Summer Games (2 page)

Horses gave her a way to be first.

There was an elemental rapport between her and the big animals. Horses were her life’s work and love. When she was riding, she forgot to feel awkward and inadequate. She merged herself with the rhythms of her horse and the demands of the jumps. There was a fantastic exhilaration in flying over fences and obstacles on the back of her huge blood-bay stallion. Only then was she wholly free, wholly alive, wholly herself.

“But if I don’t get to work instead of daydreaming,” she told herself as she retied her shoe, “I’ll end up flat on my back in the dirt, instead of flying over jumps. The cross-country part of this endurance event looks rougher than anything I’ve ever taken Dev over.”

Picking up the binoculars again, she focused on the dry riverbed twisting along the base of the hill. After a few minutes she pulled a pad out of her rucksack, sketched in the line of river and hills, and scuffed at the ground beneath her feet. Nothing gave beneath her prodding toe.

She bent and yanked at a handful of grass until some of it pulled free. Beneath the thatch of tight, incredibly tough roots, the ground was rough and dry. It was made up of tight clods of clay and small stones. She sifted out some of the pebbles and kept them in her left hand, fiddling with them as she tried to absorb the reality of the ground through touch as well as sight and smell.

Dry, very dry, but not really hard going. Frowning, she made notes along the margin of the sketch. The surface would change radically if it rained. The clay looked like it would be lethally slick if it ever got wet. But no storms had been forecast for the Olympics. From the look of the land, she didn’t doubt that it would stay the way it was. Dry.

After another long, slow look at the riverbed, she put the small sketch pad back in her rucksack. Absently juggling the pebbles she still held in her hand, she stood on the crest of the hill and thought about the Olympic Games to come, wondering how the hills would look wearing clusters of people as well as houses.

From time to time she threw away one of the small stones until finally all the pebbles were gone. Her palm felt dry from the thirsty rocks. As she rubbed her hand on her pants, she hoped it wouldn’t be too hot for the three-day event. Heat sapped a horse’s strength even more than a rider’s. No matter how hot it became, the horse was stuck wearing a fur coat.

“At least it isn’t humid,” she muttered. “That would be a killer. But this . . . I like this.”

That surprised her. The arid land that should have been so alien to her felt instead like a home she had forgotten or never known.

Smiling at the odd thought, she brushed off her fingers, raised her camera, and went to work. Delicately she adjusted the very long telephoto lens and took a series of overlapping photos. Once developed, the slides would make a panorama of the part of the Fairbanks Ranch Country Club that had been torn up and given over to the Summer Games.

Frowning, far from satisfied, she lowered the camera. Photos were better than nothing, but not good enough. What she really needed was to walk the course itself. But she couldn’t. All the endurance-event competitors would walk the course for the first time, together, the day before their ride.

Ten days from today. Just ten days until the event that would be both climax and close of a lifetime of work.

Raine didn’t know what she would do after the Olympics. She only knew that it would be something different. She was ready to step off the glittering, grueling carousel of international competition. In the past three years, the idea of raising and training event horses had come to her more and more frequently. Devlin’s Waterloo was a stallion to build a future on. Earning a medal in the Olympics would go a long way toward making her silent dreams come true.

Wind combed through the grass around her, whispering of rain that didn’t come for months on end. She closed her eyes, trying to absorb the essence of the strange, beautiful land. Never in her life had she ridden over such dry ground. It worried her that she wouldn’t have the same instinctive understanding of the terrain that she had on the East Coast or in Britain or France.

But there was no help for it. Until the day before the endurance event, she would have to be satisfied with learning what she could at a distance.

Her lips curved in an ironic smile. Somehow it was fitting that the most important contest of her life should find her on the outside looking in. She had spent her years like that, watching the world at a distance. Most of the time she preferred it that way. Sometimes, though, when she heard lovers laugh softly, saw them touch each other as though they were more precious than gold, a man bending down to his woman, smiling . . .

Abruptly Raine picked up the binoculars again. She had no illusions about her chance of finding a mate. As many men had told her with varying degrees of anger, she was too damned particular about her sex partners. The few times she finally had succumbed to loneliness had left her feeling worse about herself as a woman than before.

Get over it, she told herself coolly. The only kind of riding you’re good at is on a horse.

For long minutes she scanned the land below the crest of the hill. She hardly saw the rich honey sheen of sunlight on grass or the blue-black dance of shadows beneath the wind. She concentrated on a grove of eucalyptus, deciding that the smooth-trunked trees were rather like horses, huge yet graceful, powerful yet elegant.

She wondered if the drifts of dried leaves and peeling bark she saw at the base of the trees would be slippery or if the ground itself would be damp. She couldn’t tell from where she was and she couldn’t get any closer without crossing the Olympic boundary markers.

Damn.

Raine looked through the glasses at the dense shadows and the gray-green leaves shimmering in the late-afternoon light. So near and yet so far . . .

Story of my life.

She lowered the glasses and turned away.

Deep in the eucalyptus grove, concealed by shadows and by the absolute stillness of his body, Cord Elliot waited for the woman’s attention to pass over the grove.

Over him.

Even when she turned and disappeared beyond the crest of the hill, he didn’t move. He crouched in the fragrant shadows and waited for a long sixty count.

When no one reappeared at the top of the hill, he stood in a smooth, controlled movement. Even standing, he was still concealed by trees. He listened with the concentration of a man whose life depended on the acuteness of his senses. He heard nothing but the slow sound of grass, breeze, and leaves.

After a moment Cord flowed out of the grove, moving with the silent ease of a shadow. His sand-colored bush jacket and jeans blended completely with the tawny grass. Even his binoculars were dun colored. He walked up the sloping hill, choosing a shallow ravine that would bring him out just behind the place his target had stood.

Using every bit of natural cover, he climbed swiftly until he was just below the crest of the hill. Then he dropped flat and eased up to the top. He made certain that his head never rose higher than ripe grass swaying in the wind. His black hair would be easily spotted against the golden hillside.

His pale blue glance raked the downhill side, searching for the woman who was entirely too curious about the site of the Olympic endurance event. A quick glance revealed no one moving over the land. A second slower glance didn’t do any better.

All right, honey. Where did that nice smooth walk take you? he thought grimly. Over by those boulders?

No, not enough time. The next grove, then?

His eyes narrowed as he saw her on her knees in the grass. Why are you kneeling there? What are you doing?

Cord checked the location of the sun. No help there. If he lifted the binoculars, sunlight would flash off the lenses, giving his location away. For now he would have to be content with his own excellent vision.

Holes. She was digging holes.

Why? What choice piece of hell are you planting? And why there?

The tactician in Cord knew that the most effective place to put a bomb would be on the event course itself, where the horses would come thundering by, exhausted and yet still game, running their hearts out because they were born to do it and because their riders were there every step of the way, as tired and tough as their horses.

Is that what you’re after? He watched the kneeling woman through narrowed, glittering eyes. Do you ache to kill something that’s stronger and better than you’ll ever be? Or will you be happy just turning the spectators into a hell’s kitchen of dead and dying?

There was no answer to Cord’s questions except the one given by his own experience.

It wasn’t a comforting answer.

Motionless, he lay just below the crest of the hill, watching. Waiting. It was all he could do for the moment. As soon as the woman turned her back on him, he would come down off the hill and ask her some questions.

And she would answer every one of them.

*   *   *

Slowly Raine stood up. She let the last fragrant eucalyptus leaves crumble between her fingers and drift away in the fitful wind. Absently she brushed off her khaki slacks and faded chambray blouse. The pungent scent of eucalyptus still clung to her like an invisible shadow, mingling with the summer scent of grass and heat.

The good news, she decided, as she looked at the dusty earth, was that it wouldn’t get muddy under the trees, no matter how many horses galloped through. The land was dry all the way to its stony, enduring soul. With new respect and appreciation, she stared up into the towering crown of a nearby eucalyptus.

“It’s a long time between drinks for you, isn’t it?” she asked whimsically. “You could give lessons to a camel. Makes me thirsty just thinking about it.” Without looking away from the tree, she reached into her rucksack for her water bottle.

At the same instant something big slammed into her back, knocking her off her feet. Dazed, totally unprepared, she let her riding reflexes take over and fell loosely, rolling with the impact rather than fighting it. Even so, the breath was knocked out of her.

By the time she could breathe again, she was flat on her face in the leaves and dust, pinned to the ground by a heavy weight. Her binoculars, camera, and rucksack had been stripped away.

She tried to get up, only to be knocked flat again.

“Don’t move.” The male voice was cold, flat.

Instinctively she obeyed.

Then Raine felt hands moving over her body with a familiarity that no man had dared in years. Even as she stiffened, she realized that for all its intimacy, the man’s touch was impersonal. He might have been feeling her, but he wasn’t groping her.

Her world spun crazily when the man flipped her over and laid her flat again. She felt the hard muscular weight of his leg pinning her own legs to the ground, the iron power of his forearm against her throat. As long as she was utterly still, she could breathe.

If she moved at all she would choke.

Lying on her back, fighting panic, she stared up into the unyielding planes of her attacker’s face. Swiftly his free hand moved over her shoulders, under her arms, over her breasts and her stomach, between her thighs. She made a guttural, involuntary sound, fear and anger and protest squeezed into one hoarse syllable.

A winter-blue glance raked over her face while the man’s hand continued down her body to her right ankle and yanked off her shoe. He repeated the process on her left leg. Then he tossed both shoes beyond her reach. They landed on top of the knapsack, binoculars, and camera, which he had also thrown aside.

“Name.”

It took her a moment to connect the man’s curt command with the information he wanted from her. “Raine.”

“Last name.”

“Smith.” She swallowed, trying to ease the dryness of her mouth.

“What are you doing here.”

She closed her eyes and fought to control the chemical storm in her blood. She was used to dealing with adrenaline. The first thing any competitor learned was how to control the body’s response to stress.

The second thing competitors learned was how to think under intense pressure. She began thinking very quickly, and just as quickly decided if the man was going to hurt her, he would be doing so, not asking her questions.

Fury replaced fear. Her eyes opened clear and very hard. “Who the hell are you?”

The man’s powerful forearm moved slightly, cutting off her air. The pressure ended almost as soon as it began. Pale eyes watched her to see if she had taken the hint.

She had. The next time she spoke, it was to answer his question.

“I’m looking at the country,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Why.”

No inflection, just the same flat demand that had characterized the man’s every word.

“I’m an Olympic rider.”

Something flickered in the man’s eyes. “Prove it.”

His voice was still flat, yet even as he spoke, his body changed subtly, becoming somehow less . . . predatory.

“I left Dev at Santa Anita,” Raine said curtly. Her voice was thinned by anger and the aftermath of fear.

“Dev?” For the first time, inflection and curiosity humanized the man’s voice.

“Devlin’s Waterloo. My horse.”

“Describe it.”

“Seventeen and a half hands high, stallion, blood-bay with no white, three-quarters thorough-bred and the rest either Irish or—”

“Good enough, Raine Smith,” the man broke in, giving an odd emphasis to her last name.

His body changed as he looked down at her, becoming less hard and more forgiving, less impersonal and more male. He moved his arm, releasing her neck from restraint.

But he didn’t remove the weight of his leg across hers. Nor did his wariness vanish. It was as much a part of him as the darkness at the center of his ice-blue eyes.

“As for who the hell I am,” he said, smiling slightly, “you can call me Cord Elliot.”

He could have added that she barely resembled her Olympic ID photo. The photographer should have been shot. Or hanged. The photo had completely missed the intelligence and vulnerability in her extraordinary hazel eyes, the seductive curve of her lips, the feminine strength in the line of her jaw.