Devil's Gambit

  “Don’t bother for me,” Vance said, working with the afterbirth. “I’ll stay with the mare until Mac can watch her and then I’ll call it a night.”

  “Same goes for me.” Mac’s kind eyes rested on Tiffany. “You just take care of yourself, Missy. We’ll handle the horses.”

  “But—”

  “Shh, could be three, maybe four hours till I’m finished with this old gal here,” Mac said, cocking his head sadly in the black mare’s direction. “After that, I think I’ll hit the hay. I’m not as young as I used to be, ya know, and the missus, she’ll be looking for me.” He winked at Tiffany, but the smile he tried to give her failed miserably.

  Numbly, leaning against Zane’s strong body, Tiffany slowly walked out of the foaling shed and into the night. The rain was still falling from the darkened sky. It splashed against the sodden ground, and the large drops ran through her hair and down her neck.

  She felt cold all over, dead inside. Another of Moon Shadow’s foals. Dead. Why? Her weary mind wouldn’t quit screaming the question that had plagued her for nearly two weeks. She shuddered against the cold night and the chill of dread in her heart. Zane pulled her closer to the protective warmth of his body.

  Hard male muscles surrounded her, shielded her from the rain as well as the storm of emotions raging in her mind. Lean and masculine, Zane’s body molded perfectly over hers, offering the strength and security she needed on this dark night. For the first time in several years, Tiffany accepted the quiet strength of a man. She was tired of making decisions, weary from fighting the invisible demons that stole the lifeblood from innocent newborns.

  The house was still ablaze with the lights she had neglected to turn off. Zane led her into the den and watched as she slumped wearily into the chair near the fireplace. The sparkle in her blue eyes seemed to have died with Ebony Wine’s foal. Her arms were wrapped protectively over her breasts, and she stared sightlessly into the smoldering embers of the fire.

  “I’ll get you a drink,” he offered, walking to the bookcase that housed the liquor.

  “Don’t want one.”

  He picked up a bottle of brandy before looking over his shoulder and pinning her with his intense gray gaze. “Tiffany, what happened?” he asked quietly. She continued to gaze dully at the charred logs in the stone fireplace. He repeated his question, hoping to break her mournful silence. “Just what the hell happened out there tonight?”

  “We lost a colt,” she whispered, tears resurfacing in her eyes.

  “Sometimes that happens,” he offered, waiting patiently for the rest of the story as he poured two small glasses of the amber liquor.

  She lifted her gaze to meet his and for a moment he thought she was about to confide in him, but instead she shrugged her slim shoulders. “Sometimes,” she agreed hoarsely as she watched his reaction.

  How much could she trust this stranger? True, he had tried to help her with the unborn colt and in a moment of weakness she felt as if she could trust her life to him. But still she hesitated. She couldn’t forget that he was here on a mission. Not only did he want to buy the farm, but he was filled with some insane theory about Devil’s Gambit being alive.

  Zane’s stormy eyes glanced over her huddled form. Her soft honey-brown curls were tangled with straw and framed her elegantly featured face. Her tanned skin was pale from the ordeal. Dark, curling eyelashes couldn’t hide the pain in her wide, innocent eyes.

  She’s seen more than her share of pain, Zane guessed as he walked over to her and offered the drink that she had declined.

  “I don’t want—”

  “Drink it.”

  She frowned a little. “Just who do you think you are, coming in here and giving me orders?”

  He smiled sternly. “A friend.”

  Tiffany found it difficult to meet the concern in his eyes. She remained rigid and ignored the glass in his outstretched hand.

  With an audible sigh, Zane relented. Dealing with this beautiful woman always seemed to prove difficult. “All right, lady. Drink it. Please.”

  Tiffany took the glass from his hand and managed an obligatory sip. The calming liquor slid easily down her throat, and as she sipped the brandy she began to warm a little. Who was this man and why did he care?

  Zane walked over to the fireplace and stretched the tension out of his shoulders, before stoking the dying fire and finally taking a seat on the hearth. He propped his elbows on his knees and cradled his drink in his large hands.

  She didn’t follow his actions but kicked off her shoes, ignoring the mud that dirtied the imported carpet. Then she drew her knees under her chin as if hugging herself for warmth against an inner chill.

  Zane’s eyes never left her face. As he watched her he felt a traitorous rush of desire flooding his bloodstream and firing his loins. As unlikely as it seemed, he suddenly wanted Ellery Rhodes’s beautiful widow and wanted her badly. The urge to claim her as his own was blinding. In a betraying vision, he saw himself kissing away the pain on her regal features, lifting the sweater vest over her head, slipping each button of her blouse through the buttonholes.

  Zane’s throat tightened as he imagined her lying beneath him, her glorious, dark-tipped breasts supple and straining in the moonlight....

  “Stop it,” he muttered to himself, and Tiffany looked upward from the flames to stare at him.

  “Stop what?” she whispered, her eyes searching his.

  Zane’s desire was thundering in his ears, and he felt the unwelcome swelling in his loins. “Nothing,” he muttered gruffly as he stood, walked across the room and poured himself another drink. He downed the warm liquor in one long swallow as if the brandy itself could quell the unfortunate urges of his body.

  For God’s sake, he hadn’t reacted to a woman this way since Stasia. At the thought of his sultry Gypsylike ex-wife, Zane’s blood went ice-cold, and the effect was an instant relief. The ache in his loins subsided.

  He set his glass down with a thud, jarring Tiffany out of her distant reverie. “Do you want to talk?” he asked softly, walking back across the close room to face her. He placed himself squarely before her, effectively blocking her view of the fire.

  She shook her head and ran trembling fingers through her hair. “Not now...”

  His smile was sad, but genuine. “Then I think you should get cleaned up and rest. It’s after midnight—”

  “Oh.” For the first time that night, Tiffany was aware of her appearance. She looked down at her vest and saw the bloodstains discoloring the delicate gray wool. The sleeves of her pink blouse were rolled over her arms and stained with sweat and blood. She felt the urge to cry all over again when she looked up from her disheveled clothing and noticed the concern in Zane’s gentle gray eyes.

  Instead of falling victim to her emotions, she raised her head proudly and managed a stiff smile. “I’ll be fine in the morning. This night has been a shock.”

  “Obviously.”

  “If you’ll excuse me...”

  When she rose from the chair, her knees felt unsteady, but she managed to stand with a modicum of dignity despite her disheveled appearance.

  Zane picked up her barely touched glass. “I don’t think you should be alone.”

  Involuntarily she stiffened. Ellery’s words from long ago, just after her father had died, echoed in her mind. “You shouldn’t be alone, Tiffany,” Ellery had insisted. “You need a man to care for you.” In her grief, Tiffany had been fool enough to believe him.

  She lifted her chin fractionally. “I’ll be fine, Mr. Sheridan,” she assured him with a calm smile. “I’ve been alone for over four years. I think I can manage one more night.”

  He noticed the slight trembling of her fingers, the doubt in her clear blue eyes, and realized that she was the most damnably intriguing woman he had ever met.

  “I’ll stay with you.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “The mare’s not out of the woods yet.”

  Tiffany hesitated
only slightly. Zane’s presence did lend a certain security. She remembered his quick, sure movements as he tried to revive Ebony Wine’s dead colt. With a shake of her head, she tried to convince herself that she didn’t need him. “Mac can take care of Ebony Wine.”

  “And it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra pair of hands.”

  She was about to protest. She raised her hand automatically and then dropped it. “Don’t get me wrong, Zane,” she said softly, her tongue nearly tripping on the familiarity of his first name. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’ve done tonight. I do. But the foal is dead.” She shuddered and hugged her arms around her abdomen. “And Mac will attend to Ebony Wine.” She shook her head at the vision of the dead little colt lying on the thick bed of straw. “I...I think it would be best if you would just leave for now. I know that we still have things to discuss, but certainly they’ll wait until morning.”

  “I suppose.” Zane glanced at the portrait of Devil’s Gambit hanging proudly over the mantel. He had the eerie feeling that somehow the tense drama he had witnessed earlier in the foaling shed was linked to the disappearance of the proud stallion. Impossible. And yet he had a gut feeling that the two tragic events were connected.

  As if Tiffany had read his thoughts, she shuddered. Zane was across the room in an instant. Tiffany wanted to protest when his strong arms enfolded her against him, but she couldn’t. The warmth of his body and the protection of his embrace felt as natural as the gentle rain beating softly against the windowpanes. He plucked a piece of straw from her hair and tenderly let his lips press a soft kiss against her forehead. The gesture was so filled with kindness and empathy that Tiffany felt her knees buckle and her eyes fill with tears.

  “I...I think you should go,” she whispered hoarsely, afraid of her response to his masculinity. Damn him! She wanted to lean on him. What kind of a fool was she? Hadn’t she learned her lessons about men long ago from Ellery?

  “Shh.” He ignored her protests and led her gently out of the den, through the foyer and up the stairs. “Come on, lady,” he whispered into her hair. “Give yourself a break and let me take care of you.”

  She felt herself melt inside. “I don’t think, I mean I don’t need—”

  “What you need is to soak in a hot tub, wrap yourself in one of those god-awful flannel nightgowns and fall into bed with a glass of brandy.”

  It sounded like heaven, but Tiffany couldn’t forget that the tenderness of the man touching her so intimately might be nothing more than a ploy to extract information from her. At this moment she was too tired to really give a damn, but she couldn’t forget her earlier instincts about him. He was engaged in a vendetta of sorts; she could feel it in her bones. Try as she would, Tiffany couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that Zane Sheridan, whoever the hell he was, would prove to be the enemy.

  Zane left Tiffany in the master bedroom. Once she was certain he had gone downstairs, she peeled off her soiled clothes, threw them in a hamper and walked into the adjacent bathroom.

  As she settled into the hot water of the marble tub, her mind continued to revolve around the events of the past few weeks. If the first foal’s death had been a shock, the second had been terrifying. Now two more foals by Moon Shadow had died mysteriously. Each foal had been only a few hours old, with the exception of Charlatan, who had survived for a few hope-filled days.

  Just wait until Rod Crawford gets hold of this story, she thought as she absently lathered her body. The wire services would print it in a minute and she’d have more reporters crawling all over the place than she could imagine. If that wasn’t enough, Zane Sheridan’s theories about Devil’s Gambit’s fate would stir up the press and get them interested all over again in what was happening at Rhodes Breeding Farm. And the scandal. Lord, think of the scandal!

  Tiffany sank deeper into the tub, and didn’t notice that her hair was getting wet.

  What about Zane Sheridan? Was he here as friend or foe? She sighed as she considered the roguish man who had helped her upstairs. One minute he seemed intent on some vague, undisclosed revenge, and the next his concern for her and the farm seemed genuine. Don’t trust him, Tiffany, the rational side of her nature insisted.

  “Men,” she muttered ungraciously. “I’ll never understand them.” Her frown trembled a little as she thought about Ellery, the husband she had tried to love. Marrying him had probably been the biggest mistake of her life. The moment she had become Mrs. Ellery Rhodes, he seemed to have changed and his interest in her had faded with each passing day. “Dad warned you,” she chided herself. “You were just too bullheaded to listen.”

  The distance between her and her husband had become an almost physical barrier, and Tiffany had foolishly thought that if she could bear Ellery a child, things might be different. He might learn to love her.

  What a fool! Hadn’t she already known from her own agonizing experience with her mother that relationships between people who loved each other were often fragile and detached? In her own naive heart, she had hoped that she would someday be able to reach Ellery. Now, if what Zane Sheridan was saying were true, Ellery might still be alive.

  “Oh, God,” she moaned, closing her eyes and trying to conjure Ellery’s face in her mind. But try as she would, she was unable to visualize the man she had married. Instead, the image on her mind had the forceful features on a virtual stranger from Ireland. “You bastard,” she whispered and wondered if she were speaking to Zane or Ellery.

  Her tense muscles began to relax as she rinsed the soap from her body and then turned on the shower spray to wash her hair.

  Once she felt that all of the grime had been scrubbed from her skin, she turned off the shower, stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself in a bath sheet. After buffing her skin dry, she grabbed the only nightgown in the room, an impractical silver-colored gown of thin satin and lace.

  Just what I need, she thought sarcastically as she slipped it over her head and straightened it over her breasts. She smiled to herself, grabbed her red corduroy robe and cinched the belt tightly around her waist. She was still towel-drying her hair when she stepped into the bedroom.

  As she did, her gaze clashed with that of Zane Sheridan.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, lowering the towel and staring at him with incredulous slate-blue eyes.

  “I wanted to make sure that you didn’t fall asleep in the tub.”

  She arched an elegant brow suspiciously. “Didn’t you hear the shower running?” When a slow-spreading smile grew from one side of his face to the other, Tiffany’s temper snapped. “I don’t need a keeper, you know. I’m a grown woman.”

  His eyes slid over her body and rested on the gap in her overlapping lapels. “So I noticed.”

  Angrily, she tugged on the tie of her robe. “You’re insufferable!” she spit out. “I could have walked in here stark naked.”

  “Can’t blame a guy for hoping—”

  “I’m in no mood for this, Zane,” she warned.

  He sobered instantly and studied the lines of worry on her beautiful face. “I know. I just thought I could get you to lighten up.”

  “A little difficult under the circumstances.”

  “You lost a foal. It happens.”

  Her lips twisted wryly. “That it does, Mr. Sheridan. That it does.” She sat on the corner of the bed and supported herself with one straight arm while pushing the wet tendrils of hair out of her face with her free hand. “It’s been a long day.”

  “I suppose it has.” He strode across the room, threw back the covers of the bed and reached for a drink he had placed on the nightstand. “I checked on Ebony Wine.”

  Tiffany watched his actions warily. Why was he still here and why was she secretly pleased? She raised her head in challenge and ignored her rapidly pounding heart. “And?”

  “You were right. Mac took care of her. She’s a little confused about everything that went on tonight, still calling to the foal. But she’s healthy. The afterbirth detached
without any problem and Mac had already cleaned her up. He thinks she’ll be ready to breed when she shows signs of foal heat, which should be the middle of next week. The veterinarian will be back to check her tomorrow and again before she goes into heat.”

  Tiffany nodded and accepted the drink he offered. “It’s a little too much for me to think about right now,” she admitted, swirling the brandy in her glass before taking a sip.

  “It’s the business you’re in.”

  Tiffany stared into the amber liquor in her glass and moved her head from side to side. “And sometimes it seems like a rotten way of life.”

  Zane ran his hand around the back of his neck. “It’s never easy to lose one, but it’s the chance you take as a breeder.”

  “And the living make up for the dead?”

  Zane frowned and shrugged. “Something like that. If it bothers you so much, maybe you should get out of the business,” he suggested.

  “By selling the farm to you?” Her eyes lifted and became a frigid shade of blue.

  “I didn’t think we would get into that tonight.”

  “You brought it up.”

  “I just voiced your concerns.”

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, setting her unfinished drink aside. “Look, I’m really very tired and I can’t think about all this tonight.”

  “Don’t. Just try and get some sleep.”

  She managed a wan smile and walked around to her side of the bed. “I guess I owe you an apology and a very big thank-you. I...really appreciate all the help you gave in the foaling shed.”

  Zane frowned. “For all the good it did.”

  Tiffany raised sad eyes to meet his questioning gaze. “I don’t think there was anything anyone could have done.”

  “Preordained?”

  She sighed audibly and shook her head. The wet hair swept across her shoulders. “Who knows?” She sat on the edge of the bed, her fingers toying with the belt holding her robe together. “Goodbye, Zane. If you call me in the morning, we can find another time to get together and talk about your hypothesis concerning Devil’s Gambit and my husband.”