Much to her horror, Kate blushed. The heat started between her legs and slid upward to her face. Involuntarily, her gaze dropped to his ass, and what a fine ass it was, encased in well-used Levi’s.
“He affects all the women like that.” Mitch chuckled. “Though I thought if anyone would be immune, it’d be you.”
“He has to have a price,” she insisted, hating the husky rasp of her voice.
“I doubt he does. Besides, he has investors.”
“What percentage does he own?”
Mitch shrugged, clearly not interested in furthering the conversation.
“What did he pay for that horse?”
“I’m his horse trainer, not his financial adviser.” Mitch, who was known to be utterly charming or annoyingly cranky depending on his mood, was losing patience with her.
Kate shifted her gaze back to the man who should be an actor or a model, not a football player. He was entirely too gorgeous to sacrifice such male beauty to those hulks that bore down on him every game—not that she paid much attention to football, but she did know a thing or two.
She’d be paying a lot more attention now.
* * * *
Hunter had a touch of the gift, not like his sister, but nevertheless he still had it. He could see things or know things. He was never sure how he knew them, but he did. He’d known Tanner would fall in love with Emma before Tanner knew it. He’d known the Wolfe brothers had wanted to heal and become a family again and had pushed them in that direction. He’d predicted his own purchase of this very racehorse and knew this horse was special.
Some things were destined.
Such as true love. When he was a small child, he’d listened to his grandmother tell the story of how she knew when she’d found the one. His grandparents and his parents were happily married. Hunter wanted that, and he was convinced he’d know his destiny as sure as he knew his name. Something inside him would sing and the grayness of the Pacific Northwest would turn into a rainbow of colors. They’d instantly bond physically and emotionally, knowing at first sight they’d share their life together.
He’d sworn he’d found her, but in the end, she didn’t feel that way after all. He wondered if life was playing tricks on him or testing him as to his worthiness for such an eternal love. Regardless, for five years, part of him had been waiting for her to return.
One-night stands to alleviate sexual tension weren’t doing it for him. He wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of guy. In college, he’d never availed himself of the steady parade of women who’d gone in and out of the apartment he’d shared with Tanner and his wingmen. Tanner, the team quarterback, Cameron, Grady, and Hunter had been together since their freshmen year of college at the University of Washington, playing on the team’s offense. Tanner called his buddies wingmen, because if there was trouble to be found, Tanner always found it first and needed backup.
Through a set of lucky circumstances, they all played for the Seattle Steelheads football team, though Hunter preferred to call it fate. There were no coincidences. Everything happened for a reason—a simple fact that was one of Hunter’s guiding principles. Right now he wondered what twist fate had in mind for him next. Not that he put all his stock in fate. He believed in God but not necessarily as a white person would. His personal religion combined a belief in karma, the old ways of his tribe, and modern religion.
He turned to regard the woman staring at him as if she’d never seen a man before. Per usual, he waited for a sign, but nothing happened. No thrill of recognition of his soul mate. No quickening of his heart. No sense that he’d finally come home.
Nothing.
This woman was not The One. Not that he expected her to be, but he prided himself on being open-minded.
She approached him, and her blue eyes glinted with the single-minded purpose of a linebacker pursuing a quarterback. Hunter braced himself, ready to politely dismiss her, though he doubted she was the kind of woman easily dismissed.
Perhaps she was a football fan. Hunter always had time for fans. As one of the few Native American football players in the league and a member of a Coast Salish tribe, he was sought after for interviews and photo sessions, and as a role model for tribal youth. He did his best to meet every request as part of his campaign to further the average person’s understanding of Native American culture.
He smiled and held out his hand. “Hello, I’m Hunter McCoy.”
She didn’t exactly smile back. Instead, she looked him up and down as if she were assessing him for strengths and weaknesses.
“Kate Vanderhof-Carrigan.” She shook his hand, her grip surprisingly firm for such a slight woman. He sized her up. His well-honed instincts warned him she’d be a formidable opponent. She was attractive but not classically beautiful by society’s standards, though Hunter had little use for such crap. She wasn’t tall, but she took advantage of her every asset, from perfect yet subtle makeup to burnished reddish-brown hair that curled around her shoulders.
Hunter stifled a surprising urge to bury his fingers in her hair. She didn’t look like a woman who’d be interested in a one-night stand, nor was she his destined mate. She actually looked like the uptight, get-ahead-at-all-costs type. Everything about her reeked of money. Hunter didn’t care much for her type, even if his libido seemed slightly interested, but then right now it was interested in any woman.
“That’s your horse?” She pointed at SeaStrong, known as Sid around the barn.
Hunter puffed up a little with pride. “Yes, he is.”
“I’m interested,” she said, getting right to the point.
Hunter frowned. “Interested?”
“In your horse.” Her impatient tone indicated she considered him some sort of moron.
“In what way?” Hunter wasn’t sure he understood what she was getting at. He had a trainer, and she didn’t look like a groom, not with the quality clothes she wore.
“I’d like to buy him.”
Hunter threw back his head and laughed. “He’s my Derby horse.”
Her jaw tightened. “Name your price.”
“I have fifteen investors. Even if I wanted to sell, they don’t.” That wasn’t entirely true. Every one of his investors would sell if he wanted to sell. They comprised teammates, athletes on other Seattle teams, and a few team management types. None of them had much interest in horse racing, short of showing up at the Kentucky Derby and standing in the winner’s circle. Accomplishing that feat was a long shot in itself, but Hunter had a good feeling about this horse, and so did Lilli.
“Everyone has a price.”
He thought about that for a second. “I don’t. He’s more than a horse to me. He’s a member of the family. My sister would be heartbroken if I sold him. They have a connection.”
Skepticism crossed the woman’s beautiful face. “Maybe I should be talking to your sister instead.”
“It won’t do you any good. She gets very attached to her animals.”
“I want that horse.” Kate appeared to be one of those women who weren’t used to hearing the word no. She narrowed her eyes and studied him intently. He studied her right back.
“That horse is not available. One doesn’t sell a member of their family.”
She snorted, as if she considered his statement ludicrous. One more reason he’d never sell to her.
Hunter shot her one of his best panty-melting smiles, just for the hell of it, to see if he could thaw her icy demeanor. He wasn’t conceited, just confident and self-assured. He was a professional athlete in his prime. Women flocked to him. Some of them got closer than an autograph, but never for long.
Hunter didn’t waste much time dating the wrong women. Kate was the wrong woman.
And Sid was not for sale.
Chapter 2—Off the Pace
Kate wasn’t used to being dismissed, especially not by a muscle-bound jock with a stubborn streak. She stood up straighter and shot him her best bitch glare, not that she could intimidate this hulking male. The testoste
rone literally rolled off him, hitting her squarely in her lady parts. She allowed herself the brief luxury of wondering how he’d feel between her legs, then slapped such ridiculousness silly. She didn’t sleep with men who could overpower her. She slept with men she could control.
Hunter McCoy cocked his head and smirked, as if knowing his attitude would annoy her but doing it anyway. The man was too confident, too sure of himself and his place in the world, too much like her father and brother, which annoyed her.
With a nod, he turned and followed his horse and trainer back to the barn.
“Surely you have a price?” She hurried after him, curbing the desperation threatening to seep into her voice.
He barely gave her a glance as he caught up with the small entourage gathered around his horse. “No, I don’t. Money means nothing to me. This is my Derby winner.” He said the words with such absolute conviction, she hesitated for a moment. The animal had potential, but no one could be certain. After all, horses were horses, prone to fits of stubbornness and off days, just like humans.
“You can’t know that.”
He stopped, his brown eyes piercing hers to the point where she squirmed under the intensity of his gaze. “I do know that.” He pivoted on one booted heel and continued his trek to the barn, his bearing proud and graceful.
She grabbed his arm, stopping him. The sheer masculine power in those biceps caught her off guard. She jerked her hand away as if it were scorched by his feral manliness.
“How can you know that?”
He jerked his square jaw in the direction of the red chestnut dancing back to the barn. “He told me. Or at least, he told my sister.”
Kate stood there blinking and shaking her head. This time she didn’t follow the man. He was batshit crazy, and she’d sworn crazy off years ago after her college boyfriend of two years sold pictures of them screwing their brains out to a gossip rag, then expected her to think it was funny.
It hadn’t been funny, especially to her staid, old-money family.
Since then, she’d avoided messy entanglements with men who weren’t of the same social status as her. Maybe that was snobbish, but she had her reasons.
Right now, she needed a horse capable of winning the Derby so she could wrest control of Oak Brook Farm from her two siblings and satisfy the terms of the will. She’d be damned if her mother would spend her limited time on earth anywhere but on the family farm.
A Derby winner. Her grandfather’s will gave her four years to win America’s biggest race. Three years down. One left. Her last shot. Her family had won America’s most prestigious race only twice despite being in the racing business for as long as the Derby was the Derby. And they hadn’t won it in over forty-five years, with a colt sporting the fitting name of Last Bow.
She sure as hell hoped the name didn’t prove prophetic.
Jet was her Derby hopeful. Her legacy was spiraling down the toilet. She couldn’t let that happen. Not for her farm, and not for her mother. She silently cursed her grandfather for not believing a female could run Oak Brook and insisting on the near-impossible terms of his will.
Sexy Hunter and his talking horse stood between her and Oak Brook.
With a determined sigh, Kate veered off to her Mercedes. Hunter didn’t have the market on Derby winners even if he believed he did. She’d go home and research the early Derby hopefuls and find another horse to buy. She’d put out feelers with her contacts.
Not that she didn’t believe in Jet, but she’d been disappointed the past three years with horses who appeared to be odds-on favorites. The extra insurance of a second horse increased those odds.
And staying clear of Hunter McCoy with his sexy good looks kept her hormones out of the race.
* * * *
Hunter frowned, shaking his head. Kate disturbed him, and he wasn’t sure why. “Who is that woman and what’s her problem?” he asked Mitch.
Mitch followed his gaze. “Oh, Kate?”
“Yeah, her.”
“She’s a spoiled little rich girl bordering on desperation.”
“Desperation?”
Mitch nodded, not providing any additional details.
Hunter didn’t give up that easily. “Why is she desperate?”
“Do the names Vanderhof or Carrigan mean anything to you?”
Hunter shook his head as he searched his memory.
“If you lived back East you’d know the names. Old money. The closest things to blue bloods this country has. They hung out with the Cabots, Vanderbilts, and Kennedys. The Vanderhofs have owned Oak Brook Farm in Kentucky for over one hundred years.”
Now Hunter knew. Anyone involved in horse racing knew the name Oak Brook. Even though the racing and breeding stable had fallen on hard times lately, it’d once been the breeder of elite racehorses in this country. “Why does that make her desperate?”
“Don’t know. Sometimes old money becomes no money because over the centuries the family has depleted the funds and no one has worked enough to replenish them. That’s total speculation on my part. I’m a horse trainer. I don’t follow blue-blood gossip, especially when it’s back-East crap. I’m a California boy.”
“What about her horse? How good is he?”
“Good. Consistent. More like a machine than a horse. His old trainer trains the spirit right out of his horses.” Mitch’s distaste came through loud and clear.
“Can he beat Sid?”
Mitch snorted out a laugh. “I don’t know of a horse who can beat Sid on a good day, but on a bad day, yeah. He’s a fast horse with stamina. He can go the distance.”
Hunter rubbed his chin and considered the situation. “She offered me a blank check for Sid. Does she have that kind of cash?”
Mitch shrugged. “Hell if I know. You’d have to ask her.”
Hunter appreciated Mitch’s straightforward, no-bullshit attitude. “None of my concern.” He shrugged and patted Sid on the shoulder. “He’s running well. What’s the plan?”
“I think we’ll run him in a few weeks on October first at Santa Anita in the FrontRunner Stakes. If he wins, he’s in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.”
“He’ll win,” Hunter said with confidence. Sid would come through when he needed to, despite his inconsistency to date.
“He has the speed to beat any two-year-old out there if we can make him consistent.”
Hunter nodded. He’d sold his investors on this horse as a Derby contender. Now his racing team had to find a way to make that happen, while Hunter concentrated on the start of football season and stayed away from Kate Vanderhof-Carrigan. He couldn’t define what it was about her, but she distracted him, and he did not need any additional distractions in his life.
He had plenty as it was.
* * * *
Kate stood near the closed gate of the indoor arena. A tall, elegant woman dressed in designer breeches, a moisture-wicking, formfitting shirt, and custom-made Dehner boots rode in the arena by herself. The rider sat the horse as if the two of them were one entity. The harmony between them was breathtakingly incredible. Her impressive black gelding moved with grace and power as if gifted by the gods.
Kate had been at the barn for three days and had never seen the woman before. The arena was closed during this hour to other riders, so she must be someone important. The owners of this stable were wealthy Seattleites; perhaps this woman was one of the owners. It’d been made clear to Kate the first day she’d arrived that the arena would be closed from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. every morning, so Kate spent most mornings at the racehorse facility.
Kate glanced over as one of the resident trainers stopped to stand beside her. Avery Maxwell-Wolfe watched the horse and rider with a sparkle of pride in her eyes.
“Aren’t they poetry in motion?”
“Absolutely. Who are they?”
“That’s Lilli.”
Kate nodded. “Beautiful rider and equally beautiful horse.”
“It’s hard to believe she’s blind.”
&n
bsp; “Blind?” Kate turned back to the horse and rider, squinting. The woman was wearing sunglasses on a dreary rainy day, which she’d considered odd, but where she came from not altogether unheard of when people were trying to look cool.
“Don’t you hear the beeps?” Avery asked.
Kate listened. Her ears registered the annoying noises she’d dismissed as a cell phone. She nodded.
“They’re locator beacons, helping her get a sense of the arena walls and her location in the arena.”
“You wouldn’t know she was blind.” Kate watched in awe as Lilli urged the horse into an energetic extended canter across the diagonal and slowed only a few strides before the corner. Most sighted people couldn’t perform that maneuver half as well as this woman did.
“She’ll be done in a few minutes.” Avery consulted her watch.
“That’s fine. I haven’t saddled up yet.” Kate leaned on the rail and watched this horse and rider pair, promising herself her next ride would be as mind-blowing as this woman’s. It’d been a long time since she’d experienced such oneness with a horse. She’d had better things to do, such as saving a farm and proving her worth to her family.
Kate was tacking up her horse in the crossties when the blind woman approached, one hand on the harness handle of a guide dog and the other holding the reins of a very obedient horse. She put the horse in crossties after a few attempts of fishing for the tie ropes. Kate started to help her, but stopped.
The woman glanced in her direction, completely aware of another horse and rider. “Who’s there?” she asked as she gestured to the dog, who left her side and curled up in a corner out of the way of large hooves.
“I’m Kate. I’m new here.” Kate spoke slowly and loudly.
“I’m blind, not deaf or mentally deficient,” the woman said tiredly, as if she were used to this particular issue.
“I’m so sorry.” Kate rushed to apologize, grateful Lilli couldn’t see the red flush creeping up her neck.
“It’s okay. Everyone does it when they first meet a blind person. I’m Lilli.” She held out her hand, and Kate stepped forward to shake it.
Game Changer: Seattle Steelheads Football (Game On in Seattle Book 7) Page 2