Jenna Mills - Darci's Pride

“No one really believes he drugged his own horse,” Tyler said. Sam would have had to have been crazy to do so. Not only was he guaranteed getting caught, but More Than All That had been a favorite. The horse could have won easily without the aid of an illegal substance.

But that was a chance someone hadn’t been willing to take.

“I know that,” Daniel said, squinting against the glare of the sun. Over three weeks had passed since the last rain, and that had only been a few drops. “And rationally he does, too. But…”

The words trailed off. Both men knew. Much like the impact of the drought on the land, the damage had been done. Sam’s name had been smeared. His stables were tainted.

It was a situation Tyler knew well.

“He’ll rebound,” he predicted. That’s what his own father had promised him six years ago. They’d stood just inside Lochlain’s newly completed state-of-the-art barn. But instead of colts and fillies shuffling in their stalls, there’d been only the smell of hay and tack, and the sound of silence. In the parking area beyond the paddock, the banker had been sliding from his dust-covered sedan.

The word foreclosure had stuck in Tyler’s gut.

One mistake, that’s all it had taken. One lapse in judgment. One touch—

Tara.

His mouth flattened. Letting out a rough breath, he focused on Lightning Chaser, standing tall and proud in the hot breeze. But he saw her anyway, as she’d been that very first time, that very first night—the straight, sunshine-blond hair and sparkling blue eyes, the wide, teasing mouth. Smiling, laughing. Lying.

The memory seared.

Shoving it aside, Tyler lowered the brim of his bush hat and turned toward Daniel. “It just takes time.”

And distance.

“I talked him into going on safari,” Daniel said. “Bought the tickets and took him to Sydney last night. His plane left a couple of hours ago, at ten, I think.”

“Well, there you go. That should be—” Tyler stopped, Daniel’s words registering. “A couple of hours?” Glancing at the watch his father had given him on his eighteenth birthday, a watch that had been in the Preston family for generations, he swore softly.

He’d completely lost track of time.

“Late?” Daniel asked.

“Andrew’s campaign manager.” She’d cooked up some big gala fund-raiser at Lochlain for the night after the upcoming Outback Classic. With that date closing in on them, she’d insisted they needed to meet in person to finalize details. Tyler didn’t much care about invitations or napkins, but he did care about his cousin. And horse racing. And if the fund-raiser could help Andrew garner Aussie support, then Tyler would do his part. His cousin had been staying at Lochlain since arriving in Australia, using the stud as his base of operations.

The last thing they needed was the Australian candidate, media mogul Jackson “Jacko” Bullock, winning.

“We were supposed to meet at one.” It was now one-thirty.

“I’ll finish up with Lightning,” Daniel offered.

“Thanks, mate,” Tyler said, glancing toward Midnight Magic, the sleek black horse Daniel had raced out to the back pasture. Taking the reins, he slipped his foot into the stirrup and swung his leg over the horse’s back.

“Wish me luck,” he muttered, then with a gentle nudge to the horse’s sides, put the animal into a lope toward the main complex.

A few white clouds drifted across the western horizon, but Tyler knew they would not bring rain. His pop had taught him that, how to tell which clouds brought rain and which only teased, just as David Preston had taught his son how to run a stud farm. The son of an Irish horseman, David had tried to pass on all that his own father had taught him, but Tyler had needed little teaching. He’d been riding before he’d started running.

It was in the blood, David had decided. His eldest son had received the Preston horse gene. His younger, Shane, had not.

With the blistering sun beating down on him, Tyler urged Midnight Magic toward one of the three barns on the far side of the paddock. A fourth was under construction. The mares and new foals had claim to the largest structure. His two- and three-year-olds occupied the middle building. The third, original structure, was used primarily for Lochlain’s boarding business.

The buzz of activity intensified as he approached. Most of the training was done for the day, had taken place during the cooler hours before sunrise. But there was still work to be done, and like clockwork, young Heidi Hastings stood in the shade of several gum trees, feeding an apple to her little filly, Anthem. Her father didn’t understand her fixation with the animal she’d sweet-talked him into buying, but Tyler suspected Heidi’s frequent presence at Lochlain had as much to do with a certain groom hovering nearby as it did her interest in horses.

“Afternoon,” he called as his three border collies bounded up to greet him. Carbine and Windbag were pushing ten, but they still thought they were as young as the pup, Tulloch.

Heidi glanced up with a smile so bloody sweet, Tyler winced. Her father was a good man, but Tyler didn’t know how any man could raise a kid alone, much less a young girl racing toward womanhood.

“I think something’s wrong,” she said, with worry both in her eyes and her voice. “She doesn’t want her apple.”

Tyler’s chest tightened. Bloody hell—after the girl’s mother abandoned them, Dylan Hastings had his hands more than full. “Just the heat,” Tyler said. The animals didn’t like it any more than the humans did. They needed rain—badly. But with rain would come lightning, and with the land as parched as a sponge in dry rot, lightning could mean disaster.

Just the week before, some bloke had tossed a cigarette out the car window, and before the sun had set, more than a hundred acres of bush had been scorched. Two national parks had been lost.

“Try this,” he added, pulling a couple of peppermints from his back pocket. He tossed them to her and winked. “Anthem just needs a treat is all.”

Heidi’s smile turned lopsided. “Thanks, I should have thought of that myself.”

“You will,” he promised in the best fatherly voice he could find. “Just give it—”

A blur of motion from the office complex snagged his attention. He squinted against the glare, bringing his office manager, Peggy, into view. She hurried toward him— something she rarely did. In her midfifties, she was an air-conditioning kind of woman.

“—time,” he finished, pulling Midnight Magic to a stop. He swung his leg over the horse and handed the reins to one of the young grooms—Zach, Heidi’s so-called “friend.” “Cool him off,” he instructed, already striding toward Peggy.

“Mr. Preston,” she called as she always did, refusing to call him Tyler, as he’d asked her to a million or so times. She was a stickler for formality, a master at organization, and somehow kept the administrative side of the business running smoothly. “Your one o’clock is here.”

Tyler glanced toward the parking area, where a shiny white convertible sat in the closest space. Looked as though he’d have to talk napkins after all.

“On my way,” he said, veering toward the office building’s shaded entrance. The first stones had been laid six years before, but the facility had only been completed the previous winter.

“But aren’t you—”

With Windbag trotting at his heels, Tyler stopped and pivoted, felt his mouth curve at the look of horror on Peggy’s face. She was old enough to be his mother— barely—but she almost never questioned him. And never, ever corrected him.

“Yes?” he prodded, trying not to laugh.

She bit down on her lip. “Nothing. I just thought… well, she’s a pretty thing. I thought maybe you’d want to clean up first.”