mind, she’d give Marac another rub this afternoon.
Kate straightened up, aware she’d have wisps of straw in her hair and smudges on her face and would smell of horse, but knowing she needed to be by her mother’s side through this fraught process.
She led Marac into a stall, checked he had food and water, half shut his door, then rubbed her handkerchief over her face and hands and went to meet the visitors.
There was a phalanx of dark, swarthy men around a slightly shorter man. All wore immaculately tailored suits and stern expressions. Except for one, taller than the others—tall, dark and handsome personified, in fact—whose expression was more one of disdain. And his suit was better cut, though he didn’t owe those broad shoulders to his tailor. She checked his face again and saw a classic profile—long, straight nose, broad forehead and a firm chin.
You missed the lips, a voice inside her head whispered, but she hadn’t missed the lips, not in any way. In fact, it had been the lips that had drawn her attention …
He was still looking disdainful, she reminded herself.
Perhaps he felt visiting a small horse breeder’s property was beneath him?
‘This is my daughter, Kate,’ Sally said. ‘Kate, this is Sultan Ibrahim and a lot of other names he says we needn’t bother with.’
Kate approached the group and held out her hand to the sultan—didn’t sultans wear golden turbans?—then remembered where she’d been and withdrew her hand.
‘Sorry, I smell of horse. I really thought I’d be done earlier and cleaned up before you came, but Marac needed the extra run and it was such a beautiful morning, I couldn’t resist.’
She smiled hopefully at the sultan, who not only returned her smile but didn’t back away from her eau de horse.
‘Well, don’t let me keep you from your tour of inspection. I’ll tag along behind in case Mum needs anything.’
She slid past the men, telling herself not to look at faces, but how could she not just sneak a peek now she was closer to Mr Handsome—fine-cut features, a long aquiline nose, cheekbones as sharp as razors, lips—best she didn’t check out the lips …
She couldn’t help glancing up as she passed him, drawn by something more than his expression. Drawn by something she didn’t really understand, though it felt vaguely like attraction. Think about the disdain, she told herself, although perhaps it was disgust, not disdain, probably because of the pervading odour of horse that hung around her?
Could she dash up to the house and shower? So she wouldn’t smell like horse if she was close to the man again? Was she mad? Attracted to a man like that? And, anyway, she couldn’t leave the party now.
Not really, not if Mum might need her.
Or Billy.
Where was Billy?
The ache that rarely went away, tucked into a corner of her heart—the ache that was Billy, gentle, sensitive, slow-to-develop Billy—reminded her of the problems that lay ahead.
Face troubles when they come, girl, she remembered her father telling her, and although he always took the words a little too literally, she felt somehow comforted.
Ibrahim had paused by a half-open door and was talking quietly to the inquisitive gelding who’d poked his head out of his stall. As far as Kate could tell, the visitor wasn’t speaking English but the horse seemed to understand him anyway and was nodding and holding his head sideways for a hard rub.
‘Shamus is Tippy’s—Dancing Tiptoes’s—older brother—full brother, doing well in local two-year-olds’ races.’
The young horse shifted his attention to Kate’s mother and nuzzled her neck as she explained.
‘You’ve tried him in the city?’ asked one of the entourage—the taller one who’d failed to hide his disdain.
Sally Andrews shook her head.
‘Since …’
She faltered and Kate, who knew exactly how huge a strain this meeting was on her mother, stepped in.
‘Since my father died two months ago, my mother hasn’t wanted to travel far,’ she said, speaking directly to the man who’d asked the question, meeting the challenge in his eyes that seemed to peer right into her soul. ‘And logistically it’s difficult. One of our stable hands was killed in the same accident, so we’re short-handed even with me here.’
The questioner’s eyes, dark as obsidian, studied her intently.
Suspiciously?
She shook off the tremor of unease his look had caused and concentrated on the main man—Ibrahim.
‘So, should I purchase Dancing Tiptoes and wish him to run in the best races, I will have to find another trainer?’ Ibrahim asked.
He was standing so close to Sally he must have seen her reaction, and noticed Kate reach out to steady her mother.
Obsidian Eyes certainly had; he missed nothing.
Which might explain, Kate decided, why he, of all the entourage, made her feel so uncomfortable.
‘Come and meet him,’ she said, determined to ignore the stranger. ‘There’s no point in discussing training arrangements if you don’t like the look of him.’
But who wouldn’t? she thought, and her gut clenched as the ramifications of losing Tippy spun in her head.
It was inevitable that Billy would be down in the paddock with Tippy, running alongside him as if they were a pair of the same species.
‘My son, Billy,’ Sally said, and Ibrahim nodded.
Kate, whose eyes had gone to Ibrahim’s face as soon as she saw Billy in the paddock, realised that the man had seen and understood a difference in Billy—seen, understood and accepted! An empathetic man!
Bother the man who was making her uncomfortable, Ibrahim was the boss. It was he who’d decide.
Sally’s whistle had brought Tippy to the fence, Billy following more slowly, his natural caution with strangers holding him back.
Or did he understand more about Tippy’s future than Kate and Sally realised?
Sally had thrust her hand into the capacious pockets of her trousers, but Ibrahim was faster, producing from the pocket in his immaculate pinstriped suit a small, rosy apple.
‘I may?’ he said to Sally, who nodded and tucked the sugar lumps back into her pocket.
Tippy studied the stranger almost as warily as Billy had, then threw his head back and snorted before lowering it to lip the apple delicately off the man’s hand.
‘He likes apples best of all.’ Billy had come gradually closer and now stood beside the horse, his too-thin face radiating the love he felt for the animal.
‘I do, too,’ Ibrahim said.
