So he didn’t doubt that the awareness he felt was fully reciprocated on her end. What he didn’t understand was the source of her worry. He guessed the emotion ran deeper than any surface resistance to being attracted to him.
Amanda Emory was a woman of complex thoughts and feelings—the kind of woman he usually left well enough alone, since his life as the black-sheep Preston had been enough of a mess on its own. But like everything else about his connection to Amanda, that didn’t make sense either.
“Are you losing your touch, boy?” a familiar voice called from behind him.
Robbie turned to see his grandfather ambling up the small rise toward the exercise yard, his worn jeans and long-sleeved plaid shirt never hinting at his multimillionaire status. Behind him, the spread of Quest Stables made a hell of a scene, the rolling hills and meadows in the distance, the bluegrass starting to dry out with autumn in the wind, the leaves starting to drop—a thousand acres of prime horse country.
At eighty-six years old, Hugh still liked to spend time around the stables—almost as much as he enjoyed checking out races around the globe with his horse-crazy cronies, guys who’d come up in the racing world along with him. But Hugh would have been as comfortable on a ranch out west as on a farm in Kentucky. As long as there were horses nearby, he was content.
Except for right now, it seemed.
“What’s the matter, Granddad?” Robbie waved to the colt’s rider to initiate the workout while Hugh joined him at the rail.
“I saw you let that filly finish her workout without talking to the rider about how she felt from his point of view.” Hugh raised a hand when Robbie started to protest. “I know you’ve got a schedule to keep, but that filly looked better than she has all summer.”
Robbie staunched an inward sigh, respecting his grandfather’s perspective. Besides, hadn’t he been chastising himself for the same thing his granddad complained about?
“You’re right.” He nodded. Took his lumps like a man. At least Granddad said what was on his mind instead of letting problems fester beneath the skin.
Like his father.
“What?” Hugh frowned as he clapped Robbie on the shoulder. “No argument from the family rabble rouser? I thought you were always spoiling for a fight?”
Hugh’s weathered face split into a grin and then the two men assumed the same position at the fence—one boot up on the bottom rail and arms folded along the top.
“How can I argue when you’re right? I should have talked to the rider. But I did make a note to call the owner and let him know the filly is showing more promise. Her sire never brought much performance to the track, but this horse could be a whole different package.”
The sun shone warm on his arms as Robbie tracked the colt now making the first easy laps of his workout. This was why he had got into training—the freedom to work outside and be his own boss. Except for the head trainer’s occasional input, there was no one to tell Robbie how to do his job out here. Horses didn’t argue. At least not in so many words.
“So, if you already know everything your old Pops came over here to say, care to explain why you’re off your stride?” Hugh stole his clipboard to look over the notes Robbie had been making on the day’s workouts.
Robbie never lied to this man. Nor did he hedge. It was a point of honor between the most outspoken men in the Preston clan that even when they were forced to control their tongues around other family members, they never bothered with such social caginess around each other.
Which left Robbie fairly tongue-tied at the moment.
“Ah!” Hugh’s head popped up from the clipboard, his gray hair lifting in the breeze. “The eloquent sound of silence says it all.”
Blue eyes twinkling, the older man gave a knowing grin.
“It’s not what you think.” Robbie didn’t want to tread down this road today, not even with one of his favorite people.
“And what do I think? Give your grandfather some credit for having eyes, son. I didn’t get as far as I did in this business reading horses without gaining a few skills in reading people, too. You’ve got the same talent as me, so you know what I say isn’t just some trackside bettor blowing smoke.” Hugh passed back the clipboard. “You should have told me you were having woman trouble and I would have understood exactly why you’re off your game today.”
Robbie jammed the training notes under his arm.
“I’m not having trouble with a woman.” He had no business thinking about Amanda anyway. She just had a way of creeping into his thoughts when his mind was quiet.
And, if he was honest, even when it wasn’t.
“Who is she? Some gal up in Twisted River you haven’t bothered to bring around here?” Hugh pounded a fist on the fence post. “Damn it, boy, we don’t know what’s going on with you since you let your father chase you out of the house.”
Here we go.
Robbie steeled himself for the battle.
“Granddad, you know we don’t see eye-to-eye on this.” He stared out at the training yard and caught sight of Melanie coming in on Leopold’s Legacy.
Both men waved as she turned the horse in their direction.
“We should see eye-to-eye since I’ve been telling you not to let your father get under your skin since you were four years old.” Hugh grumbled, groused and then put the subject away. “So help me, I want to meet this woman you’ve been thinking about. Do you hear?”
Robbie nodded absently because his grandfather would never let it go otherwise.
“How did he do today?” Robbie called out to his sister, envious of the way her duties as a jockey allowed her to ride far from the drama that always seemed to be circulating around the main house. His new set-up, residing in one of the staff cabins, might have removed him from the continual disagreements with his father and the rift between him and his brothers, but the arrangement brought new problems.
He had the distinct feeling it made the other staffers less at ease to have a Preston in their midst. There was a guardedness around the cabins now that had never been there when he used to pass by as a visitor.
“He ran like a champion.” Melanie shook her head, her shoulders drooping. “He could be earning fat purses and the adoration of the whole racing community if it wasn’t for this mystery about his sire.”
A groom came over to take the reins from Melanie as she slid to the ground beside them.
“It’s the damnedest thing I’ve heard of,” Hugh declared, shaking his head over the issue that was never far from any Preston’s mind these days. “I’ll bet you any money it’s some computer error. Back when we used to keep information in file drawers, people knew how to access it. Now that everything is done by computer, people don’t know how to make their own damn breakfast without some bleeping machine telling them how to do it.”
Robbie watched the groom walk away with Leopold’s Legacy. Not so long ago, he and Melanie would have exchanged a wink over Granddad’s tirade. But these days, they hoped he had a point and there was some computer error behind the discrepancy in Leopold’s Legacy’s blood work.
As Melanie launched into her ideas for clearing the horse to run in Dubai next month, Robbie’s eyes snagged on a figure walking up a path from the stables toward the Quest offices.
A sweetly feminine figure he’d been seeing in his mind’s eye all day.
“Would you excuse me?” He tossed out the question as a social nicety but didn’t stick around for the answer. Plunking his training notes on a nearby bench, he stepped away from his sister and grandfather,