For the next two weeks Alejandro Salazar does not exist. You are now Colt Banyon, talented drifter groom. You will report to Cliff Taylor at the stables at six a.m. tomorrow, where you will work for the next two weeks.
You will not break your cover under any circumstance. The only communication you may have with the outside world is with your fellow challenge-takers on the phone provided.
Why this particular assignment for you? I know you have been searching for the time to provide your grandmother with the proof she desires to right a wrong long-ago perpetrated. To restore the Salazar family honor. Your time as a groom will provide you with both the means and the opportunity to do so. I hope it offers you the closure you are looking for.
I wish you luck. Don’t blow this, Alejandro. I’ve gone to a great deal of effort to provide you with an airtight identity. If you, Antonio and Stavros successfully complete your assignments, I will donate half of my fortune, as promised, to setting up a global search and rescue team. It will save many more lives.
Sebastien
Alejandro’s mouth twisted as he switched to Bacchus’s other side, toweling the sweat from the gelding’s dark coat. No doubt the idea of him breaking his back shoveling horse manure for two weeks with a name torn from the pages of a Hollywood script had provided an endless source of amusement for his mentor. But if Sebastien had been here, he would have told him this chance to provide his grandmother with the justice she was seeking was exactly the kind of closure he’d been looking for.
The feud between the Salazars and Hargroves had been going on for decades—ever since Quinton Hargrove had illegally bred his mare Demeter to his grandmother, Adriana Salazar’s, prize stallion Diablo while the horse had been on loan to an American breeder. The Hargroves had gone on to build an entire show jumping legacy around Diablo’s bloodline, one Adriana had never been able to match.
Heartbroken, his grandmother had been unable to attain proof as to what the Hargroves had done, watching as her fortunes plummeted and the Hargroves’ star had risen. Sebastien, in setting up the elaborate identity he had for him had put Alejandro in the perfect position to acquire that proof. Not only did he have the skills to carry out the subterfuge from summers and holidays spent on his grandmother’s Belgian horse farm, he had her touch with a horse.
He ran the towel down Bacchus’s hind end. Somehow, he acknowledged, it seemed almost too simple, this assignment of his, given the emotionally complex challenges Antonio and Stavros had been handed.
Antonio had been sent undercover to work as a mechanic at a garage in Milan. No issue there given his skill with a wrench. Far more shocking had been the child the Greek billionaire had discovered, the product of an old love affair. Antonio was still grappling with the considerable fallout of that life-altering discovery.
Stavros had warily gone next, finding himself sent to Greece to pose as a pool boy at his old family villa, a place he had long given a wide berth. Purchased by new owners, the property still held the ghosts of Stavros’s childhood, the site of his father’s death in a boating accident in which Stavros had survived.
Which undoubtedly left Alejandro the winner in the challenge lottery. Collecting a DNA sample from Bacchus, Cecily Hargrove’s prize horse, to prove the Hargroves’ crime was as simple as saving a few mane hairs from a brush and sending them off to Stavros to analyze in one of his high-tech labs.
Which left his biggest challenge to find a way to steer clear of Ms. Cecily Hargrove’s razor-sharp mouth and perfect behind over the next two weeks.
* * *
Cecily’s bad behavior plagued her all afternoon and well into dinner in the formal dining room at Esmerelda, a ridiculous indulgence on her stepmother’s part when the stately redbrick manor’s elegant, columned entertaining space seated thirty and it was only she, her father and her stepmother dining tonight.
She spent most of the insufferably dry meal staring moodily out the window. Her mother, Zara, had raised her to have impeccable manners. She was never rude. But Colt Banyon had hit a nerve this afternoon—a guilt she’d been harboring perhaps. A part of her knew this mess with Bacchus wasn’t just his fault—that whatever had happened to them in that horrific accident in London was something that still haunted them both.
Dessert was finally served. Her stepmother, Kay, otherwise known as the Wicked Witch of the South, flicked a jasmine-scented wrist at her as a maid served a lime sorbet. “What are you wearing to the party next week?”
Something her stepmother would undoubtedly hate on sight.
“I don’t know,” she dismissed. “I’ll find something.”
Kay eyed her. “You know Knox Henderson is coming here specifically to court you. He’s number forty-two on the Forbes list, Cecily. A catch if there ever was one.”
Her lip curled. “No one uses the word ‘court’ anymore. And like I’ve told you a half a dozen times before, I have no interest in Knox.”
“Why not?”
Because he was an arrogant jerk who owned half of Texas with his massive cattle ranches and oil reserves, merely looking for a wife to decorate his salon in entertainment magazine photo spreads. Because he reminded her far too much of her ex, Davis—another male who’d been far too rich and far too appreciative of multiple members of the opposite sex—all at the same time.
“I am not marrying him.” She lifted her chin and stared her stepmother down. “End of story. Stop matchmaking. It’s only going to be embarrassing for both of us if you keep this up.”
“Perhaps Cecily is right,” her father interjected, sweeping his cool, gray gaze over her. “She would do better to focus on the task at hand. Dale said your times today were still subpar. Do I need to buy you another horse to make this happen?”
Her stomach twisted. No, ‘I’m sorry you had such a bad day, honey.’ No ‘You’ve got what it takes, just stick with it’ from her father. Never any of that. Only the stern, silver-haired disapproval that was her father’s de facto response. It made her feel about two feet tall.
Her lashes lowered. “I don’t have time to break in a new horse, Daddy. Besides, the committee will expect me on Bacchus.”
“Then what do we need to do?”
“I will figure it out.”
Suddenly the idea of Knox Henderson’s impending visit combined with the vast amount of pressure being heaped on her from all directions vaporized any desire for dessert.
She set her spoon down with a clatter. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a headache. I think I’ll go lie down.”
“Cecily.”
Her stepmother put a hand on her father’s arm. “Let her go. You know what she’s like when she’s in one of these moods.”
Cecily ignored her, scraping back her chair and leaving with a click of her heels on the hardwood floor. She started toward her bedroom, then changed her mind, taking a detour to the kitchen where she acquired some of Bacchus’s favorite breakfast cereal, then headed out the back door to the barn.
She thought she might owe both Bacchus and Colt Banyon an apology. She told herself that was the only reason she was venturing out into a balmy, perfect Kentucky evening when she had a stack of entrance forms waiting to be filled out. It was not, she assured herself, because of Colt Banyon’s sinful dark eyes she couldn’t forget.
Her bad timing on the course earlier today seemed to follow her as she entered the barn to find the grooms had finished up work. Not about to track Colt Banyon down at the staff quarters, she headed for Bacchus’s box.
She pulled up short when she got there, watching with astonishment as her horse, extremely picky when it came to grooms and highly nerved, blew out a breath and closed his eyes, putty under Colt’s hands as the groom massaged his