Perfect.
“I like your house,” she said after she took the offered mug from him and drank slowly. “Mmm, and thank you for the clothes and tea.”
Sean glanced down at her beautiful face with its smattering of freckles and asked the question that had been on his mind. “Why do you only have one change of clothes, Shannon?” Was she running from something?
Her brown eyes shuttered and she shifted her gaze away, avoiding his when she answered, “Because I travel light.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is that so? No transportation, no personal effects?”
He kept an eagle eye on her as she took another sip, looking oh so casual. “Nope. No need.”
Something about this didn’t seem right, but he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was, so he changed the subject, knowing that if she were hiding something it would come out sooner or later. Didn’t mean he couldn’t prompt it to be sooner though. “Tell me about yourself.” Sean took a good long sip of his tea and leaned back against the old farmhouse’s outdated oak cupboards in the large eat-in kitchen.
She seemed to think about it for a minute before saying, “Before I showed up here, I was a professional equestrian.”
That surprised him. “No shite?” He’d never have guessed it by the way she’d gotten so upset about the manure. Then again he had to admit that if it had been him covered in fresh horse crap, he’d have gotten upset too.
She nodded, her big brown eyes earnest. “It’s true.”
He took a moment to study her in the afternoon glow flooding in from the kitchen’s big south-facing window over the sink and decided to believe her. What reason would she have to lie?
“Okay, I believe you. Why did you quit?”
“My overall performance was less than stellar.” She looked uncomfortable and sad for a moment.
Because she suddenly looked lonely, he said, “Have you asked yourself why that was?”
Seeming to look at a point over his shoulder, he saw her brown eyes darken with some emotion. “Because it’s never what I really wanted to do with my life to begin with, but I did it to please my parents.”
“I joined the school rugby team when I was fifteen to make me mum happy.” He could still recall the surprise on her face when he told her. “Made me a miserable feck and I quit the next week. Doing things to try and make parents happy always ends badly.”
“Amen,” she agreed over the rim of her mug. When their gazes locked, she held his and said, “What about you? What were you doing before you came over here to America?”
Looking into her beautiful eyes filled with such innocent curiosity, Sean found himself sharing the truth. “I was a bare-knuckle boxer back in Dublin.”
Her delicately arched eyebrows shot up. “Get out, no way!”
“God’s truth. I’ve been boxing since I was barely more than a kid.” He couldn’t help smiling over her incredulous tone.
She blinked at him, her eyes big and round. “That’s bad ass. Why’d you quit then?”
Finding it easy to share with Shannon, he crossed his long, muscular legs and thought about how best to answer. “Because I got in over my head with my manager on a business deal I wasn’t equipped to handle. And then I was involved in a very unfortunate betting circuit that went arseways.”
“That sucks.”
The matter-of-fact way she said it made him laugh. “Aye, it did. But it was a long time ago. I got my horse out of the deal and a fresh start. I’m happy now.”
“How long have you been in horseracing?”
Sean scratched his stubbly chin and thought about it for a minute. “About three years, give or take. Before that I worked on a horse ranch in the next valley over and learned my way around the business.”
The way she tipped her head to the side and chewed her bottom lip as she gazed at him with such interest was slowly driving him insane. It was the most innocent seduction, made all the more arousing by her complete and utter lack of awareness around it.
Thankfully, just when he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, she quit working that plump bottom lip and asked, “So how did you end up with this place?”
Grinning wide because it was still damn funny to him, Sean said with his accent exaggerated, “I found me pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” She laughed appreciatively even as she eyed him quizzically. He continued to explain, feeling oddly proud that he’d made her smile like that, “About nine months after I moved to Fortune, my mates Jake and Aidan and I got wrecked off some of Jake’s homemade ale and went panning for gold in the creek behind his cabin. And we literally struck gold.”
“Are you kidding?” she exclaimed.
He shook his head. “Totally serious. The three of us made out like thieves with those gold nuggets when we cashed in. So I bought this horse ranch, Jake opened a brewpub in town called Two Moons, and Aidan expanded his business.”
“That’s unbelievable,” she said, looking a little dazed as she shook her head at him. It was a far out story, he knew.
“The locals have called the three of us the Bachelors of Fortune ever since.” He rubbed the back of his neck and added, “It’s meant to be a term of endearment.”
She laughed at that. “Oh, I just bet it is.”
Moving next to him, Shannon began rinsing her empty mug in the sink. As she scrubbed, she kept stealing shy glances at him out of the corner of her eyes, starting at his feet and working her way up. He had to bite back a laugh when she came to his waist and bobbled the mug, almost dropping it in the sink. When her gaze finally met his, she blushed deeply and broke eye contact, but her lips curved in a small, sweet smile. He could smell the scent of his soap on her, she was so close, and it made his gut tighten with rekindled desire—and some other emotion he refused to name because he liked her smelling like him. It made him feel possessive and territorial and protective.
Riding on the feeling, Sean reached out a hand and brushed a strand of damp hair behind her ear, his fingertips caressing the delicate skin of her neck with the movement. “You have the most beautiful hair,” he said softly, almost reverently. His senses were captivated by her warmth and beauty.
Lost to her and the moment, Sean lowered his head until his lips grazed the freckles on her cheekbone. The way she trembled under his touch and inhaled softly, her lips parting gently, lit a fire of need inside him. Unable to stop, he captured her lips with his and groaned at the heat of contact.
Like a match to a tinderbox, he went up in flames. On a growl he wrapped her up in his arms and pulled her close, glorying in the feel of her lush body pressed hard against him. Running his hands over her back until they fisted in her still damp hair, Sean took the kiss deep, and nearly came undone when Shannon opened eagerly for him on a sexy moan, and their tongues brushed in a passionate mating that made him burn brighter than he ever had before. With his cock straining hard and aching against the fly of his jeans, he pushed into her and reveled in the way her body cradled him in response. The heat coming from between her thighs nearly buckled his knees.
He didn’t want it to end. He wanted more.
Taking it, Sean released her hair and found the edge of her sweatshirt with his fingertips. Lifting the fabric, he skimmed his palms up her ribcage and smiled against her lips when his fingers brushed the bottom curve of her breasts and she let out a breathy sound, arching into his hands.
Needing even more, he found her puckered nipples and pinched gently, fueled on by her husky gasp of pleasure. “You like that, don’t you?” he whispered against her lips, desire making his movements more urgent now. He pinched them again and rolled them between his fingers until she dropped her head back and her eyes drifted closed, a small feline smile of pleasure on her lips.
Instead of answering, she moved a hand down his body, caressing gently until she reached his throbbing hard-on and squeezed him through his jeans. Exquisite, torturous pleasure tore through him, and lust so strong it nearly overwhelmed him reared up and knocked him for a
loop. His body jerked and went rigid from the shock of the intensity of emotion.
Shannon must have felt it or sensed it or something because she yanked away and blushed profusely. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I should be going.”
Still reeling from what he’d just experienced, Sean was slow to respond and didn’t find his voice until she’d collected her clothes from the dryer and was already gone. Blowing out a slow breath, he raked a hand through his hair and tried to make sense of what had just happened, but his brain was simply too flooded by hormones to function properly, and he gave up. Some things a guy just had to suck up and accept, as much as it pained him.
Sean let the truth settle as he watched her rush barefoot down the drive carrying her small bundle of clothes, and he inwardly flinched at the implications. The proof was in the pudding.
Shannon was his kryptonite.
Chapter Eight
“HOW IS A woman supposed to get any snooping done around here when there’s no one around to ask questions of?” Shannon grumbled early the next afternoon.
That morning Sean; his team of men; and his champion Thoroughbred, Something Unexpected, aka Zeke—along with several other stakes racers—had left for Long Island, New York, where they would run in the final installments of the Triple Crown trifecta in the Belmont Stakes this upcoming Saturday. A few stable hands had been left behind to care for the remaining horses, but they were deceptively wily. She’d yet to corner one for a conversation. In fact, she hadn’t seen one all day, but from the fresh stall bedding for the mares and foals, she knew they were around.
At first she’d thought everyone being gone would be the perfect opportunity to go rifling through things for information or evidence, but she’d been wrong. Three hours of painstakingly reviewing the accounting books and online files had turned up absolutely nothing and only proven to be a lesson in tedium. The large gray metal medicine cabinet where vaccines and needles and such were stored was locked. Solid. She’d tried jimmying it but couldn’t get it to budge. One of the stable hands had to have the key, but she wasn’t in the mood to wait all day for one to finally show up. Still, she made a mental note to check the locker for steroids the first chance she got.
Next she’d thought about Sean’s faded yellow farmhouse. It was sitting there, ripe for the picking—or snooping, rather. So she’d left the stables and jogged up the gravel lane until the traditional two-story home came into view. Appreciating the ambiance it exuded, tucked as it was behind a thick stand of aspens and shaded by two enormous oak trees, Shannon crossed the large flat lawn and climbed the front porch.
That’s when she discovered the front door was locked. And the back one. And all the windows she could safely reach.
Though she was disappointed, Shannon accepted that the day was a bust on Sean’s place, but that maybe there was something else she could try so she wouldn’t sit around biting her nails and getting all worked up and worried. Earlier while canvassing the property, she’d noticed an older generation Ford work truck with the keys left in the ignition. Because she knew that was a quirk of farm vehicles—the keys rarely left them—she wasn’t worried that she was accidently absconding with somebody’s personal truck. Especially since a faded, mostly peeled Pine Creek Ranch logo was still visible on the driver side door.
Besides, Sean wouldn’t want her stuck out in the boonies all by herself, would he? He didn’t know it, but he’d want her to drive into town and try to hit up the locals, see if they had anything juicy to share about him. Oh no, wait. That’s what she wanted.
She should have asked him in person, but the flood of embarrassment that had filled her unexpectedly the moment she’d spotted him drinking from his stoneware mug on the front porch that morning, looking tough and rugged and sinfully sexy in a snug black T-shirt, worn jeans, and his wool cap, had had her tucking tail and deciding that she’d figure out the answer on her own. Better that than have to talk to the man she’d groped shamelessly the day before.
What the hell had she been thinking?
That was the question that played in her mind the whole windy, seven-mile drive into town. What had possibly possessed her to make out with Sean in the first place? Didn’t she care about her family? And did she not care that he might be a seriously unethical man?
The only answer that she could come up with sounded so Jerry Maguire—You complete me—and kind of cheesy that she didn’t want to admit the truth even to herself. Not even alone in a soundproof dark room. It was so bad. So she shoved it aside with pretty much everything else she was in denial about at the moment—which was about 99 percent of everything in her life.
It hadn’t been an especially good few months.
Shannon found a parking spot on Main Street and paralleled it, pulling the F150 to a stop under the shady canopy of a honey locust tree and setting the e-brake. It was a quirk of hers that she always pulled the e-brake no matter if the place she’d parked warranted the extra help or not. When she climbed out, she was instantly taken with the lively, happy energy of the town. People in casual outdoor clothing with labels from companies such as The North Face, Marmot, REI, and the like strolled leisurely down the sidewalk next to thrift shop hippies and true-blue cowboys, their suntans and windswept hair giving testament to their united love affair with Colorado’s great outdoors—and many of them walking dogs, which she was beginning to suspect should be the state’s official animal because they were everywhere.
She loved dogs and wanted one someday, but she swore that the relationship between dog and man in Colorado was on a whole other level—almost symbiotic mutualism like those birds that caravanned around on the backs of rhinos in Africa, depending upon each other for survival and protection.
Even now, a woman in yoga pants passed with her dog and a double wide jogging stroller containing two hefty-sized toddlers. Shannon scrunched her nose in confusion and more than a little admiration. How did she do that? Wouldn’t one of those accessories be hard enough to handle on their own?
Shaking her head, Shannon pocketed her keys, thankful that her clothes were clean and stench-free once again. Meeting the town’s residents for the first time while smelling like something a dog had just eaten and then regurgitated wasn’t exactly how she’d planned for it to go. She was nervous enough to begin with. Meeting new people always made her uncomfortable.
The Old West-style wood-front buildings were painted in daring, bold colors—like lime green, fuchsia, and violet kind of bold. Shannon had just stopped to admire the window display in one when her phone rang. Pulling it from the small quilted purse she’d stored in her duffle while traveling, she thumbed open the touch screen and read the caller ID, instantly frowning.
There went her mood.
Sucking in a deep breath, Shannon pasted a big, bright smile on her face. “Hi, Dad!” she said in a completely forced, cheerful voice. Really what she wanted to do was hurtle the smartphone as far into space as she could and hope that it never came back. The town tugged at her and she wished for a second that she was just a normal, average tourist visiting and not there to lie and sneak.
“What’s the status?” Callum Charlemagne said, cutting to the chase, no affection remotely perceivable in his voice.
Because her chest suddenly felt two sizes too tight and her pulse was scrambling, Shannon swallowed hard and replied carefully, “I haven’t been able to find anything yet.”
She swore she just heard her father growl. Like an animal. She’d never heard him make such an undignified sound in her life. “Shannon, let me make something clear. This Irishman, this Sean Muldoon, came out of nowhere three years ago—no background, no history of connection to the sport. Practically overnight his horses have swept all the major stakes, stealing the Triple Crown right out from under our very own Rocket Man—the fastest racer we’ve had for decades! And now everybody wants their mares bred to his stakes winners. They’ve abandoned tradition and history in favor of this gigolo’s breeding program. This famil
y has been invested in racing for generations and now we’re on the verge of collapse. We are out of money, nearly impoverished. It’s all because of him. Find. Me. Something.” He paused and then added much more quietly, “Before it’s too late. You’re the only one who can do this. We’re counting on you.”
“Maybe you should have hired a professional,” Shannon said, her voice unsteady.
“With what money, Shannon?” he demanded to know. “That bastard has taken almost everything. It’s all on you.”
Tears stung Shannon’s eyes and she blinked hard, struggling for composure. Way to bring the guilt and the hammer of gloom and doom. “I’m doing my best, Dad.”
“Try harder,” he rebuffed harshly. “I don’t think you sufficiently grasp what’s at stake.”
Feeling the slap like it was physical, her anxiety spiked and she began to shake. Insecurity slammed into her hard and she clamped down viciously, refusing to let it gain control of her thoughts. But it didn’t stop her breath from coming in fast bursts and her heart from pounding.
She closed her eyes and tried to focus around the feelings. She would ignore his comment and not legitimize it by responding. “I had a conversation with him last night and he shared quite a bit about himself. I’m not sure this guy is corrupt like you think he is, Dad.” She thought back to the rags-to-riches tale he’d shared last night. “He might just be incredibly lucky.”
“Don’t be silly,” he scolded, sounding irritated. “There’s no such thing.”
Though she wanted to argue, Shannon recognized the futility of it as well as the time that would be wasted and decided to let it go. Yet she couldn’t resist pushing just a little more before she did. Watching a woman who looked remarkably like a salt-and-pepper pixied Jamie Lee Curtis open the fire-engine-red door to the Fortune Food Co-op, she made a mental note to check that place out first and said, “The guy grew up on the streets in Dublin, Dad. He had it pretty bad I assume, because he mentioned being a boxer as a kid to help his mom pay the rent.”
Getting Lucky Page 7