“Is this the reason for the message on my machine telling me not to bother to come and see Hope race last Saturday?” Ashton asked. “These last few days have been so filled with crises at work, I haven’t even had time to follow up.”
“It wouldn’t have been much fun. Mr. Travers was hell bent for leather protecting his honor.” She gulped. “Dad let it out that a trainer friend at the track suggested to me that Clint might be the culprit drugging Hope. Clint went berserk—he never let me explain that I didn’t believe the man. He sent the kids back home immediately without letting me say goodbye and then he almost accused me of drugging my own horse.”
“Oh,” Susan gasped, “my goodness.”
“Yeah, well, he can sit on his damn high desert ranch and dry up like a prune, as far as I care.”
“Did you catch the fellow causing all the problems for your horse?” Traci asked.
Cassie flinched and looked away. “Yeah. It was my mother and one of Dad’s oldest friends. She didn’t want him to reach his dreams because he had thwarted hers. Can you believe it?”
“Your mother!” Ashton exclaimed. “You’ve got to be dying inside.”
Cassie shrugged. “Apparently, she’s been around more than I ever knew. Graduations. Outside the group home. She saw me and Clint and the kids at the museum. That might have played into her coming forward once we were onto Louie. Pretty weird, huh. But that’s how it is.”
“Boy,” Susan said, “that gives new meaning to being wary of a woman who thinks she’s been wronged.”
“So,” Traci asked, “what are you going to do about them—your mother and your dad’s old friend? They did commit several crimes, apparently over many years.”
“Nothing. They won’t try anything again. We didn’t tell Dad that my mother was behind it. That seemed more than he needed to bear. He accepted a story that Louie told us about mob involvement.
Cassie picked up a fork, only to place it back down on the table. “Funny, I always wondered what happened to my mother, what she looked like, what she might think of me now. She stood there so cool, almost serene. She said something about bitterness being a cancer.” Cassie shook her head. “I refuse to let bitterness eat at me—whether it’s about my mother, or about Clint, or about anything else. It’s not worth it.”
Traci skimmed fingers over Cassie’s hand. “Maybe your mother helped you after all.”
Cassie winced. “Maybe she did.”
“Well, doesn’t that beat all,” Ashton declared. “No wonder you weren’t able to get Hope to perform at her ability. So you got your horse back, but you’ve lost the man.”
Cassie reached for her glass of water, nodded and remained quiet. No words could express her sense of desolation.
“I’ve got a cousin I’d like you to meet, Cass,” Susan said, with a huge warm smile. “He’s into art and theater. Jason is in corporate sales. He has a big office in the Loop.”
Cassie started shaking her head before her friend even finished speaking. “No, not now. I’m too busy,” she responded demurely. That was all she needed—another male to contend with. No way. Now was not the time. Maybe never.
“But…”
“No, it’s over. That’s all there is to it. I don’t need a replacement man. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore, especially here.” She picked up her fork in an attempt to eat.
“When do you think you’ll move back to your North Side apartment?” Traci asked, twirling linguini around her fork.
Cassie went blank. She hadn’t given that any thought. Why not? “I haven’t planned that far ahead. There are several weeks left on my leave of absence. We have to get past the Land of Lincoln Stakes before I can think much about any kind of future.”
“You better start thinking and taking control of your own life pretty soon,” Susan chided. “Life is too short to let others run it for you.”
Cassie focused on the ice cubes floating in her water glass. “Doesn’t anyone else have a life to talk about? Why is it always me we’re picking on?”
“Now girl, don’t go getting defensive,” Ashton said, resting a hand on Cassie’s arm. “We’re just concerned for you. But what about Cassie’s Hope? Will she win on Labor Day Weekend? That’s what I want to know. I plan on being there, and I’ve saved up a little stash to use as my betting poke.”
At last Cassie had something to smile about, and she did so brilliantly. “There are no guarantees in horse racing, but I think Hope has a great chance to win. And you should get some fairly good odds on her. Just don’t blame me if she loses,” she added with a twinkle in her eye.
Luxurious. Heavenly. Romantic. Cassie lifted large globs of bath suds with her palm and blew them into the air. She had been in the tub for nearly an hour, letting cool water drain while adding hot. This was a superb idea. Pampering needed to be done with no sense of time.
She would not rush. In fact, for the first night in recent memory, she wouldn’t even set an alarm. An assistant would take care of the animals at the track, and she’d placed extra hay out for those at the farm. If she didn’t awaken until mid-morning, that would be all right. What a concept.
Later, as she patted herself dry with a huge terry cloth towel, a wave of loneliness nearly brought Cassie to her knees. Tears spontaneously threatened to overwhelm her mellow mood. Looking in the mirror, she stood stock still, chagrined by the sunken eyes looking back at her. Was she really that bad off? Letting the towel drop to the floor, she realized she’d lost some weight over the last two weeks. Her dad had been harping at her about eating like a bird. But she didn’t have much of an appetite. And what woman couldn’t stand to lose a few pounds?
Her lips turned downward as she brushed her fingers against her heaving breasts. It was the wrong thing do. Immediately, sensations of other fingers, of his fingers caressing those nipples flashed through her muscle memory.
“Damn,” she grumbled, “can’t I even touch myself without thinking of him? He’s gone. Get out of my loft. Get out my life,” she shouted to memories. Kneading her forehead, she tried to prevent a headache from developing into a full-fledged head splitter.
Cassie flipped off the light switch, crawled under the covers without even taking the time to put on her Bears night shirt, and hugged herself into a tight ball. She couldn’t stop the sobbing. She couldn’t stop the flood of memories—of his touch, his words of hope, his kids’ innocent love, of a future she’d finally been prepared to embrace.
They’d nearly made it happen. She had finally convinced herself that she could be the mother her mother wasn’t. She’d been willing to take the risks of looking at career and living options. She’d been ready to declare her love just as Clint had done. And then.
Everything had gone up in smoke.
Would she ever be able to pull herself together again? So much had changed. She’d opened herself to a kind of pain that had no mercy. Never again. She’d gird herself with some sort of emotional Teflon that would resist leaps of passion, that would protect her from unwanted romantic intrusions, and that would guard her from men with good looks and sweet words.
Mercifully, sleep overtook her.
Without aid of an alarm clock, she was up by five-thirty. It was dawn when she entered the barn. Cassie took a deep satisfying breath. Smells of hay, straw, leather, and horse commingled, soothing her pain from the night before.
“This is good,” she murmured. “Horses will do the best they can whenever they have a chance. They don’t get blown apart by emotional land mines.”
- o -
Fifteen hundred miles away, Clint Travers was convinced he could forget the red-haired minx, if his family would just let him. As he carried another bale of hay from the wagon to the pole barn that already held several hundred bales, he couldn’t keep the faces of his family from haunting his every step. There was no escaping their ire and disappointment.
His sister hadn’t spoken over a dozen words to him since he’d returned to the ranch. She just gla
red at him, as if trying to cast a spell.
Lester and Sammy asked questions he ignored. They had placed a picture of Cassie on the mantle along with souvenirs collected in Chicago. It looked like a damn shrine. But he wasn’t going to let it bother him. He could make them take it down, but he wouldn’t stoop that low.
When he entered his mother’s house, she’d only pursed her lips and said, “You’re back.” That was it, he thought grimly. Fortunately, he’d been able to avoid his grandmother so far.
Clint stopped at the truck to retrieve a jug of water. Taking off his hat, he rinsed his face and neck, then took a few sips. He still fumed every time he thought of the woman not trusting him—not trusting them. If she’d had more faith in him, they wouldn’t be in this mess. Well, he wasn’t in a mess really. That was the past. He just hadn’t found away to disconnect, to move on.
Maybe he should go into town and party some. Even the thought tasted like stale beer. He wasn’t ready for partying yet. He certainly wasn’t ready to get involved with another woman. Maybe never. Horses were more reliable—and when they were startled or angry, they’d only try to kick you. They wouldn’t destroy your dignity and your honor.
Looking up from his truck, Clint groaned, “Here comes trouble. Well, let’s get it over with.” His bent-over grandmother picked her way slowly but steadily along the rutted driveway toward her destination. There was no doubt that he was her destination.
“Nice day, Grandmother,” Clint said casually in greeting. “It’s good to see you.”
“Humph,” she retorted. “So good I have to walk miles to see if you are still alive.”
He ignored her sense of drama, sure that as usual she’d been able to hitch a ride to the road a mile from his driveway. “If you’d get a phone, you could’ve called.”
“Don’t change the subject,” the old weathered woman declared. “So, tell me about Fire Woman.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” Clint stiffened, crawling into his defensive shell.
“Don’t try avoiding me. You can’t do it. Never have, never will. I want to know what happened between the two of you. Everybody else here has told me how unhappy they are. But you have not sought me out. I want to know. You will tell me. Now.” After one of the longest speeches in her life, Clint’s grandmother waited without shifting a muscle.
Frowning, Clint knew there was no way to escape. “Okay, Grandmother. Sometimes you can be quite frustrating, you know.”
“I’m quite sure of that,” she said without smiling.
Clint took her through the story the best he could. He left out the lovemaking parts. Even she didn’t need to know about that. By the time he finished, he was leaning against the front fender of the truck, much more relaxed than he’d expected. It was his turn to wait.
His grandmother didn’t respond immediately. She looked steadily toward the eastern horizon before speaking. “Do you love Fire Woman?”
Shifting his weight uncomfortably, Clint chose his words carefully. “I did. I surely did. But not anymore. No, I don’t love her anymore.”
“That’s too bad.” Looking deep into his soul, the old woman spoke softly, “She loves you.”
“Come on, Grandmother. How do you know that? She never said that. She tried to bring dishonor to me, and through me, to the family. I’d think you’d be on my side on this one.”
The old woman chuckled. “If you truly thought that, I expect you would have come to see me…I saw Fire Woman last night in a small bedroom over a stable. She was weeping big tears. Her heart was crying for you. She loves you.” The words were spoken matter-of-factly. There was no need to dress them up.
Clint didn’t want to believe. He refused to believe. “That can’t be, Grandmother. You must have been dreaming.”
“Humph. You should hear yourself, Grandson,” the elder woman chided. “You have lost your bearings. How do you know she doesn’t love you?”
“That’s easy. She never once uttered those words.”
Again, his grandmother studied the eastern sky before replying. “You did not hear those words with your ears, but did you listen with your heart?” The woman thumped her heart with an open palm. “When she lay upon your chest after making love, did you not hear those words from her heart, speaking to your heart?”
“Grandmother,” Clint protested.
The old woman raised her hand to still her grandson. “Because I am old, you think I do not know the ways of love. I never forget. Somehow you have lost your way. You are confusing pride with honor. How honorable were your actions over the last two weeks?”
Clint refused to answer.
“I can see that talking to you is a waste of my time. You don’t really know you’re lost.” Her features relaxed. “When you do, Grandson, come and see me. It’s never too late to do the right thing, to be truly honorable.”
Angry and confused, Clint stood and watched the elderly woman begin to walk away. After taking several steps she turned and asked, “When you come to my house, tell me how bears survive in the big city. Tell me about the Chicago Bears.”
Wrinkling his brow, Clint shook his head in disbelief. The Chicago Bears? How could his grandmother have seen Cassie’s night shirt?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Labor Day in Chicago ushered in a crisp cold front. Fall was definitely in the air. Race fans came to Arlington Park in large numbers. Because of the holiday, five of the nine races on the card would be stakes races. Some of finest horses in the mid-west would be featured. A few had shipped in from California and New York. The crowd was jubilant, filled with anticipation.
Cassie wished she could be so carefree. The big day had finally arrived. There wasn’t anything else she could think to do. Standing back in Hope’s stall to admire the filly once again, she smiled grimly. “We’ve come a long ways girl, through thick and thin. Now it’s all up to you.” The horse whinnied in response with a gleam in her eye, as if she knew the importance of the day.
Time dragged by slowly. Cassie’s Hope would race in the seventh race, a feature race for fillies at one mile. The specter of Cassie’s mother and Louie still hung over this race.
Pulling herself together, Cassie reminded herself to think positively. Don’t give off the wrong vibes to the horse. Give her all the support she needs. Cassie chuckled. Some of that advice was good social work, some had come from her father, and some came from the lips of Clint Travers. Damn, another train of thought she wanted to abort immediately.
Mercifully, horses for the seventh race were called to the paddock for check-in and saddling. To Cassie’s relief, Hope pranced to the paddock, seemingly ready to carry the O’Hanlon colors to victory. She found her own spirits picking up with those of the horse.
The saddling went without complication. As she helped Jessica Wilder into the saddle, Cassie reminded her, “We don’t really know what her best running style is because of the drugs. Just let her run her own race. If she wants to run up front, okay. Off the pace likely would be better. Just don’t let her drop too far back. There’s a lot of speed in this race.”
Cassie watched the jockey guide the horse from the floral garden paddock area to the pathway leading under the stands to the track. Trying to hold onto her scrambling nerves, Cassie flung the lead rope over her shoulder and made her way to the box seats where she knew she’d find her father with Ashton, Susan and Traci. She was so thrilled his doctor had finally relented and let her dad come. He was no doubt entertaining her female friends with the guile and wit of a true horseman. It was race day, and Tug O’Hanlon was never better than on race day.
“Here she comes now,” Tug said, spying his daughter threading her way through the crowd. “Hope looks good,” he offered as she entered the box.
“She’s as ready as she’ll ever be. Hi, guys,” Cassie sputtered anxiously, “glad you could make it.” Gesturing toward her father, she added, “Has he given you any trouble?”
“Not at all.” Traci smiled broadly, pushing dark hair aw
ay from her face. “He seems to enjoy having three nurses taking care of his every need.”
“I’ll bet he does.”
Cassie settled uneasily into a chair while focusing binoculars on the backstretch where Hope and the other horses continued to warm up for the race. This was the horse who ran in Wyoming. She pranced up on her toes, alert, and had that rocking gait which was a sure sign of readiness.
Ten horses and riders entered the starting gate right in front of the stands. Cassie’s heart was in her throat. Her dad breathed deeply trying to relax. Her friends, catching the tension of the moment, fell silent. Hope looked so beautiful, so much like the race horse she was bred to be.
The start was clean. Going around the first turn, Jessica Wilder allowed Hope to run easily without encouragement. The filly fell in behind the leaders, running in fourth. She maintained that position throughout much of the backstretch. As they neared the far turn, two horses moved up on the outside of Hope.
Cassie froze. This was the first real test. Would the filly crumple under the pressure, or would she dig in? Without hesitation, Hope matched the pace of the horse trying to pass her. Two of the lead horses ran out of gas and were dropping back. Expertly, Jessica maneuvered her mount slightly to avoid being boxed in.
As they rounded the turn at the top of the homestretch, Hope inched up alongside the leader, along with the horse on her outside. It was clear to Cassie that unless something went dreadfully wrong, it was now a three horse race. At the sixteenth pole, the horse that had been leading all the way faltered, leaving Hope and the outside horse dueling toward the finish line.
It was the kind of tight finish that fans adored and that gave owners and trainers acid stomachs. Stride for stride, the two horses made their way down the home stretch. The horse on the outside bobbled slightly, as if gasping for air. For a moment, Cassie felt like she could see into the heart of her horse as Hope charged forward, like a champion, with powerful, unrelenting strides. She crossed the finish line a half length ahead of her closest competitor.
Cassie's Hope (Riders Up) Page 24