Leaping Hearts(98)

“Devlin, I know you’re angry,” she said when he came out of the dining room.

“I’m not angry,” he said.

She searched his face for any sign of warmth. There was none.

“Devlin, I’m sorry I kept the injury from you.”

“I believe that.”

“My arm’s going to be fine. I’m okay. Sabbath’s going to heal. We can resume training here—”

“Not here.”

With the bald words, A.J. felt like she’d hit the ground again.

“What are you saying?”

“I agreed to get you to the Qualifier. I did. Now you need to go.”

Through a dry throat, she said, “Is it just Sabbath who needs to leave?”

It was a lifetime before she heard his answer.

“No.”

Tears, hot and wet, started to fall from her eyes.

“You can’t mean this. You just can’t. This can’t be the end.”

She was waiting for a denial, for a sign of weakening from the hard line. She found none.

“You lied to me,” he said. “You lied to me deliberately about your physical condition and you did it again and again. Every time you went into the ring on that horse.”

“I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

“When we made love, and you were naked against me, I thought that there was nothing that could come between us. When I held you in my arms, and you told me you loved me, I believed you. When I asked how you were doing, I assumed you were being truthful.”

“Devlin, I—”

“I knew something was wrong but I was so in love with you…I wanted to believe your words more than I wanted to see the truth.”

With shock, she realized he’d spoken in the past tense.

“Don’t you love me anymore?”

“I don’t trust you. You can’t have love without trust. What’s worse, I don’t trust myself anymore. This is the second time I’ve ignored my instincts. You’d think after Mercy, I’d have learned the lesson.”

“Oh, God,” she moaned. “Don’t do this. There must be something I can do. Something I can say—”

“I’m going out,” he told her. “When I get back, I’ll help bring your things over to the mansion. I know that arm’s got to be hurting you.”

He stepped around her to get to the door. Didn’t look back as he left.

Great wrenching sobs of grief and self-blame racked A.J. and she fell to her knees in the foyer. As she gave herself up to the emotions, she knew a pain so deep, she felt as if she would come apart.





18


A MONTH later, Devlin walked out of the farmhouse to get the morning paper, which had landed on the frost-laden grass. It left a green imprint when he picked it up. As he turned to go back into the house, he looked up at the sky. Gray clouds shut out the sun and, against the stark sky, leafless trees moved stiffly in the cold wind.

He didn’t look up because he was interested in the heavens. He was studiously ignoring the stables. And the ring. And the paddocks and the trails.

But he felt trapped by their vicinity anyway.

All that was going to change, however, with the phone call he’d made the day before. He was putting the property on the market. The agent had been thrilled with the listing and he’d been assured it was going to go fast despite a hefty price tag. Quick was what he wanted, even though he wasn’t sure where he was going to move. He was contemplating somewhere far away, in distance and spirit. Like California. Or Hawaii. After all, he had plenty of money and no real roots. He was free to go wherever he chose.

Well, free to make the choice to leave.

He was far from unencumbered.

The ghosts of his love for A.J. haunted him, day and night, in the shadows and in the light. He thought of her all the time, almost to the point of obsession, trying to come to terms with what had separated them. He felt betrayed and sad. Beyond the pain he felt at her deception, he was still angry that she hadn’t taken into account the risks she’d assumed. Competing with her arm in that kind of condition had been foolhardy. Dangerous. She could have been hurt even more seriously. She could have been— Devlin shook his head. Enough, he told himself. He’d rehashed it all enough.

As he went back into the house, he shut the door behind him to keep the cold out. The fire he’d started at four a.m., when he’d been wandering around aimlessly, had died down though the embers were still throwing off heat. He sat down and watched their red glow, tossing the paper on the coffee table. After staring into space, he caught himself before his thoughts once more became too anguished. To distract himself, he cracked open the Herald Globe, trying to fill the empty daylight with something. Anything.

When he got to the sports pages, he sucked in a breath.

Staring up at him, out of a grainy photograph, was A.J.

He scanned the article with a hunger that pained him.

She’d decided not to sue the reporter whose flash had blinded the stallion. But that wasn’t the shocker. She was selling Sabbath. And retiring from competition.

Devlin reread the text over and over. Competing was the most important thing in her life. And now she was just walking out?

He called Chester, who had followed the stallion over to Sutherland’s. Apart from the fact he was the only groom Sabbath would let near him, there was, once again, no work at the McCloud Stables.