Mistress for a Month

The thought of her being on top of him did things to his body which hadn’t been done so swiftly or so savagely since he was a teenager. He winced then tried to rearrange the bulge in his trousers to ease his discomfort, but it was a lost cause. Nothing was going to solve his problem, nothing except full body contact with Renée.

As Rico turned into the Randwick street where Ward’s home and stables were located, he vowed to succeed in making Renée go out with him—and go to bed with him—even if he had to sell his soul to the devil to do so!

The sight of her blue BMW parked at the kerb right outside Ward’s front gate gave Rico’s black resolve a momentary jolt. She was there, waiting for him to make a fool of himself. No escape now, not unless he wimped out. And Rico was no wimp.

For a split-second the car-lined street almost gave him an excuse to drive on, to forget this insane mission. But then a gap presented itself in between a silver Jag and a dark blue Merc. Ward’s owners were not short of a dollar. With a resigned sigh, Rico expertly angled his Ferrari into the rather tight spot and cut off the engine.

After a glance at his watch—it was getting on for one—he dragged himself out from behind the wheel, slammed the door and zapped the immobiliser. Almost as an afterthought, he checked his appearance in the side-mirror, finger-combing his messy hair back from his face before frowning at the dark stubble on his cheeks and chin. He never shaved on the weekend—something Renée had no doubt noticed in the past—so he hadn’t wanted it to seem as if he’d been sprucing himself up specially for her.

Still, given he was planning to ask her out—view full sex at the end of the night—this now seemed a stupid train of thought. Totally…utterly…stupid! Which meant he was running true to form. Once Renée came into the equation in anything he did, off went his head and on went a pumpkin.

But faint heart never won fat turkey, Rico reminded himself doggedly. Or the hand of the fair lady. Not that he wanted to marry the merry widow. He wasn’t that crazy! All he wanted was a few nights in her bed, after which he was sure that this perverse sexual obsession he’d been suffering from these past five years would burn itself out.

He didn’t love her. Lord, no. No way! What was there to love? She was no better than Jasmine, really. Just another hard-nosed, hard-hearted, mercenary madam who specialised in making fools of men, namely him.

With that charming thought in mind, Rico slid his hands into the pockets of his black trousers and walked somewhat reluctantly back up the street to Ward’s establishment, throwing Renée’s BMW a testy look as he passed by. She must have been the first guest to arrive to get such a prize spot.

Rico stood for a moment at Ward’s front gate, staring blankly up at the trainer’s very stylish two-storey home and trying to get his brain into gear. All the owners would have finished visiting their horses by now. They’d all be inside, tucking into the champers and caviare. All except…Renée.

More than likely she’d still be at the stables, fussing over their syndicate’s most expensive purchase to date, a three-year-old black colt which they’d bought from Ali as a yearling but which had gone seriously shin-sore during his first preparation and been turned out to mature. He’d been back in training for a few weeks, and Ward’s PA had told Rico on the phone the other night—the notoriously taciturn trainer rarely spoke to owners in person over the phone—that Ebony Fire had come back a treat and was working the place down. No doubt Lisa had relayed the same news to Renée.

Although Rico knew surprisingly little about Renée on a personal basis, he knew how she felt about the horses she owned and part-owned. She loved them. Loved being around them. Loved touching them and talking to them. On the couple of occasions that he had come to an open Sunday prior to today, Renée had been difficult to pry away from the stables.

‘I don’t come here to eat,’ she’d snapped at him once when he’d suggested going inside for lunch. ‘I come here to visit with my horses.’

Rico smiled wryly at the memory. Oh, yes. She would not have gone inside yet. He was sure of it.

Which was a comfort. The prospect of propositioning the object of his desire in privacy was infinitely preferable to doing so in a roomful of people where others might hear her hysterical laughter. This way, he could keep his humiliation to himself.

Scooping in a deep and hopefully calming breath, he spun on his heels and headed for the side-path, which bypassed Ward’s house and led round to where the stables were located at the rear of the property. At the end of this path was a gate which was always manned by a security guard. Today’s man was called Jed, a big, beefy fellow who knew all of Ward’s owners by sight.

‘Afternoon, Mr Mandretti,’ Jed said as he opened the gate to let Rico in. ‘You’re running a bit late. All the others have gone in to lunch.’

Rico’s heart sank, till he realised Jed couldn’t possibly know that for a fact from where he was stationed. Ward’s stable complex was shaped in a square with an internal courtyard. Each side of the square housed six stalls along with feed and tack rooms at the ends of the rows, with staff quarters on the floor above.

Whilst Jed could peer through the gap at the nearest corner into the courtyard beyond, he couldn’t possibly see inside the stalls, which was where Renée always ventured. It was never enough for her to stroke her horses’ heads over the stall doors. If the horse was docile enough, she would be right in there, up close and personal.

‘No worries, Jed,’ Rico replied as he walked on in. ‘I haven’t come to eat today. See you.’

The courtyard was deserted except for one stable-hand, who was hosing away the last of the horsy deposits from the pavings, legacies of their having been walked around on show for their owners.

‘Working hard there, Neil, I see,’ Rico said as he approached.

The young lad glanced up with surprise and pleasure on his face.

‘Why, hello there, Mr Mandretti,’ Neil replied, swiftly turning off the hose so that their esteemed visitor could pass by without getting anything splattered on his very smart and expensive-looking black clothes. If there was one owner Neil liked almost as much as he liked Mrs Selinsky, it was Mr Mandretti. For one thing, he always remembered his name, not like a lot of the hoi polloi. You’d never know he was a famous TV star by the way he acted. He was so nice and friendly. Of course, no one was as nice as Mrs Selinsky. Now there was one genuine lady. Generous, too. Every time one of her horses won any prize money, she gave all the grooms a bonus.

But it wasn’t just her handing out cash which made everyone here warm to her. It was the way she was with the horses. She really cared about them. Even the boss liked Mrs Selinsky. You could tell because he actually talked to her. And the boss was not one for idle chit-chat.

‘You’ll be here to see your colt, I suppose,’ Neil said. ‘Mrs Selinsky’s still in there with him. I think she’d sleep in that stall if the boss’d let her.’

Rico decided then and there that if there was such a thing as reincarnation he wanted to come back as one of Renée’s racehorses.

‘What stall is Blackie in?’ Rico asked. Blackie was Ebony Fire’s stable name.

‘Number eighteen. The last on that row over there. I know it’s not for me to say, but if he runs as good as he looks this time in, you’ll have a class-one winner there for sure.’

‘Let’s hope so, Neil. But there’s many a slip twixt the training track and the winner’s circle.’

‘Aye. That there is. But then that’s the way of the racin’ game, isn’t it? It’s all a gamble. A bit like life.’

Rico nodded. Neil was right. Life was a gamble. Sometimes you won and sometimes you lost. Knowledge, however, increased your odds of winning. Suddenly, he wished he knew a lot more about Mrs Renée Selinsky. But it was too late to worry about that now. The time had come to take his chances. To gamble on winning the Maiden Stakes. Trouble was, he was a long shot and long shots didn’t win too often.

Despite his growing inner tension, he waved a jaunty goodbye to Neil before making his way straight for stall number eighteen.

Several of the horses whose heads were hanging over the doors whinnied to him as he strode past. Ebony Fire, however, was not one of them. At first glance, stall number eighteen seemed empty. But, once Rico’s eyes adjusted to the dimmer light inside, he saw that the black colt was standing on a thick bed of straw in the far corner, having his flank stroked and being talked as if he were a much loved child.

‘You are such a beautiful boy,’ Renée crooned as her right hand continued its rhythmic petting. Her left arm was curled round the horse’s neck, with the side of her head resting against his glossy black mane. ‘Ward says there’s no sign of that shin soreness coming back and you’ll be ready for your first race soon. And he says you’ll win. I did tell him that you might be a little nervous to begin with and we shouldn’t expect too much too soon, but he said you didn’t have a nervous bone in your body. He said you were a born racehorse. A potential champion. Oh, I do so wish you were all mine, my darling. But I suppose one third of you is better than nothing.’

Rico didn’t know whether he felt jealous of the horse on the receiving end of Renée’s caresses. Or of Ward Jackman. It sounded as if the man said one hell of a lot more to Renée than he did to him, or anyone else for that matter. Could it be that Renée’s relationship with Jackman extended beyond trainer and owner?

Suddenly, Renée’s BMW being parked right outside Ward’s front gate took on a different and more ominous meaning. Maybe she hadn’t arrived first today. Maybe her car had been there all night…

Rico swallowed the bile which leap into his throat and tried to look at this appalling idea more rationally and without panic. There’d never been a hint of intimacy shown between them that he’d noticed. No telling glances, or untoward touching.

But their being lovers would certainly explain the uncharacteristic amount of chit-chat which obviously had been going on between them about Ebony Fire. Even the most taciturn men were prone to pillow talk.

The thought of Renée sleeping with the ruggedly handsome horse trainer stabbed deep into Rico’s heart. His fists curled over by his side, his nails digging into his palms. Theoretical lovers were a whole different ball game to an in-your-face, flesh-and-blood one. If what Rico suspected was true, then it was no wonder she never brought a boyfriend to the races. He was already there!

He stared at the way she was cuddling and petting the horse, but his brain didn’t see Ebony Fire as the recipient of her caresses any longer. His mind’s eye was picturing Ward Jackman, naked and aroused, beneath her hands.

A violent shudder ran down Rico’s spine.

The colt suddenly swung his head Rico’s way as he spotted him standing there at the stable door and neighed a welcome to his new visitor. Renée whirled, her eyes widening when she saw who that new visitor was.

For a few moments her usual composure seemed to desert her, her body language showing agitation as she hurried over to the stable door, the horse hot on her heels.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she snapped as she wrenched open the bottom half of the stable door and slipped out of the stall, quickly closing the door behind her before the colt could follow. ‘Don’t you usually go home to the family on the first Sunday of the month?’

The way she said the word, ‘family’, suggested he was a member of the Mafia, rather than the son of an honest, hard-working market gardener.

‘And hello to you too,’ Rico returned, impressed at how cool he sounded in the face of the jealousy and fury raging inside him. ‘The thing is, my dear Renée, I just couldn’t go another day without a dose of your charming company,’ he added in a mocking tone which masked the truth behind his words.

She totally ignored him as she concentrated on shoving the bolt home on the door before finally raising cool green eyes to his. ‘In that case, why weren’t you at the races yesterday?’

Rico smiled. ‘Aah, so you noticed I wasn’t there. I’m flattered.’

‘Don’t be. I had a very pleasant afternoon. I picked several winners as well.’