Page 3 of Winner Takes All

“Stranger things have been known to happen,” she drawled.

“Unicorns, fairies, the Loch Ness Monster…”A viscount’s daughter falling in love with a groom. When she scowled, he added, “None of which risk their necks by racing horses.” He bent down at her feet and reached for her right boot. Despite her irritation at him, she was wise enough not to fight him. “Especially on a headstrong colt that runs that fast.”

Her beaming smile shone with pride. He’d distracted her from the pain with that compliment just enough that he could remove her boot before her ankle swelled and forced him to cut off the leather.

“Midnight races like a dream, doesn’t he?” Excitement pulsed in her voice.

But of course it did. Her love for life was just one of the many things he’d come to appreciate about her when he’d been stable master at Willow Wood, her father’s country estate, and when she’d been a permanent fixture in the horse barns.

“You should see how he breaks at the start—just breathtaking!”

“Hmm.” He tried not to look at her. Breathtaking, all right—she’dalways been exactly that. Beautiful, confident, so very tempting…a temptation made worse by the fact that she was the youngest daughter of his employer. The viscount would gladly have strung him up from the barn rafters if Shaw had dared to ruin her. “Since when do fine ladies train racehorses?”

“Not training.” She froze as he took his glove between his teeth and pulled it off, then slipped his bare fingers beneath the hem of her breeches to strip away her stocking and bare her foot to his touch. She whispered, “Breeding.”

She remained as still as a statue, like a marble Grecian goddess…except for her breath, which suddenly turned shallow as he brushed his hand over her ankle to check for damage, and except for her smooth skin which was warm beneath his fingertips.

“I don’t care if my horse can’t follow a single command,” she managed to force out between breaths, “as long as he has solid bloodlines and can run like the wind.”

Hers certainly did just that. Unfortunately for him.

He frowned, watching her ankle as he turned it gently back and forth to gauge the injury. Twisted but not broken, thank God. Yet her ankle would be bruised and swollen as big as a balloon for the next week, too painful to walk on, and certainly too sore to put weight on in a stirrup. She wouldn’t be able to ride at a run for at least three weeks.

“Your morning exercise sessions are over,” he confirmed but didn’t release her foot, soothing that news with gentle caresses up her calf…caresses he had no business giving yet couldn’t stop himself from taking. Just as he couldn’t four years ago. “You’ll have to notify your father. He’ll need to hire an exercise boy to replace you.”

When silence greeted that, he lifted his gaze to hers.

The guilty expression on her face was an open book.

Bloody hell.“Your father doesn’t know anything about you exercising the colt, does he?” When her only reply was silence, he pressed on, “So the answer’s no. You’re here with your brother, then.” Matthew must have been leading this fiasco. The man never could resist anything she asked of him. But then, neither could Shaw.

She bit her lip. “No…”

“Your Uncle Jonas.” The man’s madcap adventures were legendary. “That crazy old man put you up to this.”

“It was all my idea.” She lifted her chin, daring him to challenge her. “I’m simply staying with Uncle Jonas until the race.”

All my idea.His heart skipped. Had those words come from anyone else, he wouldn’t have immediately suspected the worse. But he knew Francesca, in some ways better than any other woman in the world. So when she admitted that riding the colt was her idea, what she actually meant—

He bit back a curse. “You were planning on doing more than just exercising him, weren’t you?” Of all the harebrained, foolish ideas she could come up with—and Francesca had come up with some truly outlandish ones in the past— “You were planning on riding him in the race yourself!”

“Because I’m the only one who can handle him.”

Her answer confirmed his suspicion, and this time he couldn’t hold back the curse. “Are you mad? Risking your neck like that, lying to your father—”

“I didn’t lie to Papa. I have his blessing to enter Midnight in the Derby.” She hesitated before confessing, “He just assumed that I’d hired an exercise boy and jockey to race him.”

He lifted a brow. “Exactly how hard did you hit your head when you fell?”

She glared at him. “Myheadis just fine.” Yet she reached up and yanked off the tweed cap she’d pulled down low over her ears to hide her hair, which now fell free in silky waves over her slender shoulders. “But this hat itches like the devil.”

She tossed it onto the hay beside her and raked her fingers through her toffee-brown hair, to shake it loose and scratch at her scalp. But the act only made her look exotic, wild, tempestuous—

“Stop that,” he ordered as an old, familiar longing rose in his gut.

Her hand froze, her fingers tangled in her tresses. Her eyes snapped to his, and she asked innocently, “Stop what?”

He half growled in warning, “You damn well know what.”