Showdown

  Closing his eyes for a moment, he breathed in the warm, honeysuckle-scented evening air, faintly intermingled with the ubiquitous smell of horses and leather that always made him feel at home wherever he was. In the distance, he could hear the soft whinnying of Bremeau’s Thoroughbreds, fighting to be heard above the deafening background cacophony of the cicadas.

  Paradise.

  He dreamed of training horses as spirited and magnificent as the prancing Mirage one day, back home in California. He had long ago given up talking about these dreams to his father—their conversations always ended in a screaming row—but silently, whenever he was alone, he continued to nurse his fantasy.

  Like most cowboys, Hank looked on horse racing as anathema to Western culture: fine for Arab sheiks and white-collar billionaires with their pristine Kentucky stud farms, all neat white fences, manicured lawns, and state-of-the-art technology. But not for the likes of real working men, men bound to the land and to their cattle herds, proud inheritors of their long-cherished cowboy traditions.

  Personally, Bobby had never gotten it. He was as proud of his cowboy roots as the next man. But he also loved horses—all types of horses, from mustangs to quarter horses to exotic Arab Thoroughbreds. His father would rather die than see Highwood used for anything other than raising cattle, he knew that. But, really, what was so wrong about applying traditional cowboy skills and techniques to racehorse training? And where was it written that a great ranch had to be about beef cattle and nothing else?

  One day. One day, when Highwood was his . . .

  He broke away from his daydreaming with a start at the touch of a cold hand against his back.

  “Sorry. Did I scare you?”

  It was Chantal, Pascal Bremeau’s young and very beautiful wife. He hadn’t heard her come in, and the cold of her fingers against his warm skin gave him a shock—albeit a not altogether unpleasant one.

  “No.” Like his father, Bobby was a man of few words.

  “I did knock,” she lied, “but I guess you didn’t hear me. You looked like you were miles away.”

  Half French and half Venezuelan, Chantal oozed the dark, heavy-lidded sultriness of South America, although her English was faultless and bore no trace of an accent. Oddly, that clipped British voice coming from such a pneumatically Latin body only seemed to enhance her sexiness.

  Bobby bit his lip and tried to think unsexy thoughts: his eighth grade math teacher naked—that usually did the trick—but not today. Nothing seemed to be working.

  She’s Bremeau’s wife, he told himself sternly.

  He mustn’t.

  He absolutely must not.

  “I thought you might like some company,” she said with practiced innocence, before slowly and deliberately starting to twirl her fingers through the still-damp curls of his chest hair.

  Inevitably he felt his cock start to harden and wished he had more than a skimpy towel between him and this stunning girl. It didn’t help that she was looking even more gorgeous than usual this evening in a crotch-skimming yellow sundress, which did little to restrain her full, braless cappuccino-brown breasts.

  “No thanks.” He tried to sound firm. He had started to pry away her hand, but somehow ended up with his fingers intertwined with hers and his eyes locked into her brazenly inviting gaze.

  Goddamnit. This was going to be difficult.

  With his heart rate rising and his dick taking on a life of its own, twitching and jumping like it was being electrocuted, it was all he could do to remember to breathe in and out.

  He’d seen this coming, of course. Chantal was a shameless flirt. From the very first morning he arrived at the estate, she’d taken to “dropping by” the schooling ring where he and Mirage were working, often wearing nothing more than a pair of frayed denim hot pants and a bikini top that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Vegas stripper. Not that he blamed her for trying. Her old man was no oil painting, and that was putting it nicely. Truth be told, Pascal Bremeau was one fat, humorless, garlic-munching son of a bitch. Plus, he was old, really old, and seemed to spend 90 percent of his time away on business leaving his bored, beautiful young wife to her own devices. What did the guy expect?

  But the fact remained, women and training didn’t mix. Bobby resented anything that threatened to distract him when he was working—and Madame Bremeau certainly fit right into that category. He had tried ignoring her, had even been outright rude to her on a couple of occasions—telling her to leave him alone and stay away from the stables, that he wasn’t interested. But his rejection only seemed to make her more determined.

  Tonight was the last night that Pascal would be away.

  And he wasn’t training now.

  “Look,” he whispered, desperately trying not to focus on her pupils, which were so dilated with lust she looked like she’d had a shot of horse tranquilizer. “This really isn’t a great idea, you know. Your husband—”

  “Isn’t here,” she finished for him, backing him toward the bed and slipping her hand expertly up beneath his towel. “But you are. You know, it’s funny”—she flashed him a wicked smile, wrapping her fingers around his cock like a vise. “Duval thinks you are too soft with Mirage. But you don’t feel at all soft to me.”

  Fuck it.

  Groaning, Bobby staggered backward onto the antique lace bedspread, pulling her down on top of him. God knew he shouldn’t be doing this—not with Bremeau’s wife—but the girl was a force of nature. Trying to resist her was like trying to turn back the tide with your bare hands. It would take a stronger man than he was.

  Agonizingly slowly, she started to stroke him, licking her palm for more lubrication, increasing her pace gradually as he instinctively arched his pelvis forward and bucked against her. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, and when he opened them again found that she was kneeling over him, lifting up her lemon-yellow dress to reveal a neatly trimmed, very dark bush and no panties. Just as she was about to lower herself down onto him he grabbed her around the waist, flipping her over onto her back as easily as he would a rag doll.

  “What are you doing?” she giggled, gasping as he climbed on top of her, nudging her already spread legs wider.

  “I don’t like girls on top,” he said. And with that he thrust into her like a rocket with so much force that she had to reach back and hold on to the headboard for support.

  Bobby enjoyed sex in a simple, matter-of-fact sort of way. But it had never consumed him with passion in the same way that his horses did. Since the age of sixteen he’d attracted women so effortlessly that he’d come to accept whatever sexual opportunities presented themselves as no more than his due, enjoying them in the same way that he might enjoy a good game of golf or a side of home-cooked ribs.

  There were women that he loved, naturally—his mother, for all her faults, was still very dear to him, and the McDonald girls, Tara and Summer, the daughters of his father’s ranch manager, were like surrogate sisters to him back home. But he had certainly never been in love, let alone had a steady, serious girlfriend. The idea had never even occurred to him.

  This pointed lack of commitment didn’t seem to put women off, however. If anything, his indifferent, take-it-or-leave-it attitude only heightened his desirability to the opposite sex. Unfortunately, experience had failed to turn him into a sensitive lover. With girls falling into his lap like overripe apples, he had never learned to curb his natural selfishness in bed. At twenty-three he still pursued his own pleasure with the same robust single-mindedness as a young stud stallion, quite oblivious of his partner’s needs or desires.

  Feeling his orgasm building almost immediately now, as Chantal writhed and clenched beneath him, he made no effort to hold it back, exploding into her like a breaking dam, burying his face in her neck to muffle the sound of his own release.

  Happily, she seemed amused rather than offended by the “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am” approach and not in the least bit put out that she hadn’t come herself.

  “My good
ness.” She laughed, smoothing down her dress and rearranging her hair as he slumped back onto the bed. “Short but sweet, eh? Is that how all the cowboys do it?”

  “I have no idea.” He grinned up at her like a little boy, happy now that he’d gotten what he wanted. “You’d have to ask them.”

  Bobby couldn’t help but admire Chantal. She was that rarest of creatures: a gorgeous girl with a nice, uncomplicated attitude to sex. It was a welcome change from all the clingy, my-love-can-change-you girls he seemed to wind up in bed with back home.

  “I know I ought to feel guilty,” he drawled, watching her peering into the mirror and rubbing off the telltale makeup smudges with her finger, “but I don’t. You’re far too beautiful to regret.”

  Chantal smiled. From anyone else it would have sounded like a line. But Bobby was not given to flattery, and something told her that a compliment from him was probably the real deal. She was just about to turn and thank him, with another offer he couldn’t refuse, when an unexpected knock on the door froze both of them to the spot.

  “Bobby? Are you een zere?”

  Oh fuck. Pascal.

  “Just a minute.” Struggling to keep the panic out of his voice, he leaped off the bed in an instant. “I’m, er . . . I’m not dressed. Give me a second, okay?

  “What the hell is he doing home?” he hissed in a stage whisper to Chantal, scrambling back into his pants while frantically gesturing for her to go and hide in the wardrobe.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. She seemed marvelously unconcerned by their current, dangerous predicament. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  Jeez, French women had balls of steel. What a piece of work! If he hadn’t known better, he could have sworn he actually saw her smile as she clambered into the huge, antique armoire.

  Briefly he wondered how many errant wives of the French aristocracy had used it as a hiding place before her. Hundreds probably. But this was no time to get historical. Shoving her right to the back, he pulled the walnut doors closed behind her and turned the key. Then with one long, deep breath to steady his nerves, he opened the door to her husband.

  Bremeau had obviously only just arrived home from his business trip. Still dressed in his formal three-piece suit, he looked white as a sheet and even more miserable than usual.

  Bobby’s heart skipped a beat. He couldn’t have heard them, could he?

  “Bobby.” The Frenchman’s short, stubby fingers worked nervously as he spoke. “This is very bad, mon ami. Very, very bad.”

  Holy crap. He had heard them.

  That was it then: the end of his career and quite possibly his life if Pascal turned out to be the murderously jealous type, which he looked like he very well might be. And all over a stupid girl! How could he have been so reckless? And with his work with Mirage only half finished too . . .

  “Eet’s your father,” Bremeau abruptly interrupted his panicked internal monologue.

  For a minute Bobby thought he’d misheard him.

  “What? My father? I don’t understand.”

  “I’m sorry,” the older man mumbled awkwardly. “I—I don’t really know ’ow to say these, but . . . ’e ’as died, Bobby. In ’is sleep. About four hours ago.”

  Bobby stared impassively at the jowly, pale face opposite him.

  No. No, there must be some mistake. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He wasn’t ready.

  “I ’ave arranged for the chopper to fly you to Nice airport in ’alf an hour. You understand, no?”

  Bremeau’s look of concern deepened. Perhaps the boy hadn’t grasped his broken English? He kept waiting for him to say something, but he looked utterly shell-shocked.

  “Bobby? Are you all right?”

  Stunned and mute, Bobby eventually managed a nod.

  “Yes. Er . . . yes. I’m fine. I understand,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Reaching up, Bremeau laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. All of a sudden the guilt he’d been unable to feel a few moments ago seemed to punch Bobby full force in the stomach. Hank was dead. His father. Dead. And here was this Frenchman, this total stranger, trying to comfort him, little knowing that not five minutes ago he’d been banging the living daylights out of the poor guy’s wife—the same wife who was hiding in the closet right now.

  The whole thing was like a sketch from a bad sitcom. Only it no longer seemed funny.

  His father was dead.

  “I’m sorry too, Pascal,” he whispered, almost to himself. “Believe me. Sorrier than you know. For everything.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Milly Lockwood Groves glared at her reflection in the mirror in despair.

  She was in her bedroom at home in Newmarket, dressed in a grotesque, frilly pink ball gown, complete with white gloves and with her great-grandmother’s pearl and diamond tiara perched on top of her carefully swept up and intricately pinned chestnut hair.

  “Please, Mummy, no,” she moaned. “It’s awful. I look like a blancmange.”

  Though she would have been the last person ever to think so, Milly was in fact a strikingly pretty girl, something that even this monstrosity of a dress couldn’t hide completely. At five foot two she had the perfect jockey’s build: slight and boyish, although in the last year she had to her great annoyance developed a noticeable bust, which seemed to get in the way of everything and jiggled about embarrassingly whenever she ran, even in a bra.

  Shifting her attention from the dress to her face, her frown deepened. She despised the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose that she’d never grown out of and the full, wide mouth that kept half her father’s grooms awake at night but that she privately thought ugly and much too big for her face.

  The only thing about herself that Milly did quite like was her hair. On the rare occasions she let it down, it tumbled over her shoulders in a glorious, shining chestnut cascade, like the overbrushed tail of a show pony. But today she didn’t even have that going for her, thanks to her mother insisting she wear it pinned up under this ridiculous crown. Honestly, she felt like one of those plastic ballerinas from inside a cheap music box.

  “A blancmange? Oh, darling, what nonsense.” Linda Lockwood Groves stepped forward and carefully smoothed out the creases at the front of her daughter’s skirt. “You look absolutely divine. Doesn’t she, Cecil?”

  Milly’s father, who had ill-advisedly stuck his head around the door on his way down to the stallion barn, took one look at his daughter’s pleading, desperate face and his wife’s determined smile, and decided to keep well out of it.

  “Mmmm,” he said noncommittally, glancing pointedly at his watch. “Sorry, girls, I can’t hang about. Michael Delaney’s bringing his new mare over for a cover with Easy Victory in half an hour. I need to make sure the old boy’s up to it.”

  “Up to it? Easy?” said Milly indignantly. “Of course he’s up to it! He’s an absolute star. Delaney’s stupid mare is lucky to have him. I bet she’s a right old plodder anyway.”

  “Hardly,” Cecil chuckled. “It’s Bethlehem Star.”

  Milly’s eyes instantly widened. Bethlehem Star was the product of two world-class parents. Her dam had placed third in the Kentucky Derby five years ago, and her sire, Starlight, was a winner at Goodwood. “I didn’t know Delaney had bought her. When did that happen? Has Rachel ridden her yet?”

  Rachel Delaney was Milly’s sworn enemy. Both children of Newmarket racing families—Rachel’s father, Sir Michael Delaney, was a wealthy racehorse owner while Cecil Lockwood Groves ran Newells, one of the most respected and successful stud farms in the country—the two girls had been at daggers drawn since kindergarten. For reasons best known to herself Rachel had always delighted in tormenting poor Milly, whose only crime as a little girl had been to be a better rider than she was, despite being a year younger.

  Even after Milly had been forced to give up riding at fifteen—Cecil had refused to let her back in the saddle after a neck injury that c
ame within a whisker of killing her—Rachel’s persecution had continued. Now, two years later, relations between the two girls were at an all-time low. The mere mention of Rachel’s name was enough to send Milly into a tailspin of fury, and the very idea of her riding a horse as famous as Bethlehem Star made her blood boil.

  “Darling, do keep still,” said Linda. “You’re creasing everything up again.”

  “He picked her up at Keeneland last season for over a mill,” said Cecil, answering his daughter’s first question but not her last. “Then he never raced her. Beautiful horse, though. She’s a maiden, so she might be a bit jumpy with Easy. I want to be on hand if things get nasty.”

  “I doubt that’s very likely,” said Milly dismissively. “If she’s anything like the rest of the Delaney women, she’ll be opening her legs nice as pie before you can say ‘spoiled bitch.’”

  Cecil laughed, but Linda looked horrified.

  “Milly!” she said sternly. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was coarse, unladylike language. “There was no need for that. Now let your father get on, please. He’s got a lot to do, and so have we.”

  Taking this as his cue, Cecil disappeared, leaving Milly to her fate.

  “Do I really have to wear this one?” she asked plaintively, her upper lip curling in disgust as she reached around and pulled at the bow on her bottom. “It makes my arse look ginormous.”

  Why did she have to go to this bloody debs’ ball anyway? All these preparations were doing her head in. Her mother, Linda, though well-meaning, was a pathological social climber, and Milly’s coming-out ball was merely the latest and most irksome of her many schemes to fix her daughter up with a “nice” boyfriend—“nice” in this case having the very specific meaning of titled, Eton educated, and set to inherit three quarters of Scotland: attributes that meant everything to Linda but nothing at all to Milly.