Shine On Oklahoma Read online

  Well, except for Caleb Montgomery, on Main Street. He was country, through and through. Could’ve had a future in politics, if he could’ve stomached it. She imagined he was too honest for it, though. He was one of the good guys. They were a rare breed, but Texas and Oklahoma seemed to produce more than their share. They were the boys who grew up around cattle and crops. Even if their daddies weren’t ranchers or farmers, those were the summer jobs they took all through high school. They liked cars, country music, fishing, and they didn’t mind fighting when it was called for.

  Dax was like that. Born and raised in Tennessee, another state with a bumper crop of good guys. He’d told her all about it one night when they’d had too many beers together, and wound up snuggled on her sofa back in Aurora Springs, NY. She’d been there with Jack, scoping out the rich widows who frequented the horse races wearing big brimmed hats and sucking down mint juleps and pretending they were in Kentucky instead of a little town in New York. The whole place looked as if it had been teleported from the 1890s. The houses. The shops. Jack had also been scoping out connections. Horseracing drew bosses like horseshit drew flies.

  That was where she and Jack had met Vester Caine, the “business man” responsible for most of the heroin in the northeast. Jack said he was a lucrative connection to have. Kendra disagreed. She’d pegged him as evil right from the start. If that bastard hurt her father….

  She shifted her thoughts deliberately back to Dax, wondering why he’d lied to her.

  Dax had told her one night long ago, something she’d already known. That his father had inherited Aurora Downs from his grandfather. And how all the other nearby tracks were owned by the State Racing Association. All but Aurora Downs. The SRA had taken them all over decades ago, to get rid of the organized crime elements that had infiltrated so many of them. But one of Dax’s ancestors had pull with somebody important, and a grandfather clause had been created. The clause allowed family-owned tracks to remain family-owned, so long as there was an heir to inherit them. And at the time, Aurora Downs had been the only family-owned track left.

  If Dax’s family ran out of heirs, the track would go to the SRA. It could never be sold.

  Dax’s family had moved from Tennessee to New York once his father inherited the track, and he’d spent his teen years working there. He didn’t have any siblings. His parents had divorced. There was no one else to inherit. The track was either going to him or to the SRA.

  Dax had lied to her. His old man didn’t have a choice but to leave him that track.

  So his offer to take her riding might not be something to celebrate after all. What if he was up to something?

  What if he knew she was?

  “All set,” Dax said, giving a final tug on the cinch.

  She turned to look at him, at his sweet smile and big blue eyes. He had the kind of face that made you think there ought to be trumpets announcing his arrival every time he came around. The kind of face that would soothe the most inconsolable shrieking infant, or the most obnoxious adult. She loved his face. It wasn’t the face of a con-man or a liar. He didn’t have a dishonest bone in his big beautiful body.

  He smiled at her and rubbed his thumb over an imaginary smudge on his cheek. “What? Have I got something on my face?”

  “Yeah. There’s handsome smeared all over it.” He wasn’t up to anything. Not her Dax. Never, not in a million years. Maybe he really believed he’d been disinherited. Maybe he didn’t know better because lawyers were slow and next week was Thanksgiving.

  He dropped to one knee, patting the other. “Step on up.”

  “You know I’ve never ridden a horse in my life, right?”

  “Yes, I do know that. You’ve told me five times this morning. You seem to keep forgetting this was your idea.” He patted his thigh again. “Step on up.”

  She put her hands on his shoulders and one foot on his thigh.

  “That’s right. Now, grab onto the pommel instead of my shoulders, and swing your leg over. And don’t worry, I’m not gonna let you fall.”

  She didn’t. She put her foot back on the floor and looked at the dark brown mare with the super-model mane. Patting the horse’s neck, she said, “I feel like I should introduce myself before presuming to climb all up on your back.” The mare turned and gazed back at her with huge brown eyes that wanted to suck all the badness right out of her soul. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Kendra.”

  The horse replied with a soft nicker. Then she faced front again and gave that mane a shake. Kendra sent Dax a look, eyebrows raised. “I think she just said, ‘don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.’”

  Dax laughed. “She said her name’s Sweet Caroline, and she’s happy to have you onboard.”

  “So she’s a flight attendant?”

  “Up you go.” He grabbed her butt and lifted. “Swing your leg over.”

  It was a shame she’d stopped understanding English the second his big hands closed over her cheeks. His touch sent heat and memory sizzling through her whole body and she froze, every bit of her focused on feeling it. Relishing it.

  It had been a long time. She still wanted him. She didn’t think that part of it had ever really ended. It had been so good, the sex between them. Long, lazy nights of slow, tender lovemaking. Steamy interludes of passionate pleasure. The touches. The looks. When they’d been together everything had been intimate between them. Even mundane things.

  “Swing your leg over,” he said, bending to speak close, his breath warm on her ear, and neck. She shivered and closed her eyes. “Kendra?”

  “Oh, uh, yeah.” She only spoke troglodyte now, but it was better than nothing. She pulled herself up and swung her leg over, moving her butt, regrettably, out of his delicious hands and onto a much harder and less fun saddle. Her heart was beating fast as she looked down at him.

  He met her eyes, frowned a little. Sure, he saw it all. “You’re blushing like a sunburn,” he said, “It’s not like that’s the first time I’ve had your backside in my hands, Kendra Lee.”

  “That’s the problem, Dax Beauregard.”

  He winced and sucked air through his teeth. “You’re one of only two people alive who know my middle name. Let’s keep it that way.” He handed her the reins, closing her hand around them just so, and placed her other hand on the pommel. And then he left his hand on top of hers for a few extra beats, and she swore she felt it tighten a little, and maybe his fingers moved in the most subtle, most minuscule caress.

  He cleared his throat, took his hand away. “Use the pommel for grip and balance, never the reins. They are only for communicating with the horse, not to keep yourself from falling off. Okay?”

  “Got it.”

  He checked to be sure both her feet were securely in the stirrups, made a few adjustments to get them just the right length, and finally turned and got on his own horse, a mottled dark gray mare that turned blue when they rode outside and the slanting sunlight fell on her coat. She had a vivid black mane and tail.

  “Who’s the other person,” she asked. “Who knows your middle name?”

  “My mother,” he said.

  “Caroline.” Then she frowned. “Is this horse I’m riding named after your mother, Dax?”

  “You remember my mom’s name?”

  She lowered her eyes, and clamped her legs tighter when the horse gave a harmless hop. When she was sure she wasn’t going to fall off, she said, “Your mother is kind of unforgettable,” she said. “But even if I’d never met her, I’d remember. I think I remember everything you ever told me.” She used to love the way he would talk to her, back when he thought she was real. Back when he thought she was good. He’d tell her things about his childhood, about his life, about things that mattered to him.

  That was when she’d started to change, that time with him. He was so good it was contagious. Typhoid Dax. He’d infected her. She’d been losing her edge since the day she first met him, waiting tables in a joint where high-end people came for lunch. Track owners and gam
blers, breeders and fans. Poor people don’t go to horse races. They’re too smart to throw money away watching horses run. They’d rather see them gallop across a meadow, or ride them across one, like she was doing right then. This was nice.

  “I’ve had that mare since I was nineteen,” he said. “She was boarding at Mom’s place in New York. I just got her moved down here this past summer. Rob insisted.”

  She nodded. His mother owned a small boarding stable near his father’s racetrack.

  There were other horses in the meadow, soaking up the autumn sunshine and nibbling on grass and wildflowers. She and Dax took a trail that followed the fence line, riding past spindly legged colts, who stuck so close to their mammas, Kendra was afraid they’d get stepped on.

  It was quiet. Quiet tended to make her uncomfortable. She said, “If I’m riding your horse, who are you riding?”

  “This is Louise.”

  “That’s my sister’s middle name.”

  “Rob thought naming her Kiley would get confusing,” he said. “She’s a blue roan. A stunner, isn’t she?”

  “She is.” Her horse jumped over something in the path, and the landing knocked her whole body dangerously sideways. She almost jerked the reins to hold herself upright, but caught the impulse just in time, gripped the pommel, squeezed her thighs, and got herself right again.

  “Nice,” he said.

  She found herself beaming with pride that she hadn’t fallen off a horse. Big fat hairy deal. She wanted to talk to him some more. She wanted to talk to him about the track and his inheritance and try to find out why he’d lied to her about it.

  But he looked at her with that serene smile and said, “You’re not here. Stop all that chatter going on in your pretty head, and try to just be right here.”

  She frowned at him. “I don’t know how to do that,” she said, and it was completely honest.

  He said, “Listen. Try and count how many different sounds you can hear.”

  Kendra listened. The first sound she noticed was the steady rhythmic plodding of the horses’ hooves over the packed earth trail. It was a soft sound, a gentle thud, tha-thud, tha-thud, tha-thud. She noticed that her hips rocked in the saddle right in time with the beat, if she let them, and tried to relax her stiff posture a little more. That was one of a hundred tips Dax had given while he’d been saddling the horses, relax your hips and rock.

  She could hear the Cimarron, too. The river unwound not a hundred feet from the trail, to the right. There was splashing and gurgling where it tumbled over rocks and fallen limbs, but behind and beneath that, a deeper, constant murmur of raw power.

  There were birds singing, too. A loud one repeated the same cry over and over, and then as she paid attention, she heard others. Warblers warbled and songbirds sang. She listened even harder, leaning slightly forward in her saddle, eyes intense. There was a bumble bee buzzing from flower to flower somewhere.

  “Works better if you don’t try too hard,” Dax said. “Just relax and let the sounds come to you. Same as the smells.”

  She could only smell horse. But no, there were late-blooming lilies that pulled her gaze right to them as soon as her nose caught a whiff. The river had a scent of its own, and so did the trees and even, she thought, the sunshine.

  And Dax. He smelled clean and familiar and good.

  He wasn’t up to anything. He’d asked her to come riding because he still cared about her. And he’d probably lied about his inheritance so he could assure himself she wasn’t going to try to con him out of it.

  Yeah, that was probably it.

  She relaxed even more, kind of sinking into her own body from a posture that had been tense and tight. She didn’t even realize how tense and tight until she let go of it. She rode along on Sweet Caroline and smelled horse and leather and flowers and Dax, and she listened to the songs and buzzes and splashes and hoof steps that came from everywhere and everything.

  It was the most peaceful morning she thought she had ever spent.

  #

  After their ride, Kiley invited Kendra to go baby shopping. Dax didn’t expect her to agree, once she found out three other women were also going along; Rob’s cousin Sophie, sister-in-law Emily, and Allie Wakeland, who was three weeks less pregnant than Kiley. She was also the talk of Big Falls because she didn’t have so much as a boyfriend, and because when her war-hero brother got back from Afghanistan, he was going to hunt down whoever had got her pregnant, and murder him.

  To Dax’s stunned surprise, Kendra accepted the invitation, and went off for a girls’ day out that was completely not her kind of thing.

  He and Rob were working with the oldest colts that day. In Dax’s opinion, the most important part of training was the relationship between horse and trainer, and you couldn’t start building that too soon. They spent a lot of time with the colts, touched them frequently, and worked on keeping their attention rapt even when distractions, from passing cars to bumblebees, came along.

  Rob said, “She’s too close to her due date to be running around shopping malls. I don’t even know how her little legs can carry all that around a shopping mall.”

  Dax, who’d been waiting for a break in Rob’s over-protective, dad-to-be griping, so he could change the subject entirely, said, “Sophie’s a doctor, Emily’s a vet, and Allie’s almost as far along as Kiley is. I’m pretty sure your wife is safer in a mall with those three than she would be in her own living room. Besides, Kendra’s with her.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a weighty look. Then he sighed. “It’s scary, that’s all. I don’t like being more than a few yards away from her these days.”

  “And she hasn’t skinned you yet?”

  Rob blinked as if Dax was speaking a new language, and then something dawned on his face. “Am I hovering?”

  “Hovering. Maybe smothering. Who am I to say? But I do know that women have babies every day without any help at all from the daddies. Aside from that fun part in the beginning.” He tried a friendly grin, in case the truth hurt.

  Rob sighed. “You’re right. I’m acting like a crazy man.”

  “That’s the thing about crazy—you can’t see it when you’re in it.” He shrugged. “I might be close to slipping into a whole other kind of crazy, myself.”

  Rob looked away from the colt he’d been brushing, a still spindly brown fellow with a mane just at that spikey stage that made him look like a punk rocker. His eyes were wide and worried. Rob’s, not the colt’s. “Kendra?”

  Dax nodded. “For what it’s worth, I’m sure her coming here had nothing to do with Kiley. She was legitimately shocked to find out about the baby.”

  “Then why is she here?” Fireball, named for his resemblance to the Rudolf character, craned his neck around and nickered. More, please.

  “I’m not sure yet, but she knows about my father, and has been asking about the track. Whether he left it to me. And uh…I’ve got reason to think there’s something going on with the books there.”

  Rob shot him a worried look. “What do you mean, ‘something going on with the books?’ Are you okay here, Dax?”

  “I’m okay. I’m not an owner. But my mother is. Rob, this has to stay between us. I trust you.”

  “You can trust me absolutely. You’re my friend, Dax.” He grinned. “Even if you did kick my ass when we first met.”

  “Hey, you held your own. Don’t sell yourself short. You put a hurtin’ on me, too.”

  “And that’s how good a friend you are,” Rob said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Letting me believe that.”

  They shared a laugh, and it died gradually. Dax took a deep breath, and then he went on. “My father’s dying words warned me that letting the track go puts my mother at risk. He said she’d go to prison. Something about the books.”

  “Holy…. What are you gonna do?”

  “If I inherit, I’m culpable. If I refuse, my half goes to the SRA, they go over the books, Mom goes to prison.”

  “This is rough, Dax.” R
ob rubbed the back of his neck with one hand.

  “I’ve got someone going over the books on the sly. Mom gave me access, though I didn’t tell her why I needed it.”

  Rob nodded. “That’s a start. You’ll know where you stand.” Then he blinked. “You said Kendra was asking about the track. You don’t think she’s…mixed up in all this, do you?”

  He didn’t want to think it. “It would be a pretty big coincidence, otherwise,” he said. “But even if she’s not tangled up in my father’s crimes, I imagine she’s got some kind of plan to get her fingers into the Aurora Downs pie. She’s up to something. She’s always up to something.”

  “Ah, hell, Dax. I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Nothing to be sorry about. I’m gonna get to the bottom of this. It’s just hard, being around her and not….” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. Rob had tried pretty hard not to fall for Kendra’s twin. He must know exactly what Dax was going through.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Rob asked.

  Dax shrugged. “I told her Dad didn’t leave me a nickel and I wouldn’t have taken it even if he had. She’s still here. Maybe….”

  “Maybe because she knows it’s bullshit? Don’t you think she did her research and knew the truth before she even came here, especially if the track is why she came here?”

  “It’s not bullshit. I don’t want it. She knows that now, so even if that is why she came, maybe it’s not why she’s still here.”

  He shrugged. “And why do you think she’s still here?”

  Dax lowered his head. “Not for me. I don’t think that. I’m not stupid.” Although she had seemed near to blissful on that ride with him this morning. She’d seemed different. She’d seemed real. And she’d seemed to be enjoying his company as much as he’d been enjoying hers.

  This was dangerous ground he was walking. Skipping. Throwing daisies. She was up to no good. Why couldn’t he keep that clear in his brain?