This woman reminded him of the one he always remembered, the one who wouldn’t let him go….

Reid grabbed Dani’s arm, turned her toward him. Her smile was gone, and he wasn’t sure. The face was Dani’s—but the desire was the same. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see any more.

His lips touched hers and he was taken back to that night. He tasted her. Same taste. Was he losing his mind? His mouth turned hard and searching as he sank into a sensation that promised chaos and contentment and a sense of coming home—a home Reid had known only once before.

He pulled back even as his hands still clutched her shoulders. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

She tilted her head slowly up and looked at him. She, too, knew he was lying.

Dear Reader,

Every month Harlequin American Romance brings you four powerful men, and four admirable women who know what they want—and go all out to get it. Check out this month’s sparkling selection of love stories, which you won’t be able to resist.

First, our AMERICAN BABY promotion continues with Kara Lennox’s Baby by the Book. In this heartwarming story, a sexy bachelor comes to the rescue when a pretty single mother goes into labor. The more time he spends with mother and child, the more he finds himself wanting the role of dad….

Also available this month is Between Honor and Duty by Charlotte Maclay, the latest installment in her MEN OF STATION SIX series. Will a firefighter’s determination to care for his friend’s widow and adorable brood spark a vow to love, honor and cherish? Next, JUST FOR KIDS, Mary Anne Wilson’s miniseries continues with an office romance between The C.E.O. & the Secret Heiress. And in Born of the Bluegrass by Darlene Scalera, a woman is reunited with the man she never stopped loving—the father of her secret child.

Enjoy this month’s offerings, and be sure to return each and every month to Harlequin American Romance!

Wishing you happy reading,

Melissa Jeglinski

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin American Romance

Born of the Bluegrass

Darlene Scalera

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Darlene Scalera is a native New Yorker who graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University with a degree in public communications. She worked in a variety of fields, including telecommunications and public relations, before devoting herself full-time to romance fiction writing. She was instrumental in forming the Saratoga, New York, chapter of Romance Writers of America and is a frequent speaker on romance writing at local schools, libraries, writing groups and women’s organizations. She currently lives happily-ever-after in upstate New York with her husband, Jim, and their two children, J.J. and Ariana. You can write to Darlene at P.O. Box 217, Niverville, NY 12130.

Books by Darlene Scalera

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

762—A MAN FOR MEGAN

807—MAN IN A MILLION

819—THE COWBOY AND THE COUNTESS

861—PRESCRIPTION FOR SEDUCTION

896—BORN OF THE BLUEGRASS

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Prologue

Hamilton Hills Farm

Lexington, Kentucky

Reid woke. His hand reached, sliding across the sheet with the same care used to touch a Thoroughbred’s million-dollar foreleg. The woman was gone. Where she had lain was still warm.

The night might have been a dream—the sky neither light nor dark, the evening song rising, too many people swaying beneath a white canopy. A heat. The scent of need. He had turned to greet yet another guest when he’d seen her. No sound had come from his parted lips. How long he had stared he didn’t know. There was only the raging red of her hair, a jewel green dress, slim hips, elegant legs. An unknown wildness. The dream begun.

He gathered the sheet into his fist. It was here now. It’d been there then. From the first. Fire.

The woman had stared back, her hand rising to the bared skin above her breasts. Breasts that promised the taste of life. Her fingers had followed the long edge of her collarbone, lifted to the tender flesh where her jaw and neck met. There they’d rested as if reassuring him she was flesh and blood. Small swallows had rippled her throat as he’d moved toward her. He had put his hand on hers, felt the press of warmth, the flash of need. Fire.

Her name was Danielle DeVries, a debutante up from the Carolinas. She was here for the horses. Everyone was here for the horses. Her knees had swayed at the first touch of his lips to hers.

He was known for his ease with Thoroughbred horses and beautiful women. Many would say this was only one more night of many nights providing pleasure and passion. He would have agreed if he’d also been a curious observer or merely a clever participant. He hadn’t. There’d been no room for wiles. He’d taken her in his arms and was no longer the master of his own fate. He’d been shaken, stunned, and, even now, craving more.

He sat up, fully awake, although his sleep had been little and his drinks had been many. He was content, restless, sated, wanting. Here was the magic they talked about. Who would have thought—a tip of the head, a curve of the neck, a meeting without warning? He would never underestimate life again.

He gathered his clothes, dressed, left the stone and wooden-beam cabin where his great-grandfather used to escape to drink bourbon, smoke cigars and swap stories with friends. The night was also leaving. The moon was a ghost. Still it would be sometime until the sun tinted pink the dew of the world’s richest grass. The tent was standing, but the tables and the pavilion had been cleared of the remains of last night’s party. Beyond rose the big house, white and old South. Reid saw a light in the kitchen, knew the coffee had been put on. But first he would check the horses. Always the horses.

It was quiet inside the stallion barn except for a few snorts, the paw of horseshoes against the straw-covered asphalt. In the distance, Reid heard the night guard’s truck leaving one of the other barns, stop at the next, making rounds. Reid walked down the wide center lane, the memory of the night and the woman still washing over him. He moved toward the far end to a stall on the right, the brass nameplate on the bottom half of its Dutch door inscribed Aztec Treasure. A hot-blooded champion who would have been gelded had his genes not been worth gold. Reid was halfway down the corridor when he heard a low moan. He quickened his steps toward the almost human sound, already murmuring, “Easy, champ. What’s the—”

His calming voice broke off as he met the horse’s eyes, white, wet without tears. His first thought was colic. He went to open the door, frowning when he saw it hadn’t been properly latched. He carefully slid back the solid slab of oak, nicked and deeply indented from the animal’s frequent fits. The horse didn’t rear up to claim his dominance as in the past. He only stared, his flanks heaving, his body trembling. Reid stepped toward the animal, then stopped, seeing the animal’s foreleg held off the ground, dangling at the knee. He stared as if what he saw was not real, only more of the night’s illusion. He felt the sweating horse’s heat, his own heat of shock and fear. Finally he turned. And saw his brother’s crumpled body lying in a bed of softest straw.

Chapter One

Saratoga Race Course

Saratoga Springs, NY

Dani touched a hard shoulder, a broad chest. Her hands were skilled, their touch delicate, her fingertips already knowing what would come. Softness, hardness, heat.

She stared into spiraling depths, dark eyes that drew her…frightened others. Such a complicated creature, this one. All male. Pure passion. Born to win.

She moved, and the eyes followed her. She saw the curve where light and dark met. A roll of white, a confession of what others didn’t see—the colorless vulnerability.

Her lips touched the thin ridge between the watching eyes. A kiss to calm. Her hand caressed. The eyes watched.

“You won’t even let ’em smell your sweat, will you, gorgeous?” The voice could have lulled lightning.

She squatted down, her hands skimming a lean leg. “Tough guy. All day, dreaming only of a fast track, sweet fillies. That’s all you want ’em to see, isn’t it?”

Her hands cupped a twin leg of muscle and power. The proud male head turned. The eyes watched. “Yessir, they like to talk about you. Say you came out of the womb ready to fight, born bad. I say you never stood a chance. They knew who your father was.” She stood, laid her cheek to silk. “Bloodlines.”

She stepped back. “All this time we’ve been together, and still, you’re giving me the show. Acting like you don’t care. Breaking my heart.”

Her hand followed a spine’s curves. “But you’re not fooling me, darlin’. Pretending not to care for nothing except ladies and long shots.” Her hand paused. She leaned in, her voice almost inaudible. “You see I knew another like you.”

She wrapped her arms around the thick neck of her current charge, felt the tremble beneath her cheek, the tremble in her heart. “Don’t worry,” she whispered into the dark softness. “You’ll always be my favorite.”

As she turned to leave, she felt the staying touch at the back of her neck, moving down to her hip. “A gullible girl would think you’re returning the compliment.”

She reached into her front pant pocket for the sought-after peppermint. “I, however, am not so naive.”

She stepped outside the stall, surveying the shedrow. It was the height of August meet, and anyone who was anyone in the Thoroughbred racing world had brought the best of their stables to Saratoga for the month. Twisting the bill of her baseball cap to the back of her head, Dani looked up past the overhang of the unenclosed barn. The dawn mist had burned off to a bright blue that soothed rather than stunned the eyes, the heat comfortable enough to drink a Saratoga Sunrise and not get dizzy.

The horses had been walked, bathed, rubbed and brushed. Legs had been carefully checked for swelling, cuts or abrasions, then swabbed with poultices of medicated mud or iced and bandaged, if needed. Manes had been combed, feet painted, clover tossed into the straw bed and liquid vitamins poured over the second feeding of oats. Morning workouts were a mere memory.

It was past noon, and the air was shifting, becoming keener, closer, a held breath. The Thoroughbreds felt it. The muscles in their impossibly slender legs twitched. Their muzzles reared up, taking deep draughts of the charged air. Post time was coming.

Her chores done until it was time to fetch the evening feed and prepare the night bedding, Dani surveyed the shedrow, her body always instinctively angled toward the red-and-white striped roofs across the street.

A few other grooms sat outside the cinder block dorms, sipping beers, shooting the breeze, looking, too, without realizing it to the semicircle of the grandstand and the clubhouse, ever aware of the hundreds of dreams sitting beneath those wooden peaks. Dreams that could die in a split second today, only to be resurrected tomorrow.

Behind her, Dani heard a voice feminine and falsely drawling.

“Granddad told me the stink in here would smell sweeter than the South in springtime one day.”

Dani glanced over her shoulder and saw the stable owner’s granddaughter, Cicely Fox, breathe in, swelling her bosom as if serving it on a platter.

“But honey, stink is still stink.” The blonde laughed, tossing back her head. It was the movement of purebreds. The jewels in her ears, the gold at her throat and wrists caught the August light as she strutted down the barn’s dirt lane, steadying herself on the arm of her cousin, Prescott.

“Watch where you step,” Prescott advised as he steered the woman to the right.

“O-o-o-o-oh!” Cicely squealed, sidestepping a trail of fresh horse droppings.

Dani’s gaze immediately went to the animals in their stalls. They’d tense at much less than a woman’s whine. She heard rustling as several pawed the straw. One nickered high. Another snorted. It sounded like a laugh.

“You there. You there, boy.”

It was a moment before Dani realized Prescott was calling to her.

“Clean up that mess. This barn’s not fit to walk through.”

Dani grabbed the shovel leaning against the rail, her fingers curling tight on the handle but her “Yessir” automatic. Once her reply might have been less abiding, but once she’d been young and reckless. No more. She knew her place, knew how dangerous it was to pretend otherwise.

“Goodness,” Cicely drawled as she passed, shaking out several tissues from her purse and holding them to her upturned nose. “Such big ol’ beautiful creatures.” Her laughter was breathy, billowing the white cover. “But such big ol’ nasties.”

Moving toward the pile and out of earshot, Dani muttered, “I suppose yours smell like mint julep.” She heard a low chuckle. Her body stiffened. When was she going to learn to be careful? She lifted her head, saw the man in the trainer’s office door, a ghost of a smile remaining on his face as he met her gaze, sent her a silver wink. Her body flinched, seized by surprise. The face she looked at was as familiar as her own.

Reid Hamilton.

She looked away as if a shadowing bill of a baseball cap would save her. She steadied herself on the shovel, feeling his scrutiny, her incredulity. Don’t let him come closer. If he came closer, touched her shoulder, spoke a familiar name, she would have to turn and look at him, the whites of her eyes signaling surrender.

She kept her head turned. She needed no study of this man. She knew that face too well—the high forehead, the abrupt angle of eyebrows, the overall excess of dark charm.

She heard him come near. She focused on a faraway point, her breathing shallow, soundless, willing her body solid again.

“The man’s blind, darling,” he whispered in that soft Southern singsong. She felt his breath warm on her neck. Her head turned without permission. She saw the dark sheen of his crown as he bent over and picked up a cream-colored square from amid the straw and sprinkles of feed.

He handed her the piece of stationery. “I believe this is yours?”

She stared at the invitation in her hand. Saratoga Under the Stars—A Grand Gala. If he’d read the card, he would’ve known it no more belonged to her than the sun suddenly too hot all around her. Yet hadn’t it been a night such as that five years ago? Didn’t she still hear the men’s sighs, their features soft with the last of boyhood, their hearts not yet hardened by disappointment or disbelief? Couldn’t she still see the women’s answering smiles as they’d watched, waited, wrapped in taffeta or silk, their beauty the very beat of the ball. Even now, she saw a young woman, a fine gentleman meeting, dancing, daring to draw close like undeniable dreams.

Dani closed her eyes, closed her heart. Who would think beyond these lowered lids such dreams were spun? Only she knew too well that desires rarely rely on reality. On the contrary, they seemed to delight in pairing the most unlikely alliances.

She opened her eyes, raised her head and met the man’s silver gaze. She shook her head, held out the invitation to Cicely watching them several stalls over.

Cicely stepped closer to look at the card. She unsnapped her purse and looked inside. “It must’ve fallen out when I got a tissue.” She eyed the invitation. “It was on the ground?”

“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.

“He has a son. My son.” It wasn’t a question. She wouldn’t ask. She wouldn’t let it be denied.

“Dani.” She heard pity in her father’s voice. The drum of her blood became louder.

“He’s my son. I saw him. I held him.” Her hands unclenched, reached out, pleading.

Mick exhaled. The stale smells of smoke and liquor came, clung to her. He tapped the cigarette on the ashtray’s edge. “That’s it? You held the boy in your arms and you decide he’s your child?” He kept tapping the cigarette after the ashes had fallen.

“The boy looks like Mom.” Her father stiffened, reached for his drink. “He looks like you.”

He set down the drink. His hand stayed curled around the glass. “Then he’ll have good luck with the ladies, but why would that make the boy your child?”

She looked away from the reasonableness in her father’s face.

“Reid Hamilton himself said the boy was his nephew.” Mick adopted a patient tone. “Why would he say that if it weren’t so?”

“You will have to tell me that. Tell me.” Her hand reached out, gripped her father’s hand holding the drink. Liquor sloshed over the sides of the glass. “Tell me.”

With that awful patronizing expression still on his face, her father pulled a fresh linen handkerchief from his pant pocket. No paper tissues for Mick Tate. Always a clean handkerchief, snow-white and starched. He ironed them himself. He had dried her tears with them. He now patted the whiskey off her hand.

“Today you saw Reid Hamilton with a child.” His tone stayed patient. “A child who’s about the same age as—”

She pulled her hand away. “I didn’t say anything about the child’s age.”

“No, but I’m guessing the boy isn’t five-foot-six and starting to shave or you wouldn’t have assumed he was your son, would you?” He smiled indulgently.

“He’s four. And he is my son.” She heard the plea in her voice and was ashamed.

“Dani, listen to me, five years ago, you weren’t much more than a child yourself.”

Five years ago. Her eighteenth birthday. Her father had been determined to mark the occasion. He had arranged the car, the dress, the engraved invitation that got her past the gate into Georgia Hamilton’s legendary pre-Derby dinner dance. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d strung the extra stars that seemed to light the sky that night over Hamilton Hills.

She stared at the man opposite her. His whole life Mick Tate had been trying to make fairy tales come true. That one night he had succeeded.

Three months later the pregnancy test had showed positive. Dani had stopped believing in fairy tales.

“What you did was the right thing to do.” Her father’s voice brought her back. “It was a brave thing.”

“To give my child up?” Pain sliced into her.

“To give your child more.” Mick lifted the cigarette to his lips, drawing deep, watching her. He picked up his drink. “Let me tell you what happened. Today you saw Reid Hamilton with a child about the same age as your baby would be, and it all became a bit too real. Much, much too real. Now the guilt gnaws at you. That’s what happened. Conscience.” He cradled his glass, looking into the amber liquid. “Such a liability.”

The waitress came to their table. Her father drained the glass and handed it to her. “Another double, darling. How ’bout you, Dani girl? Ready for that drink?”

She shook her head. Mick shrugged his shoulders and smiled at the waitress, watched the woman walk away. Dani studied her father’s profile. At one time, he could make her believe anything. It had been his charm. And her undoing.

He turned to her, saw her study. “You did the right thing, love. It’s no life for a child.”

“You didn’t give me up.” She spoke quietly.

“No, but after your mother died, I had Nanny to look after you until she got sick. By that time, you were old enough to come with me. Still, don’t think I wouldn’t have sent you to your mother’s family if they would have had you. Sons of bitches. With their fat bank accounts and their precious reputations, thinking they can pick and choose their kin like ordering from a Chinese menu.” He reached for the drink no longer there, the burn of anger and alcohol in his eyes. “No, I didn’t give you up. I was too damn selfish. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want more for you than bouncing from track to track, living in roach boxes, hoping for a triple to get us out of last week’s hole.”

The waitress returned and set the drink on the table. Mick lifted the glass, gave the woman a wink and took a long swallow. He put the glass down, the look he gave the liquor more appreciative than the one granted the waitress.

“Believe me…” He leaned back too far in his chair. He teetered for a moment, then steadied. “Your child has more.”

She looked at this man who had brought her to a magical place where horses flew and money multiplied and her mother had always laughed long and full while bits of betting slips floated through the air like confetti. “My baby had a birthmark. A small V-shape on his right thigh. The boy with Reid today has the same mark. He’s my child.”

Her father looked down, studied the liquor.

“He’s my child.” She waited. A song started to play on the jukebox. Sudden laughter across the room made her jump, but at their table, there was only silence.

“A blood test will prove it.”

Her father looked up, studied her. “I did it for the boy.” He looked away. “I did it for you.”

She sat perfectly still, fearing one wrong word, one revealing movement, and he’d stop. Her father took a drink, and then another until when he set the glass down, his hand didn’t shake anymore. She held her breath, the blood humming in her head.

“You were in trouble. I was always in trouble. You know all that.” His hand waved a dismissal before reaching for his cigarettes. “We both wanted to give the child more. The Hamiltons could give him more. He’s growing up well taken care of, never wanting. Plus these people aren’t strangers. They’re his real family. He’s with his father, for Pete’s sake.” Mick took a quick drink.

“Reid doesn’t even know the boy is his son.” The truth was worse in her own thin voice.

“If he’d known the child was his, he might’ve tried to find out who the mother was. I wanted to protect you.”

“He didn’t know who I was that night. No one did.”

“What if he’d decided to find out? What if he’d found out the mother of his child wasn’t some mysterious Southern deb but the gal who mucked out the shedrow stalls?”

It was true. She’d deceived Reid first.

Mick gestured, the ash falling off his cigarette on to the scarred table. “We’re talking the Bluegrass, darling. Where people are assessed just like the horses—by their pedigree. You know that.” He drank, the liquor going down faster. His glass hit the table too hard. “You know that.”

She watched him raise his empty glass as the waitress passed nearby. He’d never forgiven her mother’s family for not believing he’d loved their daughter. They’d thought he was after her money. But he had loved her. He loved her still.

He set the glass on the waitress’s tray, turned back to Dani. “I wasn’t going to see this child treated like the dung they tiptoe past on their way to the box seats.”

She wanted to protest Reid wouldn’t be like that, but she had no right. If she’d been sure, she would have gone to him when she first found out she was pregnant. She hadn’t. An elegant illusion named Danielle DeVries had bewitched Reid that night. The reality was a stable groom named Dani Tate. Once he had learned of her deception, why would he have had anything to do with her?

“The tests from the grandmother’s blood proved the boy was family, and that’s all they wanted to know. Now he’ll grow up a Hamilton. As he should.” Dani knew if her father had a drink, he would’ve raised it in a toast.

“Plus the price on the offspring of a dead son would be much higher, wouldn’t it?”

She’d surprised him, catching him before he could school his expression. She loved her father but she knew his flaws. She felt a whirling in her empty stomach and was afraid she was going to be sick.

He masked his surprise, lit a fresh cigarette, looked to see if the waitress was coming. “I was in trouble. You know that.”

Yes, she’d known that. They’d gone south the next day. Kentucky had always been home, but her father and she worked the East Coast circuit, their location usually dependent on how many miles her father needed between himself and the bookies he owed. Eventually things would cool off or her father would hit enough daily doubles to go home to Kentucky. They had been on their way to Florida when Dani had heard about the accident at Hamilton Hills. She had been working at Hialeah Park when she’d learned she was pregnant. After the baby was born, she’d run, working the circuit west to Santa Anita Park, then up north to Portland Meadows, never staying too long in any one spot. Eventually she’d circled back to the East, settling on Fox Run Farm in upstate New York. She’d never gone back to the Bluegrass.

“I had the lawyer who handled the arrangements only ask for what I needed. Not a penny extra.” Her father’s drink arrived. The drone of blood in Dani’s head became louder. She watched him take a long sip. He leaned back, laced his fingers together like a reasonable man. “What’s fair is fair.”

“You sold your own grandson.” She spoke from the pain and sorrow that always ran through her sparse veins.

His hand slapped the table. “It wasn’t like that.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “You couldn’t give the boy the life he deserved. I did.”

There was the rush of blood in her head, the sour taste in her mouth, and the terrible truth. She stood up too fast, her chair scraping the faded floor.

“Where are you going?”

She looked blindly at her father, shook her head. She didn’t know. She was working on instinct now.

“Dani, sit down. Listen to me.” His calm tone only made the confusion inside her worse. She gripped the chair. Her father’s eyes were bright from whiskey but his speech was still clear, his stare steady. “You wanted your child to have the best, and he does. He’s safe and he’s loved.”

“He’s healthy, too. And handsome.” She heard her own anguish. She looked away, her gaze darting about the dim room, unable to look directly at anything. The deep, frantic mix of emotions inside her threatened. She closed her eyes, afraid to make any movement at all. When she opened them, she saw the brightness in her father’s eyes had become moist, brilliant.

“You need a drink, Dani.”

“I don’t need a drink.”

“Something to eat.” She heard the caring.

She shook her head.

“You’re tired. Go get a good night’s rest.”

“I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to drink.” She hung on to the edge of the chair, her knees buckling, her strength gone. Pain and longing were the only life left inside her.

“I want my baby.”

SHE WENT HOME. Not to the small anonymous room in town she’d rented with her percent of recent winnings, but to the only home she’d ever known. The night guard waved her through without a glance at the employee tag she wore around her neck. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her here after hours.

She parked in the almost empty lot and cut across the gravel and grass to the barns. The cinder block dormitories were dark. The 4:00 a.m. feeding always came too fast.

The shedrow was sleeping. Lights were minimal—the silent flare of a solitary cigarette; subtle security lights turned the night from black to gray; the wink of fireflies.

She walked on, the turf yielding, the gravel, graveyard gray. All paths led to the track. All ended at the winner’s circle. She breathed in the incense of unspoken dreams, the sweat of loss, the rare sweet sachet of success.

Home.

Where the stakes were high. And second chances few.

One stumble and it could be over. She’d seen it happen as recently as last Thursday in the fourth. Maybe it was the sloppy track? Maybe it was a small hole, a bad step? Who knows? One minute a thousand-pound machine is barreling toward glory; the next, a winch is pulling its carcass across the finish line.

She followed the bend of the training track, seeing horses and riders where there were none.

A son. Her son. She grabbed the track’s outside rail and held fast. In a world where second chances were rare, she knew she’d been given a gift.

She walked the track’s perimeter, circling with the phantoms of those who’d tried and won and those who’d tried and lost. It had been a night much blacker than this when her knees had pulled up and her body had clenched and pain at first not much more than a woman’s weeping had become a storm. Her legs had split, and she had stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped feeling until there was a rush of warmth and a wail of life to match her own. The night had ended then. The darkness had lifted and, in a haze, she’d seen a blood-streaked bundle, white and pink and so pretty, she’d held out her hands. They’d laid him naked on her breast. It wasn’t enough. She’d asked for a little more time. They’d brought him to her washed and wrapped in blankets. She’d inspected every inch of that tiny body, memorizing, promising not to forget, trying to explain. She fell asleep, cradling him in her arms. He’d been gone when she awoke. She’d never touched her baby again.

Until today.

Her hands held each other now as she walked with the night’s ghosts. She had no rights, she knew that. She had relinquished all claims. She would never demand anything—not family or love or forgiveness. She would ask for nothing from the child or his father. But would it be so wrong to be near, to watch the child grow from a toddler to a boy to a man? Invisible, silent, watching, protecting, she would be no more than the specters surrounding her now. Surely it wasn’t asking too much?

Her father was right. The child had a home, a family, a name. She would do nothing to jeopardize that. She would ask for nothing, expect nothing. She had no rights.

But she’d given her son up once. She wouldn’t give him up again.

NOW WAS the one moment Reid knew peace—when the morning was dawn, soft and moist and warm as the steam rising from the barrels of water heating in the backstretch. When all the world was vague and muffled—the hooves on the turf, the talk between the trainers huddled at the rail, watching their charges. It wouldn’t last long. The mist would break, and the horses, the people would no longer be illusions in the lavender August light. Everything would become real once more, and Reid would remember that what was one minute could be gone the next. A turn of the head, a chance look and whole lives could change. But, for now, moving though the morning haze, he might have been dreaming.

He joined his trainer, Smiley Woods, at the rail. Smiley had trained two of Hamilton Hills’ three Derby champions, and Reid knew the man would be welcome at any farm he choose. He’d even told him so when Hamilton Hills’ financial state became public, and the offers for Smiley’s services began pouring in. But Smiley had only shook his head and said, “This is where I belong.” Such was the spell Hamilton Hills could cast.

Reid nodded now to the one man he still trusted, then turned his attention back to the horse coming down the lane.

“What do you think?”

The horse trotted by, his ears pinned, his hind end bouncing, pulling so hard at the reins, his rider was gritting his teeth. “He’s a bombshell.”

About a hundred yards away, the animal reared up, but the exercise boy was ready for him and kicked him forward. A few lengths down the rail, the Fox Run Farm trainer leaned out over the rail and shouted, “Contain him.”

Smiley watched the horse head for the turn. He was a mammoth man with a perpetual scowl that had earned him his nickname. But despite his size and scowl, there was a constant calm around him. The horses had taught him to walk slowly and speak softly.

“I knew a gelding once who moved like that in the back end, and he—”

He broke off, a life at the racetrack having schooled him in superstitions and jinxes. “I would want to see some X rays,” was all he’d say.

Reid watched the dark colt, long-legged, tight-bellied, all reckless desire to run, and although a healthy respect for curses and hexes wouldn’t permit either man to say this aloud, both knew what they saw as the dark horse shot past them. It could have been Aztec Treasure flying across the soft soil.

“He’s a stall walker.” Smiley’s gaze never left the colt. “Guard told me he had a fit last night, pawing at the door and snorting, running in circles as if already on the track. The vets leave him to last. He’ll take a nip as soon as your head is turned. Imagine he likes to kick too, but the groom who’s with him now has been with him through the infections and the fracture, and they say he’s almost playful with her.”

They watched the animal go wide, grinding his bit, fighting the rider.

“Horse does love to run though.”

Reid looked at the trainer, saw his rare smile of secret delight reserved solely for Thoroughbreds and Kentucky bourbon.

Smiley looked at his stopwatch, then back at the horse. “Some that ornery are just mean or maybe scared. This one though, he thinks he’s superior. You can see it in his eyes. There’s no wildness there or fear. Just one hundred percent insolence.”

“His dam was Every Bit A Lady. Good grass mare. Had some success in the New York stakes.”

Smiley nodded. “As steady as they come.”

“This one though—he’s up, he’s down. The Foxes have about written him off as one big mistake.”

Smiley silently studied the horse.

“He’s running in a claimer tomorrow.”

The large man glanced over. “And I thought you came up to Saratoga for all the high society hoopla?”

Reid returned the other man’s wry smile. Both knew the invitations had been few after the accident and the investigation. Those that did come now went unanswered.

Smiley looked back across the oval. “But, here you are, scouting for salvation.”

Reid followed his trainer’s gaze. They’d both seen it happen before. One horse. That’s all that was needed. A few healthy purses on the track, then an enviable income earned in the breeding shed for a good number of years. One horse.

The two men stood so close, their elbows hit as they leaned on the rail and watched the horse run, tail streaming straight out, nose, neck, back all aligned, born like hope, to go forward.

“He’s had a few setbacks, hasn’t been able to get his performance back up. They wanted him to have some impressive runs before they turned him out to stud. He only started one season before he was waylaid with ailments. I’m betting he’s got a few wins in him.”

Smiley, as always, watched the horse. “I’ll give you my best.”

It was the closest thing to a promise at the track.

“I’ll work with you on this one.” Reid saw the trainer slip him a glance. “We should have enough time until the rains come. If they do come early, I’ll ship him south the last few weeks, but I’ll go with him.”

“You taking this one personal, huh?”

The horse went by at a walk now. The rider exited the track, steering the animal toward the barns.

“It’s always personal.”

The animal’s head swung from side to side and his ears lay flat as he fought being reined in. Reid headed toward the colt, following the winded, damp horse as if already assured redemption.

The colt’s ears were still pinned when they reached the barns. A female groom giving a leg up to a rider watched the horse’s return, then crossed the soft dirt toward the animal. She was thin with the lean frame that comes from excessive work or excessive worry. Her face was unadorned and her hair in the single simple braid of a young girl. But as she moved toward the animal, Reid saw beneath her straight-legged denims and loose T-shirt, the fullness of breasts, the curves of hips, the body of a woman.

“Get the hose for this one,” the rider warned as he dismounted. “He’ll never stand still for the sponge.”

The groom reached behind the horse’s head and scratched him on the spot of the withers where horses can’t reach. Reid saw the animal’s head turn to look at the diminutive woman. The colt’s ears pricked forward.

“He’ll let me know,” the groom replied. “He’s the boss.”

Reid moved toward the horse as the woman took something from her pocket, offered it in her palm to the animal. “A peppermint, a carrot or two, and he’s a lamb,” she told the rider as the horse nuzzled her palm. “He just likes to remind you of who he is.”

She looked even smaller next to the beast she still soothed. She stroked the horse’s heaving side. Her movements were unhurried, reassuring, the quiet, consistent gestures of hands that had given care their whole life.

“They tell me you’re the only groom he’ll have.” Reid moved closer to the horse.

She looked up, meeting his gaze. He had heard the soft Kentucky in her drawl but there was more, something else vague but still familiar. He looked into the pale green of her eyes, clear as water, and, for a moment, was disoriented. She turned her head away, her long braid swinging forward, falling over her shoulder, across the rise of her breast. There was the warmth of the animal between them and the lingering uneasy confusion created by the woman’s profile. Then Reid remembered. She was the woman who’d caught his nephew yesterday when the boy had run wild across the backside.

“We’ve met, haven’t we?”

Chapter Three

He saw fear in her pale green eyes. He hadn’t meant to frighten her. He knew it wasn’t de rigueur for the owners and jockeys to talk to the grooms. The track was divided into two worlds—the racing set and the training set. He, however, had always lived in both and even if he hadn’t, wouldn’t have abided such a distinction.

“Yesterday, here at the stables.” He smiled to put the woman at ease. Those light green eyes looked at him. “Weren’t you the one who corralled my nephew? Little guy?” He measured a height of about three feet with his hands. “Faster than the speed of light?”

She nodded, but didn’t return his smile.

He stepped back, observing once more the animal’s conformation, the legs, etched, muscular columns stacked straight and clean. Looking at them alone was a pleasure.

“How is he?” the groom asked.

He looked at her. Her beauty was quiet. A man wouldn’t see it at the first glance nor probably the second, but if he was wise enough to look a third time as Reid did now, he would wonder how he’d missed it before. “Who?” he asked.

“The boy.” She looked away from him as she spoke, busied herself removing the saddle. The horse swung his head toward him.

“Sleeping I hope, but that’s a long shot. Odds are he’s already up, pestering his grandmother for a Moon Pie.”

“A Moon Pie?” The groom paused, the horse’s tack in her arms. “In the morning?”

Reid stepped forward and took the tack from her with such a natural movement, she didn’t object until it was no longer in her hands. He ignored her protests, hoisting the tack higher and marveling at the small woman’s strength. “His favorite breakfast. I don’t doubt he gets it now and again when I’m safely out of sight. My mother spoils him rotten.”

As he turned from the tack stand, he saw the girl’s lips curve and knew he’d put her at ease. She had a lovely full-lipped smile. He smiled back at her. “How long have you groomed for this outfit?”

“Almost two years.”

He nodded toward the horse. “You took care of him when he fractured his pelvis?”

“And when he had the lung infection, the colic.” Her smile disappeared, leaving a sudden maturity in her face far beyond her years.

“No wonder he trusts you. You’ve stuck by him.”

“He’s just had a bit of bad luck is all.” The colt shuffled. She caressed the animal’s neck in silent communication. “That doesn’t mean you abandon him.”

A cloud came across the woman’s features and her eyes darkened to the green of May. She turned, led the horse to a waiting pail of soapy water.

“Loyalty. I like that.” Reid thought of the innuendo following his brother’s death and Aztec Treasure’s fatal injury. The investigation had eventually ruled the incident an accident, but most said that was only because there was no evidence to prove otherwise. Reid still heard the whispers when he walked into a room.

“Obviously so does he,” Reid noted as the horse rested his nose on the woman’s shoulder.

The woman didn’t look at him as she began the colt’s bath. Reid sensed he had made her uncomfortable again. He should go, let her do her work. Still he stood, watching her slip the sponge rhythmically across withers to loins, the steam rising from the colt’s flanks.

“You just have to pay him a little attention now and then. Everybody is too quick to forget who he is.” She rinsed the horse. “But he knows exactly who he is.”

She finished putting on the cold-water bandages and blanketed the colt. “A winner,” she said quietly as she watched the horse being led away by a hot walker. She looked directly at Reid. “It’s his meanness they talk about but it’s his heart they’ll remember.”

Reid saw in her expression she loved the animal as only grooms could—with the bonds of a mother to a child. He understood. He himself was drawn to the colt. He looked at the horse being hand-walked and knew there was something that colt could give him. A dream.

He turned back to the woman. The sensation remained as if she, too, had the answers to endless questions. The sense of familiarity returned, stronger this time, obviously fostered by their shared fondness for the horse being led around and around the walking ring.

The groom glanced up and saw his study. She busied herself cleaning up, uncomfortable once more. He should go. His own reluctance surprised him. He picked up the pail for her. Her hand shot out, grabbed the pail’s handle.

“Thank you.” She squared her feet, made her stance firm but he saw from her inability to hold his gaze, she was ill at ease. He let go of the bucket.

“Goodbye…” Funny he should feel such an intimacy, yet he didn’t even know her name.

“Goodbye.” She set the pail down and squatted, pretending to tighten her shoelaces. Out of the corners of her eyes, she watched him walk away. She thought about the boy. She wouldn’t let herself think about the man, the way even now her breath came hot and thick. She could only think about the boy. Nothing else.

Saratoga’s closing day was next Monday, Labor Day. Many of the outfits were packing up this weekend, moving on to Belmont Park, then south for the winter. Dani was going south, too, but not with Solstice and the Fox Run team. She was going home to Kentucky and the Keeneland Racecourse, only fields away from Hamilton Hills. She hadn’t told anyone. She had to tell the colt first. The horse already knew something was changing. He’d been edgy, walking the stall more, dancing with a jump in the air on his front legs and two or three head tosses. She had to tell him today.

She saw the walker leading the animal back, a look in the horse’s eye as if he were listening to something far away, something humans could never hear or see. She took the lead line, murmured, “There, now,” heard the tenderness in her voice.

She led him into his freshly-bedded stall, he always seeming too big for his box. The late summer light found the straw and turned it blond. She picked up the hard brush and the currycomb, and as she rubbed, she explained everything in a low voice that now held a clef of sadness. She found the soft brush and began to alternate a hard stroke with a soft one, the rhythm matching her murmurs of hope and fear, and her hands dully cramping.

She crouched to the side, running her hand down the front of the legs, feeling for the heat or swelling that signaled hurting. “Staying away isn’t a choice, you see. In fact, there is no choice. All right, yes, some will say there’s always a choice, and in my head, I know that.”

She rubbed the legs with a mix of alcohol and liniment. “But in my heart, there is no choice. I have to go. Or it will be like giving him up all over again.” She wrapped the legs with clean white cotton from the ankle to just below the knee and then wrapped them again with flannel, careful they were tight enough to stay but not too tight to cause the legs to fill with fluid. “I’m only going to be nearby, you see. Not close enough to cause any trouble but close enough to get a glimpse or two, watch him grow. God, you should see him. Maybe you did. Yesterday. Right here at the barns. Yesterday. I held him in my arms.”

She fell silent so the shake in her hands would stop, and she could fasten the last steel pin.

She straightened, unfastened the tethered horse, removed his halter. “I have to go, Solstice. He’s my child, you see.”

She turned, bent to move the feed tub, when she felt a breath along the left curve of her neck and then, the sharp edges of teeth closing around her ear. She didn’t move. Neither did the horse. A slight bearing down and her ear would be his. A long second went by. The pressure along her flesh stayed the same, not hard enough to cut the flesh but tight enough to hold on. Another second passed. She heard the scratching of another groom raking outside. She stood with the perfect stillness that had bonded her to this horse. As soon as they’d met, she’d recognized the animal’s need for a space to call on and always find calm. After that, when he had come to her and butted her shoulder or nipped the thin cotton cloth on her back, she’d stood absolutely still, giving him one area of quiet in a noisy, confusing world.

She calmly waited, not touching him, not moving. Several minutes passed. Solstice’s mouth opened and his moist grip released her. She straightened, standing a little off to his side. His head turned to her. His eyes, like all horses, set wide so that even when he looked at her, he always seemed to be looking past her. Except this time. She stared at that animal, and he stared back at her without mistake. She saw the white and black of his eyes and within them, a look that seemed to say, “I was listening.” Like she had done when she’d first come and had listened and heard too much noise inside him.

THE NEXT DAY she led this animal she loved to the paddock. His trainer had been eyeing the second tier of stakes races for two-year-olds when Solstice’s colic had come. His other injuries had dropped him back further. His failure to rally and his willfulness had brought him to today’s claiming race. Still he was nickering and pulling like it was Derby Day, and she had to jerk the reins a couple times to stop him from doing his dance. He’d known he was going to race when his hay and water had been removed after breakfast, but she suspected his restlessness also stemmed from her divided attention. Even as they entered the circle of the paddock, she couldn’t help scanning the crowd. She was always looking now for Reid and the child. She had hoped they’d be with the Foxes, but it was only Prescott and his grandfather who followed the jockey and Solstice’s trainer to the saddling enclosure and into the walking ring.

Then she saw them—Reid, her son, her son—at the outside fence. Reid was watching the horse. The child’s attention was everywhere—to the horses, the milling crowd, the afternoon light, the call of music. She heard, “Riders, up,” and the jockey came forward for a leg up. The cup of a hand was all the connection she would have with the dark-eyed, dark-skinned man about to ride Solstice, but she willed a win into that palm.

The racetrack workers usually gathered at the course’s backstretch to watch the races. Dani, however, headed to the grandstand fence, close to her horse, close to her son and his father.

Another Fox Run groom joined her at the rail as the post parade began. “He’ll park,” he assured her, folding a slice of pizza in half and taking a large bite. “He’s a speedball.”

Dani watched Solstice following the pony girl and the palomino. The horse had seemed to relax as soon as the saddle was put on his back. In his gait was a certainty as he went from a walk to a jog to a canter. Even into the starting gate, always a moment of anxiety, Solstice strode in and waited as if already assured a win.

Dani waited, the sun on her shoulders, her hands holding on to the cool metal fence. The trumpet blast sounded. For a beat, the world went still. Then the gates opened.

“And they’re off,” she whispered, the breeze catching her words and carrying them up, up above to where women in wide hats sipped champagne, a summer strawberry split on each flute’s rim, and her son sat beside his father on spindly bentwood chairs.

The colt broke clean but at the first turn, was six horses back, two lanes from the rail. Still the steady beat to his stride echoed his earlier assurance of being the only winner in this race. He lengthened his stride, passing until he was in fourth position by the second turn. There he stayed as if waiting. Dani saw the hole between the second and third horse and Solstice slip through it as easily as entering a dream, and her voice joined the swell of the crowd as the horse, her horse, headed down the homestretch, the strong August sun turning his coat purple and the daylight decreasing between him and the leader, a gray with white stockings.

Solstice’s proud black head was at the other horse’s shoulder, then neck, the jockey coiled low on his back, a passenger now. Three strides to the wire, the heads aligned until Solstice lengthened his neck and stuck his nose in front of the favorite’s.

The tote board flashed Photo Finish but Dani was already crying, having no doubt who won and not caring that the other groom was chuckling over her reaction to an ordinary race. Solstice cantered, then turned toward the winner’s circle as Dani came to meet him. She smiled at him as the results came up on the board, and they moved into the winner’s circle but once again, Solstice’s looks went around her as if she were in the way.

They came out of the winner’s circle and were heading to the test barn when a man came out and hung the tag on Solstice’s bridle. Horses that ran in a claiming race were up for grabs, and Dani knew the tag now swinging against Solstice’s profile meant another trainer had claimed him. Still she stopped and stared at the tag as if she’d never seen such a thing before. She heard the assistant trainer swear, but the head trainer was stoic, Prescott and his grandfather indifferent. They still got the purse. But whoever had put down the required amount of cash in the racing secretary’s office and dropped the claim slip got the colt. It happened all the time.

She was also going away, Dani reasoned. She too had been claimed. Still the reckless excitement of the win left her as she led the animal toward the spit box. She heard a child’s voice and thought she was imagining it. Then she heard Reid’s voice answering, “Yes, that black beauty there.” She looked and saw Reid and Trey coming toward her and Solstice until she was only conscious of the man, the boy, the animal.

Reid smiled and nodded hello as he came up and stood next to her at the horse’s side. Her son stood next to him, holding his father’s hand, looking up at the huge animal.

The man ran a knuckle gently along the horse’s damp neck. “Ready to come home?” he asked.

Dani looked at Solstice. The animal looked right through her.

Hamilton Hills Farm

Lexington, Kentucky

HAMILTON HILLS had been built high on an emerald plateau as if destined for greatness from the beginning. Reid looked out across the acres of legendary lush grass, the reaching lines of white fence and knew the idyllic scene was an illusion. The farm that had set the standard for achievement in the Thoroughbred industry for half a century had died with his brother.

Still, few could view the vast tranquillity spread out before him and not believe a better tomorrow was coming. Reid was one of them. He looked at the land steadfast in its innocence and simplicity and was glad to be home. He’d brought the horse. And the woman. The woman with the deep silence and the sure hands. Her name was Dani Tate. He didn’t need another groom. He barely managed to give the men that were left three square meals, a roof over their heads and an adequate salary. But horses were creatures of habit, and it was more than track superstition that made a trainer reluctant to break up a good horse-groom team. Everyone knew the stories of perfectly healthy horses dropping dead for no reason after being separated from a favorite groom. So when the woman had offered to come to Hamilton Hills with the colt, he’d said yes. In fact, he hadn’t even been surprised when she’d asked. She seemed to need the horse as much as the horse needed her. Now Reid needed them both.

He headed toward the barns, passing the small white building with peeling red trim that was the workers’ canteen. It should’ve been closed down, but it seemed like such a small tribute to the workers who had remained, faithful to the ideal that had been Hamilton Hills.

He passed the equine swimming pool, remembering his brother’s pleasure when it had been built, back when he had mortgaged all their futures, before the bloodstock market collapsed. The pool was empty except for leaves; the underwater treadmills and Jacuzzis used to treat the racehorses’ strains and sprains long gone. The private veterinary hospital was shut down also as were two-thirds of the barns, their residents having been led several years ago through the mist, across the fields to the auction block at Keeneland Racecourse.

He rounded the half-mile training track his father had built years ago when he tired of shipping a hundred yearlings daily to a rental track eight miles away. This year, there were only thirty-two yearlings in the training barn. Yet, last season, there had been only eighteen.

One side of the heavy double-wide door on Barn 4 was rolled back, the smells of sweet clover, oil soap and leather meeting Reid as he entered. Smells that had washed through his dreams since he was a child; smells that were now becoming like home to his own nephew.

Several stalls down from the entrance, Bennie Montano was leveling the dirt floor with a wooden rake, humming softly. He looked up as Reid came in.

“Morning, Bennie.”

The man leaned on his rake. “Morning, boss.” Dust danced in the sunlight trying to pierce the cool, dim interior.

“Everybody settling in?” Reid referred to the horse and the woman, both who’d arrived in the van yesterday.

The dark-eyed man looked at Reid. “She’s a woman.”

Reid looked at the man who’d been grooming at Hamilton Hills since Reid was a boy. After Reid’s father died, it was Bennie who’d brought Reid to the barn, gave him a shot from the bottle of rye he always kept buried deep in the bran barrel and sat with him until the day was nothing but barn lights and deep blue sky.

“That’s true. The groom’s a young woman,” Reid said in a tone that asked if that would be a problem.

“Personally, it don’t matter to me. The women seem to have a way about them with the horses, taking care of them as if they were their own kids. And this one, she’s skinny but strong. You can see the way she looks at that horse, she thinks of the animal like family. But…”

Reid frowned, waited for the man to continue.

“This crew is all men, and some of them might not be as gentlemanly as me.”

“Her father was a racetracker. She told me she was practically born on the backside. I’m sure she’s seen the less gentlemanly aspects of the shedrow and knows how to take care of herself.” Reid’s frown deepened.

“Then, there’s the other old-timers. They’ll be wondering why some spanking new sweet young thing gets the new hope.”

Reid scowled at his head groom. “She’s been grooming this colt for over two years. I brought her here for the horse.”

Bennie eyed the other man. “We don’t need no more trouble.”

The old man was right. Women were common in the racing world, but a young, pretty girl in the middle of an all-male crew could cause problems. Reid should’ve realized that even before Bennie brought it up. If he’d been thinking straighter, he would’ve told the girl no when she asked to come aboard, but he had wanted her, truth be told. He had wanted her for the horse.

“There’ll be no trouble. Should you see signs otherwise, I want to know about it, understand?”

Bennie nodded.

“Is she here?”

“She’s down in number 20 with the new hope.”

Reid strode to the barn’s far end, angry with himself and his own shortsightedness. The girl had come eight hundred miles. He wasn’t going to tell her to turn around and leave. He could find her something at Keeneland, but, bottom line, he didn’t want her to go. He needed her here. He wanted her here, he realized as he moved through the shadows and sunbeams.

He would keep an eye on her and the men, he decided as he passed too many empty stalls. His crew were good men, but still Bennie was right—they were men, and the new groom was a young, single, attractive woman. Hamilton Hills didn’t need any more trouble.

He heard her voice like a lullaby before he reached the stall almost at the end of the wide lane. She spoke too softly for him to hear the words but he knew from the singsong rhythm, she was promising the animal only good things. Past the half-opened stall door, he saw her. She was at the horse’s side, speaking into that huge black neck that blocked Reid from her view. The light turned the animal’s coat blue and the straw gleamed. He heard a wistful, sad note in the soft song now as he moved toward the stall and wondered what sorrows this young woman had. The horse watched him as he approached, then swung his head and curved his neck around the woman in a horse hug. Not wanting to startle the woman, Reid made his steps heavier.

“Good morning.”

He sensed rather than saw her fear. If a filly, she would have been skittish and difficult to manage. The colt also felt her nervousness and swung his head up, shuffled his front feet. The woman had been brought here to keep the horse calm. Bennie was right. He’d made a mistake, but he’d deal with it later. Right now, he wanted to calm the woman—and the horse.

She’d already become aware of her charge’s shift in mood and had begun the soft crooning that lulled him. Reid saw the calm come over the animal as if bewitched, and he marveled at this wisp of a woman’s power. The horse eyed him.

“So you two made it?”

“Yessir.” She kept distance between them.

He shook his head. “I’m Reid, Dani. Just Reid.”

She nodded, not looking at him.

“So what does our fella here think of his new home?”

“Clover hay, sweet feed, Kentucky bluegrass.” She smiled her gentle smile and patted the horse’s cheek. “He’ll be happy here.”

“What about you?”

She looked at him, her eyes again startled as if unaccustomed to questions about herself. He looked away from her mouth, away from her slightly parted, full lips that struck him as particularly vulnerable. The sense that it was a mistake bringing this woman here became stronger. “You’re all situated?”

She nodded, stroking the horse’s neck.

“Everything satisfactory?”

“Yessir.”

“Reid,” he reminded.

“Reid,” she dutifully repeated.

Something in that soft utterance stopped him. He looked at the woman for several silent seconds before dismissing the sensation. Still Bennie’s dire predictions lingered in his mind.

“You’ve met some of the crew? You rode down with them, right?”

Her hand stilled on the horse’s coat. “Yes.”

“And you’ve met a few more since you got here?”

“Yes.” Her long hair was sleeked back across her crown in her customary braid, and as opposed to the horse’s dark gleam, it turned fawn in the light. She looked at him, waiting for him to make the point he was bumbling toward. The colt shifted his weight.

“You’ve probably noticed they’re all men?”

She looked confused. “Yes,” she answered with a high note of question.

“I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.” At the moment, he was the one feeling uncomfortable as the small woman stared at him. He saw her cheeks color, but it wasn’t until she spoke, he realized her flush was more from anger than embarrassment.

“I’ll take care of your horse, Mr. Hamilton—”

He didn’t bother to correct her.

“And I’ll take care of myself.” Her voice was resolute but low and steady, not wanting to spook the horse.

“Good, but should something occur otherwise between you and the crew, I expect you’ll tell me directly.”

She paused as if struggling with her answer. Finally she nodded.

He knew she was lying.

She knew he knew.

“We’ll turn Solstice out today, give him a little rest after the trip. You can check in the training barn, see if they need any help with the yearlings.”

She nodded.

“Have him tacked up for training early tomorrow.” He felt her gaze on him as he walked back to the front of the barn. He met Bennie coming out of the barn’s office.

“What house is she in?” he asked, referring to the tenant residences scattered around the property.

“The one out past the foaling barn.”

Reid looked to the other end of the barn, saw Dani’s slight silhouette as she stepped outside the stall. “I want her closer.”

Bennie scratched his wiry head. “There are none closer. That’s it.”

Reid thought a moment, his gaze on the woman until she disappeared back into the stall. “There’s the cabin at the one end of the lower pasture. It can be seen from the main house. I’ll have it aired out and cleaned up. Move her in there tomorrow.”

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