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He began slowly taking off one layer of clothing after another. This wasn’t a seduction—this wasn’t about physical desire. He managed to remove all of them, without Mason seeming to notice. The heat from the bath had filled the room but still she was shaking. Danyl guided her into the hot water, quickly removed his clothes and got in behind her, pulling her against him, wrapping his arms around her as if to protect her from what had already happened. Mason’s tears fell from her face into the water in the bath, but they gently grew to a stop, along with the shakes that had rocked her body as if from the centre of her being.
As Danyl wrapped her in a dressing gown, after drying her, and led her to the bedroom, where he encouraged her to get into bed, his feelings began to swamp him. As he watched her close her eyes, and drift into a restless sleep, he felt his anger grow once more. Anger at how guilty he felt for not being there the moment he’d seen her fall, for not being able to protect her, for not being able to be ‘seen’ with her, as his head of security had ordered. And he promised himself in that moment that he’d never let his duty come between them again.
* * *
The sound of her mobile phone ringing drew Mason from her sleep. For a moment, she was confused. She was in Danyl’s bed, but alone. Her hand reached out to the space where he’d slept, which was still warm from the heat of his body. She wanted to nestle into it. Draw from that heat.
Memories from the previous day crashed through her like a cascade, each accompanied by the sound of a gunshot. The moment she’d felt Rebel stumble, the way his head had drawn her down, the fear that formed before she’d even had a chance to figure out what was going on. The slam of the grass-covered ground vibrating through her body as she’d hit it. The searing pain in the forearm she’d put out to try to soften her fall, the snap of Rebel’s bones, not hers, cutting into her like a knife. The sheer terror she’d seen in Rebel’s eyes, as if he was so far gone as not to understand the greatest threat of the vet’s gun. She’d known it was the right thing, she still knew that, but guilt, hurt, shock built in her chest now, as painful and mind-numbing as it had been yesterday.
Her phone hadn’t stopped ringing. She flung out an arm, nearly knocking it from the bedside table, finally registering that the call was from Harry by his assigned ringtone.
‘Are you okay?’ His gravelly Southern voice sounded in the earpiece.
‘Fractured ulna, eight weeks in a cast. What happened? Where are you?’
‘I’m at the stables. Hold on.’ His voice became muffled as he shouted words to someone else. ‘Listen, Mason. I’m being investigated by the Racing Commission.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Rebel had painkillers in his system. And an anonymous accusation has been made against both of us. Apparently one of us dosed him up so that he could race.’
‘But Rebel didn’t have any injuries. There was no need for him to be on painkillers. And if he had been, then I wouldn’t have run him.’
‘I know. I know, and I wouldn’t have either.’
‘Why would I have drugged a horse? I’d never do that, Harry, I swear.’
The silence from the phone unnerved her.
‘Harry?’
‘They said you were on drugs too.’
Her mind scrambled to the hospital the day before. ‘They took blood and urine samples from me yesterday.’
‘I know.’
‘You know? How?’ she demanded.
‘It’s all over the papers. The Racing Commission have taken this very seriously.’
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sp; ‘Because I’m a woman?’ she said furiously.
‘Because whoever this anonymous source is has shared it with nearly every single newspaper in the country,’ Harry growled.
‘Okay,’ Mason said while her brain scrambled. ‘Fine, I’ve nothing to hide. I don’t take drugs. But who could have dosed Rebel?’
Harry didn’t have an answer to that and said his goodbyes before hanging up the phone.
Her head throbbed as she got up from the bed too quickly, the ache in her arm almost forgotten as she tried to see her way through how her life had changed so much in just twenty-four hours. She blocked out the images of Rebel in his last moments, broken, terrified, tortured, before the vet had done what needed to be done.
She made it to the bathroom before throwing up. Shaking, she brushed her teeth, showered and dressed to go and find Danyl. She needed him. She needed his warmth. But as she got to the slightly open bedroom door she heard the sounds of a hushed argument from the lounge.
‘You have to extricate yourself from this.’ It was a voice she didn’t recognise, and one she took immediate dislike to. It was nasally and thin. ‘The bad press surrounding the death of the horse, the accusations...it will do irreparable damage to your reputation.’
‘I don’t care. I’m staying here. I’m staying with Mason.’
