Reclaimed by the Powerful Sheikh Page 2

  Joe McAulty had something on his mind. Not that he’d open his mouth to speak until he was ready. There was no rushing the man, never had been and never would be. So she just carried on packing the saddle bags until he said his piece.

  Tent, phone, food, she mentally ticked off, coffee...

  ‘I didn’t think he’d call it in so soon.’

  ‘Pops, it can’t be helped.’ It was the same response she’d made when he’d first told her about the debt collection.

  ‘But after everything you did, the purses you won from the Hanley Cup...’

  ‘Pops, Mick died.’ She threw the words over her shoulder, shrugging off the swell of grief she felt for the neighbour who’d seemed an old coot even when she was a child. But her dad was a plain speaker, and emotions were an unknown language over which he stuttered and stumbled. ‘Who could have known that his son would call in the debt so soon? And yeah, if he hadn’t, the money from the wins might have kept us going for a couple of years, but something else might have come up.’

  She finally allowed herself to turn around. Her father was kicking the dirt floor, keeping his focus on the spray of dust caught in the sun’s early rays.

  ‘The farm isn’t lost yet, Pops.’ Mason knew he felt responsible, but she couldn’t blame him. Not at all. ‘Our work, the work we do with the kids here, it’s as important to me as it is to you. And it’s expensive. Keeping all the horses, the counsellors, the physios, the staff... Mick’s son calling in the loan, it’s just something we have to deal with.’ Another something, she said to herself, to add to the many others. ‘Joe,’ she said, calling him by the same name all the other farmhands and staff used, finally getting his attention. ‘I’m not going to let this go without a fight. Especially to that trumped-up wannabe ranch owner.’

  A sad smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. Defiance was something that ran through them both in spades. She turned back to the horse behind her, faking the need to check the bags one more time. ‘Perhaps I can find another syndicate to race for. There’ll be plenty of options after the Hanley Cup.’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask you to do that.’ Her father’s voice had lowered, full of the same gravel and grit he’d just kicked up off the floor.

  ‘It wasn’t that bad, Dad,’ she said, unable to turn to face him. He’d know. He’d raised her singlehandedly from the age of two. There wasn’t a secret she could keep, a lie she could tell, without him knowing. Racing again... No, it hadn’t been as bad as she’d thought. Riding Veranchetti had made her feel...alive. Complete in a way she hadn’t felt for years. But it had been hard. Had thrown up a lot of feelings. Ones that she needed to sort through. Which was why she had decided to go and fix the outposts herself.

  Yes, riding had been tough, but Danyl? No. Her feelings about him hadn’t been hard to discern at all. She needed to stay away from him at all costs.

  * * *

  Mason swept up the tendrils of her long, dark hair into a band, allowing the cool breeze to nip at her hot neck, and watched the sun set between the giant clefts of the mountains bordering the Hunter River Valley, breathing in the first calm lungful of air she’d tasted in almost eighteen months. The ride out here had been incredible, the familiar dips and rises of the stunning horse farm she’d been lucky enough to grow up on as familiar as the wooden knots on the farmstead’s dining-room table.

  Whenever she came out here, whenever she saw the sweeping stretches of the green valley, bordered by mountains that seemed like immoveable watchtowers guarding the land, she found herself wondering how her mother could have left. Her father had tried to explain over the years, the yearning for something more that her mother had felt. And perhaps, if Mason was honest with herself, she had felt a thread of that too when she’d gone to America to train as a jockey ten years ago. But home and wanting wasn’t at the end of a rainbow. It was at the start of it. She’d learned that lesson hard. Mason wouldn’t regret leaving, but she’d not be doing it again.

  She brought the steaming hot mug to her lips and inhaled the scent of roasted coffee beans, wet earth and the wood near by. If she discerned the aroma of sweat, hay, manure, grief and something male she refused to acknowledge it—just her memory playing tricks again.

  Before her, the night sky crept over the valley’s emerald patchwork quilt and it wouldn’t take long for it to reach behind her and the farm that she had tried so very hard to save. The money from the purses of the three races she’d won for the Winners’ Circle should have been enough. She stamped down the little voice in her heart that pleaded to know why it wasn’t. She had never been one for self-pity, and if she had? She would have been done for, long before now.

  She’d have spoken to Mick’s son if she didn’t already know he was a bottom feeder, wanting to turn the farm next to theirs into prime real estate, wanting to sell off land that had been in his family for nearly seven generations to the highest bidder. Money. Why did it always come down to money?

  What she and her father did on their farm, the way they helped troubled kids—kids with learning difficulties, kids that just needed something positive in their lives—interact with horses, learn to ride, to care for another living thing and be cared for in return...there was no price to put on that. When Pops had been forced to stay at the farm, to give up his training career to raise her after her mother had left, he’d seen a way to carry on what he loved most. His love for the horses was now spread through hundreds of children, teenagers and young adults. It might not have been a fix-all, it might not have helped every child that passed through the farm, but it had helped enough. The sheer delight at seeing a child, unable to look anyone in the eye, finally come out of themselves, transform into something brighter, the first smile, laugh, in what looked like years for some of them... That was worth it all.

  But in order to continue they needed to expand. They needed more room for the counsellors, staff and children. They weren’t operating at a loss as such, but without increasing the scope of the business they wouldn’t survive either. And now with the loan? The purse money would go to that, and they were back at square one. Everything she’d done in the last eighteen months, wiped clean.

  Coffee hit her stomach hard as Mason considered riding in another race. The last three had been physically and mentally challenging. Though reluctant to admit it, ten years made a difference to a body and the training had been intense. The first thing her dad had done when she’d returned to the farm after the race series was force-feed her enough food to feed an army. She hadn’t lost weight as much as body fat, all of it turning to enough muscle to harness the power of the two incredible horses she’d had for the Hanley Cup. Eighteen months of six day a weeks, morning and afternoon training, one meal days.

  She might have left racing after what had happened ten years ago, but her body hadn’t forgotten, and there hadn’t been a day in between that she hadn’t been on a horse. Her father had said she’d been born to it, and the pride at the time...the pride before had been enough to make her want to fulfil that childhood dream of being Australia’s best jockey. Not best female jockey. Just best jockey.

  And for a few moments, riding Veranchetti and Devil’s Advocate, she’d felt that need unfurl within her, the knowledge that she could make it happen, she could still have that childish dream and turn it into reality...it had been seductive, a whisper of what could be.

  But to race again, for a different syndicate, on different horses? No. She knew that wasn’t an option. Neither was going back to the Winners’ Circle.

  There had been plenty of journos just waiting to get her story, and the money they were offering for interviews and photoshoots would be worth considering if it hadn’t been those very same people who had destroyed her career first time round. The coffee turned bitter on her tongue, and she knew that even as a last resort she couldn’t do it. She had learnt enough about herself to respect the person she had become, and to honour that by being tru
thful and faithful and kind to herself. It might have taken these last ten years, but she wouldn’t sell herself out to the highest bidder.

  The sun had now firmly set behind the mountains, stars beginning to wink out of the night sky. Fool’s Fate pricked his ears and snickered, pawing at the ground and shifting his head against the rope tied to a tree behind her.

  Mason frowned, as the sounds of crunched twigs and leaves met her ears. It wouldn’t be Pops, not knowing that she wanted to be alone. And the farmhands were out in town tonight, settled in at the pub. It couldn’t be anyone from Mick’s farm, the border between their land too far away from her camp. That just left poachers. She threw her coffee over the embers of the fire, sending a hiss out into the air, and reached for her shotgun.

  * * *

  Danyl cursed into the dark as the glimmer of light he’d seen from a fire disappeared. It had been a beacon and now he could only smell burnt coffee and damp ash. Perhaps he should have listened to Joe McAulty. He’d left his horse tied up a little way back because he hadn’t wanted to scare her. He felt twigs crunch and crack under his feet, the sound echoing like gunfire in the silence of the night. Ignoring the feeling in his gut, the one that poked at him as if to say that perhaps he shouldn’t have left his men back at the farm, he pressed on. He couldn’t have had this conversation in front of an audience. His men hadn’t been happy about it, but they’d done as he’d commanded.

  He came out from underneath the wooded area, and for a moment the beauty of the sight stopped him. The night scene before him stole his breath; it almost matched the awe he felt when he looked out at the Ter’harn desert. That’s why, he told himself later, it took a moment to realise the camp that he’d overlooked was empty. The moon passed behind a cloud, casting the still smoking fire and the small tent in shadow.

  He cursed again, exhausted and frustrated. Where the hell was she? No longer disguising his footfalls, he stomped into the clearing. Given the flight, the particularly painful meeting with Ter’harn’s Prime Minister, and the even more barbed conversation with Joe McAulty, Danyl had just about had enough.

  He scanned the site again, looking for signs of where she might be. He’d followed Joe’s instructions, and clearly found where she had set up, but—

  The sound of the chamber being pulled back on a pump-action shotgun stopped his thoughts in their tracks. Logic did nothing to slow the sudden jolt of adrenaline coursing through his veins. Logically he knew it was Mason, logically he knew that she wouldn’t shoot him. But still...

  ‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ he heard a voice from behind him say.

  CHAPTER TWO

  December, ten years ago

  ‘I SHOULDN’T HAVE come here,’ Mason said, pulling at the short hemline of the dress Francesca had somehow talked her into wearing.

  ‘It’s New Year’s Eve, Mase! It’s time you let your hair down instead of being all train, train, train, diet, exercise, no alcohol, no fun,’ her friend replied in the rapid-fire American accent Mason was only just about getting used to.

  ‘I look ludicrous.’

  ‘Are you insane? You look fab-u-lous!’ Francesca replied, hanging on to every syllable of the word.

  ‘How are you supposed to walk in these instruments of torture?’

  ‘Wash your mouth out—those are Louboutins,’ she said, this time slicing the brand into almost three separate words.

  ‘Then perhaps he should have stuck with boots,’ Mason muttered under her breath.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Listen, girly, I know you only got off the boat four months ago—’

  ‘It was a plane.’

  ‘And America isn’t Australia, and New York isn’t the hick town in whatever part of New South Wales you’re from, but it’s time to acclimatise to these surroundings.’

  Mason bridled at the comment, her shoulders squaring at the slight against her home, softening only when she caught sight of Francesca’s tongue, literally pressed against the inside of her cheek.

  But, stealing another glance at the surroundings, Mason felt as if this was a glimpse into a world in which she did not belong. That perhaps if she stared too long, or stayed too long, she might lose herself.

  When the bus from the training stables had dropped them off outside one of New York’s most renowned hotels, the Langsford, she had looked up at the huge, sweeping circular driveway, the gilded graphics on the Roman-style pillars that fronted the building, and thought... They’re not going to let me in here.

  Between with the heels Francesca had forced her into and the black and white marble foyer, she’d nearly broken her ankle as she’d walked towards the biggest spiral staircase she’d ever seen. And even Francesca had let out a low whistle when she’d seen the ‘reception room’ hired for the night’s event, arranged by America’s richest horse owners.

  Smooth, sleek lines of chrome and black dropped away at the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Washington Square Park and the surrounding area. Purple NYU flags hung from buildings and a few brave souls were risking hypothermia out in the snow-covered streets, revelling or hurrying towards whatever party or group they were out to join before midnight.

  A smartly dressed waiter passed with a tray of champagne flutes, a small piece of strawberry the only adornment to the alcohol. Francesca grabbed two glasses, thrust one into her hands so quickly she nearly dropped it, and Mason watched, shocked, as Francesca took a third before allowing the waiter to move on.

  Francesca consumed the entire contents of the first glass in one mouthful before placing it on a side table, and flashed Mason a beaming grin before returning to sip from the second. Her eyes locked on to something over Mason’s shoulder, a whispered excuse trailing behind in the wake of a speedy departure. Mason turned to find Harry, their trainer, making his way towards them...or, well, Mason at least.

  ‘You doing okay?’

  ‘I’m...acclimatising,’ she said and smiled at her father’s old friend, before taking a sip of champagne. It was expensive, but not very nice.

  ‘You’re doing better than Joe would have.’

  ‘No.’ She smiled ruefully, thinking of how he might have behaved amongst these people. ‘Pops wouldn’t have acclimatised to this very well.’

  Harry grinned. He was a large man, who smiled deeply, laughed heartily and trained his jockeys to within an inch of their lives. ‘This is an opportunity for you to meet some of the horse-racing syndicates that may take you on in the future.’

  Confusion marred Mason’s brow. ‘I thought you were happy with O’Conner.’

  ‘I am, and I’m looking forward to the first race of the season, but that doesn’t mean I, or you, will be riding and training for him for the rest of our careers. You never know, you could be riding for one of the people in this room within the year.’

  Mason turned to scan the room with different eyes. This time she saw people forging connections, not just small talk, not just flirting, but making investments in their future. As her eyes traversed the room, they caught on one particular figure at the edge of the crowd, his elbow leaning against the bar, at least a head taller than those around him.

  Power. Raw and untamed.

  It was the first thought she had, the moment her eyes rested on him. Although his body cut a lazy figure, seeming almost bored in the way his head leant to one side, there was something leashed about him. Tension thrummed through his body, vibrating at a pitch she was surprised those about him couldn’t feel. She could. All the way from the other side of the room.

  Dark, thick hair fell in slight waves around a face that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a marble statue of perfect male beauty. Skin smooth over his brow, deeply tanned, the colour of the darkest whisky and just as tempting. High cheekbones perfectly captured her gaze, and for a moment she just stared. A trace of stubble on his firm jaw mad
e the palms of her hands tingle, made her want to reach out and feel the texture beneath her skin, made her want to hear the sound of it rasp against her.

  She cursed herself for the foolish thought, but couldn’t pull her gaze away. He seemed to be listening to a group of men, but something told her that he wasn’t really paying attention. It was his eyes. They weren’t focused on the man speaking, but somewhere over the man’s shoulder. Then he turned his head slowly, not scanning the room, not aimlessly wandering, but, deliberate, clear, and directed straight at her. His eyes caught hold of her gaze, and refused to let it go.

  The burn of a blush against her cheeks was instantaneous. She dropped her eyes, shocked by the spark of electricity that had hissed and snapped its way up her spine, across her skin and into her chest. She chanced a glance back towards the man who had incited such an extreme reaction, only to feel it all over again as her eyes joined his once more.

  A gasp?

  Had she really gasped?

  She turned to Harry in an attempt to sever the connection, but Harry was gone and she was standing alone. Now the blush was one of pure embarrassment. She must look to him exactly what she was—a country bumpkin, or ‘hick’, as Francesca had remarked earlier.

  That was when she heard a uniquely feminine laugh from somewhere near to the man who had run a lightning streak through her. Of course. When she looked back, she saw that Francesca had joined the circle of awe around the figure whose eyes were no longer on Mason, but on her beautiful, laughing friend.

  ‘Hey.’ A familiar voice called for Mason’s attention.

  Scott was making his way towards her on slightly unsteady feet. How had he managed to drink so much already? ‘I hate these things,’ he complained.

  Mason let out a huff of air, thankful for the distraction offered by the trainee jockey from whatever had just happened. No, she wasn’t naïve enough not to know what it was, but it was certainly the first time she’d felt anything like what she’d read in the romance books that were the only thing her mother had left behind.