Kathleen O'Reilly - Courting Disaster

Hugh smiled and waved the reminder off with a careless hand. “I liked you, Demetri.”

“It was a boneheaded move,” Demetri reminded him.

“You were a friend.”

“So are you. Take the money. It’ll be an infusion of cash to tide Quest over until the ban has lifted.”

Hugh shook his head, not even hesitating. “Put your wallet away. First Elizabeth, now you.”

There was that name again, rolling in his head. He could feel the itch in his fingers, the ache in his body, the challenge. Always the challenge. “Elizabeth?”

“The money’s not needed here,” answered Hugh, slamming down his glass. “Thomas won’t take any loan, and I don’t want to discuss it any longer. For over sixty years I’ve been picking out the best legs, the biggest hearts and the horses that kept going when they had nothing left to give. After I retired, Thomas ran these stables with honor and integrity. They’re not going to take that away from us now.”

“Talk to Thomas. Please.”

Hugh sighed, downed the remainder of his bourbon and shook his head. “No.”

Okay, so the honest, aboveboard ways weren’t going to work. Not a surprise. “My teammate wants to stable some horses here. Would you mind if I show him around?”

“Stabling horses here? While people suspect us of cheating to win, and we can no longer race our own horses? Is this another cockamamy way of throwing money in my direction?”

Demetri had been stabling horses at Quest for nearly ten years. Last spring the Prestons’ own champion Leopold’s Legacy was on his way to winning the Triple Crown when a DNA test was required because of a discrepancy in the Jockey Association’s computer records. The results revealed that the stallion’s sire was not Apollo’s Ice, as listed, and a racing ban was imposed on all majority-owned Quest horses. The integrity of the stables had come into question and owners began to remove their horses. But Demetri could help add more horses to Quest Stables. Boarding fees didn’t bring in nearly as much as stud fees or racing purses, but whatever worked.

“No,” he lied. “Definitely not. He’s new to horses.” Actually, Oliver didn’t know that he was stabling horses at Quest. But he would soon. Demetri would buy them, Oliver would “own” them and Quest would stable them. Everybody was a winner.

Oliver was in his debut season as the number two driver for Team Sterling, with the promise of a great career ahead of him, assuming he didn’t muck it up. Young at twenty-two, he was powerful and aggressive, and what he didn’t have in brains, he made up for in grande cojones and gamesmanship.

Some of the other drivers didn’t care for Oliver. They said he was too aggressive, too manipulative, always chasing the top step of the podium, rather than driving for the team, but that was the exact reason that he and Demetri worked well together. It wasn’t about the team, it was only about the win. And James Sterling, former CEO of Sterling Motor Cars, and the principle executive for Team Sterling, was building up his reputation by picking drivers who drove to the edge.

Drivers like Demetri.

For a moment Hugh studied him, looking right through him, but Demetri didn’t flinch. Finally Hugh nodded. “Bring him to the barbecue with you tomorrow. Maybe he can keep you out of trouble.”

“Sounds like a plan,” answered Demetri, rising from the chair and heading for the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Are you forgetting something?” asked Hugh.

Demetri looked around blankly. “No.”

“Are you planning on walking all the way back to town?” The faded blue eyes danced with mischief.

“Call me a cab?”

“You’re a cab, and if you give me your promise to keep your hands off my great-niece, then I’ll let you borrow one of the trucks.”

“You don’t need my promise,” answered Demetri, because he knew it was a promise he couldn’t keep.

Elizabeth.

Hugh moved to the desk, rummaging for a moment before throwing a set of keys in Demetri’s direction. “I know I’m going to regret this. And try not to smash up this one, Demetri.”

Demetri grinned. “I always try.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Elizabeth found her cousin Melanie riding in the paddock, sitting on top of a big gray with flashing white stockings who looked speedier than Elizabeth ever wanted to travel. However, Melanie was of a different mind. She wanted to ride faster than some nuclear-powered rocket, and Elizabeth wished her all the luck in the world with that.

Everybody had a gift. Elizabeth could sing, and Melanie could talk to horses. Maybe not in words, but when you saw Melanie with a horse, you knew that two-way communicating was going on. Melanie would murmur sweet nothings to the Thoroughbreds, and when they were out on the track, those sweet nothings could make them move like nobody’s business. Baby talk, was how Elizabeth used to tease her cousin. After Melanie started winning her races, Elizabeth stopped her teasing.

For a few seconds she watched her cousin ride, noticing the way the horse and the rider moved together, and noticing the telltale droop in Melanie’s smile. At that disturbing sight, Eliza-beth squared her shoulders and pushed all the bad things out of her mind, including the inopportune car-crush—along with the correspondingly inopportune, hot-looking car-crusher. Out of her mind, and hopefully out of her loins. Briskly, she waved, looking just as bright and perky as a woman who had not just wrecked a car that cost more than God, or lusted after a man that she had no business feeling the heat for. “Hey, cuz. Ready to race?”

Melanie’s mouth curved up at the corners, and she dismounted, hopping down to the dirt. “Bet you twenty I can beat you out to the ridge.”

Elizabeth snickered. “I don’t bet with jockeys. I’m absolutely certain there’s something against that in the Bible. Don’t know where to find it, or specifically what it says, but I’m comfortable in my decision.”

“Spoilsport,” answered Melanie, pulling a face. She hollered at one of the stable hands, asking for another mount for Elizabeth—hopefully something not quite so zippy. Elizabeth found herself more than satisfied when the man led out a pretty little broodmare, soft brown with a coal-black mane. Courtin’Cristy was what they called her. A pretty name for a pretty horse.

Gingerly, Elizabeth climbed into the saddle, taking a deep breath and adjusting to the discrepancy in heights.

The stable hand opened the gate and the two cousins took off “racing,” which was Elizabeth’s word for a nice, steady trot, curving among the sturdy branches of the black walnut trees. Riding with her cousin through the hills and valleys with the wind at her back, Elizabeth felt like a kid once again.

The afternoon was crisp and cool, the last of the bright yellow leaves valiantly fighting against the November wind, carpeting the grass in a patchwork quilt of red and gold. In the distance, the smoky smell of burning leaves drifted in the air as the rituals of the first true cold snap of autumn commenced.

The ridge overlooking the winding valley had always been their place to go, a place to forget all the troubles of the world. They pulled up in a plush field of bluegrass, perfect for sitting and watching the clouds skate by. Melanie sighed, her face not nearly as happy as Elizabeth wished it were.

Quest Stables was in serious financial trouble, and to Elizabeth’s way of thinking, it was time for the Prestons to face facts. Their prize Thoroughbred, Leopold’s Legacy, had been pulled from the racing circuit because his pedigree was in doubt, and until the Prestons could get the mystery of his parentage resolved, things weren’t so rosy.