Nick Corelli for this new perspective, then cursed herself double-time for caring. His opinion of her living conditions shouldn’t matter one blue-eyed damn. But when she opened her eyes they were focused on her bed, and she could still see his long denim-encased legs spread across it. She could still imagine his body heat seeping into the covers.
With a growl of frustration she strode to the door and hauled it open. A horse whickered softly across the way, instantly easing the tightness in her chest. She pulled the door to behind her and moved surefootedly toward the lone equine head that loomed over its stable door.
“Hey, Star.” She smiled as she rubbed the proffered jaw, then let her fingers dwell on the velvet warmth of the animal’s muzzle. Warm, familiar, soothing. She felt her tense muscles relax another degree, felt her smile kick up a notch. “Don’t you ever sleep?” she crooned as she ran her other hand along the mare’s neck and under her blanket, automatically checking for warmth.
The mare stalked off with an impatient shake of her head, then circled the box with her long graceful strides. She, Tamara Cole, owned half of this fabulous animal. Shivering with a flash of intense excitement as much as the cold, T.C. shoved her hands deep into her pockets. “No,” she told herself firmly. “You know you can’t accept it.”
And if she didn’t accept it, what would happen? She wondered if Joe had considered that possibility and if he had made some provision, named some alternate benefactor. Nick hadn’t mentioned it, but then, he hadn’t mentioned much at all, and she had been too stunned to think coherently.
Now a whole crowd of questions scrambled for answers. Why had George told her to carry on as usual, knowing she was now a part-owner? Why had Joe made her a part-owner, knowing she would likely refuse the gift? Why had he specifically requested she learn the news from Nick?
Frowning, she turned to lean her back against the stable door. It didn’t surprise her that Joe hadn’t left Yarra Park to any of his Melbourne-based family. Neither George nor any of his sisters had ever shown any interest in the property—in fact, they had bemoaned their father’s obsession with horses. An old man’s eccentricity, George had called it, with a condescending twist of his lips.
Nor did it surprise her that he had singled out Nick, the only one who had chosen his own career path in preference to a ready-made position in a Corelli company. At first that decision had caused a rift, but ultimately Nick’s independent success had earned his father’s respect and admiration. It made sense that Joe would consider Nick worthy of his beloved property, but would Nick appreciate the magnitude of the gift?
T.C. snorted. He called it a consolation prize, for heaven’s sake.
Frankly she couldn’t see what he would want with a fledgling standardbred training establishment at the opposite end of the world from his New York base, and if he didn’t want his half, what should she do about hers?
She blew out a breath and shook her head slowly. “Gee, Joe, it’d be really good if you could help me out here…if you could tell me what you were thinking when you drafted that will.” Of course, no magical answer boomed out from beyond the steel rafters. “Seems like I’ll have to do this the hard way,” she told Star, knowing exactly how difficult that would be.
First she would have to deal with her treacherous body’s intense physical response to Nick’s presence, and then her awestruck mind might kick into gear and form some meaningful connection with her mouth. Maybe then she would be capable of asking all the questions that needed answering before she could decide what to do.
Three
T.C. intended posing those questions the next time she saw Nick. She planned to stiffen her backbone, look him in the eye and say, “Nick, I need to know your intentions.”
She was pleased with that forthright opener, composed the next morning while she and Jason, her stable hand, exercised the first half of their team. And when it was time for a coffee break, she took her mug to an upturned bucket in the breezeway, tilted her face toward the midmorning sun and fine-tuned her intonation.
“Nick, I need to know…Nick, I need to know…”
Then Nick sauntered into the barn, and her plans, her intonation and her backbone, turned to mush. He wore a polo shirt in the same azure-blue as his eyes, and faded jeans that hugged him in all the right places. The warmth that flooded her body had nothing to do with the sun. Her heart stalled, then bounded into overdrive. She felt all the same jittery reactions as when she stepped a horse onto the track before a big race, but she didn’t look away. She couldn’t not watch his lazy loose-limbed approach. Talk about poetry in slow motion. If he’d been a horse, she would have labeled him a fabulous mover.
“Is this the new boss?” Jason asked.
T.C. nodded, swallowed, inhaled once, exhaled once. By then Nick was close enough for her to notice his shower-damp hair and the rested look about his eyes. It was obvious his sleep hadn’t been disturbed by spicy aftertones clinging to his pillow!
Somehow she managed to mumble the necessary introductions, and Nick shook Jason’s hand. “You must own the one-two-five out front.”
Very smooth opening, T.C. thought with a cynical twist of her mouth, seeing as Jason was mad-keen on his newly acquired dirt bike. They swapped notes in that rev-head shorthand T.C. had never understood, and when Ug snuffled noisily out of her morning nap, Nick hunkered down to tickle her behind the ears. With a fatuous look of bliss clouding her mismatched eyes, the dog promptly rolled onto her back.
T.C. snorted. She bet females did that trick for Nick Corelli all the time.
“What do you call her?” His gaze lifted from the prone dog and met T.C.’s over the rim of her coffee mug.
“Ug.” Jason supplied the answer, which was just as well, because the smiling warmth in Nick’s eyes had struck T.C. dumb. Behind the subterfuge of sipping coffee, she attempted to unravel the knot in her tongue.
“Strange name.” He smiled right into her eyes, and that uncooperative tongue looped itself in a second half-hitch. Luckily Jason came to her rescue again.
“When Joe first brought her home—he found her down the road a bit—T.C. said she wanted to call her Lucky, because she was lucky Joe found her. But Joe says ‘There’s nothin’ lucky about a dog that looks like that.’”
“So how did she get to be Ug?” Nick asked.
“Joe said ‘I’d call her plain old ugly,’ and it just sort of stuck. Except T.C. shortened it to Ug.”
T.C. smiled at the familiar anecdote. She felt like she might finally be capable of speech. “You look like you slept well,” she said, by way of a start.
“Like a baby.” His smile deepened the creases on either side of his mouth, and it struck her that he must smile a lot. “Any more of that coffee around?”
“I’ll get it,” Jason offered. “Um, you want milk or anythin’?”
“The works.” Somehow T.C. wasn’t surprised. She figured Nick would demand the works in all kinds of ways. “Plenty of milk, at least two sugars. Thanks, Jason.”
As the kid bustled off, Nick hoped the coffee wasn’t already bubbling away in a percolator. He wanted some time alone with Tamara. He pulled up the bucket vacated by Jason and sat. “You know, I’d still be sleeping like
