Giving Chase (A Racing Romance) (Aspen Valley Series #2) (32 page)

S
wallowing became impossible. Frankie stared at him, not breathing. She could hear the blood pumping through her body like a death drum. Her tongue stuck to her palate as she tried to speak.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Come on, Frankie. It’s so obvious. Do you really believe that Rhys bedded you because he
fancied
you? He hated your guts! You stole his National ride, for God’s sake! That’s like the Holy Grail to him. Do you really think he was just going to say “Oh, go on then, you have it”?’

Frankie shook her head and got to her shaky legs to back away.

‘That’s not true.’

Donnie raised his eyes to the ceiling before giving her a look of disdain.

‘Yes, Frankie, it is true. I was there. Remember? At the Christmas party? You came over practically gagging for it. Rhys saw his opportunity to get his ride back…and get another into the bargain,’ he added with an evil twinkle.

Heat washed over Frankie’s face. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t think. Fear curled around her body until it held her in a vice-like grip. She’d never realised how isolating the feeling of betrayal was.

‘He wouldn’t—Rhys wouldn’t do that,’ she stammered. ‘Not to me.’

Donnie raised a challenging eyebrow then nodded to the open doorway. Rhys, looking thunderous after his void ride, limped into the room with his saddle over his arm.

‘Might just as well have stayed in here with you guys,’ he muttered, dumping his saddle on the bench. ‘Bloody Virtuoso figures he just wanted to go for a look at the countryside rather than contest the Gold Cup. Fucking animal.’

When neither Frankie nor Donnie replied, he looked up.

‘What’s up with you two?’ he said.

Frankie felt numb, her legs, her arms, her brain seemed to have switched to some sort of survival mode. She couldn’t answer him.

Rhys narrowed his eyes, his dark eyes switching from her to Donnie and back again.

‘What—
’

‘Rhys
, is it true?’ Her words were strangled.

‘Is what true?’

‘Did you—did you—’ She moistened her lips, summoning the courage to ask the question. ‘Did you seduce me to get the ride on Peace Offering?’

In desperation, she
watched his face for his reaction, a reaction that would ease the panic rising inside her.

A pause.

‘No, of course not,’ Rhys said.

She sucked in her breath, gulping in air to fill her lungs. His words sounded genuine, but his expression was all wrong.
He was glaring at Donnie. And that pause…Frankie staggered backwards. The expression on his face during that pause had said a thousand words. And they weren’t the words which were uttered from his mouth.

Rhys had lied.

Frankie’s body was numb as Bold Phoenix jogged onto Cheltenham’s centre stage. She heard the amassed crowd like she was underwater. Her mind swirled. Rhys wasn’t whom he’d claimed to be. Yet she’d felt like she had learned so much about herself through being with him. If he was a fraud, did that mean she wasn’
t whom she thought she was either? Bold Phoenix broke into canter and she automatically rose in her stirrups. She shook her head to clear it. There she’d been, asking herself—seriously questioning herself as a mature adult—if she was in love with Rhys. But that Rhys hadn’t existed. It’d all been for show. An act.

‘I
can’t believe it.’ The words fell from her lips and were swept away by the wind. They remained the only response in her mind though. Thinking in coherent sentences was impossible.  ‘I–I can’t believe it.’

Down at the s
tart, Bold Phoenix slowed on his own accord to join the other horses circling. Frankie looked at them without actually seeing them. The usual ball of trepidation before a race was strangely absent. She had no idea what Jack might have said in the parade ring. She couldn’t even remember him saying anything at all.

The runners were called forward. With no instruction from his rider, Bold Phoeni
x happily followed at the rear.

Rh
ys had lied.

Like a genie from a lamp, the loving boyfriend in whose arms she’d spent so much of the season, had vanished in a puff of smoke. Frankie became more aware of the race when her horse launched into a gallop. How long was this race? How many jumps were there? Was it a hurdles race or a steeplechase? Who was she riding again?

She looked down, her brain taking a sabbatical before matching her yellow sleeves to the chestnut neck. Bold Phoenix, that was who she was on. Was this how people felt after an accident when you saw them wrapped in foil with a “Have I left the oven on” expression on their faces? Was this full-blown shock, which numbed the brain to protect it from the psychological trauma of the event? She’d only once felt like this before. When she’d been told Seth was dead. Was this so dissimilar? She’d lost someone close to her, someone, she dared say it, she loved?

The first fence registered when she saw the front runners rising over it. Five lengths off the pace, Bold Phoenix took the jump in his own time. Frankie didn’t notice the gap begin to widen. Neither did she notice the next three
fences nor the hollering crowds when they passed the grandstands.

Rhys had lied
.

What a fool she’d been!
She cringed as she recalled how blissfully happy she’d been. All that time he’d probably been laughing at her. Had he been keeping Donnie updated with his progress? Had they chuckled at her gullibility? Despite the fresh wind blowing in her face as the field rounded the far turn, her cheeks burned with humiliation.

She was jolted back to her race when Bold Phoenix cat-jumped over the water and dragged his hindlegs. In a daze she looked up. Apart from a horse pulling up on the wide outside, the rest of the field were a good ten lengths clear.
The skeletal trees bordering the course scratched the slate sky. Distractedly, she pushed her mount on and Bold Phoenix quickened his stride.

Rhys had lied
.

Had he though? Or h
ad she created a fantasy? She thought she’d gone into the relationship with her eyes wide open, yet she might just as well have been wearing Ta’ Qali’s sheepskin noseband over them.

As the ground ahead rose up the side of the hill, a faller brought Frankie’s mind sharply back to the job. She switched wide to avoid the crumpled heap of silks on the landing side. The rest of the field had reached the top of the hill and were now picking up speed on the descent. They were pulling further and further clear.

Rhys had lied.

Frankie frowned to herself.
That could well have been her on the floor back there. She
had
to concentrate. She clucked in Bold Phoenix’s ear and once again, he responded to her urging. Hell, she was three quarters of the way through her first Cheltenham Festival ride and she’d taken absolutely nothing of it in. Rhys’s bombshell had completely decimated every scrap of enjoyment, all the nerves, all the adrenalin. Not only had he managed to seduce her Grand National ride off her, but he was about to ruin her Festival debut too.

‘Bastard,’ she muttered.

She gave Bold Phoenix an unnecessarily violent kick over the next open ditch on the downhill slope. He pitched on landing. She pushed herself back in the saddle to counterbalance his momentum. The chestnut found a footing. The cheering of the crowds drifted over to her on the wind. She had heard that the cheers at Cheltenham were like nowhere else on earth. They made the hairs on people’s arms stand on end. And here she was, lagging fifteen lengths behind the field, about to let Rhys steal this opportunity away from her as well?

‘No
t bloody likely,’ she growled.

She kicked Bold Phoenix on, letting caution depart on the south-westerly. Filled with a
fury completely foreign to her, Frankie felt no fear. She urged her mount towards the third from home. Her blood boiled in a cauldron of anger. Bold Phoenix spring-heeled the jump. The leaders were now just ten lengths clear. They galloped flat out around the long turn into the home straight, the noise of the crowd building. Frankie imagined her parents somewhere in that pebbledash of yelling punters. Her father! A new rage flooded her face. She’d turned her back on him, had shouted him down every time he’d warned her that Rhys was bad news. And all the while, he had been right! How could Rhys allow her to ruin her relationship with her father? A wave of guilt mixed uncomfortably with her anger. She’d let him down so many times in the past. Discovering he’d been right about Rhys was just the icing. How could he ever look at her again without thinking she had been the child that was a constant disappointment? Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them away.

Rhys had lied
.

She looked ahead. The field were coming back to them and a blob of red in the distance marked the Finish lollipop.

‘Come on, Phoenix!’ she shouted. ‘Come on! You bastard, Rhys! I’m not going to let you take this away from me too!’

Her renewed urgings surprised Bold Phoenix into running faster than he’d ever done before. The second last fence loomed. He took confidence from his determined rider
and hurdled it like it was a practice jump at home.

The roar of the grandstand hit them in a wave of
jubilant sound. They could have been shouting for any one of the ten runners in front—River Train, the favourite was leading—but at that moment, Frankie felt they were all for her. Bold Phoenix was gaining, galloping like he’d just joined the race. They picked them off, tenth, ninth, eighth, seventh. They took the last in joint fifth position. Just the infamous Cheltenham run-in opposed the horses.

‘Come on, Phoenix!’ Frankie shouted, the roar in her tone emanating from somewhere deep deep within.
She ducked her head between her shoulders and shoved forward for all she was worth. ‘We are going to do this! Come on!’

Bold Phoenix
stretched out his neck, straining his legs to run faster, to reach further. They passed the fourth then third horses in a flash of muddied silks and chestnut and blonde manes. The horizon bobbed as she raised her head. Two horses up ahead, to her left. River Train leading. A heaving black mass of tweed and corduroy to her right. A hundred yards to that lollipop.

Frankie pushed. Frankie shoved. Frankie’s blood boiled at the thought of Rhys. Bold Phoenix could go no faster. Rocking back and forth in her saddle, Frankie glimpsed the front two horses slowing, the lactic acid burning in their muscles too unbearable to see out the Cheltenham hill.

‘Come on! We can do this!’

Bold Phoenix dug deep. With an extra spurt, he quickened. Three, four, five strides
; they drew level. Six, seven, eight; they galloped in sync. Nine, ten…Exhaustion overruled his willingness to please. Frankie closed her eyes. She rested her face against his mane and wrapped her arms around his neck, bobbing on his back as he changed down into a rattling trot. She looked back down the course at an upside down world. There behind them was that red lollipop. There also behind them was River Train. They’d done it. Frankie slumped.

But
Rhys had still lied.

*

A hammering on the front door roused Frankie from her daze. She lay on her bed looking up at the ceiling. What little comfort the darkness afforded was jarred out of her as a second hammering sounded. She heard Tom descending the stairs.

‘D
on’t answer it, Tom,’ she called.

His footsteps stilled.

‘You sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘Okay, then.’ He sounded uncertain. Nevertheless, his footsteps returned to his bedroom.

‘Frankie!’ Rhys shouted from outside.

She closed her eyes, trying to block out the sound of his voice.

‘Frankie, let me in!’

She wrenched the pillow from beneath her head and blocked her ears with it.

‘Come on, Frankie! It’s me, Rhys!’

Like a match to kindling, rage erupted inside her. She flung the pillow aside and flew to the window. Struggling with the latch for a moment in her haste, she shoved it wide and leaned out.

‘I know it’s you, goddammit! And that is exactly why I’m ignoring you!’

Rhys stepped back from the front door’s overhang to look up at her. The security light lit the anguish on his face.

‘Frankie—
’

‘Just go away!’

‘If you could just let me explain.’

Frankie’s hands trembled on the window frame and she sucked in a lungful of cold air to keep her voice from going the same way.

‘What is there to explain, Rhys? Don’t tell me that Donnie was lying. I could see that he wasn’t.’

‘I wasn’t—
’

‘Did you or did you
not
sleep with me at the Christmas party just to get the ride on Peace Offering?’ A new iciness crept into her tone.

Rhys lifted his hands and let them fall in exasperation.

‘Yes, but—’

The knife that had been wedged in her heart for the past four hours twisted deeper.

‘Then there’s nothing to explain, Rhys!’ she screamed. ‘Just fuck off! I don’t want to see you again. Dad was right about you–you are just like your father!’

Rhys stepped back as if
she’d physically assaulted him.

‘Don’t!’ he yelled in reply. ‘Don’t you
ever
say that! I’m nothing like my father!’

‘Yes, you are. You’re a lying, cheating son of a bitch. Dad said right from the start not to trust you.’
She bit her lip and her voice quavered. ‘I turned my back on him for you. I trusted you—’

‘I never asked you to turn your back on your dad.’

Frankie gripped the window frame until her fingertips hurt. She felt like hurling herself out of the window and punching Rhys.

‘You never
what
?’ she said. ‘Of course you bloody did! You–you
seduced
me. Dad told me you were up to no good, that the Bradfords never change, but I didn’t listen to him.’ She laughed in ridicule at herself. ‘The fool that I am, I actually believed that you wanted to be with me because of who I am, not for what I could give you.’

‘I hate my father,’ he said deliberately. ‘I am
not
my father.’

Frankie shook her head, watching Rhys clench his fists by his sides. A wild hysterical laugh gathered inside her.
He might have more layers to him than an onion in Antarctica but she still knew how to hurt him.

‘Take a good look in the mirror, Rhys,’ she spat.
‘A
good
look. Because from where I’m standing, you are exactly like your father.’

She slammed the window closed, making
the photo frame on her bedside table fall flat.

‘Frankie?
’ Rhys’s voice was muffled but still clear. ‘
Frankie
!’

‘Go away!’ she shrieked. She picked up the photograph. With the glow of the outside light shining through the window, she didn’t see Seth leading the string of horses though. All she saw was the black-jacketed figure in the background. She flung the photo at the wall, but screamed in frustration when the shattering glass did nothing to assuage her anger.

‘Goddammit!’ Rhys yelled from below. ‘Stupid fucking—RRRR!’ The wheelie bins parked out the front received the brunt of his frustration.

Frankie stood in the middle of her room, shaking. Her trembling breaths filled the void. She listened for Rhys to cut through her heart again, but there was only silence. A few seconds later, the security light, with no movement to trigger it, clicked off.

A gentle tap on the door made her jump.

Tom peeped in
.

‘Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing.’