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Dealing with him last night had been hard enough, but in the cold light of morning? How much more was one woman expected to take? Her stomach growled in accusation, calling her both a coward and indecently irresponsible for attempting such hard work without breakfast. The energy bar she’d consumed almost whole about an hour ago was not enough fuel for her body. Instead, she channelled her frustration as she hit the large block hammer onto the wooden post, so nearly in place.
Two more over-the-shoulder hits and she kicked against it to test its stability. Done.
She turned to find Danyl standing two feet behind her, looking horrifyingly good after what could only have been a hard night’s sleep. And worse, he was armed with coffee and a smile. The smell hit her hard and her mouth started to water. From the coffee, she told herself. The coffee, not the man.
‘Can I help?’
She allowed the shocked laugh its wings and it spread out before them like a challenge.
‘A prince doing hard labour?’ she scoffed.
‘I can handle it,’ he said with a shoulder-shrug.
‘Sure, there’s a spare block hammer over there,’ she said, gesturing to the large canvas bag holding the tools. ‘Square peg, square hole,’ she added, and nodded to the gap in the fencing, one over.
He held out the coffee to her, which she stared at suspiciously before taking a sip. The moment the liquid hit her tongue she laughed.
‘It’s not burnt.’
‘Of course not,’ he said, sounding offended.
‘There was a time when you thought coffee was made in shops, not grown and ground.’
‘That was a long time ago.’
She took too large a mouthful and scalded her tongue.
She watched him retrieve the block hammer and approach the post as suspiciously as she’d approached the coffee. Mason nearly choked when he pulled off his T-shirt.
Admittedly, it was already stiflingly hot at seven-thirty a.m., but she hadn’t had the time to steel herself against the image of his naked chest and the thoughts and memories that crashed against her. But this wasn’t the chest of the young guy she had met ten years ago.
This was the chest of a man.
Powerful, toned, taut where it should be, and sweet lord, but the most delicious line of hair leading beneath a pair of jeans that should be outlawed on him. She felt like a voyeur, but couldn’t move, couldn’t take her eyes off Danyl, as he positioned the post in the hole with something like ease in comparison to the grunts, sweat and curses she’d needed to do exactly the same job.
But when he started to swing the hammer, that was when it got bad. All the muscles in his back undulating beneath his bronzed skin, more than a few shades deeper than when they had been in New York ten years before. The thought of how he had possibly obtained an all-over-body tan struck images and fantasies in her mind, one after the other with each blow to the post. And there she was, watching him and sipping coffee like some English aristocrat perving on the hired help. The irony wasn’t lost on her.
* * *
Danyl ignored the gaze he knew was firmly fixed on his back. Or tried to at least. He felt it as a solid thing, an actual touch across his flanks and spine. And damn him if there wasn’t a part of him that was preening beneath it.
Good. It was good that she was affected as much by him as he was by her. He’d had eighteen months to get used to the adult Mason McAulty, and still it wasn’t enough. Oh, he could appreciate the way that her body had grown into itself, her face losing some of the softness he’d once enjoyed so much, to gain cheekbones and definition he knew some women would spend hours and hundreds of dollars of make-up trying to replicate. She’d always had an immaculate body—toned, smooth planes of skin, with every ounce of fat banished by the gruelling training needed for her to be able to compete at championship level. In fact, if anything, over the last few months she’d clearly lost too much weight, making him want to tie her down and force-feed her the sweet cream scones he remembered she loved so much.
Pushing the images that thought conjured up away from his mind in case he missed the post with the blunt end of the hammer and looked even more foolish than he probably did already, he decided to get down to business.
‘What will it take to get you to the gala?’
‘Nothing you can provide, I assure you.’ There was more stubbornness in her words than arrogance. Perhaps there was even a trace of fear. Good. It would do her well to be suspicious for what he was going to hit her with. His aide had called him barely an hour ago, with news that had determined Danyl’s course of action.
‘Not even one million Aussie dollars?’
‘If it were just about money, I’d be out there finding another race.’ Her quick response suggested that she’d expected him to try and offer her money.
‘You don’t need to race, Mason. You could do just one of the interviews that the American press want and get that money in your account.’
‘An interview? And the photoshoots? And the snide questions about my miraculous comeback? And those rumours?’ Her voice was gaining both in righteous indignation and speed. ‘Do you have even one iota of understanding as to how painful that would be for me? That even after all these years, and those three wins, people still want to know what happened with Rebel? It doesn’t even matter that Harry and I were found innocent. The horse was drugged. I was accused of being involved. I was accused of taking drugs,’ she said on a harsh whisper, as if even out here she didn’t trust someone not to be listening. ‘And there’s nothing we can do about it.’
‘It still hurts?’ he asked, finally putting down the hammer and turning to her.
