Flirting with Trouble

Which might not have been so bad, except that high-society party girls like Marnie Roberts didn’t stay interested in unemployed losers like Daniel Whittleson. And once Marnie walked out on him—as she would have eventually—he’d be facing both financial and emotional poverty.

Still, Daniel had learned a very valuable lesson from the Del Mar experience. He’d learned that he couldn’t afford to be sidetracked by things like staggeringly good sex—or even what might have turned out to be a halfway decent, if temporary, relationship with a woman. Work came first for Whittleson men. Especially Daniel. Because work led to success, and success was the only way to escape the insecurity and poverty he’d known as a child.

So Daniel had cut ties with Marnie completely. And he’d stopped thinking about Del Mar and anything related to that sorry chapter of his life a long time ago.

At least until this morning.

He grimaced at the memories and pushed them back into the furthest, darkest, least-visited corner of his brain where they belonged. It hadn’t been easy, but he had successfully rebuilt his career after Del Mar, and he would never go back again. He’d practically been a kid with Little Joe, barely out of college with the first horse he’d trained by himself. Now, at thirty-two, he had trained scores of horses, many of whom had gone on to become champions. He was building the pedigree necessary for a trainer who someday intended to own and operate his own stables. Stables that would be successful enough for him to finally reassure the child who still lived inside him fearing poverty and loss. Only when Daniel had achieved that goal would he be able to call himself successful. Only then would he be fulfilled. Personally and professionally. Nothing—nothing in the world—mattered to him more.

“Daniel!”

At the sound of his name, he turned and saw Jenna Preston striding down the steps of the big house, waving her arm over her head to get his attention. The house was a huge, rambling red brick structure, two proud stories of more than five thousand square feet of living space. The front boasted a broad, shady porch supported by pillars, but here in the back, the long, sheltered veranda was less formal. There were two other verandas. The one on the west had comfortable dark green wicker furniture with floral cushions for viewing sunsets, while the east veranda had bamboo furniture for outdoor dining.

Off the east veranda was a cobbled patio with a massive built-in grill and rotisserie, Thomas Preston’s pride and joy during the summer months, when he loved to cook for friends and family. Daniel could see the big, kidney-shaped pool shimmering nearby in the morning sun, its deck a tile mosaic of horse-themed images and icons.

A handful of small, tidy cabins were used to house guests and employees—Daniel included—all scattered within easy walk of the big house. Bunkhouses provided lodging for those who worked the farm, and there were barns for the horses, corrals for exercising, a practice track and several storage sheds. In many ways, Quest Stables was like a small town. During busy times of the year, Daniel had been known to go weeks without ever leaving the grounds.

He exited the corral and began to walk in Jenna’s direction, meeting her halfway. Like him, she’d been up before the sun and was dressed for the day ahead in blue jeans and work boots and a gray work shirt decorated with the logo of Quest Stables. At fifty-five, Jenna was as trim and fit as life on a working horse farm could make a person. She was a good head shorter than Daniel’s own six feet, her auburn hair framing her round face in soft waves. Her cheerful, thoughtful nature was the perfect complement to her husband’s straightforward, uncompromising one. Jenna could and did show Thomas sides of a situation he wouldn’t bother to entertain himself.

Rumor on the farm had it that not a blade of bluegrass could bend anywhere on the property without Jenna knowing about it. Although she had raised three kids into admirable adults, she still took a maternal interest in some of the younger workers on the farm. Daniel had been one of them when he’d first come to work here. In a lot of ways, Jenna had been the mother he’d lost when he was a teenager.

“Daniel, there’s a phone call for you at the big house,” she called when she was within earshot. “They said they tried your cell phone but didn’t get an answer.”

That was because he never turned on his phone until after he’d enjoyed those few stolen moments at the beginning of the day. He frowned. “It’s barely 7:00 a.m. Who is it?”

Her already concerned expression darkened. “They wouldn’t say. The caller ID has an international code, though. Australia. And the voice is too official-sounding for them to be calling about something casual.”

Daniel’s first thought was Sam. “It’s not my dad?”

She shook her head.

Her concern infected him then. If it wasn’t his dad, there was a strong chance it was about his dad. The old man was only sixty-one and had always been in good health, but that was an age where problems could start showing up. Daniel quickened his pace as he headed for the house, not waiting for Jenna. He took the steps of the veranda by twos and saw the library door—the one through which she must have exited—open. Sure enough, the phone lay on its side on the table nearest the door, so he scooped it up.

“Daniel Whittleson,” he said without preamble, barely winded from the brisk walk.

“Mr. Whittleson, this is Detective Headley of the Pepper Flats Police Department.”

Something seized Daniel’s heart and squeezed hard. Pepper Flats was the town closest to Whittleson Stud, his father’s four-hundred-acre station in Hunter Valley, Australia. A call from the police couldn’t be good.

The detective’s voice was noticeably quieter when he added, “I’m afraid I have a bit of bad news for you, sir.”

“What is it?” Daniel could barely get the question out.

“Your father is Samuel Whittleson of HunterValley?”

A knot of something hot and sharp tightened in his belly. “Yes,” he told the detective. “I’m Sam’s son.”

There was a slight hesitation, then, “I’m afraid your father’s been shot.”

“Shot?” Daniel echoed incredulously. Of all the things cartwheeling through his head, a shooting had been nowhere among them.

Before he could say anything else, the detective hurried on. “He’s in hospital right now and has an excellent chance of recovery. He was shot in the chest, but the bullet exited cleanly and no vital organs were affected. He may be a while in surgery, though.”

Daniel’s head was still buzzing with the news that his father had been shot and he barely heard anything else the detective said.

“Do the police have the shooter?” he asked after a moment.

“We do,” the detective told him. “Your father was shot by a neighbor, Louisa Fairchild.”

It was a name Daniel knew well. Not a conversation with his father went by without Sam saying something about Louisa. The two of them had been feuding over the rights to a lake that adjoined their properties since the day Sam took ownership of his farm a decade ago. Daniel had met the woman a time or two during his visits to his father, and as cantankerous as she was, no way would he have figured her to be capable of shooting someone. Hell, she must be eighty years old!

“Louisa Fairchild?” he echoed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. How could Louisa have shot my father?”

There was a meaningful hesitation, then the detective said, “We’re still interrogating Miss Fairchild, but she claims it was self-defense.”

“What?” Daniel was incredulous. Self-defense indicated that she’d needed to protect herself from Sam Whittleson. And although his father wasn’t the most even-tempered, jovial man on the planet, he was in no way abusive.

“I’m afraid, Mr. Whittleson,” the detective said, “that there are some mitigating circumstances, and that much of what Miss Fairchild has said isn’t quite connecting. We won’t have a chance to speak to your father until the doctors give us the go-ahead, which could be days from now. I’m afraid it may be some time before we have the whole story.”

Daniel gripped the phone fiercely, his head spinning with all he’d heard, little of which made any sense. One thing, however, was certain. “I can be in Australia tomorrow.”

Marnie Roberts was not having a good day. She’d awoken to discover that the old song about it never raining in Southern California was a total lie. In fact, there were actual monsoons in Southern California, as evidenced by the puddles of water that had formed beneath the jalousie windows of her San Diego condo during the night. Inside the windows, that is. Outside the windows, she’d discovered upon cranking them open and peeping through, someone had evidently moved the condo swimming pool just beneath her unit. Which might have brought up the value of the place if it weren’t for the fact that this new pool was filled with muddy water and dead, mushy marigolds.

Things had only gotten worse.

The monsoon had blown out her power, too. So she’d woken up late, with coffee to chase the cobwebs from her brain, no blow-dryer or straightening iron to tame her mass of unruly auburn curls, no steamer to tame her even more unruly clothes, and no light in her windowless bathroom to help her apply her makeup. Consequently, when she finally arrived at the San Diego office of Division International Consulting—the PR firm that had employed her for the past five years—she looked nothing like her usual flawlessly professional self. Instead, she looked like…

Well, there was no avoiding it. With her auburn hair lank and lifeless and her butter-yellow business suit wrinkled and limp, she looked like a dead, mushy marigold.

She hated days like this.

Great, she thought as she entered the outer office and breathlessly greeted Phoebe, The Perkiest Receptionist in the Pacific Time Zone. This was just great. And today, Marnie was supposed to be meeting with a new client, a rising young comedian who was notorious for cruelly insulting perfectly nice people like, well, like Marnie, and the dead, mushy marigold look was going to give him tons of ammunition.

She really hated days like this.

In an effort to kick her office door closed with one foot, she inadvertently got her heel caught in the carpet and stumbled forward, losing her grip on the mondo-size latte she’d picked up at the drive-through and sending it careening through the air. It landed upside down—naturally—and the plastic top came popping off—inevitably—spilling a river of tan along the pastel dhurrie rug she’d bought for her office only days before—of course. All this after it had sloshed a nice long estuary across the lower portion of her previously butter-yellow suit first.

She really, really hated days like this.

She tugged her foot free from the door and slammed it down with confidence—it was not petulance—something that made the heel snap off and go flying toward her other calf, leaving a long scrape. Not sure whether she should focus her immediate attention on the shoe, the calf or the rug, she hobbled to her desk and was reaching for a tissue when the intercom buzzed with enough volume to make her squeal.

“Marnie, I need to see you right away,” her boss Hildy’s voice boomed ominously into the room. Not that Hildy Emerson wasn’t ominous and booming every day, but today, she sounded even more urgent than usual.

Not a good sign, Marnie thought. But then, considering how her day had been so far, not exactly surprising, either.

She pushed the button on her intercom. “I’ll be right there, Hildy.” To herself, she added, Just as soon as I’m presentable. Which should be sometime in September.

As if reading her thoughts, Hildy immediately replied, “I need you now.”