Breaking Free (Thoroughbred Legacy #10)

by Loreth Anne White

  “Get out front!” he yelled at her between CPR breaths and compressions. “Flag the ambos outside—tell them we’re in here. Move it, now!”

  Chapter Three

  Heidi stood at her bedroom window, staring into the dark night, thinking about stuff.

  Her father still wasn’t home and she could hear her gran stirring down the hall as she went to the bathroom. A strange mix of concern and irritation flushed through her.

  She hated feeling this way about her family.

  It had gotten worse after the night she’d stood at this same window, watching the strobe lights pulse over the night sky, hearing the distant bullhorn—knowing Lochlain Racing was burning.

  She’d smelled the bitter smoke on the wind, and she knew Anthem was in there, in the blaze. Her dad, too, fighting the fire with the other villagers, and her heart had been so sick with worry.

  She’d wanted to be there. To help. But she’d been ordered to stay with Granny June. Just as she’d been ordered by her father to stay home tonight.

  And now Zach had gone to the B&S ball without her.

  She swiped a stupid tear from her face. Damn, why was she so emotional?

  Granny June’s health wasn’t helping. It was draining Heidi. Her gran was forgetting things, getting more confused. Wandering off. Leaving water to boil, running the bath and not shutting off the taps. And Heidi’s freedom was increasingly restricted because of it.

  Apart from her riding, she could never do anything after school because her dad was worried something would happen if they left June alone too much now. And Heidi didn’t want to feel like this—resentful about it. But her dad was putting more and more pressure on her to help care for his mother as work commitments pulled him away, and it was starting to wear her down.

  She wanted out.

  She wanted to go to private school in Sydney to study art. Like her mum, Heidi was gifted artistically. And like her mother, she hoped one day to work in an artistic field, in a big vibrant city.

  She heard her gran going back to bed down the hall, and Heidi looked up at the splatter of stars, the thin sliver of moon, wondering how often her mother gazed up at the sky in London—the same sky.

  So far away.

  She wondered if her mum ever missed her family. Or if her dad ever wished he could see Sally again. Heidi could never tell what he was feeling. Whenever she mentioned her mother to him, he’d just get all bossy and change the subject.

  He thought not talking about Sally was somehow shielding her from the fact her mother had walked out on them, from this very house, one night ten years ago.

  After that her dad had invited his recently widowed mother to come and live with them, mostly to help care for Heidi, who was only four.

  Now she was fourteen, and she was caring for her gran.

  Another warm tear rolled down her cheek. Her dad didn’t understand.

  He never did.

  He was always too busy being a cop, catching crims, protecting others. He had no idea how much of a burden Gran was becoming, how fast her illness was progressing. Heidi suspected a part of him didn’t even want to see it.

  She wrapped her arms over her stomach, feeling so alone.

  She missed Zach.

  She missed riding her horse, and prayed Anthem was going to make it. She wanted to be with her mare, and they’d told her she couldn’t be anymore. That she should only come at the vet’s visiting hours, because everyone had their hands full at Lochlain and she was getting in their way.

  She sniffed, rubbed the back of her hand across her nose, and went down the hall. Edging open the door to her grandmother’s room, Heidi listened carefully, hearing only the sounds of soft breathing in the dark. “Gran?” she whispered.

  No answer.

  She hesitated. Her dad would kill her.

  But she didn’t care.

  She left the house, closing the front door very quietly. Going round to the garage, she got her bike out, and began cycling the twelve miles along the dark farm roads to Lochlain Racing, her bike-light a small halo in the Australian night.

  It was almost midnight when Dylan pushed open the door of Elias Memorial’s dimly lit waiting area.

  Megan had dozed off in a chair at the far end of the room, the television mounted near the ceiling silently flickering with highlights from the latest country cup race at Muswellbrook.

  Someone had given her a blanket and she’d pulled it up to her chin. The scarf that had tied back her hair was gone, and the wet strands had dried into thick soft blond waves that fell both seductively and innocently across her cheek. Louisa’s blue heelers lay sleeping at her feet. One of the dogs cocked open an eye, regarded him warily.

  He knew their names now—Scout and Blue. He’d persuaded the clinic staff to allow the animals into the waiting area while Louisa had been wheeled in for emergency angioplasty. It hadn’t been a tough sell. Jenny, one of the emerg nurses, was engaged to Mitch Ogden, an old mate of Dylan’s. Mitch, Henry, Dylan and his older brother Liam used to hang together as young boys.

  It was a time when Dylan was still a Smith, not a Hastings.

  A time when he still had a brother.

  Dylan’s step-dad had officially adopted him much later, long after Liam’s murder. Long after the family moved to Sydney, where his real father had turned into a morose drunk unable to come to terms with his son’s brutal death, and Dylan’s mum had finally remarried.

  Dylan hesitated at the waiting-room doors, oddly conflicted by the old memories that really had no relevance to this moment, other than being somehow tied back to Louisa Fairchild. Arresting her had stirred it all back up to the surface. And it wasn’t something he wanted to deal with.

  But at the same time, the soft and unexpected compassion blooming in his chest as he studied Megan sleeping in her chair was almost pleasurable.

  She didn’t look so slick right now. She looked vulnerable. Dylan was born to care, to protect. To defend. And he felt these instincts rustle in him now.

  It had been almost two hours since he’d left her here and gone back to the station to prepare the formal homicide charge.

  He’d brought a copy with him.

  Megan was going to be furious.

  He removed his hat, dragging his hand over his hair before stepping into the room. He felt tired. Responsible for Louisa’s heart attack.

  He’d judged Louisa’s stress at the station to be a display of guilt. Had he been too intent on hammering her for personal reasons—for a sense of retribution—to notice the warning signs?

  Self-reproach bit at him.

  As much as Dylan despised the old dame, he did not want to be the cause of her death. And with guilt came an even deeper sense of unease. This incident was going to provide D’Angelo with a devastating round of ammunition when he finally made it through those APEC barricades and saw firsthand what was going down with his client.

  This case really could end up costing Dylan his job.

  He’d seen it happen to better cops than himself. The firm of D’Angelo, Fischer and Associates had gone after a couple of Newcastle officers for alleged police brutality last year and won on procedural technicalities. Bloody pack of dingoes.

  Dylan couldn’t afford to lose this job. It was his life. He’d returned to Pepper Flats specifically for this posting. It had been his way of trying to hold on to his family ten years ago, after Sally’s affair. And even when Sally had split before the first year was out, it had still proved a good place to raise his child.

  And right now Dylan’s discomfort was compounded by the fact he hadn’t been able to make it home to talk to Heidi before she went to bed—because of this case. Because of Louisa.

  He needed to get home in time to catch his kid before she left for school in the morning.

  Pressure weighing heavy on him, Dylan took a seat near Megan, watching her, wondering if his involvement with Louisa Fairchild’s clan would, again, cost him life as he knew it.

  Megan stirred, and so
mething weird tightened in his chest.

  Her eyes flickered open sleepily, then flared wide as she sat up sharply, startled to find him looking at her.

  “Any word yet?” he asked. Waiting for Louisa to come out of surgery had bred an uneasy, if temporary, truce between them.

  “No,” she said, pulling the blanket higher. She looked cold. And about as exhausted as he felt.

  With all Louisa’s minions, Dylan wondered why Megan was the only one here tonight. Was the old woman really so alone?

  “You the only family Louisa has in town at the moment?” he said.

  She pushed a thick wave of hair back from her face and moistened her lips as she weighed up his reasons for asking. Beautiful lips, thought Dylan.

  “My brother Patrick was here while you were gone,” she said. “He went back to the estate to look for some of Louisa’s medical papers. The doctors think she might be on a medication that isn’t documented in her clinic files. They want to be sure.”

  “So you and Patrick must be the grandchildren of Betty Fairchild?”

  Interest flared in her green eyes. She sat straighter. “You know about Betty?”

  “I was born here. I grew up in the valley. Old-timers talk.”

  She studied him, curiosity beginning to hum about her with a kinetic energy that stirred something dark and quick in Dylan. She clearly wanted to ask more about Betty, and he wondered why. Surely she knew about her own grandmother.

  “How come we haven’t seen you out in these parts before?” he said.

  “You going to accuse me of gold-digging again?”

  “Just wondering what brings you here, and where home is for you, Megan.”

  She studied him in silence. “Sydney,” she said finally. “Our side of the family was estranged from Louisa for some time. She wanted to get to know us better, so we came to visit at her invitation.”

  He nodded. He wanted to believe in her.

  Then he thought of Sally, and glanced away. Be damned if they weren’t similar in looks. The kind of looks that really did it for him.

  A doctor passed, and they both tensed. More minutes ticked by. Dylan got up and went to the nurses’ station to ask how things were progressing, and they said he should take a seat, that the doc would be out as soon as he had word.

  He paced the waiting area like a caged lion, Megan watching him.

  Another half hour passed.

  He checked his watch, stopped pacing. “You want a coffee? Or tea or something? There’s a machine round the corner.”

  Relief visibly rippled through her, and she smiled. “Coffee would be heaven.”

  He brought it back to her, and their fingers brushed as she took the cup. Energy crackled so sharp and sudden between them that her eyes flashed up to meet his. Dylan swallowed.

  He took one seat down from her, bending to scratch Scout behind the ear with one hand, holding his coffee in the other, discomfited by what was clearly a powerful and very mutual physical attraction between them.

  “How old is your daughter?” she said, cradling her cup in both hands, blowing steam.

  Dylan slanted his eyes to her. “Fourteen,” he said.

  “You’re a single dad, aren’t you?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  She lifted her shoulder. “The way you were talking to her on the phone.”

  A wry smile tempted his lips. “You’d make a good detective, Stafford.”

  “I’d know better than to arrest my aunt for murder if I was one.”

  His smile faded. He continued to hold her eyes. “I’d be remiss not to have brought her in, Megan,” he said quietly. “I do have a job to do.”

  “Right.” She looked at her coffee. “So what kind of party did your daughter want to go to?”

  “You heard that much from the phone call?”

  “I was standing right there.”

  He sipped his coffee, realizing he’d underestimated this woman. “It was a B&S ball,” he said. “Being held out on one of the farms north of here. They’re—”

  “Bachelors and Spinsters. I know what they are. People dress up in fancy gowns and gumboots or whatever, drive for miles to some really isolated rural area, sit in some shed or paddock in mud or dirt and drink a ton of beer from kegs around a big bonfire while decked out in all their finery.”

  This time he did smile. “And then they do burnouts in their parents’ sports utes on some poor farmer’s field.”

  “Great big drunken orgies,” she said.

  His jaw tensed.

  “I’m not surprised a father wouldn’t want his teenage daughter to go. I wouldn’t either.” She assessed him quietly for a moment. “Does her mother have a say?”

  He raised his brows. Megan was fishing. And very directly so. “Her mother hasn’t been around for the last ten years,” he said carefully.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. She walked out one night, never looked back.” He swallowed the last of his coffee. “She’s a big-shot interior designer in London now. Exactly where she wants to be.”

  “And you?”

  He got up, feeling intensely uncomfortable. “I’m also exactly where I want to be,” he said, scrunching his cup and tossing it forcibly into the rubbish bin.

  She watched him, her curiosity clearly piqued, and the fact she was personally interested in him sent a hot frisson through Dylan’s gut. Discomfort, or pleasure, perhaps an odd mix of both—he couldn’t be sure.

  “You’ve been with the Pepper Flats station awhile, then?”

  “Ten years.”

  “That is a long time.”

  He knew what she had to be thinking, that someone of his age and tenure should be working higher up in the Land Area Command, or handling one of the big-city beats. Not manning a rural three-man station.

  Truth was he’d had it with metropolitan policing. His stint with the Sydney narc and homicide squads had eaten up his life like a cancer, sent his marriage down the tubes, and he’d had his fill of the grit, the death, the drugs, the graveyard shifts and overtime. Marriage problems on those beats were an occupational hazard. His had been no exception. Sally’s affair on top of the usual stress had been the real killer.

  Dylan had taken a demotion in order to move his young family back to the Hunter Valley, where he’d hoped to make a last-ditch go of his relationship with Sally. He’d wanted to give his kid a life—a yard, a dog, a swimming pool, access to the bush. Country values.

  As unconventional as it sometimes seemed these days, he’d always dreamed of an honest-to-God traditional family.

  Perhaps it was because his own family had been decimated in childhood.

  Hell alone knew why, but it was what he wanted, and he’d taken the career-killing move to do it.

  He’d stayed for all those same reasons, for Heidi, even when Sally couldn’t hack it. He inhaled deeply. He sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Megan Stafford all that.

  “I believe in community policing, Megan,” he said simply. “I believe in this town.” He checked his watch, and got up, suddenly needing space. He’d said too much. It was fine for him to ask questions—that was his job. But her asking questions felt personal. Too personal. And this woman made him want to share. That freaked him. He never shared this stuff.

  “It’s got to be tough,” she said. “Being a single parent.”

  “Why? You have kids?” he answered much too aggressively.

  She snorted softly. “No, I don’t. But I was a fourteen-year-old girl once. So I do know something about that.” She looked up at him and smiled a smile that made Dylan’s heart tumble in spite of himself.

  “And I had a father. A real alpha dad who pretty much wouldn’t let me do anything.” She regarded him with a shrewdness that wormed way too close to home. “He’d have liked to have kept his ‘baby’ girl in cotton wool for the rest of his life…” Her voice caught, a poignancy crossing her lovely features, and then she gave a half shrug. “He never got that chance. I l
ost him when I was about your daughter’s age.”

  Dylan immediately wanted to ask what had happened, but just then the ward doors swung open with a crash, and the surgeon came striding out, removing his mask.

  Megan surged to her feet, reached her hand out, and for an insane second Dylan thought she was going to grasp his own for support. But she caught herself, wrapping her arms tightly over her stomach instead. He was even more stunned to realize he’d have welcomed her touch, taken hold of her hand in that moment, and comforted.