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Chapter One

Saratoga Race Course

Saratoga Springs, NY

Dani touched a hard shoulder, a broad chest. Her hands were skilled, their touch delicate, her fingertips already knowing what would come. Softness, hardness, heat.

She stared into spiraling depths, dark eyes that drew her…frightened others. Such a complicated creature, this one. All male. Pure passion. Born to win.

She moved, and the eyes followed her. She saw the curve where light and dark met. A roll of white, a confession of what others didn’t see—the colorless vulnerability.

Her lips touched the thin ridge between the watching eyes. A kiss to calm. Her hand caressed. The eyes watched.

“You won’t even let ’em smell your sweat, will you, gorgeous?” The voice could have lulled lightning.

She squatted down, her hands skimming a lean leg. “Tough guy. All day, dreaming only of a fast track, sweet fillies. That’s all you want ’em to see, isn’t it?”

Her hands cupped a twin leg of muscle and power. The proud male head turned. The eyes watched. “Yessir, they like to talk about you. Say you came out of the womb ready to fight, born bad. I say you never stood a chance. They knew who your father was.” She stood, laid her cheek to silk. “Bloodlines.”

She stepped back. “All this time we’ve been together, and still, you’re giving me the show. Acting like you don’t care. Breaking my heart.”

Her hand followed a spine’s curves. “But you’re not fooling me, darlin’. Pretending not to care for nothing except ladies and long shots.” Her hand paused. She leaned in, her voice almost inaudible. “You see I knew another like you.”

She wrapped her arms around the thick neck of her current charge, felt the tremble beneath her cheek, the tremble in her heart. “Don’t worry,” she whispered into the dark softness. “You’ll always be my favorite.”

As she turned to leave, she felt the staying touch at the back of her neck, moving down to her hip. “A gullible girl would think you’re returning the compliment.”

She reached into her front pant pocket for the sought-after peppermint. “I, however, am not so naive.”

She stepped outside the stall, surveying the shedrow. It was the height of August meet, and anyone who was anyone in the Thoroughbred racing world had brought the best of their stables to Saratoga for the month. Twisting the bill of her baseball cap to the back of her head, Dani looked up past the overhang of the unenclosed barn. The dawn mist had burned off to a bright blue that soothed rather than stunned the eyes, the heat comfortable enough to drink a Saratoga Sunrise and not get dizzy.

The horses had been walked, bathed, rubbed and brushed. Legs had been carefully checked for swelling, cuts or abrasions, then swabbed with poultices of medicated mud or iced and bandaged, if needed. Manes had been combed, feet painted, clover tossed into the straw bed and liquid vitamins poured over the second feeding of oats. Morning workouts were a mere memory.

It was past noon, and the air was shifting, becoming keener, closer, a held breath. The Thoroughbreds felt it. The muscles in their impossibly slender legs twitched. Their muzzles reared up, taking deep draughts of the charged air. Post time was coming.

Her chores done until it was time to fetch the evening feed and prepare the night bedding, Dani surveyed the shedrow, her body always instinctively angled toward the red-and-white striped roofs across the street.

A few other grooms sat outside the cinder block dorms, sipping beers, shooting the breeze, looking, too, without realizing it to the semicircle of the grandstand and the clubhouse, ever aware of the hundreds of dreams sitting beneath those wooden peaks. Dreams that could die in a split second today, only to be resurrected tomorrow.

Behind her, Dani heard a voice feminine and falsely drawling.

“Granddad told me the stink in here would smell sweeter than the South in springtime one day.”

Dani glanced over her shoulder and saw the stable owner’s granddaughter, Cicely Fox, breathe in, swelling her bosom as if serving it on a platter.

“But honey, stink is still stink.” The blonde laughed, tossing back her head. It was the movement of purebreds. The jewels in her ears, the gold at her throat and wrists caught the August light as she strutted down the barn’s dirt lane, steadying herself on the arm of her cousin, Prescott.

“Watch where you step,” Prescott advised as he steered the woman to the right.

“O-o-o-o-oh!” Cicely squealed, sidestepping a trail of fresh horse droppings.

Dani’s gaze immediately went to the animals in their stalls. They’d tense at much less than a woman’s whine. She heard rustling as several pawed the straw. One nickered high. Another snorted. It sounded like a laugh.

“You there. You there, boy.”

It was a moment before Dani realized Prescott was calling to her.

“Clean up that mess. This barn’s not fit to walk through.”

Dani grabbed the shovel leaning against the rail, her fingers curling tight on the handle but her “Yessir” automatic. Once her reply might have been less abiding, but once she’d been young and reckless. No more. She knew her place, knew how dangerous it was to pretend otherwise.

“Goodness,” Cicely drawled as she passed, shaking out several tissues from her purse and holding them to her upturned nose. “Such big ol’ beautiful creatures.” Her laughter was breathy, billowing the white cover. “But such big ol’ nasties.”

Moving toward the pile and out of earshot, Dani muttered, “I suppose yours smell like mint julep.” She heard a low chuckle. Her body stiffened. When was she going to learn to be careful? She lifted her head, saw the man in the trainer’s office door, a ghost of a smile remaining on his face as he met her gaze, sent her a silver wink. Her body flinched, seized by surprise. The face she looked at was as familiar as her own.

Reid Hamilton.

She looked away as if a shadowing bill of a baseball cap would save her. She steadied herself on the shovel, feeling his scrutiny, her incredulity. Don’t let him come closer. If he came closer, touched her shoulder, spoke a familiar name, she would have to turn and look at him, the whites of her eyes signaling surrender.

She kept her head turned. She needed no study of this man. She knew that face too well—the high forehead, the abrupt angle of eyebrows, the overall excess of dark charm.

She heard him come near. She focused on a faraway point, her breathing shallow, soundless, willing her body solid again.

“The man’s blind, darling,” he whispered in that soft Southern singsong. She felt his breath warm on her neck. Her head turned without permission. She saw the dark sheen of his crown as he bent over and picked up a cream-colored square from amid the straw and sprinkles of feed.

He handed her the piece of stationery. “I believe this is yours?”

She stared at the invitation in her hand. Saratoga Under the Stars—A Grand Gala. If he’d read the card, he would’ve known it no more belonged to her than the sun suddenly too hot all around her. Yet hadn’t it been a night such as that five years ago? Didn’t she still hear the men’s sighs, their features soft with the last of boyhood, their hearts not yet hardened by disappointment or disbelief? Couldn’t she still see the women’s answering smiles as they’d watched, waited, wrapped in taffeta or silk, their beauty the very beat of the ball. Even now, she saw a young woman, a fine gentleman meeting, dancing, daring to draw close like undeniable dreams.

Dani closed her eyes, closed her heart. Who would think beyond these lowered lids such dreams were spun? Only she knew too well that desires rarely rely on reality. On the contrary, they seemed to delight in pairing the most unlikely alliances.

She opened her eyes, raised her head and met the man’s silver gaze. She shook her head, held out the invitation to Cicely watching them several stalls over.

Cicely stepped closer to look at the card. She unsnapped her purse and looked inside. “It must’ve fallen out when I got a tissue.” She eyed the invitation. “It was on the ground?”

“Yes, Miss Fox.”

Cicely’s hand reached out, then retreated. “Throw it away.” She tossed her head as she turned to her cousin and laughed lightly. “I think they’ll let me in, don’t you?”

Her smile turned inviting as she shifted her gaze to the gray-eyed man. “We should all go together.”

Dani looked up from the embossed square straight into the man’s silver study. His face wore new lines but still the skin stretched too tight over raw bones. The glints of light in his eyes were gone, leaving shadow. She wasn’t the only one who had suffered.

She didn’t look away. It was too late. She couldn’t risk the naked movement. Her eyes ached. Her heart ached. She pushed back the cap from her head, freeing the brown hair beneath, freeing the man who had known her only one night. One night when she’d been a mystery unraveling. Red-haired and reckless. And he had not resisted.

Now she turned her head, not the elegant toss of wellborn women, but a wrenching movement. She felt the fine hairs along her nape pulling, her skin straining beneath her chin where first it would begin to slacken. The movement was too abrupt, but she had no choice. If she stared at the man one moment longer, her eyes would lock as her heart had locked all those years ago.

Cicely’s hand reached out again, not for the invitation but for the gray-eyed man. The linen-smooth palm beckoned. Dani felt the heat of the man’s gaze. She stared at Cicely’s offered hand as if those ivory fingers would rise and bless them all. Take it, take it, she urged. Her thoughts could have been words said aloud as the man moved toward Cicely, her hand slipping into the curve of his arm and pulling him close.

“We’ll pop in, have a few drinks, then be on our way,” Cicely said as her escorts matched her steps. She snuggled closer between the two men.

Reid didn’t hear the soprano chatter beside him. He was thinking of the woman behind him. At first, he’d only seen her bare profile, the check of her jaw, the muscles working in her throat. It was when she’d looked up, the slopes of her face becoming less neutral, the feminine more forceful, he’d thought he’d seen something else. Something familiar. He had smiled at her mumbled comment; inside he had mocked himself and his own foolish obsession.

Still, she seemed familiar in a vague, indistinct way like an image not quite formed that nagged and tugged at odd hours. He might have even looked over his shoulder once more if he hadn’t seen the lank length of her tarnished hair. The woman he thought of, the woman he always thought of had hair violent red and surely, wouldn’t be found mucking out stalls. Still…His head turned without thought. She hadn’t moved.

Dani clenched the shovel handle, only the brace of muscle up her arm staying her. Go, she ordered unspoken until the man looked forward once more. She grasped her shovel and watched him, watched him go, the powder puff of a woman beside him. She dropped her gaze, seeking respite. She saw Cicely’s tiny feet stepping in thin leather straps, made for the most refined of arches. The shoes’ heels, high and equally thin, tipped the soles up, lightly muscled the calves. The stockinged legs shimmered like a heat wave, stretching up to a fitted flamingo pink skirt topped with a jacket. Dani had always hated the color pink.

The trio moved farther down the row of boxes. She was safe. Even if Reid looked back again, he would still see only a woman brown and beige and dusty as the hay and dirt beneath her boots. She watched, made herself watch and felt the thin cotton of her T-shirt stick to her back.

The three stopped before the stall Dani had left only minutes ago. “Here’s the one you saw,” Prescott said.

The dark colt’s ears pivoted. He raised his head, arched his neck high above the metal half gate. Reid stared. The animal was the image of its sire. A Kentucky Derby winner who had run like the Devil and behaved twice as bad. A champion who went crazy one night, killing a man and himself.

Reid stood before that stallion’s son now. Cicely started to speak, but Reid’s hand hushed her. Her cousin tapped her shoulder, silently gestured, and they stepped away. Reid stayed.

Dani watched him. She knew he was remembering that night. They’d said he’d discovered them—his brother’s battered body on the straw, the magnificent horse, his right foreleg shattered. Before there had been only dancing and desire. Afterward, only death.

Reid kept his gaze on the colt as he spoke to Prescott. “They predicted he’d end his first season as one of the top two-year-olds. What happened?”

Prescott stepped toward the stall. “You know what they say— ‘if he didn’t have bad luck, he wouldn’t have any luck at all.’ That’s what you’re looking at right now. Began with a lung infection that cut his training short. Then recurring bouts of colic took their toll. Even still, he had broken his maiden and placed in an allowance when he acted up while being washed, slipped and cracked his pelvis. We rested him for nine months. He fought us the whole time. Some horses you’d never see on the dirt again after that, but this one, he lives to run.” Prescott looked at the horse but didn’t reach out his hand to stroke him. The horse didn’t offer himself to the man. “He’s got the breeding and the bone, but he can be a brute.”

Reid’s stare stayed level with the animal. “You didn’t cut him.” The horse tossed his head and snorted.

“Granddad believes if he can just score some points on the track, his real worth will be as a stallion, but so far he hasn’t rallied. After three starts here, he’s still the long shot. Until he can show us he can find the winner’s circle, we’re not entering him in anything but test drives.” The man eyed the dark animal. The colt dipped his huge head, butted the stall guard.

Prescott shook his head. “Won one ungraded race in his career yet he’s already famous for being one big hassle. Our trainer says sell him or geld him and I agree but Granddad can be as stubborn as this colt. Probably why he’s got a soft spot for him. But after these last performances, even he’s ready to throw in the towel. If we ever get this colt to the breeding shed, between his record and his temperament, the fees will never come to what we hoped.”

Reid listened to the other man, his gaze locked with the colt’s. He turned away without saying anything.

“Shall we wait for your mother here?” Cicely asked Reid as the two men joined her. “She’s meeting us, isn’t she?”

“She’ll be along. She was just going to stop by the Woodhouse Stables on the way over.”

The three walked to the end of the row and stepped out from the overhang into the sun, the light catching at Cicely’s gold and gems. Dani threw the invitation on the pile of manure and angled her shovel.

She was stopped by a frantic yell. Turning toward the cry, she saw a child come from around the corner of the opposite stables and shoot across the dirt circle between the two barns. An older woman, still yelling, followed in pursuit but she was no match for the child’s swift feet. Laughing, the child zigzagged around an overturned bucket, under a sawhorse and started up the row of stalls.

Dani waited until he was almost past her, then ducking beneath the rail, caught the child by the arm.

“Whoa there,” she said in the same voice she used to calm the horses. Still the boy squirmed to get away. She wrapped both her arms around him and lifted him up, bracing his wiggling body against her chest. He locked his legs around her and arched back so naturally she didn’t have time to stop him. He was hanging upside down and laughing once more, so free and full of glee, she found herself chuckling even as she tightened her arms and pulled him upward. They met face to laughing face. She saw the child’s silver eyes. It could have been her own soul staring back at her.