to knead his knotted shoulders. “I want to know what happened, Moses. I want to know who did it, and I want them to pay. What I don’t want, and can’t afford, is to have you, someone I love and depend on, losing heart. We’ve got less than eleven months to the first Saturday in May.”
“Yeah.” He blew out a stream of breath. “I guess I should go apologize to that girl of yours.”
“Leave it. She can take a lump.”
He smiled again. “She wanted to give me a few. Christ, she’s got your eyes. I don’t have a lot of regrets about things I haven’t done, Naomi. In fact, I can count the big ones on one hand. I’ve never made a pilgrimage to Israel, never walked in the footsteps of my ancestors on either side. And I never made a child with you.”
Her hands stopped, and he reached back and gripped them hard. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” She lowered her head so that her cheek rested on his hair. “Don’t be. Why are there so seldom second chances on the big ones, Moses?”
Rich was thinking the same thing. Second chances were as rare as hens’ teeth. It was a lucky man who could snare one. Rich Slater was a lucky man.
He put two grand on the trifecta at Laurel and moseyed back to the bar. Mostly, trifectas were a sucker’s game, but he was on a roll.
Sticking with the ponies, he thought. The hell with cards, fuck point spreads. The horses were his babies now.
He ordered another bourbon, his new, sentimental drink of choice, then drew out a five-dollar cigar.
The lighter that flared under it caused his brows to rise. Rich puffed the cigar into life, then swiveled to smile affably at his son. “Well now, just like old times. Bring my boy here one of the same,” he ordered the bartender.
Gabe merely held up a finger. “Coffee, black.”
“Shit.” Rich drew the word out to three syllables. “Don’t be such a pussy, boy. I’m buying.”
“Coffee,” Gabe repeated, then studied his father. He knew the signs: flushed cheeks, bright eyes, big toothy smile. Rich Slater was not only half drunk, but he had money in his pocket.
“I thought you had trouble coming out from Chicago.”
“Got that all straightened out. Don’t you worry about me, Gabe. Everybody knows old Rich Slater’s good for his markers.”
“Oh?” Gabe lifted a brow. “I thought the trouble had something to do with dealing from the bottom of the deck.”
Was that what he’d told the boy? Rich wondered, and searched back through his soggy memory. Well, it didn’t matter. “Just a difference of opinion, that’s all. All tidied up now. This here’s my race.” He gestured toward the monitor. “Number three,” he muttered. “Yeah, number three.”
Gabe glanced up at the screen just as the gate sprang open. “I’ve heard you’ve been playing the track again.”
“Come on, baby, hug that rail. Where’d you hear that?”
“Here and there. Somebody spotted you at Churchill Downs on Derby day.”
Rich continued to watch the race, urging his horse on with little jerks of his body. His mind was working, though, picking carefully through the minefield Gabe was setting for him.
“He’s got it. He’s got it! Now, come on, wire. Ha! Son of a bitch, I can pick ’em.” Pleased that the first horse on his ticket had come in a winner, he signaled for another drink. “I’ve got the touch, Gabe, I’ve always had the touch.”
/> “What kind of touch did you have in Kentucky last month?”
“Kentucky.” The broad, amiable grin only widened. “I haven’t been down in Kentucky for oh, five, six years or more. Shoulda stuck with the horses, though, that’s the truth.”
“I saw you myself, the morning of the race.”
Not by a flicker did Rich show reaction. His eyes stayed on his son’s. “I don’t think so, buddy boy. I’ve got me a nice set of rooms outside Baltimore. All the action I need is within an easy drive. Pimlico, Laurel, Charles Town. Now, maybe you’re thinking of