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“Mm-hmm.” Hilary Cambria, who’d traveled with him to Kentucky from their native Australia, and who looked fresh as a daisy, gave him a pitying look. “You should be out there, dancing.” Pursing the lips Shane had always thought were one of her best features, she cocked her head to consider him. “You need to lighten up, boyo. Live a little.” She raised her glass. “Like her.”
Shane didn’t have to glance over to know whom his cousin meant. The redhead. The pool shark who bought shots for her mates and drank whiskey like one of the boys. There’d been so much laughter and melodramatic groaning around the pool table when he and Hilary had first entered the bar, he couldn’t help but notice the woman who’d been in the middle of it all.
She behaved as if she hadn’t a responsibility in the world. She dressed as if she didn’t give a damn, yet she had more men around her than a swimsuit model.
He knew without having to look again that her skin was the color of wheat, her hair a red-brown that was several shades darker than her many freckles. She was tall, strong and curvy like a milk-fed farm girl, her innocent look at odds with her bold personality.
“Live for today, for tomorrow we may die.” He’d heard her toast, and frankly it had irritated the hell out of him. He couldn’t stomach a cavalier attitude toward life, yet part of him wanted to challenge her to a game of pool and give her a real race for her money. He wanted to spend the night finding out what was truer: the sassy attitude or the fresh-off-the-farm appearance.
Another part of him knew that a woman like the redhead was simply one of life’s distractions, and he’d stopped indulging in those years earlier, when he’d realized his need to find a purpose for his life outweighed all other desires.
“I saw you watching her.” Hilary interrupted his thoughts. “She wanted to dance with you, you know. She was walking right toward you.”
Shane took a sip of his beer, buying himself a moment. He wanted to answer this well.
Returning the frosted glass to a damp cocktail napkin, he reached across the round table, laying his hand on Hilary’s. “I’m with the prettiest girl in the place. And I happen to know she’s a great conversationalist. Why would I give all that up for a dance?”
His heart sank when he saw her neat jawline tense.
“Because I’m your cousin. And because dancing… is… fun.” She spoke slowly, as if she were addressing a half-wit. “Or don’t you like fun anymore?”
Exhaling her anger, she plucked up her wineglass, her blue eyes narrowing above the rim. “You know I love you, but I can’t spend all my time babysitting so you won’t be lonely. It’s starting to put a crimp in my social life.”
Understanding her true implication, Shane responded immediately and firmly. “I’m not babysitting you.”
“Tell it to someone who hasn’t known you since you wore tighty whities.”
She took a gulp of wine, and Shane felt the awesome burden of his own ineffectualness. “What, pray tell, are tighty whities?” he asked, mostly to fill time until he figured out how to talk to her. She’d changed so much in the past year.
Surprising him, she laughed, and thankfully the sound wasn’t quite as brittle as he might have feared. “You really need to get out more. Tighty whities are men’s jocks. The plain kind. Do you know that in America, some men wear jocks that are red-white-and-blue on the Fourth of July? I wonder how they fit all the stars and stripes on there?”
She had decided to make him laugh, and she succeeded. He felt a rush of affection for the girl who had always loved everything American. He hoped this trip to the States would be a gift to her, hoped it would bring back some of her joy.
He was tempted to tease her in return, to lighten the mood still more, but when he looked at her face, he saw that she was already glancing beyond him, her expression so wistful, so rich with longing that he turned to see what was affecting her.
On the dance floor, the redhead had found a partner—a jockey, Shane guessed. Wiry, compact and several inches shorter than the girl, he looked like a dervish, spinning and kicking his seemingly boneless legs out at odd angles. Shane suspected, though, that it was not so much the jockey but the girl whom Hilary watched.
The redhead would never win a dance contest. Like her partner, she flung her arms and legs about in what appeared to be several directions at once. Given her long legs, long neck, plus the russet hair and freckles, he figured he could be forgiven, although probably not by her, for thinking she looked like an enthusiastic giraffe. Once again, his interest caught and held.
When the jockey did a crazy move, kicking one leg way in the air and then spinning around, the woman laughed and matched him move for move.
“She’s got the right idea,” he heard Hilary murmur with a catch in her voice that made his gut ache. “Dance like there’s no tomorrow.”
Her eyes swam with pain. She’d never been good at hiding her feelings, even now when, for the first time, she earnestly tried. Immediately Shane felt helpless. Then he felt the roiling frustration and anger that his helplessness aroused.
“I’m beat,” he said, watching her expression. “Mind if we head back to the motel?”
He thought he handled that relatively well, making their hasty retreat about him rather than her, but the twist of her lips said she knew exactly what he was doing, and she snapped.
“Don’t coddle me.” The rage underlying the low, frustrated growl was so unlike Hilary that even she seemed shocked.
A terrible, impotent grief choked Shane. He wanted to rail at the unfairness of a life that would harm a woman like her, but leave him standing—he, who in thirty-four privileged years had never found a purpose to his existence. Hilary had always been the one with plans, goals. Gratitude. He had been the discontent wanderer.
In a way, he wished Hilary would give him hell, vent her anger on him, say everything that was on her mind, but as swiftly as her anger spiked, it receded. Without another word, she reached for the light wrap draped over the back of her chair. Shane stood, waiting to see whether she would welcome his help or insist on maneuvering herself out of the bar.
As it turned out, she did neither. Allowing her hands to rest limply in her lap, her head bowed forward in an unconscious posture of defeat, she waited silently while he came around behind her and wheeled her back from the table. She neither looked at him nor made a sound as he steered the wheelchair between the bar’s narrowly spaced tables.
A year ago, he had been traveling through Central America digging sewers, building an hogar, desperately seeking activities to give his life meaning.
He had meaning now. The same accident that had damaged Hilary’s spinal cord had killed her parents, leaving her with sole ownership of Cambria Estates, a vineyard and winery near Sydney, Australia. Shane had returned from Central America immediately—needed. Truly needed for perhaps the first time in his life.
He’d been learning the wine business ever since, set with the task of ensuring that Cambria was strong enough to support Hilary for the rest of her life, if need be.
Standing behind the wheelchair, looking at her beautiful bowed head, he vowed that nothing would throw him off track. He had no interest in “living for today”; not when he had finally found every reason to plan for tomorrow.
Chapter Two
Quest Stables occupied a thousand acres in Woodford County, Kentucky, south of Lexington. It housed five hundred horses, and its stunning size and international reputation often distracted visitors from the land upon which it sat. That was a shame, indeed, because Quest was so exquisite, so resplendently engraved upon the landscape, that it could have been a commercial urging tourists to drop everything and visit the Bluegrass State.
It was true that guests to the stables or to Thomas and Jenna Preston’s home often commented on the artistic perfection of the surroundings. If a property could have its colors done, Quest would be a winter—bright and clear and deep. The grass wasn’t green; it was emerald. The wildflowers were amethyst and vermilion and bridal-gown white. Copses of oak and pine and aspen softened the strong summer sun, giving the impression that heaven kissed the land with gold.
Still, the pastoral elegance perceived while brunch-ing on the large veranda could be misleading. Behind the veil of gentle living, there thrummed the inevitable activity and workload of an establishment that produced world-class champion racers.
The most recent and most renowned of the Prestons’ winners was a bay stallion named Leopold’s Legacy. Two months earlier, the handsome brute had won the Derby, followed by a dazzling victory at the Preakness that suggested more wins and high stud fees in his future. He was what every owner and trainer hungered for—a horse that could become a legend.
But Legacy’s ride to the top had been marred. A routine DNA test proved that his sire was not the champion Apollo’s Ice, as originally recorded, and the Prestons, who so recently had stood in the winner’s circle, now found themselves in the middle of a breeding scandal. The reputation and financial future of the entire organization were in danger.
Most mornings for the past month, Quest’s difficulties had been the first thing on Audrey’s mind. She awoke worrying about Brent Preston, Quest’s breeder, and about Carter Phillips, their veterinarian. More than anyone, the two men were coming under suspicion from the Jockey Association. Only Thoroughbreds produced by live cover rather than artificial insemination were accepted for the association’s registration, and both Brent and Carter had witnessed the breeding of Leopold’s Legacy’s dam, Courtin’ Cristy, with Apollo’s Ice at Angelina’s Stud Farm.
Audrey knew the Prestons well and trusted them implicitly. They had been beyond reproach as employers to both her father, who had served as their head farrier for eleven years, and her since she took his place last year. Shoeing Thoroughbreds was the only work she had ever known. Her father had been her hero and best friend, and she’d trailed him like a puppy through the stables while he worked. Treating her like one of the team instead of a youthful nuisance, the Prestons had made it easy for her to follow in her dad’s footsteps.
Feeling impotent in the face of their current troubles, she had readily agreed to help by pulling names up from Quest’s database so the Prestons could contact the owners of their stabled horses. The family wanted to personally break the news that the Jockey Association had recalled Leopold’s Legacy’s Thoroughbred status, which meant the regional racing commissions refused to let him race in North America. Several owners already had withdrawn horses stabled at Quest after the first whiff of scandal, and the Prestons were hoping to stanch further losses by reaching their clients before industry gossip did.
Printing phone lists didn’t feel very proactive, but it was better than sitting on one’s hands, and if it helped Brent and Carter even a little bit, then it was worth it.
Rolling over in bed the morning after she’d danced the night away, Audrey realized this was the first time in weeks that she’d awoken to find her thoughts consumed by her own circumstances as much as by the Prestons’.
Bending an arm above her head, she gazed at the ceiling, recently painted a crisp white, and tried to guess the time without looking at the clock. It was a workday, and she almost always rose before five on a workday, but the brightness and warmth in the room suggested she’d overslept.
Of course, the warmth could be attributed to the big body in bed next to her. A faint disgust had her shaking her head. She’d been exhausted when her head hit the pillow, but she was reasonably certain she’d climbed into bed alone.
“How did you get in here?” she asked without looking over, wrinkling her nose at the answer—a rude snort in her ear.
“Seamus,” she scolded, rolling toward a hundred-and-sixty pounds of lean muscle, wiry steel-gray hair and huge feet. Four of them. “You’re supposed to be sleeping at the big house. Thomas and Jenna bought you that beautiful bed. Don’t be an ingrate.”
The mammoth Irish wolfhound responded by swiping a sleepy tongue over Audrey’s face then yawning. Hugely.
“Morning breath, Seamus.”
Audrey sat up. Her bedroom window, which she’d left open, was once again missing its screen, pried off by the one male on the property that had fallen hopelessly, madly in love with her.
Leaving Seamus where he was—not a morning man, he’d be snoring before her feet hit the floor—Audrey hauled herself out of bed and slogged toward the living area of her small home, one of the employee cottages on the Prestons’ estate.
She’d have liked to have started her day straight off with a mug of painfully strong coffee, but she’d ignored a blinking light on her phone machine the night before. Prioritizing, she padded down her short hallway and pressed “play” on the machine that sat on the maple-topped bar dividing her kitchen and living room.
“Audrey,” the first message began, “Carter here. Melanie spotted a problem with Something to Talk About’s gait a couple of days ago. I haven’t found a cause, but I noticed he’s due for a shoeing, so can you give me a call when you get around to him? Thanks.” Beep.
Making a mental note, Audrey went to the fridge and withdrew a pound bag of ground coffee beans. She grabbed a filter and a measuring spoon so she could start her eight-cup-a-day habit as the next message played. She was so freakishly tired from yesterday, she thought she might up the ante to ten cups.
“Hi, Audrey.” Halting with the measuring spoon in the coffee bag, Audrey turned her head toward the machine. The voice alone made her feel cold all over. “It’s Dr. McFarland. I don’t have the results of your blood tests yet, obviously, but when you left my office today, I got the sense you might not follow up with the surgeon I recommended. So I’m calling because…”
Dr. McFarland paused, and Audrey found herself hoping that the internist had mistakenly hung up or been cut off. No such luck.
“Audrey, I’ve known you a long time, and I understand how difficult it would be if you were sick again, but I—”
Lunging for the phone machine, Audrey pressed “skip.”
Heart beating as if she’d already injected caffeine into a major artery, she set her jaw and breathed deeply through her nose.
No, you don’t understand.
“I’m not sick again.” Breathe in, two-three-four… I am not sick. Breathe out, two-three…
The next message had already begun, and Audrey made herself concentrate on Jenna Preston’s upbeat voice, hoping it would calm the buzzing in her brain.
“… calling to invite you to lunch tomorrow. I hope you can make it. You don’t have to call back, honey. Just come on up to the house at noon. See you tomorrow unless I bump into you before. Bye.”
When the phone machine clicked off, Audrey closed her eyes and stood very still.
A year ago, her dad had died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of sixty-four. Henry Griffin had been her only relative, her roommate, her rock. Since his passing, Jenna’s kindness had swelled into a motherly concern that made Audrey feel guilty, because she knew in her heart that it was time for her to leave Quest. The call from Dr. McFarland confirmed the instinct.
She and her dad had moved here from Texas when Audrey was twelve. Certainly it had occurred to her in recent years that a twenty-something ought to experience more of the world than a piece of Kentucky, but until her father’s passing, she had never seriously entertained the idea of leaving. She figured that was why she took so many dang classes—so she could be an armchair adventurer. But now that he was gone, was it enough? She had a little money; she could travel, see places she’d only read about. She was twenty-four, and she’d never been in an airplane.
Opening her eyes and abandoning the coffee, she crossed slowly to the living room, to a recliner that sat just inside the front door. Neatly positioned beside the chair, rested a pair of burgundy-green-and-navy plaid men’s slippers made soft and pliable from lots of wear.
As if the slippers belonged to her, Audrey slid her feet inside. Her stress melted into the faux sheepskin lining. She’d given Henry the loafers as a joke Christmas gift one year—slippers that matched his favorite plaid chair. He’d worn them every night after work, claiming, “My big ol’ feet never looked better.” Memories rose from the shoes’ very soles… The way her dad laughed like a cartoon chipmunk: “Chee-chee-chee-chee.” The Sunday morning going-to-church scent of Aqua Velva aftershave. The soft expression in his eyes when she sometimes caught him watching her.
“God must think I’m an okay sort, Audrey Lea, because He gave me an angel to love.”
Audrey shook her head. She was no angel. Angels didn’t get so scared piss-less that they wanted to crawl under their beds and stay there.
She’d always known her future was a big question mark. She’d never had the luxury of taking it for granted, as other people her age were privileged to do.
What she did have was an appreciation for the fragility of life. She needed to carpe diem while there was still a diem to carpe.
Seamus’s toenails clicked slowly down the hallway as the big lug made his way sleepily toward the living room.
“Decided you couldn’t live without me, huh?”
Meeting him halfway, Audrey leaned over for a sloppy kiss and a wirehaired hug. The problem with saying hello to a new life was the necessity of bidding goodbye to the old one first.
“I love you, you big goof, but it’s time for you to find a girl your own age. Preferably your own species.” When she straightened, he whined. “Come on, I’ll make breakfast and show you some of the travel brochures I’ve been collecting.”
As they walked to the kitchen, Audrey considered the past year of breakfasts shared only with her four-footed friend. Then she remembered the brief moment of excitement and anticipation in the bar last night.
“To tell you the truth, Seamus, I wouldn’t mind waking up next to someone my own species, too. It wouldn’t be anything serious, so don’t get your whiskers in a knot. But I’m thinking I could combine travel with a little romance. I hear Frenchmen are a lot of fun. And they know how to let go when the time comes.”
“Shove over, you big, beautiful nag.”
Leaning her shoulder heavily into a shining gray filly named Biding Her Time, Audrey waited for the horse to shift her weight. Biding leaned the opposite way, forcing Audrey to drop the filly’s hoof and stand up—or be squashed by several hundred pounds of Thoroughbred.
“Sheesh!” Pulling her gloves off her hands, she slapped them to the ground. “You are the most stubborn damn thing.”
Showing more initiative than he ordinarily did during daylight hours, Seamus bounded off a comfortable bed of hay in one of Quest’s many stables and came to Audrey’s defense, growling at the horse.
Biding gave him the evil eye, stamped her hoof and whinnied. Untied, she wouldn’t be above trying to knock the dog down.
“Better leave her alone, Seamus, you know how cranky she gets. Besides, this is my job.”
Audrey had played or worked around horses all her life, and truthfully she liked the crafty and opinionated beasts best. Biding Her Time was one of those. After several races in which she had yet to place, a number of people were prepared to write her off. Not Audrey. She knew, or sensed anyway, that the filly was testing the waters, not merely in races, but in her life. Biding paid attention to everything in the stable, in the paddock, on the track. She investigated her surroundings as if she were waiting for the click that would inspire her to think, I’m home, I’m safe, I’m ready to win.
Pushing back the locks of hair that had fallen loose from her braid and plucking at the T-shirt that glommed ickily to her damp skin, Audrey went forehead to forehead with the filly. “I certainly hope you’re ready to get new shoes, ’cause they’re coming, whether you like it or not.”
Repositioning herself, Audrey picked up the left front hoof, quickly shoving her shoulder under the horse. Biding relented, allowing her foot to be placed between Audrey’s bent knees and the pedicure to begin. It was a game they had played for the past year. They both enjoyed it.
“Atta girl.” Audrey began filing and soon was immersed in the sound of the hoof being grated down, the “Classic Strings” CD on the player perched atop a stool a few feet away, and the huff-huff-huff of Biding’s breathing.
This was the part of the job Audrey liked best—the soothing rhythm, the juxtaposition of quiet solitude and labor that was hard enough to soak her hairline, chest and back with perspiration. She’d have to finish her morning work in time for a shower before lunch. Which was a real waste of personal grooming, if you asked her, because she had two more ponies to shoe that afternoon.
The sad truth was that she’d rather plant herself on a chair outside Biding’s stall, chow down on a turkey-and-Swiss on rye and sneak the horse a few carrots, than join the Prestons at the big house. She knew today would present an ideal opportunity to tell the Prestons they needed to hire a new farrier, and she could feel her stomach churning at the prospect.
Turning toward the backpack she usually lugged with her to the stables, Audrey withdrew a roll of the antacids she’d been wolfing down lately. Peeling back the silver paper, she tilted her head, popped two tablets into her mouth and began to chew, quickly deciding this was going to be at least a three-antacid morning.
“Audrey Griffin, don’t you dare fill up on candy before lunch. We are having a veritable feast, and I expect you to arrive hungry!”
Startled by her employer’s voice, Audrey nearly choked on the tablets.
She whipped around. “Jenna!” Immediately upon seeing the woman’s genteel, humor-filled face, she felt tension wring her intestines like a wet towel. “I didn’t hear you come up. I…I guess I was busy thinking…I have to finish shoeing Biding, and it’s getting pretty close to noon already, so maybe…”
The lame attempt she was about to make to wriggle out of lunch died on her lips when she realized that Jenna had a companion.
“Audrey, dear, I’d like you to meet Shane Preston, our nephew. He’s here from Australia. We decided to take a quick tour of the stables before lunch.”
Audrey blinked, as if that could change the scene in front of her. Raising the back of her wrist to her forehead, she wiped away a sheen of perspiration that now was due to more than physical exertion.
“Shane, this lovely girl is Audrey Griffin. You’ll get to know each other better later, of course.”
His brows spiked over the word “lovely.” Audrey saw it and was torn between wanting to run home to change her clothes and the desire to chuck a horseshoe at his head.
