Deception (32 page)

“Your girth gave?” Richard’s voice reflected his disbelief.

“Apparently.” Connor flipped the saddle over and began to examine it. The stitching was sound, unrotted. She unbuckled the girth and carefully studied it. Her heartbeat increased as her fingernails scratched at the stitching. The threads were not frayed or worn, as if they’d broken from use. They were carefully cut—very carefully cut. Snipped just enough so that during a moment of stress they’d give. She looked up at Richard.

“Why did Tinker spook?” she asked calmly.

“There was something in the woods. Or someone. I didn’t get a clear look, but something darted as if it were going to rush into the path. Tinker saw it much better than I, and she stopped and reared. I was so busy trying not to fall off on my head that I didn’t really look to see what it was.”

Connor swallowed. “Did you remember anything?”

“Blue. Whatever or whoever it was, it was blue.”

Lunch was a quiet meal. Absorbed in her thoughts, Connor finally picked up on the tension at the table. Willene hustled back and forth from the kitchen, avoiding Richard’s attempts at light conversation as if she might catch the plague from exchanging greetings with him. Renata and Danny ate fast, eager for a ride in the woods.

“You two know when the holidays are over we’re going back to afternoon lessons,” Connor told them as they prepared to hurry down to the barn. The hustle and bustle of Christmas had waylaid her aggressive lesson schedule.

“Every afternoon?” Renata looked worried.

“Five times a week. Your father is going to expect you to be very accomplished by the end of May. That gives me only another five months to work with you.” Connor tried to coax a grin out of Renata. “Just think, after that you’ll be on your own, without a riding teacher to torment you.”

“Exactly,” Renata said, her brown eyes dancing with her own thoughts. “See you later, Uncle Richard.”

They were gone in a flash, out the front door and across the porch, laughing and giggling as they went.

“Renata didn’t seem too eager to spend time with you,” Connor said. She dropped her shoulders and slouched, sighing with relief. Her back was killing her. “Every muscle and bone in my body hurts.”

“You’re lucky you aren’t wearing a hoofprint on your forehead.” Richard’s tone was dark. “Will Clay be here this afternoon?”

“He’s supposed to come back to Oaklawn no later than dinner, but the scheduling is hard on him. It all depends on how things go with his campaign strategy planning session.”

“How do you feel about that?” Richard toyed with the crumbs of the Mississippi Mud Cake that Willene had served for dessert.

“Clay and I don’t often talk about the campaign. I’m not sure how it will affect me,” Connor answered. “I don’t know if I want to participate in it or not. I don’t know if I can become part of that kind of life.”

“Has Clay asked you to do that?”

Richard’s question was softly put, as if he knew already that Clay had not.

“No.” Connor looked down at her empty coffee cup. It stung her pride to give that answer. Clay had scrupulously avoided talking about the distant future—after May, when she was due to leave. “I guess I’m jumping the boat to worry about that kind of thing. Maybe Clay has no intention of weighting down his future with a California horse trainer.”

“He well may not.” Richard sighed. “I don’t want to be brutal, but I also don’t want to give you false hope. Clay will become a United States Senator, and he’ll sacrifice whatever it takes to get there. Even if it’s you. Even if he loves you.”

“That’s not very encouraging. In fact, it’s pretty discouraging.”

Richard put his head back and looked up at the ceiling.

“At the moment, I’m a little more worried about your physical safety than I am about your love for Clay.”

Connor turned her head. Someone was standing outside the dining room door. She reached across the table and put her hand on Richard’s, tilting her head toward the closed door. He nodded that he understood.

“Let’s take a walk,” he said.

They were deep in the pecan orchard before Connor spoke. Clouds were building over the western horizon. It would be an early dusk and a stormy night. The sky reflected her own growing anxiety.

“Richard, don’t tell anyone about the girth.” She saw the protest rising on his lips and she stopped it with a touch of her fingers. “Please. I know what I’m doing.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t think you have any comprehension of what you’re doing, of what you’re toying with.” As if to emphasize his words, a gust of wind blasted through the orchard, rattling the few leaves left on the pecans. “This place is cursed. If not from the dead, then from the living. Someone is trying to hurt you.”

“Really, I know what I’m doing. That girth was cut deliberately. Someone meant to harm me, and I know it.”

“Which is exactly why you need to tell Clay. Surely he won’t allow you to risk your neck anymore. If you don’t have enough sense to realize the dangers, maybe he will. And maybe he’ll take the necessary steps to protect you.”

Connor scooped up a handful of the brittle leaves and crushed them in her hand. “That’s right. He’ll want me to leave.”

“I’ve given it a lot of thought, and that might be the best thing. I mean, who would want to see you break your neck around here? Cutting that girth was the same thing as a physical assault.” He grabbed her shoulders. “The only difference is that one would be obvious, and the other is sneaky. Who would want to hurt you like that?”

“There is one possibility.” Connor hesitated. Once she said it, there was no taking it back. And she had no proof, only intuition. “It might be Renata. I don’t think she wants to hurt me, but I do believe she’d like to frighten me away.”

Richard didn’t reply for a long moment. He continued to walk beside Connor. “She’s a lot smarter than most people would ever imagine. ‘Cunning’ may be a better word. I wondered about this at lunch today. There were several times I saw her looking at you …”

Connor stopped. Richard was actually scaring her. The hair on her arms was standing on end. “Then you don’t think I’m crazy?”

“Not at all. There was one time when I was visiting that Talla warned me about Renata. She was laughing, but she said for me to watch my back, that Renata didn’t like me coming to Oaklawn and that she’d do whatever she had to do to keep me away. It was as if the child wanted Talla all to herself. Now she may have transferred that need to Clay.”

“Which is exactly why I won’t be run off,” Connor interrupted. “If she’s allowed to accomplish this, what’s next?”

“That really isn’t your problem, Connor. What should matter to you is that you lead a happy, safe, and sane life. You have dreams. You have talent. You don’t need a man who mainlines political ambitions, or his psychotic children.”

Beneath the fear that danced down her skin, Connor felt a core of something else. She gave Richard a lopsided grin. “As strange as it’s going to sound to you, I do need Clay. The woman who never needed anyone now finds that she does, after all.”

Richard’s gray eyes deepened as he searched Connor’s face. “You honestly love the bastard, don’t you? I mean really once-in-a-lifetime, grand passion, knock-your-socks-off, till-death-do-you-part, love him.”

“That pretty well describes it.” Connor’s smile widened a little. “It makes me feel so vulnerable to say it. I haven’t told anyone but you.”

Richard took her shoulders and swung her around to face him. There was no matching pleasure in his face. “I’m afraid for you, Connor.”

“Why?” She tried to keep the pulse of fear out of her veins. Richard looked … distraught. Genuinely distraught. And she wanted him to be happy, to share her delight.

Richard searched for words. “I love you, Connor. Not as a lover, but as a friend, so I’m not jealous of your feelings for Clay.”

“I know that,” she said impatiently.

“I just want to make it clear. Clay is one of the most dynamic men I’ve ever known, and I’m not going to say that he’s responsible for any of the things that have happened, but you have to admit that the women he gets involved with suffer. All of them. Without exception.”

“I’m not certain that’s Clay’s fault,” Connor said stiffly. She tried to turn away from Richard, but he held her.

“I didn’t say that it was, and from where I stand, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to argue who’s to blame and who isn’t. What matters is that women who spend too much time with Clay pay a heavy price.”

“Like Talla?”

“Like his
dead
wife, exactly.”

“From what I hear, she spent more time with every stud she could find than she did with her husband or her children. I could make a difference to those kids, Richard. Danny already cares for me. Renata could learn to. They need someone to bring some stability into their lives. And Clay, too. He’s been starved for affection. He’s the kindest, most generous man I’ve ever met.”

“I won’t argue those things. But his wife is dead. A young girl back in high school disappeared without a trace. She got a little too close to a claim to the Sumner hearth, and bingo, they ‘disappeared’ her.”

“Willene told me about that girl. That wasn’t Clay’s fault. If anything happened to her, it was Clay’s father who had it done.”

“Does that make a difference to the girl?” Richard was almost shouting, and his grip on her arms tightened cruelly. “If she’s dead, does it matter to her who ordered her execution?”

Connor jerked free. “Stop it! Stop it now, Richard!” She felt her chest heaving in and out. She was more frightened than angry. “You have no right to imply such things. Clay is your friend. He’s never said anything but kind things about you. In fact, of all the people in Mobile, Clay has been the one to stand up for your right to pursue the career you love. And there’s no proof that anything happened to that girl. None!”

“Connor, I’m not belittling Clay! I’m only trying to make you realize that this is a dangerous situation. Someone is trying to hurt you. And I believe it’s because of your involvement with Clay Sumner.”

His words penetrated the icy chill of her fear. “Who do you think it is?”

“Renata, possibly—but she has to have some grown-up help, don’t you think?”

The image of the young woman standing at the foot of her bed came to her so clearly that she gasped. Could that have been Renata’s accomplice in the game? It was too farfetched to consider. She was beginning to sound as irrational as Richard. “This has gone far enough. You’ve actually got me thinking that an eleven-year-old child might be deliberately trying to kill me.”

“Maybe not kill, maybe just frighten away. But that’s my point—you could have been killed today. Maybe the intent was that you fall and break an arm or a leg. But you might have broken your neck. You could have killed yourself tripping down the stairs. Or worse, you might be lying in a hospital bed this minute, paralyzed from your neck down, all of your dreams shot to hell.”

Everything Richard was saying was true. Connor knew it, but she rejected it. “As you can see, I’m perfectly fine,” she said quietly.

“Dammit, Connor, that’s because you’ve been lucky. But your luck may not hold out forever.”

“So you want me to turn tail and run? I think you know me better than that.”

“I curse the day I mentioned your name to Clay Sumner. I curse myself for not telling you about his sexually crazed, insatiable wife who died swinging from the rafters,” he pointed across the orchard, “in that barn. I curse this inbred, incestuous place that twists people to the point that they’ll do anything for a name or a scrap of power. And I wash my hands of any responsibility for what happens to you.”

He turned his back on her and walked away, his feet scrunching through the leaves.

Connor watched him go. She thought to call him back, to tell him something that would stop him from leaving angry, but there was nothing she could say. She was not leaving Oaklawn. Clay needed her. Danny needed her. And Renata, too. Renata more than anyone.

She felt the tears on her cheeks and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. “Damn you, Richard,” she whispered. “I need a friend, and you’re walking away.”

Overwhelmed by a feeling of complete desolation, she went down to the barn. Apollo needed work. There were stalls to clean, tack to oil, jumps to set up, and feeding schedules to revise. If she worked at it, she’d find no time for self-pity or self-doubt. The only bright spot was that Clay would be back at Oaklawn for dinner. He’d promised. Then she could decide whether to tell him about the girth.

With a few minutes to spare between her bath and getting dressed for dinner, Connor was stretched out on the bed when she heard soft footsteps outside her door. Her reaction was instantaneous. Heart pounding, she rolled to the left, dropping on her hands and knees beside the bed. The movement was purely instinctive, a survival impulse.

“Connor?” Sally’s soft voice called to her as she tapped on the door. “Mr. Clay wants to speak with you on the telephone.”

Feeling like the biggest fool in the world, Connor scrambled to her feet and threw her robe on. She’d heard the telephone ring. There was an extension in her room, but since no one ever called her, she never bothered to answer it.

“Thanks, Sally,” she called. “I’ll pick it up here.”

“Willene asked me to ask you if you’d like some port or a drink before dinner. She said it might relax your muscles.”

“No, thanks,” Connor said. So, Willene had been taking in her cautious movements all afternoon. Connor had tried to hide her sore muscles, but she hadn’t been very successful. Luckily, everyone attributed it to her tumble down the stairs. No one, except for Richard and the person who’d cut her girth, knew about her fall. “I’ll be down to eat, and I’ll have some wine with dinner.”

“Okay.” Sally’s footsteps were hurried as she took off down the stairs. Connor had the mental picture of her taking them two at a time. The girl had no love for the stairs or the hallway, and after her trip down them headfirst, Connor understood Sally’s feelings completely.

She picked up the receiver, thinking maybe that Richard had called Clay and told him about the girth against her wishes before he went back to Hollywood. “Hello, this is Connor.”