Wendy Warren - Biding Her Time

Dear Reader,

Like most young girls, I loved horses. I recall once attempting to convince my parents that a small stable would fit perfectly in our suburban backyard. Nixing that idea, they opened our home to a number of rescued dogs and cats, and I didn’t revisit horses until this book project came along.

The research was fascinating. I learned about horse racing, yes, but also about the bold and complex men, women and animals at the heart of the sport. Bold and complex describes the story line of THOROUGHBRED LEGACY, as a matter of fact, and getting to know the other authors was a pleasure. I hope you enjoy Biding Her Time and that it whets your appetite for the books to follow!

Wendy Warren

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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WENDY WARREN

lives with her husband and daughter in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Their house was previously owned by a woman named Cinderella, who bequeathed them a garden full of flowers they try desperately (and occasionally successfully) not to kill, and a pink General Electric oven, circa 1958, that makes the kitchen look like an I Love Lucy rerun.

A two-time recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA ®Award, Wendy loves to read and write the kind of books that remind her of the old movies she grew up watching with her mom—stories about decent people looking for the love that can make an ordinary life heroic. When not writing, she likes to take long walks, hide out in bookstores with her friends and sneak tofu into her husband’s dinner. If you’d like a tofu recipe—and who wouldn’t?—visit her Web site, www.wendywarren-author.com.

With deep gratitude to the editors,

past and present, who have taught me to write

and paid me to do it.

From the early years: Wendy Corsi Staub,

Anne Canadeo and Lynda Curnyn.

Susan Litman, my current editor,

is savvy, talented, smart as a whip and sends e-mails

that knock me off my chair with laughter.

Stacy Boyd and Marsha Zinberg invited me on-board

the Thoroughbred Legacy project and have guided it

surely and with terrific grace.

I am very appreciative!

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

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

“Put your hands in your pockets, boys, and dig deep. I’m about to lighten your loads.”

Bending over a pool table that had seen more money change hands than Chase Manhattan Bank, Audrey Griffin stretched one toned, well-muscled arm along the green felt. Loose auburn waves spilled over her shoulder as she cocked her opposite elbow back and lined up a seemingly impossible shot.

“Thirteen in the corner,” she called, then sank the ball so fast, a few of the men around the table cussed a blue streak guarandamnteed to set their mamas to praying.

Laying her cue stick atop the well-used table, Audrey brushed her hands, shrugged and let an obnoxious grin spread over her face. “Anyone for darts?”

Colby Dale told her what would have to happen to hell before he played anything with her ever again, but he tossed her a ten spot before walking away. Two of the others coughed up handfuls of dollar bills, and Jed Clooney gave her two bucks in change plus an IOU, just to be irritating.

“Aw, c’mon.” Audrey gathered her winnings, patting the cash into a neat pile. “I’ve been beating y’all since Red Bullet won the Preakness. You gotta be used to it by now.”

“You’ve been gloating about it that long, too,” Jed reminded her as he gathered up cue sticks, “and we’re not used to that yet.” But he tweaked Audrey’s nose as he passed by to show there were no hard feelings. “Nice game, junior. The old man would be proud.”

Audrey felt tears well up.

Shit.

Blinking the emotion away, she pushed her smile higher. No way would she lose it now. Not when she’d been sucking it up successfully all day.

“Beer! I’m buying.” Leading the procession to the bar, she ordered ten Michelob drafts from Herman, the proprietor of Hot to Trot, added shots for those who wanted them and raised her jigger of bourbon immediately when it came. “Live for today, for tomorrow we may die,” she toasted, trying to remember if there was more to the quote, then deciding it was fine just as it stood.

The boys must have agreed with her, because every shot glass bottomed up along with hers. The glasses returned to the bar with a clunk, warm hands reached for icy beers, and talk turned to a couple of local yearlings that had graduated from the Keeneland spring sale in April.

As the conversation heated up along the mahogany and tufted-leather bar, Audrey relinquished her stool and stepped away from the others. The guys would be content to nurse their beers and talk horses the rest of the night, but she didn’t have the focus right now to discuss business. Nor did she have the desire to chase her whiskey with beer. It felt better tonight, or at least more appropriate, to let the eighty-proof Kentucky bourbon have its way with her—burning the back of her throat, threading her veins with a thin coil of heat that made her feel uncomfortably weak. Patting the base of her throat, where the alcohol stung, she decided that bourbon and life had a lot in common: fun in the moment, but you had to be prepared for consequences.

Antsy, Audrey glanced around the room and spied the jukebox. Music. That’s what she needed tonight—and not the sticky Peyton Place theme currently playing, either. Slipping away to feed the machine, she chose her songs, then faced Hot To Trot’s scuffed square of a dance floor, her gaze flicking toward the bar.

A couple of women with whom she’d gone to high school had joined the group of men, scooting their jeans-clad, teeny tiny tushies onto bar stools already occupied by a jockey and a groom from Quest, the same stable at which she worked. Each woman had one superslender arm flung around the neck of the man whose seat she shared, probably to avoid falling off. Audrey smiled. If she tried to plant her generous bootie on a stool that was already taken, she might hip check some poor jockey into the next county.

As the first of her music selections began to play, she took a breath and determined to have a good time, even if she danced alone to every song. Since eleven that morning, nasty what-if thoughts had been pelting her brain like buckshot. Sound and movement might drown them out.

Reminding herself that dancing by one’s lonesome ranked pretty low on the list of life’s injustices, she prepared to dive in—

And then she saw him.

Golden-haired and granite-jawed, over eighteen hands high and as broad as a lumberjack, he seemed bigger than life in every way, as if he’d been carved from the side of a mountain. Earthy, hard-edged and enduring, he gave the startling impression that he had been around since the beginning of time… that he could be around forever.