‘Possibly. Though this isn’t all that major a race meeting. Not too many of the seriously rich here today. Look, darling, take my advice and don’t go worrying about Crosswinds this afternoon. Just relax and enjoy yourself. Tonight, after dinner, I’ll sit down and make a list of likely candidates, then tomorrow I’ll ring around and issue some invitations.’
‘What kind of invitations?’
‘Dinner. Drinks. Whatever suits each man in question.’
‘You don’t know any suitably rich women?’ Rich women liked racehorses too, Courtney had been thinking. And there would be less chance of a woman partner wanting to interfere with the management of Crosswinds. She just didn’t trust a man not to try to poke his bib in.
Lois looked just a tad exasperated. ‘Lord, darling, no woman is going to want to be your partner. You’re far too good-looking. No, no, no, some filthy rich old bloke is our best bet. Trust me. By the end of the week, we’ll come up with just the right person. I have every confid— Oh, good God, it’s Jack Falconer. And he said he definitely wasn’t going to be here today!’
Courtney followed the direction of Lois’s disgruntled gaze and encountered a man standing at the railing of the saddling enclosure, alternately studying the race book in his hands, then the horses being led around the parade ring. A pair of expensive-looking binoculars were hooked around his neck. He was tall, with a strongly masculine profile and close-cropped dark hair.
Courtney’s eyebrows lifted. She’d always fancied macho-looking men, and this one was certainly that, despite his sleek, city-smooth clothes. He was somewhere in his early thirties, she guessed. Though she couldn’t be certain from this distance. He could have been older.
His being older wouldn’t have made him any less attractive to Courtney. She liked older men.
‘Who’s Jack Falconer?’ she asked, intrigued by Lois’s reaction to seeing him.
‘What? Oh…one of my owners.’
‘Rich?’
‘Used to be. Not so rich any more.’
‘What happened?’
‘He chose the wrong business partner. The mongrel embezzled a good chunk of their clients’ money and did a flit to Paraguay or Bolivia, or wherever. Jack nobly made restitution himself, though legally he didn’t have to, and it almost sent him to the wall. He lost just about everything, including his live-in lady. The rotten cow dumped him and married a politician old enough to be her father. Rolling in dough, of course. Jack pretended he wasn’t shattered but he clearly was. He was besotted with his darling Katrina. He only bought a share in a racehorse in the first place because she loved coming to the races and mingling with the rich and famous.’
‘She sounds awful. Whatever did he see in her?’
Lois laughed. ‘When you see her, you’ll know the answer to that. And you’ll see her today. Her new hubby is presenting the trophy in the main race of the day. That’s why I was so taken aback to see Jack here. Because his… Oh, darn, he’s spotted me. I’ll fill you in later.’
Lois plastered a high-voltage beam on her face and stepped off the veranda of the members’ stand into the warm winter sunshine. Courtney followed, more intrigued than ever by the man walking towards Lois. Full frontal and up closer, he was even more attractive, with the sort of deep-set blue eyes that Courtney adored.
No grey in his dark brown hair that she could see, so her guess of early thirties remained. As did her initial impression that he was really built. With his suit jacket flapping open and his tie blown back over his right shoulder, there was no hiding the way his broad chest was stretching the material of his pale blue shirt.
Yet there was no question of fat, or flab. That telling area around his waistline against which his binoculars kept bouncing as he walked showed no hint of a soft underbelly, or of being held in. His stomach looked flat and rock-hard, just the way Courtney liked them.
He was even taller than she’d first thought on seeing him standing alone in the distance. Six four at least. A big man all round.
Courtney adored big men.
The three of them met on the grass, with Courtney hanging back slightly. All the better to observe him from…
‘Jack, darling…’ Lois presented her cheek to him for a kiss. ‘How lovely to see you.’
‘Hello, Lois.’ He smiled with a slightly crooked smile as he bent to give her a peck. ‘You’re looking lovely today. There again, you always look lovely.’
‘You’re such a flatterer,’ she said coyly, and Courtney tried not to laugh. But the woman was a riot. As rough as guts around the stables, but here, at the races, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
‘Now, what are you doing here, Jack?’ Lois went on sweetly. ‘When I contacted you this week, you said you definitely wouldn’t be. What changed your mind? The glorious weather?’
He seemed drily amused by her none too subtle probing. ‘No, after we talked I remembered you always said that the first time you put Big Brutus over a bit of distance, he’d win.’
‘He will too,’ Lois replied. ‘I’m very confident.’
Recognition of the horse’s name dragged Courtney’s attention away from ogling Jack Falconer. Big Brutus was one of Four-Leaf Clover’s first crop and the ugliest colt her mother had ever bred. Hence his name. He’d been one of the yearlings she’d refused to sell for peanuts, subsequently leasing him to Lois. He’d been a total dud at two years old, not much better at three, and had turned four this very day, still with only a few minor placings.
But he was bred to stay all day.
Courtney scrambled through her race book to find the race Big Brutus was entered in. There it was. A handicap over twenty-four-hundred metres, with prize money of…
‘Wow!’ she exclaimed. ‘First place pays a hundred thousand smackeroos. My cut would be what, Lois?’
Those piercing blue eyes swung her way. ‘I beg your pardon? God, don’t tell me you’re Big Brutus’s jockey. Tell me she’s not the jockey, Lois.’
‘She’s not the jockey,’ Lois said with a wry smile on her face. ‘But if she was, you’d have one of the best riders in the country on your horse.’
‘That may be, but I’ve never had much luck betting on female jockeys.’
Courtney bristled in defence of her sex. And irritation at herself for once again being attracted to a male chauvinist. Would she never find a man who looked as she liked them to look, yet believed God created man and woman equal?
‘When a race is lost,’ she said frostily, ‘it’s mostly the horse’s fault. Or the trainer’s. Or the owner’s. Not the jockey, be she female or otherwise.’
‘I don’t see how it can be the owner’s fault,’ he argued back.
‘Some owners insist on seeing their horses run in races far above their talents. And other owners insist their horses not run
