by Tami Hoag
“Yes, she is, isn’t she,” Christian said, feeling ridiculously proud of the dark-eyed little girl, as if he were somehow responsible for her good behavior. As if he were her father. Gads, he thought, swallowing hard.
“Maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t go out in the heat, sugar,” Maggie said, giving him a look that mixed humor and sympathy. “You’re looking a mite peaked.”
The woman was too perceptive by half. He ignored her remark, turning instead to Katie and Nick. “Alex tells me you two are expecting, so to speak.”
“We’re on the list,” Nick said with glowing brown eyes as he hugged his wife and grinned.
Katie looked more than a little nervous at the idea. “It could be a long wait,” she said, fussing with the gathers in her pink gauze skirt.
“Well, congratulations anyway, luv,” Christian said sincerely as he handed Isabella to her. “You’ll be a wonderful mother.”
Katie smiled and glanced away, blinking back sudden tears.
“We should maybe go find Alex, huh?” Nick suggested gently, steering her away. He glanced back over his shoulder at the others apologetically but managed a happy tone as he said, “Hey, dinner at our place after the show. My mama’s special deep-dish pizza and plenty of cold stuff to wash it down.”
“Was it something I said?” Christian murmured as he watched them walk away, Nick with his arm around Katie’s shoulder and his dark head tilted down toward hers solicitously.
“She’s just a little unsure of herself,” Maggie said, her eyes full of concern.
Ry scowled as he set his son down. “And we all know whose fault that is.”
“Rylan, let it go,” Maggie said wearily, leaning against his oaklike frame. “Your mama ran out on you a long time ago. It’s best left in the past.”
“Yeah,” he said reflectively, “but look how often the past comes back to haunt us.”
Christian went into the stall to check on his horse, his mind wandering once again to Alex. If his suspicions were correct, it was her past that was driving her to take risks. How long would she allow it to haunt her? More important, could he stop her before she let it destroy her?
Charlie ran a cloth over the sorrel mare’s glossy coat, then ran a different one over Alex’s boots, removing every speck of mud from horse and rider in preparation for their appearance in the show ring. If they came out looking less than spotless, it would be through no fault of the groom.
“Make sure Heather C. keeps Rugby moving,” Alex said, straightening her jacket and wincing at the feel of sweat running between her shoulder blades. “His back will tighten up if she just sits around on him gossiping.”
“Don’t you worry, miss. I’ll crack the whip,” Charlie said.
“And I’ll want you here with him the instant I finish with Duchess.”
“Right.”
As she polished the visible edge of stirrup iron, the groom suddenly cast a suspicious glance over her shoulder and stiffened in affront.
“What the bloody hell do you want?” she barked. “A flaming lot of nerve you have, showing your face round here! Who do think you are?”
Alex’s gaze was immediately pulled from the ring to the handsome man standing beside her horse wearing dark sunglasses and a sheepish expression. Robert Braddock. If Charlie’s reception of the man had been fiery, Alex’s was glacial. She stared down at him from her much greater height as if she were the queen of the world and he a filthy, traitorous pockmarked peasant.
He cleared his throat nervously and pulled his sunglasses off, revealing the remnants of a beastly hangover. “I wonder if I could have a word with you, Alex?”
“For what?” Charlie demanded. She cuffed Braddock on the arm and scolded him in a voice a decibel too shrill for his pounding head to stand. “Go on, you ruddy blighter! You’ve got nothing to say my miss wants to hear! We’ve all had a bellyful of you, we have. You ought to be ashamed—”
“I am,” he admitted, giving her a determined look, his words stopping her arm in midswing as she hauled back to clip him another one.
They both glanced up to Alex for a sign. She nodded Charlie away. The girl took a reluctant step in the direction of the ring, shaking a warning finger at Braddock. “This had better be good, Bobby, mind you, or you’ll have me to answer to. Right?”
“Gawd, she’s something else,” Braddock muttered, rubbing at his throbbing temples. “That girl could sell sass by the gallon and still have a surplus,” he said, turning his patented good-ol’-boy grin up toward Alex.
“What did you want to say to me, Mr. Braddock?” Alex asked, freezing the charming smile right off his square face. The wounds that had been opened the night before were still too tender for her to be readily forgiving. “Please be brief, I have to ride soon.”
“I want to apologize for last night,” he said smoothly, going for endearing contrition, since charm had been knocked out of the box. He tilted his head and gave her a boyish smile. “I’m really sorry, Alex.”
“And that makes it all right?” Alex asked, cold fury building inside her from the leftover ashes of another fight with a handsome, charming man who had believed his looks and his position allowed him to get away with anything. “I don’t think so.”
Braddock’s bloodshot dark eyes flashed a little. His jaw hardened a fraction. His drawl had lost some of its honey when he spoke again. “I didn’t mean any harm.”
Alex stared at him, unblinking. “You made me the butt of a joke. You thought you could just play with my life for your own amusement.”
“I said I was sorry.” His patience was wearing thin in big patches now, his expression taking on a hardness Alex doubted he often let other people see. “You know, maybe if you’d been a little friendlier to begin with, none of this would have happened.”
His tone and his words struck another raw nerve. “I’m sorry, Mr. Braddock,” she said with frigid formality, “but I don’t feel obligated to be ‘friendly’ to men who consider it their due.”
With that Alex nudged her horse forward, buckling the strap of her helmet as she headed for the arena. As she cantered her mare in a slow circle she glanced out to see Robert Braddock glare at her, then turn on his booted heel and storm away. She’d made herself an enemy, but there was no time to dwell on it now.
By late afternoon everyone had abandoned their jackets to ride in shirtsleeves with the blessings of the judges. The heat had climbed another sweltering degree toward one hundred, and what little breeze there had been in the morning had died a stagnant death. The air hung damp and hazy over the thickly forested hillsides that rose around Green Hills.
“He’s gonna tear ’em up today. Aren’t you, big guy?” Tully boomed, slapping his hand against the wire grill of Terminator’s stall.
The gelding was tacked up and tied to either side of the stall. He sat back on his haunches, wild-eyed, and lunged forward, jerking at his bonds.
Tully laughed and banged the stall again. “Just look at him. He’s rearin’ to go!”
“Mr. Haskell, please don’t do that,” Alex snapped, impulsively grabbing hold of Tully’s wrist as he started to hit the grill again.
The big man turned and looked down at her, a curious mix of anger and speculation on his meaty face.
Alex dropped his hand abruptly and stepped back. “We don’t want him to leave his game in the locker room, do we?”
“No,” Haskell said slowly, pulling out a handkerchief to dab at the sweat on his forehead.
Uncomfortable with his sudden close scrutiny, Alex moved away from him and bent to dig her gloves and crop out of her gear bag. She sincerely wished Tully Haskell would have been too caught up rubbing elbows with the rich and famous to bother checking up on her. Both she and Terminator were nervous enough as it was. The course for the grand prix was being set up. In a few moments the riders would be allowed to walk it, judging the distances, making strategy. Alex wanted no distractions.
“I see you haven’t come to your senses yet,�
� Christian said dryly.
She closed her eyes, loath to look up and see whether he was talking to her or Tully. This is all I need, she thought, for the two of them to get into it right here in Hill’s stable. Lovely.
“Don’t you have stalls to muck out, Atherton?” Tully asked caustically.
Christian gave the man a cool, dismissing look and turned away from him, his focus on Alex. He’d watched her warm up Terminator. The rogue had done his best to run off with her. He’d fought her every step. And now he stood in his stall looking as if he were possessed by demons—rolling his eyes, grinding his teeth, kicking out with his hind legs. The horse looked insane, and the thought of Alex climbing back up on him drove Christian near that very same edge. His earlier promise of noninterference had gone by the wayside, thrown over by the suddenly dominant need to protect the woman he loved.
“Christian, we aren’t going to discuss this,” Alex said, struggling for an ounce of coolheadedness as she straightened.
“Don’t be such a stubborn little fool, Alex!” he said, his temper flaring to rival the heat wave. Grabbing her arm he turned her toward the stall. “Look at him. The poor beast is completely off his head!”
“Butt out, Atherton,” Tully said, shoving Christian back a step. “You charmed her into sleeping with you, but you can’t charm her into losing to you.”
“You bastard!” Christian spat the word, his British reserve evaporating in a haze of fury. He had taken all he intended to from this ill-mannered lout. He wasn’t about to stand for Haskell making sleazy gossip of his love for Alex. Acting completely on instinct, he hauled his arm back and bloodied Haskell’s nose with one forceful punch.
“Christian, stop it!” Alex shouted.
He dragged his eyes off Tully, who was swearing a muffled blue streak as he held his handkerchief to his nose and dyed it red with his own blood. Reason came seeping back into his brain as he looked down at Alex. She was furious with him. Her eyes blazed with golden light beneath ominously lowered black brows. Her chin had lifted to that foreboding angle he recognized all too well.
“I think you’d better go,” she said.
“Alex, please—”
She held her hands up to ward off whatever explanation he had to offer. “Go. Now.”
“Fine,” he said, pulling himself together, straightening his back, setting his shoulders, lifting his aristocratic nose a fraction. Love had reduced him to a brawlling bully. It had reduced him to begging. Who needed it? “Don’t expect sympathy when that rogue throws you through a fence.”
There were thirty horses entered in the Green Hills grand prix. Three had been scratched due to heat exhaustion. Terminator was not among them. Christian watched from stop Diamond Life as Alex tried to work the horse in a slow circle. The gelding refused to walk, dancing instead in a series of hops and leaps, his head way up, nostrils flaring. His coat was nearly black with sweat, white lather foaming along his neck and dripping from his mouth. Alex sat on him, her back rigid with the strain of holding the big horse in check, the muscles standing out in her arms. Christian’s stomach churned.
“She deserves whatever happens to her, If you ask me,” Robert grumbled, circling his gray around Christian’s horse.
Christian shot him a dire look. “Nobody asked you.”
Braddock swore under his breath. “What’s the matter with you? Getting yourself all tied up in knots over a woman. It’s not like you.”
It might not have been like the Christian Atherton who had cavalierly bet his friend he could win a certain lady’s favors, but it was very like the Christian Atherton who had evolved over the past few weeks. He had done a great deal of growing and changing in a short space of time. The pains of that growth were still stinging and aching through him, evident in the set of his square chin and the tension in his shoulders.
Braddock grinned. “Why don’t I call us up a couple of first-stringers from my little black book? We’ll head into DC tonight and take your mind off that razor-tongued little viper.”
Christian gave him a look of utter disdain and moved his horse away. “Grow up, Robert.”
He was as disgusted with himself as he was with his friend. He didn’t enjoy the turbulent emotions warring inside him. He didn’t like dealing with new feelings. He wasn’t at all certain he would be any good at respectability. Just look what he’d done defending Alex’s honor. Punching her client in the nose! She’d love him for that. Well, bloody hell, she deserved better than Tully Haskell, whether she believed it or not.
Wiping the sweat off his brow with his forearm, he tried to drag his concentration off Alex and back to the matter at hand. He had a jump course to ride.
A grand prix course is designed to challenge both horse and rider. The fences are imposing, the distances between them difficult. This course was no exception, and adding to the difficulty was the gooey top layer of footing in the ring. The heat and humidity would be a factor for horses who lacked stamina. Whoever went home with the lion’s share of the prize money was going to have earned it. There would be no easy victories.
Christian set his young stallion to the task with his characteristic determination. He may have been easygoing outside the ring, but in it he was the consummate competitor. He attacked the course with a combination of aggression and finesse and a confidence that was telegraphed to the handsome equine star beneath him. They came away with a clear round.
Others were not so fortunate. Countless rails came down, particularly at a big triple bar with a deceptive curving approach. Several horses slipped turning corners. Two riders came off. By the time twenty had gone, there were only four clean rounds.
Alex waited her turn near the end gate, a terrible feeling of foreboding boring through her like acid. There was no way in hell Terminator was going to make it through this, and yet she felt she had no alternative but to try him. Driven by something that went way beyond the issue of job security, she rode the chestnut gelding into the ring. She had to prove herself. She had to pay her dues.
Wrestling for control of the bit, she took her horse into the first fence. He put an extra stride in at the last second, jumped badly, and rapped the top rail hard, but it stayed up. The instant his feet touched the ground, the battle was on again. He lunged against the bit, pulling Alex up out of the saddle. This time he left the ground too early, ignoring the signals of his rider, but jumped big and left the second fence intact.
The fight for control raged on. Alex’s arms felt like hot lead from trying to hold Terminator to a manageable pace. Pain knifed into her shoulders and fear climbed high in her throat. Because Terminator refused to listen to her, he was out of position coming into nearly every fence, and as a consequence Alex was out of position. The horse made the jumps on sheer physical talent. She clung to him through pure athleticism.
They were coming into the toughest part of the course—a combination of three jumps with one stride between each followed by the curve into the triple bar. As they started for it, Terminator ducked his head again, jerking the reins through Alex’s numb hands, which allowed him a burst of dangerous speed. By luck they made the first of the combination in perfect stride, but they hit the second one soundly, bringing down the top rail. Alex was thrown forward on landing, giving Terminator free rein as she struggled to stay aboard. He ducked out on the third fence of the combination and rounded the turn at breakneck pace for the triple bar.
Alex had taken falls before—as a seasoned rider, she expected to take her share of spills. But this wasn’t just a tumble, it was a catastrophe. This was the kind of crash that ended careers, even lives.
Terminator galloped for the triple bar out of control, wild, running as if he were being chased by the devil himself. He cut the corner too sharply, saw the fence too late, tried to put on the brakes, and slipped in the mud, then took off in a last-ditch effort to save himself. He went up in the air, twisting as his hind legs slipped out from under him, and then went crashing down.
Alex saw it all
happen in slow motion—the jerky takeoff, the sudden terrible change of angle, the red-and-white bars of the fence rushing up at her, then nothing.
When the blackness receded, she was looking up at half a dozen anxious faces. Her fuzzy gaze focused in on one.
“Christian?”
He was on his knees beside her, mud staining his immaculate white breeches, sweat running in rivers down his ashen face. His eyes were bright with an emotion like panic. “Lie still, darling,” he said, his voice choked and hoarse. He ran a trembling hand back through her hair. “Just lie still. There’s a doctor coming.”
“I’m all right,” she said, groaning as she struggled to sit up. “All right” was a gross exaggeration. She felt as if she’d been beaten with a club, but none of the pain was the kind associated with broken bones. She looked at him anxiously. “The horse?”
“Damn the horse!” Christian barked, his face flaming a furious shade of red.
The horse! If he’d had a gun, he would have shot the hateful creature there and then. Nothing, nothing in his life had ever terrified him the way seeing her fall had—watching Alex lose control, watching the horse go down in a tangle of legs and lumber. It had nearly killed him to see it happen, to fear the worst, to bend over Alex as she lay unconscious for those few terrible seconds. And she was asking about the bloody horse!
“The horse is fine, Ms. Gianni,” one of the ring stewards said from somewhere above her.
Alex nodded, wincing at the throbbing that set off in her head. Helmet or no, she’d taken quite a jolt. Still, she was in one piece and saw no reason not to demonstrate that fact to the five hundred people watching. Hanging on to Christian’s arm for support, she pushed herself to her feet and was rewarded with a round of applause for her efforts.
An hour later she’d been thoroughly checked over by the doctor on call and pronounced whole and healthy. Half her body was liable to turn black and blue, and she had a nasty cut on her right cheekbone, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t endured before.
She was sitting on a trunk in the stall where her tack was stored, holding a bag of ice to her cheek when Christian reappeared. After helping her from the ring to the ambulance and hovering like a mother hen while the doctor checked her for a concussion, he had been called back to the arena to ride in the jump-off.