Breaking Free (Thoroughbred Legacy #10) Page 18

  “You sure, Megan?” he murmured against her mouth.

  She was beyond sure.

  She answered by groping for one of the blankets, letting it fall to the ground. Still kissing her, he began to lower her onto it.

  They went down hard, knocking back into a stack of Louisa’s boxes, sending more toppling, as they bumped up against the hay bales. Straw catching in her hair, Megan laughed against his mouth as they rolled onto the ground. He stilled suddenly, and sat back, staring at her, his blue eyes darkening to near black.

  “You’re the most beautiful woman,” he whispered, removing bits of hay from her hair. He took off her boots slowly, tantalizingly, and he slid her pants down over her hips.

  Her hair a wild tangle around naked shoulders, Megan watched from the blanket as he stood above her and removed his clothes. Before dropping his faded jeans to the ground, he removed a condom packet from the back pocket.

  Shafts of golden light from the setting sun angled through the open barn door, painting his skin a gilded bronze as he stood above her, even more powerful in his nakedness than he was dressed in his uniform with a gun at his hips. His torso was muscled, broad, tapering to narrow hips. His thighs were potent, his erection bold, his calves beautiful, strong.

  There was no pretense about this man. No apology. What you saw was what you got. All or nothing.

  Holding his eyes, she reached out for the condom as she slowly parted her legs to him.

  His Adam’s apple moved in his throat as he swallowed. He knelt slowly between her open thighs, and she rolled the condom down over his erection, stimulating him with soft, rhythmic movements until his eyes were almost swallowed by dark desire. Breathing hard, he clapped a hand on the inside of each of her knees, opening her legs wide, and he softly kissed the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, moving his mouth higher, and higher, until she began to shake and arch her hips to him, desperate for the sensation of his warm mouth between her legs.

  Then she felt his tongue slip into her, and her world swirled. He teased her soft folds, grazing her gently with his teeth where she was so swollen and sensitive that it forced a cry to build low inside her chest and her vision to blur.

  Nothing about the outside world mattered anymore. Not the drought, the mounting storm, the whispering threat of fire. There was no thought, just the sensation of being with him, wanting him, needing him. He lowered his weight onto her, leaning her back as he forced her thighs open even wider with his knees. She felt the smooth, hot tip of his erection, and with one sharp thrust he entered her to the hilt.

  Megan gasped, arching her back as her body accommodated him, and he began to move with long, fast, rhythmic thrusts. She met him with urgent, undulating movements of her own, the friction, the heat, the pent-up frustration and adrenaline driving them both higher and higher and hotter, sweat dampening their bodies, her skin slicking against his as they moved faster, desperate, panting until Megan’s body went totally rigid…and she began to tremble.

  With a sharp cry she shattered, her muscles releasing in convulsing waves, taking control of her body and her mind as she arched her back, digging her fingers into his buttocks, pulling him hard into her.

  Dylan sank himself completely into her wetness as he felt her climax around him, her nails digging into his skin as she thrust her pelvis against him with a cry. The sensation cracked his control and he released into her with a powerful shudder, holding her tight against his body, inhaling the scent of her hair, her skin, the straw in the barn, the old leather, in the most exquisite, earthy sexual experience of his life.

  Still coupled, they lay, pulsing softly in unison, coming down, allowing the soft sounds of the evening to wrap around them, the breeze cool on sweat-dampened skin, cocooned from the reality they both knew they had to face.

  Dylan wasn’t sure how this had happened. He’d just come to say sorry.

  But then he’d seen her in the barn, tousled and dusty in her jeans, her cheeks flushed from sun, a hot spark of frustration glinting in her green eyes, and those damn condoms had begun burning a hole in his pocket.

  It had happened so fast, so naturally. And so damn perfectly.

  He rolled off her, propping himself up onto his elbow to look down at her, naked on the blanket, hair splayed in a gold tangle about her face. He teased a stray bit of straw from her hair.

  “You fit me, Megs,” he murmured, trailing his fingers around the contours of her breasts, her stomach, just absorbing her proprietarily.

  She smiled up at him, and a cool whisper of warning snaked through him.

  He had to be careful. He didn’t own her. She wasn’t his. She had promised him nothing. And he felt a tinge of male fear.

  Because he wanted to keep her. By his side. Always. It was a fault of his, he was beginning to realize, this need to jealously guard—even cloister—the people he loved.

  Maybe it was because his family had lost everything after Liam was murdered in the Koongorra bush all those years ago. Dylan had never gotten over not having been able to save his older brother that day, or identify his attacker in the police lineup.

  Even though he’d been only eight, it had weighed heavily on him all these years.

  His family might have healed if he’d been able to help bring his brother’s killer to justice.

  But Louisa had made certain they never would.

  Protecting the people he did love, holding them close and within his control, was just part of his psyche now.

  But Megan was showing him he could end up pushing his daughter away like that. And maybe her, too.

  “You got sunburned today,” he said, softly.

  An emotion he couldn’t quite read sifted into her eyes. “That horse did me in today. I couldn’t get near him.”

  “Breaking Free?”

  She nodded, sitting up, reaching for her shirt. “I was frustrated, trying to corner him, bend him to my will. That’ll never work with Breaking Free,” she said, pulling her shirt over her head. “I should have waited for him to come to me. Been patient.” She reached for her jeans.

  He arrested her hands. “Wait,” he said softly. “Just a moment longer.”

  The light had faded outside, and through the open barn door the sky was pale lavender, darkening to indigo in the east. Tiny bats flitted almost imperceptibly outside. Reality felt a world away.

  He got up and lit one of the lanterns hanging in the rafters. “I want to look at you some more.”

  A wariness filtered into her eyes. “Dylan—”

  His mobile phone beeped in his pants. He held up two fingers for a second as he reached for his jeans, finding the phone in his pocket.

  “Hastings,” he said.

  And the cold blade of reality sliced right into the barn, into their private moment. Dylan’s heart sank as he learned the warrant he’d finally received to look into Reynard’s financial affairs had just been overturned by a higher authority. Something was going on with this case, something much bigger, and he was not in the loop.

  He cursed, flipping his phone shut.

  “What is it?” Concern darkened her big green eyes.

  “It’s nothing.”

  But it was everything. He was being stonewalled at every turn, making no headway on finding Louisa’s accomplice. The only thing he had left to go on was a call he’d received earlier today from a police contact in Melbourne.

  Dylan had put out feelers on a couple of employees at Whittleson Stud, Sandy Sanford in particular since Megan had flagged his name.

  Sanford had given nothing in questioning, but Dylan had learned he was fairly new in the valley, and that he’d done carpentry work at Whittleson Stud, Fairchild and Lochlain, which gave him access and a working knowledge of all three farms. Sanford’s record of past employment also hewed closely to the racetrack business around the country, most recently Melbourne, which had prompted Dylan to place a few calls. It turned out Sanford had been questioned by police in connection with betting fraud, but nothing had st
uck.

  Dylan needed to talk to him again. He should have been doing that instead of making love to Megan. He cursed to himself, running his hand over his hair, conflicted.

  She pulled on her jeans and hugged her knees close, giving a little shiver in the cooler evening air. “What’s going on, Dylan?”

  He skimmed her cheek with the back of his hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I am worrying about it. “

  “I need to get back to work. I might have a lead.”

  “What lead?”

  “I’ll know more later.” Once he questioned Sanford again. He sat next to her for a moment, touched her face, torn. “Megs…when this APEC stuff and everything is over—”

  “Go, Dylan,” she said, that edgy look in her eyes intensifying. Worry spiked through him.

  “Just…go find the person who did this, okay? And soon.”

  “I want to talk to you, Megs. About…this. Us.”

  She nodded, features tightening. “Later. Just go do your thing, and let me know…if I can help.”

  He started to pick up the boxes they’d scattered in their ardor.

  “No. I’ll do that.” She smiled encouragingly, but it never quite reached her eyes. “I need to gather myself before I face the manor house, anyway.”

  His eyes held hers for a beat, intense. Then he brushed his lips quickly over hers, and was gone.

  Megan stood at the barn door, watching Dylan’s silhouette move toward the manor house in the distance. Her chest tightened. She felt ill at what could still blow up in their faces within the next forty-eight hours, how badly hurt they could all be.

  It was as if her whole world was suddenly hanging by a tentative gossamer thread.

  Perhaps she should never have crossed that line and made love with Dylan.

  But it had happened so fast and furiously, her body acting apart from her mind, responding to pressure that had been cooking between them for days.

  She pressed her hand to her stomach, feeling the quivering butterfly nervousness of an incredible emotion she couldn’t quite articulate, and along with it came the foreboding sense that this fragile thing growing between them wasn’t going to last beyond D’Angelo’s court order.

  The need to tell Dylan what D’Angelo was doing gnawed deep. But if Dylan learned there was an injunction coming down, D’Angelo would hear about it. And he’d act on his threat.

  Of that Megan was certain.

  She’d be responsible for Dylan and Heidi and June being dragged through sordid tabloids, splashed on television news. She’d annihilate any hope of reconciliation with Louisa, and, well, Patrick could kiss his inheritance goodbye.

  There was just no up side to telling Dylan. He had to find Sam Whittleson’s killer, and fast.

  Megan turned back into the barn, the glow from the lantern soft and yellow as she crouched down to scoop up the papers that had scattered from Louisa’s upended boxes.

  She righted an empty container, gathering a stack of envelopes. But while she was dusting off bits of hay, the name on the envelopes suddenly registered.

  The letters were addressed to Kent Oxford, her grandfather, Betty’s husband, right here at Fairchild Acres.

  Her pulse quickened.

  She picked up some more, riffling through them quickly. There were twenty-two letters, all of them to Kent. All unsealed.

  Megan was unable to stop herself from reading the words on a page protruding from one of the envelopes. “To my dearest Kent.”

  Her heart beat faster.

  She extracted the thin pages written in flowing, youthful longhand. The letter was dated, incredibly, sixty-four years ago. She flipped through to the signature on the last page.

  All my love, Louisa.

  Why had Louisa been writing letters to her grandfather?

  Megan checked the envelopes again. They had stamps, but no postmarks. They had never been mailed.

  They’d never reached their intended recipient.

  Why not?

  Why had Louisa kept them?

  She glanced at the open barn door, suddenly nervous about being discovered going through Louisa’s things. A faint beam of light came from a tractor in the distance as it chugged down to the cottages, hauling a trailer with metal drums. She knew the drums were for storing water because of possible bush fire. But otherwise all was quiet.

  It was wrong, but she just could not help herself from pulling loose the sheafs from the first envelope. She turned up the lantern and sat on the blanket, leaning against the hay bales. And began to read.

  I hate it here, Kent, really hate it. I had no choice but to come. My parents were embarrassed by my condition. They said if it became apparent it would ruin me for marriage, and they have high expectations for me. They don’t want you to know about the baby, which is why they took me in the night and told everyone I had gone to school in Switzerland. But I want you to know where I am, and to know I left against my will. I want to run away from here. Perhaps we could keep the baby, and some day marry…

  Megan’s body grew hot. Her eyes watered with increasingly fierce emotion as she read, one page after the other, while the night outside grew dark.

  Astounded, Megan realized Louisa had been writing from a home for unwed mothers, about to give birth to a baby. Her grandfather Kent’s child. Louisa had been sixteen, Kent only two years older, and a laborer on this very farm, training under his father, who was then Fairchild’s operations manager.

  But what about Betty?

  When had Granny Betty gotten together with Grandpa Kent? While Louisa was away, waiting for his baby?

  God, would Kent have started seeing Betty if he’d actually received these letters?

  Megan read more, skimming as her hunger for information outweighed her need for detail.

  And as she read, her heart broke. Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Louisa had given birth to a baby girl.

  It was a hard birth. It didn’t go well at all. But she was so beautiful, so small, when she came out. And when I heard that little cry, my heart near burst with pride. I wanted to hold her in my arms, just to feel those tiny little hands in my own, but they took her from me, as I knew they would. I cried all through the night and my breasts leaked painfully. And then they came and woke me in the early hours of the morning. It was still very dark, and they told me my baby girl had died.

  Megan smeared the tears from her eyes, the words blurring in front of her. But she read on.

  They said I won’t be able to have more children. I feel so empty, Kent. I want to come home and pretend this never happened. I want to see you again so badly. But I’m afraid I have changed. And that maybe you, too, have changed. These months away have felt like years, an eternity. I don’t feel sixteen anymore. I just feel hollow.

  Megan clutched the letter to her chest. If Kent thought Louisa had just left him without a goodbye, it was possible he’d fallen for Betty over the long months of her absence. And if Betty didn’t know about the baby, there wouldn’t have been any sense of guilt or betrayal on her part.

  How it must have killed the young Louisa to return home and see her sister with Kent. The family rift began to make sense. And so did Louisa. She must have grown bitter over the years, watching Kent and Betty falling in love, getting engaged, marrying on the farm. While those letters to Kent sat hidden in a box in her room.

  Megan had to believe Kent hadn’t known about the child. Her grandfather had been a kind, gentle and compassionate man. She couldn’t imagine he’d have hurt Louisa that way.

  Or even if he had found out years later, choices had been made. Time had passed that could no longer be rolled back. Pain all round. It must have been what led to Betty ultimately being cut off from the estate.

  Megan glanced up, saw it was pitch-dark out. People would be worrying about her.

  She returned the letters to the box and quickly tidied up, setting the other boxes right. But the one with the letters she tucked under her arm. She’d ta
ke it up to the manor house, go through them all again, slowly, in her room with the door closed.

  After excusing herself from dinner and having a hot shower, Megan climbed into bed, and by the light of her bedside lamp she began to read as the wind intensified, rustling the leaves outside, the scent of smoke once again thick in the air, and the faint plaintive howl of dingoes carrying across the river.

  Louisa had literally poured her young broken soul into these unread letters. Her writing was poignant, lyrical, her feelings so deep and stoic for a girl that age.