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  The terrain was flat.

  Smooth.

  Fast.

  In no time they crossed the back road, slowed to descend an incline and were surrounded by forest.

  Cat filled his mind and his heart. He’d put another woman in danger. She was angry with him for holding back, but no angrier than he was with himself. His refusing to sleep with her again hadn’t helped protect her. She was doomed unless he got to her in time to stop Hill.

  Aidan kept the mare at an even trot as he searched out the way. Picking up the trail, he headed the mare to the right and signaled her into an easy lope until he got his bearings. Everything was pitch-dark now. The moon was a mere sliver peeking from behind a cloud. From this direction, nothing looked familiar, and he feared going too fast. He didn’t want to pass the entry to the ravine.

  He found it by bizarre accident—a swath of faint light fingering a stand of trees.

  Aidan stopped the mare and scanned the area. The light was coming from below. The ravine. Apparently Hill had left his truck lights on so he could see what he was doing.

  Praying he wasn’t too late to save Cat, Aidan didn’t wait to find the cleared path—he headed the mare down through the maze of trees.

  * * *

  DEAN HILL WAS MAKING HER dig her own grave. The only reason Cat was following orders was to stall for time.

  Aidan had to be looking for her by now.

  The horror of it was that Dean had moved the burial site closer to where she and Aidan had their “just sex” encounter that had sparked her feelings for him. Looking up at that very spot and remembering how exciting that had been—and then how it had all gone bad within moments when the dogs found George—she swallowed hard. No matter that she was still angry with Aidan for not being honest with her, she realized she really did love him.

  To her dismay, she was starting to believe in this McKenna curse thing.

  Did that mean Aidan really loved her?

  Anger and disappointment didn’t stop her heart from beating faster at the thought. He’d threatened to take her off somewhere until the murderer was caught. His methods might be questionable, but his heart wasn’t. She’d been judging him by the mistakes she’d made in trusting and marrying Jack. Aidan wasn’t anything like her ex-husband. There had to be a way to work things out between them.

  If she survived.

  “Keep digging!” Dean ordered. “I don’t have all night.”

  Jamming the shovel into the rocky earth, Cat wanted to swing it smack into Dean’s head. He was sitting on a tree stump several yards away, and he had that gun pointed straight at her.

  “Did you make George dig his own grave before you bashed in his head?”

  “He was already dead.”

  She just had to keep Dean off balance long enough for Aidan to find her. That shouldn’t be impossible. In her opinion, Dean had already gone around the bend.

  “Then I assume you made Raul do the dirty work.”

  “Little pissant complained about it, too. I had to threaten him, tell him I’d have the police on him.” Dean laughed. “Who would believe someone like him if I said I saw him do it?”

  “He had a right to complain. This is hard work. Do you know how much rock there is, considering how close we are to the stream?” To emphasize her point, she smacked her shovel against a nearby boulder.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty time to rest. Eternity, actually.” Dean laughed at his own macabre joke.

  Cat eyed the water several yards away and wondered if it was deep enough to use for a getaway.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Dean said. “I’ll shoot before you get a toe wet.”

  Imagining she heard a soft noise that sounded like a horse blowing through its nose, her pulse surged. She said, “Tell me again why I should cooperate with you,” to center Dean’s attention on her.

  “I have the gun, remember.”

  Was someone really out there? Aidan? Her spirits rose. She might survive the night, after all. She kept digging, keeping her efforts as ineffectual as possible.

  “Either way you’re going to kill me, right, Dean?”

  “I am, but I can make it easy on you.” He popped something in his mouth and chewed. “Or very, very hard. I’m getting better at this. More creative. Easy or hard…your choice.”

  Cat pretended to look at him, but she was subtly searching the nearby woods. “I prefer easy.”

  “Then dig.”

  Was that movement directly behind him?

  Her hopes soared. She cleverly positioned herself to attack Dean. In the meantime, she had to keep him talking.

  “Why didn’t you bury Helen?” she asked.

  “I wanted it to look like a heart attack, so no one would connect her murder to George’s.”

  “What you did to her was gruesome—”

  “It was necessary!” he yelled. “I already paid her to keep quiet about False Promise. She was my vet, too, and she’s the one who determined he was sterile. When the bitch figured out I killed George, she wanted a hundred grand to keep her mouth shut. Well, I shut it for good!”

  A horse snorting made Dean jump up from the stump. As Aidan broke from the trees, Dean turned, gun arm first. Cat acted without thinking. She threw the shovel at him and ran to jump him from behind.

  The second the shovel struck Dean in the middle of his back, he swung around.

  “No!” Aidan shouted as the gun went off barely a yard away.

  Cat jerked to a stop at the fast, sharp pain and grabbed her middle. A wet warmth covered her hands. Her head went woozy and her legs gave way.

  “Cat!” Aidan yelled, as she sank to the ground.

  Dean swung around again, and Cat gasped, fearing he would now shoot the man she loved.

  Aidan was ready for him. He grabbed Dean’s gun arm, held it high and jammed his knee into the other man’s gut. Dean’s grip on the gun loosened and it spun away into the dark.

  Cat forced her eyes to stay open, her mind to stay in the present. Part of her wanted to drift off to someplace peaceful. Someplace without pain.

  The men were still fighting, and she tried to say something that would stop them.

  She couldn’t find her voice. She could hardly breathe.

  Dean tackled Aidan to the ground, where they rolled closer to her. They traded punches. Blood burst from Aidan’s nose like a fountain, but he got his hands on the other man’s neck. Dean struggled, tried to loosen Aidan’s grip, but his struggle weakened.

  Cat realized he would kill Dean if he didn’t stop.

  “Aidan, no!” Pressing her side harder to stop the bleeding, she bit back the pain. “Leave him to the law. I d-don’t want to have to visit you in j-jail.”

  She saw her plea got through to him. He loosened his grip and Dean choked in some air.

  And then the night split with whirling red lights and screaming sirens and howling dogs—Smokey and Topaz tumbled down the ravine toward her—and it felt like all hell broke loose before her world went silent.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I almost killed Dean Hill,” Aidan told his brother, as he waited to see Cat. She was out of surgery, out of recovery and being settled in her room. He was so grateful she’d survived that he actually felt weak with relief. “It would have been my fault, though. I nearly caused the death of another woman I love.”

  “You’re in love.” Tiernan clapped him on the back. “Congratulations, boyo.”

  “No congratulations required. She was almost killed. What if I can’t stop it the next time?”

  “Perhaps there won’t be a next time,” Ella said. “We’ve been living a peaceful and fruitful life since we got married.”

  “Fruitful?”

  Tiernan grinned. “Ella’s expecting.”

  “Then ’tis you two who need to be congratulated.” Aidan shook his brother’s hand and kissed Ella on the cheek. “But it does not change my mind that I cannot be with her.”

  “What about Cat’s m
ind?” Ella asked. “Doesn’t she have anything to say about it?”

  Before Aidan could tell them how Cat wouldn’t want him anyway because he hadn’t told her about the dreams, hadn’t told her about Pegeen, the nurse came out of her room.

  “You can go in, now, Mr. McKenna. She’s waiting for you.”

  “How is she?”

  “She’s doing fine. Go see for yourself.”

  Tiernan pushed him forward to the doorway.

  Aidan stepped into the room and stopped where he could devour Cat with his gaze. Lying in the hospital bed, she looked so fragile. So vulnerable. He thanked his foresight in alerting Pierce, who had tracked his location through the GPS on his cell phone. Even so, there’d been a moment he’d thought it was too late, that he’d lost her. The dogs, who’d been thrown off farm property, kept off by the electric fence and so had arrived with back-up, hadn’t given up on her. Neither could he.

  Cat was alive.

  All that mattered to him.

  Her eyes fluttered open. “Aidan.”

  “Aye.”

  “Is it over?”

  “All but Hill’s trial. Raul made a deal with the state’s attorney. He agreed to testify against Hill.”

  “Good. I’ll testify, too.”

  “As will I. I shall return to see the man properly punished.”

  “Return?” Suddenly, she sounded anxious. “Where are you going?”

  “’Tis not fair for me to take advantage of your good will any longer.”

  “Good will? We’re partners.”

  “About that. I shall find a way to pay back every penny you put out to bring Mac here.”

  “No, you won’t. We have a contract, and I’m holding you to it. You’re not going anywhere without me.”

  Which stopped him cold. After their argument, he’d thought she would be relieved to be free of him. His pulse began to thrum.

  “I put you in danger.”

  “What’s done is done. That’s the past. I’m alive and I intend to stay that way.”

  “You want to continue working together after all the half-truths between us? And the danger I brought you? ’Tis too big a risk.”

  “You take risks all the time, Aidan McKenna. With your horses. One question. No half-truths here. Are you still in love with Pegeen?”

  Couldn’t she see he was in love with her?

  “I will always have room in my heart for memories of Pegeen…but at last I have put her to rest.”

  “Then it’s time you took another risk for yourself. Take a risk on loving me.”

  Warmth flashed through him at the invitation. “How is it you think I love you?”

  “You don’t have a choice. You saved my life. It’s yours.”

  * * *

  THE DAY OF THE MCHENRY STAKES came all too soon. Out of the hospital and nearly healed, Cat held Aidan to his contract. Not that he’d tried getting out of it again, but he’d accepted her decision with a wariness that elevated her anxiety level every time she thought about it.

  He hadn’t admitted he loved her.

  And she still was sleeping alone.

  Now in the box to watch Mac race with Aidan and his brother and sister-in-law, she was both happy and envious. Tiernan’s love for Ella was so obvious in the way he looked at her and touched her.

  To her disappointment, Aidan seemed ill at ease, as if he wanted to say something that he couldn’t force through his lips.

  A declaration of love? Or was that wishful thinking?

  “Mac’s in the starting gate,” Tiernan said.

  Seeing the black colt with Tim Browne in green silks on his back, Cat felt a thrill shoot through her. She slipped her hand into Aidan’s, determined to keep it there whether or not he liked it.

  “This is it,” she said. “The moment we’ve been waiting for.”

  “Aye.”

  The starting bell went off, the gates flashed open, the horses charged down the field, and Aidan squeezed her hand tightly.

  People around her yelled, bettors and owners alike screaming the names of their horses.

  Only Aidan wasn’t yelling. Nor was Tiernan.

  She looked from one brother to the other and saw the same intense expression in their rugged features, and she knew they were urging on Mac Finnian silently. Psychically.

  After all that had happened, after hearing Tiernan and Ella’s story, she had to believe there was something to the claim.

  “C’mon, Mac!” she yelled as the field passed the half-mile post.

  Browne was holding Mac back. The colt was in the middle of the field. Waiting for an opening.

  And then the field entered the stretch and Mac fairly exploded past the horses on either side of him. Aidan’s grip on her hand tightened even more as Mac passed the horse in front of him, then another and another until he was in second place.

  Cat held her breath. The race now seemed suspended; it looked as if Mac couldn’t pass the horse in the lead. And then Browne barely touched the colt’s shoulder with the whip. Mac stretched out, lengthened his stride and pulled ahead. He easily took the race by two lengths.

  “He won!” Cat screamed, and Aidan picked her up and twirled her around. “Mac won!”

  She kissed Aidan square on the mouth and he kissed her back, hard enough to make her giddy.

  When he set her down, he was smiling. “Sure and this was a sign.”

  “This might be only the first step, but Mac is headed for the Breeders’ Cup Classic.”

  “A sign for us, as well,” Aidan said.

  Making Cat’s heart thump. “What does that mean?”

  “You’re mine, remember?” He pulled a small box from his pocket and opened it to reveal a ring set with an emerald. “I love you, Cat Clarke. Marry me and make our partnership permanent.”

  “Say yes!” Ella said.

  Tiernan just grinned.

  Her heart soaring, Cat held out her left hand. After Aidan slipped the ring on her finger, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him again.

  Tiernan broke into their moment. “They’re waiting for you in the winner’s circle.”

  Aidan wrapped a possessive arm around her waist. “Let us go congratulate our colt.”

  * * * * *

  ISBN: 9781459226357

  Copyright © 2012 by Patricia Pinianski

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