but you had to be prepared for consequences.
Antsy, Audrey glanced around the room and spied the jukebox. Music. That’s what she needed tonight—and not the sticky Peyton Place theme currently playing, either. Slipping away to feed the machine, she chose her songs, then faced Hot To Trot’s scuffed square of a dance floor, her gaze flicking toward the bar.
A couple of women with whom she’d gone to high school had joined the group of men, scooting their jeans-clad, teeny tiny tushies onto bar stools already occupied by a jockey and a groom from Quest, the same stable at which she worked. Each woman had one superslender arm flung around the neck of the man whose seat she shared, probably to avoid falling off. Audrey smiled. If she tried to plant her generous bootie on a stool that was already taken, she might hip check some poor jockey into the next county.
As the first of her music selections began to play, she took a breath and determined to have a good time, even if she danced alone to every song. Since eleven that morning, nasty what-if thoughts had been pelting her brain like buckshot. Sound and movement might drown them out.
Reminding herself that dancing by one’s lonesome ranked pretty low on the list of life’s injustices, she prepared to dive in—
And then she saw him.
Golden-haired and granite-jawed, over eighteen hands high and as broad as a lumberjack, he seemed bigger than life in every way, as if he’d been carved from the side of a mountain. Earthy, hard-edged and enduring, he gave the startling impression that he had been around since the beginning of time… that he could be around forever.
Since she was a kid, Audrey had been a dedicated people watcher. One of her worst habits, aside from cutting her toenails on the bed, was to file people into categories of her own creation. The stranger at the bar fit neatly into “Blessed At Birth.” Born beautiful—and unless she missed her guess, rich—he’d probably developed his taste for designer clothing in preschool.
Despite the dim bar lighting, the man’s bloodline was plain as day. He’d been born to win. His suit covered a body clearly trimmed of excess. His hair was perfect, and she’d bet a dollar to a doughnut that his nails were manicured, which made her curl her own fingers into her palm. She was a farrier; she spent more time working on horses’ hooves than on her own cuticles.
Audrey didn’t date much, but when she did, she had rules. Thoroughbreds were strictly off-limits. All that perfection made her queasy. The men to whom she was attracted were usually local guys from the community college, where she took one class every semester. What the men she dated had in common was that they were not interested in long-term anything (which kept the goodbyes quick and pain-free, exactly how goodbyes should be) and they were average. Not awash in so much testosterone that they seemed like superheroes waiting for a damsel to rescue.
Audrey Griffin was not a girl who believed in knights-in-shining-armor or in being rescued.
Although…
She’d already spent a good dozen of her twenty-four years pulling herself up by her bootstraps. Would it be so awful if she lost herself in a man who looked as if he could vanquish a dragon without breaking a sweat? Just this once.
All day she’d felt as if she were disappearing, bit by tiny bit. The stranger’s gaze seemed to bring her back.
And if his gaze is that powerful, imagine what his touch can do.
Heat rushed through her. The man seemed to glow in the darkness of the bar, more beautiful and more mysterious than the others present. Most mysterious of all, he never looked away. Men like him rarely noticed her, and that had never bothered her before, not a bit. Yet…
She couldn’t help it; his attention made her feel special, almost… protected.
It was sophomoric; it was foolish. It was the kind of magical thinking she’d abandoned in junior high. Still, she had the feeling that nothing bad could happen if he was with her.
Oh, how she ached to believe the lie for a night.
Her song continued, filling the bar with its intoxicating rhythm.
Throat dry from the whiskey and nerves, Audrey took a step toward the stranger.
And then another.
He continued to watch her, too, and she wished she could better read his expression, but she decided to let the ambiguity be part of the pleasure.
She wasn’t a sexy dancer, but she liked to move. Of their own volition, her hips began to sway to the beat. With nerves making her skin tingle, she gave him a smile that she hoped held the invitation to join her on the dance floor. Her mind began to whirl as she reached the place where she had only to raise her voice above the music in order for him to hear her. Should she speak now or wait until she was closer and could whisper the invitation to join her?
Moistening her lipstick-less lips, she drew them back in a smile of invitation, and—
“Kentucky Ale and a Chardonnay.” Herman’s deep baritone resonated as he placed two glasses in front of Audrey’s mystery man. “You want a bowl of peanuts for your table?”
Too quickly, too easily, her fantasy date’s attention broke away from her and swung to the bartender. “No, thanks.”
Audrey felt the first sickening moments of embarrassment. Two glasses? And one of them a Chardonnay?
He didn’t look her way again, not the tiniest glance, as he unrolled bills from a rather thick wad of money, motioned for Herman to keep the change and picked up his drinks. Audrey watched him, trying hard to feel philosophical instead of fourteen, as his smooth gait carried him to a table in the shadowed corner of the bar.
Since his back was to her now, she risked following him with her gaze. Dim lighting or not, the truth was immediately apparent. Waiting for him on the opposite side of the round wood table sat a woman whose beauty seemed otherworldly. Where Audrey was tall with a perfect build for stable work, the other woman looked like a ballerina from the waist-up. A V-neck blouse in soft pink set off her mother-of-pearl skin and delicate collarbones. Audrey wore a short-sleeved, button-down shirt that could have belonged to a man. Her bold auburn hair seemed almost cartoonish compared to the other girl’s soft, nut-brown waves. And when the lovely creature smiled, Audrey cringed inside.
She had sent a come-hither smile and wagged her hips at a man whose girlfriend made “perfection” seem like a criminal understatement. She, who had learned long ago that her highly imperfect life made running with the Thoroughbreds of the world about as likely as a draft horse competing in the Derby.
Audrey didn’t think she was unattractive. She knew that if she put a little effort into her appearance she could look like… well, a girl. But putting effort into her appearance would defeat her purpose: to weed out imposters.
Life was full of people who had no problem loving you when everything was going right. But throw ’em a curve—financial ruin, physical hardship, a little terminal illness, say—and the phonies scattered like rats to a sewer.
Her eyes began to burn. She blinked hard. Lately she was tired and not above wondering why some lives seemed to be inherently more graceful, crafted more exquisitely…hell, just plain easier… than others.
Maudlin alert. Stop thinking.
Turning, Audrey let her eyelids drift shut as she moved to the
