Winner Takes All

by Anna Harrington

  Contents

  Winner Takes All

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Dear Reader

  SPECIAL BONUS!

  More Books by Anna Harrington

  Winner Takes All

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  Copyright ©2020 by Anna Harrington

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  Published by Rose Garden Books

  Cover Design by Hannah Linder

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  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author at anna@annaharringtonbooks.com. This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.annaharringtonbooks.com

  Dedication

  Dedicated to Stefanie Chin

  Here’s to the wonderful, exciting, and amazing life waiting for you!

  Always remember that the world is big, time is short,

  and life is meant to be a grand and daring adventure.

  Epigraph

  “It is not enough for a man to know how to ride; he must also know how to fall.”

  ~ Mexican Proverb

  Chapter One

  Epsom, Surrey

  Early May, 1810

  Jackson Shaw narrowed his eyes at the horse thundering down the backstretch of the racetrack, then glanced at the pocket watch in his palm. The sweep of the second hand couldn’t keep up with the fast pace that the black colt was setting.

  He grimaced. Unfortunately, the horse wasn’t his.

  “Who the devil…?” he muttered and watched the colt lengthen its powerful strides as the jockey on its back urged it to run even faster.

  Horses from all over the country were coming in to train for the annual Epsom Derby, now less than a fortnight off, including a few from as far away as Scotland and Ireland. He thought he knew all of them, had already seen them show their power—or lack of it—during their daily exercise sessions.

  But not this one. This horse he would have remembered.

  Good God, that colt was powerful, strong, tall…and without a trainer. Or at least no other man stood trackside to give orders to the exercise boy on how to pace the colt, as Shaw did with his own horse and rider at every breaking dawn.

  He ignored his own horse as the gray colt galloped past, the exercise boy keeping to the training pace Shaw had set for this morning. Ghost had decent bloodlines, good disposition, a fine frame, and the best jockey Shaw could find in Benny to race him, and he hoped to sell the colt for a princely sum if they made a good showing. But Ghost lacked that special spark which the greatest horses possessed. The one that made them think they could race the wind. And win.

  But the black colt possessed that trait in spades. Even now he fought the jockey for his head, for the freedom to race completely unchecked.

  “Don’t give it to him,” Shaw muttered the warning to himself. “You’ll teach him to be a bully.” But damnation if he didn’t want the lad to do just that, only so he could see how many lengths those flying hooves could eat up against the ticking watch in his palm.

  Paddy Brannigan came up to the fence beside him and followed his gaze. “Whose colt?”

  “No idea.”

  The black horse reached the far turn that curved back toward the front stretch and the grandstand, still fighting the jockey for his head. Yet no trainer appeared from the nearby stables where the other horses were being boarded in preparation for the race, still no answer to who owned him or had entered him in the Derby.

  But Shaw knew this much—that black colt would be his toughest competition for the cup. A win he desperately needed for himself.

  His horse training business was slow. Slow? He should have laughed at that understatement. It was practically non-existent. Four years ago he’d started his own horse farm, but he hadn’t yet been able to turn a profit. While the rich and aristocratic admired his skills with saddle horses and driving teams, they were less convinced that he could make his mark in the area of horsemanship that truly mattered to them—racing.

  But more than his reputation was at stake. So was his farm. The rent was due, grain and hay needed to be ordered, and he had no idea where he’d find the blunt in his accounts to pay for it all. The only way to save both was to earn the Derby’s prize money and sell Ghost on the heels of his win. If not, the farm would be lost, and he’d be forced back into being a stable master again, into caring for another man’s horses instead of his own.

  A bird flew up from a clump of grass beside the track and darted directly in front of the black colt. Startled, the horse jerked to the left, and the jockey flew to the right, came off the saddle, and hit the turf. Hard.

  Christ! Shaw ducked under the railing and sprinted toward the lad who lay crumpled on the ground.

  “Get the colt!” he shouted at Paddy, who nodded and hurried to signal to Ghost’s exercise boy to chase down the black horse, who was now enjoying the freedom to run as fast as it wanted.

  Shaw knelt on the ground beside the fallen rider. The lad was much younger than he’d assumed even for an exercise boy, with slender shoulders and a slight frame. He lay on the turf, his face turned into the turf and his arms wrapped over his abdomen as he fought to regain the breath that had been knocked from him. Each deep gasp shuddered through him with a pained wheezing.

  But he was alive. Thank God.

  “Don’t move,” Shaw ordered and ran his hands over the lad’s shoulders and arms, down over his ribs—

  “Don’t touch me!”

  Shaw jerked back at that feminine cry. What the blazes—

  He rolled the boy onto his back. Brilliant blue eyes stared up at him, the color of sapphires in the rain. Shaw knew those eyes, just as he knew the woman behind them. The Honorable Francesca Darlington, daughter of Viscount Darlington.

  Frankie. The memory of her corkscrewed itself into his gut.

  Unable to hide his stunned surprise, he blurted out, “What the hell are you—”

  “My horse!” She glanced frantically down the track, her voice raw from gasping for air. “Where’s Midnight? Was he injured?”

  “He’s all right. My groom’s catching him.”

  With a scowl, she shoved his hand away—Christ, it was still resting on her chest! No, on the place where her chest should have been but instead was the board-flat front of a boy. She’d wrapped her breasts to hide them beneath the linen shirt and wool jumper she wore against the morning chill. But now that she was out of the saddle, she couldn’t hide the curve of her bottom beneath the buckskin breeches, the fullness of her lips, the smoothness of her cheek.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded again, his frustration rising.

  She winced as she slowly sat up, surely to be covered in bruises by nightfall. “Training my horse.”

  Her horse? Since when did the daughter of a viscount train horses? Or ride them astride at breakneck speed around a racetrack? “You could have been killed.”

  She shoved herself to her feet. “I am perfectly capable—”

  Her right ankle buckled beneath her.

  She gave a soft cry of pain and fell into him, landi
ng against his front, with her arms flying up to encircle his neck. He caught her. In that heartbeat’s pause, he smelled the familiar scent of her, of wild lavender and the open fields, and he felt the softness of her body in his arms. A sharp yearning shot through him that fours years apart hadn’t been able to dull.

  Francesca Darlington, of all women…Damnation.

  Biting down a curse, Shaw scooped the little troublemaker off her feet and carried her toward the side of the track.

  “Shaw!” Paddy called out from the far end of the front stretch. The black colt had been successfully caught and now flicked its tail as it snorted impatiently, ready for another run. The gray horse pranced beside him as if taunting the black. “Is the boy alive?”

  “Not once I’m through with her,” he muttered beneath his breath.

  “Please, Jack.” Her old nickname for him fell far too easily from her lips. She clutched desperately at his shoulder to gain his attention. That touch, too, came far too easily. “Don’t tell them it’s me. I don’t want anyone to know.”

  Which was why she’d dressed as an exercise boy, apparently. To hide her identity. Damned foolish chit!

  Except that she wasn’t a chit and hadn’t been for a very long time. She was a grown woman who should have been married by now to a gentleman who possessed the patience to overlook her antics. Shaw should have left her right there on the turf, to suffer the consequences of her folly.

  Yet with a grimace, he acquiesced to her wishes and waved Paddy away. He had never been able to refuse her anything. Apparently, he still couldn’t.

  “Twisted his ankle,” he shouted back as he carried her toward the stables. “I’ll tend to him. Keep working the horse.”

  “Both horses?” she interjected hopefully.

  “Both horses,” he called out to Paddy. “Then give the black a good cool-down.”

  With a nod, the older man turned to give instructions to Ghost’s exercise boy and handed him the black’s lead line. Then both horses set off down the front stretch at a slow, loping canter.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He grunted in answer and kept his gaze straight ahead. He unceremoniously bounced her with each jarring step he took, all the way to the stables.

  Carrying her inside, he shot a quick glance down the wide central aisle to make certain no one was there to see them except for two curious horses who stuck their heads out of their stalls to stare at them. Then he kicked open the door of the feed room, carried her inside, and dropped her onto a deep pile of hay.

  She winced as she landed on her bruised bottom, but the glare she shot him proved she was going to be just fine. Unless he throttled her first.

  He shoved the door closed.

  “Explain,” he ordered, his tone clear that he’d brook no argument.

  “Really, Jack.” She rubbed at her hip. “If you’re going to go around whisking women off their feet, you truly need to work on your charm.”

  His response was a silent crossing of his arms and a deepening of his glare.

  She blew out an exasperated breath. “I told you. I was exercising my horse.”

  He was in no mood for dissembling. “What are you doing riding a racehorse?”

  “Stranger things have been known to happen,” she drawled.

  “Unicorns, fairies, the Loch Ness Monster…” A viscount’s daughter falling in love with a groom. When she scowled, he added, “None of which risk their necks by racing horses.” He bent down at her feet and reached for her right boot. Despite her irritation at him, she was wise enough not to fight him. “Especially on a headstrong colt that runs that fast.”

  Her beaming smile shone with pride. He’d distracted her from the pain with that compliment just enough that he could remove her boot before her ankle swelled and forced him to cut off the leather.

  “Midnight races like a dream, doesn’t he?” Excitement pulsed in her voice.

  But of course it did. Her love for life was just one of the many things he’d come to appreciate about her when he’d been stable master at Willow Wood, her father’s country estate, and when she’d been a permanent fixture in the horse barns.

  “You should see how he breaks at the start—just breathtaking!”

  “Hmm.” He tried not to look at her. Breathtaking, all right—she’d always been exactly that. Beautiful, confident, so very tempting…a temptation made worse by the fact that she was the youngest daughter of his employer. The viscount would gladly have strung him up from the barn rafters if Shaw had dared to ruin her. “Since when do fine ladies train racehorses?”

  “Not training.” She froze as he took his glove between his teeth and pulled it off, then slipped his bare fingers beneath the hem of her breeches to strip away her stocking and bare her foot to his touch. She whispered, “Breeding.”

  She remained as still as a statue, like a marble Grecian goddess…except for her breath, which suddenly turned shallow as he brushed his hand over her ankle to check for damage, and except for her smooth skin which was warm beneath his fingertips.

  “I don’t care if my horse can’t follow a single command,” she managed to force out between breaths, “as long as he has solid bloodlines and can run like the wind.”

  Hers certainly did just that. Unfortunately for him.

  He frowned, watching her ankle as he turned it gently back and forth to gauge the injury. Twisted but not broken, thank God. Yet her ankle would be bruised and swollen as big as a balloon for the next week, too painful to walk on, and certainly too sore to put weight on in a stirrup. She wouldn’t be able to ride at a run for at least three weeks.

  “Your morning exercise sessions are over,” he confirmed but didn’t release her foot, soothing that news with gentle caresses up her calf…caresses he had no business giving yet couldn’t stop himself from taking. Just as he couldn’t four years ago. “You’ll have to notify your father. He’ll need to hire an exercise boy to replace you.”

  When silence greeted that, he lifted his gaze to hers.

  The guilty expression on her face was an open book.

  Bloody hell. “Your father doesn’t know anything about you exercising the colt, does he?” When her only reply was silence, he pressed on, “So the answer’s no. You’re here with your brother, then.” Matthew must have been leading this fiasco. The man never could resist anything she asked of him. But then, neither could Shaw.

  She bit her lip. “No…”

  “Your Uncle Jonas.” The man’s madcap adventures were legendary. “That crazy old man put you up to this.”

  “It was all my idea.” She lifted her chin, daring him to challenge her. “I’m simply staying with Uncle Jonas until the race.”

  All my idea. His heart skipped. Had those words come from anyone else, he wouldn’t have immediately suspected the worse. But he knew Francesca, in some ways better than any other woman in the world. So when she admitted that riding the colt was her idea, what she actually meant—

  He bit back a curse. “You were planning on doing more than just exercising him, weren’t you?” Of all the harebrained, foolish ideas she could come up with—and Francesca had come up with some truly outlandish ones in the past— “You were planning on riding him in the race yourself!”

  “Because I’m the only one who can handle him.”

  Her answer confirmed his suspicion, and this time he couldn’t hold back the curse. “Are you mad? Risking your neck like that, lying to your father—”

  “I didn’t lie to Papa. I have his blessing to enter Midnight in the Derby.” She hesitated before confessing, “He just assumed that I’d hired an exercise boy and jockey to race him.”

  He lifted a brow. “Exactly how hard did you hit your head when you fell?”

  She glared at him. “My head is just fine.” Yet she reached up and yanked off the tweed cap she’d pulled down low over her ears to hide her hair, which now fell free in silky waves over her slender shoulders. “But this hat itches like the devil.”

 
; She tossed it onto the hay beside her and raked her fingers through her toffee-brown hair, to shake it loose and scratch at her scalp. But the act only made her look exotic, wild, tempestuous—

  “Stop that,” he ordered as an old, familiar longing rose in his gut.

  Her hand froze, her fingers tangled in her tresses. Her eyes snapped to his, and she asked innocently, “Stop what?”

  He half growled in warning, “You damn well know what.”

  Understanding fell over her, but the minx didn’t lower her hand. Instead, now she brushed it through her hair with deliberate flirtation, letting it cascade in thick curls that caught the sunlight that fell through the small window. “It never bothered you before to watch me fuss with my hair.” Her voice turned husky. “You used to like it, in fact.”

  Still did, if the aching throb in his groin was any proof. That was the problem. Leaving her four years ago hadn’t been what he’d wanted at all. But the daughter of a viscount had no future with a man who mucked out her father’s stables.

  “I do like it.” He caressed his hand farther up her leg to her thigh. The buckskin barred him from touching the smooth skin he knew lay beneath, but it didn’t stop her jerky inhalation of surprise. “If I thought for one moment that you were doing it to please me rather than to distract me—” He shamelessly stroked higher until his fingers brushed mere inches from the juncture of her legs. She trembled, her big eyes darkening with desire. “More of your clothing would be coming off than just your hat and boot.”

  Her lips parted delicately. “Jack…”

  “You know how I feel about you, Francesca.” His voice dropped to a low confession. “You’ve always known.”