Leaping Hearts (35 page)

“You’re right. I should have taken my things out. I don’t live here anymore—”

“No, after their wedding.”

A.J. frowned.

“Before my mother remarried, she asked me what I thought of Garrett. I liked him a lot and I told her I wanted him, so when she walked down the aisle, I assumed she was doing it to bring him to me. I figured you’d go away so I could have what was mine. Imagine my surprise when I took up residence and you were still around. God, I hated living in the same house with you. You were the perfect student, the perfect daughter, the perfect everything. You rode well, sang well, wrote well. Not only didn’t I get the undivided attention I figured was part of the bargain, but I had to compete with a damn superhero.”

“But you did well in school,” she said, amazed.

“Not like you did. I’ve never done anything as well as you did.”

“That’s not true. You’ve run the stables—”

“I do the ledger but you’re the leader.” He laughed harshly. “You’ve always been the leader. I can remember, in the early days, I’d go down to the stables and see everyone looking at you with respect. You were half the age of those champions and yet they
knew
you were special. Everyone’s always known you were special. Even my mother.”

“Your mother despises me.”

“Only because Garrett loves a dead woman more than her. My mother’s never been her husband’s true love and never will be.”

“But they’ve been together a long time. I know he loves her.”

“Your father has one room in this house that’s his. Whose portrait is on the wall?” Peter shoved his hands into his pockets. “And as for you, you’re the spitting image of a rival she can never beat. But that hasn’t kept her from using you against me. Sometimes I think she likes you more than me.”

“Peter, your mother adores you. She’s always singing your praises.”

“In public, yes. Privately, she’s more likely to be nailing me to the wall and you’ve been her favorite hammer. All those trophies”—he pointed to the boxes—“every last one of them has been pounded into me. I know every score,
every triumph over the odds, every facile maneuver you’ve ever made. I used to pray you’d fail just so I could stop hearing about it all. That woman has held me up to your gold standard since the day I first met you and I’ve hated you for it.”

“But the success of the stables—”

“Every quarter, I have to go to her and review the Sutherland accounts like I’m facing a board of directors. She’s always feared your little hobby was too much of a cost center. You know how she is about money. If it doesn’t benefit her, she’s highly suspicious. Every time you’ve found another thing to buy, some new piece of equipment or new facility, she’s badgered me about it. I’ve had to be accountable for every cent you’ve spent and I’ve loathed it. I can’t stand defending you.”

“I had no idea that was going on.”

“I know. You’re completely clueless about so many things and always have been. You bounce through life, running after one goal and another, not noticing how much other people have to do to accommodate you. And now that you’re gone, you have no idea how hard it is to go to that damn stable. People miss you and they blame me. They know I’m the reason you left.” He paused. “Every day, it’s like walking into an armed camp and all the guns are trained on me.”

“I didn’t think anyone cared that I left.”

“Of course, they do. Half the damn place is in love with you and the other half wants to be you.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I assure you, I’ve spent a hell of a lot more time examining your life than you have.”

A.J. stared at him with wide eyes. She was shocked at his introspections and by what his words revealed about him. He was far more self-aware than she’d assumed him to be or would ever have thought him capable of being.

She said, “I never imagined you to be so…smart.”

“I think you mean that as a compliment.”

“I do.”

“Well, thanks.” There was a long pause. “People really do miss you down at the stables.”

“That surprises me. I mean, I try to be good to everyone but I didn’t think I made any special effort for them to like me.”

“People have always been drawn to you.” Peter shifted his weight and leaned against the doorjamb. “You know all those men at the compound? The ones you’ve spent so much time training with? They used to come to me, wanting to know how to get you to go out with them.”

“But none of them ever asked,” A.J. said, remembering the Saturday nights she’d spent alone. “What did you tell them?”

“Simple,” he replied. “I said you were a lesbian.”

There was a moment of silence and then the two began to laugh.

“That explains it,” she said.

“There’s something else you should know. I was the one who talked Garrett into making me head of the stables. It’s something I’ve learned to regret. After you left, your father was miserable. My mother blamed me for making him unhappy and for driving away one of Sutherland’s stars. I’m sorry I pressed your father like I did. I really am. And I’m sorry I threw you out.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I wish we’d talked like this a long time ago.”

“You know, so do I.” He glanced around the room. “Look, about your things—”

“Don’t worry about it. I should have put them in storage myself when I left.” A.J. picked up her gear. “I’ll come back for them someday.”

He took a step back, out into the hall.

“If I don’t see you before the competition, good luck. I mean it.”

“Thanks.”

After an awkward moment, A.J. left. As she drove away from the mansion, she was feeling optimistic about their conversation. It had been totally unexpected. Long overdue. A harbinger, she hoped, of good things to come for them both.

“So your stepbrother isn’t as awful as you thought he was?”

Devlin was pulling on flannel pajama bottoms as A.J. settled into bed.

“No, he really isn’t,” she replied, looking up at him with a smirk.

“Why are you smiling like that?”

“Those are the same pajamas you were wearing the night I first came here.”

He pulled the drawstring tight and tied it at his taut stomach. “Are they?”

“I thought you were incredibly sexy when you opened the door. I couldn’t believe what your body looked like in the moonlight. I just melted.”

His eyes flared with heat.

“Did you?” he drawled, sauntering over to her.

She nodded, responding to the electricity that sparked between them. “And I think you’re sexy right now.”

“You know what I’m going to do?” Devlin reached out a hand, one fingertip coming to rest on her lower lip. With aching slowness, he traced a path down her neck to her collarbone.

“What?” she asked, breathlessly.

He pulled his hand away smartly. “I’m going to go into the bathroom and brush my teeth. There was a lot of garlic in that clam sauce.”

She started laughing.

“And then I’m going to come back and I’m going to start at your feet and kiss my way up every inch of your body.”

In a voice husky with desire, she told him to hurry back.

Devlin’s body was humming with anticipation as he went across the hall and into the other room. Reaching over the sink, he whipped open the medicine cabinet and grabbed a nearly spent tube of toothpaste. When nothing came out, he knew he had no one to blame but himself. He’d been squeezing from the middle for the past few weeks and now the thing was mangled and deformed, refusing to give up its last dregs with any alacrity. Cursing, he smoothed it out, rolled it up from the bottom and, by putting it on the edge of the sink and leaning on it with his palm, finally managed to cover his bristles with an anemic showing of fluoride.

He leaned over to throw the thing away and froze as he
noticed something disturbing. Bending over, he fished out an empty bottle of Motrin from the dental floss and wads of Kleenex. He’d seen a number of them showing up in the trash lately. Stringing together the seemingly unrelated discoveries, he grew alarmed.

A.J. was impatiently leafing through the pages of the most recent issue of
Horse Illustrated
when Devlin came in with the empty bottle.

“What’s this?” he demanded.

She looked up.

“Why are you going through the trash?”

“Why are you taking so many pills?”

There was a pause.

“You find one empty bottle—”

“This isn’t the only one. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. And don’t give me that look. Last time I checked, that stuff wasn’t a controlled substance.” She looked back down at the magazine, turning a page sharply. “It’s perfectly safe.”

“Why are you taking it so much?”

“I get sore after training sometimes. It’s no big deal.”

“I think you’re lying to me.”

A.J. threw the magazine aside. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

There was a long silence between them.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Whatever you say.”

He turned and left. As A.J. heard him go downstairs, she lost her composure and buried her head in her hands.

I can do this, she told herself as guilt and frustration swelled. I can do this. I can do this.

They were so close to the Qualifier. Less than forty-eight hours. And then she could say she took the stallion no one else could control and got him to that event. She told herself that feat, in and of itself, was an accomplishment she could be proud of. Something she could call her own. And that the feeling of achievement she would have would make all the stress worth it.

Really, it would.

By the time Devlin came back upstairs, she’d turned off the light and was lying on her side, looking out at the moon-drenched
meadow behind the farmhouse. She felt the bed dip as he slid between the sheets and was relieved when he reached for her. Her hands linked with his.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I love you, too,” she replied, wishing the Qualifier was already past them.

BOREALIS HUNT AND POLO CLUB
, read the discreet sign. The letters were black on a black-green background, barely readable. Underneath, the caption
MEMBERS ONLY
was in white, very readable. The entrance to the club matched the sign. A pair of stone pillars and a few precisely clipped bushes were understated. The guardhouse was not.

“Back in the land a’ the frozen chosen,” Chester said, making reference to the patrician membership.

As the trailer stopped in front of the security detail, a dour-looking man dressed in a green-on-black uniform stepped into the road. Leaning out of the cab, Devlin flashed the proper credentials and they were meticulously reviewed. When the guard passed them back, he caught sight of A.J. His face burst into a happy smile.

“Well, hello!”

“Good morning,” she said. “How’re you doing?”

“Just fine, just fine. Go on through, and good luck,” he told them with a wave.

“Amazing what a pretty girl can getcha,” Chester said. “Been passin’ through this gate every year feelin’ like a criminal. Didn’t think that man had the front teeth to smile with.”

“Membership has its privileges,” Devlin said under his breath.

Chester turned and looked at A.J. “Ya belong here?”

“I do, but I only ride here now and then.”

“It’s an impressive place.”

“Well, only because of the sticky buns. The food is overcooked in the English style, but boy, they can bake well.”

“Must move a lot a’ white bread at lunch.”

A.J. forced a laugh and glanced under her lashes at Devlin. His profile was etched in stone, the handsome features drawn tight. Her chest ached as she realized that, even though they were sitting side by side, she missed him as if he’d been gone for days. Things hadn’t been right since he’d found that empty pill bottle. She had yet to find a way to talk to him about the distance between them and tell him how scared she was by his withdrawal.

She looked away from him, back out the window. The winding drive they were on was a half-mile ascent marked by an alley of oak trees. It was a portentous approach, and when the clubhouse was revealed at the top, the building did not disappoint. An imposing structure, it had a formality and majesty of design that spoke volumes about its early-American roots and wealth of its patrons. Built in the late eighteenth century, the historic landmark had a prominent entrance marked with Corinthian columns and a portico. The center portion rose up a towering three stories and flanking wings emerged from this anchor in two L-shaped expanses. There were long paned windows on every side, portals that were marked by black shutters that stood out against white clapboard siding. All around the building, there were vast, rolling lawns.

Behind the clubhouse were the stables, training rings and paddocks as well as the polo field, which was used every year for the Qualifier. This field was a vast, flat plane of perfectly shorn grass that now had jumps cutting into its smooth surface. To one side, a set of green and black bleachers rose. These would soon seat members, who were used to the hard wood and liked it, and spectators, who weren’t and didn’t.

The inhospitable bleachers were just one way the club let it be known that the comfort of four-legged animals was more important than that of bipeds, regardless of what the evolutionary scale hierarchy might suggest. Whereas the mares and stallions had heated stalls and warm running water
for their baths in the stables, outside of the clubhouse, people were forced to use drafty bathrooms with no mirrors, and faucets that might as well have been spitting ice cubes.

This disparity between the creature comforts of creatures and those of humans was part of the tradition of the place and the Qualifier. The Borealis had been playing host to the spectacle since the very first one had been held in the late 1800s but it was an odd choice for the notoriously closed club to sponsor. The open roster of the competition, which provided any professional rider could compete assuming they had the temerity to take on its infamous courses, was peculiarly egalitarian considering that becoming a member of Borealis was close to impossible.

Another disconnect between the club’s closed-door policy and the Qualifier was the attention the event drew and the resulting invasion of nonmembers. For one day every year, intruders rushed over hallowed Borealis land. This caused no small amount of consternation among the membership, most of whom would have been content to have the competition staged for their edification and no one else’s. They exercised their malcontent by ensuring that the foreigners were treated as inhospitably as possible. No matter how wealthy or important an outsider was, the no-guest policy barred him or her from the clubhouse. This meant there were a lot of well-dressed people using the bathrooms down at the stables, another source of grumbling among people whose butts were already sore, courtesy of the bleachers. These folks had a feeling, unconfirmed but strident, that the bathrooms were better where they weren’t allowed. They were right, of course, and nothing was more amusing to members than some woman in a Chanel suit tottering across the grass to a loo she wouldn’t have let her gardener use as a toolshed.