Читать книгу Darci's Pride - Jenna Mills, Jenna Mills - Страница 9

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 why this party at Lochlain is so important. That’s why I didn’t use my name in our correspondence—”

Why she hadn’t called, hadn’t let him hear her voice. Even with the change, even with all that elegance and breeding, he would have known.

Tyler didn’t need a mirror to know that the truth of it all burned in the dark green of his eyes. “Some things never change, do they, sunshine? You still color the truth to fit all nice and tidy into your pretty little world.”

She winced. “Think what you will of me,” she said, and her voice was stronger now. “But I’m standing here, aren’t I?”

Yes, she was. She was standing in a sliver of sunlight, right in front of the family bookcase as if she had every right to be there. He took the last three steps that separated them and did what he’d been telling himself not to do. He lifted a hand toward the side of her face, and touched.

He wasn’t sure what he expected…wanted. For her to turn away, twist away. Lift a hand to his wrist and yank it from her face. Tell him to go to hell.

For her to step into him, lift her own hand to his face, push up toward him, tell him that she was sorry…

She lifted her eyes to his, but made no move to step away, no move to break contact. The new age music had faded to a low, soft chant, leaving only the sound of their breaths and the burn of the heat.

“You’ve done well,” she said quietly, and he felt himself stiffen as if she’d used her hands on him, rather than just her voice. “That’s all I ever wanted for you.”

The words fell into silence for a long, slow heartbeat until the soft music shifted to a new song, this one with a shrill feminine wail.

He jerked back, broke every sliver of contact, but bloody hell, even as he let indifference fall around him, he couldn’t help but wonder if any of Tara still existed beneath that trim-fitting suit, where he’d once run his mouth down the curve of her back to the little filly—

“Peggy will get what you need,” he said roughly, as a mobile phone started to ring. Not his. He hated the things, rarely carried one, certainly not one that played Irish rock music as a ring tone. He turned, refusing to look at her one second longer. To let himself wonder.

He strode toward the partially open door as the phone rang again, and again, the old braided rug muting the sound of his boots. It had been one of his father’s first purchases after moving to Australia. He’d hung on to it all this time, a reminder of what it was like to start with nothing. True, he’d had his name and a sizable trust fund, but back then David Preston had not had the one thing that had mattered to him.

“Ty.”

The quiet voice slipped across the office and the years. Time moved forward. Tyler knew that. To get where he was going, a man had to keep his eye on the destination.

But he also knew the value of looking back. Of remembering—of never letting himself forget where he’d been.

It was the only way to make sure he never went there again.

Slowly he stopped, and slowly he turned. And this time he was prepared. He was prepared for the sight of her standing there, the sight of Darci Parnell in her chic little suit, holding the picture of him in her hands, the picture he’d caught her looking at when he’d first walked into his office, of him sitting atop Lightning’s Match, when the gum trees his father had planted had been too young to give off shade. He’d been wearing a bush hat even back then, and against the glare of the summer sun, he’d squinted at the camera.

“I’m sorry about the mess with Sam,” she said, looking up from the photo to the man. She hadn’t answered her phone. “I know you didn’t do anything wrong.”

But someone didn’t. Someone thought he’d drugged Sam Whittleson’s horse. And someone wanted to make him pay.

“Lightning Chaser is an amazing horse,” she added. “I’m looking forward to the Classic.”

One side of his mouth lifted. With More Than All That sidelined, the field was wide open, and rumors were running rampant that a filly who rarely ran with the boys might give the race a try. A filly owned by none other than the former owner of Warrego Downs…Weston Parnell.

A filly named Darci’s Pride.

Somehow, Tyler thought it fit.

“Well then,” he said, “that makes two of us, sunshine.” Her smile was brief, fleeting, politely formal.

“I’m looking forward to seeing what Darci’s Pride is made of,” he added with a wicked surge of adrenaline. “See if she’s all that she’s made out to be.”

Darci’s chin came up. “She is.”

He shouldn’t have winked. Tyler knew that. But damn it all to hell, he did.

Habit, he told himself. It was just a bloody habit. “I prefer to be my own judge.”

Her smile widened, reminding him for one cruel moment of that girl he’d seen—

He broke the thought, the memory. “I’ll send Peggy in,” he said, and then he was gone, didn’t trust himself to linger, to look, for one second longer. It was well and fine to glance back…but only a glance.

She watched him go. She stood there in his large, Spartan office, not trusting herself to move, barely trusting herself to breathe, and watched Tyler Preston walk out the door.

Again.

She should have been prepared.

The last time, she’d been naked, clutching only a sheet. But somehow, through the years and the miles, the distance she’d injected between them, she’d forgotten. She’d forgotten what it was like to be in the same room as Tyler Preston, to feel the gleam in those dark green eyes, to see how his mouth could curve into those naughty, wicked smiles, smiles that had the simultaneous power to seduce and destroy. She’d forgotten how his voice, that low, irreverent Aussie drawl, could swim through her and touch places she hadn’t been touched in six long years.

She’d forgotten, because she’d had to.

She’d forgotten, because remembering would have made walking away, moving forward, impossible.

And if there was one thing Darci was determined to do, it was move forward. There’d been no future for her in Australia all those years ago, a seventeen-year-old whose face had been splashed on the cover of every tabloid. Everywhere she’d gone, people had looked at her. They’d stared—and they’d known. She was the girl who’d seduced the man, the jailbait who’d gone to bed with the cowboy.

The harlot who’d smeared the reputation of one of Australia’s favorite sons.

The shame had followed her everywhere, until finally she’d stepped onto the big jet that hot March afternoon, and never looked back. England, Oxford, had been a world away, and with the miles and the years, she’d moved forward.

But then she’d run into Andrew Preston at a party in London, and all those hard broken edges she’d pushed deep had shoved their way forward, and she’d known. Finally, after six years, she’d realized how to fix things. How to make things better, to give Tyler back all that she’d taken from him.

That’s what she wanted. To give Tyler back the respectability her recklessness had cost him, to prove to him and her father and everyone who still saw her as frivolous that she was no longer that reckless, irresponsible child. That she was competent, could be trusted. That she was no longer that motherless girl spinning so desperately, horribly out of control. Then she would be free of the past. Then she would walk away, walk forward. Finally, at last, get on with her life.

She’d planned and she’d analyzed, just as she’d learned to do at Oxford. She’d struck up a conversation with Andrew and the two had quickly realized how much they had in common. It had been easy between them. He hadn’t recognized her name, hadn’t recognized her as the girl who’d almost destroyed his cousin.

The invitation to join his campaign had been natural, easy. He needed help in Australia. She was Australian. Her father had served two terms as president of the ITRF. Despite her six-year exile, she knew people. She had friends, influence. She could help Andrew as no one else could. She could help him gain Australian support, despite the popularity of Jacko Bullock.

The opportunity had been all but gift wrapped, the kind of chance she’d been craving since earning her degree in commerce and political science.

She’d wanted to say yes, absolutely, to shout it from the rooftop of her London flat. But she’d realized she couldn’t, not until she’d told Andrew the truth about her and his cousin. She’d learned the consequences of lies, even seemingly harmless little white ones. So she’d talked to Andrew and held her breath, and after a long, unsteady heartbeat, he’d smiled warmly and held out his hand, told her the past was the past.

But then Tyler strode into his office, tall and dusty, damp from his land, in need of a shave and with that battered hat pulled down low on his head, and something inside her, all that determination and resolve maybe, the nice little speech she’d rehearsed, had simply shattered.

The years had been kind to him. Amazing, actually. He was still lanky, but no longer in the way of the brash cowboy half the country had been in love with. He was a man now, with all the confidence and awareness that came with the years. Even the gleam in his eyes was different, still bloody irreverent, but more focused now.

Dangerous.

And in the moment she’d first seen him standing there, she’d realized how wrong she’d been. How badly she’d misjudged the situation. All that she’d forgotten, all she’d refused to remember, had surged back, tightening around her like a shiny new vise.

One glance at the picture in her hands, of Tyler so long ago, and the ache in her chest deepened. He’d been young then, innocent in the way only a child could be. But even then, when he could have been no more than eight or nine, the grit had been in his eyes, the dreams and the determination to make them come true. And the hat…

She smiled at the sight of it sitting crookedly on his head, much like a similar hat he’d worn when she’d first seen him all those years ago. She’d been bored, flipping channels on her television, when she’d landed on a local access cable station, and seen him. She hadn’t known the horseman’s name, had only seen the naughty gleam in his eyes, heard the irreverent drawl, and from that moment forward, she’d been hooked. She’d made it her mission—

Her mission. It always had a way of getting her in trouble.

She set the picture back on the shelf and fished around in the leather satchel that doubled as a briefcase, locating her mobile phone. She pushed the button to see the missed call, braced herself even before her father’s name appeared.

He’d been trying to reach her for several days.

Sighing, she jabbed a few buttons and brought the phone to her ear: “Sweetheart, I do wish you would answer your phone. I have decided to fly into Sydney a few days in advance of the Summit.”

Darci closed her eyes and let out a slow breath. It was one thing to avoid her father with an ocean between them, something entirely different when he was only two hours south. “We can have lunch,” he said in his booming formal voice, the one he always used. The only one, Darci had learned, he knew how to use, even when she’d been a young girl who’d needed something so…different. “I will be at the Observatory, as usual. Barbara will set something up.”

She wanted to resent him for that, and maybe once, she had. Most fathers didn’t need an assistant to arrange time with their children.

But Weston Parnell was hardly most fathers, and he never had been, even before, when her mother had been there to soften him.

“I need you to think about what we discussed last week,” he said, as he had in every message he’d left her over the past four days, since she’d boarded the plane at Heathrow. He’d actually insisted on driving her there, but in the end, she realized he’d only driven her there to try and talk her out of leaving. “Now is not the time to get involved with the Prestons.”

They were an upstanding family, but he made them sound like pariahs, something dangerous to be viewed with mild curiosity, but only from a safe distance.

“Not even Andrew. I am hearing things—”

She stiffened. That was new.

“I know you think you have something to prove, Darci-Anne, but aligning yourself with that family at this point in time is not the way.”

The chill down her spine was immediate. It almost sounded as though her father was warning her.

Through the window, she saw Tyler squatting next to two black-and-white dogs in the shade of one of the old gum trees, his attention on a young girl with a high ponytail. They were laughing.

“Please be careful,” her father concluded. “Please think about all that I have advised you.”

His words fell silent then, leaving only the haunting thrum of the music piped through the office.

“Miss Parnell?”

Hiding her unease, Darci turned toward the tidy woman with the surprisingly long gray braid standing in the doorway.

“If you’ll follow me,” the woman who’d introduced herself as Peggy said. “Mr. Preston requested that we use the conference room.”

The quick blade of disappointment shouldn’t have surprised her—she didn’t belong in Tyler Preston’s office any more than she belonged in his life.

“I take it you’ve increased security?”

Staring out the window, Tyler threw back the last of his Scotch. Night had long since fallen. Deep in the shire, over thirty kilometers from Pepper Flats, the nearest town, darkness swallowed the land. But he could still see her, damn it. Still see Darci walking with his cousin to her shiny little sports car. Andrew had pressed a hand against the small of her back. He’d opened the door for her. Before she’d disappeared inside, she’d turned toward him and slipped off her sunglasses, beamed a smile up at him. He’d smiled back at her, warmly.

Intimately.

“Around the clock,” he said, turning from the memory and toward the man. Darci had gone, butAndrew had stayed. “Called a private security firm this afternoon. They’ll have someone here in the morning.” Maybe it was an extreme step, but Tyler wasn’t taking chances. “Until then, the grooms are taking turns staying awake, just in case.”

Leaning forward in one of two leather wing chairs, Andrew frowned. The two had grown up a world apart, but with the same height and short dark hair, they could easily pass as brothers.

The Irish blood of their paternal grandfather ran strong like that.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone was targeting the family,” he said.

Tyler pushed from the window and strode toward the small table where the whiskey bottle sat. He rarely had more than one glass, but tonight he was pressing for his third. “Not the family,” he said, offering the bottle to his cousin.

Andrew tossed back the rest of his glass and extended it toward Tyler.

“It’s bigger than that,” Tyler said, pouring. “Corruption is everywhere, and the Internet is only making it easier. The syndicate sees money to be made.”

And they didn’t give a damn who fell in the process

Andrew’s gaze turned speculative. “Darci thinks…”

His cousin kept talking, but his words barely registered. Darci says. Darci thinks. Darci believes. It had been that way all evening. No matter where the conversation turned, it always twisted back to Darci Parnell.

And even a deaf man could have heard the admiration in Andrew’s voice.

“I’m so damned lucky to have her,” he said, and Tyler refused to let his fingers tighten against the glass. “She’s really giving me her all.”

Tyler bit back the hard sound that wanted to break from his throat. “She’s a go-getter,” he drawled. “Always known how to get exactly what she wants.”

Andrew stiffened, swore softly. “Christ, will you listen to me? I’m sorry, man. I wasn’t thinking. She told me about you two.” He stood, spread out his hands. “If having her around is a problem—”

“No problem at all,” Tyler assured. “You won’t find anyone who can do for you what she can.”

Somehow he didn’t choke on the words, and the image they immediately evoked, of Darci smiling as she pushed up on her toes and curved her arms around Tyler’s neck…

Andrew didn’t look convinced. “I’m not here to—”

Tyler lifted his hand. “It’s all good, mate. Darci is good, the fund-raiser is good…your campaign is good.”

The blue in Andrew’s eyes darkened, but he said nothing. They looked like brothers, but they weren’t. They were cousins. An ocean had separated them most of their lives. They knew how to talk horses and campaigns, but that’s where it stopped.

Hell, even Shane didn’t bring up Darci Parnell.

But long after Tyler had gone upstairs, long after the big stone house had gone quiet, the scent of rose and powder overrode that of leather and sandalwood.

He should have slept. Sunrise would come whether he wanted it to or not, and with it a full day of training and finalizing security for LC. But sleep eluded him. He tried reading. He tried some of Peggy’s new age music. He tried another drink.

But the restlessness kept right on surging.

Shortly after one o’clock he turned out the lamp and resigned himself to counting wallabies.

He’d reached fifteen before the bullhorn broke the silence. He was on his feet before the red glow coming from his window registered. For one sickening second everything slowed, blurred—the shouting, the glow that turned into flames, the acrid intrusion of smoke.

The frantic scream of horses.

But just as quickly adrenaline punched through the haze and he was yanking on his jeans and his boots, grabbing a shirt as he lunged for the door.