Sheikh's Scandalous Mistress (13 page)

A strong hand was on her shoulder as Andy gripped it hard. For a guy north of sixty, he was still strong. It was probably all the mucking out of stalls he did. “You know, it’s going to be alright.”

“How?”

“I think things always get better when you got your kin with you in on it. You just need to tell him.”

Sam shook her head and gathered up her purse and other accoutrements. “Easier said than done.”

* * *

The smell of meatballs, thick with garlic and oregano, hit her nose the minute she walked into the old farmhouse. Technically, her dad had fully inherited the house when she’d been nine, and it had been his to redecorate if he’d wanted. But no. It was still decked out in the gingham and flannel that her grandparents had loved, still had a doily over the ancient horsehair sofa, and still had a scuffed up, standing piano in the corner of the living room. It was a time capsule, a testament to life in Kentucky decades upon decades ago.

If they lost the farm and the land, the house would go with it.

The last thing she could see was her father settling in an apartment near some of the big medical complexes out by the university. After hand-carved bannisters and chair molding, how could he go to a soulless manila wall and cheap laminate counters? How could he leave the last place Grammy and Grandpa had been? The garden in back where her mother’s ashes had been spread?

Neither of them could leave that.

Tossing her purse onto the floor, she steadied her shoulders and put on her biggest smile. It didn’t matter how distressing the figures had been or what Andy’s level-headed advice was. She had returned home after college to keep an eye on her dad and decided to run the farm when he couldn’t beyond that. She’d promised to be the shoulder her father could cry on, to be the person who would keep him safe. Maybe it was a reversal of the parent-child dynamic but she bore it determinedly because he was all she had.

So tonight, she would just enjoy him and the mouth-watering hints of oregano and paprika tickling her nose.

“So, it’s Gerry Cutter’s famous spaghetti.”

Her dad, goofy as always, wore a chef’s hat, some big poofy white thing that served as an ode to Chef Boyardee. Standing tall, he added a pinch of Texas Pete to the mixture. Sam knew that, if she weren’t there, he’d have added at least a tablespoon. He loved everything so hot it would make you sweat the second it moved over the tongue.

There was no shortage of TUMS in their house.

“Indeed,” he said, grinning back at her and continuing to stir the sauce and meatballs mixture. “I was feeling so good after my hike that I wanted to make you a taste of Italy.”

“The closest to Italy you’ve ever been is that restaurant on Versailles Drive.”

“It’s a good place!”

“It’s clearly using Prego,” she said, tasting the sauce her dad whipped up, “and so are you. It doesn’t even have the chunky tomatoes or onions.”

“Look, I am giving you a taste of Italy. It’s a spicy meatball,” her dad continued, grinning, in a terrible accent that sounded more like Mario the plumber than anyone who’d ever been near Sicily.

“Yes, congrats on your mastery of pouring in hot sauce,” she mocked, sticking out her tongue. “You did a good job, though. Just enough zing.”

“But not so much zing you’re hugging porcelain,” he finished.

She rolled her eyes. His cornball humor had always made her gasp and groan in front of her friends in high school, but she’d somehow missed the bad puns, silly jokes, and overall goofiness in college. It was nice to see it again, especially when his hip pain had rendered him so dour lately.

“I get it. But really, Dad, you didn’t have to cook.”

“Oh, I know what this is,” he said, turning back to the boiling noodles.

“You do?”

“Yup, sure do,” her dad said. “I saw the doctor on Monday. He said that I was doing okay. In fact, he said I had great powers of recovery. It’s been almost five months and I’m feeling like I’m fifty again. It’s great.”

“Still, you don’t need to make me dinner,” she hedged, knowing partly how silly her concerns were.

Her dad did hike the hills of their property once a day, and he rode one of their old mares now on the trails. The doc had forbidden any serious jumping or barrel racing for at least another year, but her dad was always one to push boundaries. Sam didn’t want him to feel he had to be serving her, too. What kind of caretaker would she be if she let him? Of course, a voice in her mind that sounded suspiciously like Andy, chided her:

You can’t be Superwoman, can’t keep saving him.

She told that voice to shut the hell up. Sam had one more big save she had to figure out, had to coordinate, and that was how to come up with five million dollars. Right, and after that she’d create peace in the Middle East and invent a fat-free cookie that didn’t taste like cardboard.

“It’s just, you knew I was going to be home from the office. I could have fixed us something.”

“This is the only meal I can really get right.”

“You mean it’s the only thing that doesn’t end up frozen, burned, or completely hard as a rock,” she corrected, grinning again, despite the situation. “I know. I just…if you need me to do something, then it’s okay to let me know.”

“I can do some things for myself. I’m not an invalid. I’m through the hard part,” he insisted. “You just sit down at the table and let me get all the food out there for you. It’s something that would make Chef Ramsey eat his angry British heart out.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Sam replied earnestly, her mouth gone to Pavlovian levels of slobber as she waited for dinner. “But if you want me to cook for the next week, I will.”

“I don’t,” he said, getting out two plates. “Maybe I want to hone my skills so no one gets chipped teeth.”

“You do steaks on the grill okay,” she pointed out helpfully.

“I do at that, but I’ll level with you darling. I was starving and you were running so late over at the farm.” He stilled. “Is everything alright?” He looked back at her with wide eyes.

Sam bit her lip and then nodded. “It’s going to be fine,” she said, trying to mean it, promising herself she’d fix it. No matter what Andy said, inside her mind or out of it, there was no point in telling him and ruining his good mood right now. She would find a way to fix this before bringing it to him, even if she had no idea how.

Chapter Two

“Come on Midnight Runner! Come on! Goddamn it!” Sheikh Harun Bahar cursed and flung his tickets away as his horse rounded the bend. They were still several lengths from the end but the winning horse had already made its way across the finish line to the fanfare of everyone in the stands and the yell of the hick calling out the races. “This is the third time.”

People stared at him, women with eyes wide as they adjusted their ridiculous and massive derby hats, and men who were fanning themselves with their own tickets. He wondered how many of them had picked White Lightning from Cutter Farm over his own Midnight Runner. If they were smart, all of them had. He had no idea why he was failing. He’d been a success at everything else back in Dubai. Whether it entailed constructing shopping malls or breaking land on luxury golf resorts, he always had a nose for a winning business.

Until now.

Now, he’d started up with horse breeding. He didn’t directly do it. No, there were staff here he checked in on every few months who were supposed to be handling his line of thoroughbreds. A few were direct descendants of the horses his mother had bred back home. But his mother’s gift for breeding and even that vaunted lineage that had wowed the crowds and outraced some of the fastest horses in the Middle East seemed to be failing him here. Currently, he’d make more money selling Midnight Runner to the glue factory than he would by continuing to run him. The sheikh certainly shouldn’t be betting on him, which said everything about the disaster his horse venture was.

If he weren’t a billionaire, he’d have lost his shirt today on the damn horse, and that was unacceptable.

Shaking his head and shoving his fists into his pants pockets, Harun weaved in and out of the crowd around him. The luxury box at the downs was spacious, but he wanted to go out to the crowd. He had some so-called trainers to berate, and for the actual owners of the steeds, there was the socializing after. Maybe it was a tradition held over from the old days, maybe even back to Royal Ascot in England. This was all sport of course, another way for the landed and the wealthy to show their prowess off.

If Harun could manage to have
any
prowess at all among the crowd, he’d be grateful. With a losing set of horses, and the general lack of understanding about the ins and outs of Kentucky society, he got the cold shoulder at all of these post-race soirees.

This afternoon was no different. As he milled around the party room, laid out with a collection of chilled shrimp, cocktails, and even pâté, the rest of the crowd parted from him like Moses and the Red Sea. It half made him want to breathe quickly on his hand to make sure it wasn’t his breath, but that would have been too embarrassing. Besides, it wouldn’t have helped. He didn’t reek; he just didn’t know how to break into the close-knit Kentucky racing society, and having a losing glue stick for a race horse wasn’t helping matters.

Serving himself a plate, he smiled politely at a few men and women who passed his way. It was a marvel if any of them even gave him the time of day. Part of him wished by now, and after a couple years of futile trying, that he’d just give in to his cousin’s advice and give up the horse dream. It was just that it was connecting him more closely to his mother than he’d ever been before and, frankly, there was something to be said…at least a little…for not being naturally gifted at something. Until now, he’d succeeded out of the gate. The more he and his horse racing business struggled, the more determined he grew to make something out of it. Sheikh Harun Bahar had never wiped out completely at any venture, and he’d be damned if now was going to be that time.

The entrance of two people—an older man with a slight limp and a much younger woman—interrupted his contemplation. The crowd cheered and a few of the men tossed up their ten gallon hats at their arrival. No one had to tell him that these two had to be the owners of White Lightning, the famous Cutter Family. Until now, he’d only spied their lead trainers at the events. The rumor was that Gerald had been ill, recovering from surgery, and the daughter, whose name he couldn’t remember, was stuck running all the nitty gritty. Even though White Lightning had trashed him thoroughly before, he’d never seen the people who kept the prize money so continually out of his grasp.

Gerald, despite his limp, seemed younger than Harun would have thought. Part of him assumed any man who needed major surgery was either elderly or had seriously scarred and bruised himself. Mr. Cutter was neither. With graying—almost silver—hair and crow’s-feet prominent with his ruddy tan, he seemed fairly healthy for an old farmhand and horse breeder. Whatever procedure had kept him down these past months hadn’t bowed either his spirit or his gregariousness. No, he was slapping the others on the back and raising a toast of Kentucky bourbon to the celebratory masses. Defiant and larger than life. It made it too easy for the woman beside him, in her plain black dress and veiled hat, to melt into the wall paint behind them.

But only a fool would see past her.

Her eyes were a striking shade of blue, like the Aegean Sea, and they sparkled with intelligence as she started moving through the crowd. Her cheeks were rounded—cherubic, as his mother would say—and it complimented her obvious curves. Her torso overall was sleek but her hips were generous, and Harun shifted on his feet, trying to calm himself a bit. Part of him could imagine digging his fingers into those hips, imagine dragging her into a corner and letting nature lead them both. No, the young Miss Cutter was extraordinary, and that was hard enough. The fact that both of them were the conquering heroes while he was just another competitor who’d been left in their dust chafed him.

It made him burn.

Maybe he needed to get a shot or six of bourbon, too, let it burn down his throat before he went completely mad. As his eyes watched Miss Cutter flit about the room, the rest of him was seated in a club chair in the far corner. These people had long ago made it clear he wasn’t welcome among them, so he was determined to stay only long enough to be polite, and then go back to his own facility to shout at his trainers, idiots that they were. Across the way, by the food service, Yehan, his old servant, scowled back at him. It had fallen on Yehan over the years to teach him manners and, in turn, it had fallen on Harun to break every single rule repeatedly. Scowling in a corner and shoving shrimp in his mouth was probably enough to send Yehan into apoplexy.

“Oh, Sheikh Bahar, you don’t have to be so upset,” Betty McGivens said.

She was the one person among the Kentucky racing elite who ever made an effort to speak with him. She was tall and willowy, a bit too thin for his taste, and her nose was pinched in a way that reminded him somewhat of a weasel or a rat. That probably wasn’t a bad analogy. He was almost thirty, and he’d met the most scheming and underhanded of high society in Europe and in Dubai. He knew a gold digger maneuvering for position when he met them and Betty pinged every radar he had. He knew why she fawned over him for about half an hour every time he attended a race, though the idiot Yehan smiled and waved as she approached.

Old fool is probably hoping I’ll finally settle down, as if I’m interested in that
.

Still, she
was
the only one who would talk to him, so maybe she’d be at least somewhat useful. After all, he did want to know more about the Cutters and how they’d trained horses who’d basically swept this season and were Kentucky Derby favorites for the coming year. But more, he wanted to know the name of the girl with the eyes like the ocean who had suddenly stirred his interest.

Betty, after all, was the type who knew
everything
about everybody and was more than happy to share it.