Пиппа Роско – Reclaimed By The Powerful Sheikh (страница 4)
But in order to continue they needed to expand. They needed more room for the counsellors, staff and children. They weren’t operating at a loss as such, but without increasing the scope of the business they wouldn’t survive either. And now with the loan? The purse money would go to that, and they were back at square one. Everything she’d done in the last eighteen months, wiped clean.
Coffee hit her stomach hard as Mason considered riding in another race. The last three had been physically and mentally challenging. Though reluctant to admit it, ten years made a difference to a body and the training had been intense. The first thing her dad had done when she’d returned to the farm after the race series was force-feed her enough food to feed an army. She hadn’t lost weight as much as body fat, all of it turning to enough muscle to harness the power of the two incredible horses she’d had for the Hanley Cup. Eighteen months of six day a weeks, morning and afternoon training, one meal days.
She might have left racing after what had happened ten years ago, but her body hadn’t forgotten, and there hadn’t been a day in between that she hadn’t been on a horse. Her father had said she’d been born to it, and the pride at the time...the pride before had been enough to make her want to fulfil that childhood dream of being Australia’s best jockey. Not best
And for a few moments, riding Veranchetti and Devil’s Advocate, she’d felt that need unfurl within her, the knowledge that she could make it happen, she could still have that childish dream and turn it into reality...it had been seductive, a whisper of what could be.
But to race again, for a different syndicate, on different horses? No. She knew that wasn’t an option. Neither was going back to the Winners’ Circle.
There had been plenty of journos just waiting to get her story, and the money they were offering for interviews and photoshoots would be worth considering if it hadn’t been those very same people who had destroyed her career first time round. The coffee turned bitter on her tongue, and she knew that even as a last resort she couldn’t do it. She had learnt enough about herself to respect the person she had become, and to honour that by being truthful and faithful and kind to herself. It might have taken these last ten years, but she wouldn’t sell herself out to the highest bidder.
The sun had now firmly set behind the mountains, stars beginning to wink out of the night sky. Fool’s Fate pricked his ears and snickered, pawing at the ground and shifting his head against the rope tied to a tree behind her.
Mason frowned, as the sounds of crunched twigs and leaves met her ears. It wouldn’t be Pops, not knowing that she wanted to be alone. And the farmhands were out in town tonight, settled in at the pub. It couldn’t be anyone from Mick’s farm, the border between their land too far away from her camp. That just left poachers. She threw her coffee over the embers of the fire, sending a hiss out into the air, and reached for her shotgun.
* * *
Danyl cursed into the dark as the glimmer of light he’d seen from a fire disappeared. It had been a beacon and now he could only smell burnt coffee and damp ash. Perhaps he should have listened to Joe McAulty. He’d left his horse tied up a little way back because he hadn’t wanted to scare her. He felt twigs crunch and crack under his feet, the sound echoing like gunfire in the silence of the night. Ignoring the feeling in his gut, the one that poked at him as if to say that perhaps he shouldn’t have left his men back at the farm, he pressed on. He couldn’t have had this conversation in front of an audience. His men hadn’t been happy about it, but they’d done as he’d commanded.
He came out from underneath the wooded area, and for a moment the beauty of the sight stopped him. The night scene before him stole his breath; it almost matched the awe he felt when he looked out at the Ter’harn desert. That’s why, he told himself later, it took a moment to realise the camp that he’d overlooked was empty. The moon passed behind a cloud, casting the still smoking fire and the small tent in shadow.
He cursed again, exhausted and frustrated. Where the hell was she? No longer disguising his footfalls, he stomped into the clearing. Given the flight, the particularly painful meeting with Ter’harn’s Prime Minister, and the even more barbed conversation with Joe McAulty, Danyl had just about had enough.
He scanned the site again, looking for signs of where she might be. He’d followed Joe’s instructions, and clearly found where she had set up, but—
The sound of the chamber being pulled back on a pump-action shotgun stopped his thoughts in their tracks. Logic did nothing to slow the sudden jolt of adrenaline coursing through his veins. Logically he knew it was Mason, logically he knew that she wouldn’t shoot him. But still...
‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ he heard a voice from behind him say.
December, ten years ago
‘I SHOULDN’T HAVE come here,’ Mason said, pulling at the short hemline of the dress Francesca had somehow talked her into wearing.
‘It’s New Year’s Eve, Mase! It’s time you let your hair down instead of being all train, train, train, diet, exercise, no alcohol, no fun,’ her friend replied in the rapid-fire American accent Mason was only just about getting used to.
‘I look ludicrous.’
‘Are you insane? You look fab-u-lous!’ Francesca replied, hanging on to every syllable of the word.
‘How are you supposed to walk in these instruments of torture?’
‘Wash your mouth out—those are Louboutins,’ she said, this time slicing the brand into almost three separate words.
‘Then perhaps he should have stuck with boots,’ Mason muttered under her breath.
‘What?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Listen, girly, I know you only got off the boat four months ago—’
‘It was a plane.’
‘And America isn’t Australia, and New York isn’t the hick town in whatever part of New South Wales you’re from, but it’s time to acclimatise to these surroundings.’
Mason bridled at the comment, her shoulders squaring at the slight against her home, softening only when she caught sight of Francesca’s tongue, literally pressed against the inside of her cheek.
But, stealing another glance at the surroundings, Mason felt as if this was a glimpse into a world in which she did not belong. That perhaps if she stared too long, or stayed too long, she might lose herself.
When the bus from the training stables had dropped them off outside one of New York’s most renowned hotels, the Langsford, she had looked up at the huge, sweeping circular driveway, the gilded graphics on the Roman-style pillars that fronted the building, and thought...
Between with the heels Francesca had forced her into and the black and white marble foyer, she’d nearly broken her ankle as she’d walked towards the biggest spiral staircase she’d ever seen. And even Francesca had let out a low whistle when she’d seen the ‘reception room’ hired for the night’s event, arranged by America’s richest horse owners.
Smooth, sleek lines of chrome and black dropped away at the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Washington Square Park and the surrounding area. Purple NYU flags hung from buildings and a few brave souls were risking hypothermia out in the snow-covered streets, revelling or hurrying towards whatever party or group they were out to join before midnight.
A smartly dressed waiter passed with a tray of champagne flutes, a small piece of strawberry the only adornment to the alcohol. Francesca grabbed two glasses, thrust one into her hands so quickly she nearly dropped it, and Mason watched, shocked, as Francesca took a third before allowing the waiter to move on.
Francesca consumed the entire contents of the first glass in one mouthful before placing it on a side table, and flashed Mason a beaming grin before returning to sip from the second. Her eyes locked on to something over Mason’s shoulder, a whispered excuse trailing behind in the wake of a speedy departure. Mason turned to find Harry, their trainer, making his way towards them...or, well, Mason at least.
‘You doing okay?’
‘I’m...acclimatising,’ she said and smiled at her father’s old friend, before taking a sip of champagne. It was expensive, but not very nice.
‘You’re doing better than Joe would have.’
‘No.’ She smiled ruefully, thinking of how he might have behaved amongst these people. ‘Pops wouldn’t have acclimatised to this very well.’
Harry grinned. He was a large man, who smiled deeply, laughed heartily and trained his jockeys to within an inch of their lives. ‘This is an opportunity for you to meet some of the horse-racing syndicates that may take you on in the future.’
Confusion marred Mason’s brow. ‘I thought you were happy with O’Conner.’
‘I am, and I’m looking forward to the first race of the season, but that doesn’t mean I, or you, will be riding and training for him for the rest of our careers. You never know, you could be riding for one of the people in this room within the year.’