by Tami Hoag
“What’s this? Bad manners from my British buddy?” Robert teased mercilessly, his dark eyes dancing. “My, my, what would the queen say?”
“She’d say you were an obnoxious pig. Do go away.”
“Ah, well, I’ve got better things to think about, like how I’m gonna spend my thousand bucks. Think I’ll start with a new pair of custom-made boots.”
“I’ll feed you the ones you’re wearing in a minute,” Christian said, his ego smarting just a little too much to have his pal pour salt on the wound.
“Tsk, tsk, Christian,” Braddock said, shaking his head. “Your frostbite is showing.”
“Shove off.”
Robert sighed happily and turned a page in his catalog. “I’m just thinking I might buy myself a new jacket to go with the boots. Think I’d look good in pinstripes?”
Christian raised a disdainful brow. “Considering where you normally shop, I should think you could replace your entire wardrobe twice over for a thousand dollars, but that’s irrelevant. You shan’t have the money.”
“Oh, really? I think that little tumble you took over Ms. Gianni’s shoulder rattled your brains, friend. Too bad you weren’t wearing your helmet. There’re some good ones in this catalog,” he said slyly, fanning the pages in Christian’s face. “Maybe I’ll be nice and buy you one with your own money.”
Christian gave him a long, cool look, then smiled like a crocodile. “I am going to take great delight in humiliating you with your cash, Robert. I wonder what billboards cost these days.”
“You’ll never need to know.” Braddock folded the catalog and tucked it beneath one arm. “Just to make things clear up front—you do realize this has to be an honest-to-gosh date you get with her. You have to escort her to the party, eat with her, dance with her, and kiss her in full view of everybody.”
“Really, Robert,” Christian said with distaste, “you can be absolutely adolescent.”
“Those are the terms,” Braddock said, unruffled. “Agreed?”
Christian rolled his eyes. “Agreed.”
He could, after all, be just as adolescent as the next man. There was no reason for him not to be. He had no one to answer to. There was no harm in a little wager between gentlemen. It wasn’t as if the lady in question would be hurt in any way. They would both enjoy a nice night out, Christian would be a thousand dollars richer, and Robert would be a poorer but wiser man. It seemed a good deal all around.
They turned their attention to Alex and Terminator as she worked him in circles in their own private corner of the field, staying well away from the other horses and riders.
“What do you know about her?” Christian asked.
“Not much more than I already told you. She’s renting that place down the hill from you, taking on horses to train and show. Got some girls taking lessons from her. But as far as where she came from and how she got here—that’s a mystery.”
“Hmmm…” Christian mused, his curiosity more than piqued by Alex Gianni. “I do love a good mystery.”
“Well, pal, you’d better hit the bookstore then and stock up, because that little lady isn’t interested in playing Sherlock and Dr. Watson with anybody.”
“We’ll see.”
“Look at the way she sits that old boy,” Braddock said in admiration. “Deep in the saddle, solid as a rock. She’s good.”
“Yes, quite,” Christian agreed. “Too good to be getting herself killed on the likes of that ill-bred nag. Tully Haskell has sunk to a new low, foisting Terminator off on an unsuspecting young woman. If she gets hurt…” The threat trailed off as he realized what he was saying.
A shudder snaked through his lean body. Where had this sudden virtuous streak come from? It wasn’t any of his business what went on between Alex Gianni and Tully Haskell. It certainly wasn’t his place to act as either guardian or avenging angel. Good Lord, he wasn’t now, nor did he ever want to be, responsible for Alex Gianni or anyone else!
“You all right?” Robert asked, concerned. “You’re looking a mite pale.”
“I’m fine,” Christian muttered. “Just the leftover bits of something I picked up in England.”
“Speaking of things you picked up in England,” Braddock drawled sardonically as his gaze homed in on the slim young woman striding toward them in fashionably tattered jeans and a black-leather motorcycle jacket.
Christian groaned from the bottom of his heart.
“Blimey, gov, I heard you flipped for some bird in the stables!” the woman exclaimed, her cockney accent ringing out as loudly as the bells of Saint Mary’s Church. She stopped several feet away from them, doubling over as she dissolved into a fit of laughter. “Flipped! Crikey, I’d ‘a’ killed to see that! His nibs sprawled out on the cobblestones, tossed over by a lady!”
“Charlotte, must you always use a tone of voice loud enough to drown out aircraft engines?” Christian hissed between his teeth.
The girl’s outburst had drawn amused stares from all around them. Snickers went through the little knots of people like ripples moving outward from one loud splash in a pond. There was no hope of keeping the little incident with Alex a secret, of course, but he would have preferred to have had the gossip spread by someone other than one of his own grooms.
She laughed, waving a hand at him. “Oh, go on! Ain’t nobody here what hasn’t heard the tale half a dozen times already!” she exclaimed, dropping all the Hs off her words in typical East End fashion.
Braddock rubbed a hand across his jaw to discreetly cover his grin. Christian turned a dull red and spoke through clenched teeth. “Charlotte, you are the bane of my existence.”
“Oh, go on!” She laughed and batted his arm, not contrite in the least.
Charlotte “Charlie” Simmonds was eighteen, a petite cockney firecracker with an accent as thick as London fog, and burgundy hair, which she wore combed straight up. It was shorn off on the top and looked as thick and flat as the yew hedges in Windsor Great Park. Christian suspected she got it to stay up that way through sheer stubbornness. Her face was still slightly round with baby fat and striking due to an overabundance of eye makeup and dark lipstick. A cluster of earrings dangled from her right lobe. The left one held a single garnet stud.
She was the niece of Old Ned, head stable lad at Westerleigh Manor. “A bright, precocious girl,” Ned had called her. “Needs to see a bit o’ the world, is all,” he’d said. “Her dad run off and her mum drinks a bit, and there’s no proper jobs about for a girl her age.”
There had been a kind of desperation in his eyes at the time, and Christian could only wonder now why he hadn’t taken heed of the signs. Ned had fairly begged him to take the girl back to Virginia with him. He had yet to figure out why he had said yes.
“You might be slipping, luv,” Charlie said, digging him in the ribs with her bony elbow. “The ladies are supposed to fall at your feet, not the other way round!”
Christian bit back half a dozen different remarks, all along the lines of “mind your betters.” He cursed a royal blue streak under his breath. Each and every one of those remarks were things his brothers might have said to the servants. One couldn’t say those sorts of things in America. According to ideology no one had any “betters” here. It was one of the reasons he had moved to the States—to get away from the blue blooded, stuffy class system he’d grown up in. And here he was, ready to revert to type at a little needling from an impudent teenager. Maybe he was slipping.
“What’s the matter, ducky?” Charlie asked, squinting so that her eyes became tiny bright spots of brown in her pixie face. “Can’t take a little ribbing? Stuffy, stuffy,” she scolded in a singsong voice, shaking a finger at him.
“Oh, don’t be so tedious,” Christian grumbled, scowling at her. “I ought to give you the sack for lack of proper respect.”
He grimaced the instant the words were out of his mouth. Uncle Dicky would have been rolling in his grave if they hadn’t cremated him and scattered him over Cheltenham racecourse.
“Right. Right. Go on. Go ahead and fire me,” Charlie said lightly, shrugging without concern. She turned her young womanly wiles in Robert’s direction and batted her spiky lashes at him. “I hear they’re looking for help at Green Hills, and the trainer’s a real dishy guy. Ain’t that right, Bobby?”
Braddock wheeled toward his friend with stark panic in his eyes, but Christian took no pity on him. He was too wrapped up in his own worries.
“I’m going to watch the next competition,” he mumbled, and wandered off in the direction of the show ring.
It was all that time he’d spent with his family, he thought morosely. They’d rubbed off on him. Three weeks with the Athertons was enough to give anybody a stiff neck. He rubbed the back of his now as he leaned against a light pole and stared, unseeing, at the horse and rider negotiating the jumper course in the arena.
The effect would wear off, he was certain. He would loosen up again. All he needed was a bit of fun with any one of a number of ladies whose names would have rated gold stars in his address book had he been gauche enough to use such a system. He preferred to appreciate every woman for her own unique qualities and leave rating systems to men with no class.
There was Hillary Collins, he reflected. She was always pleasant company. And then there was Regina Worth, who had two really outstanding qualities, he thought with a lazy grin. And Louisa Thomas …
But each name that came to mind faded quickly away. The truth of the matter was, he didn’t feel like seeing any of them. The only woman he was interested in seeing was the one who had turned him down. The one with the flashing amber eyes and sexy, sexy mouth. The one with the mysterious past. The one who had sent him sprawling with the ruthless efficiency of a Ninja warrior. The only woman he was interested in was at that very moment riding into the arena on a horse he wouldn’t have wished on his worst enemy.
So maybe it wasn’t going to be quite so simple to win this bet, Christian thought as he watched the unflappable Ms. Gianni cast an imperious glance at the course she was about to negotiate, but then he had all the time in the world. It had never taken Christian Atherton a month to get a date with a woman in his life. Alexandra Gianni was not going to be the exception to that rule.
three
TERMINATOR REARED AS THE ARENA GATE swung closed behind him. Alex calmly forced him forward, driving him with her legs. She had learned very quickly that it did no good to punish him for his bad manners. He tended to take reprimands as a challenge and exacted his revenge with even more outlandish behavior. She had decided the only hope she had for redeeming him was to ignore his little fits and do her best to help him keep his mind on his business.
The horse could jump like a champion. His talent over fences was the only thing that had saved his miserable hide from being made into so many baseballs. If she could get him to concentrate on his job and forget the shenanigans, she might prolong his career and put off his trip to the butcher’s for another few years.
With that in mind she urged him into a canter and glanced over the course as she circled him near the gate. Because this was just a schooling show, and most of the horses participating were either young, unseasoned, or simply not good enough to make it on the A circuit, the fences were not terribly high—nothing over four feet. And though the course itself was more complicated than those of the hunter classes that had preceded it, it was still well beneath Terminator’s capabilities. He had already been shown at higher levels of competition, but Alex had chosen to restart him and bring him up gradually to the tougher levels as they got to know each other, and as she gained more control over his unbalanced mind.
When she noticed Christian standing outside the ring, his gaze riveted on her, she caught herself straightening in the saddle, bringing her chin up, making half a dozen little adjustments that might impress him. Dammit, she scolded herself as she pointed her horse toward his first fence, there was no room for Christian Atherton in her life, and there was certainly no room for him in her head now. She was going to need every scrap of concentration she possessed to get through this round unscathed.
It took Terminator exactly two fences to decide that the course bored him. He lugged on the bit, doing his best to pull Alex’s arms out of their sockets while charging toward each low fence and launching himself flatly over them like a steeplechaser. The battle for control waged throughout their round, and Alex was glad jumpers weren’t scored on style and manners, as hunters were. All that mattered was that they get themselves over the fences without knocking anything down, and despite everything, Terminator managed to accomplish his task. They would be coming back for the jump-off and competing this time not only against the other horses that had jumped clean first rounds, but against the clock as well. The horse with the best time and least faults would win.
Christian watched her exit the ring. He was impressed with her riding if not her horse. Beyond being proper in her leg position and seat, she had savvy and style. There was something in that style, in the way she held her head, in the way she brought her horse to the fence and moved him away from it, that prodded at his memory. He wanted to think he’d seen her ride before, and yet he hadn’t. Odd. Her name didn’t ring a bell, and there had been nothing in their conversation—a conversation held in delightfully close quarters—that had sparked further recognition.
Finally he dismissed the whole idea from his head. He had never met Alex Gianni. A grin spread slowly across his face. He had never met her before, but he was definitely going to get to know her.
“Looks damn fine on a horse, don’t she?”
The graveled voice had much the same effect on Christian as fingernails on a chalkboard. He turned and treated Tully Haskell to the trick he’d learned as a schoolboy at Winchester—looking down his nose at someone who was taller than he.
Haskell was a big man in his forties with an upper body made solid from years of physical work, and a paunch that was the result of a more recent sedentary lifestyle and too much fried food. He had taken up a stance beside Christian, planting himself like an oak tree, and was lighting up a long cigar with a gaudy ruby-studded gold lighter.
Christian eyed the blue ribbon pinned to the pocket of his western-cut shirt with sardonic disdain. “Giving out prizes for obnoxious qualities, are they?” he questioned dryly. “You’re destined to be a champion, Tully.”
“You’re a regular laugh riot, Atherton,” Haskell said with a sneer, his fleshy face coloring red from the neck up, as if his shirt collar had suddenly gone too tight on him. He shook his cigar at Christian. “We’ll see how hard you laugh when Alex and Terminator start mopping up at the big shows.”
“You can’t be serious, meaning to send that unhinged animal up against a grand prix course?” Christian shuddered at the thought. The grand prix was the most demanding and most prestigious of all the jumper classes, usually held amidst considerable pomp and pageantry and for big purses. The fences and courses were formidable. It took both a sound mind and a sound body for a horse to take the stress. “What are you trying do, get Alexandra killed?”
“Hardly.” A reptilian smile curved Haskell’s mouth. “This is just the beginning of a long and mutually advantageous relationship between Alex and me.”
Christian gave him a sharp look, his brows drawing together above intense blue eyes.
“Yes, Lordy, she do sit a horse nice,” the man drawled, his gaze roaming over Alex as she jogged his horse some distance away. He took a long drag on his cigar and exhaled on a sigh that rang unmistakably in Christian’s ears as the first stirrings of desire.
Tully turned back toward him with a maliciously smug gleam in his eyes. “I hear she gave you what-for in the stable. About time you got put in your place.”
“Oh, I know my place, Tully,” Christian said coolly. “On top.”
He stared at the arena where the grounds crew was raising several fences and taking others down in preparation for the jump-off. “Alexandra and I had a bit of a misunderstanding. Rest
assured, we’ll work it out.”
Haskell turned and jabbed Christian hard on the shoulder with a blunt-tipped forefinger. “You stay the hell away from my trainer, you pompous British prig. She’s got better things to do than have you pantin’ after her. I know your game, Atherton. Charm them into your bed, and they won’t try so hard to beat you in the ring. Well, you can just forget it this time.”
Christian coldly eyed the finger pressed to his jacket. Using every bit of his inborn self-control, he reined in his temper, rerouting its energy to the force of his personality so that icy contempt rolled off him in a frigid blast. Haskell, sensing he had crossed a line, took an involuntary step backward, and Christian calmly brushed off the shoulder of his coat.
“Regarding Ms. Gianni,” he said formally, his blue eyes blazing as he stared into Tully’s florid, fleshy face. “You’re not her owner and you’re not her father, which, in case you haven’t noticed, you are more than old enough to be. You pay her to ride your horses. What she does on her own time is none of your damned business.”
Glaring at him, and growing redder by the second, Haskell chewed back a retort. The ring announcer called for the first horse of the jump-off. Tully turned abruptly on his booted heel and stalked off in a cloud of smoke.
“Ill-mannered, ill-bred swine,” Christian muttered, scowling after him.
“The horse or the owner?” Robert queried, taking up Haskell’s place.
“Both. They deserve each other. Would you believe he actually had the nerve to warn me off?” Christian fumed. “The unmitigated gall!”
Braddock arched a dark brow. “Tully’s got his eye on the Italian Iceberg too? Well, I’ll be damned. That old tub o’ lard!” He laughed in disbelief and tucked his hands into the pockets of the green windbreaker he’d thrown on over his riding coat. Grinning, he nudged his friend with an elbow. “Bet she can’t throw him over her shoulder.”