by Melissa West
“Haven’t you ever heard of teasing?” Emery asked Trip with a smile. “All work and no play for Mr. Superstar Trainer?” She knocked his stomach lightly with her fist, too comfortable and too in her element. But the moment her hand made contact with his rock-solid abs, she felt herself flush. God, why had she done that? She couldn’t seem to be around Trip without staring or flirting—like no time had passed and nothing had changed between them. She needed to get herself under control.
Trip cleared his throat and ducked his head, but she caught the edges of his lips curving into a small grin before he tucked it away.
Embarrassed, Emery focused back on the exercise rider. He couldn’t be older than sixteen, likely a cousin or son of one of the trainers. Some poor kid forced to ride when he’d rather be playing video games or chasing girls. Did they still call it that? “Tell me what’s the trouble. You’re tense and the horse knows it.”
The boy glanced from Clark to Trip, then finally to Emery. “He threw Mike Black yesterday. Talk said Mike couldn’t even get out of bed today. That’s why I’m covering for him.”
At that, Clark started laughing again. “You’re a fool, boy. Mikey’s going to hit the races today and bet away his wages for a week. Mark my word.”
“So, he wasn’t thrown?”
Trip patted Craving Wind. “Ah, he was thrown all right, but he got back up. So will you. We’ve all been thrown a few times. Rarely does anybody get injured. No one’s been put in the hospital. This year.” He winked at the boy, whose attention was on Emery.
“But you were thrown, weren’t you, Ms. Carlisle?”
Emery felt all the blood drain from her face. For whatever reason, she’d never expected anybody on the farm to mention her injury. She knew everyone in racing knew about it. Heck, it was the Kentucky Oaks and she was a front-runner for the Derby. That kind of thing didn’t go unnoticed. But how could she explain to this boy that she wasn’t afraid of getting thrown or even being trampled—she was afraid she’d lost her touch. Lost her talent. Lost herself.
She’d opened her mouth to reply when Trip cut in. “Well, I think I’ll show Emery around the rest of the farm. We’ll check in with you later,” he said to Clark, who nodded. And then, with the relief of a cup of water on a scorching day, she followed Trip back out, ignoring his curious stare. There was no doubt he had opinions, and that was fine. That was perfectly and completely fine. He could keep his opinions. As long as he kept to their agreement and let her race, she didn’t care what he thought of her. So there!
Only, as she watched him walking toward the stables, his head slightly down, she knew she was lying to herself.
Trip led her around the stables and back to a small white house with navy shutters, planter boxes full of vibrant flowers below each window, and a red door. They stepped through the door without knocking and into a small kitchen with a breakfast nook just to the right, facing the pastures, with a clear view of the rising sun. A six-person rectangular oak table dominated the nook, a metal light with a rooster on it hanging down over the table, like it was ready to steal your food if you came in a minute late.
Emery glanced around, feeling better with each passing moment. From the orchard print shades over the windows to the rug below the sink that read “Southern Soul,” it felt like she’d entered her grandmother’s house back home. “I thought you were showing me the rest of the farm?”
Just then a woman appeared from around the corner, all gray hair and Southern curves and a smile that said she knew Emery down to her bones even before she’d heard her name. “Trust me, honey, this is the most important place on the farm. Especially first thing in the morning.” Then she wiped her hands on her apron and gripped Emery’s shoulders gently before leaning in to kiss her cheek. “You must be Emery. I’m Vivian Marshal, but everybody around her calls me Mama V.” She winked over at Trip. “Omelet and bacon?”
Trip grinned. “You know me well.” He pulled out a chair for Emery and nodded for her to sit before taking the seat across from her.
“Mama V keeps us fed,” Trip said with a smile. “It’s a twenty-four-hour kitchen in here.”
Mama V laughed. “Well, not all day. But yes, before I started cooking for them, they’d go all day without eating. Riding those horses, training, talking business, then turn to the races. They’d go sunup to sundown, all of them turning into skin and bones and embarrassing the family. Couldn’t have that.” She cracked an egg into a frying pan, the sizzling sound filling the silence in a comfortable way. Then she flipped it and threw in peppers and onions, and Emery wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“Now, now. What’s that look for, lady girl? I’m sensing some high-and-mighty judgment falling my way.”
Mama V spun around, her wooden spoon out, and under her stare, Emery straightened and smiled. She distinctly remembered her grandmother spanking her with a wooden spoon—on more than one occasion. Something told Emery Mama V wasn’t against using her spoon either.
“Nothing. I was just . . . Nothing.”
Trip leaned in. “Let me guess; you’re a simple, egg-whites-only kind of girl?”
Emery blanched. “Lord no. Well, unless I’m watching my weight for a race. But I never understood why anybody had to mess up a perfectly good egg by throwing vegetables into it.”
“Is that right?” Trip asked, smiling.
“Yes; the only thing that belongs on eggs is cheese. And maybe salt and pepper. Onions and red and green peppers?” She made the universal yuck noise, and Mama V laughed loudly from where she stood by the stove.
“Honey, you’re going to be a lot of fun around here.”
Then she came over and placed a steaming omelet in front of Emery, cheddar cheese melting from its center. Emery’s gaze snapped up. “How did you know?”
“Oh, Mama V sees all,” Trip answered for her, before digging into his own plate.
Mama V glanced between the two of them, a small smile on her face. “Indeed I do.”
The fog had completely cleared by the time they finished eating, and though Trip itched to take Emery riding, to watch her in her element, he knew she wasn’t ready. He could see it on her face when the boy had called her out on her injury. A part of him wanted to talk to Clark, warn him to make sure no one else on staff brought up her accident, but he didn’t think that was the best thing for her. She needed to face what happened, her fears. He just wasn’t sure how to help her get there without pushing her away.
“Want to see the rest of the farm now?” he asked, reaching for her arm. Damn, he wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t seem to be around her without touching her in some way.
Her blue eyes dropped to his hand on her arm, her eyebrows threaded with doubt, but he knew Emery well enough to realize she would have barked some feminist remark if she didn’t like it at least a little.
“Um, sure.” Her gaze lifted, and the intensity in it made Trip want to reconsider his agreement with himself to be good, to keep their relationship professional. He ached to pull the stubborn, broken woman to him and put her back together again one long, mind-blowing kiss at a time. He thought of the last time his lips were on hers, the kiss full of urgency and the good-bye he couldn’t say, and wondered if it would be like that now, or if they would take it slow, relish in each other more.
Shaking himself from his thoughts before his jeans got any tighter, he asked, “Okay if we ride?” Her back went rigid, and he felt her pulling away, burying in on herself, when he realized what she thought he meant. “In the cart.” He pointed at a golf cart parked by the stable, and she released a breath, smiling with relief, and he couldn’t help feeling pride that he’d put that there. Damn, he was in deep, and she’d only been back in his life forty-eight hours. By this point, he should have already introduced her to the rest of the staff, passed her off to one of his assistant trainers, and gone on his way. Instead, he was giving her a personal tour of the farm. His brothers would laugh their asses off if they saw the way he was fawning all over her. Or
maybe they’d be fawning, too.
The thought brought on more jealousy than he had any right to feel.
He slid into the driver’s seat of the golf cart and patted the seat beside him for Emery to join him. He kept waiting for her to ask for the cane, to limp, or at the very least to show some hesitation with this much walking, but she never let on. Which either meant she genuinely didn’t need it or she was too stubborn to show weakness. Both possibilities seemed equally probable.
Emery slipped into the golf cart, her hands at her side, until her left brushed against Trip’s thigh, and she jerked back, placing them in her lap, then folding them together, back in her lap, and then finally crossing her arms like she needed to hold her hands down to prevent them from behaving badly. He smiled inwardly, enjoying the way she reacted to him—how she became so easily rattled. Was it possible she still had feelings for him, too?
Too?
Trip put the cart in drive before his brain could unpack that little disastrous thought, and they made their way around the farm, Trip pointing out barns, trainer quarters, training rings, and everything in between. Finally, they reached the track, and Emery drew a shallow breath, stepping out of the cart even before it was fully in park.
“You have your own track?”
Trip walked up beside her, standing far too close to be appropriate, but he couldn’t help himself. When he set out to open Hamilton Stables, he told his father he wouldn’t cut corners. He wanted the finest facilities on-site, and if Carter gave him those facilities, he promised to make the Hamilton brand a household name. The track went in six months later, and that year Trip had a horse in the money in two of the three legs of the Triple Crown.
“It’s a seven-furlong track. I had it put in a few years back. Nothing overly grand, but it helps with training.”
“You have your own track,” she repeated, this time with a sense of awe and longing in her voice. “I begged Daddy to put in a track back home, but he said it wasn’t necessary with so many tracks available to us.”
It was a fair way of thinking, but Trip prided himself on knowing the traditional ways of training and then elevating those methods to create a more modern approach. Some of the older trainers mocked him early on, but winning was winning, and soon they began implementing Trip’s methods at their own farms.
He glanced over at Emery and hesitated, unsure how much he should push her. How soon. He knew she had enough drive to get over her fear, but her eyes weren’t lit with excitement. They were round with terror. He treaded carefully. “Emery, you know you can—”
She cut him off quickly, the fear winning out. “What do your brothers do around the farm? Nick and Alex, right?”
Trip stared at the track, sure staying there with her fears straight ahead would make Emery uneasy, but maybe that was what she needed right now. A visual to remind her why she loved racing. He considered asking her to race right now but knew she would pull away from him again, and he wanted her close. Too close for any good to come of it.
“Nick works for Hamilton Industries, the business side of the Hamilton brand. And you met Alex, right? He mentioned a minor assault at Patty’s?”
She cringed. “I wouldn’t call it assault. I just forcefully dragged him away from our table . . . by my fingernails. There was no blood or anything. Did he say there was blood?”
“No, no blood,” Trip said with a laugh. “Though now you’ve got me wondering.”
“He was about to tell Patty that I worked here, which would mean a direct gossip path to Daddy’s ears. I couldn’t let that happen.”
Trip drew a breath and cut his eyes over to her. “You’ve got to tell him the truth eventually. You know that, right?”
“Eventually is a very long word. So back to Nick and Alex.”
“Right.” He pushed away the nagging questions in his mind—why she’d come to him, what Beckett would say if he knew, where he thought she was that second—and went on about his brothers. “Like I said, Nick works for Industries, and Alex . . . well, Alex is Alex. He does what he wants, still trying to figure out his passion. But he’s recently started managing the breeding side of Hamilton Stables, working the foaling and mare barns. Keeping up with requests, talks with our staff vet, the health of our broodmares. Stuff like that. So far so good, but with Alex you never know.” Trip thought of his brother’s adventures over the years—backpacking through Europe, a summer in Australia, climbing Mount Everest. He reminded Trip of a colt he’d tried to train a few years back, only to realize the horse would never race. Too wild and independent. Just like Alex.
“I didn’t realize you’d ventured into breeding.”
Trip shrugged. “It made sense. One-stop shop and all that.”
She nodded slowly, and Trip wondered if she was thinking about Carlisle Farms, and their move from training to breeding. If Beckett would view this as yet another reason to be angry at Emery for working with Hamilton Stables. They weren’t the only barn to offer breeding and training services, but they were certainly the best.
“So you’re the only one who trains?”
Trip adjusted his stance, memories pouring in of the first time he knew he wanted to be a trainer. “When I was little, I used to practically live at the track, taking in every detail. It amazed me—the science of it, the structure, the thrill. I knew my passion by the time I was eight years old, and so I’ve spent most of my life learning, watching, paying attention to what works—and what doesn’t. Especially to what doesn’t. Before long, I went from assistant trainer at Wyncrest Farms to starting Hamilton Stables. I’ve loved every minute of it. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
He glanced over to find Emery watching him intently, her eyes so blue in the morning sun they appeared like something out of a fantasy. A gust of wind blew around them, causing her hair to glide over her face, and without thinking, he reached over, gently tucking the wild strands back behind her ear. She drew a slow breath, her gaze never leaving his, and Trip thought how differently this moment would go if she were anyone else. He would thread his fingers into her hair and lean in, press his mouth to hers, and take her the way she deserved to be taken. Show her she was still the woman she had once been. But then, he hadn’t felt this spark with any other women. Eight years, and not a fifth of the intensity he felt around Emery.
Now, she was here, back beside him, the fire between them enough to light an entire city, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. She worked for him now—an employee. Even having these thoughts was unethical and against the very foundation of Hamilton Stables. What the hell was he doing?
He pulled away and shook his head, clearing away the temptation, though he knew he couldn’t keep it at bay for long. He needed to separate himself from her before he made a mistake he couldn’t correct. “So, yeah, that’s the track.”
Emery faced forward, her eyebrows drawn together at the coldness in his voice. “It’s great. Thanks for showing it to me.”
“Sure thing. It’s my job. I’ll get you back to the stables now.”
Trip headed to the cart, hating the tension between them. All his old feelings for her had resurfaced, clouding his logic. He needed to think, to focus, but his focus kept drifting to her dark, tight jeans, the way they hugged her legs. He wondered what those legs would feel like wrapped around his—Dammit all to hell, dude! Pull yourself together!
He took a long pull from his water bottle as they parked the cart by the barn and peered over at her to find her staring at a bay being brought in from his morning exercise. “Water for your thoughts?” He held the bottle out to her. They could do the friend thing, right? Nothing wrong with friends.
She laughed, but the sound didn’t hold the warmth it should. “Just . . . remembering.”
“Well, you know the good thing about remembering?” Emery glanced over, and Trip had to order his brain to be good, because dear God above, those eyes of hers made him want to do very bad things. “It’s never just the bad stuff. If we let ourselves re
member, we can remember why we made the choices we made in the first place. Remember why you love racing, Emery. And never forget it.”
CHAPTER TEN
Wearing blinders
“Only one more box,” Annie-Jean said triumphantly.
They’d spent all morning setting up Annie-Jean’s booth at Triple Run’s annual fall festival. Each year, Annie-Jean baked dozens upon dozens of her specialty cookies for the festival, and each year, she begged Emery to man the booth with her. The first year—four years ago now—Emery agreed, only to find herself stuck for eight hours, handing out cookies, smiling away, Annie-Jean like a hardcore drill sergeant, refusing to let her leave, even to go pee. Never again, Emery had said—until now.
She told herself it had nothing to do with the possibility of running into Trip. Nothing at all. He was probably out of town anyway, or at the stables, or handling any one of a thousand things trainers handled. But she couldn’t get the feel of his fingertips brushing her hair from her face out of her mind. Couldn’t stop the warmth spreading over her when she remembered the intensity in his stare.
“Remember, presentation is everything. Does the tablecloth look okay?”
Emery grinned as she peered down at the white cloth, with Annie-Jean’s logo—AJ’s Creations—printed across the top. She went all out, a characteristic she shared with her brother, Beckett Carlisle, whether she wanted to admit it or not. “It’s perfect, Annie. You’re worrying too much.”
Despite it being early morning, the temperature was comfortable for fall. The trees all around them bore green leaves with yellow tips, the start of their change to the deep reds and oranges of the season. Emery loved fall, loved the feel of excitement in the air for football and festivities. Loved all the craft shows and baked goods, so long as a certain person’s name didn’t pop up.