Winner Takes All - Anna Harrington Page 0,9

an icy rain. What a fool she’d been! Papa had most likely planned this match for her all along, agreeing to allow her three years to herself only so he could wait until Lord Charles was graduated from Oxford and secured a government position before pressing openly for the match.

Papa had never believed in her. He’d simply been biding his time.

The only hope she had left was that Midnight might somehow win. But she would have to find a good jockey, someone she could trust to ride the colt, and here in Epsom she knew no one to turn to for help. Except…

Jackson Shaw.

She grimaced. Apparently, she’d be selling her soul to the devil after all.

Chapter Three

Shaw sat at the long wooden table in his kitchen with the farm’s account books spread out around him in the glow of the lamp and leaned back in his chair with a sigh. He’d spent the evening attempting to rob Peter to pay Paul in a desperate bid to keep the creditors at bay for a little while longer.

It wasn’t working.

In frustration, he shoved himself away from the table and crossed to the hearth, to top off his cup from the half empty coffee pot resting on the grate.

If he didn’t win the Derby, then his horse farm was done. Simple as that. Even selling off half his stock of horses wouldn’t be enough to meet the rent, buy the hay and grain needed to feed the rest through the winter, and pay the grooms. Raising and training his own horses had always been his dream, but his timing had been far from ideal. When he’d started the farm, he hadn’t yet saved up enough, hadn’t been ready with his plans…but he’d been more than ready to leave Willow Wood.

“Desperate to leave,” he muttered.

The temptation Frankie had presented had simply been too much to bear.

The night before he’d left, they’d met at the old cottage as they’d often done. There was the same basket of food she’d smuggled from the kitchens, the same bottle of wine he’d gotten from the local tavern, the same blankets spread out beneath the stars. But that time, she’d offered herself to him. It was all he could do to deny himself the pleasure of her, knowing from previous intimacies how sweet she was, how much he ached to possess her completely.

How much he loved her.

But while they might be able to engage in light play without being discovered, there were lines that could never be crossed. At that moment, with Frankie lying half naked on the blanket, his mouth and hands on her, and soft pleas for pleasure falling from her lips— A line? Christ. They’d hit a brick wall.

He frowned at the dark liquid as it splashed into his mug. Francesca Darlington…Good God. He’d thought he’d never see her again. Why would he? Normal society misses existed in a separate world from his, far away from those masculine pastimes of horses, hunting, and racing. Besides, any normal society miss would have been married by now, busy with her own house to run and children to spoil.

But Frankie had never been a normal miss.

Apparently, she still wasn’t.

She was as beautiful and intriguing as ever, with a sense of adventure that still cast her into trouble, a sharp mind and quick wit that ran circles around other society ladies, an innate wildness that churned inside her like a summer storm—intense and just as untamed. Even more so now than he remembered. The past four years had matured her from the fresh-faced girl he’d fallen in love with into a woman in full. One who simply captivated him.

He would have bet his last ha’penny that she’d have forgotten about him by now. But when he’d kissed her, he realized the truth—she hadn’t forgotten him at all. Just as he hadn’t forgotten her.

Scowling, he dropped the pot back onto the grate with a clatter and took comfort in the burn of the hot liquid down his throat.

A knock rapped at the door.

He reached for his pocket watch and frowned at the time. Almost midnight, long past when Paddy and the other grooms had gone to bed. Long past when he should have been in bed himself, given that he’d be at the track at first light to put Ghost through his paces. If the weather held and there weren’t any more surprises, he had a very good shot at the prize money. If not…He glanced back at the account books