by Nora Roberts
She sighed, shifted, and snuggled up against Gabe. It struck her, amazed her, as it always did, to find him there. Warm, solid. Hers. That body. She skimmed her fingers down his chest, up again. Long and hard and tireless. The face that could make her toes curl every time he looked at her.
And that was only the shell.
A terrific shell, she mused, tracing his jaw with her fingertip. But what was inside it was equally impressive. The strength, the kindness, the courage. He’d already beaten the odds, time and time again. Overcoming a birthright of misery and meanness to make it on his own.
Right now, sleeping in his place of honor in the barn was a horse who had the same kind of strength and courage. Together, they were going to make history.
“It’s no use,” she murmured, nuzzling her lips against his throat.
“Hmm?” Automatically he stroked a hand down her back. He’d been enjoying the lazy caress of her fingertips for some time.
“I can’t sleep. I’m too revved.”
“Well, then.” Always willing to accommodate, he rolled her over so that she was stretched on top of him. “Enjoy yourself.”
She chuckled, wiggling away. “That’s not what I meant.” Kneeling, she looked down at him, letting herself linger over the long silhouette. “Not that it isn’t a tempting offer.” Leaning down, she gave him a smacking kiss. “I’ll take you up on it when I get back.”
He made a grab, but she was already scrambling off the bed. “Get back from where?”
“I need to walk. I want to look in on Double.”
She tugged jeans over naked legs and hips, made his mouth water. “Darling, it’s one o’clock in the morning.”
“I know.” Her head popped out of the opening of a baggy T-shirt. “In a little over eight hours, we’ll be at Belmont. So who can sleep?” Tossing back her hair, she pulled on boots.
He could have, but it seemed a moot point. “I’ll come with you.”
“You don’t have to. I won’t be long.”
He sat up, raked a hand through his hair. “I’ll come with you.”
“Okay. Catch up with me.” She dashed out the door and down the stairs.
It was a perfect June night. Warm, just a little breezy, star-shattered. She heard the long, double-toned hoot of an owl, smelled roses and night-blooming jasmine. Moonlight showered on the outbuildings, lending them a timeless, fairy-tale aura.
Perhaps this was her fairy tale, she thought. Her personal happily-ever-after. It was true that tragedy had brought her here, opened the door to her future. But fairy tales were rife with tragedy. Orphans and spellbound princes, betrayals and sacrifices, evil intent and lost loves.
But right always triumphed. Maybe that was why the analogy appealed to her. If this was her fairy tale, she would see that right triumphed. She wouldn’t give up on finding the truth.
She would see Captain Tipton again, and Charles Rooney. She would talk to Gertie, to Moses, and yes, to Naomi. To anyone who had had even the smallest role in the events leading to Alec Bradley’s death. She would convince Naomi to allow her lawyers to speak freely.
But for now, for the next week, there was only the Belmont. And she was a part of it. With a quiet laugh, Kelsey lifted her face toward the sky. She had a place in the grandeur and the grit, the sweat and the seduction of racing’s finest hour.
In a week’s time, she promised herself, she would watch Gabe and his spectacular colt accept the last jewel in the Crown.
A barn cat dashed across the path, his long sleek form a gray bullet that shot her heart to her throat. Chuckling at herself, she rubbed a hand there as if to ease it back into her chest again.
The stable door opened with a thin squeak. The smells came first, old friends rushing at her through the dark. Horse, leather, liniment, manure. Rather than turn on the lights and disturb those sleeping, she groped along the wall from memory and found a flashlight. Its beam cut a narrow swath. Her boot heels clicked after it.
From the second stall a pair of eyes gleamed goblinlike from the shadows. Her breath caught; the beam bobbled. Fairy tales, indeed, she thought, and was grateful Gabe wasn’t with her to see how she jumped at a couple of barn cats.
She smiled when she saw the cot pulled in front of Double’s box. The security system aside, a warrior like this merited a personal guard. Well, she wouldn’t disturb the groom, she promised herself. Just one quick peek over the cot and into the box, and she’d leave them both sleeping.
But the cot, she saw with some surprise, was empty. Alarmed, she shone her light into the box. Double was there, fully awake, staring back at her.
“Sorry, fella. I guess I’m jumpy. Did your friend here go off for a smoke, or a call of nature? Are you all packed?” She laughed and reached for the box door.
It wasn’t latched, was open fully three inches.
“Oh, God.” A movement behind her had her swinging about, flashlight gripped like a weapon. The blood thundered in her ears as she zigzagged the beam and cursed the cats who hunted at night.
But a cat, however quick and clever, hadn’t unlatched and opened the stall door. Her one clear thought was to protect, to defend. Kelsey shoved the door open and rushed to the colt’s side. Even as she pivoted, to shine her light into the corners of the box, the blood in her ears exploded.
She was aware of one vivid flash of pain, the high, alarmed whinny from the colt. Then nothing.
While the figure dashed from the box, breath harsh and panicked, the colt danced, lethal hooves arching over Kelsey’s unconscious form.
Halfway between the house and the barn, Gabe balanced two mugs of tea. It appeared to him that they were going to be up most of the night, but the herbal brew Kelsey preferred was a better idea than coffee at this hour. Particularly if he could coax her back into bed and channel her nervous energy into a more intimate arena.
They hadn’t been wasting much time on sleep in any case, he thought. Not since the night he’d joined her in her tub. It had been tricky to convince her to move in with him for a few days. He’d shamelessly used the race as a reason for it—his need for some moral support.
It worked, he reminded himself, grinning as he sipped from his mug. He intended for it to continue working, stage by stage until it was a permanent condition. But he’d calculated that a woman still raw from a divorce needed to be eased into the idea of a second marriage.
The biggest surprise was that he hadn’t needed to be eased into the idea at all. It had simply appeared, full-blown, in his mind. Or maybe in his heart. He’d never given a great deal of thought to the traditional boundaries of marriage, wife, family. With an upbringing like his, the idea of it was absurd, even destructive.
But not with Kelsey. With her he wanted the promise, the future. The chance.
Together they would share all of this. He skimmed his gaze over the outbuildings, the hills, the fences. Together they would make more.
And maybe, while they were doing it, they could help each other bury the past.
The shrill, frenzied cry of the colt split the quiet. Both mugs shattered on the gravel as Gabe lunged forward. With Kelsey’s name bursting from his lips, he dragged at the barn door, slapped the lights. Ice-edged panic chased him between the boxes, sliced nastily into his spine.
She was sprawled on the straw, facedown, the colt backed into the rear of the box, eyes rolling as he pawed his bedding. The world upended, draining the blood from Gabe’s head out through the soles of his feet.
He moved like lightning, shielding her with his own body as he gathered her up. He took a blow to the shoulder, unfelt as he lifted her. Her face was corpse white, her body limp as rags. Ignoring the flailings of the colt, he laid her on the cot. His fingers trembled as he pressed them to the pulse at her throat.
“Please, baby. Please.”
It was there, that quick flutter of life. He kept his fingers pressed to it, as if by removing them that life beat would drain away, and buried his face in her hair.
There
was only panic and relief, panic and relief, a bright and giddy pendulum swinging inside him. He stayed as he was, his fingers at her throat, his face in her hair, one arm cradling her.
“Gabe. Jesus Christ, Gabe.”
The frightened voice of his trainer snapped him back. He lifted his head and watched the somehow dreamlike movements of Jamison stepping into the box to calm the colt.
“Easy, boy. Easy now.” Jamison dragged the colt’s head down, using his voice and his hands to soothe. “Settle down.” But his eyes were anything but calm when they focused on Gabe. “What happened here? Where’s Kip? He’s supposed to be bunking outside the box.”
“I don’t know where the hell he is. But you’re going to find him. Find him and the fucking night watchman.” Forcing himself to move slowly, Gabe ran his hands over Kelsey, checking for broken bones. He located the knot at the back of her head. His fingers lingered there, gentle as a kiss, while his eyes sliced back to Jamison and burned. “Call a doctor, and the cops. Now.”
“She’s hurt.” Jamison continued to stroke the quivering colt. “How bad?”
“I don’t know. Call, goddammit!”
As if in answer, Kelsey stirred under his hand and moaned.
“Kelsey.” He had to yank himself back from snatching her up. “Kelsey, take it slow.”
“Gabe.” Her eyes fluttered open, but her vision swam, touching off nausea. “God.” She closed them again, struggling to breathe evenly.
“Don’t try to move yet.”
“I’m not. Believe me.” She concentrated on moving air in and out of her lungs. When it seemed she had that down, she cautiously opened her eyes again. This time, she brought his face into focus. There was murder in his eyes, she thought dimly. Then remembered. “The colt. Someone was in with the colt.”
“It’s all right. He’s all right.” Gabe cursed viciously when she winced in pain. “I’m going to take you up to the house now. I’m going to take care of you.”
“Somebody was in there. The groom was gone. The door was open. But I couldn’t see who it was. Did they hurt him?”
“No.” Gabe glanced at Jamison, who was sliding the box door closed. “Make the calls, Jamie. I want Lieutenant Rossi. I want Gunner, too. See that he gets out here and checks the colt over.”
“He looks fine,” Jamison began, but was already nodding. His eyes were bloodshot and strained. “I’ll get him here, Gabe. Take her on up, do what you can for her. I’ll sit up myself with the colt tonight.”
“I want two men on him.” Gabe lifted Kelsey as carefully as a man handling spun glass. “No less than two at any time. Is that understood?”
“It is.”
“And find Kip. I want to talk to him.”
“All right.” With a heavy heart Jamison watched Gabe carry Kelsey outside. He turned to the colt, rubbed his weary eyes, then went to make the calls.
“I’m all right, really.” But Kelsey kept her eyes closed on the trip from barn to house. “Just a headache.”
“Be quiet,” Gabe told her, fighting to keep his voice light. “Just rest.”
His jaw tightened as his boots crunched over bits of the shattered mugs. If he hadn’t stopped to make the goddamned tea. If he’d been with her . . .
“Are you sure Double’s all right? I didn’t have a chance to see.”
“Will you stop worrying about the fucking horse?” It exploded out of him, and unlocked the gates. “Do you think I give a damn about that horse right now? I’d have killed him myself if he’d have hurt you.”
“Gabe—”
“Shut up! Goddammit!” His face a mask of rage, he shoved the door open. She cringed, chiefly because his shouting caused her head to swim.
“There’s no need to yell. You’re entitled to be upset, but—”
“Upset?” He laid her down on the couch in the living room. The way his muscles were beginning to tremble, he wasn’t certain he could carry her up the stairs. “Is that what you think I am, upset? A little out of sorts maybe because someone knocked you senseless? Yeah, that’s right. I’m upset.”
He fisted his hand and worked off a fraction of the emotions boiling inside him by ramming it into the wall.
The words she’d been about to speak slid soundlessly down Kelsey’s throat. She stared from the dent in the wall to his battered knuckles.
“I guess I’m upset because I found you unconscious in a stall with a panicked horse who might have trampled you to death at any minute.”
She hadn’t thought of that, and the image it presented made her stomach lurch. She began to tremble. “Gabe. Don’t.”
“I was a little upset because I thought, for a minute, the longest minute of my life, that you were already dead.”
The tears began to spill over. One, then two, then a stream. “I guess ‘upset’ was the wrong word.”
“Christ.” Abruptly hollowed out, he rubbed his hands over his face. But it didn’t help. He went to her then, gathering her close, holding her when she curled into a ball on his lap. “Christ, Kelsey, I lost my mind.” He kissed her, gently now, drying her cheeks with his lips. “I’m sorry. Let me get you some ice.”
“No, don’t go. Just don’t go.”
“Okay. Let me see if you’re hurt anywhere else.”
“It’s just my head. He must have been behind me. It was stupid to rush in that way, but I wasn’t thinking. I saw the cot was empty, then that the stall door was open. All I could think of was what had nearly happened to him before. What happened to Pride.”
“Next time think what would happen to me.” He tipped her face up. “I couldn’t handle losing you.”
She took his hand, pressed his torn knuckles to her lips. “I guess we could both use some ice.”
“Yeah.”
But they stayed where they were until Rossi knocked on the door.
An hour later, Gabe walked back from the barn again, this time with Rossi at his side. “You’ve got a hole in your security, Mr. Slater.”
“I’m aware of that.” A hole big enough, he thought, for someone to slip through when the night watchman made his hourly outside rounds.
“Somebody could have come in from the outside. Somebody who knows your setup here. You’ve got a lot of land, a lot of ways in and out.”
Rossi scanned through the dark. He didn’t envy Gabe that. He much preferred his tidy apartment, the claustrophobia and comfort of the city.
“I like taking the easy way,” he continued, “and looking at the inside.”
Gabe was looking at the inside as well, at every hand he’d inherited from Cunningham, at every man and woman who had been hired on, or fired, in the ensuing five years.
“You’ve already got a list of everyone who works for me. Do whatever you have to do with it.”
“I intend to.”
“I’ve arranged to have two men with the colt at all times. I’d be one of them myself, but I’m not willing to leave Kelsey any longer than necessary.”
“I can’t blame you for that.” Rossi paused. It was a pretty night, what was left of it. He might as well enjoy the breeze. “She’s toughing this out pretty well. I’d say she’s taking her knock on the head better than your groom’s taking his.”
“Could be her head’s harder.” They’d found Kip groaning back to consciousness in the empty box adjoining Double’s. “We didn’t have any trouble shipping him off to the hospital.”
“She’ll be fine.” Curious, Rossi brushed a shard of china with the toe of his shoe.
“I was carrying a couple of mugs when I heard the horse,” Gabe explained. “Guess I dropped them.”
“Mmm. Like I said, she’ll be fine. You’re favoring your right shoulder.”
Instinctively, Gabe straightened it. “It’s nothing. The colt caught me.” If it hadn’t been his shoulder, it might have been Kelsey. Her head, her face. The thought roiled in his stomach. “You’ve done a background check on me, haven’t you, Rossi?”
“Standard procedure.”
“Then you know a little something about my father.”
“Enough to know he wouldn’t win any Daddy of the Year awards.”
“He’s in town. Has been for several weeks.” Gabe spoke without inflection. He might have been discussing the weather. “I’d say I