Reckless Runaway at the Racecourse
RECKLESS RUNAWAY AT THE RACECOURSE
by
Ros Clarke
Find more stories by Ros and other fun stuff at her website:
http://theoldshed.me
© Rosalind Clarke, 2011
Table of Contents
Chapter One
There was someone on the track.
Luke’s blood ran cold.
There was someone on the track
.
A slip of a girl in a vivid cornflower blue dress and long chestnut brown hair flying around her shoulders was stuck right in the middle of the bright green turf with nine tons of thoroughbred horseflesh galloping straight at her.
Including the top horse in Luke’s stable. The Derby horse. The one that would finally set the seal on his already glittering career.
Devastating images flashed through Luke’s head in a brief, nightmarish instant – horses rearing, jockeys tumbling, hooves kicking, ambulances, vets, big white screens to hide the horror from public view…
She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t running to safety.
She was going to ruin everything he’d worked so hard for.
Luke wasn’t going to let her.
He shouldered his way through the heaving crowds, ducked under the white fence and sprinted out onto the grass. He didn’t bother to stop as he hoisted the girl over his shoulder and flung them both to safety on the far side of the track. Just a few feet behind them, nine horses with their tiny jockeys perched high on top thundered past at over thirty miles an hour.
Breathe.
Breathe
.
Luke held on to the rail as if it were a lifebelt while he struggled to get air back into his lungs.
Stupid. So stupid.
H
e’d known it since he was a small child: never, ever cross the track while the race is on. Never.
He could have been killed.
Luke felt the blood throbbing in his veins as he stared down the course, each pulse a rhythmic reminder that he was still here. Still breathing. Still alive.
Gradually, he became aware of something beating against his back and a weight hanging over his shoulder. A woman. The one who’d nearly ruined everything. Luke had one arm around her thighs and the other down by her ankles, holding her firmly in place. Nicely turned ankles, he noticed with the tiny part of his brain that was still functioning normally. Soft thighs. Loud voice.
‘Let me go, you bastard!’
Loud voice yelling right in his ear.
‘Put me down right now or I’ll.. I’ll…’ She hit him again, hard enough to hurt.
The sheer elation of survival quickly subsided, giving way to deep anger as Luke began to comprehend the full extent of her folly. Did she even realise how many lives she’d put in danger?
He let her slide down to the ground, automatically taking note of her hourglass waist. Her
perfectly rounded bosom. Her tousled hair. Her wild face, red with rage. Or possibly red from hanging upside down for the last few minutes.
Luke shook his head dismissively. It didn’t matter that she looked like an angel. She’d acted like an idiot. Luke had a few things to say to this woman and he wasn’t letting her go until she’d heard them.
‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’
Luke blinked. Wasn’t that supposed to be his line? But the girl in front of him was stamping her foot and looking decidedly disgruntled at having been rescued. Oh God, she wasn’t a protestor, was she? Mind you, she didn’t look like a typical Animal Libber, not in that short clingy blue dress and those spiky black heels.
‘That was a Manolo Blahnik!’
She was still shouting at him and Luke still had no clue what she was talking about. ‘That was a what?’
‘My shoe!’ She held up her right foot to show him. The heel dangled by a thread. Typical woman, Luke thought, with vicious fury, only worried about her precious designer accessories. ‘It was caught in the grass and I was pulling it free when you came along with your Neanderthal manoeuvre.’
‘So it’s Neanderthal to want to save lives, is it?’ Luke gripped her arms even more tightly. Someone needed to shake some sense into this woman and he was quite happy for it to be him.
She rolled her eyes at him. ‘Don’t be silly. I had plenty of time to get out of the way.’
‘Funnily enough,’ he bit back, ‘it wasn’t
your
life I was worried about.’
‘Well, no one asked
you
to come running out onto the track.’
Luke gritted his teeth and spoke very slowly and clearly. ‘There were nine horses out there. Any one of which could have been spooked by the sight of you, or swerved dangerously to avoid you. At the speed they travel, those kind of incidents can easily be fatal to the horses. Not to mention the jockeys.’
‘The jockeys?’ Her voice was thin and she had begun to shake visibly.
Luke held her firm. ‘Imagine being trampled underfoot by nine horses running at thirty miles an hour.’
Her eyes widened at the realisation of what she had done began to sink in. As they gleamed in the pale spring sunshine, Luke saw that they were the most extraordinary green-gold colour.
‘I didn’t think…’ she began.
‘No,’ Luke interrupted savagely. ‘You didn’t think at all, did you? This is all just a playground to you, isn’t it? A place to drink and flirt and have a good time and show off your expensive designer shoes. Not a place where people’s lives and livelihoods are at risk. It’s all very well being sorry,’ he went on, determined to drive the lesson in, her wide-eyed guilt notwithstanding, ‘but you should never have done it. It was thoroughly irresponsible and…’
Fliss listened with shivery detachment to the cut-glass upper-class accent, accepting the tirade her rescuer was throwing at her. Deep down she knew she deserved it. She had been irresponsible. Reckless. Impulsive. All the things her school reports had always accused her of and all the things her mother had tried to stamp out of her.