Born Of The Bluegrass

Dani watched the man and child. It was like a dream.

“If you can teach the Thoroughbreds to run like that, you’ll make a fortune in this business one day.” Reid’s tone became stern. “Until then, Trey Adam Hamilton III, the barns aren’t your personal playground.”

She heard the name. Reid’s brother’s name.

“Understand?”

The boy nodded.

“Okay then.” Reid lifted the boy, swung him up on his shoulders.

The child wrapped his arms beneath Reid’s chin, crouched low over the man’s crown. “Rider up.”

Reid smiled as he caught the boy’s hands in his own. “It’s in the blood, I’m afraid.” The boy bucked up and down on his shoulders.

Dani stared at the child, wondering whose blood ran through those tender veins.

“An obvious champion,” she said. She didn’t realize she was hanging on to the hem of the boy’s shorts until she gave it an affectionate tug. She looked down and saw the strawberry-colored mark on the child’s thigh. Her fingers gripped the material. The first time she’d seen that thick V-shape, she’d thought it had looked like a bird in flight. She had to let go.

“Are you fellas ready?” Cicely called. Dani forced her fingers to drop, her gaze to shift from the boy to where Cicely stood, fanning Georgia Hamilton. “Your mother, Reid, needs a beverage,” Cicely said.

“Just gathering my guy here,” Reid told her.

The child rested his chin on the Reid’s crown, looked down at Dani. “Celery,” he pronounced.

“Cicely,” Reid corrected, trying not to smile. He lost. Still smiling, he looked at Dani. “Thank you.” Moving one hand up to support the boy, he extended his other hand to Dani in gratitude. Her hand touched his, withdrew before his fingers found hers.

“Trey,” Reid instructed, his silver eyes still on Dani. “Thank the nice lady for reining you in.”

Twin silver eyes looked down into hers. “Thanks, nice lady.”

She touched his bare sweet knee. “Any time.”

The boy looked down at her and smiled. How often had she imagined what he looked like, how his laughter sounded, what he would feel like in her arms? Her hand stayed on the child.

“Thank you again,” Reid said. “Say goodbye, Trey.”

“Bye,” the child told her.

“Goodbye.” Dani let go, clasping her hands behind her back to hide their tremble.

SHE FOUND her father sitting between Willie and Lou at the bar that served the huge blue margaritas. It was early. The night was maybe only two or three rounds old.

He looked up, meeting her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. His hair had grayed at the temples, and there was bloat beneath the eyes from alcohol and age, but overall, the face so many women had found handsome hadn’t changed. Good genes he would say. Bloodlines.

He tapped his cigarette against the ashtray’s edge. “Sit down. Have a sip with me and the boys here. I’m going to tell them about the day I rubbed a Derby winner.”

“C’mon, Mick, don’t you have any new stories?” Willie raised his beer to his smiling lips. Dani’s reflection in the mirror stayed grave.

Mick pushed his empty glass toward the edge of the bar, signaling the bartender. He was a man who believed a life of excess was the only life worth living. It was often the secret to his appeal. One day it would kill him.

“Some stories deserve repeating. The home stretch at Churchill Downs is one of them, right, love?” Mick met his daughter’s eyes in the mirror.

“I need to talk to you.”

Mick took a sip from the full tumbler the bartender put down in front of him and studied his daughter in the mirror’s reflection. “Let the ol’ man buy you a drink first, Dani girl. You’re getting as high-strung as the ponies.”

She felt the tension in her limbs, the jerk in her pulse. “No.” One syllable but it sounded of a madness in the making.

Her father swiveled slowly, his drink wrapped in one hand. Lou and Willie studied their beers. Mick studied her. She smelled the whiskey in his glass, on his breath. She should wait for a few more rounds when the liquor loosened his tongue. She thought of the child. She couldn’t wait.

“I saw Reid Hamilton today.”

Her father looked at her a long second. He swiveled back to the bar, avoiding her mirrored gaze. He stubbed out his cigarette long after it stopped smoking. Just as she decided he was going to ignore her or try to escape, he raised his gaze and gave her a long look in the mirror. With an exhale part breath, part sigh, he slid off the stool and gestured grandly to the square tables in the back. “Let’s have a seat, shall we?”

Sipping from his drink, he led the way. He was shorter than her, but his build was as narrow and taut. In his youth, he’d dreamed of wearing the silks, but the dream and the paddock were as close as he’d ever come.

Father and daughter sat down, facing one another. Dani’s hand clenched into a ball on the scarred table-top. She covered it with her other hand, her fingers curling, pressing into the thin flesh, slim bones. She had too much at risk to fall apart now.

“I saw Reid Hamilton today.”

Mick’s gaze shifted for a second, then came back to her. He took a long drink. His eyes watched her above the rim. She squeezed her hands together.

“So you’ve said.” He set his glass carefully on the wet ring that had formed on the wood.

She should’ve waited. Waited until the whiskey had made him brash. She’d been in too much of a hurry. Reckless.

“He had a child with him. A boy.”

She watched for his reaction. He reached out, his fingertips touching the cool sides of the glass.

“He said it was his nephew. His brother’s boy.”

Her father drew circles on the glass’s damp surface.

“I held the child in my arms.”

Her father’s hand went still. He lifted his fingers, touched the wetness to his lips.

Dani’s hands clutched each other as if to snap bone. “I held the child in my arms.”

Her father raised his glass to his lips. “Dani.” He stopped, said no more. He drank.

Her voice was eerily even. “Reid Hamilton isn’t the boy’s uncle. He’s his father.”

Mick pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapped one out and lit it, his eyes narrowing. “You said the child is the brother’s boy.”

“The child is Reid Hamilton’s son.” The words bubbled up, burned her throat. “He has a son.” She’d become a broken record.