Raising the Bar

by Leigh Dillon

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  By Leigh Dillon

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Raising the Bar

  By Leigh Dillon

  Destin Bellingham has inherited a problem. Thanks to his late playboy father, Destin faces putting a For Sale sign on his family’s historic horse farm. Getting his talented stallion, Black Sambuca, into the Grand Prix show ring would put Bellmeade back on the map—if only someone could make “Sam” behave like a show horse.

  Disgraced top rider Tonio Benedetto has his own problems, but he can work magic with difficult jumpers, so Destin hires him despite his bad-boy reputation. The street-smart, openly gay loudmouth from Miami and the closeted, buttoned-down son of Old Dominion Virginia make a rocky pairing, but time is running out to save Bellmeade from bankruptcy.

  Opposites attract, sparks of tension grow into flames of passion. But if Tonio fails to tame Sam, will true love become a lost cause too?

  States of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the United States.

  To my long-suffering mother, who thought the day she’d read this dedication would never come.

  Chapter 1

  “DAMMIT!” DESTIN Bellingham hurled the printout, and the bad news it contained, toward his desktop. Instead of sailing smoothly, the paper turned a midair flip and scooted under one massive mahogany pillar of the Bellmeade Farm office desk. “Dammit,” Destin said again, leaning on his hands against the desk’s edge, weak with defeat.

  Outside the office window, three sleek broodmares grazed on the lush bluegrass in the mare paddock—three where there was once twenty. Rows of silver plates and trophy cups reflected the view, multiplying Destin into dozens of tiny images of despair. Above the trophy case, the oil portrait of Destin’s great-great-grandfather, dressed in his scarlet hunt coat, sneered down at his descendant over his luxuriant painted mustache. A framed studio portrait of Destin’s lately deceased father hung below the painting, and Destin clenched his fists, fighting the urge to throw something at his dad’s smiling face.

  One corner of the printout peeked out from under the desk. Destin pawed at it with the toe of his paddock boot, but the paper didn’t budge. With a grunt Destin squatted and scrabbled at it with his fingers. And because things always seemed to happen that way, as he crouched on the floor with his hair hanging over his red face, a shadow and a pair of polished DeNiro riding boots appeared in the office doorway.

  Albert. Crap.

  Destin jerked upright, too late to save his dignity, and smoothed back his thick mane of wheat-gold hair—the only gold left in the Bellingham family these days, if the stats on the printout were true.

  “Hey,” he said, summoning up what he hoped was a welcoming smile. It felt more like a grimace.

  “This a bad time?” Albert asked, flashing a look up and down Destin’s broad-shouldered frame. Al, the very picture of a Virginia gentleman, wore a tweed hacking jacket in casual but elegant plaid, and those shining boots over fawn riding breeches, impeccably turned out for the afternoon of horseback riding they had planned.

  Destin was, well, not turned out. At all.

  “No, I just—” Destin looked down at the printout in his hand, then thrust it at Al. “This came just now.”

  Al took the paper and read it, his frown deepening as he scanned the page. “That’s not good,” he said, handing the printout back.

  “I know. Maybe five swimmers in a sample of five million. That’s basically the end of Argento as a stud.”

  Al made a sympathetic face. “You can’t run Bellmeade on just one stallion and three mares.”

  Tell me about it. Destin threw another dirty look at his father’s portrait.

  “According to this, not even one stallion,” he said. “And we’re down to only twenty vials of frozen semen with that one.”

  Al stared at him. “Twenty! Where’d it all go?”

  “Freebies to Dad’s friends with mares to breed, and Dad not bothering to collect any more. That’s where it went.” Destin kept his voice even, despite his wild urge to kick things. Throwing tantrums had never been the Bellingham way, and Destin wasn’t about to break family tradition.

  “You need mares and another stud,” Al said, giving his jacket a miniscule tweak. “You’re not going to have much of a breeding operation without one.”

  Captain Obvious strikes again. “No. I could get outside stud service, of course, but there’s not really room in the budget right now for breeding fees. Not if I want to pay the feed bill and the grooms,” Destin said aloud, trying not to grit his teeth. “And Dad sold off the best broodmares anyway.”

  Al shot him a surprised look. “Yes, true. But you still have a few, and there’s that big black home-bred stud. What’s his name? Black Sambuca? You said he’s a great prospect.”

  Destin opened his mouth to answer, but before he could get the words out, faint, frantic shouting reached his ears. “Oh no,” he groaned, and raced out of the office and into the aisle of the stud barn. Al hurried after him, the rap-tap of his expensive boots echoing in the open rafters of the century-old brick structure. The shouts came nearer, and the thunder of hoofbeats reverberated through the ground.

  “Stay here,” Destin snapped, putting his hand out to stop Al.

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  The sound of pounding hooves grew closer and louder. An immense coal-black shadow blew past the open doors at the end of the aisle and went rocketing off down the dirt lane that led away from the stud barn. Grooms came pelting after the black horse, shouting in Spanish and waving their arms futilely in his wake.

  Destin didn’t join them in their hopeless foot chase. He took off running, the prick-eared faces of the stabled horses blurring as he spurred his long-legged athletic body down the center aisle. Thank God he had the keys to the farm truck in his pocket. The battered F-250 kicked up sawdust and dirt as he floored the accelerator, fishtailing down the delivery road that intersected the lane. There wasn’t much chance of Black Sambuca getting off the farm property. Even a horse of Black’s caliber couldn’t clear the ten-foot wrought iron gates that enclosed the main entrance. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.

  The truck shot out of the side road only yards ahead of the onrushing stallion. Destin wedged the pickup as sideways as he could get it without smacking the old drystone walls that lined the driveway, then got out, peeling off his barn jacket as he went.

  Black came rushing on. Destin raised his jacket over his head and waved it like a man signaling an oncoming locomotive. Any normal horse would have shied away from the flapping garment, but Black didn’t even slow down. He was twenty yards away, now ten yards….

  He’s going to jump the truck. Oh my God, he’s going to jump it.

  Destin ducked and threw his arm up, bracing for the inevitable spray of broken glass when the sixteen-hundred-pound horse hit the windshield. Tucked against the door, he peeked out from under his arm, bracing for the worst.

  Black flattened his ears. He was close enough now that Destin could see the whites of his eyes and the pink inside his flared nostrils. Muscles rippled under the black s
atin skin of his broad chest as he pounded forward. But at the last possible moment, instead of leaping, Black planted his forefeet, skidded to a dusty halt, performed an impossible pivot, and launched himself over the supposedly jumper-proof railing that topped the old stone wall of the hayfield beside the driveway.

  Destin gaped after him as the stallion capered off across the fallow field, tail straight in the air like a departing middle finger.

  Nobody could do that. Not a single horse in Destin’s living memory could turn and clear a standing jump like that. A horse that could do that in the show ring was practically unbeatable.

  Too bad nobody spoke Black Sambuca’s language.

  Chapter 2

  “THAT!” DESTIN spat, tossing his jacket on the chair behind the office desk. “That is why Black Sambuca is not the magical stallion who can save Bellmeade.”

  Al, who had greeted Destin’s return to the stud barn with unaccustomed silence, dropped into the leather visitor’s chair and set the barn binoculars on the floor beside him. Outside a pair of grooms led Black, blowing and huffing but still feisty, away to the round pen between the stud barn and the house.

  “Standing jump,” Al croaked.

  “Beg pardon?” Destin asked.

  “I saw it.” Al gestured at the binoculars. “He took a five-foot wall from a standing jump. It’s impossible.”

  “Not for that one.”

  “You’ve got to get him into the show ring. I don’t care what his problem is. He’s good enough for Grand Prix Hell, he’s good enough for the Olympic show jumping team.”

  Al looked to the back wall of the office as he said this, and Destin followed his gaze. There, among the many images of past champions, two photos stood out. In the first, a smiling man with blazing red hair sat astride a blazing red horse, holding an Olympic gold medal toward the camera. The horse was Maximus, one of Bellmeade’s greatest home-breds. In the other picture, a beaming woman with a weathered face hugged Argento’s dapple-gray neck, an Olympic team silver gleaming on her chest and a winner’s rosette fluttering on Argento’s bridle. Sweet, brilliant Argento, Bellmeade’s last and now-faded hope.

  “Nobody can make Black jump when he doesn’t want to jump,” Destin said. “That’s his problem. And you never know when he’s going to stop jumping. He just… does.”

  “All he needs is the right rider.” Albert pulled a long, expensive-looking cigar out of his jacket. He had it halfway to his lips before remembering Destin didn’t like smoke. “Sorry,” he said, putting the cigar back.

  “I seem to be fresh out of riders,” Destin said. “They’ve been avoiding me ever since Black dumped Brigitte Erlich on her butt at his debut Upperville show and then bucked around the arena like a bronco on crack.” He perched his bottom on the corner of the desk and sighed. “For some odd reason, that seems to have made a bad impression on the riding community. They’re all politely but emphatically not interested.”

  “What about that guy who rode King George a couple of years ago?”

  Destin frowned, confused. “King George?”

  “Oh, that’s not his name. They called him that because he was a mad Hanoverian.” Al paused, waiting for Destin’s reaction. “All right,” he said when Destin’s confusion failed to clear up. “Stonebrook Flash. Big bay with one blue eye.”

  “Oh!” Destin strained his memory. “That one. The one that looked like he was going to smash through every jump.”

  “But he never did. Phenomenal, but he only jumped for that one guy. He’s the guy you need.”

  “Who was he?”

  Al squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh God, I can see him. Wiry build, dark hair. Mom didn’t like him. She said he looked like a satyr.”

  Images flooded into Destin’s brain. The Floridian sunlight of the Wellington show ring, bright winter flowers clustered around the uprights of ocean-themed jumps, and a trim figure in a navy jacket charging around between them, dragging and sawing at the mouth of a mahogany-bay behemoth of a horse. Every approach a battle, but every leap a triumph.

  “Benedetto!” Al announced. “The guy’s name is Tonio Benedetto. Not old country, though. I think he’s from South Florida.” He turned and scanned the bookshelves that surrounded the office fireplace. “You don’t happen to have the last Sporting Horse, do you?”

  “Probably. There’s every copy of everything up there. Dad didn’t throw stuff away.”

  Al ran his fingers along the packed spines and pulled one out. “Here we go.” He rifled the pages, flipping past ads for saddles and nutritional supplements and photo essays on schooling techniques. “He was December’s rider profile.” He held the magazine, open to the article, out to Destin.

  Destin heaved himself off the desk with a groan and took the Sporting Horse. A full-page photograph greeted him of a handsome, smiling young man about Destin’s age. Crystalline-blue eyes blazed, mischievous but intense, from under a neatly cropped head of curly jet-black hair. The long sideburns that framed his pointed face accentuated Tonio’s high, Mediterranean cheekbones, giving him a subtly mythological look.

  Al’s mom was right. Put pointy ears and a pair of horns on this guy, and he would be a perfect—not satyr, but definitely a faun.

  Sexy.

  Destin shook the thought out of his head, annoyed. This was not the time or the place. Or the person.

  “Any idea who his agent is?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Uhh….” Al pulled his earlobe and looked out the window.

  “Uh, what? Is it somebody I wouldn’t like?”

  “Actually I don’t think Tonio has an agent right now.”

  Destin cocked his head. “Why not?”

  “Because of that thing with the Team Austria chef d’equipe.”

  “What thing? What are you talking about?”

  “Wow, you really were out of the loop up there in Boston, weren’t you?” Al stopped pulling his ear and turned businesslike. “I don’t know firsthand what happened, but it was at the last FEI World Equestrian Games. Something went on between Tonio and the Austrian in the barn area, and Tonio punched the guy in the face. This wasn’t some little tap either. Tonio straight-up decked him. Turns out Tonio had been drinking and flunked a sobriety test. He got suspended, and his agent fired him. He’s been reinstated, and as far as anybody can tell, he’s stayed sober, but he’s kind of a free agent right now. I’d heard he’s down at Tryon right now, so he’s not too awfully far away. Oh, and if it matters, he’s gay as hell and doesn’t care who knows it.”

  Gay. Words bubbled up on Destin’s tongue, words he’d longed to say for so many years now, but he bit them back. He and Al had been friends almost their entire lives, but somehow Destin had never summoned up the courage to have a coming-out party in front of a guy named Albert Melrose Ffinch the Sixth. Destin liked things the way they were, and clearing the air had never been worth blowing up a lifelong friendship over. Instead he massaged his chin and focused on the painting over the fireplace, a mellow hunt scene of riders and hounds trotting down a forest trail through a tunnel of golden autumn leaves. Destin knew that forest well. He had spent most of his childhood riding that very trail, and had things gone better, he and Al would have been traveling down it right that minute.

  “No, it doesn’t matter if he’s gay,” Destin murmured, still half lost in the golden woods. “Who’s Tonio riding for right now?”

  “Nobody that I know of. I haven’t seen him in the ring lately.”

  Trouble. This guy is trouble. He’s a drunk with a hot temper, and that’s the last thing I need to deal with right now.

  But the memory of Tonio steering the big bay horse through the Wellington jumps replayed in Destin’s mind. The horse nobody could ride. Nobody but Tonio. Destin mentally changed the color of the horse and imagined Tonio riding Black Sambuca in that ring, Black’s raw power harnessed and tamed, flowing over the jumps as silky smooth as his namesake liqueur. Desire flared in Destin’s heart, or maybe desperation. He wanted
that vision to come true. He needed it, and he would have it no matter what it cost.

  He dropped his hand from his chin and turned around. “How do I get hold of Tonio Benedetto?”

  Chapter 3

  THE RINGING of the phone sounded very far away, as if Destin had dialed the moon instead of North Carolina.

  Brrt. Brrt.

  One more ring. He’d give Tonio one more ring to pick up, and then he’d end the call.

  He gave Tonio two. Then three.

  “Heya!”

  The unexpected voice on the other end, equal parts defensive and breezy, startled Destin so badly that he nearly dropped the phone.

  “Uh, hello,” he said. Speaking aloud cleared his head, and he turned brisk. “This is Destin Bellingham, owner of Bellmeade Farm. Am I speaking to Tonio Benedetto?”

  “Bellmeade! Holy… I mean, yeah, I’m Tonio. Good afternoon! What can I do for you?”

  Destin paused. Tonio’s words had come out in such a machine-gun barrage that it took him a moment to register what he’d just heard. “I know this is kind of irregular,” he said, “but I understand you’re acting as your own agent at the moment.” It had taken Destin hours to come up with that diplomatic wording. He held his breath and hoped it would work.

  “Yeah. I guess you could say that.” Momentary silence on Tonio’s end. “You got a ride open, by any chance?”

  “Yes, actually.” Good. Tonio was taking the bait so far. Destin launched another probe. “I understand you’re an expert with difficult horses.”

  “Oh.” That didn’t sound so eager. “That bad, huh?”

  The dry bitterness in Tonio’s voice stopped Destin for a moment. It sounded all too much like the prelude to yet another refusal, and his heart sank.

  “No, the horse I have in mind isn’t bad, per se. More erratic. He needs something his riders haven’t been able to give him so far, and I was hoping you would agree to come to the farm and have a look at him. No commitment. I just wanted your opinion.”