He was a man—unlike Knox Henderson who preferred to preen like a peacock, there was a quiet substance to Colt that held her in its thrall.
He slid his hands down her horse’s head and began working his neck muscles, the kneading movement of his big hands making her horse shudder. Her stomach curled, tiny pinpricks of heat unfolding beneath her skin.
Would he handle a woman with such sensual precision? What would those hands feel like? Would they be deliberate and demanding? Slow and seductive? All of the above?
Bacchus lifted his head, his soft nicker of welcome causing the subject of her fascination to turn around. She wiped her expression clean, but perhaps not quick enough. Colt Banyon’s cool, dark stare made her freeze, utterly disconcerted.
“Why aren’t you eating with the others?” she blurted out.
A blast of arctic air directed her way. “Wasn’t hungry.”
She sank her hands into her pockets. Blew out a breath. “I owe you an apology for my behavior earlier. I was frustrated, I took it out on you. I’m sorry.”
A barely perceptible blink of those long, dark lashes. “Apology accepted.”
He turned and went back to work. Her skin burned. He’d clearly formed an opinion of her and wasn’t about to change it. Which should have been fine because she was used to people forming false impressions of her. Sometimes she even encouraged it, because it was easier than trying to maintain human relationships, something that never seemed to work out for her.
But for some reason, she wanted Colt Banyon to approve of her. Maybe because her horse had already given him the thumbs up and Bacchus’s opinion was never wrong.
Her horse nuzzled the pocket of her dress. She pulled out a handful of his favorite brightly colored fruit breakfast cereal and fed it to him.
Colt eyed her hand. “What is that?”
“Breakfast of champions. He’ll do anything for it.”
“Except jump the course the way you want him to.”
Ouch. She winced at the dig. “Are you always this—”
“Impertinent?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you thought it.”
“I think,” she corrected stiffly, “that you are direct. And that you don’t like me very much.”
He glanced at her, face impassive. “It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m paid to follow orders just like you said.”
She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Sure you did.”
Wow. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her. She watched as he ran his hand over Bacchus’s side and dug his fingers into his trapezoids, key muscles her horse used to balance himself with. “What are you doing?”
“He seemed stiff when you rode him earlier. I thought a massage might loosen him up.”
“Did your grandmother teach you that too?”
“Yes. If he’s tight, he can’t stretch over the jumps properly.”
Well she knew that, of course. Jumping was all about form. But she’d only ever heard of equine therapists doing this kind of a massage.
“Is your grandmother a therapist?”
He shook his head. “Just a horse lover with a special touch.”
“Does she live in New Mexico?”
A longer glance at her this time. “You been checking my résumé out?”
Heat stained her cheeks. “I like to know who’s working in my stables.”
“So you can see which ‘school of psychobabble’ we come from?”
“Colt—”
He started working on her horse’s back. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the stall. “We had an accident,” she said quietly. “In London last year. Something in the crowd spooked Bacchus as we approached a combination. His takeoff was all wrong—we crashed through the fence.”
She closed her eyes as the sickening thud, still so clear, so horrifically real, reverberated in her head. “I was lucky I didn’t break my neck. I broke my collarbone and arm instead. Bacchus tore tendons—badly. Physically, he’s a hundred percent but mentally he hasn’t been right since then. That’s why I was so frustrated today.”
He turned around and leaned against the wall. The corded muscles in his forearms flexed as he folded them over his chest, a flicker of something she couldn’t read sliding across his cool, even gaze. “That had to have left some emotional dents in you as well.”
She nodded. “I thought I was over it. Maybe I’m not.”
* * *
Alejandro knew he should keep up the brush off signals until Cecily Hargrove walked back out that door—the safest place for her. But there was a fragility that radiated from her tonight, dark emotional bruises in her eyes he couldn’t ignore. Perhaps they were from the accident. He thought they might be from a hell of a lot further back.
His heart tugged. Her undeniably beautiful face, bare of makeup, blue summer dress the same vibrant shade as her eyes, she looked exceedingly young and vulnerable. His grandmother had always said showjumping was a mental game. If you lost your edge, it all fell apart. Maybe Cecily had lost hers.
“Maybe you need to take a step back,” he suggested. “Take some time for you and Bacchus to fully heal—mentally and physically. Figure out what’s missing.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have time. I have a big event in a month. If I don’t perform in the top three there I won’t make the world championship team. Bacchus is the only horse I have that’s at that level.”
“So you make it next year.”
“That’s not an option.”
“Why not?” He frowned. “What are you—mid-twenties? You have all the time in the world to make the team.”
Her mouth twisted. “Not when you’re a Hargrove, you don’t. My grandmother and mother were on the team. I am expected to make it. If I don’t, it will be a huge disappointment.”
“To who?”
“My father. My coach. The team. Everyone who’s backed me. They’ve spent a fortune in time and money to get me here.”
That he understood. He’d spent a lifetime trying to live up to his own legacy—to the destiny that had been handed to him from the first day he could walk. Sent to an elite boarding school in America from his native Brazil when he was six, then on to Harvard, the pressure had been relentless.
When he’d moved to New York to run the Salazar Coffee Company’s global operations as the company’s CEO, that pressure had escalated to a whole other level, driven by a ferociously competitive international marketplace and a father who had never been content with less than a hundred and ten percent from his sons.
He knew how that pressure could rule your life. How it could crush your soul if you let it.
He set his gaze on the woman in front of him. “You know better than anyone what you do is as much psychology as it is sport. Master the course in your head and you’re halfway there. Fail to do so and you’re dead in the water.” He shook his head. “If you push Bacchus before you’re both ready, it could end up in an even worse disaster than the one you’ve already been through.”
Long, golden-tipped lashes shaded her eyes. Chewing on her lip, she studied him for a long moment.