Summer Games (30 page)

Deliberately she turned her back and began weaving Dev’s thick, sweeping mane into an intricate French braid. When she finished there would be nothing but a smooth, textured surface running the length of Dev’s heavily muscled neck. There would be no wild black fall of mane or bright, beribboned pigtails to distract from the stallion’s performance in the Olympic dressage ring.

After she completed Dev’s mane, she brushed his long tail until it was a black waterfall rippling and shimmering nearly to the floor. She polished each hoof until it was dark and gleaming.

Suddenly Dev’s head came up, telling her that someone was walking up to the stall. She looked up hopefully, only to be disappointed.

It wasn’t Cord.

Captain Jon leaned on the stall door and glanced critically at the stallion. “Should I send over one of the girls to help you?”

“I’ve got it under control. How are we doing in the dressage ring so far?”

“Better than I’d hoped. The French are having the same trouble we are. Their bloody beasts are damned near jumping out of their skins with health. Their fault scores are still only fifteen to twenty, though. They take to discipline better than you Yanks.”

She smiled at Captain Jon’s familiar—and mostly joking—complaint. Yet the thought of having to hold her edgy, violently healthy stallion to a mere twenty faults was troubling.

Dressage wasn’t like jumping, where whatever faults horse and rider made were obvious to anyone with twenty-twenty vision. A perfect jump was one in which horse and rider approached from the proper direction, cleared the obstacle without touching it, and landed right side up. The style of horse and rider were irrelevant.

In dressage, style was all important. Each dressage exercise could theoretically be performed to perfection. But as in any art, what constituted perfect style was very much a matter of taste and individual prejudice.

Dev usually got high positive marks in dressage simply because he was beautifully built and had a commanding presence. Her own deceptive appearance of fragility also added to their positive marks; obviously, she wasn’t controlling the stallion through sheer brawn. The point of dressage was for the rider to appear to be merely a well-dressed passenger rather than the one who was giving orders—“aids”—to tell the horse what was expected of him.

Unfortunately, Dev often made it clear that his rider was, indeed, having to work to control him. That was why he received relatively high negative, or fault, marks for obedience. He made up for that on the grueling endurance portion of the three-day event. There his great vitality, courage, and trust in his rider brought even seasoned competitors to their feet, cheering.

Captain Jon cleared his throat, paused, and decided he couldn’t avoid it any longer. “Raine?”

She realized she was staring past him, looking for Cord. She turned to face the captain, caught by the unusual hesitation in his voice. “Yes?”

“If you like, I’ll short-list you. You don’t have to go out there and be a bloody target.”

She froze. Short-listed. Taken off the American Olympic Equestrian Team and replaced by one of the other American riders who had also trained strenuously for four years, hoping to make the Olympic cut.

Yes, Captain Jon could short-list her. It was his right. But he had to do it now, before she entered the first competition of the Olympic three-day event. Once she competed, if she was disqualified for any reason, the Americans would simply have to go on under the handicap of having only three riders on the team rather than four.

In a competition that counted the best three out of four team members’ scores, having a team member disqualified during the event was a crippling blow to any hope of winning.

“Are you giving me a choice?” Raine’s voice was careful, as colorless as her face.

“Of course.”

“I want to compete.”

Captain Jon rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. “Even as a target?”

Her chin came up and she met his eyes. “If you’re worried about the team, short-list me. If you’re worried about me, don’t. I’m a candidate for kidnap, not assassination. Ask Cord.”

“I did.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And?”

“He said he would greatly prefer that you didn’t risk your neck on the endurance run. However, he made it clear his position was a personal preference, rather than a professional recommendation. As he put it, he’s being paid to protect you from outside attack, not from the dangers inherent in being an Olympic equestrian.”

She closed her eyes, silently thanking Cord for not taking advantage of his position. She knew that he was very worried about the obstacles on the endurance course. He could have used his professional status to ground her. He hadn’t.

“Mr. Elliot is an unusual man,” the captain added. “Honor isn’t just a word to him, it is the core of the man. In addition, he has a great deal of respect for your skill and for you yourself.”

“Yes,” she said softly, “I know.”

Automatically she looked past the captain, searching for Cord’s lithe male figure. He wasn’t anywhere in sight.

Was he going to miss seeing her ride in the dressage competition?

Captain Jon cleared his throat again, accurately guessing where her attention was. Guiltily she focused on him.

“Go ahead and enjoy Elliot,” the captain said crisply. “God knows it’s about time you let a man get close to you. But don’t let him distract you from your major purpose—the Olympic Games.”

She flushed, but she met his level glance with one of her own. “I won’t let the team down, Captain Jon.”

He nodded once, abruptly. “If I thought you might, you would be short-listed right now instead of polishing that bloody great stallion. Give him your best ride, Raine.”

“I will.”

He smiled. He had expected no less. “Don’t worry,” he added, gripping her shoulder. “I don’t expect miracles from you. Devlin’s Waterloo was born to run, not to make pretty patterns in the sand of a dressage ring.”

Raine stepped out of the motor home, as polished and ready for the ring as her horse. The door automatically locked behind her. If she wanted to go back inside, she would have to get the key from Thorne. No problem, there. He was never out of sight.

Unlike Cord.

She squared her shoulders and looked around, hands on hips. Instead of dusty shirt, jeans, and old boots, she was wearing the formal riding attire of the dressage ring. Black hat and brilliantly polished English boots, white blouse and carefully tied stock, jodhpurs, and a dark, severely tailored riding coat. White gloves were carefully rolled into a jacket pocket. She wouldn’t put them on until just before she went into the ring.

“Only the military would insist on wearing white gloves around the stables,” she muttered. “Ruddy nuisance.”

She made a small adjustment to her hat, which was also a protective helmet. Her hair was twisted up beneath the hard plastic. There would be no flying locks to detract from the calm, measured elegance required by Olympic dressage.

The clock ticking inside her head told her that she couldn’t stall any longer, hoping Cord would appear. With quick strides, she set off across the stable yard.

Instantly Thorne appeared and walked at her right elbow. She didn’t ask him if he had seen Cord. She didn’t trust herself to play the small ritual game lightly. It seemed that she had spent a lifetime looking forward to someone coming to see her perform, only to be disappointed at the last minute.

Setting her teeth, she took a deep breath and put aside this disappointment as she had learned to put aside others in the past. She was about to enter the first event of an Olympic competition. She had worked all her life toward this moment. She would give the games what they demanded and deserved.

Her best.

When she turned the corner at Dev’s stable row, she found the stallion bridled and saddled, standing quietly, black muzzle nibbling at Cord’s collar. Suddenly she felt lighter, younger, triumphant, as though she had won the dressage event before she even went into the ring. Her step quickened, lengthened, and she truly smiled for the first time since she awakened and found herself alone.

Dev scented her, lifted his head, and nickered, tugging at the reins. Cord turned and held out his hand to her. He didn’t say where he had been, or why.

She didn’t ask. She knew that she didn’t have the security clearance to hear the details of his professional life.

“You look very cool and elegant.” His eyes went over her slender figure from her hat to her boots. “Will you be disqualified if I hug you?”

Instead of answering, she put her arms around him and hugged him hard. His arms came around her just as quickly, just as hungrily. Then, in a voice too low to be overheard, he said, “Blue and the rest are watching through binoculars from a safe place.”

She nodded and held tighter. “I’m glad you’ll see me ride in the Olympics,” she whispered, and felt his arms tighten even more. She tilted her head back so that she could see his brilliant, intense eyes. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure, love. But it won’t always be my choice to make.”

“I understand.”

And she did.

When Cord lifted her up into the saddle, she smiled down at him and put her hand along his cheek, savoring the roughness of beard lying just beneath tanned skin. “And thank you for saddling Dev.”

“For a smile like that, I’d saddle the devil himself.” He kissed her palm and stepped back.

He walked alongside Dev to a practice area where dressage contestants “rode in” their horses, carefully warming up the animals so that their muscles would be supple for the intricate demands of dressage.

Quietly, watching the people milling around, Cord waited while Raine took Dev into the ring, collected him, and began working him. Despite the stallion’s impatience to leap and run, she schooled him relentlessly until Dev’s weight was poised over his hocks and his neck was a smooth, impressive arch balanced lightly against the bit.

It was a far cry from the kind of riding Cord had been raised with, but he didn’t underestimate the skill and discipline that dressage demanded from both rider and horse. Especially now, when Dev was fully rested and his rider’s adrenaline was pumping with the knowledge that soon she would enter the ring for the first time as an Olympic rider.

When Raine’s name was called as the next competitor, she pulled on white gloves, turned Dev, and rode him out of the practice area toward the competition ring.

Saying nothing, Cord watched her go. He could have called out, wishing her luck or some such trivial thing, but he didn’t. He understood that she had to be focused entirely on the Olympic test ahead.

With a quick, almost invisible signal to Thorne, Cord withdrew to a place that would allow him to see the waiting competitors, the show ring itself, and the spectators. He unzipped his jacket partway. He wore a different jacket today, darker, looser. Its folds concealed the small, lethal submachine gun he carried in addition to the customary pistol in the small of his back.

An hour ago, Blue Herring had sent another warning. Barracuda was on the move. Supposedly he was headed south, toward San Diego, where an exclusive golf course had been torn up to create an obstacle course that would test the courage of riders and horses alike.

Cord should have been relieved by the news that Barracuda wasn’t headed for Anaheim and the dressage ring, but he wasn’t reassured one bit. It would be like Barracuda to turn around and strike where he was least expected.

Raine waited behind the bleachers while the previous rider’s scores were flashed on the lighted board. A round of mild applause came, telling her that the Swiss rider had performed adequately but not well.

Nervousness turned over coldly in her stomach. She concentrated on the flags of the participating countries flying behind the bleachers, along with the flag bearing the Olympic symbol of five interlocking circles. The bleachers were brimming with an excited, attentive crowd. Three judges sat alone beneath an awning at one end of the freshly raked, sandy rectangle that was the competition ring.

Raine heard her name and country announced over the public address system. At Captain Jon’s signal, she took a slow, collected Dev, and rode her horse into the first test of the Olympic three-day event.

With the contest finally begun, her tension fell away. Focused, determined to do well, she entered the smooth-surfaced, rectangular performance area. At a pre-arranged place she stopped Dev neatly in front of the judges, saluted, turned her horse, and immediately started the required pattern of dressage exercises which every Olympic competitor performed.

For the next seven minutes and thirty seconds, the judges would scrutinize both horse and rider. What they were looking for was a harmony between man and beast that would be expressed in serene, elegant, yet powerful movements over the freshly raked sand. While Dev changed paces and leads, directions and diagonals, Raine was supposed to sit gracefully and not in any way show that she was the one giving the horse its cues.

With horses that were trained and bred only for dressage, there was a gentleness of spirit that greatly aided the rider’s appearance of being merely a well-dressed passenger. Event horses, however, were competitors bred and trained for aggressive health and the kind of spirit that wouldn’t quit no matter what the obstacle ahead or the exhaustion of the moment.

As a result, Dev didn’t want to confine his bursting energies to seven and a half minutes of restrained, civilized patterns of walk and slow trot, slow canter and fast walk, switch leads and working trot, stand immobile and wait for an invisible signal to move, and so on. The stallion’s spirited displeasure at being curtailed showed in his tossing head, his champing at the bit, his constant testing for a weakness in his rider’s grip on the reins.

For seven and a half minutes, Raine and Devlin’s Waterloo fought a fierce covert battle for control of the bit.

For her it was like trying to control a swift river with her hands cuffed together at the wrists. The minutes stretched on and on, as though the clock in her head was caught in a continuous loop of seconds without end. She didn’t hear the crowd or feel the breeze that kept the flags snapping colorfully. She didn’t feel the moisture sliding down her spine. It wasn’t nerves that made her sweat, it was the sheer strength it took to keep her stallion in line.