‘They cut those off too.’
His blue gown had started to feature a prominent and exciting landmark as her hand sneaked further underneath, cupping his balls and letting her fingertips roll through the soft hair.
‘I must say, I like your bedside manner.’ He started to kiss her throat. ‘You have lovely warm hands.’
‘You know what they say.’ She swung her legs up onto the bed and knelt over him, lifting up the gown. ‘Warm hands …’
‘… warm heart?’
‘That too,’ she started to kiss her way up his thigh. ‘You know, I don’t think there’s much of an injury down here at all.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ She wrapped her hand around his cock, now at full mast and ran her thumb along the taut flying buttress of sinew at the back of the shaft. ‘It feels pretty intact to me.’
‘Are you sure you’re examining it with the right equipment?’
‘Hmmm, perhaps I should take a closer look.’
‘Ahh …’ Hugo groaned happily a moment later. ‘Warm hands, warm mouth.’
When the curtain swished back, it shook on its metal rings briefly before being swiftly closed again.
‘In my twenty years of medical practice in hospitals all over the world,’ a tense Dr Singh announced from the other side, ‘I have seen people do some very strange things in hospital emergency wards, but I have never seen
that
before.’
To a mortified Tash’s relief, he took it incredibly well, especially when he pointed out that the pregnant woman in the first trimester can have an unusually high sexual appetite.
‘Really?’ Hugo looked delighted.
‘Did you say pregnant?’ Tash squeaked.
They gaped at each other in shock.
By the close of cross-country day the bogey fence had claimed a significant proportion of the field, including both the German riders who had been in the top ten before the phase started. Now Lough was leading with Rory in second after a blistering round inside the time on White Lies, his old ally playing to his greatest strength which had always been fast galloping on big tracks.
‘He’s a lousy show-jumper,’ he admitted quietly to Anke afterwards. ‘We could really stuff it up tomorrow. I have only one fence in hand over Stefan and Kevin, and Lough has two over me.’
‘You must think positively!’ Anke insisted brusquely.
Rory tried to feel positive – it had been one of the most thrilling cross-country rides of his life, yet he only wanted to share it with one person and she was still lying low.
He even went along to the raucous grooms’ party hoping that she would be there, but she wasn’t and Franny, dressed in an extraordinary red rubber catsuit, decided it would be fun to get a gang of girlfriends to tie him up and cover him with show sheen, which didn’t greatly improve his temper as he slithered back to the horsebox to slip about on his bed like an eel.
He jumped as a text came through on his phone, heart pounding crazily when he realised it was from Faith.
Just done evening check on Whitey. All well. Sound as a pound. Sleep well.
Thank you. You are an angel. Sleep well too
, he texted back, adding lots of kisses and then cursing himself after he’d sent it because he must come across as a gormless berk, especially if, as he feared, she was with Dillon, possibly about to take a moonlit walk around the deer park and do nefarious rock ’n’ roll things to one another among the trees.
He’d not seen much of his celebrity patron that afternoon, having been too focused on Whitey, but he knew from the chatter around him at the stables that the cheesy popster had arrived in a very big black car with several overexcited little girls in pink jodhpurs and a nanny in tow, all of them eschewing the VIP and members’ areas and trooping around the course to watch the action at close hand, no doubt sharing hot clinches with Faith at every opportunity.
Well, they would both have to take notice of him tomorrow, he told himself, trying to let it sink in. He’d either triumph or crash and burn; there was no mid point.
I’m almost there, he realised, suddenly terrified.
The prospect of the next day overwhelmed him, the sheer pressure of the task ahead and the number of things that could go wrong. Even assuming Whitey passed the vet’s inspection, which was no certainty given his age and history of injury, there was still Lough to beat, just as there were tens of very shallow plastic jump cups holding up the poles that stood between him, a quarter of a million pounds and the revelation of a truth he feared may already be lost.
Laughter and a hushed argument directly outside the horsebox made him reach for his iPod, guessing Franny was back and, as he had feared, she had company.
But he had barely slotted a tiny white headphone into one ear when somebody started knocking on the door.
‘It’s open,’ he snapped, hoping Franny’s companion was good at removing rubber outfits quietly.
Whispering at someone behind him to wait a moment, Dillon Rafferty walked in, looking more like a Greek farmer than a pop star, with a newly regrowing beard, mahogany tan and dusty clothes. But the big white teeth still flashed a thousand watts when he saw Rory.
‘There you are! We’d given up on you.’
Rory eyed him warily over his own feet, which were encased in a bright blue sleeping bag.
‘You’re doing great.’ Dillon gazed around him at the horsebox. ‘Christ, it’s just like being on a tour bus, only with mud.’
‘This is what we do.’
‘I like it.’ Dillon sounded surprised.
Rory tried to sit up too fast, sliding around in his sleeping bag because he was still covered in show sheen.
‘You can ask her in.’ He managed to sit up again. ‘I know she’s out there.’
Dillon looked awkward. ‘Sure?’
‘Sure.’ His heart cracked a little, and he reminded himself angrily that she had never been his to lose.
But the figure who stepped up into the lorry wasn’t Faith. It was a blonde woman Rory had definitely seen before, fine and willowy with alabaster skin, hollow cheeks and huge, haunted eyes. Nodding hello, her hand instinctively slipped into Dillon’s and he squeezed it tightly before lifting it to his lips.
Rory’s eyes, wide as two pewter plates, gazed from her to Dillon as the colour mounted in his cheeks.
‘This is Fawn,’ Dillon introduced them.
Suddenly Rory recognised her. ‘But I, but you, but …’
Even more high-cheeked than Rory, and flashing that graceful Hollywood smile immortalised on a thousand billboards, Fawn Johnston held out her hand to shake Rory’s. ‘Great to meet you, Rory. You’re one hell of a rider.’
‘I’m learning.’ He cleared his throat.
‘Fawn really wanted to meet you. We’ve rented a cottage on the estate and the girls are all in bed – Hana is watching them. She’s going to nanny for us now we’re … um—’
‘Back together,’ Fawn interjected smoothly, smiling widely. ‘I’m gonna be based here in England more from now on,’ she told Rory.
He nodded, but he wasn’t taking much in as his mind finally, laboriously connected the wires: Dillon and Faith are not together, he realised. Dillon and Faith are not together. Dillon is still in love with this woman, his wife.
‘I’m real passionate about horses,’ Fawn was explaining. ‘I rode horseback as a little girl and I still do it for movie roles. I love it that Dillon own horses with you. We were so excited to see you ride today.’
Dillon laughed, looking at his wife with total devotion. ‘She made
us all run around like idiots trying to see as much as possible while you rode White Tie.’
‘White Lies,’ Rory corrected, shuffling his sleeping bag to the lip of the Luton and smiling at Fawn, who he had suddenly decided he liked very, very much. ‘I’m retiring him after this – he’s been a great servant, but he needs a quieter life, hacking and hunting. He’s so cool – you could put a baby on him one day and ride him round Aintree the next. You and Dillon should take him on.’ He had no idea where that came from, but it suddenly made sense. ‘You have him after he retires if you want.’
‘You’re kidding me? That would be so cool.’ Fawn’s pretty grey eyes widened.
‘We must go.’ Dillon had started to tow her back towards the door.
But Fawn tugged him back. ‘
Tell
him, honey. We agreed.’
‘Oh yes, I almost forgot.’ Dillon swung around, looking hugely embarrassed. ‘Faith.’
Rory swallowed a cannonball. ‘What about Faith?’
Dillon cleared his throat a few more times, clearly not knowing where to start.
Fawn hissed across at him, ‘You gotta tell him
everything
, D. Like we agreed.’
‘Okay.’ Dillon coughed awkwardly. ‘Fact is, Rory, Faith was the one who pushed me into it. I’d have never got involved otherwise.’
Rory eyed him with alarm from his slippery sleeping bag. ‘I don’t think I want to know this.’
‘She sort of forced me into it.’
Rory closed his eyes, imagining his beloved Faith tying Dillon Rafferty to a bed in the Caribbean.
‘But I love it now,’ Dillon was saying, ‘especially now I know Fawn wants to get involved. I understand why she’s so passionate about it.’
‘Eh?’
Fawn smiled her ice queen smile. ‘What Dillon is
trying
to say is that Faith was the one who persuaded him to buy horses for you to run in the first place, Rory.’
Rory stared at her, not understanding.
‘I knew Faith by sight from learning to ride with you, of course,’ Dillon explained. ‘But I hadn’t been up to the yard since breaking
my leg, and I was at a pretty low ebb when I bumped into her in Cottrell’s sales room. We got talking and she said she’d been sent there by a friend to bid on Trudy Dew’s piano. Then Trudy herself showed up and played “Two Souls”. I wanted that song so badly it hurt, and I wanted the piano to go with it.’
‘You outbid Faith?’
He shook his head. ‘She’d made it pretty clear her friend would go as high as it took.’
‘Of course, it was Flipper,’ Rory remembered. ‘It was the day of Whitey’s accident. He desperately wanted to buy Trudy her Bechstein back, but was too busy saving my horse’s life to go to the sale and bid himself.’
‘Faith could see I’d pay a hell of a lot more than Flipper could afford. So she said that she would refrain from bidding if I promised to get you some decent horses.’
‘She did?’ Rory gaped at him in amazement.
He nodded. ‘She’s a pretty determined character, as you know. I think she’d have spent all afternoon out-bidding me if I hadn’t said yes, cranking the price up to cost more than a stableful of top horses. And I always thought you were a great rider, so it made sense to shake hands on it. She was fantastically businesslike; she even got our agreement in writing. I’ve just adored her from that day on. If she thinks I’m letting you down as an owner, she’s on my case like a shot.’
‘I thought it was Nell who got you into it,’ Rory laughed incredulously, eyes shining as the scales fell from them, ‘but she’s always preferred the bright lights to boggy fields. Darling Faith, my clever, gorgeous girl. I still can’t believe she did that for me. She pretty much blackmailed you.’
‘I prefer to think of it as collaborative negotiation.’
With an impatient tut, Fawn stepped forwards, increasingly uncomfortable with all this eulogising talk of Faith. ‘Yes, they cut a deal in an auction room – hey, let’s not go into any more details.’ She waved her hand airily. ‘All I know is, she’s one heck of a girl. And the sooner you two get it together the better.’ She narrowed her eyes, lowering the temperature in the horsebox by several degrees. ‘Besides I want her occupied.’ The smile warmed a degree. ‘And you two guys would be
so
perfect together.’ She gave him a sweet, albeit frosty, wave and headed outside, making Rory wish he hadn’t offered her Whitey.
With a nervous nod, Dillon bolted after her.
‘Wait!’ Rory and his slippery sleeping bag tumbled from the Luton before hopping through the horsebox like a boy in a sack race. ‘I need to know what happened with Faith in the Caribbean.’
Dillon regarded him over his shoulder. ‘D’you remember what happened to Trudy Dew’s Bechstein in the end?’
‘You gave it back to her.’
‘Exactly,’ he nodded, stepping outside. ‘It played its sweetest music for her. You must keep the Faith, Rory.’
‘But you and she …’ The sack race hopped after him.
His head reappeared around the doorframe. ‘Forgive me. I never lost the Faith because she was never mine to keep. She’s a one-man religion. You win this slam thing tomorrow and you’ll find out just how much she cares.’
‘I already know,’ he croaked.
‘Good.’ Dillon smiled at him. ‘Now go back to bed and don’t forget to say your prayers.’
As ever on the final evening of the three day event, all those with a horse still in the running were on full alert, even the hard-partying grooms, regularly heading back to the stables and checking for lumps and bumps and any unsoundness that might cause their charges to be spun at the following morning’s final veterinary inspection.
When a groggy Lemon appeared from the grooms’ party at close to eleven, Lough was in his horse’s stall.
‘Looks like I’ll be going home early,’ Lough told him, looking up from examining Toto’s near hind leg which was already thick with swelling above the hoof, the horse reluctant to bear weight on it.
The shadow of a small round head and Mohican was silhouetted over the door in the moonlight. ‘No way! You’re
leading
. There’s nothing wrong with him.’
‘The fetlock’s badly bruised, Lem. He’s hopping lame.’
‘I’ve been icing it all evening. It’s just a bump.’
‘I’m the fucking vet.’
‘You got struck off!’
‘I stopped practising,’ Lough hushed him in a harsh whisper. ‘It’s different.’
They glared at one another. Their relationship, always volatile, had become increasingly tense in recent weeks, particularly since Lough had followed Beccy to France in a state of high agitation and then returned unable to stop smiling, his heart beyond Lemon’s reach for ever.
‘We’ll see what he’s like in the morning.’ Lough straightened up, letting the horse’s rugs drop back over his quarters. ‘I won’t present him at the trot up if I’m in any doubt. And it’ll take a miracle if he’s sound, quite frankly; he’s way too sore.’