by Nora Roberts
She grimaced as the light through the open drapes blinded her. Shielding her eyes, she braced a hand on the doorjamb.
“God. What time is it?”
“Just past ten.” Naomi poured a cup of coffee from the pot on the room service tray. “Your timing’s good, Kelsey. Breakfast just arrived.”
“Breakfast? Ten?” She squinted through her splayed fingers. “Gabe?”
“Oh, at the track since dawn.”
“But—” Fully awake now, she dropped her hand. “That jerk! He promised he wouldn’t go without me this morning. Of all mornings.”
“Mmm.” Naomi poured a second cup for her daughter. “According to him, you were an ill-disposed lump who told him to go away when he suggested it was time to get up.”
“I did not.” She took a sip of coffee. “Did I? He’s probably making it up.”
“He probably wanted you to get a little rest.”
“He’s my lover, not my keeper.” Then she flushed. However unusual the relationship, Naomi was still her mother. She cleared her throat and sat down. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be at the track.”
“It’s not a big race for us. A mile and a half.” She shrugged and spread blackberry jam on a triangle of toast. “We’d just like to see High Water hold his own. I guess we could get lucky since the Arkansas colt is scratched.”
“Scratched? When? What happened?”
“Oh, he pulled up lame in yesterday’s workout. A sprained foreleg. I guess I forgot to tell you.”
Pouting, Kelsey bit into a slice of bacon. “I feel like I’m outside the party, with my face pressed against the window while everyone else eats the cake.”
“I’m sorry, honey. You’ll just have to tolerate all of us being worried about you. When I think of what could have happened—” She sighed, spread more jam. “All right, all right, we won’t get into it. I know that butt-out look on your face. I’ve seen it in the mirror often enough.”
“It didn’t mean butt out,” Kelsey said with a smile. “It meant don’t worry.”
“It goes with the territory, even for a come-from-behind mother. So, eat your breakfast. I have instructions to see that you do.”
“Gabe again.”
“I imagine you know he loves you.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you know he’s besotted?”
This time the smile crept onto Kelsey’s face. “Do you think so?”
Naomi only laughed. “Never mind, you already know it. It’s thrilling, isn’t it, and terrifying to have a man tangled up over you that way.”
“Yes. And twice as thrilling and terrifying when you’re just as tangled up over him. I know it might seem soon to be this involved with someone after the divorce, but—”
“Kelsey, not only am I not in a position to criticize, but I’m going to point out that you and your ex-husband were separated for two years.”
“Still—” Kelsey shook her head. “I’m second-guessing myself because it doesn’t seem right. It only feels right.” She toyed with her breakfast, hoping she wasn’t choosing the wrong moment. “When you separated from Dad, did you still love him? I’m sorry.” She lifted her eyes. “Someone said something to me yesterday that made me wonder. If you’d rather not answer, I understand.”
“I told you once that whatever you asked I’d try to answer.” But this one was hard. It wrenched at an old wound in the heart, an almost forgotten one. “Yes, I still loved him. I loved him for a long, long time after it was foolish to do so. And because I did I was angry, with him, with myself, and determined to prove it didn’t matter.”
“Is that why you . . .”
“Threw myself into parties?” Naomi continued. “Enjoyed fanning gossip about myself and other men? Courted small scandals? Yes, at least partly. I wasn’t about to admit I’d failed. I wanted Philip to suffer, to have sleepless nights thinking about me reveling in my freedom. And because I undoubtedly succeeded in that, I drove him further and further away until what I wanted most was impossible for me to have.”
“You wanted him back.”
“Desperately. I was vain enough to think I could have him on my terms, and my terms only.”
“And Alec Bradley?” She saw Naomi flinch, and forced herself to finish. “Was he someone you used to make Dad suffer?”
Naomi switched from coffee to water. “He was a kind of final gauntlet flung. A man with as sterling and blooded a pedigree as Philip’s, but with a faintly unsavory reputation.”
Kelsey’s stomach knotted. She had to know, and to know, she had to ask. “Did you hire him?”
The discomfort in Naomi’s eyes vanished. “Hire him?” she repeated, blank.
“I’ve heard that he put certain skills on the market.” She gulped at her coffee. “So to speak.”
The last reaction Kelsey had expected was laughter. But it came now, rich and delighted across the table. “Christ, what a thought. What a thought! The very last thing I wanted from Alec was stud service.” Her amusement fled. “The very last thing.”
“I’m sorry, that was a stupid question. I didn’t mean it precisely as it sounded. I was thinking more of public displays than private ones.”
“No, I didn’t hire him. Though I did lend him money a time or two. He was always in between deals, you see,” she said dryly. “Always in the midst of a little cash-flow problem. It might be vanity again, coming back to color memory, but as I recall, he pursued me. Not that I evaded,” she added, and chose a single raspberry from a bowl. “I wanted the attention. I needed it, and he was very charming. Even when you knew differently, he could make you believe you were the only woman in the room. I was certainly aware of his reputation, of the fact that he could be bought. That added to the appeal, I suppose. The fact that he was with me, charming me, hoping to conquer me, because he couldn’t help himself, did wonders for my ego.” And a great deal of it, she remembered, had been simple ego. “In the end, he refused to accept, or wasn’t able to accept, that I didn’t choose to be conquered. And that’s what killed him.”
“But rape isn’t about sex.”
“No.” She’d once thought it was, or had wanted to believe it was, because sex was easier. “He wanted to hurt me. To humiliate me. I’ve never really understood why he seemed so desperate that night. There wasn’t passion in his eyes. There wasn’t lust. I think I could have fought them, have outmaneuvered them. It was the desperation in his eyes that made me reach for the gun.”
Naomi shuddered once, then cleared out her clogged lungs with a long quiet breath. “I’d forgotten that.”
“I’m sorry I made you remember.” Though she promised herself she would think everything through later, Kelsey covered Naomi’s hand with hers. “Let it go. We’ll both let it go. This is a day to look forward, not back. Why don’t you come check out the outfit I bought for the race? If I don’t get into it soon, we’ll miss the first post.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
RENO WORE A SLATE-GRAY SUIT AND MAROON TIE. HIS SOFT ITALIAN boots shone like mirrors. The pencil-slim woman on his arm was a head taller than he, and kept her artfully painted face tilted toward the cameras.
He knew it was a pathetic cliché, the short man proving his masculinity by latching on to tall, stunning women. He didn’t give a damn. Right now he needed something to prove his manhood, his worth. His cojones.
The sling on his arm precisely matched the silk of his tie. They were, he knew, the only silks he’d be wearing that day.
He smiled and preened for the cameras, as eager for the attention as the woman posed with him. Beneath the bravado, the quick, sassy answers about his next ride, his next season, he was a whirlwind of nerves and misery.
He watched the jockeys stride to the paddock, knew what each and every one of them was feeling, thinking. The concentration, the little mental games to keep the adrenaline up.
Only one would win, but others could prove their mettle with the ride. Some would come back, anot
her race, another year. Others would fade—gain weight, lose interest, take a fall. They might choose to headline in the sticks, preferring second-rate wins to first-rate losses. The great ones would stay on one circuit, getting rich, drawing their own following, avoiding or overcoming the broken bones and bad spills.
The middling ones would move from track to track, following trainers, harassing agents, disappearing perhaps to resurface as a groom or valet, or as an assistant trainer on some tiny farm in the boondocks.
But none of that showed now. Now they were warriors, soldiers, showmen, eyes tensed and narrowed behind the plastic goggles, bodies lean and tight and limber under the silks, their feet encased in supple, dainty boots. The helmets were in place beneath the cloth Eton caps, the post-position number a cardboard garter on the arm.
Some of them would have risen at dawn to work their partners themselves. Others would have slept late, their relationship with their horse purely business and unemotional. Fear of the scale would have kept most of them away from food, seduced them into another hour sweating in steam.
Now they were weighed and ready. Reno watched them with grinding envy and despair.
He should be the one listening, with the air of narrowed focus, to the trainer’s final instructions. It should be him garnering the praise, admiration, and hopes of the owners.
It should have been him flying down the track with the whip between his teeth.
His worst fear was that it would never be him again.
He forced himself forward, that quick, cocky smile fastened to his face.
“Miss Naomi.”
“Reno.” Automatically Naomi reached out, clasping his good arm. “You look great.”
“I’d rather be wearing your colors.”
“You will, soon.” She glanced toward the woman he’d left entertaining some reporters. “Pretty girl. She looks familiar.”
“You might have caught her in a couple of commercials. Shampoo and toothpaste, mostly. She’s trying to break into movies.” He shrugged his date off, and looked at the colt. “He’ll run for you, Miss Naomi.”
“Yes, I know he will.”
“Just the man I wanted to see.” Kelsey stepped forward. “I was hoping you’d have some time in the next couple of weeks to look at my yearling again, Reno. Honor needs a rider who can coax the best out of her.”
His stomach churned once, hard. “Sure. Sure, I’ll do that. I got nothing but time. I’m going to go give Joey a send-off.”
“Did I say the wrong thing?” Kelsey murmured when he hurried off.
“I don’t know.” Distracted, Naomi looked toward Moses. “He’s probably just strung out like everyone else.”
“I’m sure you’re right. I’m going to go wish Gabe good luck. Meet you in the box.”
“Make history for me, Joey.” Gabe shook hands with his jockey.
Joey flexed his fingers, cracked his knuckles. “I’m going to do that, Mr. Slater.”
“You hold him back, like I told you,” Jamison added. “I don’t want him to drive until the head of the stretch. We’re not looking for a record here. We’re looking for a win.”
“Me and Double here, we could get you both.” He grinned and saluted when Reno joined them. “Get yourself a front-row seat, pal. And have some of that fancy champagne you like waiting.”
“I’m going to do that.” Reno kept his smile in place as he nodded to Gabe. “Good luck today, Mr. Slater. You’ve got a horse in a million here.” His hand grew sweaty in his pocket. “I’d like a chance to go up on him myself one of these days.”
“We’ll talk about that when you’re back to a hundred percent.”
“A man gets spoiled riding the kind of horse I’ve been riding the past year or two.” His eyes locked on Jamison’s. “That’s the way it is, isn’t it, Jamie? We get spoiled.”
“You could say that, Reno.” Jamison kept a hand around Double’s bridle.
“I won the Belmont for you two years back, remember? Everybody called it an upset, an apprentice jockey and a long-shot colt. But the truth was, it was my day. My horse. My race.” Inside his pocket, his damp fingers opened and closed, opened and closed. “People forget, though. They forget all the races, all the wins. It’s the Derby they remember. It’s the Derby that puts you on top.”
His hand trembled when he took it out of his pocket, when he laid it flat-palmed on the colt’s neck. “Well, you got yourself the Derby, and a lot more.” He forced a laugh. “Win or lose, they won’t forget this Belmont. So you win it. You win it big.”
“Riders up!”
At the call, Reno stepped back. His face was white, sheened with sweat. Turning quickly, he strode away. Kelsey snatched at his arm as he passed her.
“Reno?”
“I’m sorry” was all he said before shaking her off and rushing away from the paddock.
“Jockeys.” Jamison launched Joey into the saddle. “Temperamental.”
“He looked ill,” Kelsey murmured, but there was no time to worry, barely any time to think. After the race, she promised herself, she’d try to find him and see if she could help. But now it was Gabe’s moment. She wasn’t about to have it spoiled.
“Even though you went off without me this morning, I’m going to wish you luck.”
“It would have taken a crowbar to get you out of bed at dawn.” And he’d wanted the morning to himself, to search for signs of his father. But he’d found none. More relaxed, Gabe tilted his head to study her. Her hair was scooped up under a white straw hat, its wide brim tipped flirtatiously over one eye. Her short, snug red dress was topped by a waist-length white jacket. His pin galloped over her breast.
“Now that I see what a few hours’ extra sleep did for you, I’m glad I didn’t have a crowbar handy.”
“A very clever way of sliding out of it, Slater.”
“I thought so.” He tucked her arm through his. “You’re wearing my colors.”
“Today they’re the only colors worth wearing.” She pressed a hand to her heart as they walked to his box. “Why aren’t you nervous?”
“Nerves won’t change anything.”
“Tell that to my stomach,” she muttered, and dug in her bag for her binoculars. “I’m beginning to think I want this more than you do.”
“No, you don’t.”
He kept a hand on hers as the horses were led to the gate.
The odds were locked in, the betting windows closed. Overhead the sky was the clear dreamy blue of summer. The oval, the mile and a half of meticulously tended turf, was fast today. The crowd that massed in the grandstands was on its feet, setting up a steady drone punctuated by shouts and cheers.
It was easy to forget how huge it all was. For those who had seen the sport only on a television screen it would seem small, intimate, rather than the world that it was.
It had, through ambition, through luck, and through a steady inner drive, become Gabe’s world. Now, all the work, the disappointments, the triumphs, and the hopes came down to this single race. This single horse.
He watched Double being loaded, and remembered the night he had been born. The way the laboring mare had wheezed, the way the wind had blown, keening against the walls of the foaling barn. The snow and sleet hurling down, the endless wait while the mare strained and labored.
Then the first sight, the terrifyingly fragile legs stabbing their way free in a gush of blood. And the mare’s cry, eerily human, heralding that last pang of birth.
That small, wet life had lain on the soiled straw, taking the first breath that would lead Double or Nothing, out of Bold Courage, to the starting gate at Belmont Park, Long Island.
And now, three years later, Gabe remembered the thrill that had passed through him, arrow bright, when he had looked into the foal’s eyes.
“I love that horse.”
He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Kelsey’s fingers tightened on his. “I know you do.”
The gate opened with a scream of metal. Almost at
once there was a gasp from the crowd as Double swerved to the right from his number six post position, nearly unseating his rider. Whatever had spooked him, the disastrous move had placed him behind a wall of horses with his jockey fighting for balance.
All of Jamison’s careful instructions on how to run the race became useless in the space of a heartbeat. Joey’s only goal now was to get Double or Nothing back into the Belmont.
There was a split-second decision, whether to fight through the field or go around it. Rider and horse made it together, swinging wide, in a move—depending on the outcome—that would be seen as either valiant or foolish. As if he knew what had to be done, the colt bore down.
He charged down the field, eating up the distance with wild speed. When they passed the wire the first time he was a length behind the leader, and gaining.
From his position in the box, Gabe kept his binoculars in place. He was focused on only one horse. The race itself was nearly forgotten, shadowed under the bright flash of admiration. There was more than beauty there. There was courage. Win or lose, he wouldn’t forget it.
The half mile went in forty-six seconds flat, with Double and the leader pulling steadily away from the pack. The crowd roared, a frenzy of sound. But Gabe heard only Kelsey’s voice beside him, quietly murmuring encouragement. It might have been only the two of them, standing hand in hand, watching a single horse.
At the far turn Double made his challenge, battling for advantage as they hit the top of the stretch. It was here, in its demanding, heartbreaking homestretch, that the Belmont tested valor. The Kentucky-bred colt was rallying from behind, shooting toward the leaders like a spear.
But it was too late. What had been born in the Longshot colt that windy night in late winter, what Gabe had seen in his eyes during those first wonderful moments of life, drove him faster than the whip laid across his back.
With heart, with honor, he thundered across the wire two lengths in the lead to take the Belmont Stakes, and the Triple Crown.
For a moment, Gabe could only stare. The emotions swirling inside him came too fast, too hard to sift out only the thrill of victory. That was his horse, cantering easily now, with its rider high in the irons. That was his dream, covered with sweat and dirt and glory. Whatever happened now, no one could ever take away from him, or the spectacular colt, this dazzling moment.