Devil's Gambit

  As she sipped her wine and observed him, Tiffany felt the long dormant stirring of feminine desire. Urges that were better denied began to burn in her mind. I won’t let myself fall for him, she promised but knew that her efforts would prove futile. He was already an integral part of her life. Ever since last night, when he had bent over the lifeless foal and tried to force air into the still lungs, Zane Sheridan had become a part of Rhodes Breeding Farm. Whether she liked it or not.

  She dragged her eyes away from his strong physique and concentrated on the clear liquid in her wineglass. “Don’t you have some place you have to be?” she asked.

  The lean frame stiffened. He hesitated for just a moment before turning to face her. “Later.”

  “Tonight?” she asked in attempted nonchalance. Her tongue caught on the solitary word.

  He nodded curtly. “I’ve got some early appointments in San Francisco tomorrow.” He noticed the slight tensing in her shoulders. Damn her, that strong will and pride will be her downfall...or mine. “Things I can’t put off any longer.” He finished his wine and stared at her. “Is that a hint?”

  “No...I mean, I just think it’s strange that you’ve been here—” she made a big show of checking her watch “—over twenty-four hours and still haven’t gotten down to the reason you came.”

  “The time of reckoning—right?” His eyes met her gaze boldly before glancing at the portrait of the horse.

  She took a seat on the edge of the gray corduroy couch. “Close enough. But first I want to thank you for helping last night. I really appreciate everything you did....”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  She remembered waking up and finding him sleeping in the uncomfortable chair with his feet propped on her bed. “Yes,” she whispered. “For everything.”

  “And now you want to know about Devil’s Gambit,” Zane thought aloud as he stood and stretched his arms over his head. It was an unconscious and erotic gesture. His sweater rose, displaying all too clearly his lean abdomen. His belted cords were slung low over his hips and Tiffany glimpsed the rock-hard muscles near his navel. She imagined the ripple of the corded muscles of his chest, his muscular thighs and lean flanks.... She had to look away from him and force her mind from the sexual fantasy she was envisioning. What was wrong with her? She’d never reacted this way to a man, not even Ellery. Until Zane Sheridan had walked into her life, she had considered herself nearly uninterested in the opposite sex.

  One look from Zane’s steely gray eyes had drastically altered her entire perception of her own sexuality. Her new feelings were at once exciting and frightening. Zane was the one man she couldn’t begin to trust...not with her body or her soul. He had already admitted that he was waging a vendetta of sorts, and she didn’t doubt for a minute that he was the kind of man who would use and destroy her because of his hatred of Ellery.

  Zane took a final sip of his wine and then set the empty goblet on the mantel. “I meant to tell you about Devil’s Gambit last night,” he explained, “but Ebony Wine had other things on her mind.”

  Tiffany nodded and clutched the stem of her crystal glass more tightly as she remembered the agonizing scene in the foaling shed and the innocent stillborn colt. Had it been only last night? So many things had changed, including her respect and feelings for Zane. “So what about now?”

  Zane angled his head to the side and studied the wariness in her eyes. She was sitting on the edge of the gray cushions, waiting for him to explain his reasons for being there. “No time like the present, I suppose.” He walked over to the bar and splashed three fingers of Scotch into an empty glass. “I think your horse—”

  “You mean Devil’s Gambit?”

  “Right. I think he’s in Ireland, using an alias.”

  “Now I know you’re crazy.” What did he mean about Devil’s Gambit being in Ireland? His story was getting more far-fetched by the minute.

  If she had any guts at all, she would tell him to get out of her house...her life, take his wild stories and shove them. Instead she twirled the stem of the wineglass in her fingers and stared up at him.

  “Just hear me out. Have you ever heard of a horse named King’s Ransom?”

  “Yes,” she admitted, recalling the Irish Thoroughbred. “But I really don’t keep up on the European horses, not as much as I should, I suppose. There just isn’t enough time. Dustin handles that end of the business.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Zane replied with obvious distaste.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Only that sometimes it’s hard to tell Ellery and Dustin apart.” He paced across the room before sitting on the warm stones of the hearth.

  “So you know Dustin?” That knowledge came as a shock to her and she felt a new wariness steal over her heart. Hadn’t Dustin mentioned King’s Ransom to her—something about the horse’s fame as a stud? Tiffany couldn’t recall the conversation....

  “We’ve met.” Zane leaned his elbows on his knees and cradled his drink with both of his hands.

  “And you don’t like him any more than you liked Ellery.”

  “As I said, they’re too much alike to suit my taste.”

  Tiffany was stunned. Dustin had his faults, of course, but she’d come to rely on her brother-in-law and his savvy for horses. It seemed as if Zane were determined to destroy anything and anyone who was solid in her life.

  “Not much does, does it?” she countered.

  “What?”

  “Suit your taste.”

  He hesitated. His eyes darkened and for a moment she imagined that he might suggest that she suited him. Instead he lifted an appreciative dark brow. “You’re right—not much.”

  Tiffany’s throat constricted, and she sipped her wine to clear the tight lump that made it difficult to breathe.

  If he noticed her discomfort, Zane chose to ignore it and get to the point. “Anyway, this horse, King’s Ransom, was a disappointment when he raced. He had all the qualities to perform on the track—great bloodlines, perfect conformation and a long, easy stride. He had the look of a winner about him, but he just didn’t seem to have the grit...or heart to be a champion. He never finished better than fifth, and consequently he was retired about seven years ago and put out to stud.

  “The first of his offspring began running about four years ago, and even though they inherited all his physical characteristics, none of the colts and fillies were anything to write home about. It seemed as if they all ended up with his lack of drive.”

  “So what does this have to do with Devil’s Gambit?” Tiffany asked. Her blue eyes mirrored her worry. Despite her arguments to the contrary, she was beginning to understand what Zane was hinting at.

  “I’m getting to that. All of a sudden, less than two years ago, when that year’s two-year-olds and three-year-olds hit the track, look out! Overnight, King’s Ransom was producing some of the fastest horses in Europe.”

  “That’s not impossible,” Tiffany said uneasily. She felt a sudden chill and shivered before getting up and walking closer to the fire...to Zane.

  “But highly improbable. It’s the same principle as what’s happening here with Moon Shadow, in reverse. Just as a good stud won’t go bad overnight, the reverse is true. A mediocre stallion doesn’t become the greatest stud in Ireland by a fluke.” Zane was looking up at her with his magnetic gray eyes. He knew that he had Tiffany’s full attention. Her glass of wine was nearly untouched, her troubled blue eyes reached into the blackest corners of his soul. God, she was beautiful. He swirled his drink and stared into the amber liquor, trying to still the male urges overcoming him.

  “I own a mare that I bred about five years ago to King’s Ransom,” Zane continued. “The colt that was born from that union was just what I expected—a solid horse, a plodder, but nothing that would compare to his recent foals. I rebred that same mare to King’s Ransom three years ago, and the resulting filly has already won two races and come in second in another. This horse is a full sister to t
he first.”

  Tiffany’s dark honey-colored brows drew together pensively as she tried to remember what it was about King’s Ransom... Vaguely she recalled a conversation with Dustin. Dustin had been going on and on about King’s Ransom and his ability as a sire. At the time, it hadn’t seemed all that important. Dustin was always raving about one horse or another—comparing his current favorite to the horses he and Tiffany owned.

  “It might be worth it to breed one of the mares, say Felicity, to King’s Ransom,” Dustin had insisted.

  “But the cost of shipping her would be prohibitive,” Tiffany had replied. “The insurance alone—”

  “I tell you, that stud’s got what it takes!” Dustin had been adamant. “He could sire the next Devil’s Gambit!”

  Now, as Dustin’s words came back to her, Tiffany paled. If what Zane was suggesting was true, then Dustin must have been involved! “I...I don’t believe it,” Tiffany said, taking a sip of her wine and trying to ignore the chilling implications running through her mind.

  This was absurd. Ludicrous. Her relationship with Dustin had always been solid, and after Ellery’s accident it had been Dustin who had helped her over the rough spots, given her his ear, offered a strong shoulder to cry on.

  “Believe it. Devil’s Gambit is siring foals and King’s Ransom is getting all the credit. Your horse is being used, Tiffany!”

  She squared her shoulders and trained disbelieving eyes on Zane. “I don’t know why you came here,” she said. “If it was to trick me into selling the farm, then you may as well leave now. All of this—” she moved both arms in a sweeping gesture meant to encompass everything that had transpired between them “—has been a very entertaining show, but I don’t believe any of it. You’re wasting your breath.”

  Zane pursed his lips together in frustration. With a frown he got up, crossed the room and picked up his briefcase.

  “God, Tiffany, you don’t make it easy,” he muttered as he set the leather case on the wooden desk and silently wondered why it bothered him so much that he had to prove himself to this woman. He could hardly expect that she would believe his story without proof. After snapping the case open and extracting a white envelope, he handed the slim packet to her.

  With trembling fingers Tiffany opened the envelope and extracted a faded photograph of a black stallion.

  “This,” he said angrily while pointing at the horse in the photo, “is a picture of King’s Ransom. He looks a lot like Devil’s Gambit, don’t you think?”

  The resemblance was eerie. Tiffany couldn’t deny what was patently obvious. Even though the photograph was old and faded it was glaringly evident that the stallion’s size and conformation were incredibly like that of the dead horse.

  Zane reached inside his briefcase again. This time he took out the manila envelope he had given her the night before. It still contained the photographs he had insisted were those of Devil’s Gambit. Tiffany might have believed him last night except for the fact that the white stocking on the horse’s foreleg was missing.

  “Are those two horses the same?” he demanded. His jaw was rigid, his gaze blistering as he searched her face.

  She studied the photographs closely. A cold chill of dread skittered down her spine. The horses were nearly identical, but definitely not one and the same. Only by placing the photographs side by side was Tiffany able to discern the subtle differences between the two horses. The slope of the withers was different, as was the shape of the forehead. Only a professional would notice the small dissimilarities.

  Tiffany closed her eyes against Zane’s damning truth.

  “Are they the same horse?” he repeated, his voice low.

  Slowly, she shook her head.

  Zane set the pictures on the desk and expelled a heavy sigh. Finally, he had gotten through to her! He poked a long finger at the more recent photograph. “This,” he said, “is the stallion that’s supposed to be King’s Ransom. I say he’s Devil’s Gambit.”

  Tiffany swallowed against the dryness settling in her throat. Here was the proof that her husband had lied to her, that her proud stallion was still alive, that everything she had believed for four years was nothing more than an illusion created by her husband. Devil’s Gambit and Ellery were alive! “How did you know?” she finally asked in a forced whisper.

  He rubbed his hand over his chin and closed his eyes. “I didn’t really know, not for a long time. I guess I became suspicious when the second foal, the filly, exhibited such a different temperament from her brother.

  “When she started racing as a two-year-old, I was certain she was the fastest horse on the farm, though her bloodlines weren’t nearly as good as several other horses.”

  He walked over to the fire and looked into the golden flames, as if searching for easy answers to his life. “I didn’t think too much about it until I got to talking to several other owners who had noticed the same phenomenon on their farms: all of King’s Ransom’s latest offspring were markedly different from his first foals.” Zane smiled to himself, amused by a private irony. “No one was really asking questions—all the owners were thrilled with their luck, and of course, King’s Ransom’s stud fees have become astronomical since the latest colts and fillies have begun racing.”

  Tiffany lifted her hands and shook her head in silent protest. “It still could be a coincidence,” she whispered. Her suggestion was a desperate attempt to right her crazily spinning world, to hold on to what she had believed to be true for four long years, and both she and Zane knew it.

  “Look at the pictures, Tiffany,” Zane quietly insisted. “You’re knowledgeable enough to realize those two stallions are different. Something isn’t right at Emerald Enterprises.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Emerald Enterprises owns the farm.”

  “And therefore King’s Ransom.”

  “If that’s what you want to call him.”

  Still the connection to her horse wasn’t completely clear. “And you think Devil’s Gambit is somehow involved?”

  “I know he is.”

  “Because...someone switched horses, planned the accident, thereby killing the replacement horse and Ellery? Then what about Dustin? How did he manage to escape with his life?”

  “Maybe he planned it.”

  The words settled like lead in the room. Only the occasional crackle and hiss of the fire disturbed the thick, condemning silence. “Dustin wouldn’t...” she said, violently shaking her head. “He couldn’t kill Ellery...they were brothers...very close....”

  “Maybe it wasn’t intentional. I told you I think Ellery was in on the swindle.”

  Her frigid blue eyes held Zane’s gaze. “That doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, you know,” she rasped, her body beginning to shake from the ordeal of the past two days. “Ellery owned the horse. Devil’s Gambit was worth a lot more alive than he was dead!” She raised a trembling hand in the air to add emphasis to her words, but Zane reached for her wrist and clutched it in a deathlike grip.

  “Just hear me out. Then you can draw your own conclusions.”

  “I already—”

  He broke off her protests by tightening his fingers over her arm. “Please listen.” His grip relaxed but his stormy eyes continued to hold her prisoner.

  “All right, Zane. I’ll listen. But in the end, if I don’t believe you, you’ll have to accept that.”

  “Fair enough.” He released her and took a seat on the corner of the desk. His stormy eyes never left the tense contours of her elegant face. “When I requested a third breeding to King’s Ransom, at the high stud fee, I was granted it. But because of the stallion’s ‘temperamental state’ I wasn’t allowed to witness my horse being bred.”

  “And you didn’t buy that excuse?” Tiffany guessed.

  “It sounded like bull to me. It just didn’t make a lot of sense. I’d witnessed the first breeding but was out of the country when the second foal was conceived.”

  “So what happened?”

&
nbsp; “I began asking a lot of questions. Too many to suit the manager of the farm. All of a sudden I was told that King’s Ransom’s services were, after all, unavailable. He was booked to cover far too many mares as it was, and I was asked to pick up my mare and leave.”

  “Before she was bred?”

  “Right.”

  Tiffany began to get a glimmer of the truth, and it was as cold as a winter midnight.

  Zane walked over to the hearth. As he sat on the warm stones he studied the amber liquor in his glass. “I picked up the mare, and the manager didn’t bother to hide his relief to be rid of me. As I was leaving I saw a horse I recognized as King’s Ransom running in a distant field. I thought it odd, since the manager had told me not five minutes before that King’s Ransom was supposedly in the breeding shed.”

  “So you took these pictures!” she said breathlessly, the scenario becoming vivid in her confused mind.

  “I’m a camera buff and happened to have my camera and telephoto lens with me. I grabbed what I needed from the glove box and photographed the horse. I took several shots and noticed that the stallion was running with a slight misstep. I hadn’t heard about any injury to King’s Ransom, and that’s when I began to suspect that there might be two horses using the same name.”

  Tiffany’s eyes were wide and questioning. “And from that you just deduced that one of the horses was Devil’s Gambit?”

  “It wasn’t that difficult, really,” Zane stated, his silvery eyes delving into hers. “Black Thoroughbreds are fairly uncommon, much rarer than bay or chestnut.”

  Tiffany nodded, her heart freezing with the fear that he was telling the truth. Dear God, what had Ellery done?