One eyebrow raised, he watched her quick movements around the galley. “I don’t understand.”
“Simple. If you work your horse too much, he’ll go stale. If you work yourself too much, you’ll lose your edge. So you wait until you’re all edges and angles and time moves like it’s nailed to the floor.”
And a lot of people have affairs while they wait, she added silently. Like me.
Yet this didn’t feel like an affair to her. It didn’t feel like something brief and mildly distracting, a pleasant way to kill time until the main event started. Summer games until the Summer Games began.
Affairs just weren’t her style. She wished they were. She wished she could learn to give a little and always hold a lot in reserve, to walk carefully instead of running headlong over life’s obstacle courses. She wished she could approach life like a dressage rider, always serene, always utterly in control. But she never had.
Cord was right. It was no accident that she had chosen to rescue and tame a half-wild blood-bay stallion called Devlin’s Waterloo. It was no accident that she had found the risk and adrenaline and challenge of the three-day event irresistible. She gave all to everything she did or she gave nothing at all.
There was no safe, easy, comfortable in-between for her. She had taken some hard falls in her life. She would take more. That was the nature of the world she had chosen. Ride tight or fall hard, victory or defeat, all or nothing at all.
“I feel like the invisible man,” Cord said.
She blinked. Without realizing it, she had been staring at him while she tried to put the pieces of her world back into place. “Just planning what to do next.”
“And?” His eyes were pale and intent, sensing that there was more than one level of meaning to her words.
“Usually, I’d run a few miles.”
“But today isn’t usual?” he asked softly.
“I’m a bit late,” she said, glancing at her watch. “And besides, I’m not exactly overflowing with nervous energy at the moment. I woke up feeling lovely and . . . lazy.”
He smiled slowly. “I know just what you mean.”
She gave him a sideways look, remembering the reason for her delicious feeling of relaxation. They had reached for each other many times during the night. Each time it had been better. And now the look in Cord’s eyes told her he was remembering it, too, the primitive fire when he entered her, filled her, and her voice was a husky demand enforced by her teeth.
He enjoyed the bright color staining her cheeks. He enjoyed even more remembering a few other ways to spread fire beneath her smooth skin. A kiss, a darting lick, a gentle closing of the teeth on taut, pouting flesh . . . yes, there were a lot of ways. The best way of all was to open her thighs and push into her slick, clenched heat until molten honey spilled.
And if he kept thinking about it, he wouldn’t be able to stand up straight.
“Since you aren’t going to run,” he said in a husky voice, “what comes next?”
“Clean out Dev’s stall. Feed him. Groom him. Walk him a bit. Take him to the ring. Work him. Groom him again. Polish tack. Fret about the endurance course that I can’t see for four days. I’ve a lot of that yet to do—fretting.”
Frowning, Cord looked at his hands. They were tight with the effort not to turn into fists. He hated thinking about her on that course. He had seen the plans, knew the dimensions of each obstacle to the last millimeter. The thought of an exhausted Raine pounding over that course on the back of a big, equally exhausted stallion made ice condense in his soul.
“The course is worth fretting about,” he said distinctly, spacing each word. “It is one brutal son of a bitch.”
She looked at his eyes, cold blue and very intent. She knew suddenly that he was worried about her. No, that was too pale a word. He was afraid for her.
The idea that a man like Cord would be intimidated by the endurance course startled Raine. Seeing her chosen work through his eyes somehow made it seem more . . . dangerous. She opened her mouth to explain that it really wasn’t that risky, not if she was careful and Dev was healthy. Then her mouth closed.
There was little she could tell Cord Elliot about skill, danger, risk, and safety.
“I’m a good rider,” she said quietly, walking over to stand close to him, “and Dev is one of the ten best event horses in the world.”
He said nothing, merely pressed his mouth against her abdomen as though to absorb her into his soul. He tried not to see her as she so recently had been, sprawled unconscious in the dirt while seventeen hands of savage stallion stood over her. His mind knew that the bee had been an unpredictable accident. A lightning strike of bad luck that wouldn’t happen again.
Yet he couldn’t forget that she had nearly died.
“I’m not doubting your skill or Dev’s worth,” Cord said finally, rubbing his lips against her as he spoke. “There’s such a thing as luck, though.”
His expression changed as he remembered the gold coin in his pocket. Lady Luck. Lady Death. Same coin, different faces . . . and such a terribly thin margin separating them.
“Let’s go take care of Dev,” he said abruptly, pushing back from the table. He swept the rest of the dishes into the sink and turned toward Raine, who hadn’t moved. “Well?”
She tilted her head to the side, studying him. “Don’t you have to work?”
“I will be working.”
He turned to pull a denim jacket off a hook. Despite the warmth of the day, he would wear a jacket. He always did, because he always wore a gun.
As he turned to lift the denim, Raine caught the blue-steel gleam of the gun holstered in the small of his back. She hadn’t noticed the gun, hadn’t even seen him put it on. The jacket settled into place. Blue denim concealed gun and holster, beeper and ammunition clip.
“Do you need that just to watch me groom Dev?” she asked tightly.
Temper flared in Cord, surprising him with its speed and bite. He paused before he turned to face her. He hadn’t had to struggle like this against himself for a long, long time. It was unnerving to know how quickly, how deeply, she could get past the control that was so necessary for his job.
“Anyone who can face that damned endurance course without flinching can face a few other things, too,” he said curtly.
“Such as?”
“I was dragged out of crucial project and dumped into the middle of Olympic security for two reasons—to protect your father, and to protect you.”
Her eyes widened. They looked dark against her suddenly pale face. “Me?”
“You’re a tempting target, Raine Chandler-Smith. Your father is very powerful. Your mother is the only heir to one of America’s great fortunes. You’re a favorite news item on the society and sports pages. Reporters swarm around you because of your family connections and the fact that you’re a woman competing at the highest level in a sport formerly reserved for men only, and military men at that.”
No words came to her. She made an oddly helpless gesture with one hand. She never thought of herself like that, an object of envy or greed or revenge. She was just a woman who had a certain skill with horses, a skill she had worked all her life to hone.
Outside the motor home, a man called and was answered by one of the stable girls. Another voice joined in, laughing. To Raine, they seemed far away, the other side of another world.
“If that’s not enough,” Cord continued, his voice as flat and cool as his eyes, “there’s the fact that if certain people can’t get through my men to kill your father, they can always grab you and come in the back door.”
She listened and knew her world was being shaken again, forcing her to accept the very things she had ducked for years. She didn’t like it. She didn’t want to see reality this way, feel it like a cold lump in her stomach. Fear.
Cord wouldn’t lie to her about something like this.
“Is that what the man on the radio told you?” she asked, her voice tight.
“Which man?”
<
br /> “Hasta la bye-bye,” she said sardonically.
Her tone told Cord that she resented the unknown man, resented the other, harsher reality that had been intruding on her world since she was old enough to recognize and name it. Most of all, right now she resented the messenger bringing bad news: Cord Elliot.
His smile was brief. When he spoke, his voice was as clipped as his smile had been. “Good old hasta la bye-bye. Yes, he told me. But I already knew. I just didn’t know which killer was going to be looking through a sniper scope at the prize. Not knowing which enemy is at play makes it hard to do a good job of protecting people.”
Suddenly chilled, Raine rubbed her hands over her arms. “You made sure I was cooperative, didn’t you?”
“What do that mean?”
“The only bedroom you had to chase me through was yours,” she retorted, remembering the words she had overheard.
“I caught you, too.”
She looked away, unable to meet his piercing ice-blue eyes. Instead of apologizing to her for seducing her to make his own job easier, he was pushing her as hard as she was pushing him. It made her angry. She let anger take her, preferring a hot argument to the cold tactics of a colder war.
“Was that why you installed me in your motor home?” she asked furiously. “A simple exercise in tactical economy? Killing two birds with one bullet, as it were?”
Something flared in his eyes, something hot. Without warning, he reached for her and pulled her against him. His arms wrapped hard around her, as though he expected her to fight. Though her body was stiff, she didn’t struggle.
“That’s not why I made love to you,” he said, his lips against hers. “Being your lover makes my job harder, not easier. When you’re out of my sight I worry about you. And when you’re in my sight I want you.”
His mouth fastened over hers in a kiss that left no doubt about his hunger. Neither did the hard length of his erection pressing against her.
After a moment’s hesitation, she put her arms around his waist and kissed him hungrily in return, ignoring the deadly gun her fingers stumbled over in the small of his back. It was only for a few days, so few . . . she could live in his world that long.
As though sensing her decision, Cord lifted his head just enough to speak. “If I don’t stop right now, the only riding that gets done today will be done right here.”
He saw the centers of her eyes expand, felt her shiver, sensed the sudden, lush heaviness of her hips seeking him. She wanted him.
“You’re tempting me,” he said thickly.
“Good.”
“After last night, I was afraid you’d be sore.” He had reached for her during the night, and she had come to him each time with new eagerness, new skill. Just thinking about it made his pulse quicken.
She gave him a look from beneath dark, thick lashes. “So was I.”
“Are you sore?”
“Nope.” She laughed and ran her hand down his chest to his waist. She didn’t have to go an inch farther to feel the thick arousal beneath his jeans. She slid her fingers between the steel snaps and tested him. “Mmmmm, lovely. It’s a good thing I’m an endurance rider.”
He was too busy trying to breathe to answer.
Cord opened the outside door of the motor home. Sunlight streamed in, bringing with it the smell of dust and horses, and sprinklers working valiantly against the normal southern California summer drought. Faint voices drifted into the silence, people too far away to be clearly heard. A car horn honked and somebody shouted a greeting.
Utterly normal.
He went down steps. Raine followed him, admiring the strength implicit in his wide, muscular shoulders and the coordination that showed in the easy movements of his body.
Thorne was in his customary spot near the motor home’s door. With his straw cowboy hat pulled low and his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, he looked as lazy as a lizard sleeping in the sun. Yet his eyes were alert and wide open in the shadow of the hat brim. Despite the heat of the sun, he wore a lightweight jacket.
“Morning, Mr. Elliot.”
“Morning, Thorne. I’ll be with the U.S. Equestrian Team today.”
“Yes suh.” Thorne’s glance switched to Raine. “Good morning, Miss Smith. Captain Jon said to tell you that you’re scheduled for an hour later than usual.”
“Er, thank you.” She knew she was blushing, but was helpless to stop it. Women her age spent the night with men all the time and no one blushed over it.
But it was new to her, and it showed.
“You going to bring that red devil out here for another combing?” Thorne asked.
She smiled despite her embarrassment. “Red devil, huh? No, I’ll groom him in his stall.”
“Now, that’s a shame,” Thorne drawled, letting the languid southern syllables roll off his tongue. “I was looking forward to seeing Mr. Elliot get bit by something meaner than he is.”
Laughing, she shook her head. “He’s not that mean.”
“Me or Dev?” Cord asked, smiling.
“I’d recommend the Fifth Amendment for that question, Miss Smith,” Thorne said smoothly.
“Sold.” She smiled widely at Thorne, her embarrassment forgotten.
Cord stepped to her left side, put his hand at her elbow, and began walking toward the stables. After a few steps he dropped behind her, turned, and said casually, “Thorne?”
Raine turned around, too. She watched both men, caught by something hidden just beneath the calm surface of Cord’s voice.
“Yes suh?”
Cord’s thumb gestured carelessly at the cloudless sky. “Have you noticed? It’s a blue day today.”
Thorne changed subtly, coming fully alert without shifting his position in the least. “I hear you, suh.”
Just as she started to ask Cord if he meant Delta Blue, she noticed two people coming out of the shadows between the rows of stalls. The couple was close enough to have overheard everything that she, Cord, and Thorne had said. She waited until the people had passed beyond the range of her voice before she turned back to Cord. He was watching her with narrow, knowing eyes.
“You’re Blue’s daughter, all right,” he said approvingly. “Nobody needs to tell you when to talk and when to shut up.”
“Would that be Delta Blue you’re referring to?” she asked sweetly. “As in the color of the sky today?”
He smiled, but it wasn’t a comforting gesture. Once again he stepped around her, moving to her left side. They set off for the stables again. While they walked, she gave him curious sideways glances. From the first time she had encountered Cord in the hills outside Rancho Santa Fe, he preferred to walk at her left side.
Always.
“Is there something wrong with my right side?” she asked.
He looked blankly at her.
“You keep moving to my left side,” she pointed out.
“I’m left-handed.”
“So?”
“So my holster is positioned for a left-hand draw.”
“Oh,” she said numbly, wishing she hadn’t asked. “My God. How can you stand it?”
“Being left-handed?” he asked, deliberately misunderstanding her question.
“Living like you do. Always having to remember to look around before you say anything, making sure that you can’t be overheard. Always having to plan your movements so that your left hand is free to grab the gun you always wear.”
“Do you have to remember each one of the hundred little things that help you to keep your seat on Dev?”
“If I did, I’d spend all of my time in the dirt. By now, keeping my seat is a reflex.”
“Precisely.” His voice was neutral despite the bleak blaze of anger in his eyes. “Not thought. Reflex.”
She knew him well enough to sense the anger coiled just beneath his control. She didn’t want to pry at it; there was no reason to spoil what little time they had together. She had regretted her question the moment it was out of her
mouth.
“I’m sorry. I have no right to judge your choices.”
He gave her a sideways look. She had every right, but not now. Not when it was his job to protect her.
While they walked toward Dev’s stable row, Raine was careful to keep the conversation away from anything related to Cord’s work. She talked about tack and Dev’s leg bandages, oat hay versus alfalfa hay, the benefits and drawbacks of certain kinds of horseshoes for jumping versus speed. He asked questions with a depth of understanding that surprised her. He was truly listening to what she said.
Yet despite his very real attention to her words, his eyes were never still. He was always measuring the people lounging against stable walls or carrying feed up the row, the people who walked horses or groomed them or simply stood with them in the dappled shade of trees. He looked at roof lines and deep shadows, and knew instantly if someone was coming up behind him.
And he did it all while exchanging greetings with other people and carrying on a conversation with her. No fuss. No dramatics. Just years of reflexes sharpened in the cold world beyond the castle walls.
A door banged open across the yard, startling Raine. Before she could do anything more than register the fact of an unexpected noise, Cord was between her and the sound.
Even as his left hand swept beneath his jacket and closed over the butt of his gun, he recognized that the source of the sound was harmless, a stall door banging in the wind. He stepped back into place at her side as though nothing had happened. And to him, nothing had.
She shivered, feeling the lethal cold of that other world blowing across her neck. For a horrible instant she hadn’t known whether the sound was harmless or deadly, whether to freeze or run, scream or stay silent.
But Cord had known.
His fingers laced between her. “Don’t worry, love,” he said softly. “I’m as good at my job as you are at yours.”
Her fingers tightened in his. She was very glad to know that he was close by. The thought of being a target had settled in her like winter. She suddenly had a gut understanding of why people built high castles and higher walls and barred all gates against the icy darkness beyond.
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