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“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.
Chapter Two
“Good God, boy, you’ll give your grandmother and I both a heart attack one of theses days.”
Dani looked up to the voice, saw the same silver circles.
“Sorry.” The blood was beginning to come back into Reid’s face. “He’s four. And hell on wheels. I swear I’m going to have to attach a shank line to his shorts.”
“Four,” Dani repeated in a quiet voice. Her gaze went to the boy.
The child nodded and held up four fingers.
She smiled. The ache multiplied, moved across her skin.
“I’ve trained thousand-pound animals.” Reid shook his head. “But forty pounds of four-year-old…” He looked at the boy, his eyes soft as a night she remembered.
“They’re a special breed.” She almost touched the child’s hair, the same color as hers when she’d been a child.
Reid reached for the boy. “I’m afraid being raised by an overindulgent uncle and a doting grandmother doesn’t help the situation.”
Uncle? She didn’t mean to tighten her grip on the boy. “He’s not your son?”
The surprise in her voice caused Reid to look at her. She straightened her arms to give him the boy, still not sure she could let go.
“He’s my brother’s boy.”
No! She almost denied it aloud. Reid still studied her. She steeled her expression while emotions sliced through her: confusion, guilt, yearning, hope. She let go of the child.
Reid settled the boy on one hip. His gaze stayed on her. She faced him, her features purposely bland, her insides twisting. She’d been so sure.
“My brother died several years ago. There was an accident.”
She knew. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m the boy’s legal guardian.”
It made sense, she told herself. Perfect sense. Until she looked at the boy’s profile.
“He must give you and your wife a run for your money.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. She had to know.
“No wife.” Reid looked at the boy. “Just you and me. Right, bub?”
“Right, bub,” the boy repeated.
Dani watched the man and child. It was like a dream.
“If you can teach the Thoroughbreds to run like that, you’ll make a fortune in this business one day.” Reid’s tone became stern. “Until then, Trey Adam Hamilton III, the barns aren’t your personal playground.”
She heard the name. Reid’s brother’s name.
“Understand?”
The boy nodded.
“Okay then.” Reid lifted the boy, swung him up on his shoulders.
The child wrapped his arms beneath Reid’s chin, crouched low over the man’s crown. “Rider up.”
Reid smiled as he caught the boy’s hands in his own. “It’s in the blood, I’m afraid.” The boy bucked up and down on his shoulders.
Dani stared at the child, wondering whose blood ran through those tender veins.
“An obvious champion,” she said. She didn’t realize she was hanging on to the hem of the boy’s shorts until she gave it an affectionate tug. She looked down and saw the strawberry-colored mark on the child’s thigh. Her fingers gripped the material. The first time she’d seen that thick V-shape, she’d thought it had looked like a bird in flight. She had to let go.
“Are you fellas ready?” Cicely called. Dani forced her fingers to drop, her gaze to shift from the boy to where Cicely stood, fanning Georgia Hamilton. “Your mother, Reid, needs a beverage,” Cicely said.
“Just gathering my guy here,” Reid told her.
The child rested his chin on the Reid’s crown, looked down at Dani. “Celery,” he pronounced.
“Cicely,” Reid corrected, trying not to smile. He lost. Still smiling, he looked at Dani. “Thank you.” Moving one hand up to support the boy, he extended his other hand to Dani in gratitude. Her hand touched his, withdrew before his fingers found hers.
“Trey,” Reid instructed, his silver eyes still on Dani. “Thank the nice lady for reining you in.”
Twin silver eyes looked down into hers. “Thanks, nice lady.”
She touched his bare sweet knee. “Any time.”
The boy looked down at her and smiled. How often had she imagined what he looked like, how his laughter sounded, what he would feel like in her arms? Her hand stayed on the child.
“Thank you again,” Reid said. “Say goodbye, Trey.”
“Bye,” the child told her.
“Goodbye.” Dani let go, clasping her hands behind her back to hide their tremble.
SHE FOUND her father sitting between Willie and Lou at the bar that served the huge blue margaritas. It was early. The night was maybe only two or three rounds old.
He looked up, meeting her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. His hair had grayed at the temples, and there was bloat beneath the eyes from alcohol and age, but overall, the face so many women had found handsome hadn’t changed. Good genes he would say. Bloodlines.
He tapped his cigarette against the ashtray’s edge. “Sit down. Have a sip with me and the boys here. I’m going to tell them about the day I rubbed a Derby winner.”
“C’mon, Mick, don’t you have any new stories?” Willie raised his beer to his smiling lips. Dani’s reflection in the mirror stayed grave.
Mick pushed his empty glass toward the edge of the bar, signaling the bartender. He was a man who believed a life of excess was the only life worth living. It was often the secret to his appeal. One day it would kill him.
“Some stories deserve repeating. The home stretch at Churchill Downs is one of them, right, love?” Mick met his daughter’s eyes in the mirror.
“I need to talk to you.”
Mick took a sip from the full tumbler the bartender put down in front of him and studied his daughter in the mirror’s reflection. “Let the ol’ man buy you a drink first, Dani girl. You’re getting as high-strung as the ponies.”
She felt the tension in her limbs, the jerk in her pulse. “No.” One syllable but it sounded of a madness in the making.
Her father swiveled slowly, his drink wrapped in one hand. Lou and Willie studied their beers. Mick studied her. She smelled the whiskey in his glass, on his breath. She should wait for a few more rounds when the liquor loosened his tongue. She thought of the child. She couldn’t wait.
“I saw Reid Hamilton today.”
Her father looked at her a long second. He swiveled back to the bar, avoiding her mirrored gaze. He stubbed out his cigarette long after it stopped smoking. Just as she decided he was going to ignore her or try to escape, he raised his gaze and gave her a long look in the mirror. With an exhale part breath, part sigh, he slid off the stool and gestured grandly to the square tables in the back. “Let’s have a seat, shall we?”
Sipping from his drink, he led the way. He was shorter than her, but his build was as narrow and taut. In his youth, he’d dreamed of wearing the silks, but the dream and the paddock were as close as he’d ever come.
Father and daughter sat down, facing one another. Dani’s hand clenched into a ball on the scarred table-top. She covered it with her other hand, her fingers curling, pressing into the thin flesh, slim bones. She had too much at risk to fall apart now.
“I saw Reid Hamilton today.”
Mick’s gaze shifted for a second, then came back to her. He took a long drink. His eyes watched her above the rim. She squeezed her hands together.
“So you’ve said.” He set his glass carefully on the wet ring that had formed on the wood.
She should’ve waited. Waited until the whiskey had made him brash. She’d been in too much of a hurry. Reckless.
“He had a child with him. A boy.”
She watched for his reaction. He reached out, his fingertips touching the cool sides of the glass.
“He said it was his nephew. His brother’s boy.”
Her father drew circles on the glass’s damp surface.
“I held the child in my arms.”
Her father’s hand went still. He lifted his fingers, touched the wetness to his lips.
Dani’s hands clutched each other as if to snap bone. “I held the child in my arms.”
Her father raised his glass to his lips. “Dani.” He stopped, said no more. He drank.
Her voice was eerily even. “Reid Hamilton isn’t the boy’s uncle. He’s his father.”
Mick pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapped one out and lit it, his eyes narrowing. “You said the child is the brother’s boy.”
“The child is Reid Hamilton’s son.” The words bubbled up, burned her throat. “He has a son.” She’d become a broken record.
