“Not magic,” he insisted. “I told you about the connection.”
“You put those thoughts in my head.”
“I was merely trying to calm you. To give you an inner peace.”
“Peace? You think I can have peace of mind when someone can get inside my head and screw around with it?”
“That’s not what I did.”
“Semantics, Curran, semantics. How far does this go?” she asked. She pushed herself out of her chair and stared down at him. “Where do you stop?”
“I don’t know.” Slowly, Curran rose to face her more directly. “As I told you before, I’ve not had a connection with any other human being.”
Despite being so frightened by the experience that she couldn’t control, Jane responded physically to Curran’s closeness and the warmth of his breath across her face. Her pulse triggered and her mouth went dry.
“So I don’t know where we can take this,” he continued softly, his tone seductive.
He trailed a finger along the side of her face and she sucked in her breath. He would kiss her again, and here she was, dressed only in his robe. Thinking about that, she shuddered. Her body came alive, wanting more than a comforting embrace.
He whispered, “You’re special—”
Those words a dash of cold water, she cried, “Stop!”
You’re special, Jane.
Gavin had told her the same thing. Suddenly, she had the awful sensation of history repeating itself.
“I—I mean, don’t do it again!” She backed off and crossed her arms in front of her so that he couldn’t get any closer. “Get in my mind, I mean.”
To her frustration, Curran said, “I can’t promise any such thing. The connection between us has a life of its own. What I can promise is that you can trust me, Sheena.”
A thrill shot through her at the use of the nickname. Jane wanted to trust Curran McKenna, but could she? She had put her trust in Gavin Shaw, another Irish horse trainer, and had almost died for her folly.
How could she be certain that Curran wouldn’t give her equal reason for regret?
MORE THAN AN HOUR LATER, Jane left the guest house, refusing Curran’s offer to escort her to her door. She needed time alone from him. Time to think.
Thankfully, Curran had backed down and given her some quiet time during which she had felt her equilibrium restored. Then they had talked about Finn—not about the violence done to him, but about his progress.
Jane entered the house. The downstairs was dark and quiet. Nani must have retired for the evening, which meant no questions. At least not tonight. No doubt her grandmother suspected that something weird was going on. Curran was undoubtedly right when he’d suggested that Nani deserved to know the truth.
Just not tonight. She couldn’t take any more truths tonight, Jane thought.
She took the stairs as quickly as she could, considering how badly her bruised body was beginning to hurt. Clean as she was, getting in her Jacuzzi to soak and vibrate out the aches and pains was sounding like a fine idea even at this late hour.
She was never so glad to get inside her own quarters.
When she turned on a low lamp that softly illuminated the jewel-blue walls, however, Jane realized she wasn’t alone. Curled up in a wingback chair near the canopied mahogany bed, Susan blinked against the light as if she’d been asleep.
Immediately concerned, for this was not like her sister, Jane asked, “Susan, are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right.” The teenager untangled her limbs and easily got to her feet. “I’m totally humiliated. All because of you, Jane. I don’t believe you went to Tim and spoke to him about me.”
Wondering who had contacted whom, Jane calmly said, “He was using you, Susan.”
“You don’t know that.”
“As a matter of fact, I do. He’s assistant to Holt Easterling, who works for—”
“I know who he works for. So what?” Susan’s voice went up a notch. “Everyone in this area has some connection to Thoroughbreds and people still manage to see each other, don’t they?”
“I—I guess.”
“So Tim works for people who have a horse that is the favorite to win the Classic Cup. The one you bought won’t even let a jockey on his back. So sure, I guess it makes a lot of sense that they’d get Tim to show interest in me so that he could spy on us to plan strategy.”
Put like that, it did seem a bit ridiculous, Jane admitted. Still, why else would a man Timothy Brady’s age want to date a teenager?
Thinking about her grandmother’s concern for her relationship with her sister, not to mention her own feelings, Jane decided she’d best try to smooth things over.
“Susan, I actually ran into Tim by chance this morning. I’m not certain that he told you this, but I already knew him from New York.”
“What?”
“He’s the one who helped me out in Hudson Valley after the accident. I actually like the guy, but I still think the age difference…” She stopped before she repeated herself and put her sister off further. “I didn’t set out to humiliate you, Susan, and I’m sorry if I did.”
“Sorry? According to you, I don’t do anything right. And you want me to go live with Mother!”
Jane grimaced. “I don’t. I would miss you. I lost my temper before. I am sorry,” she repeated.
“Really?”
“Truly. Grantham Acres is your home for as long as you want it to be. Or at least for as long as we still own it.”
“Oh, Jane,” Susan said, launching herself at her sister. “I’m sorry, too.”
Jane winced but kept herself from indicating that she was in pain. She hugged Susan and kissed the top of her head.
“I know the pressure you’ve been under trying to keep our home for us,” Susan said. “We won’t really lose the farm, will we, Jane? It would kill Nani.”
It would kill her inside, too, Jane thought. What was left of her. She squeezed her sister tight.
“We have to stick together, kiddo. And we’re not going to lose Grantham Acres if I can help it. We just have to pray that Curran can ready Finn for the race. If that’s possible, I know Finn will run for us with his heart.”
Which was about all you could ask from another, whether a horse or a man.
HAVING PROMISED to find Jane’s cane before Belle noticed that it was missing, Curran went after it straightaway with the first rays of dawn.
But that wasn’t all he was looking for on the back acres. Starting where the cars had been parked, Curran carefully made his way into the stand of trees, his gaze sweeping the ground around him.
All he spotted, though, was the occasional footprint in the soft earth beneath the trees. Jane’s. His. And that belonging to another man who wore a smaller shoe than his own.
Hunkering down to examine one of the prints more closely, he guessed it might have been made by a brogan. Not much he could tell from that except whoever had been out here wore a sensible work boot.
Curran rose and gazed around the area. Something that didn’t belong at the edge of the clearing caught his eye.
A moment later, he was there, looking down at a tranquilizer dart.
What in the world…?
And then it hit him. Someone had been shooting at Jane, certainly, but not with bullets. Even so, a tranquilizer dart prepared to calm a large animal could wreak havoc on, if not kill, a human being.
Whoever had been after Jane, then, was an amateur rather than some professional hit man. Undoubtedly someone who worked with Thoroughbreds for a living, if the choice of weapon were any indication. The person hadn’t even been clever enough to destroy the evidence. Or perhaps an amateur wouldn’t even think that far ahead.
Taking a piece of paper from his pocket, he lifted the dart so as not to smear any fingerprints, if, indeed, there were any to be found. Just in case…
Curran put the dart in his pocket and went on, all the while thinking of the trouble Jane was in.
How cou
ld he save her when she seemed determined to hurl herself headlong into danger?
The local police were their best bet, but he had little hope of convincing her to do the smart thing. She was willing to make herself a target, all to learn the truth.
Why? What truth?
What more was there to her story than she had shared?
If only he had touched her…
Connecting with her for a second time that night would have been a wrong move, and Curran had known it. She had been freaked out about what had happened between them in the back acres and didn’t want him inside her head.
Then, again, who would?
Even so, he thought, Jane was coming around, coming to him, but his trying to psych her out at the wrong moment would send her running the other way, the very thing that would destroy the possibilities between them. So he had to take extra care with her. He was beginning to realize that he wanted Jane right where she’d thrown herself when he’d found her on the ridge—in his arms.
Curran knew he could easily be one with his Sheena, could become part of her very soul.
A scary, scary thought.
Although he hadn’t had the connection with Maggie Butler, he’d been madly in love with the beautiful widow and now he was falling for Jane. Not that it was the same thing. He wasn’t the same unknown trainer without a punt in his pocket. And Jane was no Maggie—she was so very much more. Their working relationship was different, as well, but there it was—Jane was still his employer.
And he had a sneaking suspicion that the part of the story she hadn’t told him would sound all too familiar.
Jane Grantham and Gavin Shaw.
Together?
Was that what her fear of exposure was all about? That everyone would know that she had taken someone below her blue-blooded stature as a lover?
Jane and Shaw—secret lovers—why hadn’t it occurred to him until this very moment?
Having retraced his tracks to where he’d found Jane, he grimly looked beyond, to the ravine where she’d fallen. His gut clenched. The incline looked so much more forbidding in the light of morning. She could have broken something in a fall like that, even her neck.
He spotted the cane almost immediately. It lay tangled in some underbrush halfway down the incline.
Curran took a step and his foot slid. He caught himself and proceeded with more care.
It took him several minutes to get down to the cane, and even longer to climb back up. He was in the best of physical condition and he fought the incline for safe footholds. He could only imagine how difficult the climb must have been for Jane, and in the dark.
But she was a woman without fear, at least when it came to the physical dangers in life.
As his head resurfaced over the ridge, his gaze lit on a bright bit of wrapper on the ground. He might have ignored it, but the footprint next to it made that impossible.
This was the very spot where the man had stood the night before, assuming that Jane was dead.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled, making him snatch up the discarded piece of foil. He started when he saw that it was candy wrapper, a product of Ireland.
Either Connemara Mints were a recent import or…
How many Irishman were in the area at the moment? Curran wondered. Besides himself and Ned, only one other person came to mind.
Timothy Brady.
Chapter Ten
When Curran drove up in front of the guest house, Ned was coming out. Wondering what his assistant had been up to, Curran met him at the porch steps.
“I was just looking for you,” Ned explained. “Out and around so early?”
He raised his bushy eyebrows as if awaiting an explanation. Curran wasn’t about to share more than necessary with anyone yet. He had given Jane his word, after all.
“Ned, I need you to make some calls for me. You remember Gavin Shaw, don’t you?”
His assistant hesitated a second before echoing, “Shaw. Yes, of course.”
“I’m trying to get some information on the man, which means tracking down his associates over the past year.”
“What kind of information?”
“It’s personal,” Curran said. “You merely get names and numbers of the owners he worked for, and I’ll do the rest.”
“Yes, sir,” Ned groused.
Moving back toward his own quarters, Ned seemed disgruntled at the task. Curran could hardly blame him. He was an assistant horse trainer without a horse.
Hopefully, that was about to change.
Curran went inside and wolfed down a big breakfast, after which he proceeded to the barn. Jimi was already dressed and waiting for him.
“No Jane?” Curran asked.
“Haven’t seen her this morning.”
He’d thought he’d handled things well the night before. Perhaps not as well as he had hoped.
He kept watch for her as he rounded up Finn himself—no problem there anymore—and invited Jimi inside the paddock to walk with them.
“So what do you think?” the jockey asked, his young face eager as he paced alongside Curran, Finn following so as to be part of the “herd.” “Do I get a shot to ride him today, or what?”
“We’ll see how things progress,” Curran said, a bit distracted at wondering why Jane hadn’t yet shown. “But yes, I do believe you have a shot.”
When he brought out the lunge line and tried attaching it to Finn’s halter, however, Curran had another think coming. Finn threw up his head and, with eyes rolling wildly, backed off, the stallion’s fear no doubt directly related to his being tied up and helpless. Curran wasn’t really surprised that he had more work to do. Each item that jogged the horse’s memory could present a new threat.
“I think you had best get out of the way for now, lad,” Curran said, pointing to the fence.
Sighing, Jimi followed instructions and was soon perched on the top fence rail. He watched as Curran began pacing around the paddock. Each time Finn closed in, Curran flicked the line out. At first wary and skittish, the stallion eventually got used to seeing the line snake out at him without hurting him and merely hesitated until Curran pulled it back in.
“He’s one troubled horse,” Jimi said. “But he likes you and wants your approval.”
“Your turn next.”
“You want me to get in there and torture him like that? I don’t know that he likes me too much. He might eat me like a snack.”
“If you’re afraid of him, you’ll never be able to ride him,” Curran said. “Animals sense fear more acutely than human beings do.”
“Nah, I ain’t afraid!”
“Then you’ll have to prove it.”
Curran hung the lunge line on the fence and approached Finn directly. When the horse eyed him warily, he walked right by him and circled toward the barn. Hearing hooves hit the dirt behind him, Curran grinned. At least he hadn’t lost all the ground he had gained.
Not with the horse, anyway.
But considering Jane hadn’t yet shown her face, he wasn’t so certain about her.
JANE WAS ON HER WAY OUT of the house, her destination the barn, when Curran came face-to-face with her as she stepped off the stoop.
“Your cane,” he said, his voice friendlier than his expression.
“Thank you.” She took it from him. “I really appreciate this.”
“Too busy to be joining us this morning?”
“Actually, yes.” Nerves still taut, she fiddled with the silver horse head. “Unfortunately, Nani and I were having a heated discussion and I couldn’t exactly leave in the middle of things.”
“You told her?”
“You convinced me that she had a right to know,” Jane admitted. “Who can say what will happen next. Nani doesn’t miss a thing, and another set of eyes won’t be amiss.”
“Or several sets, some official.”
“No police.”
Although she’d had to argue that point with Nani even more strenuously than she had with Curran.
To be truthful, Jane wasn’t certain that her grandmother would hold off calling her old friend, Sheriff Biggs Mason.
“I found more than your cane this morning,” Curran said, pulling a small object from his pocket.
Taking the plastic zipped bag holding a single item from him, Jane frowned. “What in the world was a tranquilizer dart doing out there?”
“The man who was trying to kill you wasn’t using bullets,” Curran said simply.
“Then maybe he didn’t mean to kill me, after all.”
“You think not?”
If the dart could bring down a large animal…
“You’re right, of course,” Jane said, suddenly feeling queasy and handing the potential weapon back to him. “Tranquilized to death. Who would have thought?”
“Someone who works with horses. Not a professional killer. Not even a talented amateur.”
“I don’t get it. What are you trying to tell me?”
“That this man does sloppy work. And he’s reckless.”
“Then maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Or maybe he’ll get even more careless. I’m sure this is something you haven’t been thinking on too closely,” Curran said, “but what if the danger isn’t just to you?”
“Finn will be fine. We have the new security code on the barn and Jimi is determined to sleep outside his stall every night.”
“I wasn’t meaning Finn. What about your grandmother? Your sister?”
A frisson of fear washed through her. “They don’t know anything. No one has any quarrel with them.”
“But what if they get in the way?”
Something that hadn’t occurred to her. Jane wrestled with the sick feeling that suddenly filled her.
What to do?
“I would try sending them away for their own good if I thought I had a snowball’s chance in hell of making it happen. Nani would outright refuse. The farm is her home, and no one is going to put her out, at least not while the Granthams still own the place. As for Susan…” Jane knew her sister would see being sent away as a betrayal, especially after their heart-to-heart of the night before. But which was more important, her sister’s feelings or her safety? “I suppose I could insist Susan go to Mother for her own protection.”
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