You’ll Find Out

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

W hen Brig opened his eyes, he noticed that his body was covered in sweat, evidence of his recent nightmare—the vivid and brutal dream that had interrupted his sleep repeatedly during the last six years. The nightmares had become less frequent, but being with Rebecca again had triggered the ugly, painful dream. He lifted his arm to touch her, to find comfort in the softness of her body and to convince himself that his memory of making love to her hadn’t been part of the dream, hadn’t been conjured by his imagination. His hand touched the crumpled sheets, cold from the morning air. The bed was empty.

Brig’s eyes flew open with the realization that she was gone. He lifted his head from the pillow too quickly, and a ton of bricks pressed on his skull in the form of a hangover. Then he saw her—as beautiful as he remembered. It wasn’t part of his dream. Rebecca was really here, in his father’s cabin in the foothills of the Rockies. She was huddled in his favorite blue robe, her fingers drawing restless circles on the window ledge where she sat as she stared out the window. She appeared absorbed in thought. Pensive lines of worry marred the smooth skin of her forehead. Her honey-blond hair was unruly and tangled as it framed her delicate face. Her green eyes stared, but saw nothing. What was she thinking?

He started to call her name, but withheld the impulse as he recalled the first time he had seen her. Dressed elegantly in shimmering blue silk, her hair coiled regally upon her head, Rebecca had combined beauty with grace. She had been refined and yet seductive.

Brig hadn’t fallen in love with her then. It had come much later when the feelings of respect and trust had grown into love. They had worked together side by side, day after day, in the sweat and grime of training a headstrong bay filly to become the racing wonder she was. With Rebecca’s fiery Thoroughbred and Brig’s money, they had formed a partnership intent on taking the racing world by storm. They planned to shake up the elite world of horse racing with Sentimental Lady, a filly who could outdistance the colts.

At the thought of the elegant horse, Brig’s stomach turned over and the taste of guilt rose in the back of his throat. For the first time in his life, Brig had allowed himself to be shortsighted. Perhaps his clear thinking had been clouded with love, but nevertheless it was a poor excuse for letting his emotions override his logic. He had known from the moment he laid eyes upon Sentimental Lady that her legs weren’t strong enough to carry the weight. If only he’d used his head instead of trusting a woman with beguiling green eyes!

His nightmares were a surrealistic replay of the events that had shattered his life. It was always the same. He was with Rebecca in a crowd of thousands of cheering people. The track was dry and fast—Sentimental Lady’s favorite. The warm California sun glistened on the flanks of a blood-bay horse as she nervously pranced toward the starting gate. The other horse in the match race, Winsome, had already won top honors as a three-year-old. His list of victories included two of the three jewels of the triple crown and now he faced an opponent he had never previously encountered. Although Sentimental Lady had stormed into the racing world as a two-year-old, and at three had won all of her starts, including the Kentucky Oaks, the Black-eyed Susan, and the Coaching Club American Oaks, she hadn’t raced against the colts. She had shattered several world records, and was clocked faster than Winsome. The press and the fans demanded a match race of the two most famous three-year-olds of the season: Sentimental Lady challenging Winsome.

There was another side to the story, an interesting twist that headlined the gossip columns. The filly, renowned favorite of the feminist fans, was bred and owned by Rebecca Peters, a young woman making her way in a man’s world. The colt belonged to the stables of Brig Chambers, heir to an oil fortune and rumored to be romantically involved with Ms. Peters. It was a story the press loved, a story that extended the bounds of the racing world and included the romantic glitter of the very rich. Pictures and articles about the famous couple and their rival horses were flashed in both racing tabloids and gossip columns alike. Reporters couldn’t get enough information on the horses or their owners. Speculation ran high on the future mating of Sentimental Lady to Winsome.

As the world saw it, Brig Chambers had it all: a beautiful, intriguing woman and two of the fastest horses ever run. Nothing could go wrong, or so he was told. So why then did he argue against the race, and when he finally relented, why did doubt keep filling his mind as he watched a lathered Lady being led into the starting gate? Why was there an uneasy sense of dread? Where was the exhilaration; the excitement? The false sense of security he had felt earlier in the week began to crumble. The race was a mistake—a terrible mistake.

Winsome, veteran of many victories and known for his calm temperament, was led into the starting gate. The crowd roared its approval and Sentimental Lady spooked at the sound. She skittered across the track and shied as her jockey attempted to urge her toward the gate. Nervous sweat lathered her withers and she tossed her head in apprehension.

“She’s too nervous,” Brig muttered, but his words of concern were lost in the approving roar of the crowd as Sentimental Lady sidestepped into the starting gate. The gate closed and the Lady reared, striking her head. It was too late; the door opened with the ringing of bells and shouts from the crowd. An empty track stretched out before her and Sentimental Lady bolted. Brig yelled at the officials, but his voice was drowned in the jumble of noise from the fans.

“No!” Brig shouted at the jockey, watching the race between colt and filly in silent horror.

Winsome was ahead, but Sentimental Lady seemed to get her footing. She was astride the black colt before the first turn. The speed of the race was incredible and Sentimental Lady finished the first quarter faster than she had ever run. Winsome liked to lead and was known for crushing his opponents early in the race, but Sentimental Lady hung on, holding her own against the powerful black horse.

The blood drained from Brig’s face as he watched the horses, racing stride for stride, heartbeat for heartbeat. “This is a mistake,” he screamed at Rebecca. “She’s not going to make it . . .”

“She will!” Rebecca disagreed, her eyes shining in pride at the way the Lady was running. The crowd seemed to agree, roaring, urging the horses onward in their blinding pace.

“We’ve got to stop the race!” Brig shouted, shaking Becca.

“It’s too late—”

“We’ve got to! Lady hit her head in the gate. Her stride’s off!”

“You’re crazy,” Becca screamed back at him, but a flash of doubt clouded her green eyes. “Look at her—she’s running with the wind!”

Sentimental Lady was a neck ahead of the colt, but he was pushing her, driving her to greater speeds, forcing her to run faster than she ever had. The horses were halfway down the backstretch, their legs pounding the track furiously, their dark tails trailing behind. Nostrils distended, they ran, neck and neck, stride for stride, eyeball to eyeball. The white fence inside the track hampered Brig’s view, but still he saw the misstep as clearly as if he had been astride her rather than on the sidelines.

The blow to the leg came with a sickening snap that Brig imagined rather than heard. It was the brittle crack of bone as nearly twelve hundred pounds of horse came crushing down on fragile legs.

For a moment Brig stood transfixed, watching in sickened dread. “She broke down,” he yelled at Rebecca, who had witnessed the fateful step.

Winsome pressed on, and Lady, her spirit and courage refusing to be extinguished, continued to race on her three good legs. The jockey fought desperately to pull her up, knowing that her competitive fires would carry her on and further injure her. Each stride pushed her tremendous weight on the shattered bone, further pulverizing the bone into tiny fragments ground into tissue, dirt, and blood.

Brig didn’t see Winsome finish the race. He ran across the track to the site of the injury, where the jockey was trying to calm the frightened animal. The veterinarian arrived and tried to soothe the horse, while attempting to examine the break. The Lady reared and Rebecca, with frightened tears running down her face, softly called to the horse, hoping to somehow forestall the inevitable.

“Good girl. That’s my Lady,” she said tremulously. “Let the doctor look at you, girl.”

The frightened horse reared. Blood was smeared on her regal white star, and her right foreleg was a twisted mass of flesh and bone. The whites of her dark eyes showed the fear and pain.

Rebecca reached for the horse’s reins but Sentimental Lady reared again. The injured leg glanced Becca’s shoulder, leaving her ivory linen suit stained with blood and her shoulder bruised.

“Get away from her,” Brig shouted, pushing Becca away from the terrified horse.

“I can’t . . . oh, Lady . . . Lady,” Becca called as she backed away. “Calm down, girl, for your own sake . . .”

The veterinarian looked grimly at Brig. He nodded toward Becca. “Get her out of here.” He spoke rapidly as he placed a clear, inflatable cast over the horse’s damaged leg. It quickly turned scarlet with blood.

“It’s all my fault,” Becca screamed as Brig put his arms around her shaking shoulders and led her away from her horse.

“Don’t blame yourself.”

“It’s all my fault!” she cried over and over again, hysterical. “She should never have run. I knew it—I knew it. Damn it, Brig, it’s all my fault!”

Brig hadn’t understood her overwhelming sense of guilt. He dismissed it as an overreaction to a tragic event, until twelve hours later Sentimental Lady was dead and the results of the autopsy proved Becca right. Only then did he understand that she was, indeed, responsible for the courageous horse’s death.

* * *

Brig rubbed his hands over his eyes and tried to dispel the brutal apparition that destroyed his sleep. How many nights had he lain awake and wondered how he could have prevented the gruesome tragedy; how many days had he tried to find a way to absolve Rebecca of the guilt? How much of the guilt was his? He should never have agreed to the match race; it was a devil’s folly. Even if the tragedy hadn’t occurred, there was the chance that the beaten horse would never have been the same.

As it was, a beautiful animal had been ruined unnecessarily, a waste due to the poor judgment of humans. If that wasn’t enough to torture him, the truth he had learned after Sentimental Lady’s death should have kept him away from Rebecca Peters forever. And yet, last night, without thinking of any of the horrors of the past, Brig had made love to her as if the deception had never existed.

Brig wanted to hate her. He wanted to curse her in the darkness and throw her out of his life forever, but he couldn’t. As he watched her staring vacantly out the window, the sadness in her eyes touched his soul. How had she ever been caught in such an evil trap? Why had she drugged her own horse in an expensive attempt to quicken Sentimental Lady’s speed? His stomach soured at the thought. Why did she seem so innocent and honest, when he knew her to be a liar? She was a dichotomy of a woman, beguiling and treacherous.

“Rebecca?”

Brig’s voice called to her from somewhere in the distance.

“Rebecca, are you all right?”

Becca cleared her mind and found herself staring out the bay window of Jason Chambers’ mountain cabin. Brig’s concerned voice had brought her crashing back to the present. How long had she been daydreaming about a past that was so distant? She cast a quick glance at Brig. He was still in bed, propped up on one elbow and staring intently at her. He seemed anxious and didn’t appear to notice that the navy blue comforter had slid to the floor. How long he had been watching her, Becca couldn’t guess.

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, to build her courage rather than create warmth. “I guess I was just thinking,” she replied evasively. She turned her head away from him and hid behind the thick curtain of her hair, where she brushed aside a lingering tear that had formed in the corner of her eye. She had loved him so desperately and the bittersweet memories of their past caught her unprepared to meet his inquisitive gaze.

His dark hair was rumpled and a look of genuine concern rested in his unguarded stare. “What were you thinking about?” he asked. He didn’t attempt to hide the worry he felt for her.

Her lips trembled as she attempted a smile. “Us.”

“What about us?”

Her voice was frail, but she forced her eyes to remain dry as she found his gaze and held it. “I . . . I was thinking about how much love we had, once,” she admitted.

“Does that make you sad?”

She had to swallow to keep her tears at bay. He couldn’t understand, he never had. She averted her gaze and stared sightlessly out the window. “It’s just that I loved you so much,” she admitted raggedly.

His brows knit in concentration as he drew his knees beneath his chin and studied her. Why was she here, opening all the old wounds? What did she want? “I loved you too,” he said.

“Not the same way.” It was a simple statement of fact.

“You’re wrong.”

“You still don’t understand, do you?” she charged, as she whirled to imprison him with her damning green stare. “I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. I wanted to share all of the expectations, the joys, even the disappointments with you.” Her voice caught in the depth of her final admission. “I wanted to bear your children, Brig. I wanted to love them, to teach them, to comfort them when they cried.... Dear God, Brig, don’t you see? I wanted to be with you forever!”

“And I let you down?”

“I . . . I didn’t say that . . .”

His gray eyes challenged her from across the room. The silence was heavy with unspoken accusations from a distant past. With an utter of vexation, Brig fell back against the bed and stared, unseeing, at the exposed beams in the ceiling. “I wanted those things, too,” he conceded.

“Just not enough to trust me.”

“Oh, Rebecca . . . don’t twist the truth.” He felt raw from the torture of her words. “I asked you to marry me, or have you conveniently forgotten that, too?”

“I remember,” she whispered.

“Then you can recall that you were the one who couldn’t make a commitment. You were the one who had to prove yourself to the world.” The rage that had engulfed him six years before began to consume him once again, and he had to fight to keep his temper under control. How many times would he let her deceive him? His fingers curled angrily around the bed sheet.

“I needed time.”

“I gave you time, damn it!” He sat upright in the bed and his fist crashed into the headboard. “You asked for time, and I gave it to you!” His ghostly gray eyes impaled her, daring her to deny the truth.

“But you couldn’t give me your trust, could you?”

“Do you blame me?” Pieces of their last argument pierced Brig’s mind. His accusations, her violent denials. If only she could have told him the truth! He didn’t wait for her to respond to his rhetorical question. Instead he grabbed his clothes and stood beside the bed. He was still naked and Becca could see the tension in all of his rigid muscles. His voice was uneven, but he managed to pull together a little of his composure. “Look, Rebecca, this argument is getting us nowhere. I’m going to take a shower and get cleaned up. I drank a little too much last night and I’m paying for it this morning. When I clear my head, we’ll talk.”

He turned toward the bathroom, but paused at the door and faced her once again. His voice was softer and his smile wistful. “I’m glad you’re here,” he admitted, wondering why he felt compelled to explain his feelings to her.

She didn’t move from her seat on the window ledge until she heard the sound of running water. Once she knew he was in the shower and she had a few minutes to herself, her tense muscles relaxed and the tears burning at the back of her eyes began to flow in uneven streams down her cheeks. She pinched the edge of her thumb between her teeth and tried not to think about the love they had found, only to lose.

Was it her fault, as Brig insisted, or was it fate that held them so desperately apart? If only she hadn’t been so blind when it had come to Sentimental Lady, if only she had listened to Brig’s wisdom. Perhaps they would still be together, would have married, and would share a child. Perhaps Sentimental Lady would still be alive. But Becca had been young and hellbent on making a name for herself as a horse breeder. Sentimental Lady had been her ticket to success. How was Becca to know that Brig’s prophecies would be proven correct, that Sentimental Lady’s legs were too weak for her strong body? Not even her trainer had guessed that the Lady would break down. And how was Becca to know that someone would inject her horse with an illegal steroid, a dangerous drug that alone might have permanently injured her horse? In the end, Becca had not only lost the fastest horse she had ever owned, but also the trust of the one man she loved. Was it her punishment for being overly ambitious, for fighting her way to the top in a man’s domain?

Becca stiffened her spine and tried to ignore the unyielding pain in her heart. Perhaps she was overreacting. Last night Brig hadn’t been overly upset when she had tried to explain about the horse; maybe she was blowing the problem out of proportion. But then again, last night Brig had been drinking and was shocked to see her. Everything that had happened between them was somewhat unreal, an unplanned reunion of two lovers suffering from the guilt of the past. This morning things were different. Gone were the excuses of the night, the passion of six lonely years, the feeling of isolation in the mountains. Today, the world would intrude and the mistakes of the past would become blindingly apparent.

She had decided to accept Brig’s decision concerning Gypsy Wind and the money. She realized that, legally, she had virtually no say in the matter. If Brig demanded repayment, she would have to sell the Gypsy. Nothing she owned even approached fifty thousand dollars. However, she would try her damnedest to make Brig understand what the horse meant to her, what Gypsy Wind represented. Before her resolve could waver, she went to her car and grabbed the overnight bag she had stashed in the back seat. She cleaned herself in the guest bath and changed into her favorite forest green slacks and soft ivory blouse. The outfit was a little dressy for the rugged mountains, but this morning Becca wanted to look disturbingly feminine. She wound her hair into a gentle twist and pinned it loosely to the back of her neck before touching a little color to her pale lips and cheeks.

Without consciously listening, she knew the exact moment when the shower spray was turned off. Apprehension rose in her throat. She had to keep busy and hold her thoughts in some sort of order, because like it or not, she knew that she and Brig were about to become embroiled in one of the most important arguments in her life. She planned her defense while putting together a quick breakfast from the sparse contents of the refrigerator. By the time she heard the bedroom door opening, the hasty meal was heated and the aroma of freshly perked coffee mingled with the scent of honey-cured ham to fill the rustic kitchen and dining alcove.

She thought she heard Brig coming, but his footsteps paused, as if he had entered another room in the house. She waited and then heard him continue toward the kitchen. She was just sliding the eggs onto a plate when he strode past the dining alcove and through the door. She was concentrating on her task and didn’t look up.

“What’s this?” he asked, just as she set the plates on the table.

“What does it look like? It’s breakfast.” She turned to face him and found that he wasn’t looking at the table. Instead he was staring intently at her, as if he were trying to put together the pieces of a mysterious puzzle. He looked more like the man she remembered from her past. Clad only in jeans and an old plaid work shirt, he seemed younger. His head was still wet from the shower and his jaw cleanly shaven. The slight hint of a musky aftershave brought back provocative memories of living with him in a rambling beach house overlooking the moody Pacific Ocean.

“I’m not talking about the food,” he replied cautiously. His eyes turned steely gray. “Your clothes, did you bring them with you?”

Her eyes met his and refused to waver. “Yes.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying that you intended to spend the night with me? Don’t you have a hotel or something?” When she didn’t immediately respond, he grabbed her arm and his fingers tightened painfully. Suspicion clouded his gaze. “Just what’s going on here?” he demanded.

“What do you think?”

“I think that you planned last night.”

“I only planned to find you . . . not seduce you, if that’s what you’re implying. I didn’t even know if you would see me. I had no idea that we would end up making love.”

His grip tightened on her arm. “Then why the change of clothes?”

She couldn’t help but blush. “I really didn’t know where I’d be spending the night. I only guessed that you would be here, and I knew that it was too late to head back to a hotel in Denver.”

“And what if you hadn’t found me? Did you plan to sleep in the car?” He couldn’t hide the sarcasm in his voice.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m just trying to understand you.” He sighed, releasing her arm.

“I tried to explain everything last night, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“I’m listening now.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter.

Becca took a deep breath before she began. “I told you that I owed your father some money . . . fifty thousand dollars to be exact.” She watched his reaction, but he didn’t move a muscle, stoically waiting for her to continue. “I needed the money to breed a horse.”

“And I assume that your mare conceived and now you have yourself a Thoroughbred.”

Becca nodded.

“Colt or filly?”

She met his gaze boldly. “Filly. Her name is Gypsy Wind.”

Brig’s jawline hardened. “You told me that much last night. But you neglected to tell me that she’s a full-blooded sister to Sentimental Lady.”

Becca hid her surprise. “I tried to tell you everything last night. You weren’t interested.”

In frustration, Brig raked his fingers through his hair. He shifted his eyes away from Becca for just a minute. “I can’t believe that you would be so stupid as to make the same mistake twice, the same damned mistake!”

“Gypsy Wind is no mistake.”

“Then why are you hiding her?”

“I’m not.”

“Come on, Rebecca. Don’t deny it. If you’d let out the word that you were breeding another horse, a full sister to Sentimental Lady, the press would have been on you like fleas on a dog. That’s why you hid her, came to a private source for money.”

“I came to your father as a last resort.”

“Sure you did,” was Brig’s contemptuous response. “I bet the old man really ate it up, didn’t he? He never could pass up the opportunity to pull one over on the press.” The smile that tugged at the corners of Brig’s mouth didn’t touch his eyes. There was a sullen quality, a bitterness, that made his features seem more angular.

Becca’s chin lifted and a defiant glimmer rested in her round eyes. “How did you know that Gypsy Wind is Sentimental Lady’s sister?”

“Because I knew there was more to the story than what you admitted last night.” His raised palm stilled her protests. “And I admit that I didn’t want to discuss anything with you last night, including your horse or the money you owed my father.” Brig noticed that the defensive gleam in her eyes wavered. “But you did pique my interest, and after my shower I went into the old man’s den. That’s where I found this.” He extracted a neatly folded document from his back pocket.

“The note,” she guessed aloud, staring at the yellowed paper.

“That’s right.” He tossed the note onto the table and it slid across the polished oak surface to rest next to Becca’s mug. The figure of fifty thousand dollars was boldly scrawled on the face of the document; Becca’s signature attested its authenticity.

As Becca reached for the paper, Brig’s words arrested her. “Check out the back.” Becca turned the note over and saw Jason Chambers’ notation. Proceeds to be used for breeding of Night Dancer to Gypsy Lady.

“When did you plan to tell me about her, Becca?”

“I did—”

“Because my father died! What if he hadn’t?” Brig’s voice was deadly. “How long would you have waited? Until she began racing?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered honestly.

Brig reached for a chair, turned it around, and dropped into it. He straddled the seat and rested his arms against the back while his eyes impaled her. “Why don’t you tell me all about it,” he suggested, ignoring the now-cold breakfast. “We’ve got all weekend, and I can’t wait to hear why you took it upon yourself to flirt with tragedy all over again.”