DANYL WAS NERVOUS as hell. He’d seen Mason race a hundred times in the last few months. She was incredible on the back of a horse. Glorious even. But this was the biggest meet she’d ridden in and there was a sense of tension in the air. Mason had garnered the attention of many of the big syndicates and quite a few of them were here today, like him, just to watch her. Her training had been nothing short of furious. Six days a week, morning and afternoon, if she wasn’t with the horses she’d be in the gym, doing circuit training that would have cut even the fittest men down to size. By the time she collapsed on his sofa on the few days a week that she would stay with him, she would all but gaze dazedly at him while he ate his dinner. For some reason her training limited her to one—impressively large—meal a day.
Her dedication and determination put him to shame, and he’d used that. Somehow her drive had only ignited his. He’d always had good marks, but his tutors were beginning to see something else in his work. A creativity in his thinking that they congratulated themselves on unearthing. But it really didn’t have anything to do with them. It was Mason. Talking to her about his thesis, his projects, he discovered that she had a different way of looking at things and he met her curiosity and built on it.
The only time she shied away from any conversation topic was when it concerned her mum. They’d skirted around the issue, and each time he could see the scars and hurts caused by her abandonment. Each time he’d tried to soothe away that pain, and even if in his deepest heart he didn’t think his assurance, his affection, would ever be enough to fill the hole she’d left behind, it wouldn’t stop him from trying.
He ignored the vibration of his phone. It would either be the palace or Antonio or Dimitri, and he could afford to give none his attention right now. He was in the private members’ box, surrounded by his security detail, who were amusingly almost as concerned as he. Over the last few months, she had managed to wrap them all around her little finger.
His feelings for her had multiplied like a never-ending algebraic equation, increasing each day and each moment they spent together until it felt as if it would burst from his chest. He hadn’t quite put them out there though. He didn’t want to distract her, and he wanted to cherish this, these feelings.
A commotion began to build at the starting gate. They were about to bring the horses out.
* * *
Mason felt a little off. She couldn’t describe it any other way. She was worried about Rebel. He didn’t seem... And that was the problem. She just couldn’t put her finger on it. She’d mentioned it to Harry and together they’d checked him over, hoof to ear, checked the paperwork recording all the feed times and care instructions. Nothing had changed since yesterday. Harry had looked at her and said that she’d be fine. Implying that she was transferring her concerns onto Rebel. She knew that wasn’t it. This was what she loved. She lived for it. In the last couple of weeks she and Rebel had spent more time together than she and Danyl. She knew Rebel’s moods, his likes, his dislikes. She could tell if she was riding him even with her eyes blindfolded. And she’d trust him even then. But...
They were being called to the starting gate, and she guided Rebel more with her legs than the bridle and leads. Her fingers were callused and cold in the April wind. Her legs, muscles, were tired but ready, almost relishing the burn that was to come.
Her heart began to pound, with fear, with anticipation, with hope. This was the beginning of the thrill of the win, to prove how good she was. The chance to prove to her father that the time he’d spent with her all those years growing up wasn’t a waste. That the fact he’d chosen to stay, chosen to keep her—it was worth it. She wanted so desperately to see the pride in his eyes when she told him about her latest win. It was a drug she couldn’t quit.
And Danyl. Somehow her need to impress, to succeed, had enveloped him too. He was there, always, distracting when she needed it, laughing and loving when she needed that. He was incredible and her feelings for him were compounded each day.
Rebel flicked his ears back and shook his head as they neared the other horses. Now wasn’t a time for distraction, however. Now was the time for her and Rebel.
She leaned down and whispered calm, soothing words into his ear.
‘It’s okay, Reb, we’ll just take this little road here and be back in the stalls for sugar and oats in no time. We have great things ahead of us, love.’
He leant his head towards her mouth, shaking her out of his way, or leaning into her words; she’d take the latter. Her hand stroked over the smooth, powerful length of his neck, the way he liked it best. And she allowed herself to smile. This was what it was all about.
* * *
The commentator blared across the crowds below and the starting bell sounded before Danyl had quite prepared himself for it, his eyes taking a little time to catch up, so that they were almost into the first corner of the flat before he could pick her out. His hands were wrapped around the private box’s white metal railing and in the back of his mind he felt that for the first time all his personal guard had their eyes on someone else: Mason. He’d seen her take Rebel out a lot of times when he’d been able to escape his studies and he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was something slightly wrong, slightly off about the smoothness with which they usually rode together.
The furious pounding of horses’ hooves and legs, the speed they were travelling at, rather than heightening his excitement, suddenly began to unnerve him. And, as if he could somehow sense the future, sense what was about to happen, he sucked in a lungful of sharp, cold air, just before it happened.
‘And she’s down. She’s down. Rebel and rider are down.’
The scene in front of him was shocking in its brutality. He’d seen Rebel stumble, his head dipped, and the sudden drop in speed forced the other riders either out of the way or into the back of him. It was a pile-up of horse flesh and limbs, and while the race carried on Mason was somewhere at the bottom of it.
His throat hurt suddenly and he couldn’t work out why, until one of his men jerked his arm and he realised that he’d been shouting. Screaming even. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the carnage; he couldn’t move until he’d seen her.
As the rest of the horses cleared the scene he saw Mason struggle to her feet as Rebel did the same. But the horse couldn’t make it off the ground. People were rushing towards them from the edges of the fencing. She reached out to the horse, but Danyl was sure he could see the whites of Rebel’s eyes from here.
He turned to exit the box, but one of his men stood in his way.
‘You can’t go out there,’ the man said.
Fury roared to life; he felt it sting and scar his skin and his throat.
‘Get out of my way.’
‘No,’ the man said, as he morphed into an immoveable mountain.
Danyl went to push him out of the way, but he dodged Danyl’s arms.
‘You can’t go—it’s too dangerous.’
‘I don’t care,’ he said, trying to push past him, when an arm reached out to hold him. Danyl struggled against the restraining force, inflaming his anger. He struck out at the men, uncaring of his blows or where they landed, but his personal guard were too good. One wrapped his arms tight around Danyl’s torso, and curses and shouts did nothing to remove the hold.
‘I order you to let me go.’
Silence met his command, and finally he swung round so that he could at least see back to the racecourse. An ambulance had appeared near the scene and he could see Mason arguing with someone, standing between the man and Rebel. He thought he saw Harry arrive and pull her gently out of the way. He was so distracted, focusing on Mason, that when he heard the shot his heart, his breath...it all stopped.
Mason collapsed and for a moment he thought that the bullet had struck her. All his senses focused on her, and he could have sworn he heard her cries. The sound cut through him like a knife and he all but collapsed in the arms of the men holding him back.
He struggled once more, ineffectually, desperate to reach her.
‘You can see her later, just not now.’
‘Dammit, get out of my way.’
‘No, sir. This is for your own good. This is for the good of Ter’harn. You can’t be seen with her just yet. And certainly not in this way.’
‘She needs me! I am your boss—let me go.’
‘No, you’re not, sir. Not yet. Your father is.’
* * *
Danyl paced the length of the apartment. He’d spoken to Mason on the phone briefly while she was at the hospital being checked out. She had a fractured ulna, but aside from the damage to her forearm she was incredibly unharmed. But it wasn’t her physical hurts that concerned him. She had been almost monosyllabic, and quite clearly still in shock. Devastated by the loss of Rebel, a horse she’d grown to love over the last few months.
Danyl had sent Michaels to retrieve her from the hospital, his treacherous head of security still preventing him from going to her, and he couldn’t rest until he’d seen her.
Michaels opened the door to the apartment and Danyl rushed to where Mason hovered, her shoulders hunched, one arm holding the other, a white cast covering the wrist up to the elbow. She looked so small, as if she was trying to make herself even smaller, as if she was still reliving the fall from Rebel and protecting herself from invisible dangers.
He took her into his arms and she all but collapsed. Huge great sobs wracked her thin frame, and she shuddered and shook in his arms. He picked her up; the lightness of her body had once delighted him but now he only saw its vulnerabilities, its weakness.
He took her straight into the bathroom and put her on the seat while he started the taps running in the bath. He took her chin in his hand and gently lifted her gaze to his.
‘They...they took blood samples.’
‘I’m sure they just wanted to cover their bases with Rebel.’
‘My blood samples.’
Danyl frowned.
Shock and confusion were setting in and she began to shake. He pressed a glass of red wine into her hands. If he’d had brandy he would have given her that, but she just shook her head and didn’t stop. As if she was rejecting more than the wine, more than the pain and bruises he could see coming up in the spaces not hidden by her clothes.
He began slowly taking off one layer of clothing after another. This wasn’t a seduction—this wasn’t about physical desire. He managed to remove all of them, without Mason seeming to notice. The heat from the bath had filled the room but still she was shaking. Danyl guided her into the hot water, quickly removed his clothes and got in behind her, pulling her against him, wrapping his arms around her as if to protect her from what had already happened. Mason’s tears fell from her face into the water in the bath, but they gently grew to a stop, along with the shakes that had rocked her body as if from the centre of her being.
As Danyl wrapped her in a dressing gown, after drying her, and led her to the bedroom, where he encouraged her to get into bed, his feelings began to swamp him. As he watched her close her eyes, and drift into a restless sleep, he felt his anger grow once more. Anger at how guilty he felt for not being there the moment he’d seen her fall, for not being able to protect her, for not being able to be ‘seen’ with her, as his head of security had ordered. And he promised himself in that moment that he’d never let his duty come between them again.
* * *
The sound of her mobile phone ringing drew Mason from her sleep. For a moment, she was confused. She was in Danyl’s bed, but alone. Her hand reached out to the space where he’d slept, which was still warm from the heat of his body. She wanted to nestle into it. Draw from that heat.
Memories from the previous day crashed through her like a cascade, each accompanied by the sound of a gunshot. The moment she’d felt Rebel stumble, the way his head had drawn her down, the fear that formed before she’d even had a chance to figure out what was going on. The slam of the grass-covered ground vibrating through her body as she’d hit it. The searing pain in the forearm she’d put out to try to soften her fall, the snap of Rebel’s bones, not hers, cutting into her like a knife. The sheer terror she’d seen in Rebel’s eyes, as if he was so far gone as not to understand the greatest threat of the vet’s gun. She’d known it was the right thing, she still knew that, but guilt, hurt, shock built in her chest now, as painful and mind-numbing as it had been yesterday.
Her phone hadn’t stopped ringing. She flung out an arm, nearly knocking it from the bedside table, finally registering that the call was from Harry by his assigned ringtone.
‘Are you okay?’ His gravelly Southern voice sounded in the earpiece.
‘Fractured ulna, eight weeks in a cast. What happened? Where are you?’
‘I’m at the stables. Hold on.’ His voice became muffled as he shouted words to someone else. ‘Listen, Mason. I’m being investigated by the Racing Commission.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Rebel had painkillers in his system. And an anonymous accusation has been made against both of us. Apparently one of us dosed him up so that he could race.’
‘But Rebel didn’t have any injuries. There was no need for him to be on painkillers. And if he had been, then I wouldn’t have run him.’
‘I know. I know, and I wouldn’t have either.’
‘Why would I have drugged a horse? I’d never do that, Harry, I swear.’
The silence from the phone unnerved her.
‘Harry?’
‘They said you were on drugs too.’
Her mind scrambled to the hospital the day before. ‘They took blood and urine samples from me yesterday.’
‘I know.’
‘You know? How?’ she demanded.
‘It’s all over the papers. The Racing Commission have taken this very seriously.’
‘Because I’m a woman?’ she said furiously.
‘Because whoever this anonymous source is has shared it with nearly every single newspaper in the country,’ Harry growled.
‘Okay,’ Mason said while her brain scrambled. ‘Fine, I’ve nothing to hide. I don’t take drugs. But who could have dosed Rebel?’
Harry didn’t have an answer to that and said his goodbyes before hanging up the phone.
Her head throbbed as she got up from the bed too quickly, the ache in her arm almost forgotten as she tried to see her way through how her life had changed so much in just twenty-four hours. She blocked out the images of Rebel in his last moments, broken, terrified, tortured, before the vet had done what needed to be done.
She made it to the bathroom before throwing up. Shaking, she brushed her teeth, showered and dressed to go and find Danyl. She needed him. She needed his warmth. But as she got to the slightly open bedroom door she heard the sounds of a hushed argument from the lounge.
‘You have to extricate yourself from this.’ It was a voice she didn’t recognise, and one she took immediate dislike to. It was nasally and thin. ‘The bad press surrounding the death of the horse, the accusations...it will do irreparable damage to your reputation.’
‘I don’t care. I’m staying here. I’m staying with Mason.’
‘You should seriously consider returning to Ter’harn. Your parents want you back, and your classes are finished. You could submit your dissertation over email. You no longer need to be here.’
‘What I need to do and where I need to be is here, Taruq. That’s the end of the conversation.’ Danyl’s tone was increasing both in anger and volume.
‘You have become infatuated with a silly little girl who wanted to play jockey and couldn’t, so she drugged a horse, and that horse is now dead.’
The man’s last word hung in silence, a silence that held her breath and heartbeat hostage. Horror crept across her skin, mixing with outrage and grief.
‘Get out,’ Danyl said. It was quiet, but no less terrifying for it. She imagined the battle of wills going on in the room next door—she could almost feel the intensity from here.
‘I said...’
Apparently Danyl didn’t need to finish the sentence. A commotion on the other side of the door happened and the horrible nasally man left without much further fuss.
But as he exited the building he left the door open to Mason’s sudden realisation that he was right. That the bad press the man had alluded to would somehow taint Danyl. Taint them both. Irrevocably.
The door in front of her, not just the one in her mind, flew open and there he stood, instantly seizing on his own realisation that she had overheard if not the whole, at least some part of the conversation.
‘How are you feeling?’
She looked up into his eyes, eyes that betrayed none of the conversation he’d just had. His whole focus was on her and it both soothed and ached at the same time. Could she really tie him to her now? She’d seen what the press could do to a jockey after the death of a horse. She understood it. It was an outrage. It was the dark side of the career that she loved so much. To take such a pure thing as racing a horse, and for it to be tainted by drugs and death... The ground swayed beneath her feet.
Danyl saw the moment the blood left her face and caught her just before she collapsed. He took her back to bed, and called out for someone to call a doctor, anyone, anything that could help right now. Mason waved off the offer of a doctor, and instead turned and buried her head back into the pillows. He stayed with her for an hour, comforting and soothing as she drifted in and out of sleep.
When he was sure that she was asleep for longer than a few minutes he went back out into the sitting room, where he found three of his men, all with faces grimmer than his own.
‘Report.’
‘There are investigators searching the stables. A few have been over to the room she shares with Francesca. She’s been telling anyone who’ll listen that Mason would never do anything to hurt either Rebel or herself. But the housing is surrounded by reporters. Whoever made that accusation made sure that this wasn’t going to go away.’
‘And the trainer? Couldn’t he have drugged the horse?’
‘All reports show that he’s straight up, no priors, no need. He’s good at what he does.’
Danyl rubbed his head in frustration.
He looked to Michaels, and he could see the concern etched into the older man’s eyes. He’d been with the family since his father was at university, having been placed with him at Eton. ‘She’s okay, Michaels. She’s strong,’ he said, not quite believing it but hoping it.
‘And the test results?’
‘We’ll have them by five p.m.’
Danyl gave a curt nod. ‘I don’t want to be disturbed for anything else.’
If he’d taken even one second before turning back to the bedroom, he would have seen determined nods acknowledging his request. But he didn’t. He entered the bedroom, took off his clothes and climbed into bed beside Mason, pulling her sleeping form into an embrace. In her sleep she clung to him, while torturous dreams sent shivers and jerks through her delicate body.
* * *
Just after five in the afternoon, Mason woke at the sound of a knock on the door and became aware of Danyl dressing quickly and leaving. It took her a moment to focus; she desperately wanted to stay in bed, but her body had other ideas. Along with the aches and bruises that were gently humming beneath the surface of her skin, she was hungry. Her stomach let out a determined growl as if to make its complaint fully known. She peeled back the covers and gently swung her legs over the side of the bed. Deciding that she could make it the rest of the way, she pulled on a pair of leggings and grabbed a shirt from Danyl’s wardrobe.
She entered the sitting room just as Danyl was closing the door on whoever had just been to see him. He looked about and, without his having to say anything, the two guards quickly slipped out of the room.
She frowned; it wasn’t unusual for them to be either alone or with the men in the same room, but there was something heavy in the air. Something she couldn’t quite understand.
‘You should sit down,’ Danyl said.
She looked at him, at the hundreds of emotions he was trying to hide. Causing a chain reaction beneath the surface of her own skin.
‘I think I’ll stand,’ she replied. She didn’t know what was coming, but she was sure that it was better to meet it on two feet.
‘The test results came back.’
‘Oh. That was...quick.’
‘I may have put some pressure on the tests being done as soon as possible.’
‘Why? They’re only going to come back clean. I’ve never taken drugs in my life,’ Mason stated, still unsure as to what Danyl was hiding.
‘Yes, your test results came back negative for any drugs in your system, and the Racing Commission are dropping any and all lines in that particular investigation.’
‘But what about Harry? Are they dropping that?’
‘I don’t know. But that’s...there’s...’
‘What?’ Mason asked, shaking her head against the strange way he was behaving. She could see it. There was something else. Something that suddenly hooked impossible weights over the butterfly wings that had leapt into her stomach at the negative test results. ‘What is it, Danyl?’
‘The tests also showed that you’re pregnant.’