Page 21 of Winner Takes All

He rolled her beneath him. When her warm and welcoming body wrapped around his, guilt swept over him. He rested his forehead against hers, squeezing his eyes shut against the unbearable choice he’d been given. He couldn’t leave their future to tomorrow’s race and the whims of fickle fate.

“Jack,” she whispered, her voice thick with equal parts arousal and concern. “What’s wrong?”

Everything.Yet he shook his head, his forehead rubbing gently against hers. He couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes, couldn’t bear to see the emotion in hers. Instead, he pulled in a deep breath. “Do you love me, Francesca?”

Her fingers stilled as they brushed through the hair at his nape. “Do you really have to ask?”

“Yes.” The most important question he’d ever posed in his life.

She turned her head to slide her lips back to his ear and whispered, as if sharing a secret, “I’ve loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

A scoffing sound escaped past the tightening knot of emotion in his throat. “The first time you saw me I was mucking out your father’s horse stalls, standing in shit up to my ankles.”

“The first time I saw you,” she corrected, “you were working hard at what you love—caring for horses.” She kissed his cheek, softly cajoling him to open his eyes and look at her. “Even then I knew you were a man who wasn’t afraid of hard work, who was capable of achieving anything he set his mind to.” She lay back on the pillow, and her silky hair spilled around her. “How could I not love a man like that?” Certainty glowed in her eyes as brightly as the moonlight that slanted through the window and polished her bare skin with a silver sheen. “I still do.”

His heart tore. Emotion ripped through him like a ball from a pistol. And just as deadly.

“I want to make love to you again,” he told her in an aching rasp, desperate to lose himself in her and let her ease away his pain. “Will you let me?”

A teasing smile played at her lips as she repeated, “Do you really have to ask?”

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from hers, couldn’t stop the yearning from coiling in his gut and knotting there in a tightening fist that made his breath come hard. It was the exact same sensation that always gripped him when he raced, whenever his horse was only half a length behind and pressing toward the finish, when he would push his mount for all it was worth. Riding for a fall, the jockeys called it, when the desperation to win drove a man to risk everything. Even his own destruction. Just one wrong move, one small stumble, and it would all be over…

He lowered his head to kiss her. The instant his lips touched hers he knew—he was tumbling into the darkness, the hard ground rushing up to meet him as he fell.

Chapter Seven

Frankie frowned at the overcast sky.

“Any sign of rain?” Uncle Jonas squinted upward as he took her arm and led her through the saddling paddock where all the Derby entries had gathered.

Around them, thousands of spectators had crammed into the grandstand and infield in anticipation of the race, most of them already foxed on the ale and punch being sold by helpful market wenches and boys who carried mug-filled trays through the crowd. The nearby fair had finally closed after a week of revelries, but most of its festivities had simply relocated during the early morning hours to the infield. Odds-makers shouted above the noise of the crowd to entice everyone to place their bets, echoed by the calls of race officials from their high-perched box as they gave last minute orders to the jockeys and trainers. Over it all, excitement buzzed as everyone anxiously awaited the call to the post.

Everyone but her father and Lord Charles.

After Jonas told the viscount what had happened at the bonfire, Charles had immediately been sent packing and deposited unceremoniously at the nearest posting inn to catch the mail coach home. Then Papa had surprised the daylights out of her by apologizing and admitting that he’d been wrong about Charles, if not about finding her a husband. His apology had been grudging, although a small step in the right direction, yet she couldn’t persuade him to join her and Jonas at the track for the race. In his humiliation over events at the bonfire, he preferred to remain at her uncle’s and learn of the race’s outcome when she returned.

“No rain yet.” Inwardly, she cursed rain, drizzle, dew, a freakish snowstorm, and anything else that Mother Nature might hurl at her that would cause Midnight to run a poor race. She had to win. After last night, sheabsolutely hadto win! She couldn’t imagine marrying anyone now except Jack, could never let another man do to her all the wonderful and delicious things he had.

Winning was her only chance of marrying him.

Of course, he hadn’t asked her to marry him, which bothered her more than she wanted to admit. Yet when she’d awoken this morning, deliciously sore in all kinds of unmentionable places, she knew that he’d claimed her completely, body and heart and soul. But he was gone. A note left for her on the kitchen table explained that he’d left early for the track to see to the horses and that they’d talk once the race was over. Not a marriage proposal either, that note. Still, her heart had panged wildly with hope. After all, Jack loved her, and not even fate could be cruel enough to cheat them out of a future together a second time.

As she walked on Uncle Jonas’s arm past the line of horses, she assessed the competition one last time. Just as she and Shaw had predicted, the horses who possessed a nervous and antsy disposition couldn’t be convinced to remain still; they were unwittingly using up a good portion of their race energy in the paddock before the ribbon had even been raised. Then there were the ones who seemed asleep, as if they wouldn’t jump if someone set gunpowder off beneath them; these could be dismissed outright because they lacked the racing spirit required to win the Derby. Three had been scratched. Only two gave her pause. Both large bays, both alert to all that was happening around them and knowing fully well that today was special. Today was their chance to shine.

But even they were no match for Midnight and Ghost.

Her eyes landed on the end of the line where their two horses waited with their jockeys, along with Paddy and Shaw. Her heart skipped when she saw him. She couldn’t help the small whisper that fell from her lips, “Jack, marry me.”

Uncle Jonas leaned down to catch her voice over the noise of the crowd. “Eh?”

“Black will run free,” she blurted out to cover her slip and waved a gloved hand toward Midnight at the end of the paddock to distract him from her embarrassed blush. “And Mr. Shaw’s gray Ghost beside him.”

“Ah, yes! Very good. Very good indeed.” With pride, Jonas threw out his chest—and his belly along with it. “The cup will be yours, my dear. Count on it!”

No. Jackson Shaw would be hers. And she didn’t count on it. She prayed for it.

Nodding and waving politely to the other owners as she passed, she felt like a silly goose dressed in muslin with kid gloves and a parasol raised over her bonneted head. She was dressed for a Mayfair outing, just like all the wives and daughters, when she should have been dressed as a jockey in the race. If only she could have seen the looks on their faces when they realized that a woman was riding to victory in the Derby!