by Nora Roberts
In his own breast, Moses’s heart was heavy. He’d put too much on the line at the Derby. He knew better. Both sides of his heritage warned against testing the gods. Yet he had tested them, putting all of his hopes, all of his heart, into one two-minute race.
And the cost had been staggering.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Kelsey murmured from behind him. “It’s hard to believe that in another year they’ll be ready for the saddle.”
Moses tucked his hands into his front pockets and kept his eyes on the foals. “So, you decided to show up.”
“I’m sorry. I’m a little late.”
“A little late today. Half a day yesterday, and the day before that.”
“There were some things I had to take care of.”
“Things.” He turned to her, knowing he was about to take out some of his frustration on her. Certain she deserved it. “Only one thing comes first for anybody who works here, and that’s the horses.”
He strode off toward the barn with Kelsey trotting guiltily after him. “I’m sorry, Moses, really. It was unavoidable—”
Her heels dug in when he stopped abruptly in front of her and swung about. “Listen, little girl, this isn’t one of your playgrounds. You don’t get to call time here and tie your shoe. What you do is you pull your weight, all day, every day. Because if you don’t, someone else has to pick up the slack. That’s not the way I run things. Just what were you doing yesterday when you should have been with your horse, when you should have been taking your orders from the yearling manager?”
“I was . . .” Kelsey all but sawed at her tongue. “It was personal business.”
“From now on you get your hair fluffed and your nails painted on your own time. I’m not wasting mine. You’ve got stalls to muck.”
“But I—I need to work with Honor.”
“She’s already on the longe. You can cool her off when she’s done. Now get a shovel.”
He strode away, disappearing inside his office. Grooms and stable hands who’d stopped to listen immediately got back to work. Everyone enjoyed a public flogging, but no one liked to get caught watching one.
“Well, you’ve been accepted.” Naomi stepped up to Kelsey and ran a comforting hand up and down her spine. “He wouldn’t have spoken to you that way unless he considered you part of the team.”
“He might have slapped me down privately,” Kelsey muttered. “And goddammit, I wasn’t getting my hair done. Look at these.” Incensed, she fanned out her fingers, the nails short, clipped, unpolished. “Does it look like I’ve had a manicure recently? I’m not here to play. Just because I needed a few hours off—” She stopped, swore again. “It was important to me.”
“Sometimes we can forget there’s anything else going on in the world that doesn’t happen right here. You’re under no obligation to throw yourself into this. The fact is, most owners aren’t nearly so involved with the day-to-day work. If you’d rather—”
“You don’t think I can handle it.” Color bloomed and rode high on Kelsey’s cheeks. “You don’t think I can see it through.”
“I’m not saying that, Kelsey.”
“Aren’t you? Why should this be any different? I’ve always moved from job to job, interest to interest. Why should anyone believe that I can stick, that this means any more than writing ad copy, or explaining Impressionist art to tour groups? If I can give up on everything else, why shouldn’t I give up on this?” She tossed back her hair. “Because it is different. Because everything’s different.”
Turning on her heel, she stalked to the barn.
Naomi only sighed. It was, she realized, a surefire way to forget your own troubles when two people you loved dumped their own at your feet. Gauging temperaments, she decided that Kelsey could use some time wielding a pitchfork to cool off. So she started with Moses.
He was at his desk, barking on the phone to Reno’s agent. “No, I’m not putting him up at Belmont. He’s not ready, and Corelli rode High Water to place in the Preakness. He knows the colt and he deserves the ride. Yeah, that’s final.”
He slammed the phone down, cutting off the voice yammering through the receiver.
“I’m not putting up a spooked jockey with a bum shoulder.”
“I agree with you.” Ready to placate, she sat on the corner of his desk. “And so does Reno. He knows he’s not ready.” In a gesture she hoped would serve as truce, she covered his hand with hers. “Weren’t you a little rough on Kelsey out there?”
His face closed, and Moses drew his hand away. “Are you here as the owner, or as her mother?”
“I’m here, Moses,” she said, and left it at that. “I know she’s taken some time off recently. Just as I know that something’s troubling her. Just,” she continued quietly, “as I know something’s troubling you.”
“Let’s stick with one issue, Naomi.” He pushed back from the desk. “She’s been slacking off. So maybe the bloom’s faded.”
Puzzled, she studied his face. Not just annoyed, she realized, but worried. “And maybe she just had some loose ends to tie up. We can’t forget the fact that she’s had to make a lot of adjustments in a very short time. I thought you were happy, even impressed with her work up until now.”
“Up until now,” he agreed. “I’ve been anything but happy and impressed the last few days. She needed a shot, and I gave her one. Maybe you’ve forgotten that’s one of the things I do around here. If you want her treated differently—”
“I didn’t say that.” Annoyance snapped into her voice. “But I know you, Moses. You don’t slap someone down like that in public for a couple of infractions So, who’s decided to treat her differently?”
He turned so that they faced each other with the desk between them. “As far as I see it, that’s a girl who’s gotten pretty much everything she wants her whole life. She’s spoiled, she’s reckless, and she’s used to coming and going as she pleases.”
“Just like I was.”
He acknowledged that with a nod. “Some. But you finished what you started, Naomi.”
“Maybe this is the first time she’s found something worth finishing.”
“And maybe she’s getting bored and is going to pack her bags. Do you think I don’t know what it’s going to do to you if she turns away now?”
The chill had Naomi hugging her arms. “You’re the one who told me she wasn’t going to do that.”
“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was just so damn happy to see you smile all the way again. Everything seemed to be moving in the right direction. And then . . .” Disgusted, he dropped back down into the chair, scrubbed his hands over his face. “Goddammit. She got in my way at the wrong time.”
“What is it, Moses?” She reached for him again. This time he gripped her hand.
“The gods laugh, Naomi. Especially when you forget that they can step in at any time and snatch away what you want most. I’ve had my heart broke before.” He looked up at her again, smiled a little. “You did it first. But it’s been a while. I’d forgotten how much it hurts.”
“Pride,” she murmured. “You let me do all the grieving over him.”
Miserable, he looked down at the joined hands. “I missed something, Naomi. I had myself so revved up about winning that I had to be careless, even for a minute. It cost too much.”
“You can grieve, Moses, but you can’t take the blame.”
“That was my horse, Naomi.” His eyes cut back to hers. “Your name might be on the papers, but he was mine. And I lost him. I wasn’t looking in the right place at the right time. I didn’t sense what I should have sensed. Even now, I go back over that day. I go back and back and back, and I can’t see it. It had to be under my nose.” He rapped a fist against the desk. “Under my fucking nose.”
There was, she knew, only one way to handle him in a mood like this. “Okay, Whitetree, it was all your fault. You were in charge. I pay you to train my horses, to know them, to understand them, and to guide them from birth to death
. I also pay you to oversee the men, to hire and fire, and to decide which team works for which horse for which race. It looks as though I’ve also been paying you to foretell the future.” She cocked her head. “Since that’s the case, I don’t know whether to fire you or give you a raise.”
“I’m serious about this.”
“So am I.” She rose and skirted the desk to knead his knotted shoulders. “I want to know what happened, Moses. I want to know who did it, and I want them to pay. What I don’t want, and can’t afford, is to have you, someone I love and depend on, losing heart. We’ve got less than eleven months to the first Saturday in May.”
“Yeah.” He blew out a stream of breath. “I guess I should go apologize to that girl of yours.”
“Leave it. She can take a lump.”
He smiled again. “She wanted to give me a few. Christ, she’s got your eyes. I don’t have a lot of regrets about things I haven’t done, Naomi. In fact, I can count the big ones on one hand. I’ve never made a pilgrimage to Israel, never walked in the footsteps of my ancestors on either side. And I never made a child with you.”
Her hands stopped, and he reached back and gripped them hard. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” She lowered her head so that her cheek rested on his hair. “Don’t be. Why are there so seldom second chances on the big ones, Moses?”
Rich was thinking the same thing. Second chances were as rare as hens’ teeth. It was a lucky man who could snare one. Rich Slater was a lucky man.
He put two grand on the trifecta at Laurel and moseyed back to the bar. Mostly, trifectas were a sucker’s game, but he was on a roll.
Sticking with the ponies, he thought. The hell with cards, fuck point spreads. The horses were his babies now.
He ordered another bourbon, his new, sentimental drink of choice, then drew out a five-dollar cigar.
The lighter that flared under it caused his brows to rise. Rich puffed the cigar into life, then swiveled to smile affably at his son. “Well now, just like old times. Bring my boy here one of the same,” he ordered the bartender.
Gabe merely held up a finger. “Coffee, black.”
“Shit.” Rich drew the word out to three syllables. “Don’t be such a pussy, boy. I’m buying.”
“Coffee,” Gabe repeated, then studied his father. He knew the signs: flushed cheeks, bright eyes, big toothy smile. Rich Slater was not only half drunk, but he had money in his pocket.
“I thought you had trouble coming out from Chicago.”
“Got that all straightened out. Don’t you worry about me, Gabe. Everybody knows old Rich Slater’s good for his markers.”
“Oh?” Gabe lifted a brow. “I thought the trouble had something to do with dealing from the bottom of the deck.”
Was that what he’d told the boy? Rich wondered, and searched back through his soggy memory. Well, it didn’t matter. “Just a difference of opinion, that’s all. All tidied up now. This here’s my race.” He gestured toward the monitor. “Number three,” he muttered. “Yeah, number three.”
Gabe glanced up at the screen just as the gate sprang open. “I’ve heard you’ve been playing the track again.”
“Come on, baby, hug that rail. Where’d you hear that?”
“Here and there. Somebody spotted you at Churchill Downs on Derby day.”
Rich continued to watch the race, urging his horse on with little jerks of his body. His mind was working, though, picking carefully through the minefield Gabe was setting for him.
“He’s got it. He’s got it! Now, come on, wire. Ha! Son of a bitch, I can pick ’em.” Pleased that the first horse on his ticket had come in a winner, he signaled for another drink. “I’ve got the touch, Gabe, I’ve always had the touch.”
“What kind of touch did you have in Kentucky last month?”
“Kentucky.” The broad, amiable grin only widened. “I haven’t been down in Kentucky for oh, five, six years or more. Shoulda stuck with the horses, though, that’s the truth.”
“I saw you myself, the morning of the race.”
Not by a flicker did Rich show reaction. His eyes stayed on his son’s. “I don’t think so, buddy boy. I’ve got me a nice set of rooms outside Baltimore. All the action I need is within an easy drive. Pimlico, Laurel, Charles Town. Now, maybe you’re thinking of Pimlico, the Preakness. I was there. Sure was.” He winked. “Had some money down on your colt, too. You didn’t let me down. Maybe, seeing as I’m rolling hot, I’ll take a trip up to Belmont. Think you can cop the whole Crown, do you, Gabe? You do, we’ll have ourselves a real celebration.”
“There was trouble at the Derby.”
“I know about that. Shocked I was, too, sitting in my room watching it on TV. Crying shame to see a horse go down that way.” He shook his head sadly over his drink. “Damn shame. But then, it didn’t hurt you any, did it?”
“Somebody helped that horse go down.”
Lips pursed around his cigar, Rich nodded. “Now, I heard about that, too. Nasty business. Christ knows it happens.” He reached for the beer nuts, popped two in his mouth. Gabe noticed he was wearing a ring on his pinky, little diamonds shaped into a dollar sign.
“Oh, not as much as it used to,” Rich went on. “Harder to get away with pumping a horse up with chemicals these days.” He puffed out smoke, amusing himself by stringing Gabe along. “Now, back in the days when your granddaddy and me used to play the ponies, there were plenty of tricks. Didn’t have so many tests then, so many fucking rules on the horses and the jocks. But that was forty years ago and more.” He sighed reminiscently. “Too bad you never got to know your granddaddy, Gabe.”
“Too bad he got a bullet in the brain over a . . . difference of opinion.”
“That’s the truth,” Rich said, with no sarcasm. He was a man who’d loved his daddy. “It’s like I always tried to teach you, son, sometimes cheating’s just part of the game. It’s a matter of skill and timing.”
“And sometimes it’s a matter of murder. A horse, a man. One’s not so different from the other to some people.”
“Some horses I’ve liked better than some men.”
“I remember another race, in Lexington. I was just a kid.” Gabe picked up his cooling coffee, watching his father over the rim. “But I remember you were nervous. It wasn’t that hot. The Bluegrass Stakes is in the spring. But you were sweating a lot. You had me working the stands, looking for loose change, panhandling. A horse broke down that day, too.”
“Happens.” He turned back to the monitor. Despite the chill from the air-conditioning, the back of his neck was damp. “I’ve seen it happen plenty in my day.”
“It was a Chadwick horse then, too.”
“No shit? Well, that’s bad luck. Hey, can’t you see I’m dry here?” Rich slapped a hand on the bar.
“A jockey hanged himself over it. As I recall, we didn’t stick around long after that race. A few days, that’s all. That was funny, too, because our room was paid up.”
“Itchy feet. I’ve always had them.”
“You were flush after that. The money didn’t last long. It never did, but you had a nice fat roll when we headed out.”
“I must have bet some winners that day.”
“You’re on a roll now, too, aren’t you? New suit, gold watch, diamond ring.” He picked up Rich’s hand. “Manicure.”
“You got a point here, boy?”
Braced against the stench of bourbon, Gabe leaned closer. His voice was low, icily controlled. “You’d better hope I don’t find out you were in Kentucky on the first Saturday in May.”
“You don’t want to threaten me, Gabe.”
“Oh yes, I do.”
With fear and rage circling through his system, Rich picked up his fresh drink. “You want to back off is what you want to do. You want to let things lie and get your mind on that horse you’re running next week. Keep your mind on that and on that pretty blond filly you’re banging.”
In a flash, Gabe had a hand wrapped around the k
not of his father’s new silk tie. The bartender hustled over.
“We don’t want any trouble here.”
“No trouble.” Rich grinned into Gabe’s face. “No trouble at all. Just a family discussion. That’s a prime piece you’re putting it to, son. Blue blood. I bet a thoroughbred like that’s got plenty of kick, and lots of endurance. Maybe it’s time she met your dear old daddy.”
Gabe’s hand ached with the pressure of making a fist. The fist ached to connect. Yet no matter how repugnant, there was no escaping the fact that the man was his father. “Keep away from her,” Gabe said quietly.
“Or?”
“I’ll kill you.”
“We both know you haven’t got the guts for that. But we’ll make a deal. You keep out of my business, I keep out of yours.” Rich smoothed down his tie when Gabe allowed him to jerk free. “Otherwise I might just have me a nice long talk with your pretty lady. I’d bet we’d have lots to talk about.”
“Keep away from what’s mine.” Gabe took out a bill and put it on the counter beside the coffee he’d barely tasted. “Keep far away from what’s mine.”
“Kids.” Rich beamed a fresh smile at the nervous bartender when Gabe strode away. “They just never learn respect.” He picked up his drink, tried to ignore the fact that his hand was unsteady. “Sometimes you just got to pound it into them,” he muttered.
Nursing his drink, he turned back to the monitor and waited for his horse to come in.
It was nearly dusk when Kelsey walked out of the barn for the last time. She’d put in a backbreaking twelve hours, hauling manure and straw, scrubbing down concrete, polishing tack. Now every muscle in her body was weeping. All she wanted was a blissfully hot bath and oblivion.
“Want a beer?” Moses sat on a barrel, two cold bottles dangling from his fingers. He’d been waiting for her.
“No.” She gave him a nod as frosty as the brews. “Thanks.”
“Kelsey.” He held a bottle up. “I couldn’t find my peace pipe.”
Reluctant, she gave in and accepted one. She’d have preferred a gallon of water, but the beer washed away the taste of dirt and sweat just as well.