was nothing unique about baby powder and roses. He knew that. It was a common scent, pleasant even. Soft.
There’d been nothing soft about her.
Tara Moore had been like an explosion of danger and mystery and temptation, as far removed from the cool sip of Chardonnay standing across from him as cyclone season was from drought. But he stood there anyway, unmoving, barely breathing…and watched her.
As he’d done so many other times, in so many other places, when he’d damn near choked on something as benign as roses. And powder.
Andrew’s campaign manager had a picture in her hand. It was one of the early ones, its black-and-white image faded by time and sun. He knew that from where she stood, toward the left of the crowd of photographs and yellowed newspaper articles, blue ribbons and trophies, certificates. Those photos were from Lochlain’s adolescence, when his father had worked sunup to long after sundown to carve out a place for himself in Australia. To prove that he was every bit as worthy as the older brother he’d left behind in America.
Those pictures were from when Tyler and his brother, Shane, had been adolescents, as well. When Tyler had raced out of bed before first light, while Shane had often lingered at the house.
Those pictures—the one she held in her fine-boned hand—were of the time when a big beautiful foal had first come to Lochlain, and Tyler had named him Lightning’s Match, telling his father that only lightning could beat the big bay colt with the proud stance and white blaze.
It had been the beginning of a legacy, a legacy Tyler had worked to build and fortify for more than twenty-five years.
A legacy whose near destruction Tyler thought of every time he smelled baby powder and roses.
Slowly Andrew’s campaign manager turned, and something inside Tyler just…stopped.
Chapter Two
Those eyes. Goddamn, he knew those eyes, wide and blue and so full of temptation they should have been illegal. But there was no temptation in them now, only a cool, distant refinement that sliced like a chilled knife.
“Tyler,” she said, and her voice was different, too, no longer laughing and daring, infectious, but strong and graceful, as bloody elegant as the rest of her. “It’s been a long time.”
What have they done to you? That was the first question that fired through him. What had her father done to her? What had England done? Oxford?
Where the hell was…Tara?
But just as quickly those questions fractured into the only truth that mattered.
The seventeen-year-old with the ultrastraight, ultra-blond hair and low-rise jeans, with the trio of hoop earrings and the galloping filly tattooed at the base of her back…no longer existed.
Bloody hell, she’d never existed at all.
She’d simply been an illusion.
A lie.
Through the quiet, Peggy’s Celtic music gained tempo, a flute and a drum merging into a staccato rhythm. He’d been about to swipe off his hat. He’d been about to stroll into the room as big as Australia, covered in dust and full of excuses, and charm his way out of discussing the merits of hors d’oeuvres until Andrew arrived.
But now he lounged in the doorway, and watched.
And something entirely different streamed through him.
“Tara.” That was the name she’d given him, the name he’d whispered as she’d twisted beneath him and he’d twined his fingers with hers as his thoughts had drifted to the future.
It was a damn odd time to smile, but his lips curved anyway, slowly, with deceptive languor. “Oops,” he said with all the remorse of a nine-year-old caught with his hand in his grandma’s cookie jar. “My bad.”
Her eyes—impossibly, ridiculously blue—darkened. She stepped toward him, photo still in hand, but before she could so much as breathe, he rolled right on.
“It’s Darci, isn’t it, sunshine?” The endearment, first drawled that long-ago night when she’d sauntered up to him with mischief gleaming in her eyes, sliced deep. “Darci Parnell.” Daughter of Weston Parnell, currently serving as Australia’s ambassador to Britain. At the time, six years before, he’d been serving his second term as president of the International Thoroughbred Racing Federation—the role Tyler’s cousin Andrew now sought to claim.
Back then, when Darci had claimed to be twenty-three-year-old Tara Moore, Weston Parnell had been one of the most influential men in the Australian racing community.
Hell, in the entire country.
Darci had been seventeen. Seven-bloody-hell-teen. Tyler had been twenty-eight.
Preston Heir Robs The Cradle
He still had that newspaper, not framed and displayed like the ones chronicling Lightning’s Match and the growth of Lochlain, but tucked inside the bottom left drawer of his desk next to a foreclosure notice, as a reminder of just how steep a price carelessness could demand.
“I know this must come as a surprise,” she said in that thick, cultured voice, the one that curled through him, even now. “But I thought it best—”
“You thought it best.” He pushed from the wall and strolled closer, enjoying the way she tried to back up, but had nowhere to go. Except into the Preston-fortified bookcase. “You have a habit of that now, don’t you, sunshine?”
Color touched her cheeks, not enough to be called a blush, but a flush, much like the night he’d looked down at her through the flickering light of a candle, and seen a soft glow to her cheeks.
And her chest.
Now her chin came up. “I knew you wouldn’t be happy—”
“But why let something insignificant like that stop you, right?”
“I believe in Andrew,” she said, and for the first time, fire flared in her eyes, not the recklessness of before, but something harder and deeper, wounded almost.
Tyler just barely bit back the growl that formed in his throat.
There was nothing wounded about Darci Parnell.
“He wants to make a difference,” she said. “He’s the only one who can. If Jacko gets elected—”
“Jacko is your father’s friend,” Tyler reminded her, but the obvious did not need to be pointed out. They both knew of the relationship between Weston and Jackson Bullock. With several newspapers and television stations fortifying his portfolio, Jackson had been more than happy to help his mate squash the bug who’d dared to put his hands on Weston’s precious little girl.
The memory—the truth of it all—flashed in Darci’s eyes. “And he’s done enough, wouldn’t you say?” Her voice was quieter now, almost sad. “It’s time for fresh blood and new ideas, and that’s what Andrew represents. But he’s got an uphill battle in Jacko’s backyard. That’s
