Darci's Pride

Heidi’s smile turned lopsided. “Thanks, I should have thought of that myself.”

“You will,” he promised in the best fatherly voice he could find. “Just give it—”

A blur of motion from the office complex snagged his attention. He squinted against the glare, bringing his office manager, Peggy, into view. She hurried toward him— something she rarely did. In her midfifties, she was an air-conditioning kind of woman.

“—time,” he finished, pulling Midnight Magic to a stop. He swung his leg over the horse and handed the reins to one of the young grooms—Zach, Heidi’s so-called “friend.” “Cool him off,” he instructed, already striding toward Peggy.

“Mr. Preston,” she called as she always did, refusing to call him Tyler, as he’d asked her to a million or so times. She was a stickler for formality, a master at organization, and somehow kept the administrative side of the business running smoothly. “Your one o’clock is here.”

Tyler glanced toward the parking area, where a shiny white convertible sat in the closest space. Looked as though he’d have to talk napkins after all.

“On my way,” he said, veering toward the office building’s shaded entrance. The first stones had been laid six years before, but the facility had only been completed the previous winter.

“But aren’t you—”

With Windbag trotting at his heels, Tyler stopped and pivoted, felt his mouth curve at the look of horror on Peggy’s face. She was old enough to be his mother— barely—but she almost never questioned him. And never, ever corrected him.

“Yes?” he prodded, trying not to laugh.

She bit down on her lip. “Nothing. I just thought… well, she’s a pretty thing. I thought maybe you’d want to clean up first.”

Now he did laugh. Loudly. A pretty thing. It figured. His mother, his new sister-in-law, his office manager…even Daniel’s American wife. It seemed the women of Lochlain and the surrounding area had a bloody intense case of matchmaking fever.

“Freshen up?” Without cracking a smile, he glanced down at the damp white cotton pressed against his skin, his dusty jeans and mud-caked boots, then shot the dog a grin. “What? She thinks I might run the party planner off?”

Peggy had the good grace to flush. “Of course not… I just thought…”

“Right-oh,” he said, adjusting the bush hat that had seen rain and heat and far better days. He knew what Peggy thought…what they all thought. Thirty-four years old was well and past time for the Preston heir to settle down.

“No worries,” he deadpanned with a quick rub of the old dog’s head. “I’m sure Miss—” He slipped off his sunglasses, but couldn’t come up with Andrew’s campaign manager’s name. “I’m late enough as it is. I’m sure she’d rather get this over with than wait for me to shower.”

Peggy sighed. “You make it sound like torture.”

She knew him well. He wasn’t a party kind of guy. He didn’t do galas and benefits. He didn’t do tuxedos or cologne. He only knew a Shiraz from a Chardonnay because his mother, daughter of a local vintner, had drilled it into her boys.

With his best trust-me smile, Tyler sent the dog off to play and strode toward the office.

Air-conditioning blasted him the second he walked inside. The scent of vanilla and sandalwood came next, courtesy of the cluster of candles Peggy kept on her desk. Just because she worked at a stable didn’t mean she had to smell hay and manure all day, she insisted.

It was a modest building by comparison to the nearby Fairchild Acres, but with four offices, a file room, a video room and adjacent meeting room, plus a small lunchroom, the facility suited him. He’d left the decor to Peggy, who’d chosen the same dark woods and rustic furniture found in the main house a couple of hundred meters away.

With the thud of his boots against the hardwood floor drowning out the soft, new age music Peggy said created ambience, Tyler covered the distance to his office and pushed through the partially open door. He had less than twenty minutes to give her. Andrew had departed Sydney a little before noon. He’d return to the stud soon. They had business to discuss. Andrew needed to know about the recent threats. Any talk of the party—

She had her back to him, but the gruff words Tyler had been about to offer stuck in his throat anyway. She stood there so unnaturally still, her posture boarding-school perfect, pale blond hair fastened behind her head in some sleek, elegant twist. A tidy cream suit hugged her willowy frame much too tightly considering the heat that baked the valley. She had to be burning…

The scent slammed into him on a soft wave of air-conditioning, the unmistakable whisper of baby powder and roses—and everything inside of Tyler tightened.

Familiarity came hard and fast, followed by a sharp twist of denial. There 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.